@article{ref1,
title="The pain paradox: borderline personality disorder features, self-harm history, and the experience of pain",
journal="Personality disorders",
year="2015",
author="Carpenter, Ryan W. and Trull, Timothy J.",
volume="6",
number="2",
pages="141-151",
abstract="Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD), compared to controls, report a relative absence of acute pain. In contrast, BPD is overrepresented among chronic pain patients, suggesting they experience a relative excess of chronic pain. To date, this &quot;pain paradox&quot; has been only partially explored; no study has examined both acute and chronic pain in the same sample. In addition, previous research has not fully examined the effect of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) on either acute or chronic pain experience in BPD. Undergraduates (N = 206), oversampled for those high in BPD features, completed a Cold Pressor Task (CPT), rating their pain every 15 s over a maximum of 4 min. Following the CPT, participants completed measures of BPD features, NSSI history, past-year pain, and perceived pain tolerance. <br><br>RESULTS did not support the expected negative association between BPD features and acute pain. Multilevel modeling revealed an interaction of BPD features and NSSI history on CPT pain ratings: Among individuals in the no-NSSI group, BPD features were associated with greater acute pain. Among individuals in the NSSI group, BPD features were not significantly associated with acute pain. <br><br>RESULTS for past-year pain indicated that BPD features were associated with greater past-year pain regardless of NSSI history. This finding, coupled with the difference in the association of BPD features and acute pain between the NSSI and no-NSSI groups provides tentative evidence that the combination of BPD features and NSSI history, among nonclinical samples, is linked to a pain paradox. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1949-2715",
doi="10.1037/per0000112",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/per0000112"
}