Why We Suffer In Our Minds
We know that physical pain has important evolutionary survival purpose. But could mental pain have similar origins of usefulness?
“We suffer more often in imagination that in reality.” — Seneca
It’s near-universal psychologic speak to say we suffer more in our minds than in reality, and it is also an objective fact. Our inner dialogues make up the overwhelming percentage of our daily conversation. Not only are the preponderance of our thoughts non-verbal, but recent studies show that up to 95% of them may be unconscious. We aren’t even aware we are having these conversations with ourselves.
Why is this? Is there an evolutionary reason? Well, I don’t have a surefire answer, but let’s turn for a second toward a different kind of suffering — physical pain. Pain plays an incredibly important role, perhaps the most important role, in survival and passing down our genes through generations. Thus promoting the survival of the human species. Congenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis (CIPA) is a very rare and extremely dangerous condition. People with CIPA cannot feel pain. Pain-sensing nerves in these patients are not properly connected in the parts of the brain that receive the pain messages. If that sounds helpful, it is not. CIPA is extremely dangerous, and in most cases people with this condition don’t live over the age of 25. In many cases, those with CIPA don’t make it past childhood.
Now to mental pain. A. H. Almaas, a Kuwaiti-American author and philosophical teacher who writes about and teaches an approach to spiritual development informed by modern psychology, has a theory on mental pain that I think is at least worth considering. That it is there because we love ourselves so much. It wakes us up to the necessity of knowing who we are. In essence, your mind is trying to make you so uncomfortable that you are willing to address the issues. Finally. And thus end the underlying suffering for good.
I have no idea if Almaas is right or not — I’d even posit he can’t know for sure — but I’ll end on some good news (and some slightly daunting news). The good news is this has happened to me at some level. You can uncover things you didn’t know were causing mental anguish, figure them out, and in the process let go of them. The word liberating always comes to mind.
The daunting news? For most of us, there’s a lot going on up there in our minds. Dan Harris, the author of 10% Happier, wanted to name that book “The Voice in my Head is an Asshole.” So, you’re going to have to do a lot of waking up if you are like me. Or most of us. It’s a life pursuit. Not a cure-all. But I’ve embraced it, and I hope you do too!