How Do Pain and Pleasure Affect Your Happiness? Here Are 4 Questions You Should Consider.
Consider the idea of happiness for a moment. Are you? If so, what do you suppose is the driving force behind that happiness? How do you turn things around if you are feeling down or unhappy? I only ask because, in the modern world, it seems the goal is always happiness—but that’s a bit of a sliding scale, and our pursuit of it might be a bit misguided. And it’s not just affecting the adults in the room. It’s drastically affecting your kids.
Take a look at the world around you. Do you see what I see every day—avoiding pain as the chief means of pursuing happiness? Not only do many of us live in a constant state of desiring for more, but we also live in a world that provides overwhelming abundance. Our drug of choice—gaming, sex, drugs, food, shopping, social media, even the news—is only a click or two away.
You might not even be aware that it’s happening, but your brain is regularly being subjected to an overdose of dopamine—a type of neurotransmitter that is partly responsible for how you feel pleasure—which, oddly enough, is causing higher degrees of addiction and greater amounts of pain. The avoidance of pain becomes the cause of pain. And your kids might be at a greater risk.
So, parents, this is for you. While on the one hand, your kids are positioned in life with greater opportunities, greater technology, more things to learn, more career choices—the list goes on. But on the other hand, the abundance and accessibility have also resulted in more depression, anxiety, and addiction. Has the pursuit of pleasure deepened the wound of mental illness and magnified the cultural stigma?
But what if you could find the balance between pleasure and pain? And help your kids find it as well? What would it mean for your mental health and the health of your kids?
Consider these four questions.
What’s wrong with pain?
This past summer, we purchased the all-important trampoline for the kids. The assembly process connected a few pieces with a small machine screw. I was losing daylight and trying to move a bit faster. In my haste, the screwdriver slipped from the screw and drove right in the palm of my hand. The pain was unbelievable. The worst I have ever experienced.
Pain is usually the indication that something is wrong, like driving a screwdriver into your hand. The sensation sends the message to stop, change direction, avoid something, or my case, seek medical attention (which I didn’t. I toughed it out and finished the assembly). However, the indicator of pain does not mean we ought to altogether avoid pain. Pain has a purpose. We can experience physical pain when exercising too hard, and our muscles break down. We experience emotional pain when a relationship ends or losing a loved one. We experience spiritual pain when we confront the reality that our choices have eternal consequences. Pain is meant to teach us something.
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What’s the price of trying to always feel good?
I am sure you have heard the famous definition of insanity, “doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.” This quote is getting at the consequences of never learning from our mistakes—never learning from the pain. So what can you learn if you never experience pain?
Modern western culture is driven by the pursuit to always feel good. Gather some friends, grab a Coke, and you’ll feel good! Go to a bar, watch a game, enjoy a beer—life is good! Buy this product, take that drug, wear these clothes—all of it will help you escape your pain and set you on the right track to feeling good! At least this is the message we are being sold, day in and day out. The price? The greater our pursuit of pleasure, the lower our pain tolerance.
What would happen if you fought through the pain?
When it’s appropriate, enduring the pain makes us stronger. I know what you’re thinking. Was Kelly Clarkson right? Can it be that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? In a sense, yes.
The relentless pursuit of pleasure is our brains seeking a rush of dopamine. That great feeling you get creates an experience that eliminates the pain of the regular world for a time. We resort to drugs, alcohol, television, social media, gambling, etc. You name it; you can probably get addicted to it. The pursuit of pleasure throws our minds out of balance.
Imagine a scale—the kind that requires balance. You throw a huge rock on one side, throwing the balance of scale off, skewing to its extreme in one direction. Your brain wants to correct it and achieve balance, requiring an equally heavy rock on the other side, violently sending the scale in the other direction. It’s not balanced. It’s chaos. And it’s painful. But, when you face our pain, deal with it rather than run from it, you teach your mind to achieve a better, more healthy balance. Pleasure and pain hold each other in constant harmony with only slight shifts from one side to the other—small, subtle changes achieving a greater sense of mental wellness. A practice your students can learn right now.
What would it look like to fully engage in the world rather than run from it?
Your students have more opportunities than ever before to escape from the world. Screens, games, drugs, pornography, self-harm, over-eating, under-eating, even school, and sports. All of it can be an escape from the pain they experience. Learning to confront the pain rather than run from it first requires them to face it.
This is why the Get Schooled Tour-ESCAPE has quickly become a critical program at RemedyLIVE. It provides your students a safe space to interact with the reality of pain and their desire to escape it and understand its effects on their minds and mental health. And like every RemedLIVE program, it offers the appropriate next steps to seek help. Escaping pain is not usually a conscious choice but a trap you didn’t see coming. This is especially true for your students. Decision-making skills are still developing, low emotional IQ, and circumstances they didn’t choose. Escapism often just happens.
However, the trials and pain you go through produce perseverance. Perseverance gives you character and teaches you and your students valuable lessons about who you are and are capable of. Not sure where to start? Let us help you bring The Get Schooled Tour-Escape to your school, youth group, or literally any other youth gathering you can create. We got your back!
