Pain Catastrophizing

Pain catastrophizing is the tendency to describe a pain experience in more exaggerated terms than the average person, to ruminate on it more, and to feel more helpless about the experience. People who report a large number of such thoughts during a pain experience are more likely to rate the pain as more intense than those who report fewer of them. One suggestion is that catastrophizing influences pain perception by altering attention and anticipation and by heightening emotional responses to pain, though researchers cannot yet rule out that at least some of the effect works the other way, with a more intense pain experience itself producing more catastrophizing thoughts about it.