
Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose

This is particularly important in the context of people who have a history of trauma where choice was taken away from them. Directly affirming control over a potentially painful situation enables each patient or playmate to know that, fundamentally, they hold the power. “They understand that it’s for their benefit, and it’s within their control,
... See moreLeigh Cowart • Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose
“Oh, Saint Catherine of Siena drinking the pus from another nun’s breast tumor.”
Leigh Cowart • Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose
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The pain matrix, she says, is concerned with three things: alarm, location, and context. It’s the sensation of ouch, the position on the body where the ouch is coming from, and how you’re feeling about all of that.
Leigh Cowart • Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose
“The idea of our understanding of the brain is that [if] one area is very active, it’s going to use up more oxygen,”
Leigh Cowart • Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose
Another popular reason for desiring pain is that it creates a contrasting sensation that intensifies pleasure.
Leigh Cowart • Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose
“pain brings us immediately and brutally into the present.”
Leigh Cowart • Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose
a German study where the research team, led by Dr. Herta Flor, used big, big magnets to peer into the brains of masochists. The resulting paper, “Contextual Modulation of Pain in Masochists: Involvement of the Parietal Operculum and Insula,” published in the delightfully named Journal of Pain in 2016, is dense and intimidating, and I am awed by it.
Leigh Cowart • Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose
Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter has a phrase that describes the way she suffers during the hundreds of miles she runs: she calls it the pain cave. I like the image. Pain creates walls, a container of sorts, sealing you off from the world. But there is an opening to that cave, a light in that fucking tunnel, an end to this. And it’s coming.