Balance wheels
Jun. 16th, 2010 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
makes_you_tick[Filtered to the Deities]
Let's talk about pain tolerance. I'm going to keep it simple here. Pain is a reaction that your body makes in order to let you know something's wrong- that's the point of pain. It's meant to get you to leave any potentially damaging situations you might be in. In some cases, the body goes into 'shock', more accurately termed as an acute stress reaction. The person goes into a daze and basically 'checks out' until the trauma is gone- and sometimes continue on for as long as three days. That is assuming, of course, that a person lives that long. This sort of 'shock' is a psychological reaction to passing the physical tolerance. It's too much, so the person in pain escapes.
Now, I'm practically a professional at causing physical pain. I have a great deal of experience at it. But what I don't understand is the flip side, emotional pain. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate getting a good jab in at someone who's treated me badly. But for a long time, I've only imitated most emotions, not understanding them myself. But of course they're necessary to operate within a normal world, hence the imitation. Seeing people slip into that haze of an acute stress reaction always made me wonder, is there an emotional tolerance? And what would that mean? In the strict sense, it's the amount of emotional pain someone could sustain without a breakdown of some sort. I'd always figured there would be a similar acute stress reaction for emotional pain, but there are a wide variety of emotional reactions- sadly a far more subjective subject than even emotional pain.
A lot of people on the Network have discussed how emotional pain is far greater than physical pain. It's not hard to see why. While people in physical pain have a high likelihood of eventual recovery (seeing as a removal of the pain stimulus is what's necessary), what happens with emotional pain? I hypothesize that it's far more likely to stick around, as people seem a lot less likely to deal with the emotional stimulus causing the pain. Emotional pain tends to require a confrontation to distance one's self for it, rather than mere flight. A person has to actively let go of their pain of losing someone or face their frustration over a situation they can't change. It's less passive.
As far as my personal experience with emotional pain goes, I believe I passed the tolerance for it a long time ago. If there is such a thing as an irreperrable breakdown, I went through such a thing as a young child. When faced with something so far beyond the normal tolerance, I do believe some people just break in half. Rather than facing their emotional pain, they run away, deny it, even go so far as to forget it entirely. And thus we get our myriad of psychological reactiions, conditions and diseases, some which can be handled and some which...well, we continue to have little idea how to fix. Can these be termed emotional 'shock'? The persistence of these problems is at least fairly explainable, knowing the emotional pain lasts longer.
Regardless of how anyone puts the rest of it, a lack of pain is always a hindrance for humans. Pain is important to telling us that we're doing something wrong, or that something wrong is being done to us. Losing pain puts us in a sea of numbness that separates us from normal life.
[End Filter]
I woke up today to find my rocky road melted all over the counter. Rudy, you haven't been hit with a snack-destroying curse today, have you? And if anyone broke into my house just to destroy my ice cream supply- that was all you could think of, really? Either way, it's a shame, but rather inconsequential when compared to some of the things we've been through the past month.
Every time I start hating this place, it comes back around. I suppose it all runs in cycles.
Let's talk about pain tolerance. I'm going to keep it simple here. Pain is a reaction that your body makes in order to let you know something's wrong- that's the point of pain. It's meant to get you to leave any potentially damaging situations you might be in. In some cases, the body goes into 'shock', more accurately termed as an acute stress reaction. The person goes into a daze and basically 'checks out' until the trauma is gone- and sometimes continue on for as long as three days. That is assuming, of course, that a person lives that long. This sort of 'shock' is a psychological reaction to passing the physical tolerance. It's too much, so the person in pain escapes.
Now, I'm practically a professional at causing physical pain. I have a great deal of experience at it. But what I don't understand is the flip side, emotional pain. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate getting a good jab in at someone who's treated me badly. But for a long time, I've only imitated most emotions, not understanding them myself. But of course they're necessary to operate within a normal world, hence the imitation. Seeing people slip into that haze of an acute stress reaction always made me wonder, is there an emotional tolerance? And what would that mean? In the strict sense, it's the amount of emotional pain someone could sustain without a breakdown of some sort. I'd always figured there would be a similar acute stress reaction for emotional pain, but there are a wide variety of emotional reactions- sadly a far more subjective subject than even emotional pain.
A lot of people on the Network have discussed how emotional pain is far greater than physical pain. It's not hard to see why. While people in physical pain have a high likelihood of eventual recovery (seeing as a removal of the pain stimulus is what's necessary), what happens with emotional pain? I hypothesize that it's far more likely to stick around, as people seem a lot less likely to deal with the emotional stimulus causing the pain. Emotional pain tends to require a confrontation to distance one's self for it, rather than mere flight. A person has to actively let go of their pain of losing someone or face their frustration over a situation they can't change. It's less passive.
As far as my personal experience with emotional pain goes, I believe I passed the tolerance for it a long time ago. If there is such a thing as an irreperrable breakdown, I went through such a thing as a young child. When faced with something so far beyond the normal tolerance, I do believe some people just break in half. Rather than facing their emotional pain, they run away, deny it, even go so far as to forget it entirely. And thus we get our myriad of psychological reactiions, conditions and diseases, some which can be handled and some which...well, we continue to have little idea how to fix. Can these be termed emotional 'shock'? The persistence of these problems is at least fairly explainable, knowing the emotional pain lasts longer.
Regardless of how anyone puts the rest of it, a lack of pain is always a hindrance for humans. Pain is important to telling us that we're doing something wrong, or that something wrong is being done to us. Losing pain puts us in a sea of numbness that separates us from normal life.
[End Filter]
I woke up today to find my rocky road melted all over the counter. Rudy, you haven't been hit with a snack-destroying curse today, have you? And if anyone broke into my house just to destroy my ice cream supply- that was all you could think of, really? Either way, it's a shame, but rather inconsequential when compared to some of the things we've been through the past month.
Every time I start hating this place, it comes back around. I suppose it all runs in cycles.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:17 pm (UTC)That'd surprise me, though.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:33 pm (UTC)What's your favorite kind, out of curiosity? Mine seems to change.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:45 pm (UTC)Caramel's pretty good, but I usually end up combining it with something else.
My name's Gabriel, by the way. Don't think I've met you before.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:46 pm (UTC)Not really, ice cream's kinda all gone back home.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:51 pm (UTC)[This is sarcasm, if only he knew.]
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 05:58 pm (UTC)Completely gone? Sounds awful, I'm sorry to hear that.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 06:05 pm (UTC)You don't sound cursed, but I'm going to keep an eye out for one today. Something odd is certainly going on.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 06:16 pm (UTC)[private]; 1/2
Date: 2010-06-16 07:40 pm (UTC)[private];
Date: 2010-06-16 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 08:21 pm (UTC)He does take a slight offense to the insinuation that leaving it out on the counter was all he could think of--quite the contrary, actually. But doing anything else would take all the fun out of it, and we're not about to stand for that, now are we?
Regardless, he's pleased at the notice, even if Sylar isn't.]
no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 11:28 pm (UTC)Hi there, let me troll you ;)
Date: 2010-06-16 11:29 pm (UTC)[private];
Date: 2010-06-16 11:29 pm (UTC)You think maybe I was sleepwalking?
XD I lol'd.
Date: 2010-06-16 11:31 pm (UTC)No one who posts today is safe.
Date: 2010-06-16 11:36 pm (UTC)Also, I can't actually stop saying it.
[private];
Date: 2010-06-16 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 11:50 pm (UTC)Anyway- I'm Gabriel Sylar. Certainly is interesting to meet you.
[private];
Date: 2010-06-16 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 11:56 pm (UTC)I'm Curt Wild.