Pain rather seemed to increase life than to weaken life in these champions. However, the goal is to teach people how to accept and understand their inevitable fear, hopelessness, and anger and to treat those feelings as members of your own internal family. One must learn the inner dialogue skills that will enable them to recognize their pain, identify the accompanying thoughts and emotions, and then approach these internal states with interest and compassion. A basic problem usually emerges early, so many trauma survivors are alexithymic (have an inability to identify and describe emotions in the self), so they never complain about their pain or disability unless they are totally overwhelmed. When asked how they are feeling, they will almost always reply, “I am fine.” Heir stoic parts clearly helped them cope, but these managers also kept them in a state of denial. Some shut out their bodily sensations and emotions to the extent that they could not collaborate effectively with doctors. Cookin’ some fish–think about walking into a house where fried fish, sauerkraut, and head cheese were prepared for dinner. (Some dinner!) You would probably pass out at the door. Yet, the people who live there would be unaware of the smell of their food odor. Why? Because sensory adaption decreases our response to a constant or unchanging stimulus. However, if I took some of their food to work and heated it up in the microwave, my coworker might response by saying, “Whoa! It smells like shit here, what is it?!” Fortunately, the olfactory (smell) receptors adapt quickly. When exposed to a constant odor, they send fewer and fewer nerve impulses to the brain. Soon, the odor is no longer noticed. Adaptation to sensations of pressure from a wristwatch, ring, or glasses is based on the same principle. Sensory receptors generally respond best to changes in stimulation. We need above all not to know about changes; no one wants or needs to be reminded 16 hours a day that his shoes or on or that his back hurts. We simply learn to cope and limit our activities to reduce the sensations of the pain. 

Basically, people learn to grin and bear it because no one wants to hear about their pain anyway. This is also called selective attention (voluntarily focusing on a specific sensory input). We are able to tune in on a single sensory message, while excluding others. Another familiar example of this is the cocktail party effect. When you are in a group of people, surrounded by voices, you can still select and attend to the voice of the person you are facing. Or if that person gets dull, you can ease drop (eavesdrop) on conversations all over the room. (Be sure to smile and nod your head occasionally!) The cocktail party effect is quite powerful. If you are listening to one person, another person nearby can talk backward and you will not notice the strange speech. What makes this possible? Selective attention appears to be based on the ability of various brain structures to select and divert incoming sensory messages. Then, as they asked the stoic parts to step back, they started to acknowledge the angry part that was in pain and wanted to tell and wreak havoc, the part that wanted to stay in bed all the time, and the exile who felt worthless because he was not allowed to talk. These people were raised to be seen and not heard—safety meant keeping their need under wraps. And that is why the antiquated generations are so strong. They were taught not to complain, to be quiet, polite, and respectful. And to work hard and they could get what they wanted out of life and that their word was their bond. Yet, some people feel trapped by conflicts at their job, where a manager part insisted the only way out was to overwork until their back pain flared up to the point where he could barely walk. And so, these type of people really need to dial it back a little and rest so they do not end up being paralyzed.  When people have nerve damage, they may be injuring their body and not even be aware. Stop and think, what about messages that have not reached my brain? Is it possible that some are blocked while others are allowed to pass? Evidence suggest there are sensory gates that control the flow of incoming nerve impulses in just this way. Specifically, sensory gating refers to facilitating or blocking sensory messages in the spinal cord. 

A fascinating example of sensory gating pain in the spinal cord is that one type of pain will sometimes cancel another. The gate control theory suggest that pain messaged from different nerve fibers pass through the same neural gate in the spinal cord. If the gate is closed by one pain message, other messages may not be able to pass through. How is the gate closed? Messages carried by large, fast nerve fibers seem to close the spinal pain gate directly. Doing so can prevent slower, reminding system pain from reaching the brain. Pain clinics use this effect by applying a mild electrical current to the skin. Such stimulation, felt only as a mild tingling, can greatly reduce more agonizing pain. So just because a person looks good and seems happy, you never know what they are going through. A visual inspect cannot tell you what is going on internally. For example, there are Victorian houses that look very beautiful inside and out, but you cannot see if the pipes are rotted out or if the studs are about to collapse, or if they knob and tube wiring is about to start a fire, unless a professional goes in an examines these things. Just like many used cars look nice, but you would not buy one without having a mechanic look under the hood, would you? So you never know what a person is going through just because they look good. It is not your job to manage the lives of other people. The sense of the human body supplies raw data to the brain, but the information remains mostly meaningless until it is interpreted. It is as if the senses provide only the jumped pieces of a complex puzzle. A variety of psychological factors affect the severity of pain. Psychological interventions can help people in physical pain. Cognitive behavioral therapies and mindfulness-based practices have also been shown to have a beneficial impact on pain, joint inflammation, physical disability, and depression. However, none of these studies has asked a crucial question: Are increased psychological safety and comfort reflected in a better-functioning immune system? Instead of listening to the whirr of a dentist drill, for example, you might imagine that you are lying in the Sun at a beach, listening to the roar of the surf. At the house, music can be a good distractor from chronic pain. Distraction can reduce pain.