.png)
discomfort avoidance
discomfort avoidance
1
discomfort avoidance
Discomfort avoidance is the habitual evasion of pain, often from failing to differentiate between positive organic pain and less positive types of pain.
Need experience
Discomfort, as a mild form of pain, exists to warn you of a possible threat to be removed. Removing the threat, or realizing the perceived threat does not actually exist, sufficiently removes the pain. But when seeking to remove the pain itself, instead of the source of the pain, the trouble persists to report more pain. Pain is not the problem as much as the trouble pain reports.
Discomfort naturally starts as organic pain, to warn you of something to remove. If the actual threat is not promptly removed, or if not promptly removing yourself from the threat, residual pain sets in to repeat the warning. If still not removing the threat, biostructural pain sets in as the repeating warning burns a damaging neuropathway. Eventually, metapain sets in to warn of the threat of your body’s own persisting and quite damaging pain.
Unless you are routinely processing your pain by promptly resolving needs, you are easily at risk of conflating your healthy organic pain with less healthy later forms of pain. You may slip into the habit of evading all forms of pain, which naturally builds up as the perceived and often real threats persist to provoke more pain.
Modern conveniences make it easy to avoid processing any pain. Intoxicating substances enable discomfort avoidance. Popular politics, ubiquitous technologies, easily available mood-altering substances, and other factors work together to turn this discomfort avoidance into norms of mass avoidance.
Instead of willingly struggle in pain for another, we are all more likely to expect others to endure hardships for us. With symfunctional strainconsuming our cognitive bandwidth (cognition contraction), we may hardly question the norms of our frequent avoidance of discomfort.
Defunctionalizing
The less support you receive while struggling with something you find increasingly unbearable, the less apt you are to accommodate other uncomfortable items. The less your pain processes toward resolving its needs, the more guarded you’re likely to be against anything uncomfortable.
The more life presents you alternatives to enduring life’s natural discomforts, the more likely you avoid discomforts of almost any kind. The less you face life’s natural discomforts (or overloaded by unnatural discomforts), the more agonizing you likely find what otherwise would be tolerable.
The more you avoid discomfort, the more apt you are to project your unwelcomed pain onto others. The slower you process pain to resolve needs, the more likely intense pains leave a deep imprint of trauma on you. The more trauma you carry, the more difficult to process your life’s pain toward resolving needs. The more your cognition capacity severely contracts from such trauma, the more predisposed to settle for relief-believing and relief-generalizing. And the more apt you are to moralize all pain as bad. And the more drawn you are to popgen views.
The more discomfort you avoid, the more discomfort you tend to endure.
Refunctionalizing
The more support you receive while struggling with something you find increasingly unbearable, the more apt you are to deal with other uncomfortable items. The more your pain processes toward resolving its needs, the less guarded you’re likely to be against anything uncomfortable.
The more life presents you alternatives to enduring life’s natural discomforts, the less likely you choose to avoid discomforts. The more you face life’s natural discomforts (and not overloaded by unnatural discomforts), the less agonizing and more tolerable you find life’s many discomforts.
The less you avoid discomfort, the less apt you are to project your pain onto others. The quicker you process pain to resolve needs, the less likely intense pains leaves a deep imprint of trauma, and can actually result in posttraumatic growth. The less trauma you carry, the easier to process your life’s pain toward resolving needs. The less your cognition capacity contracts from trauma, the less predisposed to settle for relief-believing and relief-generalizing. And the less at risk you are to moralize all pain as bad. And the less drawn you are to popgen views.
The more discomfort you embrace, the less discomfort you tend to endure.
Examples
Both addictions and relying on impersonal laws allow for avoiding the uncomfortable details of addressing specific needs.
Relational knowing
The more you avoid reported threats from your pain, the more those threats tend to remain and get worse, lowering your functioning capacity even further.
Complementary refunctions
Discomfort engagement
6/16/23