'Mindful people' feel less pain

[nabla9]

I think Marvin Minsky had it right in his book The Emotion Machine (2006):

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

[danharaj]

Hah. There's definitely pain out there that can't be studied to oblivion. Anyone so pompous hasn't experienced, for example, a cluster headache.

[logicchains]

It reminds me of a quote by Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

[kstrauser]

I think so, too (even though I haven't read it). That jibes with my own experiences in meditating. Part of the process is going through a quick scan of your body and just noticing how your different parts feel: "huh, there's tenseness in my jaw", "there's a headache", "there's soreness in my leg" etc. It's amazing how quickly you can turn that from "my head hurts" to "there's pain in my head", which is a subtle but important distinction. You can't choose not to experience the pain sensation, but up to a point you can decide to simply note it and not react to it as pain.

[3pt14159]

There is a chapter in the book The Contractor by Raymond Davis, a former Special Forces soldier (allegedly) turned CIA contractor (formerly State Department) that talks about how to leave a situation in your mind when Raymond was in near-torturous conditions in a Pakistani prison. I wouldn't do it justice trying to recall it, but it's similar. You focus on the situation, understand it, then you kinda "walk away" in your mind to a place you want to go.

I thought the book was much better than the reviews online made it out to be; though it is Fair Game's inferior.

[agumonkey]

Meditating does help this. You get skilled at defusing the loop earlier.

That said joy and pain is a vast topic.

[quadcore]

Sorry, language question, what does 'study' means in this context?

[neuralzen]

That Dennett quote is fantastic...thanks!

[mcculley]

Mindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

[HiroshiSan]

Is that true if your being tortured by someone other than yourself? I've seen the picture of the monk who set himself on fire while meditating in protest.

I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.

[philwelch]

That's not a terrible one-line summary of stoicism.

[dang]

That's a well-known Buddhist proverb but I don't know what the textual source is, or if there is one.

This is the sort of thing one can email to the Quote Investigator. Maybe I will.

[nickthemagicman]

Just curious what the difference is? Suffering is your reaction to the pain? Like if you're stoic you acknowledge the pain but continue on with out suffering?

[miguelmota]

Unhappiness comes from reality not meeting expectations. Have no expectations and always be happy. Worrying about events outside of your control is pointless. Everyone needs some stoicism in their lives. Indifference is a power

[ironmagma]

That's easy to say, and very difficult for people in certain circumstances. With chronic illness and chronic pain, life can be very, very unbearable. We do have a built-in expectation of being able to, for instance, exist without being brought back to the world of pain every 3-5 minutes at random intervals. Not every expectation is willed into existence.

[ehnto]

Anecdata, but I have a condition that led to a childhood and young adulthood of chronic pain. I noticed my way of handling pain I am aware is going to happen is vastly different to other scenarios. If I know it's going to happen, I feel it but feel no need to react. It just happens, and I can keep thinking and operating as if nothing is going wrong. But I still react to unexpected bumps even if they don't actually hurt that much (or at all).

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.

[amingilani]

I've definitely felt this. I'm more 'mindful' as the article says.. in the sense that I can step outside my emotions and control them.

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.

[jdkoeck]

Are you sure you're just "more rational"? None of that seems mindful. It sounds like you're bordering dissociative disorder.

[throwanem]

Amazing. There's actually worse popular science reporting out there than what Popular Science puts out.

[cpncrunch]

In what way?

[ericand]

If I understand correctly, they say that meditation deactivates default mode and this has a positive impact on pain tolerance. Interestingly, there is lots of discussion on the importance and value of default mode for creativity and other things. Are these at odds or have I misunderstood?

[thedirt0115]

I had never heard of "default mode" before this. Do you have any suggested reading on the topic, especially around creativity?

[cpncrunch]

I think it's more to do with removing the emotional rumination aspect of the default mode network, which is associated with anxiety, depression and pain.

[desmondw]

The concept of being more pain-free is dangerous to take at face value. Being 'pain-free' through mindfulness comes from a deep understanding of any given pain, which comes from feeling it fully and coming to terms with that feeling. Which, is itself very painful.

[yawgmoth]

If anyone is interested in developing mindfulness, I like Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

[ollerac]

I've been listening to his Guided Mindfulness Meditations a few times a week. The body scan has been a phenomenal way of for me to relax into the difficult emotions and feelings I sometimes experience. Highly recommended.

[cryptozeus]

thanks for reminder, already have the book on kindle and totally forgot about it

[m3mpp]

Pain is also linked to fear, so more mindfulness, less fear and less pain. Some people, while physically training can inflict extreme pains on their bodies, but without any fear whatsoever, so they're ok, even enjoying it for some, "working hard!"

[whack]

I don't know how much I really believe this. Could this be a case of false correlation, as opposed to causation? Most medical advice for dealing with pain tells you to distract yourself from the pain, and certainly not to focus on it. Whereas mindfulness exhorts us to focus on our immediate circumstances, and not distract ourselves with more abstract thoughts. These 2 approaches to pain-management seem very contradictory.

https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/qa/what-are-some-ways-...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745617

[gmoore]

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-mindfulness-meditation-s...

[qubax]

Or people who feel less pain gravitate toward being "mindful".

Not that we can get an objective definition of "mindful" and "pain". Also we have no objective way of measuring either.

[QuadrupleA]

Didn't realize that neuroscience has investigated mindfulness directly like this. Very cool. I've long found that practice useful, to focus as directly on pain as I can; it becomes manageable, even sort of interesting in a way. The alternatives, like attempting to escape via addictions / distractions, don't usually turn out well.

[codr4]

I've done more Yoga than most and suffered from chronic pain after a climbing accident for a long time. The reaction to pain makes a big difference, and it's very difficult to react in a sane way when your ego is left running the show while you're out time traveling.

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

In certain practices pain is treated as a message and your best response is to attentively listen to it, without judgement and even without a desire to end it. This, naturally, changes the way one experiences pain.

[sridca]

They may experience the same intensity of physical pain, but _feel_ less of it, which makes sense as mindfulness meditation trains one to emotionally dissociate from anything painful (affectively or physically).

[yters]

So if the suffering of others bothers us, all we need to do is remind ourselves it is their fault they are letting the pain get to them, and go on about our business. Hurrah!

[trukterious]

My experience is that stopping and paying attention to a stubbed toe makes it more bearable than yelling and hopping around the room.

[SketchySeaBeast]

If not for yourself, for your roommates and cat.

[davesque]

It's interesting that I had to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the skeptical comments.