History Main / ImHavingSoulPains

This trope is most frequently found in "kid-friendly" fantasy and science fiction works in an effort to heighten drama [[CouldHaveBeenMessy without the use of blood]]. Most likely, the hero is experiencing a psychological, supernatural, or magical attack that gives him/her ambiguous chest pains or a mind-splitting headache. You can bet that the hero will be doubled over in pain, unable to move.

Scenes with this trope can be pretty [[NightmareFuel frightening]] anyway if used well, like with trippy spirit monsters chanting and hovering over the hero, or surreal montages of the hero's fears playing before his/her eyes. (See one of the possible causes, MindRape.)

* Ash, Brock, and Dawn in ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' get spikes of pain when the Lake Trio are kidnapped, because they had [[{{Synchronization}} been linked to them previously]].

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekS2E18TheImmunitySyndrome "The Immunity Syndrome"]], Spock experiences this when the [[spoilers:USS Intrepid]], an all-Vulcan starship, is destroyed with all hands, feeling their deaths from light-years away.

** Plus one non-power-related incident in ''Series/PowerRangersLightspeedRescue'', when Ryan was cursed with a snake tattoo. Every time he morphed the tattoo would come closer to killing him, making each morphing painful.

* In ''ComicBook/NewXMenAcademyX'', Pixie received one of these injuries during their trip to Limbo. It acts up specifically around demons and beings with darkness in them.

When a character feels horrid pain in an... abstract way. It can be their soul, heart, spirit, [[WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries hair]], consciousness or the nervous system itself, but it never leaves a physical mark and involves no gore despite it being unimaginably painful.

A character who has a SoulJar will likely experience this if said jar is damaged or (especially) destroyed, since in this case their soul is ''physically'' being damaged.

* Ash, Brock and Dawn in ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' get spikes of pain when the Lake Trio are kidnapped, because they had [[{{Synchronization}} been linked to them previously]].

** In the second Rebuild movie, Mari forces Unit-02 into a berserk state with the 'Beast mode'. Control rods literally burst from the Eva's back, and it's heavily implied that Mari herself feels the pain. The only reason she really keeps going is because she is a bit of a masochist and claims that it is 'so much fun'.

** A more horrifying version of this trope occurs for people whose [[spoiler:souls are trapped inside philosopher's stones]]. They are compressed into what seems to be a tiny pocket dimension and subjected to excruciating agony that will only end when their particular soul is used up as energy. Yes that's right, each [[spoiler:philosopher's stone]] is a self-contained ''hell''. More disturbingly, they're fairly common; at one point we see a room filled with ''tanks'' of the objects.

* In ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', [[spoiler:Kyubey causes these in Sayaka by pressing on her Soul Gem, demonstrating to her what "real" pain is, while commenting on how fortunate she is that her physical body can no longer feel it.]]

** Voldemort's spirit suffers this when [[spoiler: Betsy severs his PsychicLink to Harry]], having what is described as a full body migraine.

* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', Oreg suffers terrible pain whenever he disobeys an order (even if he really tried to obey, but couldn't do it for some reason), and if he gets separated both from his owner and castle Hurog. [[AWizardDidIt His father]] [[PoweredByAForsakenChild turned him into the]] GeniusLoci of castle Hurog, or something like that, and permanently [[MadeASlave bound him]] to obey the owner of a certain ring, that goes from father to son in the Hurog family line. Oh, and he's immortal. Ward, his current "owner" treats him more like a brother than a slave, but doesn't know exactly how the magic works, so that this still happens ... once.

* ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'': "Soul-clenching" perfectly describes Lyra's feeling upon having her [[OurSoulsAreDifferent daemon]] seized. It gets worse in the third book, when the two of them are [[spoiler:separated by Lyra's choice]]. Even people without visible daemons can feel that.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': Frodo had a Burning Scar that was inflicted upon him by a Morgul blade during his second encounter with the Nazgûl, but also suffered from the evil presence of Sauron himself, especially after he entered Mordor. The book described him to be waving his hand feebly as if trying to ward off a blow. He often collapsed and eventually had to have Sam carry him up to Mount Doom. It might be a case of Giving In To Spirit Pain or Evil Induced Adrenaline when Frodo's actually at Mount Doom and all his energy returns ten-fold in a frenzied attempt to save the ring. It also could be that the One Ring was sapping him like it did to Gollum, and was trying harder and harder to sap his strength away to keep itself away from Mount Doom. Then, being there, it decided "Hey, this STR-sapping thing just isn't working, let's try full on Dominate Creature effect..." After the adventure was over, he continued to feel the effects of the wound once a year, on the anniversary of the day he received it, even after the Ring was destroyed. The Ring itself apparently left its mark too, since he left Middle-Earth for Valinor in hope of healing his Soul Pain.
* ''Literature/TheLostFleet'': One of the side effects of spending a long time in [[HumanPopsicle survival sleep]] is [[ImColdSoCold constantly feeling cold]] for hours afterwards, and the story opens with Captain Geary experiencing these symptoms ''and'' the adverse psychological effects of learning about [[ColdSleepColdFuture the world he's woken up to.]] [[DownplayedTrope It's probably psychosomatic]], but for weeks afterwards he's described as feeling an echo of that lingering chill every time stress and anxiety starts to wear him down.

* In ''Literature/WhiteTrashWarlock'', a character experiences ''literal'' soul pains after performing a magic ritual to wound their soul and create an artifact powerful enough to destroy an Eldritch Abomination that's terrorizing Denver. The wound causes them frequent pain and corrupts their magic enough that any supernatural creature they run into knows immidiately that done some kind of dark magic and assume the worst.

* The eponymous character of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' experiences something like this when he's about to lose his soul, or has just had it returned. It's at least partly an emotional effect due to extreme guilt; whether real physical pain is involved is difficult to tell. On one occasion, the show fakes viewers out after he has sex with his sire Darla.

* Occurs every so often on ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' when someone's powers are on the fritz. Sometimes the source is running out (Tommy as Green in ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers''), sometimes its deharmonizing with their body (Jason as Gold in ''Series/PowerRangersZeo''), sometimes its the powers being taken away...

** Plus one non-power related incident in ''Series/PowerRangersLightspeedRescue'', when Ryan was cursed with a snake tattoo. Every time he morphed the tattoo would come closer to killing him, making each morphing painful.
* Played with in ''Series/{{Suits}}'' when Louis tries to get Donna to fill in for his vacationing secretary.She turns his wording into objectifying her and her work, invoking this with "That just makes my soul hurt." Of course, she is kidding and just feels like messing with Louis and making sure he won't ask again or try to convince her.
* In ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', Sam coughs up blood, suffers horrible pain and dizziness, and develops life threatening fevers, after he starts transforming to complete the trials which will close the gates to hell.

* In the ''VideoGame/ChzoMythos'' universe, a soul can feel pain if someone or something it relies utterly upon or loves deeply is killed and/or destroyed, but since this permanently cripples the soul, it can only be done once. The pain worshiping cult, the Order of Blessed Agonies, have their potential new members causing this pain to themselves as final test before they are fully accepted into the cult.

* In ''Pungirls,'' (Jackson Ferrell's first comic, years before ''Webcomic/SketchComedy)'' Karen's catch phrase, at least in the early strips, was "The puns! They hurt my soul!"

* In ''Webcomic/ChampionsOfFaraus'', when Daryl accidentally comes into contact with one of the spheres inside [[PocketDimension Leilusa’s avatar]], his body more or less starts warping like a glitched out character model in a video game, while he screams in agony. After Leilusa dispels it, Daryl is physically no worse for wear than he was before. Leilusa describes it as “Unimaginable pain and suffering”.

* Pain with no physical source can be a symptom of Clinical Depression, or a host of other psychosomatic disorders.

** It's theorized that the abstract chest/abdominal pain many people feel in conjunction with sudden or intense negative emotions are the result of your brain desperately trying to find a physical reason you're not feeling well, because physical pain is easier to rationalize than emotional pain.

* Under stress the muscles in your chest expand and contract creating the feeling of a pain over your heart/soul area. Commonly known as Heartache.

** Similarly, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E13TheNameOfTheDoctor "The Name of the Doctor"]], the Doctor also suffers this when [[spoilers:The Great Intelligence]] starts interfering with his timeline, turning every one of his victories into a defeat, and "feeling all of his past selves dying all at once".

** The ExpandedUniverse makes it clear that Force lightning is this as well. (Carbonite is AndIMustScream, by the way. Leia got off easy comparatively.)

* ''TabletopGame/BetrayalAtHouseOnTheHill'' has a ring that allows you to attack an enemy using your Sanity stat rather than Strength and cause Mental damage rather than Physical if successful. [[FanNickname Sanity PUNCH!]]