Fable

Brown et al. wrote a comprehensive survey on mindfulness.¹ At one point, they consider how our defenses to emotional anguish might mirror our defenses to physical pain:

Few people like pain and discomfort, the most common manifestation of physical distress and illness, and common sense suggests that they should be avoided when possible, whether that be through a diversion of attention away from the body or suppression of experience though conscious will, self-medication, or other, more extreme interventions like alcohol and drug use. People generally do not believe that attending to pain will alleviate it, and for some time now, behavioral health researchers and practitioners have concurred, describing the benefits of distraction and other attentional diversion strategies in coping with pain and discomfort.

We know our mental life through the events it causes in our bodies (see Emotion for more detail). Mental anguish would be represented in the physical body. Wouldn’t our mental coping strategies resemble our coping strategies for physical pain?

Brown et al. gives more support to this possible relationship:

Avoidant strategies [to chronic health problems] may also produce, perpetuate, or exacerbate anxiety and cognitive disruption, and the unwillingness to openly experience physical pain and distress may also have the unintended consequence of fostering an increased sensitivity to, and intolerance of the very states an individual seeks to avoid.

If injured, we might avoid triggering the wound’s physical pain to give the body time to heal. If emotionally injured, we might also neglect the associated pain by isolating it and avoiding it. How does this anguish get healed?

Perhaps later, we are triggered to recall the injuring event then integrate the isolated pain with the antiseptic account of the event. Without recognition, we resolve the distress of an emotional event. Our body and brain have the innate capacity to heal these injuries.

If the recall of an emotionally distressing event triggers too much pain, we would resume our avoidant defenses just as we would avoid confronting chronic health problems. If by avoiding, we become more sensitized to the pain, we build up our defenses and remain split. (For more discussion, see me essay - Spitting And Healing Emotional Distress.)