Psychological pain: what is it and what is done in therapy to overcome it?

A review of the characteristics of this psychological phenomenon, and how it can be treated.

Psychological pain is a concept that is sometimes used to refer to people who are going through bad times and require professional help in therapy.

In this article we will see what this form of discomfort consists of and what measures we mental health professionals take to treat patients who experience it.

What is psychological pain?

As its name suggests, psychological pain is a type of discomfort, discomfort or suffering in general that does not have a physical cause, that is to say, that does not originate in the stimuli captured by the nerves that send signals from our organism to our brain..

Thus, it is an unpleasant experience of a diffuse nature, which we cannot attribute to specific parts of the body, and which we usually attribute to what happens not in the nerve cells that capture organic faults in our tissues or organs, but to what takes place in our mind.

This means, among other things, that it is very difficult to know what is the origin of psychological pain, because we are not able to know even by approximation the area in which is what we must act to "heal".

In fact, even the idea of needing a cure for this type of discomfort seems questionable: Would a medical intervention really solve the problem? In reality, there is no reason to take this idea for granted: even the therapeutic resources provided by psychiatry in these cases are often, if we are lucky, a help to cope with the experience for a while, although they expose us to side effects and do not put a definitive end to the discomfort.

Thus, although psychological pain usually has objective implications that go beyond what happens in our consciousness and in our subjectivity (for example, if it is very intense it is associated with a greater risk of suicide attempts or the development of addictions to "relieve oneself" by generating an additional problem), those who suffer it in their own flesh have no choice but to admit that they do not fully understand what is happening to them, and that they can only locate the origin of the discomfort not in something physical, but in their consciousness.

In spite of this, there are aspects in which psychological pain and physical pain overlap in the same experience.. For example, anxiety, when present at very intense levels, often goes hand in hand with digestion problems, general discomfort in the muscles and joints due to muscle tension, increased susceptibility to headaches or even Migraines (in the case of those who suffer from them).

This is not in itself strange, nor is it a scientific mystery; it is a reminder that the division between mind and body is basically a social construct that we use to be able to better understand the complexity of the human experience; in reality, both elements are part of the same reality, and are only clearly differentiated in a superficial sense, in the world of language and metaphors used to describe the mind.

Difference with chronic pain

Chronic pain has in common with psychological pain that in this case its presence does not indicate that there is an organic problem in a place where there are nociceptors (cells that trigger the sensation of pain when they detect lesions in certain tissues of the body).

However, in the case of psychological pain there is no doubt that the problem is not related to injuries, inflammation or burns, but to abstract psychological processes.The problem, however, has nothing to do with injuries, inflammations or burns, but with abstract psychological processes that have to do with the way we interpret what happens to us and what we can do.

Thus, people who suffer psychological pain do not experience discomfort in the section of the nervous processing that goes from the senses to the brain, but in the whole perception-action-perception cycle itself, that is, in the whole circle of life experience: what we think is happening to us and what we think we can do about it..

It is not so much a physiological problem as a philosophical one (without the need for us to be important philosophers to suffer from it, of course).

What is done in therapy in the face of psychological pain?

As we have seen, psychological pain is a very complex phenomenon. This makes it difficult to define, even from a scientific point of view, although in general it has been possible to establish a series of common elements that are present in cases of psychological pain and that allow us to distinguish it from the different types of nociception.

In view of this, psychotherapy is considered as the set of procedures that, carried out by experts in psychology, can help to overcome or alleviate this type of pain, can help to overcome or alleviate this discomfort. The key lies in acting on both sides of the perception-action cycleIn this process, psychologists take into account that mental processes are also, at bottom, actions, part of our behavior.

In this process, psychologists take into account that mental processes are also, at bottom, actions, part of our behavior. Following an experience of psychological pain, various patterns of behavior are grouped together, sometimes taking the form of anxiety. which sometimes take the form of anxiety, sometimes of depression, sometimes of frustration or of impulses that are difficult to repress, and so on.

Whatever the case may be, in therapy we will see which behavioral patterns are feeding and reinforcing these mental operations and these behaviors observable from the outside and that keep the discomfort alive, in order to modify these elements and replace them with others.

Are you looking for psychological support?

If you feel psychologically unwell and feel that you need professional help, I propose that you contact me to attend therapy.. I am a psychologist specialized in anxious and/or depressive problems, as well as addictions and poor impulse control, and I base my work on the cognitive-behavioral model and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I attend in face-to-face sessions (in Almería) or online, and if you want to know more about how I work, you can visit this page.

Bibliographical references:

• Meerwijk, E.L.; Weiss, S.J.; Toward a unifying definition of psychological pain. Journal of Loss & Trauma, 16(5): pp. 402 - 412.
• Shneidman ES. The Suicidal Mind. Oxford University Press; 1996. Appendix A Psychological Pain Survey.
• Thornhill, R.; Wilmsen, T.N. (1989). The Evolution of Psychological Pain. In Bell, R.W.; Bell, N.J. (eds.). Sociobiology and the Social Sciences. Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press.
• Wille, R.S.G. (2011). On the capacity to endure psychic pain. The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 34: pp. 23 - 30.