Pain is both a physical and emotional experience, much more than just the body's nerve response to an injury or a change in a function of the body. Pain is a complex experience that is very personal (and sometimes isolating) for the individual person. It is invariably influenced by a person's beliefs, culture, ideas, fears and feelings.
For the last 20 years or so, the concept of pain has been recognised as being what a person says it is, existing when they say it does and being as painful as they say they feel it. How an individual person views different types of pain will alter the way they react to that pain, and ultimately affect how they will feel about the pain after the experience.
The anticipation, or the 'expectation', of pain can increase anxiety levels in a person and as a result increase the intensity of how they perceive the pain when it comes. Therefore if a woman is fearful and anxious about her labour, her need for pain relief can often be higher. It has also been suggested that women who feel they are in control of the decisions about what is happening to them in labour will perceive their pain as less intense and less threatening. They will also be more likely to feel more positive about their labour experience after the birth.
Our body is an amazing system. Inbuilt into this system are a couple of known mechanisms that can allow our bodies to naturally deal with how we interpret pain. These include:
Endorphin release
The gate control theory