Why Do We Like To Suffer?

If we do a quick survey at street level and ask passersby if they want to suffer, we can anticipate that we will encounter an overwhelming collection of negative responses. However, if we know something today, it is that the motivations that we think do not always move us. So why do we like to suffer?

Semantics are often very revealing in this regard. For example, let’s think about the concept of love. How many times have we referred to it as insanity? What do we think of the person who begins one relationship after ending another? Thus, we associate suffering, through paradoxical channels, with the act of wanting, and we can even use it to use or value or quantify the quality of this feeling.

A curious fact happens and it is that many people come to consultation saying that they feel bad because they do not feel bad . Because they have the feeling that they have rebuilt their lives very quickly after losing, for example, a loved one. In their diagrams, the image of the person who breaks down in tears after having lost what they loved so much appears clearly.

Do we like to suffer?

In English, to fall in love goes with the verb fall , whose most common translation is ‘to fall’. In fact, it may be easy for us to compare the act of falling in love with a sensation similar to what we can feel when we drop down a very high slide or jump on a parachute. It is the emotional response to a kind of surrender to the will of chance.

In a special way, in youth we tend to handle a concept of love that is very separate from other words such as stability, routine or will; much closer to others, such as spontaneity, madness, delivery or blindness. According to Iñaki Piñuel, author of the book The 5 Traps of Love , human desire is reinforced if it encounters opposition or difficulty and weakens after its satisfaction.

In fact, there are many people who question the existence of love when they have not felt that feeling of butterflies in their stomach for weeks. They miss the dynamics of going up very high and going down very low; to laugh out loud and to make your face fill with tears. We want to suffer, in this sense, because we want what it means to us.

This is one of the many reasons why some people do not want to leave that toxic relationship that causes so much pain. They themselves confess that they keep them in “a life without living”, but at the same time they find very intense emotions in them (a sign that they are very alive).

Suffering as a secondary reinforcer

But hey, if we want to get sentimental, we can turn our heads to work. What is the message of the prevailing meritocracy? Push yourself and… you will get what you want. It is the candle of the North American dream, a good part of what gives us back the illusion of control over the world around us. If the amount of effort we put into a goal is not associated with the outcome, what are we left with? Why get up in the morning? What information to have to anticipate what will happen?

Many workers feel that if they don’t have the perception of having worked hard, they don’t deserve better pay, public recognition, or improved other working conditions. It is that thought that does not allow you to enjoy your new position, celebrate your merit; gifts are not celebrated -if they are enjoyed-, because only that which has made us suffer deserves a party.

In this way, we come to suffering as a reinforcer. A toll that some people are not afraid to pay because in return they receive elements that they enjoy, such as the love or care of others. They refuse to remove the t-shirt that identifies them as victims because it is this that makes others aware of their needs to a degree that they truly enjoy. Thus, they fear that, if they stop suffering, these attentions will also end.

On the other hand, if they stop suffering, they would have to face a dissonance even if the attentions continued. Then they would have to wonder if they are acting selfishly, if they are selfish. An adjective that nobody wants for their self-concept. In addition, the cardiologist Georgia Sarquella Brugada affirms that “ the limit between pleasure and pain is not very clear and terror generates adrenaline, endorphins, epinephrine and dopamine, not so much because of the scares, but because of the state of suspense, that being in I wait without knowing what will happen ”. This is another reason why we like to suffer.

Another secondary benefit of suffering is the feeling of being useful to others. In this case, suffering constitutes proof that we are giving a valuable resource to others, being capable of being useful to them, and ultimately worthy of consideration.

We like to suffer while doing sports

In addition, many people seek suffering by doing sports – and its consequent hormonal release. They look for that point where the body begins to suffer, either from running very fast or going up a steep ramp. Thousands of amateur cyclists climb the hardest and most demanding mountain passes on the main laps throughout the year. They look for nature, the landscape, but also the pleasure that comes from coming face to face with their own limitations, in a place where nothing happens if they do not achieve it, as if it can happen in other environments, such as work.

By putting our body to the limit, it reacts by releasing endorphins to protect us against pain. Surely we have all heard that of ” how hard it is for me to go to the gym, but how good I feel when I return .” Of course, because at that moment we are mentally savoring a high concentration of endorphins in the intersynaptic space.