The Art of Distraction

1. It is important that we take into consideration, areas other than physical pain and have an holistic approach. Pain is whatever the person who is suffering it feels it to be. Physical pain can be experienced as a result of disease or injury, or some other form of bodily distress. For example childbirth. Although not associated with injury or disease, but can be an extremely painful experience. Pain can also be social, emotional and spiritual as well as just physical.

Sam Anderson book reviewer for New York magazine and writer of many articles like, In Defense of Distraction, Anderson has primarily become interested in the way culture and our habits of reading has drastically changed with technology. In the article In Defense of Distraction, Anderson explores the poor attention one has developed throughout the decades and how this attention has distracted the human mind in a way that it has centered to our cultural attention. It is an inevitable habit we seem to apply in our everyday life’s, in our yoga class one a week, the cancer slowly spreading across our body, the pretty little liars show that is shown every Tuesday that seems to not be enough. We seem to pay attention all the time

The psychological processes in the article include pain perception, and how we as humans perceive pain, how we react to it, and how we adapt to it. The article explains the pain signaling process and how pain can be amplified. For example, when we get pricked by a needle, a signal from our finger ascends through the spinal cord to reach parts of the brain. From there, we perceive pain, then we form a pain experience. Pain perception can be resulting from several factors such as the frequency of pain input, how sensitive the CNS is, How the body reacts after brain perceives and tries to send information to the injured area. A pain experience is when we have the urge to put a band aid on our injury, or be scared to get pricked from a needle again. However, each pain experience differs from one culture to the other, moreover, one person to the other. The article is conducting a research paper about pain and pain perception in different ethnic groups.

Pain is not only defined as a sensation or a physical awareness, but also entails perception. Moreover, pain is an unpleasant and an uncomfortable emotion that is transferred to the brain by sensory neurons. There are various kinds of pain and how one perceives them is varied as well. Certain parts of the brain also play a key role in how one feels pain such as the parietal lobe, which is involved in interpreting pain while the hypothalamus is responsible for the response to pain one has. Although some believe pain is just a physical awareness and is in the body, pain is all in one’s mind because the perception of pain and the emotion that controls its intensity differs in individuals and when pain itself is administered to the body, the brain determines the emotions one attaches to each painful experience.

This paper will define the term pain and how it pertains to the comfort theory. Next, there will be discussion from relevant literature in regards to pain. Its defining attributes will be

“Pain is much more than a physical sensation caused by a specific stimulus. An individual's perception of pain has important affective (emotional), cognitive, behavioral, and sensory components that are shaped by past experience, culture, and situational factors. The nature of the stimulus for pain can be physical, psychological, or a combination of both.” (Potter, Perry, Stockert, Hall, & Peterson, 2014 p. 141) As stated by Potter et al, the different natures of pain are dealt with differently depending on many factors. Knowing this, treating pain can be very difficult as there is no single or clear cut way of measuring it; “Even though the assessment and treatment of pain is a universally important health care issue,

To most people, pain is a nuisance, but to others pain controls their life. The feeling discomforts us in ways that can sometimes seem almost imaginable. These feelings can lead to many different side effects if not dealt with or diagnosed. These effects can include depression, anxiety, and incredible amount of stress. The truth about pain is that it is vital to our existence. Without the nervous system responding to pain, we would have no idea if we were touching a hot stove, being stuck by a porcupine’s needles, or something else that could leave a lasting effect upon our bodies without us even knowing anything about it.

Pain perception can be less than might be expected from the extent of a physical injury. This was proven by a scientist called Susana Bantick, Oxford University, and colleagues who carried out a study on the influence of attention distracting pain processing (Bantick et al, 2002). During the experiment, brain processing was measured by measuring brain activity using fMRI. Participants rated pain from 1-10 when noxious heat stimulus was applied to their hand in the scanner. She then followed the same process but gave them a task which required cognitive processing; reducing the amount of focused attention on pain. Bantick, therefore, showed attention distraction can reduce the amount of pain perceived by the individual, also pain processing to the brain was reduced. This provides vital evidence that pain perception does not just depend on the injury alone.

An important part of life is the capability to feel pain. Pain allows individuals a warning system when something is wrong. Without pain, there would be no warning system other than noticing we are injured using our 5 senses. The issue with just relying on senses to determine when we are hurt is that the elapsed time taken to notice may have been too much to fix the issue. As a species, we need pain to alert us of injures and prevent them from killing us. There are two nerves in our body that signal pain. One nerve send a signal to the brain to alert us that something is wrong and the second nerve signals the start or stop of the pain.

It makes us feel sad or helpless, feelings no one wants to experience. But, despite all our efforts, pain always finds a way to borrow into our lives. It can’t be stopped, merely delayed in some instances. It can show up as, say, a broken arm, or even the death of someone close to us.

Some people live lives full of joy, happiness, and pleasure, but no one escapes the experience of fear and fear's companion, pain. We are born into lives of awaiting fear and pain. Our lives are profoundly shaped by them, as well as our efforts to avoid them. These emotions are not something that can be turned off and on. Pain and fear seem to always uncontrollable and untouchable.

Pain and comfort as a rule are considered opposing in the needs of human beings. Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with potential tissue damage. Pain can be divided into categories of long-term pain or short-term pain and by the type of pain, level of pain, location of pain, and ease of solving the pain. Frequently, there is no way to completely manage pain, specifically in end-of-life care. Pain is at

‘Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage’ (International association for the study of pain 2014). Pain can be made up of complex and subjective experiences. The experience of pain is highly personal and private, and can not be directly observed or measured from one person to the next (Mac Lellan 2006). According to the agency for health care policy and research 1992, an individuals self-report of pain is the most reliable indicator of its presence. This is also supported by Mc Caffery’s definition in 1972, when he said ‘Pain is whatever the experiencing patient says it is, existing whenever he says it does’.

Pain is something that connects all of us. From birth to death we can identify with each other the idea and arguably the perception of it. We all know we experience it, but what is more important is how we all perceive it. It is known that there are people out there with a ‘high’ pain tolerance and there are also ones out there with a ‘low’ pain tolerance, but what is different between them? We also know that pain is an objective response to certain stimuli, there are neurons that sense and feel pain and there are nerve impulses that send these “painful” messages to the brain. What we don’t know is where the pain

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (1979). Pain is actually the culprit behind warranting a visit to a physician office for many people (Besson, 1999). Notoriously unpleasant, pain could also pose a threat as both a psychological and economic burden (Phillips, 2006). Sometimes pain does happen without any damage of tissue or any likely diseased state. The reasons for such pain are poorly understood and the term used to describe such type of pain is “psychogenic pain”. Also, the loss of productivity and daily activity due to pain is also significant. Pain engulfs a trillion dollars of GDP for lost work time and disability payments (Melnikova, 2010). Untreated pain not only impacts a person suffering from pain but also impacts their whole family. A person’s quality of life is negatively impacted by pain and it diminishes their ability to concentrate, work, exercise, socialize, perform daily routines, and sleep. All of these negative impacts ultimately lead to much more severe behavioral effects such as depression, aggression, mood alterations, isolation, and loss of self-esteem, which pose a great threat to human society.