Turn Pain Into Power

Chapter 2 - Your Brain On Pain

Before we talk about why you should blame children for your problems, lets talk about your brain.

The human brain is an amazing machine. It is responsible for art, love, music and all manner of wonderful creations. Over thousands of years, it has evolved into one of the most complicated computation engines we know of. Yet in all this time, our brain has never forgotten its primary function – keeping you alive.

Your brain's first job is to make sure you (and it) survive the rigors of life on Earth. Historically, this was a big job. In the time the brain has been under evolutionary development by Mother Nature (genius that she is), it has developed a pretty clever survival tool. Pain.

At some point you got really sick or banged your elbow or had a bad accident (probably all three). While no one likes to be in pain, pain is your body's response to damage. It let's you know when you are in danger. Pain has to be, well, painful – otherwise, you wouldn't want it to quickly stop or get away from whatever is causing the pain. Pain is a survival mechanism. It's useful.

Everyone has, at least once, when they were in severe pain, just wished it would go away so they wouldn't have to feel the pain at all. Well, almost everyone. There is a medical condition, known as CIPA, that prevents people from feeling pain. Imagine that. Never feeling hurt. Sounds like an awesome superpower right? Not exactly. CIPA is considered an extremely dangerous condition, typically resulting in severe injuries during childhood, even death. Without pain, you wouldn't react the same to danger. Pain is how your brain keeps you alive and safe.

Pain as a mechanism to keep you safe from physical harm makes sense, but what about emotional or psychological pain? How come we feel pain during a break-up with a boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse? Why is it painful when someone close to us dies? We aren't going to die during these situations, so why do we hurt?

It's about how your brain interprets loss. Once you decide something is important, you've told your brain 'Do not lose this! I need this!' You have the ability to determine what is important to you. As soon as you decide something is important to you, your brain is going to help you get more of it and defend what you have. You can see this clearly amongst your own friends. Ever really love something but you have a close friend who couldn't care less?

Historically, the things that we considered important mattered a lot for survival (i.e. food, shelter, safety, family). There wasn't anything else! No one had to worry about how many people liked their Instagram post or how many followers they had. When your brain feels that you are losing or have lost something important, it interprets it as your survival being in jeopardy and it makes sure you know it (with pain).

Science has shown that people are 2x more sensitive to losses then they are to wins. Losses hurt more than gains. Twice as much. This is called 'loss aversion' in economics. It makes a lot of sense: If you caught a fish in the wild when you were hungry, but someone comes along and steals your one fish, that's a big problem. You might not survive. But, if you were in the wild, managed to catch a fish and someone comes along and gives you more fish, you'd be happy but you wouldn't be as happy as you were sad when you lost your fish. It's just not as important to your survival. Sounds crazy, but it's true. When resources are considered scarce (as has been the case for most of human existence), losses can cost you your life.

But evolution is nothing if not efficient. Your brain developed the structures to produce pain in response to physical damage. Do you think there is a different part of your brain that deals with psychological trauma? Nope. To your brain, it's the same thing. Ever miss someone so much that it 'hurt'? Your brain can't tell the difference because your body is triggering the same parts of the brain with the same hormones.

Okay, so what? What difference does it make if you experience emotional and physical pain in the same way? It's important to understand this because most people usually take one of two approaches to managing all pain – make it stop or move away. But there is a third option – learn from it.

This is where the stupid kids come in.