By Bella Dodds
Oh what a fun conversation: Pain vs. Pleasure! Well it could be if pain wasn’t such a taboo subject. But what better place to present this repressed issue then on a website created to have the very conversation that goes exactly 180 degrees in the opposite direction from societal norms? So here we go we’ll see what happens. I am a bit curious.
Our society has evolved to provide us with infinite forms of pleasure. Would you agree? The comforting agents call out to us in ever-growing forms of smart phones, computers and ipads where we stream movies, TV shows, Youtube clips, porn and reality shows anytime, anywhere. It takes a lot of discipline nowadays to resists the many comforts of video games, 1,000 cable channels, comfort foods, alcohol, pain killers, prescription medications, pot, or more extreme drugs…you name it we’ve got it and more numbing forms are on the way.
We are a pleasure seeking, pain escaping, and drug popping culture. But through seeking pleasure and avoiding pain we inadvertently cause ourselves a hell of a lot more suffering. The more we try to numb pain the more pain runs us and the more intense we feel the back lash.
I think we should talk about this thing called pain because this is the opposite of what we do in our society. What might happen if we got somewhat comfortable with the uncomfortable and put pain out on the table and had a healthy, open philosophical conversation about it? I mean we all deal with it even though we try to hide it.
Recently, I read some shocking statistics posted by Dr. Lisa Goodman on her blog for Wash Park Chiropractic on how our children today are dealing with pain and stress:
Children today are responding to emotional stressors in ways that we can’t imagine and generally don’t understand.
Recent studies have shown that over 10% of all teenagers are self-mutilating, and of this number, 64% are ?cutting?. Despite the appearance, self-mutilation is not a precursor to suicide, but according to the young people who will talk about it, ?it is the only thing that makes [them] feel better. Additional studies are finding that about 20% of all teenagers are experiencing depression. What used to be just typical teenage angst is becoming a problem of epidemic proportions. Less than 1/3 of these teens will seek help, and statistically 30% of them will develop a substance abuse problem in an effort to drown their feelings in a drug-induced haze or stupor.
What is being done?: Many parents have turned to the medical profession for help with their children, which typically includes drug-therapy. The problem with the typical modern medicine routine is that most anti-depressants are being prescribed off-label to children. Since they haven’t been tested on children, doctors are making a best-guess as to the correct dosage. Studies published in 2004 found that there is an increased risk in suicide for children ages 10-18 who are taking serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
I was talking to my cousin who is 16 years old and she said most of her friends were on anti-depressants and that her best friend who recently broke up with her boyfriend needed to get on anti-depressants because of her heart break. I went to high school with two individuals who sadly just died this past year due to addictions to pain killers, alcohol and possibly other drugs. They were both in their 30’s. What is going on in our society?
How much are medications or abundant forms of escaping pleasure weakening us at our core? How much is it costing our culture, health and our future? This is something I wonder about. I am not suggesting comfort and pleasure is bad all the time – certainly not. Merely, that the many forms of pleasure being used in great excess to repress our pain and numb us out is causing a VERY big problem.
Matt Stone asked me to contribute on 180 because he wanted me to open up a dialogue about dealing with stress in 
a?healthy way. As a site author on 180 I will be exploring the many subjects around pain, mental and emotional stress and how we can learn to deal with these daily life ingredients in effective and beneficial ways. It will be an on-going investigation and conversation that I am looking forward to having as I feel it is an ESSENTIAL topic of our times. In 2014 I plan to interview experts in their fields to really delve into this topic because in my heart I know there is an answer. And there better be because our kids are showing us we have a big problem. Yes a lot of it is diet related I agree, but it is?also being bullied at school, dealing with parents who are greatly stressed, body image complexes, and on and on…so how do we deal with stress in a healthy way and how can we help our kids deal with it better?
Pain can feel heavy and drab to talk about but it really doesn’t have to be. I hope to make it less heavy if possible. Curious what some of your thoughts are about it.
- How do you think we deal with stress in our society”
- What do you think the repercussions are going to be if we stay on the same course”
- How do you deal with feeling overwhelmed”
- Do you avoid pain and seek pleasure and is this habit inadvertently causing you to suffer”
- Do you ever feel like you can’t accomplish all that you would like because of a daily tendency to retreat into your comfort zone”
Would love to create a healthy dialogue about a taboo subject as I believe this conversation has very meaningful potential…
Bella Dodds is a Integrative Health Coach. She uses advanced methodologies that allow her clients to get to the core root of stress creating disharmony in their physiology and psychology. You can contact Bella for a 15 minute complimentary consultation to discuss areas of in your life you would like to improve using her Higher Mind Health methods. Bella works nationally and internationally via phone or Skype. To set up a consult click?HERE. Serious inquiries only please.
When we forget that there is light in the darkness and darkness in the light we get an unbalanced view of what reality should be. I don’t know too many places or people that really help people tap into depths of pain to heal. Massage, drugs, escapism just temporarily soften the symptoms. So what are we supposed to do? Where can we take are pain to shed light on it? Why reveal it when it just uncovers some messy truths that no one really wants to know about?
Ultimately humanity has potential for incredible advancements and growth in all spectrums of life. Not all are good but some certainly allow many of us a lifestyle we greatly appreciate – such as electricity for heat, lighting, refrigeration and cooking, etc
I think we as a species can do better in the realm of our emotions and how we treat one another and communicate with ourselves, family, within politics and foreign affairs, etc. but we have to know how to deal with our polarized thoughts and emotions in healthy ways for that to be possible.
What I know about pain is: the more you think about it, the worse it gets. Pain meds force you to think constantly about your next dose. What works better for me is engaging in things I love,
ranging from being outdoors to reading a good book.
I’ve visited with very elderly people enough to know that the generation that has now mostly passed away, dealt with all the pain we do and in a pretty similar fashion. There was a lot of drug and alcohol abuse. Trying to escape pain and find pleasure. Going back even farther, to the people who lived before WW I, actually you see the same. However, a lot of drugs that are illegal now, were legal back then. So maybe it just seemed like there wasn’t as much of a problem. Through reading biographies a person comes to realize that the pain and loss that most people back then endured was really awful. There were a lot of people who dealt with the difficulties of life pretty poorly. Religion was a comfort to some, and they just endured the horror of losing multiple family members (often children), through their faith. It seems like today we have quite a number of very helpful options, often through prescribed drugs, to help us through the struggles and difficulties of life. It seems like this makes life better and the hard times easier to cope with.
Am I first? Bella, I’d recommend that you and anyone else who is interested, read more about the Polyvagal Theory. There’s a book about it by Stephen Porges. And it is applied with TRE, something I’ve mentioned on here before.
Part of the certification process of receiving the honor of teaching Tension/Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) is learning how the polyvagal theory helps clarify our stress responses and of course applying it while we work with our clients. The goal is to facilitate self mastery in our clients.
I am also a trauma survivor-PTSD-whatevah. And when we sign on to teach TRE, we sign on to process our own traumas (tensions etc) and I’ve learned a lot and released a lot. So with that context, I’d like to answer your questions:
How do you think we deal with stress in our society?
Each person is somewhere in the Fight/Flight/or Freeze cloud. Thing is, we really don’t choose our stress responses. Our limbic system or reptilian brain does. And the problem in general is that when the way of dealing with stress becomes intense because either the initial trauma is more than our nervous system can handle and/or the day to day stressors of life build, then we tend to “discharge” that intensity in ways that seem like they’re out of nowhere to the people around us.
I also think what you refer to pleasure above is really about escape. The more relaxed and healthy I get and feel, the more I’m convinced that pleasure is health. We know whether it’s escape or pleasure is by the presence of groundedness. Not in a woo-woo way. Groundedness is about just feeling and being aware of the sensations in our bodies and staying with it. There’s more to it, it’s actually the byproduct of the physical disciplines I teach, but that’s kind of an aside right now.
What do you think the repercussions are going to be if we stay on the same course? I hate to make big sweeping doomsday statements :-). But it’s a lot harder to be loved and to love someone else if we don’t have both feet on the ground. And love ourselves. Love’s kinda the thing for me.
How do you deal with feeling overwhelmed? I get grounded! But always the way that seems easiest at the time: Take a walk. Do some TRE. Call a friend that I know will take me back to the present moment (we know who they are).
Do you avoid pain and seek pleasure and is this habit inadvertently causing you to suffer? I think denial will always be part of the human condition. I just think practice in exploring how we could have taken better care of ourselves before shiz went down.
Do you ever feel like you can’t accomplish all that you would like because of a daily tendency to retreat into your comfort zone? Yes. But that’s a big part of my body’s stress response. I lived in the freeze zone a huge part of my life. This means a constant release of cortisol and well, we know that can really mess things up. I’m wondering if part of the reason for my increase in energy and weight loss over the past 6 months is more about doing a lot of TRE (for my certification) and getting myself grounded and out of freeze zone. The freeze stone happens when we basically have to suck up all the messed up shiz happening to us and around us. We’ve already been shown that fighting or running can’t happen. Also, now that I’m more relaxed, I’ve become aware of the triggers that will put me back in freeze zone.
Been meaning to talk to Matt about this lately. I’m glad you brought this up :-)
“Do you ever feel like you can’t accomplish all that you would like because of a daily tendency to retreat into your comfort zone?”
That really struck a chord with me. I tend to find it painful to get the day started–if that means going in to work, it takes the form of acute anxiety that usually goes away once I get going; if that means a day of chores around the house, it takes the form of procrastinating, sort of spreading that anxiety out in a lower but longer dose.
All of this is less troublesome when I’m well rested and not too busy, but I can’t seem to cure the underlying tendency to inertia and almost a fear of being fully alive.
Yes this describes my tendencies perfectly, though I’m not sure I could have named it like this exactly. I, too, have so much difficulty in getting the day started despite being one of those annoyingly chipper morning people. I can see how that inertia causes a sort of low-level anxiety that spreads through the day and builds as the weeks and months seem to be flying by at warp speed with nothing having been accomplished. I mean Oct 10? What the hell?!
Hi KarenE
Been very busy today Ill have to join the conversation tomorrow, will definitely look into TRE. I have heard about it but would love to learn more. Certainly the automatic flight, fight and freeze response is where most of us are stuck on one level or another. It is beautiful to hear of your major shifts in such a short period of time getting that stress cleared from your system. Certainly life changing.
Hellz yeah Bella. This is after years of talk therapy. Which, don’t get me wrong, helped.
God there are so many typos above! Though I said “freeze stone” on purpose :-)
On rationales for technology, Ran Prieur, another favorite blogger wrote this http://ranprieur.com/archives/026.html :
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One move here is to be completely circular: if a technology is pursued then it must be valuable, and if it’s abandoned then it must be worthless. I hold this view in utter contempt. A slightly better story is satisfaction of human desires: so it’s okay to cut down forests or distribute meth if that’s what people want. Another, very popular in the modern age, is that any technology is good if it reduces pain. In that case we should all live in padded rooms doped up with opium. A pretty good test of a technology is whether it increases people’s subjective feelings of their quality of life. But again, using the padded room example, or the story of the Matrix, most of us would say that it’s not good if our happy feelings depend on blocking out reality.
My justification would be something like this: any technology is good if it expands our experience in such a way that, looking back, we’re glad we did it. Would I be glad to have had the experience of being zapped by a pain ray? I doubt it. Am I glad to have spent hundreds of hours playing computer games? Maybe Zelda Ocarina of Time and Lords of the Realm II — beyond that I’m not sure. But if NASA had built on the Apollo program, so that 40 years later I could personally walk on the moon, that would be one of the greatest events of my life. Instead, technologies that expand our range of real experience are being abandoned, while “progress” gives us better artificial experiences. I find that troubling.
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I really like that point that if reducing pain were really the greatest good for us, we’d live in padded rooms on opium. The fact that we don’t, and that most people would agree that it’s not a great idea, suggests that there’s more to life than avoiding pain.
Mindfulness. Acceptance. Stop, breathe, feel. The only thing that has really helped me.
Right On Miss Kitty :-)
Bella, this is a topic I feel really strongly about. I think our society is at the root of the problem, and it is a huge problem to be sure. This whole scenario was at the root of my eating disorder. I grew up in a family that could not deal with feelings and negative scenarios. I grew up not understanding how to deal with all the garbage that went on and abuse I experienced. I don’t think my family was unusual by any means. The only logical outcome in this situation is something like the eating disorder I had. I imagine cutting stems from a similar place. It’s an outlet to deal with the pain because you don’t know how to face and release your pain and feelings. Match this with the stresses our kids are under and our societal enabling of using drugs (and I mostly mean the legal kind) to “address” problems, and you have a recipe for disaster. It’s tragic and horrific, and unfortunately I think we will need to see fallout from the ruined lives in the young generation resulting from all the drugs before things change. Can you even imagine the societal effects of huge numbers of young people on anti-depressents which among other things can cause blunting of social awareness, cognitive issues, sexual issues for men, and likely worsen the long-term outcome of depression. And these kids will never learn how to actually deal with their problems.
I will say that the outcome of my therapy that I went through is that I can now deal with my feelings, express them and work through them. It sucks, it’s been hell, it was 7 years of therapy to get there. But the reward is amazing. I’ve rebuilt my life into something truly happy. I went through a horrible, heart-wrenching breakup several months ago. But I went through it, I felt everything, I took care of myself, I acknowledged and released the pain. I was a mess for awhile, but I got through it. I am in such a better place as a result. The reward of actually facing things is amazing, and once you figure that out you don’t want to blunt the pain anymore. But I think it will take a society-wide shift to get there.
Oh My Gosh, everything you said resonates with me SO DEEPLY.
I also think that this is a society-wide issue. Many parents, through lack of awareness of the deep damage that can be done with this approach, place adult materialistic values upon their children, thinking it will be good for them – things like multiple and diverse activities, achievements, etc. But here’s what children really need: Someone to role-model dealing with negative feelings. They need time to explore and play. They need the outdoors. And they need exposure to the wonders that life can hold. That’s about it.
So much focus on achievement, which should be the fruits of a healthy childhood, and not enough focus on the tenets that foster a healthy childhood…. which means learning coping skills around pain.
SIGH.
Yes, I agree the cure would have to start in childhood. I agree with much that Diane said below as well. If I ever have children one day, I plan to teach them how to deal with stresses, hardship and feelings, and also to have them feel the sense of safety that was missing in my own childhood. I feel a huge sense of gratefulness that I have finally learned some of these skills in adulthood, but I think it is never the same as forming the foundation as a child, not to mention that how we raise children determines who the adults are that will inherit and run the world one day.
Hi Real Amy,
Thank you for sharing how hard your healing process was but how it actually has been amazing as well. Self-healing is not an easy quick fix. It is sometimes really hard and it pushes you to your core – but the outcome is strength, self-love, new eyes and new way of being in the world. We don’t hear this on comercials, we don’t talk about it on the news – but the truth known by thousands is that if you really heal whatever is causing the problem – and you don’t just talk about it, but you decide to grow and evolve through it you come out stronger, wiser, more capable and you change your life for the better. It can be hard as hell, but worth it is well worth it in the end. That to me is why I write these blogs to share that there are alternative solutions to pain or our ‘numbers.’
I also feel compelled to post this quote from Marc David (The Psychology of Eating) because I think it applies to what you’re talking about and because I think we tend to “fix” too much, rather than listen to our animal:
When it comes to healing, our symptoms and negative behaviors dont want to be fixed, they want to be heard. They want to have space. They want to be honored and explored in their complexity, and in their divinity. From this space of radical acceptance, unconditional love, and genuine curiosity, magic happens. Whats your experience with listening to your symptoms or negative behaviors? Where were they telling you to go?
Karen, you’ll be pleased to know that I will be speaking with Marc for the upcoming Future of Nutrition online conference.
Woot Matt Stone! I will look for it.
And serendipity being what it is, here is a link to a free teleconference called Hardwiring Happiness that includes Porges:
http://www.entheos.com/Hardwiring-Happiness/Play
Two books sit on my bed stand and I refer to them often. One is Diet Recovery 2 and the other is Slow Down Diet my Marc David. The two go-to guys of eating in my opinion.
My own theory about pain tolerance is that it is tied to or similar to sugar addiction and hollywood happy endings. There is a mythology in our culture that we should feel happy all the time and if we don’t, then there is something wrong with us. This is actively preached through hollywood happy endings in which the boy gets girl and they presumably live happily ever after – not that you ever see how that ends up. Anyone who’s ever been in a relationshp with anyone knows that happy together isn’t from solely having “pleasurable” experiences, but rather from working through life together.
We need to feel pain, we need to eat bitter & sour and we need to accept that we aren’t going to be happy 100% of the time or even 75% of the time. Life is mostly struggle – struggle doesn’t imply “bad” or “wrong” it is how we FEEL our life. Struggle is what shapes our character and as the saying goes, whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
Like sugar, our concept of how often we SHOULD feel happy needs to return to a logical percentage – a sprinkling of sugar, a dash of joy. Now this doesn’t mean that the rest of the time we are feeling depressed. Moreover, realigning our sense of what “happy” means rather than, as a previous commenter pointed out, taking it to mean escape. Accomplishment, satisfaction, pride in your work, doing your best (even if the result isn’t what you’d hoped), the little things – life IS details.
I’m currently struggling with my own fear and the pain of not facing it. The more I run TOWARD the mountain of responsibility, the less pain I feel. If I simply avoid & escape, it hurts even more because the mtn hasn’t disappeared simply squeezed me tighter as the deadlines and embarrassment of not accomplishing the work I created for myself encroaches.
Responsibility feels good but our society has programmed an aversion to responsibility and it hurts everyone.
Eat your bitter, eat your sour and then you will have “sugar” (aka human kindness) to share with others. Eat only sugar and you will feel like crap and then will only have bitter and sourness to share with others.
Hannah Crum we should turn this into a post!! So true on all levels. Mind if I use this comment as a post for my website? Brilliant – loved it : )
The princess bride ( one of the best movies ever) has an unforgettable line that is absolutely true, ” Life is pain highness and anyone who tells you different is selling something”. I find it helpful to face the fear, and face the pain. I was an addict for many years( been sober 18 years), and I have often used food as a pain reliever. I am too old to cover up the pain anymore.
So how do we cope? Was it Nietzsche who said suffering brings us closer to the divine? I have thought about this a lot. I am so much more compassionate and understanding because of my pain. I am a deeper person. I am not obsessed with shallow pursuits. I am a writer so I have learned to transform my pain into a song or a twisted, slightly sadistic story.
I think that we need to teach young people the importance of suffering. It is part of being alive and the fact that we feel. People usually resort to unhealthy means of soothing the pain when they do not know how to soothe themselves.I choose to use, prayer, music, being outside and really enjoying nature and intense exercise to deal with pain and stress. Just crying and feeling the emotion is very cathartic in my opinion. I also like screaming profanity at the top of my lungs when my children are not around. In a Sam Kinison typed voice, wondering what the !@$! is wrong with this world, blah, blah, blah. I am sometimes quite a drama queen. Something else to consider would be enlisting help through the guidance of a mentor or a trusted friend that has been through the same Sh!t and can give you some perspective. It is not always easy to be vulnerable, but it is an amazing help to have someone you trust and respect to talk to. I was left to my own devices at a young age. My life really changed when I met people that really cared about me and helped me to understand human nature and how to cope with the difficulties of life.
I look forward to this series. I think that if we work on healthy paradigms and coping mechanisms as individuals, we can really help other people through our example and by offering our friendship to others. Not in a “this is the only way” typed evangelistic mentality ( thank you Matt) but in more of a “this is what I have experienced, maybe it will work for you” way. I always appreciate the Socratic method of getting people to think for themselves for many reasons. It helps ensure that they own the truths( because they were active in the process of “figuring” it out), and they don’t don’t get super pissed and hate your guts because your advice ruined their life.
Great article. Very important for our times!
Worth mentioning that my perception of pain (emotional pain in particular) and my ability to deal with it is highly correlated with my sleep patterns and metabolic health.
My husband and I communicate in completely different ways, and it is always in the back of my mind as an emotional stressor. Will we be able to grow together over the next x years? Why can’t he communicate in a way I understand, etc. When I am sleep-deprived or running low (body temp) I find myself over-reacting, teary, needing to talk it to death. When I am nourished and well rested, I have a sense of humor about it, like watching the old ‘who’s on first’ bit. I feel more deeply in love with him when I am rested.
Pregnant women are particularly notable for being hysterical, hormonal balls of mush, but I kept a journal; To a day, I only cried on days I did not take a nap. Ditto for feelings of helplessness and despair.
This was meant as a general observation not a specific response to the above comment. :)
I think a lot of people overreact to people who’re suffering, and that makes them suffer more than they would if they just interacted with them non-judgmentally without trying to correct or change them.
Word Jib! It’s kind of telling though.
I learned from my dad that using alcohol to medicate pain only amplifies that pain. I learned from experience that getting to know and love God brings relief from much of life’s pain. Personally I tend to face problems and pain head on because I have enough trust and faith that I will get through it, either by working it out, acceptance, or throwing the burden on God. Knowing why this world has so much pain and what’s ultimately going to be done about it brings a deep measure of peace. It works for me and I’ve seen it work for countless others.
Bella, this is an interesting topic, but I am afraid you are skating over the real issues and equating “numbing” with pleasure. It is not. It is, however, a way to avoid pain, but numb is not pleasure – it merely the absence of pain. Everyone has an opinion or a coping mechanism – trauma release techniques, EFT etc. It is traumatic to be human sometimes.
I have spent years researching this for myself and others. We live in a confused world that creates the pain for us and then, for money of course, provides all those ways to escape. If there isn’t any pain to start with – Madison avenue will create some for you to fix. Most of us buy into the rubbish totally.
If anyone wants to get to the heart of the pain, please do some reading on Shame and Guilt. Shame and Guilt are unspoken in our society and drugs and alcohol are generally used to mask them as an easy fix. But, they are not a fix at all, they are a mask and last as long as the pill does. The pain inside just grows.
If you are a parent, give your child a sense of psychological safety. Let them see parents who love and respect each other. Teach them boundaries and how to respect themselves. Too many children are growing up today in virtual isolation with only virtual online Facebook “friends”. They are not developing a sense of self and the self they find is socially unacceptable (too short, too fat, too tall, too skinny, too dumb, too smart). Look at what society finds socially acceptable and venerates – it’s rather scary. Can anyone seriously believe that Snooki was paid 32K to speak at Rutgers about partying? Find a socially acceptable female that is not strutting around like a hooker. Parents are letting their 4-5 year old girls dress that way. Mothers pride themselves in wearing their teenagers clothing. There are no boundaries and children need them to feel psychologically safe – loving boundaries. Children with out a safety net are extremely vulnerable. Show me a teenager who needs medication for a broken romance or is having a baby too young and I will show you someone who has a deficit of love, understand and psychological security which are all required to move forward into the future and to have the ability to dream. Children act out to desperately get the love and attention they need. Need someone to love you? Have a baby! Works every time!
Jane Middleton-Moz and Brene Brown have written openly on this taboo subject in society. Most of the “pain” you speak of is shame and guilt for not being enough. Self-hatred results from both and hating the being you are.
We have narrow limits of acceptability – ordinary=invisibility and it is just not enough for a celebrity addicted, attention seeking culture devoted to the idea that you cannot be too thin or too rich. Think about it if you can’t be too thin or too rich, can you ever be happy? There is always something more….
What I love about 180 degree health is that it rejects one of the largest lies being perpetrated in society – that dieting works. Rarely does it work. In fact, I was reading a website yesterday that postulated the idea that Obesity is Incurable – if you look at the numbers of people who succeed in getting thin and staying thin, it seems to be. Or maybe the cure is wrong as Matt and others have put forward here – bravely I might add. At least to me, who has cowered in fear of food most of my life and fear of being called out as a big fat failure. For me, over 45 years dieting and exercise has made me fatter and fatter on less and less and my disgust with myself just grew along with my fat.
John Gabriel may be on the right track – he again is talking psychological safety. So, perhaps the rise in drug use and rates of obesity are linked. Perhaps both have to do with psychological safety and or physiological safety which I believe may be the key to Matt’s idea of “eating like a fiend” idea – once your body has enough to feel physiologically safe, it will start shedding excess fat. There is so much more than even just weight to the we are not enough idea. What if we decided to believe that we are good enough?
You are very correct, these topics must be brought on the table and discussed. Imagine if we could create better healthier people by focusing on our troubled society and improving psychological safety and rejecting dieting.
It’s the screwed up system we live in causing most of the pain. As for stress, it’s interesting, a recent Harvard study showed that stress was only detrimental to people who BELIEVED it was harmful to them. There is a great TED talk on this…check it out.
Anyway, sorry to be so long winded. I have kept silent for way too long about so many things and I cannot tell you how happy I am that there are people here that have enough sense of self and safety to challenge the prevailing nonsense about health.
Keep it up all of you!
Hi Diane. I love me my Brene Brown too! She’s amazing. And shame and guilt can be addressed via the Vagus nerve being activated as well. (You mentioned TRE and this is part of it.)
Diane, this is the most sense making comment i have read in a long while.
Well written as well.
Bravo.
I really do not understand our current generation’s dependence on pharmaceuticals to deal with life stressors. Really! My four siblings and I suffered horrific abuse at the hands of our dear mother. We are now all in our forties, have never suffered from depression, are not taking any drugs (legal or otherwise), are all educated and gainfully employed, and basically living normal lives. Life is difficult. Get over it. Suck it up and move forward.
Debbie, it’s truly great that you have been able to move in your life. However, whether a person gets stuck or PTSD has to do with so many physical and neurological factors that are COMPLETELY out of their control.
You might want to consider just counting your blessings. And knowing there are just things you don’t know about that factor in here.
I find this incredibly insensitive, I liked your first line, but you ended on such a bad note. A lot of people will not be able to just “suck it up”. People need each other to get through horrific experiences, and when they don’t have any support of course they are going to turn to drugs or self-mutilation to passify their emotional pain.
Oh Debbie B. Although I appreciate your comment, and I am truly happy for you and your siblings, your comment made me cringe. I am not sure if that came across as you intended it too (I kind of hope not). Ignorance and judgement are an ugly color on anyone.
Everyone has a different threshold for stress and different reactions to it, as well as different ways of perceiving it. Telling those who crumble under stress to suck it up is kind of like Carl Lewis telling someone with no legs to just get out there and run and stop making excuses about why they don’t have any gold medals.
LOL Matt Stone :-) Perfect.
Debbie B I just watched a film about Nelson Mandela: A Long Walk to Freedom. Wow it was so profoundly humbling. It brought such a clear perspective into suffering and human experience of suffering. I think we suffer more when we want life to be easier and less painful than it is – and in so doing we make life harder on ourselves. I think what your saying on one level is when you accept life is challenging than you get on with it and it shifts your life experience dramatically.
For some people their nervous systems, biology and psyche need additional support for health and healing…but a life changing perspective to have and i beleive we are loosing it with our instant gratification mindsets – is to embrace and fully accept how challenging life can be because when you do it suddenly makes life not so painful. It is like resisting winter. You can want to it to be different and waste a ton of energy focusing on the negative, or you could fully embrace it and make the most of it! I love me some hot chocolate in the cold months!
Bella You stated so eloquently the message I meant to convey. It’s funny that you mentioned Nelson Mandela. I have always loved him (although I have never known him personally) and respected him more than words can say.
Debbie B
Humbly there is so much to learn from his life journey. Reading Mandela’s Way right now…it is speaking of how prison was one of his greatest teachers. Quite a profound read if you haven’t read it! :o)
I think our society puts too much pressure on people to always be *doing* something. You can’t just BE. Always have to be going somewhere, multi-tasking, goal-reaching. It’s exhausting. In
Asia, there are professional meditators — Buddhist monks and nuns. That’s all they do and it’s considered to be a legitimate pastime. Seeing monks wandering about gives everyone *permission* to take a time out to assess their lives, process their pain. We aren’t allowed that in this country. If you have pain, then you’d better medicate so you can get on with your life. Stop wasting time figuring things out.
How do you think we deal with stress in our society?
1.) Consume things 2.) pass the buck and inflict pain on others 3.) create ghettos and wars
What do you think the repercussions are going to be if we stay on the same course?
Madmax Beyond Book of Eli baby!!!
How do you deal with feeling overwhelmed?
“rooting down ” and going deep in the woods sometimes just taking a deep breath and making myself aware of the things that are making me feel that way and how ” they really ain’t shit” and I could just throw em all out the window and life goes on.
Do you avoid pain and seek pleasure and is this habit inadvertently causing you to suffer?
Everyone does to a certain extent but I think maybe I seek out pain more than the average person.
Do you ever feel like you can’t accomplish all that you would like because of a daily tendency to retreat into your comfort zone?
No I find it pretty rewarding to step outside of the comfort zone alot.
This is a great topic. Issues of pleasure and pain beg questions of meaning. After all people often have an issue(s) that nag them, cause them pain and they go out of their mind looking for answers. But after awhile you gotta ask yourself what is the point? Why should you be spared the pain? For what higher purpose should you be given more slack in your life? Is comfort and ease the point and the meaning of life? I dunno but somehow I doubt it. What is worth doing? Avoiding pain?
I often wonder what are the positive limits of human experience. I mean suppose you are young, healthy, smart, rich good looking. With all the slack all the world – no real problems – I wonder what such a person’s experience of life would be.
I think most modern persons have struggle and difficulties in their lives – after all everyone’s gotta eat. Working’s a bitch – usually. I imagine not working’s a bitch too. But it seems in my own case I think struggle has given me wisdom and knowledge and skills that at least to some extent seem like a necessary condition for happiness. Like I strongly suspect that if I struck rich right now I would live much better with that slack and have much richer more expansive experiences than if I were born rich.
Is anyone truly fulfilled? I often wonder if there are upper echelon’s of human existence where someone’s got it all figured out. That the inner world has been perfectly integrated into the external world. All slack all ease all lightness of being. Are such beings real on earth?
I guess the biggest reason to suppose they aren’t real is that (unless you are some kind of sociopath) its hard to feel fulfilled when there is a world of human wreckage all around you. Seems to me on some level that the nature of the external world makes completeness of the individual impossible in this mode of being. Maybe thats why religions posit heaven. I suppose also this is the reason people (some people) become monks. I dunno – just speculating out my ass here. This post got me thinking about all this again.
Two years ago I began the process of converting to a paleo lifestyle. One thing I accomplished early on was going into ketosis, and my personality and outlook on life changed completely: I felt better & happier than I had even in my life, depression was lifted & soon disappeared, even though my day-to-day life & problems hadn’t changed at all. Next, I just naturally & without any plan or desire of my own, just simply wanted to and stopped whining and feeling “put-upon” no matter what anyone said or did to me. Then I naturally developed a dislike for being around people who whined and wallowed in their self-pity. And next, again through no plan for forethought on my part, I just naturally developed a strong aversion to all “drama” & people who created, to the extent that I cleaned my piano studio of all of what I call “mama-drama”, women who just continually stirred up trouble & seemed to create problems out of thin air, leaving me with families who cooperated with me and my goals for my students, and performance colleagues who shared my vision for rehearsals and performances. I started looking for and surrounding myself with kind & happy people, and started loving my life, and looked forward to teaching and performing in a way I had never before in my life. All this was due simply and only to eating clean, eating paleo.
I am led to believe now that if we first make radical & permanent change in diet, then pain & suffering will take a hard hit for some (many?) people, and they may need nothing more than simply this change in order to turn their lives of pain into lives of happiness & pleasure.
I think we need to look deeply into our pain and suffering. One way to do this is meditation. I really like the concept of acceptance. If we accept things as how they are and stop fighting we can learn to flow through life our life will be a lot easier and more enjoyable. I love the books by Thich Nhat Hahn. He is amazing for dealing with and understanding things like depression, anxiety and really understanding what every human deals with and goes through. I totally agree with CCM that we can just BE. A saying I really like are that people are “human beings” not “human doings” and really our purpose here is just to be and experience life. Meditation teaches awareness and I think with awareness you can experience joy and happiness. Just being aware that you are alive and living in the present moment lets you look at life in a whole new way.
I agree. Acceptance is so powerful, and the opposite of avoidance. I think it is so very important that people DO realize that depression, anxiety, grief, etc. are all normal things in life that can be gotten through. I think pyschiatry has forgotten this, and the idea has spread out into society. All of these conditions are signals to our body that something is wrong and needs to be addressed and worked through, not suppressed or ignored. I like to think of it as riding out to waves and tides of life, like on a beach. There is something really powerful about being able to accept the ebs and flows and say, things are really bad now but I will accept it and go with it and work through it at my own pace, and manage this particular time in my life. This is human existence and all things will pass.
This might be slightly off topic, but it got me thinking about my work situation. I am an acupuncturist who works with workers’ comp pain patients all day (no leaky gut diagnoses here!) and I am just routinely floored at the number of people I see who are dealing with really significant chronic pain (like 8-10 on a scale of 1-10). Some observations:
1. Many – if not most – of these patients are overweight.
2. Many of them are diabetic
3. Most are working tough jobs like truck drivers, prison workers, etc or working crazy night shifts, etc, just to scrape by some kind of working-class lifestyle. Their jobs seem nightmarishly stressful and on top of that some (who are not on disability) are working these jobs in significant pain. Others sit at desks all day long (and generally don’t exercise).
4. We can imagine that the diets are high in processed food and especially inflammatory PUFA and trans fats. In fact, I am working on a brief pamphlet to give to my patients this weekend on diet, and the most important thing will be trying to educate them on healthy versus inflammatory fats.
I mean, there are so many socio-economic issues here, but what really stands out to me is that I just don’t think 50 or 100 years ago there were this many people in such advanced states of degeneration dealing with such extreme pain on a daily basis. Sometimes, if not often, my work is overwhelming because of the number of patients with major spinal issues, disc degeneration, blown out shoulders, repetitive stress injuries, etc, not including their chronic degenerative diseases (I saw a 46 year old stroke patient yesterday!).
Anyhow, I guess the point I am trying to make – again – is that there are so many people living crazy stressed out lives. So many people in pain and taking tons of serious pain meds. So many people with serious degenerative problems. One of the elephants in the room, in my opinion, is the major decrease in quality of life in America and massive increase in cost of living (as well as economic inequality) since I was born in 1970. I remember life in the 70s being so very different.
Anyhow. Just something I’ve been thinking about lately. Diet is certainly an issue here (especially crappy rancid PUFA), but it also totally transcends food too….
Awesome observation Sean C, the funny thing is by choice all of these people could let go of everything they think is a must and live as though it is the 1970’s and most of them would’nt have the issues they have. Example : just wanting what they have instead of having what they want makes all the difference. A time machine would fix it but We don’t need one, we only need to change the way we live using the past as a point of reference.
True indeed. True indeed. A good reminder!
Been thinking about this. I understand the aversion to pain, it is healthy if people use it to make intelligent choices and I also think that humans do have limitations that need to be considered. The problem as I see it is that the aversion to pain comes after poor, irresponsible decisions are made and there is often no consideration for the limitations that are then created. For example, someone decides to get drunk and drive a car, causing property damage and serious injury, which results in punishment and loss of licence. The driver fails to consider the pain s/he has created and continues to drive, refusing to bear the pain of his or her punishment and thus continues to make bad choices that result in pain, mainly for other people. This person seems to be numb in his lack of consideration and denial of inconvenient reality. I also think that as a society, we fail to deal with these people adequately, misplacing our sympathy.
I also think that there is a difference between joy and pleasure and that a lot of pleasure seeking may function more to avoid ennui and numbness rather than for pleasure’s sake or to avoid pain. One can have pain issues, yet still experience joy and there seem to be a lot of people that don’t seem to know the meaning of joy and goodwill and quash it in those around them. They think that celebrating means getting drunk and behaving like an a88hole.
Also, I think that there is the issue of short term gain vs long term pain and vice versa. I don’t think that this is a new thing, as long term planning doesn’t come easily to a lot of people. I don’t think that this is a fault, rather it is something that humans have to learn.
Unfortunately at this time, humans have a level of technology out of balance with its moral development and wisdom, which together with an emphasis on instant gratification cannot keep going this way forever.
‘level of technology out of balance with moral wisdom ‘ – exactly. I think this generation was making progress with stuff like personal growth, overcoming childhood trauma, being more in touch with our kids than our parents were – and then along came the smartphone and social media, the new drug of the age, and we lost our kids and ourselves all over again. As far as I can see, as the first generation of parents who’ve had to deal with this, the answer is about emotional support more than ever – being in touch and present. Which is harder than ever with the pace of life, work demands senddetails poor energy that characterize modern life!
I don’t know if this discussion is still open. I’m guessing since a few days have passed it may not be. I want to share my thoughts anyway.
I believe this article is missing the mark. It’s not that we are setting ourselves up for future pain by being too pleasure seeking. It’s not that we are too much a pleasure seeking society. It’s that too many people are truly, honestly suffering. They’re suffering not because there are too many video games. They are suffering from lack of social connection, lack of affection, lack of love and support, and lack of understanding. And worse, people can’t figure out how to fix it.
There are times in peoples lives where it just may not be possible or the resources unavailable to do anything about this. Somebody above posted about polyvagal theory. That is a pretty apt insight. Some people (many people) just aren’t in the conditions to deal with the full range of emotional responses. What you see as pleasure seeking is probably more of a numbing or coping behavior. I also saw posts above about pleasure vs escapism and that we always know which we’re doing. I agree with that poster entirely.
It takes a lot of work (and, in my experience, outside help) to move past this to a point where a person feels generally ok. The problem is that once a person has spent a long time under these conditions, it becomes conditioned into them. It’s conditioned into behaviors, thought patterns, and belief systems. There’s a whole range of social skills and experiences they have gotten behind on and they are not catching up. They don’t know how to get out of this trap and people that are not in it or have not been it will have no concept of how difficult it can be to get out or how deep some people are in it. This lack of understanding and judgmental attitudes can create a positive feedback loop, making the whole thing worse.
I don’t think anybody wants a socially lacking life in front of a video screen. But if we’re looking what’s wrong at a cultural level, there are deeper issues than the existence of escapist entertainment.