Pain tolerated better by women with better emotional coping skills

updated Jan 15, 2018

Tags: chronic pain, mind, pain problems

PainSci summary of Ruiz-Aranda 2010?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided at the bottom of the page, as often as possible. ★★★★☆?4-star ratings are for bigger/better studies and reviews published in more prestigious journals, with only quibbles. Ratings are a highly subjective opinion, and subject to revision at any time. If you think this paper has been incorrectly rated, please let me know.

This experiment presents clear evidence that “pain is an opinion”: an experience modified by mental and emotional factors.

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that being a drama queen actually hurts. (“Drama queens,” of course, is exaggeration for comedic effect — please don’t actually call anyone in pain a drama queen unless you want to get smacked around.)

Two groups of women were tested for pain tolerance with the traditional, unpleasant method: immersion of the hands in ice water. One group was rated with better emotional coping skills, and (predictably) they were more tolerant of pain than women with poorer coping skills.

Although the results seem unsurprising, the authors say that “currently there are no experimental investigations of the relation between emotional regulation and pain.” Based on this study, it can be assumed that emotional state and skills are relevant to pain management.

original abstract†Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.

Emotional regulation is an important variable in the experience of pain. Currently, there are no experimental investigations of the relation between emotional regulation and pain. The goal of the present study work was to analyze differences in pain perception and mood generated by the cold-pressor (CPT) experimenatal paradigm in women with high and low emotional regulation.

Two groups of women were formed as a function of their level of emotional regulation: women with high emotional repair (N = 24) and women with low emotional repair (N = 28), all of whom performed the CPT.

The results show that the women with a high score in emotional repair reported having experienced less sensory pain and affective pain during the immersion, as well as a more positive affective state before beginning the task. During the experimental task, they also reported a better mood, thus displaying lower impact of the experience of pain.

PERSPECTIVE: Emotional regulation is proposed as a key element to manage the emotional reaction that accompanies the experience of acute pain experimentally induced by the CPT experimental paradigm in a sample of healthy women.

original abstract†Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.

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