When pain overwhelms the self: A phenomenological study of a new mode of suffering, based on adults' recollections of their worst pain episodes.
The journal of pain May 2, 2025 Peter Stilwell, Mael Gagnon-Mailhot, Anne Hudon et al. 8 citations
Pain-related suffering can occur through an immediate, disruptive impact on one's sense of self, even without self-reflection. Interviews with 12 adults across Canada living with various pain conditions revealed that during their worst pain episodes, the experience overwhelmed thoughts and self-reflective capacities, disrupting foundational aspects of self-experience such as agency, bodily ownership, and time. Participants described these experiences as incapacitating, dehumanizing, and dissociating. The accounts closely resemble first-hand reports of torture, supporting a new mode of pain-related suffering that does not require self-reflection. This expands traditional understandings, which have exclusively anchored suffering to self-reflective thought, to include two inter-related modes.