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8nbVq8oVakvAp6SX  1yr ago (text post)   1266 thread views

What experimental evidence is there that chronic pain is psychosomatic?

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Having had some recurring back spine/nerve related pain after an accident, I'm a bit dubious on the psychosomatic front.

Maybe my pain was just entirely biological because pain killers surely fixed my shit up for a few hours. While not medicated I could "choose" to ignore the pain and it would go away for a while but it would return basically any time I moved "the wrong way" or was "reminded" of my problem spots by a sharp stabbing of pain when rotating my upper torso in a specific way.

I think the idea is more like this:

You have an injury, brain tightens certain muscles to protect them --> The muscles heal over time, but you have a trapped prior around constricting that area --> If you can't get muscles to release, constant muscular tension begins to cascade into other muscles and areas of the body.

Which implies that painkillers and muscle relaxants can relieve pain for far longer than they're supposed to last in such cases by helping to break the cycle.

Which conforms to my personal experience as well. Though I'd expect cases of chronic pain to be filtered a bit against cases where that works.

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