Psychologist Rachel Zoffness has been researching pain for 35 years. She says: “… 100% of the sensory messages from the body filter through our brain’s emotion machinery before they become the thing we call pain. Pain is never all in your head. Pain is never purely psychological. Pain is both physical and emotional 100% of the time.”
She says all our experiences are “biopsychosocial.” If we think they’re only “bio,” we end up ignoring the other two thirds of what makes us human, where healing can also be found.
“Our brain is our body’s danger detector…and pain is our body’s warning system… So, our brain…uses all available information to decide whether or not to make pain and how much.” To do that it takes into account our environment, our memories, and data from all five senses. Our response to pain should do the same.
Surprised? The scriptures compiled over millennia by our pre-Enlightenment forebears have all along called us to approach hard things together in the context of safe, trusting relationships, to remember together how God brought us through in the past, to put into practice the collected wisdom bequeathed to us, and to keep sharing, singing, and loving one another through hard times.
Kyle Matthews, Minister of Pastoral Care