How come when one leg is getting hurt we feel the need to hit the other leg (or other body parts) to deal with the pain?
In: Biology
People do this? I don’t think it’s a universal phenomenon, I’ve certainly never felt this need, nor observed outside of movies.
Like someone else said I don’t think it’s a universal phenomenon since I very rarely have every seen it in real life. It could come from stimming; physical movements or other forms of tics that people with autism or other sensory processing issues will commonly repeat when distressed or in pain. It’s sort of like a distraction method to help the brain focus attention somewhere else. I don’t have anything to back that up but it’s the only similar thing i can think of.
You can interfere with pain signals by stimulating other pain receptors. Capsaicin is also used to overwrite pain signals in a similar fashion. Additionally, swearing and using a reverse magnifying lense to make an injury look smaller can alter your perception to lessen the perceived severity of an injury.
If it’s the other leg specifically in the same spot, it could also be a symmetry obsessive compulsion (not necessarily meaning OCD). I often feel these when I’m trying to sleep, get an itch on one shoulder, scratch it, then feel like I have to scratch the other side with an equal amount of force. If I scratch it too hard, I then have to scratch the first side to make it feel “even”.
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