Pain

I don’t like people who talk about “pain”.

There are two parts to this. One has to do with people who feel the need to broadcast how much of “pain” they have handled and do, to the world at large, And “how difficult” it is/has been. You know the kinds I am referring to.

The other has to do with the nature of pain. And that splits into two parts again.

There’s the kind that’s felt in the body. First. The mind kicks in later. As in “registers” what’s going on. It’s usually the kind that one develops a tolerance for. And is able to raise the threshold to. I should know. I trained for over four and half years as an officer cadet for the Army. I know this gig. I also survived an acute (premature) heart attack, which had the bonus of what’s typically termed ~ an impending sense of doom.

The more interesting kind is the one that’s felt in the head before it even registers in the body. It already has you keening and wailing and lashing out before your brain even processes if you’re injured.

This is different from the psychological hurt or injury you experience when someone has wronged you. Or been nasty to you. Or said/did something that you didn’t provoke or didn’t deserve. That’s normal and you’re healthy even if all you can do is fantasise about getting back/even with them. That’s part of self-soothing.

The kind I’m referring to here bears a characteristic of violence deeply associated with it. It makes you want to act out from the pain – take it out on someone else/something. Anyone that’s immediately available and accessible would/could do.

And if you don’t act out, for whatever reason, you realize that you can feed it. Amplify it in your head. Blow it up and out of proportion. So that the next time you encounter a trigger for it, you can allow it to take over your psyche. And you can over-react, free of any conscience.

It gives you a lovely narcissistic shot at whosoever might have ‘dared’ to injure you thus. It also makes you a martyr. Even before you actually die for your demented cause. Not that you do, actually.

And if you possess even the slightest modimum of honesty and decency you’d ackowledge that you absolutely love this kind. Of “pain”. (I’m talking of and to the ones who do this and know they do this, even if they’d kill themselves before they’d acknowledge it. Those that don’t even know or cannot recognize that they do this – are beyond redemption. Simply stated).

So, yeah – what I’ve described here is what I’ve learnt to recognize as the pain that is associated with what is phrased as narcissistic injury in popular discourse these days. And you can recognize the kinds of people who are prone to this, if you observe carefully.

You’ll likely find lowered thresholds for physical pain, as a first marker. You’ll also find them over-reacting to mild stuff like getting an unwitting poke in the back from some clumsy person, say standing alongside in a bus. And another tell would be dagger-eyes, ready to physically lash out and hit someone/something back. And apologies do very little to quell their perceptible readiness-to-kill. And you’ll find the poor clumsy person wondering WTF!

Some might argue against this, as they do, that some people are just hyper-sensitive or carrying trauma. However, that would be argument from ignorance. And just making space – cerebrally – for behavior that they don’t really understand/have any experience of. Or they’re simply making allowances for themselves and own behavior.

The test of this is that hyper-sensitive kinds usually avoid getting into situations when they might encounter pain. And if they do, such as in the basic situation described above, they’re immediately conciliatory when faced with an apology. And if they over-react, they also tend to apologize right away – sensing that the other person didn’t mean it and recognizing that it wasn’t personally directed at them.

And those that carry trauma, usually have elevated thresholds for pain. It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel it as intensely. Just that they’ve lived with pain severe enough, including through recurrent flashbacks, to be able to check their own reactions. And if they don’t have narcissistic issues in their psyche, they don’t hit back, act out or lash out. They’re not looking for someone to hit back at; they’re mostly just focussed on finding something to soothe them.

The clincher though is the asymmetry between their sensitivity to the injury they experience and their visible/obvious insensitivity to the damage they do to others.

You’re unlikely to find them spending sleepless nights agonizing about how they hurt someone else. You won’t find them in pain, overwhelmed by shame or racked by guilt at what they did. Remorse, if expressed, does not reach their eyes.

How do I know this? I’ve been here. When I was a child and a young adult and overwhelmed by the question of – WTF is wrong with me?

Note: I’m aware that there are medical conditions ~ diseases and syndromes, where the sufferer experiences chronic and excessive pain, often with no direct/immediate cause. Keeping them out of what I’m discussing.