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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33348 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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That said, I have experienced chronic pain (but do not currently) and that was definitely 100% real. Certainly it can be psychosomatic for some people but let's be clear that it often has a purely physical cause.

It can absolutely have a physical cause, but more than a few months and I'd be willing to bet it's mostly psychosomatic. My understanding is that most chronic pain starts with an acute injury and spirals from there. The brain feels the body get hurt, tenses up, and a vicious cycle ensues.

At the end of the day the line between the two is blurry.

As far as I am aware one leading explanation isn't that it really is psychosomatic in the regular sense but rather than the system for sending pain signals from the spinal cord to the brain gets messed up by and self triggering from having some sort of long term pain, which leads to it continuing sending signals to the brain despite the injury healing.

The brain isn't at fault, it receives real signals, it's just that the signals doesn't have a injury as a cause (any more).

Eh, I think this one is genuinely real. As for other types of chronic pain, I'd be willing to believe they're mostly psychosomatic, but it's hard to know for sure without having experienced it. Sorry to be the "well acktually" guy but there really are real sources of chronic pain.

Hah you’re fine. I think the terminology here is mostly to blame, “real” and “psychosomatic” don’t really map onto what we’re getting at. Maybe culturally-induced vs mechanical?

Sure, IDK if it's really "cultural" though, psychosomatic seems more accurate. I think even if you were a hermit with absolutely no culture you could still fool yourself into a lot of these things.

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