In the hustle and bustle of the average life things can get pretty stressful at times. Work, traffic, the spouse and kids, the endless chores waiting to be done, it all piles up and we get stressed. What do you do to reduce that stress? How do you sooth the savage stress beast living in your chest, neck, or belly? Maybe a couple of cold ones from the fridge, maybe getting lost in the internet, maybe that pint of ice cream, or maybe you grabbed some of your favorite fast food treats and a 32 ounce soda on the way home and can now slip into a restful food coma.
Stress happens, and most typically we engage in some sort of self-soothing behavior to help us cope with the stress. Self-soothing is a better option than going postal on the neighbor’s kids that are always over at your house when all you want is a little peace and quiet. Self-soothing works and it does help us feel better, even if feeling better is really just feeling less stressed by feeling less in general. Most self-soothing works by helping us to block out the feelings we don’t like. Sometimes this is by direct chemical action on the brain, like with alcohol or sugar, other times it is by distracting us with other sensations.
The concern I have with self-soothing is that most people have come to believe that this soothed state is the same as pleasure. We have been trained to think that the intense taste sensations from high sugar and fat foods are pleasurable. We have been taught that the buzz from alcohol feels good – when in fact it is only a state of feeling less. In too many areas of our life we have given up the pursuit of true pleasure and settled for the ease of simple soothing.
Pleasure is a functional survival mechanism hardwired into our brains. In simple terms, pleasure is the rewarding good feeling that comes from doing things that directly enhance our moment-to-moment or long-term survival. A simple example: if we play a high stakes poker game and win enough money to meet our survival needs for the next year, we are going to feel extreme pleasure.
Philosophers have debated the nature of pleasure for thousands of years, but in the last hundred years the neurobiology and brain chemistry of pleasure is giving us a better understanding of the role of pleasure in both humans and animals. One current understanding is based on tracking the specific neurotransmitters that stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain and the behaviors that evoke these responses. Three fundamental behaviors are observed: novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence. All these pleasure behaviors involve stimulatory neurotransmitters. This is the key I want to point out about pleasure – it is an active state of increased awareness generated by increased output of stimulatory neurotransmitters in response to our doing something that meets some level of our survival needs.
If we are hungry, getting something to eat to satiate that hunger produces pleasure. If we are lonely, going out and connecting with others (if we do a good job of connecting) will produce pleasure. If we are being chased by evil ninjas, effectively avoiding their evil intent feels good. If we are the top in our sales division and get the big bonus, that feels good. These are all behaviors that produce positive results for our lives. This is the key I want you to recall when I look at soothing behaviors and false pleasures.
Our brain does not know the difference between imagination and reality. The same brain pathways fire off signals to the same regions when we imagine an event as when we actually experience the event. So if we are watching a movie and identifying with the main character being chased by evil ninjas, our imagination will fire neurotransmitters to the pleasure centers when the character avoids the evil ninjas just like it would if we were experiencing the event in real life. The huge difference is that the movie is not real life and we did not actually do anything to enhance our survival. We were in pretend mode. Pretend mode can be a powerful tool for preparing for action, but it can also contribute to the gradual decimation of our self-esteem if it never moves into action. Pretending just to pretend is a self-soothing behavior to enable us to evoke artificial feelings. This is the intent of self-soothing most of the time – to evoke artificial good feelings without actually having to engage in doing something that enhances your survival. Consequently most self-soothing has negative consequences to one’s health and well-being.
A very obvious example of self-soothing with negative consequences is drug abuse. A little crystal meth might make you feel like you are on the top of the world for a while, but all the while it is destroying your health physically, emotionally, and socially. Alcoholics know the consequences of using alcohol to manage their stress. Food-aholics wipe out their digestive tracts, pancreas, liver, brain, and eventually their hearts. Yet those using them perceive each of these behaviors as pleasurable.
The problem is not the self-soothing in itself, but that the people substitute self-soothing for effective action that would reduce their stress through positive change. Pretending to feel better does nothing to actually make you better. Pleasure is designed to be the reward for actually doing something that works to make you better. Chasing the reward without doing the work to deserve the reward gradually destroys your health because your body needs the actual improvements the work will bring you. Just faking the pleasure signals does nothing to solve the needs of the body that were creating the anxiety and stress signals in the first place.
We have gotten very good at creating ways to simulate the reward/pleasure feeling state – better living through chemistry. This defeats the biological reason for pleasure. It has become so confused in our lives now that we no longer seek out the simple pleasures that support our ability to survive and thrive. We want the trophy for winning without having to learn how to play. This doesn’t work for us, for our health, for our lives.
Seek out the rewards for embracing life. Tackle the new and different to discover whole new ways to experience your life. Learn the skills of living life here and now with joy and vulnerability and strength.