How many kinds of pain do you differentiate?

Work done by Dr. Ron Melzack and his associate did considerable research on this at McGill University as early as the 1970’s. A literature using the researcher and institution name and the key words important to you in the PsychLit and Medlist databases would help you find excellent answers to your questions.

2.

Ones you don’t like.
And ones that you do.
er…...like….

I can add throbbing pain, numbing pain, searing pain to your list.
I have not had pain that was a 10. Maybe a 6. Female surgery was the worst pain I’ve ever had.

Me: Doc, it hurts when I do this.
Doc: Don’t do that.
I’d add dull aches, burns, and really nasty pain,like when I shattered 3 inches of my collarbone. That was about a 6.

Hmmm…out of kidney surgery, giving birth and a dislocated shoulder that needed a pin, I’d vote the shoulder as being the worst, turrible pain, turrible. lol

I’d say my biggest pain is dull ache. lol

For me there is pain I can talk through and then pain that I can’t.

Yes, I have to report my pains to my docs and I use a pain scale.

Pains I have had:
Stabbing, twisting, pinching/squeezing, pulling, numbing, shooting, burning, chronic, acute, sickening, dull, achey, what I call “Ice pick pain”, or worse the “300lb man sitting on my head” pain.

Highest pain = 11. When if I could, I’d end it all because my migraine makes me feel as if my brain will certainly explode. Luckily that usually only occurs 1 to 3 times per year for 5 to 10 minutes at the peak of my worst migraines. At this point, tears are uncontrollable, I am in a fetal position on the floor of my bathroom. I have trouble breathing and am nearly at the point of passing out from the duration of that amount of intense pain.

I’m very good at this; almost too good. I’ve experienced a lot of pain, enough to make a person not want to wake up the next day. I’m still in some pain every day, but it’s not as bad, and my attitude has changed.

I’ll add piercing pain.

Then there is the PITA kind—the sort you feel when you get the doctor’s bill and your insurer comes up with some weasel words to claim that whatever pain you originally saw the doctor for isn’t covered under your plan. It used to be, but the 48,269 pages of fine print defining changes to your coverage exempted it last week.

@SpatzieLover

Oooh migraines, how awful. :-(
I never get headaches but I have the 50 something, all over, snap, crackle and pop thing going on. I was hard on my joints for years and now they are talking back. lol

Some that I would mention have been listed already, but here is my list anyway, with repeats and everything:

Crampy (minor muscle to moderate muscle aches)
Charlie horse cramp
Stabbing
Like acid running
Inflammed
Like a knife
Burning
Mild discomfort and discomfort (for years I did not count this as pain, but it seems medical professionals do).
Neurological pain
Muscular pain
Pin stick
Raw
Stinging

There is shoulder pain….disc pain…neck pain….stressed part pain, nerve pain, daily pain. I do it in scales now…..5 being a good day. 8 on a bad one. and then the fibro flares, when you wonder how long it will last.

“Pain is weakness leaving the body” – US Marine Recruiting office

Pain is usually our our body’s best friend as it keeps us from causing major injuries to our bodies. Without pain we would all die young.

I see that there are basically two kinds of pain.

The “physical exertion pain” where your body is constantly reminding you to not go beyond a certain point. My body tells me to keep it under level 5 pain when running (level 10 is rolling around on the ground screaming). While running in a long distance race various parts of my body send pain signals to my brain. Sciatica pain shoots down my left leg now and then for no particular reason. The sharp stabbing electric pain from the balls of my feet start up around mile 20. The cramp and nausea pains sometimes hit me hard just after the finish of a marathon when I pushed past my fitness level. The next day after a race or hard workout, sore muscles scream out that they need rest.

If we are unlucky and become injured or diseased then the body generates a kind of “sick pain” that constantly scolds us as if to say, “I tried to warn you, but would you listen to me?” “NO!” With this kind of pain you will need to rest and and seek expert medical attention. Your body is very unforgiving in this aspect in that even if the injury or illness isn’t your fault, your body doesn’t care and you will be punished anyway. In this case pain isn’t much of a friend.

Minor pain, constant pain, pain so bad I threw up, pain so bad I cried for three days straight, I’d rather be dead than have this pain, and holy shit I’m going to die any moment pain. The worst prolonged pain I’ve been in was with a slipped disc in my neck, and I’d put that at a 10. That’s the one that made me cry like a baby for three days. The worst extreme, acute pain I ever get is at least an 11. It comes from an orgasm migraine, and I literally think I’m dying every time it hits. It hits very suddenly, and all at once, exactly at the moment of climax, and feels like your brain has exploded. It’s fucking awful, given the timing!

This question gave me a bit of a jolt! I was going to put ‘baguette, sliced loaf, bread roll, teacake . . . ’ and then I realised that it wasn’t French bread you were after.
Sorry to intrude.

I haven’t experienced much pain. Toothache is one of the worst which is a sharp pain scoring 8, migraine with me was a mild dull pain at 3, cramp at night can be quite alarming and sometimes reaches a 9 though mercifully never for long, infected sinuses gave a dull throbbing pain that was more acute discomfort than pain but for sheer misery value must rate a 10.

I’ve always had trouble with that “pain scale” they use at hospitals. They say that 10 is the worst pain you can imagine. So I can hardly justify telling them anything above, say, a 5 or 6, because nothing I’ve been through even touches the pain I imagine you’d feel, say, burning alive, or being drawn and quartered, or having surgery without anasthesia. So for example, when I had a kidney stone, I believe told the nurse my pain was a 6. As a result, I’ve probably been given lower priority at the emergency room than I really probably should have had. I think I may be overthinking it.

Actually, here’s a comic that pretty much sums up what I just said.

@Mariah I think 10 is supposed to describe emergency level, unbearable, something must be done. Burning alive is beyond 10 in my opinion. But, I know what you mean about the pain scale, I think I use lower numbers than others would for the same pain.

Psychological pain, depression pain generally any pain not physical.

Four.