Beetle in a box, or, what does your pain feel like?

[Epsilon0]

Having lived with ME/CFS for a very long time, I have developed a keen interest in pain. Physical pain and psychological pain alike. So, I would like to propose that we delve into this subject together. What is pain?

A clever chap, with a fondness for bricks, once wrote that the word "pain" expresses the sensation of pain, but does not describe it. Two people who say they are in pain, may use the same word, but, experience quite different symptoms.

In order to illustrate this argument, he proposed the beetle-in-the-box example:

Suppose everyone has a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. – Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box...

So, my question to you is this: What's in your box? What is your pain like? Can you describe it?

 

[SuicideBoys93]

I was asked by my therapist not long ago if I could paint my current mind state how I would paint it? She said please share the first picture that pops into your head. I told her I picture myself in the middle of the ocean on one of those inflatable rafts waiving around a flare aimlessly signaling for help.

 

[Epsilon0]

Physical pain, in my case, can take many shapes and latches onto different parts of my body.

The one in the neck and at the base of my skull, is sharp like a red-hot iron poke. It's very intense and knocks me off my feet. When I close my eyes, I see sparks of light, and seeing them hurts me... it's a horrendous feeling. How weird that those tiny flutters of light can torture me so!

 

[Sensei]

I can describe how it felt when my thumb almost got cut off by a log splitter or when glass shards sprayed into the back of my head in a car crash. I can describe how it felt to suffer non-bipolar anxiety, despair, and depression in great detail. I can't describe how it feels to be unstable when you're bipolar. It doesn't resemble anything I ever experienced before I fell ill. I often think, "How is it even possible to feel like this?"

 

[Epsilon0]

"How is it even possible to feel like this?"

When I first got ill, I kept expecting my body to cease functioning any second. I kept waiting for my heart to stop pumping blood. Because, how could any organism be exposed to so much physical stress and not shut down?

Years later, in group therapy, I met a woman with the same diagnosis and me. And she told us that she was actually paralyzed at the onset of her ME/CFS. Her body did literally shut down, as it could not absorb any more stimuli

PS: I felt a sudden urge to give you a big HUG when I read your post.

 

[netrezven]

My pain always finds a way to turn into energy or agression, or loss of memories. But there is no one into the outside world that is pissing me off, except for some random people not knowing how to drive a car. It will be fun to record their number, find their address and light that crap away, but i usually find a more profitable way to have fun.