> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.gilespcroft.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 100% of pain, too. - URL: https://www.gilespcroft.com/100-of-pain-too/ - Published: 2026-05-25T06:00:10.000Z - Updated: 2026-05-25T06:00:10.000Z - Description: A remarkable case history that sheds the experience of pain in a different light 🥾 - Author: Giles P Croft - Tags: Pain, Psychology, MECHANICS, Life change, Attention, Consciousness, Medicine, Neuroscience, Real stories I finished last week's Daily Reminders with a couple of posts all about how we're experiencing a world of thought-perception, being projected outwards (i.e. inside-out), rather than some objective world-out-there, that we've got a window on (i.e. outside-in). If you missed them, they're both pretty good ones to catch up on! - [The thing vs. Your experience of the thing](https://www.gilespcroft.com/the-thing-vs-your-experience-of-the-thing/) - [Normal distribution curves of experience](https://www.gilespcroft.com/normal-distribution-curves-of-experience/) And they brought to mind an amazing little article I once read, in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). It's many years since I read the journal, so I'm not sure whether they still do this, but they used to have a lighthearted section near the back, called ‘Minerva’, that would detail odd little case histories – medical curiosities, if you like. (I'm gonna be honest with you here guys – it's pretty much the *only* bit of the journal I ever read 😂) I can't send you to the original, because it's behind the paywall (the citation is below), but the full text of it is freely circulating the internet, so I've included it in full. Because it's not just emotions and assessments and situations like giving presentations that are created in thought-perception, it's pain, too! Have a read of this: British Medical Journal (BMJ) Minerva 1995;310:70 ![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/2026/05/BMJ-Minerva-Nail-Boot.jpg) **A builder aged 29 came to the accident and emergency department having jumped down on to a 15 cm nail. As the smallest movement of the nail was painful he was sedated with fentanyl and midazolam. The nail was then pulled out from below.* **When his boot was removed a miraculous cure appeared to have taken place. Despite entering proximal to the steel toecap the nail had penetrated between the toes:* ***the foot was entirely uninjured** *.* (And I can tell you that fentanyl plus midazolam is about as hardcore as it gets.) ## What's the takeaway? Well, this is a teeny, detail-lite case history where we don't really know all the facts (and of course nobody will ever know what the builder himself experienced – even his [own memories are likely to be false](https://www.gilespcroft.com/the-fallibility-of-memory/) now, given all the hoo-haa)! It's also likely that he could feel *something* (even though it went between his toes, it's still a big old nail!) and was very freaked out by what it *looked* like. For me, it's (yet) another invitation to pause and consider that: 🔑 ****Key Message**: 100% of our feelings (including pain!) come from the Principle of Thought. Whatever that unfortunate (soon to be completely-zonked 🥴) builder *did* experience in that moment, 100% of it was created from *within.* His psychological system, just like yours and mine, was asking, > 📦🗣️ *“What must be true for me to make sense of the data I'm receiving?”* …and it served him up with the reality described in the case history. One that clearly lay somewhere down at the thin end of the [normal distribution curve](https://www.gilespcroft.com/normal-distribution-curves-of-experience/). ## What's *not* being suggested Again, it's important here to [draw the distinction](https://www.gilespcroft.com/contaminated-thinking/#thought-and-thinking) between (the Principle of Thought)—or ‘Thought-perception’—and bog standard ‘thinking’. Pain is made of Thought-perception – that version of ‘reality’ offered up to us by the [3 Principles](https://3pgc.org/faq/?ref=gilespcroft.com). It's a matter of (somewhat confusing) semantics, but when I talk of ‘thinking’ I'm referring to the blibber-blabber DVD commentary track [that then *interprets*](https://www.gilespcroft.com/my-mind-has-been-quite-helpful-recently/) that experience, judges it, adds meaning etc. (And let's be honest here, people – usually makes it worse.) So it's not that pain isn't there and we just *think* it is… it's more that the *experience* of pain is actively constructed from Thought. Which is pretty malleable stuff. I can tell you that the last time I was sat in the dentist's chair, I tried to not-think-about-pain and it didn't make a blind bit of difference! Then again, it is at least *possible* to do a caesarean section delivery—knife through skin!— [with hypnosis alone](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0002937860905251?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com). And there are enough anecdotal reports of war injuries going unnoticed, or people not realising they'd broken a bone during some heroic rescue or other, all at *one* end of the curve… …and then this guy, with a nail (not) in his foot, at the other. It's such an interesting, potentially helpful and relatively unexplored idea, and I was very glad to see, not so long ago, that my daughter's school was pointing in this direction, too! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/2026/05/2026-05-25-Where-is-pain-experienced---Deri-view-poster-1.jpg) 🧐 Giles SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY REMINDERS newsletter [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/2025/12/DR_Lockup-Black-1.png)](#/portal/signup) Want to start **your* days with helpful, insightful content like this? The Daily Reminder is a quick, lighthearted email that arrives in your inbox, to help keep you grounded in reality, so that you get to **‘Think less, and live more.’* **“They feel like a moment of stillness in a world of madness.” \~* Neil, UK **“One of those small things with big impact. Honestly, just sign up!”* \~ Paula, UK [GET YOURS NOW ](#/portal/signup) ### Related [Time on the ballA really lovely metaphor, shared with me by a client ⚽️![](https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/link-icon.svg)The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/thumbnail/photo-1574629810360-7efbbe195018-2ec850c1d98e6e607a2ed0595ea7e9c8e5ac37aed3239a7c438e68c94b999d3f)](https://www.gilespcroft.com/time-on-the-ball/) A metamorphosis of pain, as told by a client.