Becoming Unbound: Pain

It’s fitting that I close this series by sharing an anecdote from Maureen Seaberg, a fellow Psychology Today blogger who herself has mirror touch synesthesia. She tells of gathering accurate impressions of the aches and pains of several high school students whose class she was speaking to – without seeing the parts of their bodies that were said to be hurting. They began to ask her excited questions:

"Where do I hurt right now?" asked the girl in the lavender sweatshirt to my left. "You have a backache," I said, somehow discerning her pain from my own—present ever since a car accident last October.

"Yes!" More gasps.

"Which wrist did I break first and where exactly?" asked a young man. I thought for a second about how this was a "busier" impression as both felt injured, but one seemed a little more healed. I pointed to the outside of the right bone on my own left wrist.

"Yes!"

The bell rang. But that didn't stop the young people, who were now lining up in front of me at the head of the classroom.

"I hurt in two places. Can you tell me where?"

"You have a headache."

"Yes!" (I honestly couldn't get the second one which was lesser discomfort on her shoulder from carrying a heavy bag).

While such a report wouldn’t stand up in court (the kids’ excitement, and Maureen’s own eager engagement with them, might well bias what they concluded), it’s indicative of the kind of thing that deserves scrutiny. Many sudden "telepathic" experiences involve feeling someone else’s pain. And it may be no mere coincidence that some people who’ve had a limb, finger or toe amputated feel not just phantom limb pain (an acute sense of discomfort where the severed part of their body used to be) but also mirror the pain of other people in their phantom limb. They become mirror synesthetes themselves and clearly “show greater empathic emotional reactivity.” (All of this is addressed in my new book, Sensitive Soul.)

I am reminded of a quote by Leonardo da Vinci: “The deeper the feeling, the greater the pain.” In mirror touch synesthetes – and other extraordinary people – the current of feeling runs deep. As such, their tendency to resonate with another’s injury, illness or distress is far beyond the norm.

What does pain signify? It goes beyond the palpable feeling of hurt. In evolutionary terms, it’s explained as a way for an animal to escape, heal, and ultimately survive. The remembrance of the pain or discomfort serves as a potent reminder to avoid situations that could bring about similar pain in the future. Furthermore, the expression of pain is a social signal. Other animals, seeing the pain, infer potential danger and learn to avoid the given hazard themselves.

I would add that pain – especially the emotional kind – is essential to personal development and self-actualization. Much as a fever signifies that the body is fighting off an infection, painful or "negative" feelings inform us that we are in the midst of a difficult situation and that learning needs to occur if we are to grow. For all these reasons, the apprehension of pain at a distance betokens an essential capacity of living creatures.

Beyond our ability to sense pain, sensation in general enables us to expand our perception outwards. Consider:

Human senses reach out into the world … even apart from the five senses man extends outwards … When feeling happy and expansive I extend out in some way, I feel bigger. When I feel insecure I shrink down both psychologically and in the space around me ….

When lives suddenly become involved in extreme drama and emotional tension then the extended selves may well reach out dramatically in space and time, and thereby be "detected" by people sufficiently aware of their own sensitivity to these things.

In truth, none of us senses more than a small fraction of outside reality. The high-pitched sounds that dogs hear are beyond us, as is so much more of the electromagnetic spectrum – ultraviolet and infrared radiation, radio waves, TV signals, etc. Our devices can tune into some of it but we can’t. We’re not even typically aware of our own bodies’ constant activity: our breathing, blood flow, digestion, heartbeat.

Some people, though – and perhaps any of us, given an accident, lightning strike, or similar traumatic prompt – can tap into this wider phenomenal world. Like Tony Cicoria, we’re astonished when it happens. Like the neuroscientists who study mirror synesthetes, we puzzle over the mechanisms by which someone can believe they’re "merging" with someone or something else. But when a person’s accustomed bodily awareness is removed, it’s just possible that the universe may effectively open to their inspection. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously observed, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

To return to a more contemporary source, Eugene Gendlin (who labelled our fundamental bodily awareness as the “felt sense”), a particular quote is apt. “Experience is a myriad richness,” he said. “We think more than we can say. We feel more than we can think. We live more than we can feel. And there is much more still.”