3.4 Overriding Pain

Sonja: “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.” — Woody Allen, in “Love and Death.”

Some of pain's effects are so quick that they’re finished before you’ve had ‘time to think’. If Joan had happened to touch something hot, she might have jerked her arm away before she even noticed it. But when that pain came from inside Joan’s knee, her reflexes gave no escape from it, for it followed her everywhere she went and kept her from thinking of anything else. Persistent pain can distract us so much as to thwart all attempts to escape from it. Then we’re trapped in a terrible circle. When pain gets too good at its principal job—of focusing you on your injury—you may need some way to override pain, to regain control of the rest of your mind.

If Joan urgently wants to cross that room, she can probably do it ‘in spite of the pain’—at the risk of further injury—the way that runners and wrestlers do. Professional boxers and football players are trained to take blows that may damage their brains. Then, how do they override pain’s effects?

"About that time, G. Gordon Liddy began a new exercise in will power. He would burn his left arm with cigarettes, then matches and candles to train himself to overcome pain. … Years later, Liddy assured Sherry Stevens that he would never be forced to disclose anything he did not choose to reveal. He asked her to hold out a lit lighter. Liddy put his hand in the flame and held it there until the smell of burning flesh caused Stevens to pull the flame away." —Larry Taylor

We each know tricks for doing this, and see some of these as commendable, and others as execrable, depending on the culture we’re in.

Another way to deal with pain is to apply a counter-irritant: when a certain part of your body aches, it sometimes helps to rub or pinch that spot—or to aggravate some different place. But why should a second disturbance offset the first, instead of making you feel worse? [vi] And why do such drugs as the opiates have such specific effects on how much we hurt? Researchers have varied ideas about this but those theories are still incomplete. The simplest idea is when there are multiple disturbances, it is hard for the rest of the brain to choose one to ‘focus’ on—and (somehow) this makes it harder for a single large cascade to grow.

Usually when you attend to a pain, that makes the pain seem more intense—and this in turn intensifies your goal of getting rid of it.

If you keep your mind involved with other distracting activities, then a pain may seem to feel less intense. We all have heard those anecdotes about wounded soldiers who continue to fight without noticing pain—and only later succumb to shock, after the battle is lost or won. So the goal to survive, or to save one's friends, may be able to override everything else. On a smaller scale, with a mild pain, you can just be too busy to notice it. Then the pain may still ‘be there’ but no longer seems to bother you much. Similarly, you may not notice that you’ve become sleepy until you perceive that you’re starting to yawn—and your friends may have noticed this long before. (In my own experience, the first awareness of being tired usually comes when I start to notice certain kinds of grammatical errors.)

Shakespeare reminds us (in King Lear) that misery loves company: no matter how awful one’s lot may be, we still may draw comfort from knowing that the same could happen to someone else.

When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers suffers most i'th' mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind; But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship. How light and portable my pain seems now, When that which makes me bend makes the King bow.

Many other processes can alter how pain can affect our behavior:

Aaron Sloman: “Some mental states involve dispositions, which in particular contexts would be manifested in behavior, and if the relevant behavior does not occur then an explanation is needed (as with a person who is in pain not wincing or showing the pain or taking steps to reduce it). The explanation may be that he has recently joined some stoic-based religious cult, or that he wants to impress his girl friend, etc."—In comp.ai.philosophy, 20/7/96.

This applies to the treatment of pain-ridden people.

“The degree of awareness of one's own pain may vary from a near denial of its presence to an almost total preoccupation with it, and the reasons for attending to pain may vary. Pain itself may become the focus of the self and self-identity, or may, however uncomfortable, be viewed as tangential to personhood. One of the most powerful influences on the way in which symptoms are perceived and the amount of attention paid to them is the meaning attributed to those symptoms.”[vii]

Finally, in Chapter §9, we’ll discuss the seeming paradox implied by the common expression, “No pain, no gain.” There are many common activities, such as in competitive sports, or training for strength, in which one tries to do things beyond one’s reach—and where the greater the pain, then the higher the score.

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Prolonged and Chronic Suffering

When an injured joint becomes swollen and sore, and the slightest touch causes fiery pain, its no accident that we say it's 'inflamed.' What could be the value of this, once the damage is already done? First, it can lead you to protect that site; thus helping that injury to heal; then it can make you feel sick and weak, both of which help to slow you down. So pain can promote recovery.

But it’s hard to defend the dreadful effects of those chronic pains that never end. Then we tend to ask questions like, “What did I do to deserve this?" Then if we can find to justify punishment—it may bring us relief to be able to think, "Now I can see why it serves me right!”

Most victims discover no such escapes, and find that much has been lost from their lives—but some others find ways to see suffering as incentives or opportunities to show what they can accomplish, or even as unexpected gifts to help them to cleanse or renew their characters.

F. M. Lewis: “Becoming an invalid can be a blow to a person's self-esteem. However, for some patients, the sick role is seen as an elevation in status—deserving the nurturance and concern of others. The ability to assign meaning to an illness or to symptoms has been found to enhance some patients' sense of self-mastery over a problem or crisis."[viii]

Thus certain victims find ways to adapt to chronic intractable pains. They work out new ways to make themselves think and rebuild their lives around those techniques. Hear Oscar Wilde describe how he deals with his inescapable misery:

“Morality does not help me. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I am convicted, and the system under which I have suffered are wrong and unjust. But, somehow, I have got to make both of these things just and right to me. I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes, the harsh orders, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame—each and all of these things I had to transform into a spiritual experience. There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualizing of the soul.”[ix]

Recent research on pain relief has developed new techniques, first for assessing degrees of pain and then for successfully treating it. We now have drugs that can sometimes suppress some of pain’s cruelest effects—but many still never find relief—either by mental or medical means. It seems fair to complain that, in this realm, evolution has not done well for us—and this frustrates theologians: How to justify a world in which people are made to suffer so much? What functions could such suffering serve? How did we come to evolve a design that protects our bodies but ruins our minds?

One answer is that the bad effects of chronic pain did not evolve from selection at all, but arose as a sort of 'programming bug.’ Perhaps our ancestral ways to react to pain simply are not yet compatible with the reflective thoughts and farsighted plans that more recently evolved in our brains. The cascades that we call ‘suffering’ must have evolved from earlier schemes that helped us to limit our injuries—by making the goal of escaping from pain take such a high priority. The resulting disruption of other thought, was only was a small inconvenience before we developed our greater, modern intellects. Evolution never had any sense of what a species might evolve next—so it never prepared for intelligence.

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Grief

I cannot weep, for all my body's moisture Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart; Nor can my tongue unload my heart's great burden, For self-same wind that I should speak withal Is kindling coals that fires all my breast, And burns me up with flames that tears would quench. To weep is to make less the depth of grief. Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me! Richard, I bear thy name; I'll venge thy death, Or die renowned by attempting it.—Henry the Sixth, Part III

When you suffer the loss of a long-time friend, it feels like losing a part of yourself, because grief involves our reactions to the loss of some of our mental resources. For, certain parts of your intellect must have over time become specialized for sharing ideas with the person you love; but now, the signals those brain-parts transmit will never again receive any replies—just as would happen with losing a limb. This could be why it takes so long to put to rest the loss of a friend.

Gloucester: Be patient, gentle Nell; forget this grief. Duchess: Ah, Gloucester, teach me to forget myself! —Henry the Sixth part II

Nell can’t comply with Gloucester’s advice because the links of affection are too broadly dispersed for any resource to erase all at once; they aren’t all stored in some single place. Besides, we may not want to forget them all, as Aristotle remarks in Rhetoric:

“Indeed, it is always the first sign of love, that besides enjoying someone's presence, we remember him when he is gone, and feel pain as well as pleasure, because he is there no longer. Similarly there is an element of pleasure even in mourning and lamentation for the departed. There is grief, indeed, at his loss, but pleasure in remembering him and, as it were, seeing him before us in his deeds and in his life.”

So Constance can say, in the play King John, that mournful feelings mix with pleasant memories:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

Thus Shakespeare shows how people clutch their griefs, and squeeze them till they change to joyful shapes.

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Today, there is a widely popular theory that, normally, recovery from a grievous loss or injury goes through a sequence of stages with names like denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I like the following skeptical and constructive analogy to this: [x]

As an example, apply the 5 stages to a traumatic event most all of us have experienced: The Dead Battery! You're going to be late to work so you rush out to your car, place the key in the ignition and turn it on. You hear nothing but a grind; the battery is dead.

Denial --- What's the first thing you do? You try to start it again! And again. You may check to make sure the radio, heater, lights, etc. are off and then..., try again.

Anger --- "I should have junked this damned car a long time ago.”

Bargaining --- (realizing that you're going to be late for work)... "Oh please car, if you will just start one more time I promise I'll buy you a brand new battery, get a tune up, new tires, belts and hoses, and keep you in perfect working condition.

Depression --- "Oh God, what am I going to do. I'm going to be late for work. I give up. My job is at risk and I don't really care any more. What's the use"?

Acceptance --- "Ok. It's dead. Guess I had better call the Auto Club or find another way to work. Time to get on with my day; I'll deal with this later."

This relates to the general view of this book: although it is widely believed that ‘emotional’ thinking is basically different from regular thought (and I don’t insist they are quite the same), many of those supposed differences may disappear when we look more closely at commonsense things—as we shall in Chapter §6.