D02 Pain Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

Any pain is bad and must be relieved as soon as possible.

OR

Pain is merely a messenger to warn of threats, and those threats are worse than the unpleasant warnings themself.

Anankelogy

Accessible anankelogy distinguishes between “natural pain” and “unnatural pain”. You can thrive in life when experiencing natural pain. You cannot thrive when loaded down by unnatural pain.

Natural pain is what you feel when you’re suddenly alerted to a threat. The burning sensation you feel when too close to the stove. The disappointment you feel with unfulfilled expectations. The rejection you feel when denied entry.

Natural pain typically prompts you to react to some situation, to some incident. Any reaction resolving the needs is good. Any reaction not resolving the needs or creating other painful needs is not good. These poor reactions often result in unnatural pain.

Unnatural pain is when natural pain gets avoided, repressed, suppressed or ignored. Then your life’s warning system pops up elsewhere to insist you attend to the perceived threat. You feel a gnawing grind in your gut. You suffer an inexplicable headache. You grow self-absorbed from too much pain to bear.

Unnatural pain typically starts out as a dull and manageable level of discomfort. But this level builds over time. Dysfunctions set in. Eventually it could put your very survival at stake.

Academic anankelogy digs a little deeper. It identifies four types of pain. You likely encountered all four in your life at some point.

1. Organic pain. I.e., natural pain. That abrupt discomfort you feel when you must deal with some emerging threat. Until removed, the treat lowers your capacity to fully function in life.

2. Residual pain. That persisting alert that a partially eased need still requires your attention. Subtle at first and steadily rising.

3. Biostructural pain. That bodily ache that uses physical discomfort to insist you attend to that ignored threat. Often experienced as unexplainable stomach ache or headache.

4. Metapain. That alarm screaming through your body to warn you of excessive pain. This pain warns you of the threat of pain itself, of too much lingering pain.

When saying your immediate pain is bad, that best refer to the underlying threat to be removed. Your initial pain is merely a messenger of some threat. Try not to shoot the messenger. Or you risk ignoring a threat that likely will get worse.

Your pain is not the problem as much as the threats your pain tries to report. The longer you ignore that “good” message trying to alert you to some threat, the more your good pain slides into the less than good residual pain.

The longer your residual pain persists, the greater the likelihood it will find another route in your body to scream for attention. Your inexplicable headache could be characterized as bad, but not as bad as the underlying threat being overlooked.

At some point, your body signals its suffering from too much unresolved pain. How? Ironically, with more pain. Bad? It is always good to face the pain, to improve awareness of threats. It is better to remove the threats to remove the cause for pain than to remove the messengers warning you of these threats. It is better to appreciate natural pain as nature’s least appreciated gift than allow these threats get beyond your control. Painful indeed.

Need-response

Need-response wants to reacquaint you to your lost friend of pain. If getting too much of it, you understandably treat it as some unwelcomed foe. But the longer you ignore these unpleasant messengers, the more of them you get.

If reacting to your pain tends to leave you in more pain, then let’s get to the source of your pain. Let’s confront the sources of your pain, to remove their cause. But first, let’s improve your ability to endure natural discomfort.

Reactive Problem

The more you’ve bought into the modernity myths suggesting all pain is bad, the more likely you are trapped in your unprocessed pain. If you moralize the pain as bad, you easily miss heeding the warning about threats crashing in on you.

If your pain reports a threat and you regard that report as bad more than the threat itself, you tend to leave the threat in place. That easily leaves you in persisting pain, as your body persists in reporting the ignored threat.

Responsive Solution

The more you can welcome your natural feelings of pain or discomfort, the more equipped to more fully resolve your needs. The more you can appreciate your natural pain as good, the better you can process your pain to realize the exact threat to remove. Or to remove yourself from it.

We can learn from Wim Hof and his Wim Hof Method, and from others, to shift from reacting to extreme cold to learning we are innately capable of enduring far more cold than we give ourselves credit. I learned this as a Native American participating in an outdoor talking circle when the temps dropped far below freezing, and the breeze nipping with its wind chill factor.

When that biting breeze first hit, my first instinct was to shiver and pull back. Then I put into practice what I learned in a correspondence course. I relaxed and let the cold air pass through me. I thanked my body for keeping me alert to any potential threat of frostbite, while recognizing I was nowhere near that extreme.

I had to use my bare hands to hold the smudge bowl. As I held that turtle shell with burning herbs inside, I could feel the extremes of cold on my knuckles simultaneously as the extremes of heat on my fingertips. I learned to accept the warnings as good and not react. I learned to relax and let the unpleasant warnings pass through me. I learned by not reacting that I minimized the risk of being burnt or frostbit. All while appreciating my natural pain as something good and not something to avoid.

Need-response encourages you to shift from moralizing all pain as bad to appreciating your natural pain as good. It then encourages you to work through any residual and other types of pain so you can learn to have your feeling serve you, rather than you serve your feelings.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• I might be in the habit of ignoring my natural pain as bad, so how can I know?

• What if most of my pain is actually residual? Isn’t that type of pain bad?

• Isn’t biostructural pain the same as psychosomatic illnesses?

• Should I see a medical doctor if I am suffering from biostructural pain?

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.