How to cope with pain?

• evergreen public Stoicism pain
• Pain should be acknowledged as a sensation, a piece of information sent by our sensorial system. It is neither good or bad, it’s indifferent. It is how we deal with that sensation that is important.
  • Stoics suggest Cognitive Distancing and Objective Representation to pain management
    • Separate the sensation from the emotion it may trigger. Again, it’s important to decatastrophize
    • Describing the pain in plain words in a pure factual fashion can be very helpful. Another trick to help with cognitive distancing is to describe the pain in the third-person.
      • “Guillaume is experiencing pain in his left arm, with spikes of sharper pain when ...”
• Stoics borrow a few techniques from the Cynics, to practice the pain coping mechanism, such as frequent exposition to heat and cold

  • You could call this a form of stress inoculation: you learn to build up resistance to a bigger problem by voluntarily exposing yourself repeatedly to something similar, albeit in smaller doses or a milder form — Donald Robertson, How to think like a Roman emperor

  • That’s a perfect application of the Wim Hof Method!

• References

  • How to think like a roman emperor, Donald Robertson