Woolie
Senior Member
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- 3,263
I can't get over this one.
Its called "pain catastrophizing". The basic idea is that patients - especially of course those with medically unexplained symptoms - can work themselves into a frenzy of mad, catastrophic thinking which causes their pain to feel much worse than it really is.
The evidence for "pain catastrophizing"? Self report studies show that people who ruminate about their pain, or express their feelings about it in exaggerated terms, or feel more helpless when in pain, are more likely to rate their pain as more intense.
How circular is that? If your pain is more intense, you're likely to feel worse about it, and find it intrudes more into your thoughts... it doesn't take a genius to predict that. But of course, the claim being made here is the exact opposite: that your maladaptive, dysfunctional thinking makes the pain more intense. The tail actually wags the dog, as it were.
Now get this one: Females are more likely to "catastrophize" about their pain than males. How do we know? Because someone asked a large bunch of undergrads to think of an intense pain experience they can recall then rate their thoughts and feelings about it - how helpless they felt, how much they ruminated on the pain, etc. The females tended to rate feeling more helpless, and to think about their pain more (although not necessarily describe it in more exaggerated terms):
Testing Factorial Validity and Gender Invariance of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale
Joyce L. D'Eon, Cheryl A. Harris, Jacqueline A. Ellis
None of these researchers bothered to report what pain experiences the two genders were actually responding about, let alone ensure the pain experiences were of comparable objective intensity. I'm guessing the female undergrads were reporting a lot more menstrual pain - perhaps the odd miscarriage - and maybe a few less football injuries.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Why is this so outrageous? Because this kind of thinking is not only lazy but extremely dangerous. It can be used to justify why "medically unexplained symptoms" are really in all our heads...
Its called "pain catastrophizing". The basic idea is that patients - especially of course those with medically unexplained symptoms - can work themselves into a frenzy of mad, catastrophic thinking which causes their pain to feel much worse than it really is.
The evidence for "pain catastrophizing"? Self report studies show that people who ruminate about their pain, or express their feelings about it in exaggerated terms, or feel more helpless when in pain, are more likely to rate their pain as more intense.
How circular is that? If your pain is more intense, you're likely to feel worse about it, and find it intrudes more into your thoughts... it doesn't take a genius to predict that. But of course, the claim being made here is the exact opposite: that your maladaptive, dysfunctional thinking makes the pain more intense. The tail actually wags the dog, as it were.
Now get this one: Females are more likely to "catastrophize" about their pain than males. How do we know? Because someone asked a large bunch of undergrads to think of an intense pain experience they can recall then rate their thoughts and feelings about it - how helpless they felt, how much they ruminated on the pain, etc. The females tended to rate feeling more helpless, and to think about their pain more (although not necessarily describe it in more exaggerated terms):
Testing Factorial Validity and Gender Invariance of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale
Joyce L. D'Eon, Cheryl A. Harris, Jacqueline A. Ellis
None of these researchers bothered to report what pain experiences the two genders were actually responding about, let alone ensure the pain experiences were of comparable objective intensity. I'm guessing the female undergrads were reporting a lot more menstrual pain - perhaps the odd miscarriage - and maybe a few less football injuries.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Why is this so outrageous? Because this kind of thinking is not only lazy but extremely dangerous. It can be used to justify why "medically unexplained symptoms" are really in all our heads...
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