Avoiding Pain - You What You Eat

We do whatever we can do to avoid pain. Avoiding pain is a mentality acquired from constantly being exposed to situations of sudden discomfort. Most of those situations will not be pleasurable.

We have no appreciation for the beauty of small suffering. We neither see it nor feel it. We manage to avoid pain by whatever means available.

The method of avoiding pain is extremely effective. But the power of avoiding pain is not without its downside. There are many dangers associated to avoidance, and this is why the methods of avoiding pain seem to be ineffective. The fact that we have no appreciation for suffering makes it easy for us to deal with it by ignoring it or making it invisible.

The dangers of avoiding pain can be seen quite clearly if we stop and think about them for just a moment. While avoiding the bad effects of uncomfortable situations, we often avoid our own good effects. What is commonly referred to as the “nerspace factor” can be seen here. When we avoid painful confrontations, we allow our mind to go into a pleasurable “Zone”. This can have dangerous ramifications in our health. Often bad things are passed over in favor of pleasure, which is why it is also more difficult for us to make healthy eating a lifestyle choice if we have no reference to our reasons for doing so.

Another danger of avoiding pain is in avoiding risk. Avoiding pain does not simply protect us from an embarrassing situation. A wise man once said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Often we allow ourselves to become unnecessarily cautious. Taking unnecessary and extra precautions can cause us to become unnecessarily cautious. A similar example would be taking an extra precaution by wearing emergency brush imperative to protect against any accidental fall. This way, we can prevent ourselves from getting hurt by accident.

The Vicious Circle of Avoiding Pain

There’s an old story about a vicious circle, and that’s “The Temperance Game”. One of the rules, of a vicious circle, is to use the least amount of force required to get what you want. Let’s look at the game in further detail. The victim is first stopped from doing what he wants by a strong desire to stop him/herself. So the victim psyches up (wants it so bad!) and uses excessive force to stop the crime, by imagination. But as I said, to get what you want, you must use some force. So the victim then uses force by thinking or feeling (will power/will power) when the force is completely unnecessary. And then the victim uses force by using imagination and reason to stop the crime when the unnecessary force is completely unnecessary (there is a perfectly good logical reason why this should not have been done!)

And so it goes on. The more force you use, the more pleasure you get (there are limits to how much you can imagine/think!) and the more force you use, the less pleasure you get (there are limits to how much force can you get against yourself!). Is it any wonder that a vicious circle of Avoiding Pain can take multiple forms and that they never end?

“The condemnations of the past are increasingly inadequate to the demands of the future.” (Take this sentence and incorporate it into your diary: I AM Aholistic eaterand believe that it is MY UNE substituted way of eating to control/stop emotional eating).