What if you were told that self-inflicted pain can actually be an effective coping mechanism to reduce negative or unpleasant emotions? Sounds a little strange, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what a recent study by researcher Ashley Doukas and colleagues (2019), published in the journal Emotion suggests.

In this article we will see in detail what this research consisted of, what its results and conclusions were, and also what a previous experiment said about benign pain (this type of pain we will explain).

What is benign pain?

New research, from 2019, published in the journal Emotion and directed by Ashely Doukas, suggests that this type of pain is involved in the regulation of our emotions .

Thus, according to this study, benign pain consists of a type of physical pain, which may help reduce distress and other psychological symptoms. It would therefore be a strategy for regulating emotions.

But what do we mean when we talk about benign pain (always according to this study)? We refer to part of the psychological phenomena behind non-suicidal self-injurious behaviors (in English NSSI). These behaviours are usually carried out by people with some kind of mental disorder (e.g. anorexia, depression…) However, according to this study that talks about benign pain, these behaviours are also developed by a part of the population that does not suffer from any mental disorder.

Why these behaviors? It has always been thought that these people (those with some kind of mental disorder) commit these acts because they want some kind of pain that will prevent them from feeling the emotional pain they suffer, which is why they cause this pain classified as benign pain.

However, the research we talked about suggests that beyond this reason, there is the following one: regulate extreme emotional states . This statement is supported by the author of the study, Ashley Doukas.

Thus, as observed in this research, there would be a portion of the healthy population (the “control” group) that would use this benign pain to counteract certain negative emotions. This benign pain is not always self-induced, and could also include non-harmful sensations of cold, heat or pressure (as used in the experiment). Specifically, this group reported a reduction in negative emotions after receiving a stimulus of a painful nature.

What was the experiment about?

In the research we told you about that tried to explain the reason for the benign pain, the researchers proceeded as follows: they exposed 60 participants to disturbing images, and offered them two types of cognitive strategies, as well as two physical strategies, to cope with the negative emotions produced by these images.

Participants were told that they could reduce this negative emotion in different ways:

  • Thinking of a different image.
  • Changing the meaning of the image in his mind.
  • Administering a painful shock to himself.
  • By administering painless electrical stimulation to yourself.

Results

The results of the research on benign pain were as follows: 67.5% of the participants chose, at least once, to self-administer painful shock .

Sixteen trials were conducted, and in these, participants chose painful shock between 0 and 13 times (on average 2 times per participant). The same participants rated the strategy of painful stimulation as equally effective as others in regulating the distress they felt when viewing the unpleasant images.

Conclusions

Ashley Doukas, the author of the study, hopes, based on these results, that people who engage in this type of self-injurious behavior will be destigmatized, since, according to her, benign pain would be another way of regulating negative emotions . From this point of view, it is true that there are very harmful self-injurious behaviours, but then there are others, carried out by a group, that hide a “good intention” behind them, and that is self-regulation.

This study may seem a bit bizarre to us: who can say that self-harm is good? But we should not stay with the superficial part; what Doukas, with his research, suggests is that there are very negative self-injurious behaviors, of course, but that there are others that would not be so negative, because in reality the pain that is caused is not to harm oneself, but to regulate an unpleasant internal state, as a coping mechanism of one’s own .

Doukas, in his study, suggests that we think about when people get intense massages, which “hurt” but are also pleasant, or when we put hot sauce on our tacos. In these situations we are causing ourselves a “benign pain”.

Other research

In previous research, the following procedure was used: participants in the experiment were exposed to sitting alone in an empty room for 10 minutes.

They were ordered not to sleep, read or use their mobile phones. But they were allowed one thing: to administer painful or painless electrical stimulation to themselves as often as they wanted .

What happened in this experiment? The results showed how 60% of the participants decided to self-administer, at least once, the painful electrical stimulus . How many times were the stimulations administered? This number ranged from 0 to 69, with an average of 13, which is a lot.

I mean, they’d rather be in pain than bored. As in the previous experiment, benign pain, in this case, acted as a self-regulatory strategy to reduce negative emotions, such as boredom.

Healthy pain?

As a result of the investigations explained, we can ask ourselves (as Doukas did): Where are the limits between “healthy” and “unhealthy” pain ?

According to her, not so much in the pain itself, but in the mechanism for producing that pain; it is not the same to cut yourself as to crush yourself, for example. Thus, perhaps the limit lies in the way of infringing that pain.

Its importance in the face of self-injurious behaviour

Ashley Doukas insists that benign pain is part of non-clinical populations , and therefore does not fail to give due importance to self-injurious behaviour in patients with some mental pathology, because these are very serious cases. But she differentiates it; they are not the same actions nor do they have the same purpose.

Doukas aims, through his research, and through future research into benign pain, to expand treatment options for people with self-injurious behaviour. The aim is that they can use more “healthy” mechanisms and that, for example, instead of burning or cutting their skin, they can use some kind of non-harmful electrical stimulation.

To make such treatments possible, Doukas speaks of TENS (electrical stimulation devices), devices that are frequently used in the field of physiotherapy . The author encourages the elimination of stigmas and the opening up of the mind, especially for health and mental health professionals.

Bibliographic references:

  • Doukas, A. M., D’Andrea, W. M., Gregory, W. E., Joachim, B., Lee, K. A., Robinson, G., Freed, S. J., Khedari-DePierro, V., Pfeffer, K. A., Todman, M., & Siegle, G. J. (2019). Hurts so good: Pain as an emotion regulation strategy. Emotion. Advance online publication.

    • .