Is It All In Your Head?

10.03.07

Posted under: Thoughts

Do you ever wonder sometimes if the pain you feel is just your mental response? It’s kind of like taking a placebo. Well, you don’t know about the fact that it’s a placebo, but when you take it, whether or not it truly is helpful, you feel better.

So my question is this: Is the pain you feel all in your head? Does it really hurt or is it because you happen to be thinking about it? How do you know or how do you distinguish the difference between the two? Do you need to be bleeding or are you already bleeding inside your emotions? Why does it hurt where it does?

Most importantly: how do you stop it? How do you control it? Do you numb yourself to the point where you don’t feel anything else? Where nothing else seems to matter and all you do is go about your day, put a smile on your face for the masses, and then go home, feeling the same empty feeling?

So, is pain just a mental thing? Is there a placebo for the emotional pain you put upon yourself?

If there is, then where do I find one?

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Tags: emotional pain, pain, physical pain

10 Comments »

Stockton Boy expressed:

Saturday, March 10, 2007 @ 2:15 am GMT-8

Physical pain and mental pain are very very different. Physical pain one can find a placebo for it. Mental and emotional pain will break you apart with every thing that you do. The best thing to do for it is to know (in your case) that you have a great person that is going to see you at the end of the day and would want nothing more then to see you happy. And if you are not happy, it is best to let them know what is going on with you, not the whole detailed thing but just what brought it. Be it school or a bad dream that is bringing you down. Otherwise the person who works for eight hours and every minute is eternity without you will be brought down and confused about themselves, trying to figure out what they could do to bring you up. But when most are down they aren’t approachable. And when the person who cant wait to see you gets a smile out of you, it will only be for a moment, almost as if you want to be down. When in relationships it is always best to let the other know what it is that is putting you down, and not doing that “it’s nothing” shit. That is very aggravating and can upset the person who might actually care about how you feel. That or if they had a bad day the day before and wants today to be new, will go back to how bad the other day was when the person who they count seconds until they meet is down, and as far as the other can tell, its for no reason, especially when you say “it’s nothing”.
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Jessica voiced:

Saturday, March 10, 2007 @ 8:57 am GMT-8

It’s funny, but I never really thought about my mental response to pain before. The human body is extremely resilient, perhaps because it has the ability to block out extreme pain. Otherwise, women wouldn’t be having children. So, I guess that you could say that most of pain is in your head, especially since if you touch something hot, it doesn’t really sink in until after the neurons in your brain tell you that it should…But I think you already know how all of that works.

As for emotions, the pain comes when you try to block them. They’re just trying to express themselves, much like we do when we write blogs. As for finding a placebo, just keep writing your blogs. They are the best one that I can think of, because as I said, emotions just want to be expressed.
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Julie typed:

Sunday, March 11, 2007 @ 12:34 am GMT-8

I think emotional pain is in your head, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less than physical pain. Technically, all pain is in your head since the body sends the message to the brain that interprets it as pain. But anyway, no there’s no real placebo for heartache, but you can tell yourself long enough that something doesn’t bother you, and you’ll start believing it.
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Kaisa answered:

Sunday, March 11, 2007 @ 11:34 am GMT-8

I’ve never really given this too much thought. Or I haven’t analysed pain much, because I’ve always just figured it is all in your head. Both emotional and physical pain. The thing is, I wouldn’t want to stop pain, I don’t want to feel numb. To me, pain is sort of a reminder that I am still alive…
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Mish replied:

Monday, March 12, 2007 @ 2:27 am GMT-8

You can treat emotional pain like you can with physical pain. Just that the placebo is different.

It’s finding the placebo which is the hard part.

But I believe pain is there for a reason.
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Mari expressed:

Monday, March 12, 2007 @ 6:08 am GMT-8

Physical pain is a reaction by platelets in your blood to let you know something is wrong. Thusly, mental pain is a reaction by your mind to let you know something is wrong in your life.

The things that cause pain are always with us. Bad memories, old feelings, and such never leave. They never truly go away.

It’s like if you have a baboon on your back. It doesn’t go away just because you stop thinking about it. It’s still there messing with your hair and flinging poo at passerby. The only way to lessen the mental/emotional pain is to give the baboon on your back a banana. Think about it, talk about it, reason it out, whatever. You can’t ignore the baboon on your back.

I couldn’t resist being just a little random. But in all seriousness, you have to make peace with your pain. Otherwise it will just eat away at you until you can’t ignore it. Numbing it just prolongs the time that it has to destroy you.

As for putting on a fake smile for the world, don’t. Being fake is the worst decision you could ever make.
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Sai wrote:

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 @ 9:43 pm GMT-8

I don’t know much about emotional pain, because I always block people from getting to close. I really take precautions because I’d rather not feel hurt.
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Grace answered:

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 @ 6:01 pm GMT-8

That’s a funny question– I’ve never really thought about it before. I’m not sure, actually. I’m a gymnast– I can bend my back really well and I can do the splits all three ways, because I’ve been training everyday… I do remember it hurting, but I can’t remember if I imagined it or not. I don’t think so, though. =P
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Shyann stated:

Friday, March 16, 2007 @ 3:08 pm GMT-8

I am not sure of how to answer this question. It’s a good question. Because of the kind of person I am and the things I go through, I try not to look for answers that I know will only hurt me or leave me more confused than when I first started off.

I must say that your blogs are more in-depth then the “usual” blog. It’s always a breathe of fresh air to run into one as such.
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Miranda stated:

Friday, March 16, 2007 @ 8:25 pm GMT-8

Good question. I do think that both physical and emotional pain are very much real… you can’t help what hurts you emotionally and you don’t have to see a bee stinging you for it to hurt. Emotional pain is supposedly controllable by just willing it away but I really don’t see how that’s possible other than numbing yourself so that you don’t feel anything at all, for me anyway and I’ve done that (it’s not good ha). It kind of irks me when people say that though, that “it wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t let it” - like we like to be bothered *shakes head* Anyway, it would be great if there was something to take to make it go away, even if just a placebo… the effect would be just as real, right?
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