There is the evidence of my own experience and my work with patients which shows that we have within us the ability to control excessive pain. But our everyday experience of life makes it equally clear that under ordinary circumstances we are quite unable to use this ability. It would seem that we, civilized people, have somehow lost the knack of using it. On the other hand, some primitive peoples still retain this ability to some extent, and as a result cope with the pain of severe injury better than the more civilized and sophisticated Western peoples. This idea is quite important to our self-management of pain because it makes us realize that we are not attempting something new and difficult, but instead are merely relearning now to use an ability that we already have within us.
Our Lack of Experience of Pain-One reason for our relative inability to cope with excessive pain is simply our lack of experience in the matter. Life in Western communities is so organized now that we have very little firsthand experience of pain except an occasional visit to the dentist; and even he gives us an injection if he thinks it necessary or if we wish it This is all a very wonderful advance in the history of man but it has this unfortunate side-effect, that we are less able to cope with severe pain if it should befall us; and we turn more and more to the use of drugs for pain of less and less severity.
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