(No.1) Discomfort is a remedy?

This is about pain as a prescription (aka how the desire to feel normal again can forge a new normal with a more comfortable baseline)

Rain had been screaming (falling) on the tent all night, but I didn’t fully feel the dread until 11 am when I couldn’t put it off any longer. I was confronted with the very real reality that, sooner or later, I’d have to go outside.

Cowering. This breakfast was brought to me here.

It’s not uncommon to feel capital-A-Amazing for a bit after a sick spell. During sickness, we’re temporarily calibrated to feel like a little relief is just enough to bear. If this Ibuprofen would only start to kick in, then I will sleep. A re-adjustment is made to our settings. So that, returning to normal is newly euphoric. Never mind that two weeks ago you would’ve spiraled at a new and glittering light on your car’s dash, stomach clenched and nauseous with dread. Just me? Okay.

How do bouts of hardship make us more equipped to handle bad times? I think pain be a prescription for the mental illness and stress tides that plague everyday life.

After embarking from the tent into the rain-drenched dunes in Eastern Michigan, my sensory breakdown meters were tingling, ready to crash and burn at any minute with certainty. Wet sand scratched at my feet in my shoes. The wind blew my emergency poncho over my head every 5 minutes. I helplessly watched as my backpack dripped with water. At that point, it didn’t matter that we had scrutinously prepared or driven 4 1/2 hours to be there. We were gone.

The hike back to the car lent me some sort of revelation about my body’s screaming discomfort: it wasn’t so bad. Or at least not as bad as it was an hour ago back at camp. The car would be warm. I would soon be dry. Eureka! I began to blabber on excitedly about nothing at all, spirits swelling.

My brain’s hard-fought desire, my willpower, my wanting to return to normal levels of physical comfort adjusted my normal meter. After only a bit of comfort—a car heater and some dry socks—I felt like myself again. I forged a new baseline of comfort.

As a sensory-sensitive person, I consider my physical status to be intimately connected to my mental narrative. Obviously, this leaves me in overdrive a LOT considering life is pain, highness. And because I’m prone to heavy depression, I’m constantly searching for new ways to feel more satiated in body and mind.

I was aware, as most of us are, that psychological stressors can make you feel nauseous, tired, headachy, or what-have-you. This is the mental realm impacting the physical. However, I’ve neglected the reverse. And a valiant effort in reverse it is. The body wants a say in the matter.

The physical discomfort of gritty soggy hiking helped me hit the reset on what’s comfy and pleasurable. My body fortified my mind for future physical and psychological struggle. It helped me shift into the highly protective and delightfully empty “lizard brain.” I wanted to be a lizard and so I was. Desire, spawned by need, created a new and improved tipping point for my stress.

“It is important to emphasize, therefore, that stress resistance does not imply the absence of the stress response. Instead, we suggest that high levels of stress resistance delays the “tipping point” from adaptive to maladaptive responses and increase the duration and/or intensity of stressor exposure needed to cross over. In other words, individuals with high levels of stress resistance are able to endure a great deal of stress before experiencing negative effects.”

— The Neurobiology of the Stress-Resistant Brain (Fleshner et. al. 2011)

So now I propose that pain can be a remedy. Discomfort can act like medicine. Pushing our normal meter down towards discomfort can help us to feel extra-comfortable when we’re in stasis. And moreover, it can offer some stress relief in the process.

It’s healthy and valuable to know that we are our lizard brains. We can push through hard times out of sheer wanting. And once we resurface back to gorgeous cerebral thought and behavior, there might be a new and improved normal waiting.

Using this new normality adjuster to your advantage could be, well, advantageous.

[Fin]

Addition August 2023: Check out the two-part feature on Hidden Brain about mitigating the harm of too much pleasure—