Causes of pain...

[theslowesthand]

I'm just trying to attempt (again) to find out the causes of the "deep" emotional pain that surfaces fairly regularly. It's not the major/desperate/urgent pain (or "acute" if that's the term to use; or maybe "aggressive" pain), but the "deep" ("sad" pain?) type. Chronic, under-the-surface pain affects both these types. And it's not feelings such as anger, frustration, irritation,... - but "deeper" than these. I hope you understand what I mean here. To put it another way, it's the type of "stuff" that can "come to the surface" when you're consuming a alcohol, in the right situation/conditions/mental-state. These feelings I find almost impossible to label, explain, or work with. They just ARE.
It's always been a mystery to me, all this deep, emotional stuff. Difficult to analyse, understand, but not impossible (???)


Anyway, this is what i've come up with, as a starting point (correct me if i'm mistaken). I'm sure some of you will be able to ellaborate upon this...

• Loneliness

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Edit:

Most of the time we are oblivious to this deepness of pain, but every now and then, it "hits" us (for me, if I start to feel aware of these feelings, and I feel like drinking, then the alcohol usually somehow makes me "get in touch" with them more). I've had this general situation (of always having this "deep emotional lack"), for many years now, probably for my entire life, but only started becoming properly aware of it in my 20s (my "decade of booze"). That was the first time in my life that I was able to be "unconscious" while awake (ie aware of things that the conscious analysing mind can't touch), and so I started to become aware of things that I never was aware of before (such as this deep pain)


Ellaborated list...

• Loneliness ?
• Lack of love (ie no "real" love, whatever that means) ?
• No girlfriend ?
• Spiritual vacuum ?
• The feeling deep down that you're just somehow fundamentally flawed ?
• The feeling that there must be a better way for humanity... that we should act with some spirit of nobility instead of behaving worse than animals ?

 

[Dronee]

Could be a spiritual vacuum. Or the feeling deep down that you're just somehow fundamentally flawed. Or the feeling that there must be a better way for humanity... that we should act with some spirit of nobility instead of behaving worse than animals. Could be many things depending on the individual.

 

[theslowesthand]

Could be many things depending on the individual

What i was hoping for was to find the "common element" of this "deep pain". I was presuming that it is the same for everyone. But maybe you're right. Maybe there's DIFFERENT TYPES of this deep subtle pain, unique to each individual. Which means there's no common element. I'll have to re-think things a bit...

 

[Zaona]

...........

 

[theslowesthand]

A little irrelevant but I'm curious as to what you mean by this. I guess I don't drink that much so I wouldn't know, but does this happen? Is alcohol a trigger that could bring this stuff out in a person?

Yes it certainly can. But from my experience, like the "energy can't be created or destroyed, only converted" quote says, it won't "bring out" anything which isn't there in the first place. Basically, in terms of drinking alcohol, if you don't have the lack, you won't feel slack. Or in other words, if you're not repressing (esp), or supressing any majorly-bad sh¿t, then alcohol might not "uncover" anthing, but I dunno for sure as i've only ever been me.

Technically, i think what happens is this: Alcohol kills-off some brain cells, & in the process "numbs" the senses. So there's not as much sensory coming in (not as much being "processed" by the conscious mind). And i think it also greatly reduces the amount of "back-chatter" in the mind. So this takes a HUGE amount of "work" away from the conscious mind, freeing up the brain/mind to process more of the UNCONSCIOUS stuff (eg deep-seated & unresolved pain/issues).

Edit: A few extra notes about alcohol. There's no guarantee that having an alcoholic binge will make you feel better, or get you more "in touch" with your feelings & deep stuff. But it CAN, if you "play your cards right". Getting "successfully drunk" is an "art form" I would say. Like when sober, if you don't pay attention to your true emotional needs, they later turn around & bite you in the b*tt*m. So the same applies with being un-sobered, and probably much more so. If you're feeling bad, say mad, then alcohol can make you enraged. But if you're already feeling glad, then it can INCREASE that. Somewhat like knife-throwing, it can be a "GREAT" thing, in the right hands, but a "CALAMITY" if not handled right.

 

[Dronee]

IIRC, alcohol disrupts some of the neural inhibitors in the brain in some way causing our normal inhibitions to be not as strong as it normally is. If you want to look for a common theme, then the freewriting of many different individuals may be helpful. Freewriting isn't like alcohol of course, but it does represent an effort to do away with the usual reservations and inhibitions.

I think at our innermost core, most of us are just plain afraid. Well, actually, I think the current systems of doing things in the modern era goes directly against human nature or that it brings out the worst in us. Technological advances brings about many benefits but also many dangers. Whether you believe in God, evolution or anything else, the fact remains that the human brain is NOT well equipped to deal with the insane complexities of the modern age AND the 'primitive' social games that are not actually primitive but are based soundly on the mathematics of utility *game theory* and decisions.

Just look at the popularity contests in high schools where the most important thing is to be popular and yet these are supposed to be the grounds in which the future is built. There are too many paradoxes. Both men and women are told that they need to be superman and wonder woman... achieve the American Dream (or insert your national substitute)... get the latest technological toy as distractions. People put insane amounts of expectations on themselves, their spouses and their kids. Or they take the opposite route and just give up and become menaces to societies. And of course, there's also people who give up AND still place crazy expectations on themselves and put other people's views of them on a pedestal.

Then there's those who have succeeded in the traditional sense, but suddenly feel hollow and empty after achieving what they have. And there's those who are addicted to the success and fame and have lost most of their compassion or those who hunger after the same with similar results. We're climbing the social ladders, the financial ladders, the career ladders...

And the nature of our current economic systems of 'meritocracy' and 'capitalism' has subtle flaws. Communism and Capitalism aren't polar opposites. The same problem of maximization of personal utility plagues both. People are playing too many negative sum games today.

Seems far fetched and academic? Not at all. Mass pollution is simply a negative externality in economics which is of course a direct result from the old Prisoner's Dilemma problem of maximizing personal/group utility at the expense of others. Advertisement that teach young men and women that they need to look a certain way to be 'good' leading to anorexa nervosa amongst the increasingly neurotic populations. Brokers pushing around money and making money from seemingly out of nowhere? Why is this possible? Because our systems are complex and not many people will see or understand that these are zero or negative sum games and that they can indirectly destroy us...

But somewhere in the back of our minds where our intuitions lie sleeping, we know that things are not right with the world... Of course, the depressed or despairing amongst us know this at a conscious level. Our personal problems after all reflect these things and serve as a mirror.

Ah.. I just realized that I've written too much and am just ranting lol... ok I'll stop here.