'Mindful people' feel less pain
medicalxpress.com
medicalxpress.com
From Chapter III. From Pain to Suffering
>Why does the sensation called pain sometimes lead to what we call suffering? How could such a simple event distort all your other thoughts so much? This chapter proposes a theory of this: if a pain is intense and persistent enough, it will stir up a certain set of resources, and then these, in turn, arouse some more. Then, if this process continues to grow, your mind becomes a victim of the kind of spreading, large-scale “cascade” that overcomes the rest of the mind, as we depicted in §1-7:
Then he quotes Daniel Dennett:
> “If you can make yourself study your pains (even quite intense pains) you will find, as it were, no room left to mind them: (they stop hurting). However studying a pain (e.g., a headache) gets boring pretty fast, and as soon as you stop studying them, they come back and hurt, which, oddly enough, is sometimes less boring than being bored by them and so, to some degree, preferable."
The whole chapter is online: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E3/eb3.html
For historical reasons, I get very tense when the vehicle I'm in goes fast around curves in the road. Last week, I started to get the tell-tale panicky sensation as my bus was flying through a big bend in the highway. I thought, "huh, I'm experiencing a stress response, aren't I?" Just being consciously aware of that immediately and drastically decreased the anxiety I was feeling.
Comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/883/
I wonder how much this is related to poor understanding of the badness of certain situations...
But I'd never say it as an absolute and I think that's incredibly dangerous and the "suffering is an optional thing we invent in our heads" all over this thread is making me cringe.
certainly not my experience
Or passed a kidney stone, or had a thrombosed hemorrhoid, or been tortured. I think there’s a difference between breathing through lower back pain, and trying to contextualize someone threading a live wire up your urethra to make you talk. Even if you’re exceptionally good with pain, most people are going to have trouble with damage too. If you start cutting off someone’s fingers, they’re going to lose their zen in a hurry.
But hey, maybe we’re wrong, but to people who think I’d say... go to a burn unit and see if you can make a difference where nothing short of a medically induced coma can. There’s a Nobel prize with your name on it if you succeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9...
Here Randall is using this example as one of the worst pains in the world, while others submerge themselves in ice baths voluntarily for health and enjoyment (eg. Wim Hof the ice man)
There is something about facing an unpleasant stimulus (to put it lightly) voluntarily that changes the neurology, and the subjective experience of it.
I never felt so much relief as I did when the endodontist gave me novicaine, and a large bolus in your palette isn’t pleasant either. Still it was like a cool breeze of relief next to that tooth. People are always scared of root canals, but the truth is that if you need one, it’s actually nothing at all next to the pain that brought you there.
Someone gave you information to the contrary, and now you are suggesting not using an anecdote as proof of a treatment’s efficacy.
That’s called “moving the goalposts”.
I thought the book was much better than the reviews online made it out to be; though it is Fair Game's inferior.
That said joy and pain is a vast topic.
Imagine you wake up and your back is sore. Getting out of bed is a struggle, everything aches and you must move slowly.
Without other knowledge, you may get worried, anxious, feel distressed.
If you remember you had a workout yesterday, you may actually enjoy the feeling. It reminds you of the effort you put in, the future progress you’ll make as muscles are repaired.
The physical sensation is exactly the same.
Ultimately, we're making a prediction: my life is guaranteed to be worse off because my muscle was recently torn. Is this true?
The fact that it feels different to you could just be that it’s a different context. Different “metadata” so to speak, with the same pain.
Seems like GP thinks the metadata is making it worse, and you think the data is different. How would you tell the sifference?
Me deciding to drink alcohol would be indulging. I know the consequences but I do it anyway. In this sense, the side effects of drinking alcohol would then be caused by me.
But if I wake up one day with a huge cluster headache, why am I considered indulging in it? It makes no sense. I didn't ask for the headache, it showed up on its own. Rather, I may try to resist the headache, but I'm certainly not "yielding to a pleasurable experience", more like I am being attacked and I may attempt a skill check, or I am drowning in an ocean and trying to swim; for neither of these is the term "indulge" appropriate.
And that's the core difference. The original poster used terms like "indulge" and "desire for alternative" to imply that suffering is generated, or manufactured, by humans, that it's a fake thing that doesn't have to exist. My example of animals clearly shows that this is not the case, as most animals do not have enough mental faculties to generate such things in the first place, yet we do not kid ourselves that animals do not suffer.
Suffering is primary. Suffering comes first. "We let suffering happen to us" makes about as much sense as saying a victim is letting themselves get beaten by someone bigger. It's technically true, but not in any kind of useful sense, and the history of those kinds of statements is horrible.
> Many dogs will ignore their own pain to help another in need.
Examples like this are not useful here, because they are not situations of high control. The dog is not ignoring the pain, the dog is, rather, feeling something else that took priority. A human can similarly ignore lots of pain if they are high on adrenaline, but it is not because the human is controlling the situation and actively not "indulging" in pain, but that their body is not interested in supplying pain right the moment. But when the body goes back to being interested in supplying pain, it will come.
Pain: My head hurts. This sucks.
Suffering: My head hurts. It's not going away. Maybe this means something is wrong with me. Maybe it means I have some kind of disease or disorder. What if there's something wrong with my brain, like a brain tumor or a blood clot? What if I suddenly die next week? etc. etc.
Pain: My head hurts, but that's not going to stop me from having an awesome day.
Suffering: I have a headache, this sucks, let me avoid things that might be fun even with a headache.
Perhaps a better example is the stoicism, Steve Prefontaine famously won an Olympic qualifier with the stitches on his toe ripping; "Yes, my toe hurts, but I want to win, I can fix my toe after I finish."
There was no council of people who have decided that moving animals need to consume energy in the form of food, and that they would feel pain if they do not consume enough of this energy in time. Yet here it is, and every creature is enslaved by it.
Adult, well-read humans blessed with mental faculties are at times able to cheat the mental pathway and come up with ways to not have it show up at the forefront, but there's nothing self-inflicted about suffering, and assigning quasi-religious themes to this process is not doing us any favors.
I like the theory that many emotions, especially negative ones, exist to spur us to some type of action.
Anger means we need a way to resolve a conflict. Fear means we need to take steps to protect ourselves. Regret means we need some introspection to discover how we should do things differently in the future. Revulsion means we need to avoid something. (This applies in less abstract, more visceral ways too. Hunger means we need to eat. Physical pain means we are reaching our physical limits.)
Anyway, a lot of suffering comes about because we don't take any action. When the situation continues to exist, the negative emotion continues to exist.
This isn't to say we should just all act rashly to get rid of our negative feelings. Obviously the right action is important. But sometimes just getting started is enough to help feel better. And if you've already done what you could or should have, sometimes it helps to realize that or remind yourself of it.
This means that the suffering is not always aligned. This is very not obvious since our association of "feels bad == bad" and "feels good == good" is very strong since it's so obviously hardcoded. But it's not hardcoded for your benefit, it's there for building the pyramid, remember that.
A lot of it is quite obvious in the issue of short term vs long term gratification, but there are more complex interactions. People can drown in guilt when something bad was done to them, and a person may be very happy from a sexual encounter, unable to see the causal link between it and the alimony payments they'll soon be making. Reason is necessary, emotions are a blunt instrument. Intuition is better than raw emotions, but requires calibration. Emotion and intuition can be overwritten, to some extent, which is what most of this thread is about.
But quite often, the incentives do align, as we're one of the more advanced and successful species out there, which means we're less likely to be afflicted with the kinds of sufferings and pleasures that lead to a loss of power (i.e., musth in elephants).
Do you think your cat won't suffer is you stop feeding it? Do you think it's making a conscious decision to suffer if it's hungry?
You know that animals are known to eat their own young [1]? Do you think its a conscious decision? Or they are just on auto-mode like a person that is less mindful is?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness [1] https://www.livescience.com/2053-animals-eat-offspring.html
"Suffering in humans" is not concrete. You would need to create a distinction between "suffering in humans" and "suffering in animals" and explain where it differs and what is special about it and I don't see any such definition, so I am going to go with "suffering in general".
Many people here are talking about physical pain, which animals can also suffer from, so it doesn't seem obvious to me that your definition of "suffering" would be some kind of a special definition that shares nothing with suffering in animals.
You are likely trying to say some kind of a thing where humans are special and have special mental controls and so when a human feels pain they have more means of control about it than an animal can. This is all well and good but then we get into issues like children or people with limited cognitive capacity. The line between human and animal quickly becomes thin and we're back to square one, the square where saying that suffering is a choice is egregiously wrong and the statement must be qualified.
It seems to me that you're trying to move some goalposts around.
To be able to be mindful you need consciousness first, to have that you have to be a human. Sorry, either don't move the goalpost and bring animals in, or prove that animals are capable of managing their stimuli with mindfulness.
I'll break it down to you. You receive an input (emotion) and with mindfulness you realize that you ('you' the human, not 'you' the cat) do have a say on how to act based on it. That is all.
This is the weak point in your argument.
If I have a flat tire, I can get it fixed. I didn’t consciously choose to get a flat tire. But if I don’t fix it, the next day I will have a flat tire I consciously chose to have.
You may not be able to choose the content of your thoughts exactly, but you may be able to change how they work on you.
I do not know how to scientifically quantify or test this but it is a reported by scores of people and can be understood experientially.
The idea is that this very conversation could lessen your suffering for the rest of your life.
If you talk to your cat about stoicism, they might suffer less during starvation, yes.
I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.
* you feel less pain if you cause it for yourself (you've already conquered fear)
* mindfulness eases pain because of more knowledge / seeing, less fear
"Suffering is optional" is a concept that dies immediately if you apply even a tiny amount of creativity to the question. It also fails if applied to animals.
It's really only available to people in a specific range of situations, and often it's stated not because it's actually true, but because it makes people feel powerful in situations where they're rather powerless. Which is mostly the point of stoicism anyway, as it is a philosophy developed during a time when people felt that they couldn't change anything about the world.
Of course, this means it's a poor philosophy to follow if your interest is in things improving, and not in just you personally not caring about them, something that many people already accomplish all too well...
I think you’re projecting your own beliefs onto others.
So you claim that love, justice, truth, and honor are not real “by definition”? And, moreover, that everyone agrees with you on this?
> I think you should find another fight to pick with someone else.
Who’s “picking a fight” here? You’re being weirdly defensive.
> it's a poor philosophy to follow if your interest is in things improving
Stoicism helps people accomplish more, by letting them transcend the things that are holding them back that they control.
Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, and one of his points (as I understand it) is that humans deeply desire to know that their life is meaningful, and even if another person is torturing you, you can find meaning by maintaining your human dignity in the face of the evil around you.
The stories in the book are heartbreaking, but there is a clear sense that it's possible to find something even when it seems like there's nothing. I guess he would say: perhaps you can't always find peace, but you can find meaning.
It’s an absolutely different story when you are being wrongfully interrogated in the USSR and thus giving up simply implies a life in prison. And the other option is another day of torture.
Suffering is relative.
This is the sort of thing one can email to the Quote Investigator. Maybe I will.
https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/pain-is-inevitable-suffering-is...
It's often phrased in terms of the "first arrow" (pain) and the "second arrow" (suffering in reaction to the pain): the second arrow is optional and self-inflicted.
Stoicism is definitely something I practice, and migraines easily surpass that. Some I get are known as “suicide migraines”. In short, the monks pain ended with his life within moments, but chronic pain by definition lasts longer.
I just thought it was nifty that my body can tell the difference and is happy to bypass the reactive part of pain when it wouldn't help.
As in, if I'm getting angry, I can step outside the anger and evaluate whether it's necessary or helpful at the moment or not. If it isn't, I stop it. Otherwise, I let the anger creep into my voice to make the other person more receptive to the urgency of the situation.
It works similarly for other emotions: like, fear, shame, jealousy, frustration or even sadness... which is why I don't often cry at funerals.
I don't know if that makes me a sociopath or not, but it definitely makes me more rational.
That said, I also seem to feel a lot less pain than my wife who tends to panic easier. If I stub my toe, cut my finger or even accidentally grab a falling soldering iron from the wrong end, I can disassociate from the pain, or at least give it a back seat. The hand is mine, but the pain feels like someone else's.
As such, I get a lot more cuts and bruises than my wife. I've even had instances where I had bleeding cuts on my hand that I kept thinking were itches.. I kept confusing the blood for mysterious coppery liquid oozing out of the device I was repairing. Turns out I'd nicked my fingers prying it open.. explained how the liquid kept coming back after I wiped it.
https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/qa/what-are-some-ways-...
Not that we can get an objective definition of "mindful" and "pain". Also we have no objective way of measuring either.
I've always thought of the word "mindfulness" as one of those vague, new-age nonsense terms, like "psionic body energy" and "ethereal consciousness". Even given the above quoted definition, I still have no idea what it means. Does anyone know what is an example of mindfulness, or an example of the opposite? I don't know anyone, besides maybe Alzheimer's sufferers, who is actually unaware of the present time.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the many replies. I think the variety of different answers speaks volumes about this topic.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/
ctrl-F "mindfulness" if you don't want to read the whole thing, though I'd suggest it.
Even better, this is also available as a reading on spotify. He's got a really soothing, compelling voice. Worth a shot.
> MINDFULNESS
> It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different. [11] But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world.
Being mindful means sticking your attention to direct perception. Somehow, you resist applying labels or analyzing things. Instead you just experience them as they are.
I feel like the opposite of mindfulness is when you're driving to work in the morning and you realize you're already there and you have no idea where the time went.
Also I firmly believe that most of modern life causes that.
Walking, climbing, physical efforts, crafting.. and others, aller require a vastly deeper engagement. Oh also music.
Random examples that worked to enhance my understanding:
- Meditation, which typically starts/involves training yourself to focus on something to exclusion of external distractions; frequently it starts with body focus - think of your breathing, think of your body parts. While I still suck at it, I do see the value in continuing the effort of being able to concentrate and focus on what I choose to,and not be continually a slave to random external (and internal!) inputs
- As a completely different example, my way of dealing with many difficult items was to "push them out of my mind". But that never really works for a long time. Being mindful of them to me means diving deep into the anxieties and issues, facing them and through them, and typically they become less scary afterwards.
- Related to both, being mindful of own body is a trick I started learning very late in life. But I now notice when my breathing patterns, posture, etc indicate internal anxiety or stress long before my conscious mind is alerted.
So I'm maybe 1% on my way through the journey, and approaching it from very much the skeptical/rational/scientific side, but again, I do see the value in the goal and method.
Not to say that there aren't million people/instructors/guides/therapists out there who DO make it into woo-woo! But like anything else, you can separate wheat from chaff with a little effort :)
Hopefully you can find out a lot more about the concept by googling for it under its real name. I'm happy to point to additional resources, please feel free to pm.
[Edit: typo]
To me mindfulness is stopping at lunch or after work, removing all distractions and worries, and focusing on yourself. Asking "what am I actually feeling right now? And why am I feeling this way? " instead of just cranking up the proverbial headphones and marching on, oblivious to what is happening to you or how you actually are feeling. It's about emotional intelligence.
I walk a stair and see stains. I walk by garbage and think about it. I thought that my level of detail/awareness is normal but lots of people around me don't notice basic stuff.
I'm more surprised by myself when I become less aware of stuff around me than the other way around. Less or even unaware is quite interesting to me after it happened and I'm happy about it because I have the feeling that overaware is my norm.
Typically, I imagine, it is mostly used in a meditation context, often from Buddhism or derived practices.
In that context it would be a translation of "sati", which can also be translated as "recall". Practically this means the ability to remember. It is implied in the idea that true "sati" is in some sense continuous, and therein lies much of its benefit.
It is rarely talked about without reference to "concentration", which is a necessary and related, but distinct (certainly in Buddhist philosophy) idea.
These terms can be confusing if considered in a Western culture - they generally mean something different to what you might guess.
My Yoga teacher used to remind that a mind full of crap is not very useful.
It also puts the focus on letting go, which is key to making progress.
That’s pretty superficial. People are seldom aware of now. We are thinking of how a meeting went in the past, or what we’ll make for dinner, or how we’ll handle an upcoming conflict, or whether a decision we made in the past was the right one. We aren’t even in our physical location: we think about wanting to go out on a walk, to be back on the beach, to rest in bed, to not have to suffer through a seminar.
The idea here is to be _present_ in the moment, in this place, because that’s all there is: everything else is a delusion. Being present also means appropriate response: a pond ripples precisely as much as it should when a stone is thrown in: not too much, not too little. Too often we are carried too and fro by our thoughts; they drive us, we respond automatically, being pushed from one thought to the next. Mindfulness is being able to observe these thoughts as they pass by and realizing how to respond appropriately, as we choose; being truly alive and not a mindless automaton responding to things that “happen” to us. There really isn’t any new age or spiritual component here if you wish.
Mindfulness is stepping back and observing that phenomena, that process, and entering a state of awareness rather than “active” thinking.
Meditation is a kind of practice - you learn over time how to simply observe the mechanics of the mind as a kind of “3rd party” observer (this is probably where a lot of the spiritual / mystical feelings arise from — what people describe as a feeling of “oneness”, etc.)
Mindfulness is carrying that feeling of calm awareness throughout the rest of the day’s activities. For instance, going for a run and really just running and taking in the sensations without following every thought that pops into your head.
The classic example would be focusing on your breathing. You may have thoughts arise during this time, but you do not react to those thoughts, instead just acknowledge them and return your focus to your breath. This can be extended out to many other things that you are doing, for example, driving and having your whole head in the action of driving.
A counter example would be having anxiety over a hypothetical situation that may or may not ever occur. As well, being angry about something that happened in the past. In these situations you would refocus on the present moment and do your best to let the emotions go.
Washing dishes, thinking about the plot of a movie involving dishes - non-mindfulness.
Do you sometimes eat while watching a movie, actually not tasting the food fully? Or when in a rush ignoring all what and whom you meet on the way to the target, not happy where you are at the moment? Are you aware of the reasons why you take certain decisions? Is it really your decision, or is it just because of some inner monologue that you are not aware of? Do you sometimes step in a dog shit on the pavement?
How do we define running? The expert/fit runner can:
- Run faster than those that haven’t trained.
- Run further than those that haven’t trained.
- But at some very picky level of semantics, we understand that running is the exercise and the physical adaptation it produces might be referred to as “running fitness”.
- and if we wanted, we could insist this superficial discussion barely scratches the surface, after all sprinters and ultrarunners train differently and develop dramatically different types of fitness.
- Here’s the kicker – someone might insist “so what, anyone can do that. I can run a few steps myself”. But we understand that the level of running fitness achieved by an expert runner is something beyond innate ability of someone who has not trained.
===
How do we define mindfulness?
Those who are expert/fit at (Shamatha) meditation can:
- Upon realizing they are distracted, refocus the mind or calm the emotions. This is true for both intellectual distractions (a half hour ago, an intriguing idea just came to me and I was swept away) and emotional distractions (a half hour ago, a deep depression settled in and I was swept away).
- Recognize subtle distractions as they arise in the mind, and dismiss them before they hijack their train of thought.
- But at some very picky level of semantics, we understand that (Shamatha) meditation is the exercise and the physical adaptation it produces might be referred to as “mindfulness”.
- and if we wanted, we could insist this superficial discussion barely scratches the surface, after all shamatha meditation is altogether different than metta meditation and both produce different types of fitness.
- don't be that person that says sells the topic short and says "so what, I can do that". Yes, you can. but those who have a shamatha meditation practice can do it in a way that is beyond innate ability of someone who has not trained.
I began to experience it as a kid playing out in the woods alone. Sometimes I'd take a break and lie down on the ground and enjoy the breeze in the trees and all of the sensations that go with it.
Another example would be on a beach vacation when I'll just have a cup of coffee and watch the ocean. You're just focused on the present moment and not being distracted by a million other things. Obviously cellphones take you out of this state of mind.
Mindfulness is basically focusing on what is going on in the current moment (your senses, your surroundings, etc) as opposed to things that are not immediately there in front of you. This may seem boring at first but when you break through the boredom you sort of find yourself thinking in the way many of us haven't since we were kids. It has a bit of a nostalgic feeling to me as it reminds me of how when I was a kid I wasn't thinking constantly about things I need to do.
Obviously it's not a good idea to forget your adult obligations completely but letting them go for a moment here and there is a good thing since it can help you gain perspective.
While meditating, one typically develops two skills: 1. Samadhi: stable attention, being able to focus on the meditation object without forgetting or getting distracted. 2. Sati: mindfulness. Best translated to something like peripheral awareness.
Samadhi is focus on the book you’re reading without losing your place because the dog is barking. Sati is being aware of the context of your environment (dog barks, birds chirping, the feeling of your butt against your chair) without losing sustained attention on the book.
One cannot really develop mindfulness without sustained awareness, as otherwise you context switch from the soup you’re eating to that thing Brett said at work, to back pain, back to the soup.
Training those two skills gives a person the ability to better focus their attention on things deliberately while keeping enough in your conscious periphery that you have enough context to switch attention to other things that matter.