(Emotional) Pain
Concepts
Avoidable and unavoidable pain
Emotional Pain
"Let's stop trying to give meaning to avoidable pain."-MB
The "unavoidable" pain can only be avoided by numbing.
Numbing
Avoidance of Pain
... is a key motivation for human actions.
“Society is constructed around the avoidance and reduction of pain - both physical and emotional.”―[https://mb.emotioncoaching.net Matthias Behrends]
Key Points
The antidote for pain is feeling safe or feeling a resource.
Pain is a source of information.
In the question about what is right or wrong, good or bad, pain can guide us.
Experiencing (or re-experiencing) pain is (almost) never processing it - unless in the very specific conditions that favor Processing of Emotions.
Any experience of pain combined with helplessness usually results in a Post-Traumatic Emotional Structure. that lacks these conditions is either creating helplessness
Pain Matters.
Pain is far too serious of a matter for me to accept distractions when discussing its alleviation.
Quotes
“There is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”―[https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/6fa3fb506dde394abf471145e0c8ad39 Alan Watts]
Pain
Empathy
“The description of the wound is not a description of the pain.” (p.67)
Translation by MB
Sofsky, Wolfgang (2005): Traktat über die Gewalt. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl. (Fischer, 16855). Available online at http://www.gbv.de/dms/hbz/toc/ht014545336.pdf.
“The hallmark of peacebuilding is the management of emotional pain.”―[https://mb.emotioncoaching.net Matthias Behrends]
"Psychology, the way it is taught and practiced, ironically is the single biggest distraction from what humans need to alleviate emotional pain."―[https://mb.emotioncoaching.net Matthias Behrends]
Musings
the prevention or reduction of (emotional) pain equals a "gain"
It is the ultimate purpose of the institution of civil society to organize the distribution of pain. you can only organize well what you can measure - covid-19 we very carefully count the deceased and affected - but we are ill-equipped to quantify the impact of the same measures on the general society
Definition
... is a part of the experience of "painful" emotions (e.g. loss, grief, insult, embarrassment, loneliness, ...) that is the most visceral. It can often be physically felt.
Emotional pain can be triggered by an emotional (cognitive) stimulus, a physical/sensory stimulus or a combination of both.
combination of both
Torture
physical trigger
loss of a limb by an accident
emotional (cognitive) trigger
Examples
Terminology
Within the ECS "pain" refers to emotional pain, i.e. pain that is perceived emotionally.
