Your pain is mine - Pain Synesthesia.
Yesterday my son sustained a minor, but very painful injury to his hand and it made my entire body hurt. The feeling is referred to as pain synesthesia. It is an under researched area, so me saying this is most certainly self diagnosis, it was just the closest thing to what I felt that makes sense. I wanted to put my experience out there in case others find solace in the fact they are not alone.
For my entire life, I’ve had it to a lesser degree whenever my father would come home with scratches and cuts, sometimes bloodshot eyes, usually sustained from his work, but sometimes just from being careless outdoors. He worked with children and young adults with special needs for my entire life, and would sometimes take a beating from the people he worked with and supported, but sometimes he’d just be outdoors tracking through woods and sustain minor cuts from thorns or branches. Every time something like this happened and I witnessed the aftermath, I would get this feeling of discomfort and pain over my body. The pain he felt wouldn’t be mine, but my body would react to the pain in a way that physically and mentally hurt me.
I remember another experience of this also, I was walking my dog on my lunch break, and a old lady stood with her dog chatting to someone over a garden fence was pulled off her feet by her dog, who lunged at my dog as I past. She must have had her keys in the hand she used to break her fall, because when she got up, her house key was jammed into her palm. The feeling was instant and breathtaking, I could not let go of it for weeks after. I still think about it sometimes and feel pain for that poor lady, and think about how much pain it must have caused her, and how long it would have taken her to heal.
Yesterday my son cut off part of his finger nail and a bit of finger with a toddler potato peeler, while helping his mother in the kitchen to peel foraged apples for apple crumble. The blood was intense, 20 mins of holding paper towels over the wound, and holding his arm above his head. Three large thick paper towels soaked in blood, a bloody plaster, and many splashes on floors and furniture. It’s painful breaking a nail. Its painful bruising your nail, its even painful jamming something under your nail. But peeling a piece off with a peeler is something else. The pain he felt must have been excruciating. But my son is an absolute trooper. 3 years old, and only 30 minutes later he was telling us his finger was feeling better, and he wanted to take the plaster off.
Apologies for the thorough description, but I needed to paint a picture, just to confirm with you, the person reading this, that I am not alone in this feeling. During, I held myself together, to be strong for my son, so as not to panic him or his mother, but inside I was falling apart. The pain I felt up and down my skin, in my back, and in my stomach was intense. Not the same as sustaining an actual injury, but something closer to flu symptoms, sunburn and a stomach ache.
Once the clean up and first aid was over, and my son was sat on the sofa with his mother, being coddled and consoled, I went back to work. Somehow I managed to half focus on the work I had in front of me. But my emotions were high, I cried a bit, felt physically sick, felt weak, and for the entire rest of the evening I couldn’t look at my son without feeling pain and strong emotion. He’s so brave though, managed to make the most of his evening still and wanted to play even with his hand out of action.
But this wasn’t all I felt. The feelings of failure, my failure to protect my son, my failure come to his aid quickly, my internal failure to keep myself from panicking while he was going through pain. The guilt of it not being me. In my head I know these feelings are unfounded, they have no baring on what actually happened or how I even handled it externally, but they are still very hard to reconcile. I’m struggling to forgive myself for something I know I need no forgivness for.
Later that evening I spoke to a close friend who is also a father. He consoled me, pointed out the flaws in my internal monologue, and helped to put things into perspective. I am blessed to have that support system as I know lots of fathers out there don’t. It did not completely dispel the internal beating I was unleashing on myself, but at least slightly softened the blows.
In any case, pain synesthesia is uncommon. Some people can develop a heightened sense of empathy from the experience, while others find it so intense they become reclusive, and check out of daily life. Luckily I am not one of those, it only reaches its peak when the subject are those I feel a strong connection to, so for me, it is manageable. Supposedly it is also linked to phantom pain, the feeling amputee’s experience in their missing limbs, which from my perspective would make sense, as it was a physical feeling as well as a mental one.
But enough about me, thank you for reading this far and if you feel the need, have experienced similar or just want to chat about programming and fatherhood you are welcome to join my server on discord