Reflecting on the subject of pain in his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein concluded that the grammar of the concept had an essential relation to publicly recognisable forms of “pain-behaviour”: wincing, saying “ow”, yelping, crying, and so on. He thought that it was possible to know that another person was in pain simply by looking at their behaviour, as reliably as you could know that you yourself were. “Just try — in a real case — to doubt someone else's fear or pain,” he wrote, doubtless fuelled by memories of serving as a forward artillery observer in the First World War. He’s probably right. Still, it’s a pity he never met American ultra-runner Courtney Dauwalter.
On Saturday, Dauwalter won the women’s Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, a 106-mile race around Mont Blanc involving a total of 32,700ft of climb plus accompanying brutal descents. In the past 10 years this astonishing athlete has won 20 ultra marathons, the shortest of which was 100km and the longest 240 miles. In the past 10 weeks alone, she has won three races of 100 miles each, with little time for recovery in between. The UTMB was her latest; she completed it in under 24 hours. In an interview the day afterwards, she pronounced her legs “completely destroyed”, and I believe her.
During her youth, Dauwalter honed her tolerance to suffering by competing in cross-country skiing in Alaska, putting duct-tape on her face to avoid getting frostbite. In races these days, past a certain point of exertion she tends to vomit every couple of miles. According to one extended profile of the runner, if she’s competing for more than 24 hours, now and again she will permit herself a one-minute power nap at the side of the trail. She often hallucinates: for instance, that bears are hugging in a circle in front of her, or that flying eels are attacking her. Hallucinations have now become part of her brand: she has a merchandise line that makes graphics out of them and puts them on T-shirts.
During one long race, she refused to change her running gait despite a huge blister migrating from her little toe to the top of her foot. In another, she developed temporary blindness but still ran on. Tripping on a tree root, and unable to see the blood leaking from her face after the fall, she dismissed it as “just sweat”. As her husband said in a documentary about her: “Something that Courtney has learnt and has got really good at, is that when you think your body is telling you to stop, maybe you don’t need to stop”.
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Of course, sometimes when your body is telling you to stop, it’s a good idea to listen. My own version of this is to take a breather halfway up a local hill to enjoy the view. Dauwalter’s version is to attempt a 486-mile course record across the Rockies, stopping only for acute bronchitis at mile number 309. It’s not that she doesn’t feel pain at all. It’s rather that she mentally approaches it in a very deliberate way, originally learnt from her high school skiing coach.
To cope, she visualises in great detail a “pain cave”: a dark underground space full of tunnels, whose outer edges she pictures herself chiselling away at with every agonising step. In classically puritan vein, she tells herself at the beginning at every race that she is about to step into the cave and that “we’re going to get better from visiting it”. Early on in her career, she used to picture herself shying away from the cave’s mouth; or else sitting on a chair near the entrance, just “surviving it". Nowadays, pain and the mental chiselling it prompts are conceived of as industrious and productive: “Each time I’ve raced, and hurt a little more, and dug a little deeper, I’m actually making a bigger cave with different tunnels.” She imagines herself in a hard-hat “going to town, trying to make it a dust pile while I am in there”.
The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius might have urged us not to struggle against pain but to accept it as neither good nor bad. This runner-philosopher goes one better, advising us to give pain a meaning, then love it. Reading about Dauwalter this week — and having just finished my own bout of bronchitis — I decided to try out her technique by going for a run.
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After about three minutes of heaving myself up the road, I mentally donned a high-vis vest and headlamp and tentatively entered my cave. Staring blankly about me, I ineffectively chiselled a bit here and there, but soon got distracted by the dragging pain in my legs and hammering in my chest. As my discomfort increased, I made some more desultory marks on the walls — for some reason, these looked a bit like the scratches made by the victims of serial killers — and then put down my tools and lit an imaginary fag. I don’t think I have the right work ethic for this job. Personally, I see nothing wrong with a pain cave on the snug side.
Womanhood and pain is a naturally occurring combination. The pains of childbirth for most, menstrual pain for nearly all, and fluctuating hormones which increase the intensity of already painful conditions are the female lot without access to medication. Women report pain more frequently than men and are more susceptible to chronic pain conditions, for complex reasons that are probably both biological and social. Some studies even suggest that female pain intensity is higher too. Women also apparently buy the most over-the-counter analgesics — though it remains unclear whether some of these are purchased for their husbands.
There are also sexed differences in dealing with pain. One overview suggests that while men distract themselves with other tasks and use “problem-focused tactics”, women tend to try “positive self-statements and emotion-focused techniques”. Indeed, I can attest to this, having once done a hypnobirthing course, full of 30 and 40-something expectant mothers trying very hard to convince themselves they weren’t going to have a caesarean at the end of it. Here, too, there was a geological visualisation — except this time it was called the “cove of confidence”, and you were supposed to retreat into its soothing depths whenever you needed a break from the agony of what the instructor euphemistically renamed as “surges”. (Without wanting to discourage any pregnant readers, let’s just say that, at the very least, the cove of confidence empowers you to scream all the louder for an epidural during the surges).
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Women are also apparently more prone to what psychologists “pain catastrophising” — worrying and ruminating excessively, mentally magnifying threats and anticipating the worst, feeling helpless, and so on — which in turn exacerbates pain intensity and general distress. This degree of anxiety starts seeming more rational when supplemented with the knowledge that, when women go to the doctor, their pain apparently tends to be underestimated relative to identical behavioural manifestations by men (yet another data point unanticipated by Wittgenstein).
Indeed, there’s a danger that simply stating in public that women experience more pain than men partly due to biological factors — as I am doing here — might encourage a dismissive attitude towards women’s pain by health care providers. That is, this knowledge might induce hearers to confuse what is the case naturally, with what ought to be the case, producing a knock-on social penalty as well. Yet if the modern-day medical attitude to “natural” pain is that it should be medicated away — and clearly it is — then there’s no fair reason to extend this attitude to one sex but not the other.
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But maybe we don’t always have to opt for anaesthesia. With pain an inevitability in life, and particularly for women, it makes sense that some people make it part of an identity. Choose pain deliberately before it chooses you! Contrary to appearances, this is not always the same as masochism. Masochism, whether sexual or emotional, involves unconsciously leaning into passivity, helplessness, victimisation, and the familiarity of suffering. This seems to me the precise opposite of what someone like Dauwalter is doing. She is emphatically winning at life, not stagnating in the comforts of defeat. She has no coach, follows no set training regime but just runs how she feels on the day, and rewards herself afterwards with nachos and beer. According to one journalist: “Sometimes around 3 a.m., she is so amped, in awe of the mountains surrounding her, that she’ll squeal: “This is awesome!” Even controlling for being an American (or, at least, not being British), this still sounds pretty far from the masochistic mindset.
Indeed, one common explanation sometimes offered for masochism positions it as a negative response to a highly competitive environment — you revel in feelings of pain, failure, and inferiority as an inadequate psychic proxy for power and control. Dauwalter, in contrast, seems obviously in touch with her inner competitive beast, and approaches every race with explicitly positive goals in mind. Pain is conceptualised as a necessary means to the ends of beating rivals, smashing course records and personal bests, and — of course — winning that coveted first place in the “World’s Most Voluminous Pain Cave” competition. “My goal with every race is to make it hurt and get everything out of myself that I can,” she says.
Hardly any of us can be as positive as this about what is essentially an unpleasant experience, and in some cases overwhelmingly so. Pain hurts, sometimes terribly. The clue is in the concept. Still, in a world where so many of us seem to be keen to escape pain in all its forms, whether physical or emotional, Dauwalter serves as a fascinating exemplar of how it is possible to go the other way, and rush towards it, grinning ecstatically.
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SubscribeKathleen Stock discussing my favourite subject of ultra-running. Made my day. Thank you!
How do they know that women buy the most over-the-counter analgesics?
Does someone monitor what everyone is buying and note what sex they are?
Doesn’t this sound improbable?
Neither do I believe that women experience more pain than men. Most women work in offices while many men perform backbreaking and knuckle grazing manual labour in mines, on oil rigs, and a multitude of construction jobs.
Marketing departments have been monitoring what everyone is buying for as long as they have been in existence. The people selling pain medication really want to know who their customers are. When most purchasing is done by credit card, it is even easier to check who is doing the buying, provided you can get access to the credit card data.
We’ll have to be careful then with the stats about how many women buy men’s underwear at M&S. Could give a very false impression of the trans situation.
I suspect its done by self-report in marketing surveys. ‘How much x have you purchased this month?’ type questions. Highly suspect results.
Yes is the answer. That’s what loyalty cards are for. Tesco etc know who you are and what you buy. This allows them to tailor and target their offering both specifically to the customer and generally to the group.
Although there are more restrictions on using personally identifiable data, buying by credit card also provides the industry with information on buying behaviour. Every retailer type, product family and location is categorised. The data is anonymised and aggregated to help create customer segments for marketing purposes.
Plus of course there are still old-fashioned market research techniques like surveys, focus groups etc.
Just because a woman is buying the product does not imply they are the ones using it and therefore must be suffering more pain… unless, of course, she’s single. Otherwise it’s purchased for the family and there’s no telling who uses the most.
Which is exactly what Stock said in her article.
“Just because a woman is buying the product does not imply they are the ones using it”
As the author says in the article above and one of the reasons why market researchers don’t rely on a single source of data. They cross reference with surveys etc.
Yes, but manufacturers don’t care who the product is for, they are concerned with the purchaser. The purchaser is probably the one who chooses one of many different brands. The user takes what is in the cupboard.
I suppose if you are more sensitive to pain, then the same amount would mean what you experienced was that much greater. Women tend to be credited with having more sensitivity. Could be they feel more pain. Very hard to tell and unless we’re careful this ends up being one of those dreary victimhood contests.
Either way, unless you are actually a victim of torture or some dreadful accident, it’s unlikely as a man you’ll ever have to undergo something as painful as giving birth (must be).
While I am sure that you are basically right about job types that does not actually have to have much to do with pain. Pain and its causes and feelings is complicated.
Pain is not quite the same thing as injury, is I think the point. Women are far more rarely injured at work than men, particularly men in physical trades.
It’s also known that testosterone and other androgens can blunt pain, while testosterone’s chemical cousins – estrogen, and other hormones that are associated with feminine traits – enhance or increase pain.
Pain is meant to sense injury, but is imperfectly so. Males, being more expendable from a reproductive point of view, and physically far stronger, have evolved to endure illnesses, injuries, and threats with more alacrity than women.
In short, it makes evolutionary sense for us men to have greater pain tolerance, but to experience more injuries, and to exhibit more risk tolerance. This is also why one of the criticisms of our purported “toxic masculinity” lists stoicism as, apparently, a psychologically unhealthy trait. (Most feminist criticisms are in reality arguments that should be taken up with Mother Nature, not with individual men.)
Females, who are far less expendable from a reproductive point of view, and far more valuable in child rearing, have evolved to have a far greater emphasis on self preservation and longevity. And indeed, they live far longer, so that grandmothers to this day assist in raising their grandchildren. Women visit the doctor far more regularly, have far higher health care expenses, even controlling for childbirth and gynecology, and in general are far more risk averse than men. They need to survive to raise the next generation of human beings, and there would probably be far fewer of us, if any, if this were otherwise.
This is why a female extreme endurance athlete is so extraordinary, and therefore newsworthy.
And yes of course there are men who are immobilized by a mild cold or a bruised shin, and many truly indefatigable women, such as our long distance runner here portrayed.
But there are far fewer female boxers, soldiers, policemen, steeplejacks, commercial fishermen, fireman, miners, and underwater welders for exactly these reasons. And far fewer female criminals, homicide victims, suicides, and drug overdoses.
No. If individual men or women want to seek out and embrace pain, that’s their business, but in the aggregate, no. No people “should learn to love pain.”
Hear hear! The title is really irresponsible – even salacious – in my view.
This piece is guilty of the worst of feminist sins – gender essentialism.
But seriously, women endure the most remarkable levels of ‘natural’ pain. There is also the tragedy of chronic arthritis and muscular problems related to carrying children over the years. Again, this relates to particular physical frailties far from being experienced ‘essentially’ by all.
Gender essentialism may be an over-simplification, but it’s better than it’s opposite, which is the orthodoxy now.
The orthodox transgender line is to push gender essentialism while denying biological (sexual) essentialism. The trans clerisy has taken the most liberating concept from feminisms and queer theory of the past (gender as performance/ritual/convention) and transformed it into an inner ‘self’ or ‘essence’ of vague origins. Largely, this is done by means of semantics: The trans ministry has re-defined ‘gender’ so that now it is taken to denote ‘biological sex’. This is a complete reversal of its original meaning. If liberals had not obediently started using words incorrectly, this newfangled ideology would have struggled to get a foothold.
All unavoidable pain should be observed dispassionately, accepted, all reaction surrendered and then finally transcended. Creating pain in pursuit of an ego enhancing competitive goal creates a hardened and unempathetic personality who is more likely to be toxic in their interactions with others. Intellectual rationalisation and justification for such activities creates the cognitive architecture which promotes such undesirable behaviours.
Interesting perspective. Are you not arguing for a life lived well inside your comfort zone?
I’ve done a couple of marathons, which definitely provided some avoidable physical pain. Also some job/country moves which generated an element of avoidable psychological discomfort. I consider both to have been positive experiences which have expanded my ability to cope with the unavoidable stuff life throws.
I’m not sure people who never stretch themselves provide particularly positive examples of good cognitive architectures.
Having run many ultra marathons, I can provide my personal perspective. The feeling of achievement and accomplishment upon completion is magnified by the levels of discomfort one endures during the race. It is strangely addictive.
Isn’t that normally known as MASOCHISM?
No it is an “addiction” to naturally produced endorphins. Although Masochists experience their effects, one does not have to embrace masochism to generate the same effects. The perception of pain followed by the release of endorphins is a generalised physiological response.
I’ve never considered myself a masochist. It is a deep emotional thing though. The closer one gets to breaking, giving up and obeying what would come naturally (i.e. to stop), the bigger the sense of relief and release when it’s over. It really does ‘wash’ over you as you cross the line. It’s a proper “money can’t buy that” feeling.
Thank you.
Some call it ‘passion’.
“strangely addictive” – increased endorphins. Runners often addicted.
I’m not a marathon runner, but I did try running several years ago & managed the odd 5 or 10k shuffle. It never worked its ‘addictive’ magic on me – maybe I just didn’t push myself hard enough – so it only lasted a few years. The one thing I do remember however is the fantastic feeling of smugness once I’d finished a run. Was that endorphins? If so, they weren’t enough to get me to stick to running. I spent every step wishing it would end.. I’m much more interested in releasing the kind of endorphins that don’t require pain – singing (in a choir and in a pop band) & dance (which does sometimes involve pain, but via such joy that you don’t notice it!) How does that saying go? “Do something every day that scares you”. I suppose it all depends on what each of us finds ‘scary’.
Real achievements cause pain – for men and women. I am a runner and I feel the pain and it’s great. It’s addictive. I believe that endorphins are better pain killers than morphine and certainly they are the best solution for mental pain.
As we have more and more discussions about the pain we are feeling, should we not be trying to reduce that pain instead of just talking about it?
“Real achievements cause pain”… lol, what like Hiroshima and shit?
I think Caradog meant “real achievements involve pain”. Very few worthwhile accomplishments are painless, effortless, or lacking in destructive elements. All choice is a negation of one thing in favour of another. Often pain is involved as a means to a desired outcome. The multitude of comments in this thread suggesting that accepting pain is ‘masochistic’ are a depressing commentary on how our once vital culture has descended into obsession with safetyism and risk avoidance at all costs. Instead of regarding the acceptance of pain as masochism, why not see it as passion?
In my 69th year and having had two wives deliver five children and any number of women involved in helping to run my business and other ventures, the answer seems straightforward to me. Women by and large deal with pain in all it’s forms better, because they are forced to confront pain and deal with it, far more often and more acutely than men. Who again by and large, are woosies by comparison.God bless them all.
From a neuroscientific point of view, what we know and understand about pain overall has grown and changed radically over the last half century or so. Most of what we were taught about how pain works and why, is woefully oversimplified. Gate Theory and the Biopsychosocial model come closest to giving us a reasonable approximation of how pain works, but the fact that it can vary radically from person to person makes it a slippery fish. Also, the value of placebo has been smothered in favor of pharmaceutical approaches. In fact, probably willfully for fun and profit. Mostly profit.
True. The lack of interest in the placebo effect by the NHS is a great pity. There is nothing woo woo about it, but it is a scientific concept that is allowed for in every research programme. In the US and other countries without a nationally funded health service it is easy to see why this might be. Here it is inexplicable.
“Even controlling for being an American (or, at least, not being British), this still sounds pretty far from the masochistic mindset.”
I laughed out loud at this. You’ve got our number, Kathleen.
I did also, worth the read for that sentence
Ms Dauwalter may feel differently about things when, chairbound with wrecked knees, hips and back, she relies on her more sedate sisters for cups of coffee!
There are many types of masochism. Victor Smirnoff called a certain type of masochism defiant, for instance, which didn’t involve submission, but a pleasure in feeling pain in a controlled (by the subject) setting. That runner is closer to this type. There’s nothing ultra healthy about it and there’s nothing comparable to this runner picking when to feel pain or about a woman suffering from endometriosis.
1
This comment about pain is from the perspective of the helplessness of crime victims in Australia, even in big cities like Melbourne, in leafy suburbs of million $ homes, in the electorate of Clare O’Neil, Australia’s Minister for Cyber Security and Home Affairs.
It is possible to keep living with extreme pain renewed and increased by frequent, devastating, unpunished crime. You need to be angry though, to prevent you from ending it all via suicide. Anger compels crime victims to fight.
Writing is my only weapon against Australia’s diabolic crime reality (1).
Living with PTSD renewed by a dozen different crime incidents a day or more since 2009 by one of Australia’s many crime gangs, the MEEHAN Horde of Thugs, whose members have learned their freedom to satisfy their sadistic urges without any risk of prosecution evidently over many decades, I am compelled to warn others.
Crime trauma is extremely painful and cumulative. The injustice hurts more than childbirth or a bleeding abdominal cyst. I experienced all three.
Knowing the origin of physical pain, knowing for how long you are likely to have it makes physical pain manageable, even if stopping it isn’t optional. Crime trauma in Australia has no end.
In Australia the only way out of crime trauma is suicide.
There are no analgesics relieving the pain from ongoing, repeated crime trauma.
Therapy is pointless, because the cause of the trauma is controlled by Australia’s untouchable sadistic criminals at times flashing their Victoria Police uniforms while they commit crimes in broad daylight.
Since the Internet is everywhere, and crimes I am forced to live with are often committed via cyber-space, being physically far away from Australia does not protect people. Cyber-criminals sell their services to the highest bidders across the globe irrespective of purpose. Australia’s bikie gangs make billions in the drug trade yearly.
Cyber-crime capabilities go far beyond what is reported, far beyond privacy loss or economic damage. The capabilities Australia’s bikies are able to access evidently risk-free and on-demand include remote harm causing debilitating physiological symptoms, the worst of which in my case took over 7 months to taper off, after completely incapacitating me for the first 10 hours. My symptoms made no sense to the doctors I visited.
Last in-person stalking trauma I suffered was less than 24 hours ago, last cyber-crime trauma suffered less than an hour ago. I don’t know yet the financial fallout from the latest cyber-crime. The latest cyber-crime shows how irresponsible it is to ignore the hackability of “green solutions” forced on us. I had solar panels installed on my properties 5 years ago being naive about cyber-risks myself.
Victoria Police’s (we have no FBI equivalent, our police have neither duty of care nor accountability) treatment of me came effortlessly and without hesitation every time as they denied me justice, and denied me information about why they were denying me justice. My experience is the norm in Australia, not an exception. There must be thousands like me across Australia at any one time.
I am nothing special beyond maybe my outrage about Australia’s fake facade of law and order that makes fear impossible. What I am forced to learn about Australia’s crime reality must be shared via every possible means.
I live in Melbourne, Australia in a suburb of million $ homes (2), where I have owned my home since 2001.
I don’t have a choice about pain via ongoing, repeated trauma.
I am brutalised and traumatised daily, hourly, at times every few seconds via crimes that robbed me of my ability to earn a living in 2017, stopped me from enjoying life’s little pleasures like hiking in my beloved national park, attending dance classes or going out since 2018, stopped me from even having tenants or housemates in 2021, as crimes against me spill over to people who associate with me, I am stranded in my home trying to keep my exposure to ongoing crimes down.
If you have the choice of stopping the experience of pain without being forced to stop living, please acknowledge to yourself how lucky you are.
#ididnotstaysilent
—
(1) See my Perfect Crimes article on LinkedIn.
(2) In Australia all crime victims are assumed to be pathetic charity cases whose lifetime of poor decisions and costly mistakes led to their inevitable demise.
I have no criminal background.
I never called a friend of any kind the stalker ex-coworker IT Helpdesk Assistant, who added me to his already extensive list of concurrent targets in 2009, because I became an e-commerce world champion in my postgrad studies, while working as a Business Analyst at the Victorian Electoral Commission.
I never chose to have anything to do with bikies, drug-traffickers, Victoria Police officers or any other criminals either.
As a former refugee turned workaholic MBA earning beyond my needs I was quietly paying forward the kindness I received decades ago as a refugee by the time the stalker coworker decided to devastate my life in 2009. I never expected to be reduced to surviving crime-to-crime in a first-world country like Australia.
The stalker had (still has?) unrestricted access to every woman’s home address and the up-to-date whereabouts of people in witness protection in the state of Victoria, possibly the whole of Australia since 2007 at least.
While the stalker’s own cowardice and incompetence are unmissable, he acted as a fearless, highly accomplished criminal by 2009, breaking into my home and car while I was working long hours, leaving me sick psycho signs of his visits like his long, light-brown hair strands mixed into my food in my fridge – I had short black hair at the time and lived alone. No one had keys to my home, let alone access to my fridge.
The stalker has not changed his behaviour since 2009.
I saw him recently doing his usual loitering around my home, evidently enjoying the risk-free power he has over the lives of his victims.
He does not have to change his behaviour.
Australia never had functional law-enforcement.
Crime statistics are managed via blocking crime reporting attempts even by public servant witnesses to crimes punishable by 10 years in jail/worse, and by terrorising crime witnesses and victims into silent oblivion.
I think what you’re describing is masochism… to which, my feeling has always been, “I know you can, but why would you want to?!” Ffs… each to their own… Personally, I’ve never dealt well with pain, mental or physical, and why should I have to, when nature provides such bounty to ameliorate the suffering? Ooooh, because the medical profession HATES peoples who bypass them, so much so that parts of nature are deemed illegal and they got that shit enshrined in law – and all to save me from myself. Honest. Lol. I bet she’s a Christian too… why would I think that? *
Blood in her shoes??! Lol. Really???! It’s like blood falling out her c**t once a month wasn’t QUITE enough… ffs… (I would have said “vagina”, but, as we all know, “c**t”, that ancient as f**k word, was Renaissance replaced by something more ‘scientific’, the Latin “vagina” – a word meaning “receptacle” or “sheath”…)
*Because I went to a Church school here in South Wales back in the 1970’s and gave it up as a bad job the minute my headmaster wrote on my school report “No Cross, no crown”… but hey, have at it peeps, good for you… whatever gets you through the night…