Pain: the voice everyone should hear
- Diego Martinez
- Jun 7, 2025
- 3 min read
If we ignore it, does the pain go away?
Both in my home country, Chile, and here in France, I’ve often witnessed this scene: a child falls or gets hurt, and the accompanying adult immediately says, “Be brave, be brave, it’s nothing.” Sometimes, the child even waits to see the adult’s reaction before deciding whether to cry or not. In other cases, if an adult pays too much attention, others will often say, “If you hadn’t said anything, he wouldn’t have cried.” These situations make me wonder: what happens to the pain the child feels? How does their little brain interpret the situation? And above all, what does this kind of situation reveal about our relationship with pain?
How does your brain react to pain?
Click on the image if you want to learn more about how pain works.
A systematic review of more than 26 scientific studies, published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing in 2019, showed that distraction is effective in reducing the intensity of acute pain perception. In other words, if someone or something distracts you, you feel less pain (a point for the adults trying to distract children).
But does that mean the pain disappears or more importantly, that the source of the pain disappears?
Reducing the perception of pain simply means that: reducing it, not making it “go away.”
In this definition, two elements are fundamental: experience and damage.
Pain is an experience and, like any experience, it involves learning. The way we deal with this signal from our body (or how others deal with it) teaches us something that stays with us.
As for the damage that pain points to, it remains present even if we ignore the signal. Ignoring pain in the hope that the damage will go away is like ignoring a fire alarm thinking it will put out the fire. Nothing good can come of it.
After knowing all this, wouldn’t it be wiser to “listen” to the pain and live through the experience in a way that allows for greater learning? Wouldn’t it be better to teach this to our little girls and boys? Helping them learn to listen to that voice could help them grow up healthier and happier.
The Mysterious Science of Pain
Click on the image if you want to learn more about how pain works.
The voice many choose to ignore, but everyone should listen to
To think of pain as something “external,” like someone bothering us, is like thinking our breathing comes from outside and that it’s not us who are breathing. Pain is nothing more than our self speaking to us, telling us that something is wrong or that we need help.
Listening to this voice and giving it the attention it needs can sometimes be a matter of life or death. What is this pain in my chest trying to tell me about my health? Or what is this sadness in my heart really showing me? It’s never too late to pause and listen to the voice of pain.
After understanding all this, maybe we should learn from a very young age to listen to this voice, instead of trying to silence it or ignore it as quickly as possible. How many wounds could we avoid, even after harm has been done?
You may already be wondering: how can I better listen to the voice of my pain? The answer, once again, lies in daily experience: we recognize someone’s voice when we know that person well. That’s why we’ve shared several talks (with subtitles in multiple languages) so you can get to know this inner voice better—this voice that wants nothing more than to help us.
Don’t Suffer Your Depression in Silence
Learn to put words to your pain with this beautiful talk.
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