I have learned about all types of pain in the past few years. I know emotional pain from working on traumatic PTSD memories - that actually "hurts", you can feel it - using eye movement therapy and retelling/ reliving the event. It wears you out too. Perhaps, rather, it brings the pain to the surface where you can deal with it and acknowledge it. The pain goes places in your brain, as guided by your eye movements. I also really think my brain hurt after that - it was like it forcefully ripped something from a place where it had been somewhat "safely" encased, although it was obviously not fully contained. I guess it's like having stored some waste products in your brain and they slowly poison you through your subconscious. And there was pain in the making of new neural connections to make that memory spread out more broadly across your brain.
I know physical pain too, from injuries that have caused 3 joints to completely fail me: hip, knee, shoulder. The knee had surgery last year where they gave it a knee cap relocation surgery. If you want details, I'll let you see the surgery photographs, in full color, and you can throw up in the place of your choosing. :) It was painful - but since I was blissfully unaware of the actual details, I was surprisingly brave before the surgery, and it really took me by surprise that I had never experienced that level and type of pain before. I'm glad I didn't know the locations they would be screwing into and cutting bone apart. I didn't know it was my funny bone under my knee they'd screw into with 2 screws that would stick out somewhat forever at an angle. I never needed drugs so powerful in my life, and I've given birth to kids while having debilitating dislocating inflamed hips. I saw purple flying elephants on that Dilaudid. Hydrocodone didn't touch it even. Percocet made me throw up.
Then there is the pain of physical therapy, within 3 weeks of the surgery. And the body's and mind's reaction to pain is of course to try to escape it, so you just have to force yourself to do it, with lots of tears and shaking. And you are afraid you will rip something apart so early, because that is still possible if you're not careful. You have to learn how to walk again - it is very humiliating, yet another type of pain.
Then there is the strange type of pain that comes from not having sensation in the area of your leg where they sliced out 3 inches of bone to detach the knee cap tendon beneath your knee, and left a possibly permanent damage to the neurons. You can't be touched there sometimes because everything is either hyper sensitive or under sensitive, you can never tell what it will do or how it will feel. But it usually feels very wrong, because I can feel things about a cm beneath the skin, but nothing on top of that so it feels like skin slipping around on a robotic frame. And I don't know if the object touching it is sharp or will burn me - THAT causes me to have to constantly check what is going on visually when usually your skin would tell you. And the nerves are apparently trying to "grow back" and zap me quite often, and sometimes it feels like cold water drops.
And I also have a problem with my shoulder where it disconnects at the joint or "dislocates" too easily since there was a traumatic tear in it a few years ago. It happens about every 2 months now, especially if I actually do the exercises I'm supposed to be doing. Very painful, sharp, scary pain too. Then burning and constant aching and pain. Instability. Weakness.
Well, I probably have this disorder, but in a more mild form called "familial loose joint syndrome": http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/ehlers-danlos-syndrome/DS00706/DSECTION=symptoms
Unless I work on keeping very fit and strong, and do sports constantly it will probably happen more and more. This is an interesting blog about this disorder:
http://combatsportsreviewblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/familial-loose-joint-syndrome/
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