It’s anecdotal, but having gone through natural childbirth, I can assure you that at least for me, pain vocalizations have a HUGE effect on the perception of pain and ability to endure it. I bet midwives could say a lot more about this. I’d also be interested in reading a study on it, because those noises I made in labor were not sounds I’d heard come out of myself before or since, but they sure did help
I know it’s just me but I have chronic pain and this is so true for me! When it’s more intense or I have sharp bursts of it (or I do something stupid, like kick a solid, rigid plastic ball that I thought was rubber. Which is in fact something I’ve done), I tend to make like different noises based on how bad the pain is, like a groan when I’m just really tired of a low ache, like an ughhhhhh sound when it’s more intense and harder to tolerate, and just straight up swearing if it’s sharp and/or intense enough (i.e. stabbing pains or kicking a rigid plastic ball), and it’s definitely harder to deal with the pain if I can’t vocalize it like that. (Study methodology idea: just follow a bunch of people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome around in their daily lives. You’d get so much data so quick it’ll be crazy and honestly we’d love the company. Like I’m 100% serious you’d get such a wealth of data without the ethical worries of hurting people for science and the variety of data you’d get from people with EDS is unreal because there’s so many different angles of the pain we experience.)
Also I do remember reading something once about how people who swore when they were in pain tended to have a higher endurance for pain but it was so long ago I can’t remember where I read it,,,
I remember a scene in a netflix documentary where they made a similar experience to the pain tolerance one, but with swear words. They had the participants in somewhat painful circumstances (i don’t remember what they did) and the first time they weren’t allowed to swear, but the second time they were. The results were that the participants felt more relieved of the pain when they were swearing. I think the name was “the history or the origin of swear words”, something like that. Completely different things, but related, since swearing is also automatic, but in the experiment it wasn’t spontaneous, aswell as the one you mentioned.
It's my guess, and my guess only, that vocalisation may act as a form of distraction from the pain. Moving one's point of awareness away from the source of the pain and onto the vocalisation in question. This could explain the variation in the nature of the vocalisation as different sources and intensities of pain may call for different forms of distraction. Sharp/intense pain requiring fast and loud vocalisation as immediate relief, and longer-lasting/mild pain requiring a less intense but longer duration distraction, usually understood as a groan or a moan.
Personally, in terms of vocalising pain, I've noticed that it never ends there (depending on the level of pain). In most cases I've seen, it always escalates to swear words and this then sometimes can end up in code switching! (I tend to alternate between Sinhala: one language spoken in Sri Lanka, and English)
It’s anecdotal, but having gone through natural childbirth, I can assure you that at least for me, pain vocalizations have a HUGE effect on the perception of pain and ability to endure it. I bet midwives could say a lot more about this. I’d also be interested in reading a study on it, because those noises I made in labor were not sounds I’d heard come out of myself before or since, but they sure did help
those audio transcriptions 😭😭⁉️
𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 𝓪𝓱𝓱 𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓼𝓬𝓻𝓲𝓹𝓽𝓼 👅💦
They look so bad at first but I read the whole study and it was while working out hahaha, not as freaky as it’s seems transcribed without context!
HELP i commented almost the exact same thing
𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 ahh study
I know it’s just me but I have chronic pain and this is so true for me! When it’s more intense or I have sharp bursts of it (or I do something stupid, like kick a solid, rigid plastic ball that I thought was rubber. Which is in fact something I’ve done), I tend to make like different noises based on how bad the pain is, like a groan when I’m just really tired of a low ache, like an ughhhhhh sound when it’s more intense and harder to tolerate, and just straight up swearing if it’s sharp and/or intense enough (i.e. stabbing pains or kicking a rigid plastic ball), and it’s definitely harder to deal with the pain if I can’t vocalize it like that. (Study methodology idea: just follow a bunch of people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome around in their daily lives. You’d get so much data so quick it’ll be crazy and honestly we’d love the company. Like I’m 100% serious you’d get such a wealth of data without the ethical worries of hurting people for science and the variety of data you’d get from people with EDS is unreal because there’s so many different angles of the pain we experience.)
Also I do remember reading something once about how people who swore when they were in pain tended to have a higher endurance for pain but it was so long ago I can’t remember where I read it,,,
this is SO weird but also SO interesting😭 i love it
Very much interesting! Thank you so much!
welp—this made me think of another interesting idea: why do we moan during sex? i bet “corn” will be the most available data to gather 💀
I remember a scene in a netflix documentary where they made a similar experience to the pain tolerance one, but with swear words. They had the participants in somewhat painful circumstances (i don’t remember what they did) and the first time they weren’t allowed to swear, but the second time they were. The results were that the participants felt more relieved of the pain when they were swearing. I think the name was “the history or the origin of swear words”, something like that. Completely different things, but related, since swearing is also automatic, but in the experiment it wasn’t spontaneous, aswell as the one you mentioned.
Ah so kind of like how saying curse words relives you of anger during invigorating situations.
It's my guess, and my guess only, that vocalisation may act as a form of distraction from the pain. Moving one's point of awareness away from the source of the pain and onto the vocalisation in question. This could explain the variation in the nature of the vocalisation as different sources and intensities of pain may call for different forms of distraction. Sharp/intense pain requiring fast and loud vocalisation as immediate relief, and longer-lasting/mild pain requiring a less intense but longer duration distraction, usually understood as a groan or a moan.
Personally, in terms of vocalising pain, I've noticed that it never ends there (depending on the level of pain). In most cases I've seen, it always escalates to swear words and this then sometimes can end up in code switching! (I tend to alternate between Sinhala: one language spoken in Sri Lanka, and English)