Pain demands an explanation
A weekly nugget or two of pain science news and ideas for patients and pros, usually 400–1000 words. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.
Ever notice how rare it is for people to just say “I have chronic pain” without also including some kind of theory, some hypothetical diagnosis?
This always reminds me of the way almost everyone thinks they are above average. 😏 Many people believe that they understand their pain, and some surely do, but they cannot possibly all be right — not even close. The ideas range widely, from the medically mainstream, to more creative but reasonable hypotheses, to odd pet theories, to muddled clichés, to full-blown crackpottery.
The craving to make sense of pain is intense. Pain does indeed “demand” an explanation, and usually gets one … whether it makes a damned lick of sense or not!