May 6

You don’t have 5 senses

How many senses do you have? And you can’t count your psychic ability. That’s cheating.

Let’s see…

Touch– You can touch stuff and feel it
Taste– You can put things in your mouth and experience flavor
Smell– You can inhale the fragrance of something and experience its aroma
Seeing– You can visually perceive the light bouncing off matter
Hearing– You can auditorily perceive sound waves around you
Proprioception– your brain can actually sense your body as it exists in space
Enteroception– your brain can feel what’s going on inside your body, like right after coffee
Nociception???? What the heck is that? It’s your brain’s ability to detect PAIN.

Strange right? We all know what pain is, but it’s a special and specific type of receptor that is responsible for telling us that something is hurt or injured. It’s a notification that SOMETHING has to change and QUICKLY.

If you stub your toe: nociception
Get a paper cut: nociception
Break a bone: NOOOCCCIIIICEPTIONNNNNN

But check this out… your BRAIN doesn’t have nociception or nociceptors. Nope, it can’t feel pain. You might never know this unless you are either a nerd or have watched some horror movies.

But here’s a unique way to look at the brain’s reaction to what it might consider painful. When the brain is growing, developing, maturing, running, and functioning with an imbalance, it can’t really feel the pain of that imbalance, so it tells you that something is off by creating pain FOR OTHER PEOPLE.

Think of someone you know who does stuff that is so irritating and you just can’t figure out why. They are socially awkward or have a crazy bad temper, maybe a learning difficulty with math or reading. Maybe they are very oppositional. Possibly they are super withdrawn or disengaged from your family. All of those uncomfortable, painful behaviors are actually pain being inflicted on YOU by the brain in the person, trying to tell you that something is not right and it needs to change and QUICKLY.

There are two main points to this:

When someone is behaving in a way that is causing you pain, you can look at it as a product of their brain telling you something is not doing its job correctly, rather than looking at it as a personal attack. This will at the very least keep you from feeling offended by them and at the most, it will help you to engage them in a way that they can receive as patience, kindness, and love. They will see that you see that they aren’t doing it on purpose.

The brain CAN change quickly. You can change brain function in a matter of weeks or months (depending on the situation and the brain) and help that person to get out of the pain they’re in.

I hope this concept helps you better understand the kids and adults in your life who are dealing with brain function problems. Unfortunately, most of the institutions and systems that we are part of in society don’t understand this yet, and I believe the more people who understand it, the more we can create a soft and tender environment for people who are having “brain pain” and just don’t know how to handle it.

Do you/does your kiddo seem to be expressing brain-pain? You can always book a free, no-pressure conversation with us to talk about what to do about it.