The nature and roots of moral courage and heroic actions.
Moral heroism is not Trumpian behavior
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of
supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a
decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious
adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
As a more holistic approach to pain management gains traction, the use
of mindfulness and hypnosis has been shown to block out pain – some
people have even been known to have surgery without anaesthetic ...
Pain management techniques include mindfulness-based stress reduction, which encourages sufferers to learn to be in the moment.
Illustration: Thomas Pullin
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” reads very much like
something a Love Islander might caption a workout video on Instagram
with – but the platitude is increasingly being backed up by science.
In recent years, the advent of functional brain imaging has brought
with it a new understanding of the distinct biological and psychological
components to pain. While pain is perceived in the brain when signals
that something is wrong are transmitted through the central nervous
system, suffering is increasingly defined as our interpretation of that
pain signal. For instance, the biological root of pain could be a back
injury, while suffering might arise as understandable emotional
responses to that pain, including thoughts such as “this is unbearable”
and “why me?” Because of this interplay, the International Association
for the Study of Pain defines pain as being both a sensory and an emotional experience.
According to Dr Sarah Jarvis, GP and clinical director of
Patient.info, for people suffering from chronic pain, there is a direct
correlation between negative thought patterns and increased discomfort.
“We know that there is a cause and an effect,” she says. “For instance,
people who are depressed or stressed
are more likely to feel pain more acutely. But being in chronic pain
can itself cause psychological distress, which in turn worsens the
pain.”
Of course, that’s not to say that people suffering from chronic pain
are responsible for their own symptoms. “It’s impossible for pain or
profound physical symptoms of any sort not to have an emotional impact,”
says Jarvis. “But while we can’t always get rid of pain, there are ways
to work on
Techniques include mindfulness-based stress reduction, which
encourages sufferers to learn to be in the moment. While you may assume
that this would lead them to focus on their pain, the idea is to
passively observe their emotional state. Progressive muscular
relaxation, on the other hand, works on the premise that tensing and
then releasing tension in specific muscle groups will lead to deep
relaxation, inhibiting feelings of anxiety.
At the extreme end of the spectrum are people who manage to master
their pain responses so successfully that they are able to undergo
surgery without anaesthesia. Last year, in a world’s first, hypnosis was
used instead of anaesthetic for deep brain surgery to cure an elderly
patient’s trembling hands.
“At a basic level, it’s about people who have practised mindfulness
to the extent that they can focus on one element of their being, and
block out another,” says Jarvis. “We all know, for instance, that
somebody who lives next to a busy road can sleep through a juggernaut,
but wake up immediately if their baby whimpers. [Being operated on under
hypnosis] is the same principle. Some people are exceptionally good at
training the mind so that their entire focus is on the specific stimulus
that they are focusing on, for instance their breathing, or a
visualisation.”
While staying awake during surgery may be many people’s worst
nightmare, a number of studies suggest that some patients feel less
anxious doing so than at the perceived risk of being sedated and not
waking up. Advocates of hypnosis argue that it has no side effects,
makes operations quicker, is cheaper than general anaesthetic and
(because it does not affect the workings of the body) allows patients to
recover faster.
Jarvis cautions that there is a lack of high-quality studies into
hypnotherapy, because it is difficult to conduct randomised placebo
trials (where the patient doesn’t know whether they are under hypnosis
or not). However, she does foresee a future where we rely on a more
holistic approach to pain management. “It’s absolutely something that
will increase,” she says. “There is increasing awareness that there is
only so much we can do with drugs, and a much bigger focus on a
multidisciplinary approach.”
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For relief of pain and inflammation. Always read the label. Find out
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