Inny, what you are dealing with is a very complicated and intense subject. Basically, everything is in our heads... and much of it also in our bodies. If we had no sensors and message readers in the brain, then we wouldn't know what our bodies are feeling.

The mind body connection is really entangled. Please don't punish yourself for someone's misunderstanding of how pain is created and felt.

I live with chronic pain. Most of it is from real physical sources (such as a jaw off bite some, sacrum out, verterbraes chewing into spinal cord) but I have to believe that some of it isn't "physically real." In that sense I mean that my problem with the nerves and the signals they send to the brain are just plain screwy. They are misfiring and sending pain messages to the brain for determination when there might not be any reason or pain there in the first place. Does this mean I don't feel pain? Of course not!

Pain is when the nerves send a message and the brain interprets it as pain.

I use a TENS unit at times. This is a transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator. In short, it sends an electrical pulse into the body to break up and mess up the pain messages the nerves are trying to send to my brain. The messages that it scrambles arrive in an unreadable form and the brain goes and doesn't interpret them as pain, and thus, I don't sense as much or any pain in that area of the electrodes. Does that mean there isn't pain there?

There might be good reason for pain, such as a broken leg, but if the message is scrambled, then I won't feel the pain.

See what I mean by being complicated?

There's more, but this is basic

Don't hate yourself. Your body is doing it's best. You can always find other ways to cope with the pain, and yes, some of them will reduce the pain. But that doesn't mean it isn't real.