(I presented this paper for a fourth-year psychology project, to a group unfamiliar with ritualistic practices).
At A Glance Author atavist Contact [email protected] IAM atavist When It just happened For much of my life, I have had the goal of reaching the full potential of my physiology. To that end I began experimenting with conditioning myself to tolerate physical pain. I took a quote of Nietzsche as a personal mantra and inspiration: "I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, and torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage" (Kaufmann, 1967). The goal of my project was to increase the duration of which I was able to experience intense physical pain. To this end, I engage in three different ritualistic practices. They include lying upon a bed of nails, a pull, and a chest suspension. Given that the nature of my project required the physical sensation of pain, I deemed it best to engage in an in vivo flooding procedure. For each act with the exception of one, I was able to subject myself to an aversive stimulus to the point that the point became very mentally demanding. The purpose of this project is threefold. My first goal was to increase my awareness of when my body is engaging in an adrenalcortical (HPA) response. My other goals were to increase the temporal duration of pain exposure my body could experience before reaching 8/10 on my subjective units of distress (SUD) scale, and to increase my subjective sense of self-efficacy. I theorised that by sensitising myself to my body's HPA response, I would be able to increase the duration to which I could experience intense pain on account of the body producing its endogenous opioid.
Before engaging in the different ritualistic practices, I wrote up a scale for myself which was as follows:
1) No pain
2) Aware of physical stimulation.
3) Moderate physical stimulation.
4) Pain is mild; does not require mental attention.
5) Pain is mild; requires some mental attention.
6) Pain in moderate, requires continuous mental attention.
7) Pain is severe (motor skills become labourous).
8) Pain in severe to the point that losing mental control (loss of consciousness, screaming, etc.) seems imminent.
9) Pain is severe to the point that mental control is partially lost (breathing adversely affected, gasping from pain).
10) Pain is severe to the point of that mental control is lost.
Given that the very nature of in vivo exposure requires a high level of intensity, for each practice my goal was to reach a SUD of 8-9.
The first practice that I engaged in was lying upon the bed of nails. To this end, I first was required to construct one. After six hours of construction, I had completed a bed of nails measuring 30"x38" with 276 5" nails, each with the tip filed down to 2mm square so as to prevent any tearing or puncturing of the skin. I laid on the bed of nails both with my chest and my back exposed to the nails alternately. When lying on my chest, my body was entirely supported by the bed of nail. On the other hand, when lying on my back, my feet remained on the floor. However, I strove to keep the weight off my feet as much as possible so as to increase the weight distributed upon my back. When lying on my back, I placed a phone book under my head to reduce strain on my neck. Each time I laid on the bed of nails, I did so until I reached approximately 8/10 the SUD scale. The results are as follows:
Lying on my back Lying on my chest
Session 1: 52sec Session 1: 8sec
Session 2: 48sec Session 2: 12sec
Session 3: 92sec Session 3: 14sec
Session 4: 98sec Session 4: 25sec
Session 5: 45sec Session 5: 32sec
Session 6: 113sec Session 6: 38sec
Session 7: 174sec Session 7: 13sec
Session 8: 207sec Session 8: 27sec
The decreases in time which occurred during session 5 for lying on my back, and for session 7 for lying on my chest can be accounted for. Those where the sessions which immediately followed the pull and the chest suspension, respectively. Over the course of the month, the duration to which I was able to lie on the bed of nails progressively increased.
The next activity I engaged in after commencing the project was the pull. A pull is quite a simple process. A number of people (typically 2) are pierced with a varying number of flesh hooks and pull against one another. In the case of this particular pull, the participants were my girlfriend and myself. After the area to be pierced was sanitised, each of us had two autoclaved 8 gauge hooks pierced through the skin over each deltoid. There was a total of five people involved in the pull from start to finish. For ease in the piercing, both hooks are inserted simultaneously (this involves two people). Rope is then attached to the hooks, connecting one person to the other. Once the pull commences, the two individuals who are connected each strive to walk forward, pulling the other person behind them. This is, in effect, a tug-of-war. During the pull, the other three individuals were assigned as follows: one person to each of those pulling to help balance and to aid in pulling when necessary, and one person to monitor the hooks to ensure no tearing was immanent. The pulling itself went on for approximately half an hour. At this point, my girlfriend was unable to continue given the level of pain she was experiencing. Upon finishing, the rope was first removed, then the hooks. Air that had formed bubbles under the skin from the vacuum created while being pulled were then pushed out. The pierced areas were then resanitized. During the experience, the highest level I reached on my SUD scale was 4.
The final activity I participated in was a chest suspension. In a suspension, flesh hooks are again pierced into the skin and the individual is suspended off the ground. One limitation of suspending over engaging in a pull is that, in a suspension, one cannot control the amount of weight on the hooks once tension is applied on account that gravity is the opposing agent. However, the experience can be made easier by increasing the number of hooks, as this increases the weight distribution. After the area to be pierced was sanitised, two 10 gauge hooks were pierced through the skin over each pectoral. Then, the hooks were connected to a harness hanging from a pulley attached to the ceiling. With one individual helping me balance the other pulled me off the floor. Almost immediately I was at 7/10 on the SUD scale. I continued to hang for approximately 1.5-2 minutes before returning to the ground. During this procedure, I was able to remain at a SUD of 9 for the majority of the experience. Upon coming down, the hooks were removed, the air bubbles were pushed out, and the area again sanitised.
When the body is exposed to a stressor, it reacts in a specific physiological manner. After the stressor has been perceived the adrenalcortical (HPA) response become active. First, the hypothalamus releases corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) which is in turn picked up by the anterior pituitary. The anterior pituitary then releases the adrenalcorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This results in the adrenal cortex secreting corticosteriods. The summation of this causes the body to go through a number of changes, some of which include an increased rate of metabolizing fat into glucose, a reduction of inflammation, and increased epinephrine (adrenaline) and endorphin levels. The amount of stimulus necessary for a nerve to activate to pain is biologically determined and cannot be altered. I theorized that what happens in the body to raise the intensity and duration that pain can be experienced and tolerated comes about through a sensitization to pain. This in turn results in the adrenalcortical response becoming active sooner. This would result in the body producing endorphins earlier after the onset of the aversive stimulus. As endorphins are the body's endogenous opioid, they act to suppress pain in the body. They are picked up by the same receptors in the brain that pick up morphine and heroin, which are other opioids (Barlow & Durand, 2004). Research indicates that when the subject has experienced shock, pain is indeed enhanced (King, Joynes, Meagher, & Grau, 1996). With the pain enhanced, the extent to which endorphins are produced increase resulting in the body being able to better tolerate the stress.
In order accelerate the production of endorphins, I repeatedly exposed myself to intense bursts of pain. While lying upon the bed of nails, doing the pull and the suspension, I focused my attention on my body, paying particular attention to the areas experiencing a pain response. The purpose of this was to condition the body so that when pain was experienced, the HPA response would commence rapidly to reduce the stress the body experienced. Success was exhibited in three ways. First, the duration by which I was able to lie on the bed of nails increased both for my chest and my back. Secondly, during the pull the quantity of pain I experienced was subjectively trivial despite having two hooks in my back pulled upon for approximately half an hour. Finally, upon completing each session lying on the bed of nails, the pain ceased almost immediately upon removing the pain stimulus, and pain subsided within one minute of coming down from the chest suspension. Research has shown that when a subject has been exposed to an aversive stimulus and attempted to suppress the pain, the time that was required to recover from the pain was longer than if the subject had focused their attention to the area being aversively affected (Cioffi & Holloway, 1993). This research also showed that when the subject was subjected to a pain later in the hour, those who monitored the previous pain rated the second aversive stimulus as less unpleasant than those who had suppressed the first aversive stimulus. Though more research is necessary, these results are congruent with my theory that by monitoring stress, the body produces endorphins sooner than when the pain is suppressed. This would explain why the pain subsided more quickly for those who monitored the aversive stimulus than for those who did not, as a greater quantity of opioid would be present in the body.
In the research by King et al. (1996), it was discovered that after rats had been exposed to shock, the rats responded in a hyperactive manner when later exposed to both shock and latent heat, suggesting that the pain experienced was increased after they had been previously shocked. In addition, it was learned that when a painful stimulus followed a shock, the likelihood of conditioned fear developing was increased. When lying on the bed of nails, for each session the environmental cues were maintained to the extent possible to the end that an association would develop between by cognitive processes and the area which indicated that pain would be forthcoming. Though the location was different from the one where I used the bed of nails, the pull and the chest suspension both took place in the same place. In the case of the rats, they were passive participants in the experiment, where I had control over the aversive stimulus. This difference is crucial in whether or not the subject develops a conditioned fear. In my case, fear of the aversive stimulus was not developed because, in the event that the pain became more intense than I could bear, I would terminate it. Though I am limited in the fact that my comparison is one between different species, if humans do indeed respond in the same manner as rats, my conclusion is then logically valid.
In fact, I experienced quite the opposite reaction to the stimulus as the rats. I experienced an increase in self-efficacy. This can be explained in two ways. First, I experienced a sense of accomplishment at seeing the duration of which I was able to lie on the bed of nails increase. Furthermore, by conditioning my body to pain levels 8-9/10 on the SUD scale, the significance of which I perceived lesser pain was reduced. To elaborate, if the most intense pain an individual experiences in their life ranks 5-6 on my SUD scale, they may subjectively rate that pain at 7-8 on their SUD scale because they have never experienced a more intense pain. As I have experienced greater levels of pain, the previous experiences seem minor in comparison. This in turn increased my self-efficacy because of the awareness that if I am ever involuntarily hurt in the future, the probability of it hurting as much as the chest suspension is low. When this occurs, because I know that my past pain was more severe and I could handle the aversive stimulus, I can easily handle pains that rank lower on the SUD scale. As well, given my focus on the physiological effects of pain, I have ceased to perceive it as the subjective 'bad'. It is merely a physiological response to an aversive stimulus.
Following the research of Yonan & Wegner (2003), it may be possible that by increasing the self-efficacy of an individual in earlier part of their lives, the extent to which they believe they are able to control their environment would carry into their old age. Pain is an inevitable part of the ageing process. Physically, the human body experiences increased deterioration as the ageing process advances. However, it has been shown that self-esteem increases with age. Pain tolerance also increases, and emotional responses to pain have been shown to decrease (Yonan & Wegner, 2003). Unfortunately, many choose to live with the pain as opposed to seeking treatment. Though this could be seen as acceptable when the pain is acute, as the pain will subside on its own, waiting for the pain to reduce naturally does little good when the pain is chronic. By doing pain sensitization exercises when younger, it may be possible that the elderly would have a greater understanding of the nature of pain, including the ability to discern when treatment is necessary.
An area in which my research could be potentially applied would be cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a treatment method for individuals suffering from low self-efficacy, as well as those who experience such conditions as generalized anxiety disorder. Though the methodology could differ from that which I engaged in, the principle would remain the same. The patient would experience increased levels of pain at a rate they believe themselves capable of handling over a course of several weeks. They would also control the duration of the stimulus. At set intervals, the individual would experience a level of pain that they had experienced from several sessions before to demonstrate to them the extent of their progress, which would in turn provide a sense of accomplishment. Theoretically, if the subject were able to reduce their fear of physical pain as well as generalize it to their emotional pain, it would increase their ability to deal with the world, as they have greater self-confidence. This would come about by conditioning the subject to a higher level of physical pain on their personal SUD scale than they rate the SUD of the stressing agent on the emotional scale.
Another area I believe my research could be applied to is in situations where an individual is has been institutionalized as a result of self-harming behaviours. Research has shown "that dynamic risk factors such as mood, substance use, and psychosocial stressors play an [increased] risk [in] self-harm for young offenders" (Howard, Lennings, & Copeland, 2003). Given the nature of the study, though, all participants would need to be of the age of majority. Negative affect was one to the more significant predictors in whether or not suicide had been previously attempted. I theorize that by allowing these individuals access to such apparatuses such as beds of nails, and permitting them to engage in ritualistic procedures such as suspensions and kavadi, they too would experience increased self-efficacy. This in turn would decrease the person's negative affect, thereby removing a predictor for attempting suicide. In cases where they are engaging in self-harming behaviour that are expressed in forms of self-mutilation (e.g. self-burning with cigarettes, flesh cutting, etc.), such methods may provide a safe alternative. By allowing access to pain inducing procedures, such as those listed above, in a controlled, monitored setting, the subject still receives the quantity of pain similar to the self-mutilating practices they were engaging in, but without the harming effects.
In conclusion, I consider the research done on me to be a success. By sensitizing myself to pain, I was able to endure the aversive stimulus of lying on the bed of nails progressively longer. Resulting from this is an increased rate of HPA response and an increased level of self -efficacy. These results inspire ideas for future research in order to aid those who suffer from negative affect and those who experience anxiety related disorder.
Bibliography
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Cioffi, D. & Holloway, J. (1993). Delayed Costs of Suppressing Pain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64 (2), 274-282.
Howard, J., Lennings, C.J. & Copeland, J. (2003). Suicidal Behavior in a Young Offender Population. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, 24 (3), 98-104.
Kaufmann, W. (Ed). (1967). The Will to Power. New York: Vintage Books.
King, T.E., Joynes, R.L., Meagher, M.W., & Grau, J.W. (1996). Impact of Shock on Pain Reactivity II. Evidence for Enhanced Pain. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 22:3, 265-278.
Yonan, C.A. & Wegener, S.T. (2003). Assessment and Management of Pain in the Older Adult. Rehabilitation Psychology, 48:1, 4-13.