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Although pain is a bad feeling, it usually serves a purpose: It warns that harm to your body is occurring or is about to occur so that you can take action. For instance, the pain of a burn causes you to quickly remove your hand from the stove. But what about pain that seems to have no purpose?
The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage.” An important part of this definition is the acknowledgment that pain has an emotional feature. Acute pain — the kind that occurs to prevent or limit injury — goes away when the condition that triggered it is gone. Unlike acute pain, chronic pain continues but serves no real p…