# Hurts So Good  Author:: Leigh Cowart  ## AI-Generated Summary None ## Highlights > Today, when I use the word masochist, I am describing something universal, timeless, human: the deliberate act of choosing to feel bad to then feel better. To feel pain on purpose. People have long used this tactic, consenting to suffer so that they can enjoy the deliberately engineered biochemical relief that follows painful stimuli. It’s not weird. And it’s not rare. ([Location 105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=105)) > enjoying pain outside of consensual situations is more of a coping mechanism rather than true masochism, which requires choice, consent, and autonomy. ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=140)) > The gate control theory of pain is based on the chemical mechanisms that essentially up-vote or down-vote pain signals. Hamilton describes it as “inhibitory control from higher up” that basically says “No, that’s not relevant, or, Tell us as much about that as possible.” ([Location 429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=429)) > Pain gating, in its way, allows signals to be sorted, and they are sorted “up” or “down” for various reasons. Hamilton explains that there are chemical reasons, reasons at the spinal cord level, and, of course, psychological reasons. ([Location 435](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=435)) > When a person is in pain, whether or not they feel like they can do anything about it has an enormous effect on how their brain creates the painful experiences. ([Location 448](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=448)) > “The association of someone who has associations of sexual pleasure or other forms of psychological pleasure around pain would mean that the pain is actually just less threatening,” says Hamilton. Essentially, the idea is that because the participant is seeking the pain in a pleasurable situation, their experience will be more enjoyable. ([Location 494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=494)) > Context, again, is everything. And with context comes ritual. ([Location 536](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=536)) > The pain matrix, she says, is concerned with three things: alarm, location, and context. ([Location 553](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=553)) > Consenting to pain directly and on purpose has been an enormous influence in my life. It is the consent that makes the healing possible, and what I seek cannot exist without it. ([Location 580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=580)) ### Chapter Two THE WET ELECTRICS OF PAIN > In this way, I have come to think of my experiences with masochism as a kind of biohacking: a way to use the electrochemistry of my body in a deliberate way for the purpose of curating a specific experience. Something about my response to pain is different, be it inborn or learned (or both, I suspect). It’s something that allows me to craft a little pocket of joy for myself, an engineered release, be it through running a few miles uphill, getting a tattoo, or getting slapped in the face for fun until I cry. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=884)) > what the researchers found is a biological similarity between starvation (as in anorexia) and getting high on drugs (like MDMA). ([Location 1045](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=1045)) > “There is something about pain in all of this, especially with a Catholic background, that touches on a feeling of moral superiority,” says Harper. ([Location 1063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=1063)) > The researchers found that the people who wrote about their guilty memory held their hands in the ice water longer, rated the ice water as more painful than the others did, and afterward experienced a significant reduction in guilt. Read that again. The guilty people took more pain, said it hurt more, and felt less guilty after. But why? The authors reference D. B. Morris’s book, The Culture of Pain, which holds that “pain has traditionally been understood as purely physical in nature, but it is more accurate to describe it as the intersection of body, mind, and culture.” (As the author of a book about the societal and biological implications of pain on purpose, I am inclined to agree with this assessment.) This model of thought holds that people give meaning to pain, and Bastian argues that people are socialized from birth to accept pain within a judicial model of punishment. Add in the influence of a watchful deity, and suddenly pain as atonement makes more sense. ([Location 1088](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=1088)) > Bastian tells me that “people find emotionally intense experiences the most meaningful,” going on to cite the work of Harvey Whitehouse on the ways people bond through ritual. “One thing we know from all of that work is that pain is often used in rituals in general because it signifies something meaningful. It leads people to connect around something important,” he says. “It’s an identity marker in many ways.” ([Location 1144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=1144)) > There is something special about pain, and I will let you in on this rather obvious secret: pain lives, undeniably, in the present moment. Bastian calls it “a shortcut to mindfulness.” ([Location 1153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=1153)) > “Understanding the link between the experience of pleasure and the experience of pain, however, reveals that all of us get pleasure from pain.” And honey, truly, everybody does it. “While we might see a sinister element in those who engage in more extreme or sexualized masochistic practices, there is a sliding scale including a great many commonly accepted forms of pain enjoyment.” We look to the extremes—the flagellates, the mystics, the monks—and we see reflected back to us our own capacity to suffer on purpose, our whispered proclivities for just the right kind of pain. We see pain reducing guilt, pain creating meaning, pain signifying a transition, and pain marking a special occasion. In this kind of pain on purpose, there is, at once, the sacred and the profane. Which is how a chapter that starts with the desperate flagellations of religious zealots finds its way to the concrete floor of a mostly empty arena, where high above a woman dangles from her knees. ([Location 1173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=1173)) > “Some people of course don’t enjoy those things, but they enjoy the relief from them, so they’ll experience something unpleasant intentionally because the ending of that is very pleasant,” he tells me. “That’s not the same as enjoying pain. Right?” Or is it? ([Location 1404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=1404)) > There is powerful bonding to be found when pain is shared, and humans know it. Think about all the rituals that involve pain, from religious flagellation to frat hazing. Think about how someone might use this phenomenon to facilitate intimate bonds between strangers. Think about the last time you did something in a really big group of people. ([Location 2550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=2550)) > A very popular reason for incorporating pain into sex is that it can enhance feelings of helplessness and submission, which can intensify power play. Receiving and tolerating pain can feel like giving a gift to the person causing said pain, turning endurance into a test of devotion. Giving up control is just as much of a powerful aphrodisiac as wielding it, and pain certainly provides a fast track to finding and testing such limits. ([Location 3320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=3320)) > I mean, we can analyze this shit all day, and come up with endless theories, but regardless, these two things are true: I can intellectualize the origins of my desires, exploring their potential root causes and viewing them through an analytical lens; and my pussy gets wet when it gets wet and I like what I like. ([Location 3350](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08RYPSNVB&location=3350))