Why do we seek pain for pleasure

That's like the old joke about a guy who sees someone banging his head against a wall. 'Why are you doing this? the guy asks' 'Because it feels so good when I stop' is the answer.

Pretty corny, but essentially the same with a painful workout.

One is productive and healthy, the other is just stupid! 😵. Maybe the judo experts who break concrete blocks with their head get a dopamine rush from it. But yes, there’s a correlation.

Pain is an incredible thing. We spend our lives avoiding it. Yet there are instances where pain brings something wholly unexpected.

I had bone surgery once and the anesthetic never put me under. The drug to paralyze me worked quite well. But I felt and heard everything. I was screaming in fear of knowing what was coming only to realize the doctors had now idea I was fully awake. I felt them moving me around, intubating and then finally the searing pain of the scalpel opening me up. Believe having your bones chiseled apart has to be close to the ultimate pain experience.

Anyways at the height of the pain I somehow checked out. I separated from the pain and had what could only be termed a “mystical experience”. I connected with something that seemed vastly old and wise.

This entity told me while I was in what could only be termed as a crisis mental state. “Calm down. Everything is OK. That I needed to learn about pain”. I was mentally screaming in horrific tortured pain “what do I have to learn about pain?!!”

I was instantly removed from the hell I was experiencing and found myself in a state of perfect painless calm. I sensed a golden fog like light that permeated a vast emptiness. What struck me most was a primal sense of overwhelming awe. I was in a place unlike anything I could even imagine. Nothing existed there except perfection and what I can only call love.

The voice asked me. Now. Do you understand? I said NO! I DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS! I was in a total state of shock and confusion.

I was lifted to a similar state only magnitudes more powerful. The sense of awe was beyond overwhelming. Like living in a state of perfect love. I experienced that state for what seemed a few seconds.

Then It happened again this time the sense of awe was like seeing and understanding infinity. My level of awe was so intense that I felt my self dissolving into this realm. It was terrifying yet vastly beautiful and loving. A sense of coming home to what I really was and in a state of perfect pure love. I felt that if I embraced it I would cease to exist. Dissolving and becoming part of whatever it was I was experiencing.

The voice then asked me “Now. Do you understand?” I found myself yet in a state of total confusion and disorientation saying “Yes. I think I understand”. It felt like something inside me knew what this “being” was asking me. Just not the superficial part I consciously know as “me”.

I was told this is the last time I would need to go thru this. An image appeared in that strange golden light. A sphere. Suddenly a layer formed below the sphere and wrapped itself around it. Two more times this happened. Three realms wrapped around me.

The next thing I knew was in post op. The nurse was trying to wake me. I could tell she was very concerned and somewhat frightened. I couldn’t breath and struggled to find my breath. I didn’t know if I was breathing or not but the nurse settled down patted my arm and left.

After relaying the “medical”! part of all this to my surgeon he freaked out and sent me to the Anesthesiologist.

When I stopped at his office and asked for him, the receptionist talked to him. He instantly left his current patient and took me to his office. No doubt concerned of a lawsuit. He pulled out the charts of my anesthesia. Showing me all the drugs administered and where the graph fell from the top of the chart to near the bottom. I remember him telling me “ This is as close to death as I can put you without killing you”. “How you knew what was going on, I can’t explain” I could tell he was being totally truthful and truly couldn’t explain what was going on.

That kinda shook me up. I never told him my experience other than the excruciating pain.

Thirty years later I still grapple with this experience. What IS pain?….

@metoo

Your posting was an amazing experience

Very spiritual and otherworldly

For some reason, when my tattoo artist tells me this part will hurt or it will be a long painful line, I love it. Like. I love it. I look forward to getting tattoos on the same scale as getting a massage or getting a manicure . I literally am let down when a tattoo is over. Granted, I’ve never gotten a shin or rib tatt, but still.

I think it’s why I want so badly to be spanked. I know I’ll love it.

For me, it had to do with growing up. I was suffering from phimosis so masturbating meant experiencing both pleasure (from stroking my penis) and pain (from the erect or is stretching my ultra tight foreskin). I had to endure this for 8 years before the foreskin finally stretched out enough to no longer hurt. But my brain associated penile pain with pleasure.

There has been an incredible amount written on this. The one that I remember was the fact that a medical person of some sort said that some nerves, at least in spanking, parallel, both pleasure and pain, and that causes them to get married together.

There are a lot of other things written about endorphins.

Somewhat related is the fact that there is funeral art in tombs that are at least 2000 years old depicting spankings that are clearly erotic. One shows two men spanking a woman.

I paid a great deal of attention to this sort of thing at one point because I was trying to convince myself that it was OK to be aroused by pain and that there was justification for it. I guess I'm to the point now or I just accept it!

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My wife spanks me on a regular basis not because she enjoys it, but because she knows enjoy it and it brings her joy to bring me joy. And I reciprocate in other things that she enjoys--not spanking.

However, I need to be warmed up. If she swings to hard at the beginning, it immediately and completely turns me off.

She has learned to start off swinging easy and then over the course of three or four minutes, she increases the intensity. Then she switches to a paddle that hurts more and slowly increases the intensity with that one. After five minutes, she is able to swing just about as hard as she can and, yes, it hurts, but somehow, it hurts so good. The warmup seems to get the blood flowing and it gets me turned on, and, apparently, that combination makes the pain feel good.

I'm sure there is a scientific or medical or psychological explanation for why it hurts so good. I'm just glad that my wife and I how to do it.

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It is a pleasurable pain that you want more of…for me anyway.

@MissStress Very well put;

I don't know enough about bdsm, but this is I hope helpful:

When superficial pain is caused, the body's response is to adapt by injecting feel-good into our system. Now this is where bdsm comes in: if the pain level is constant, the response tapers off. The key is to:

- cause superficial pain on a ramping/varying scale

- link the pain to sexual stimulus

When done right, it is called "good pain" and the receiver is in a heightened erotic state. Too much pain, too steep a ramp or bad coordination creates "bad pain" where the process aborts.

When things go well, the recipient goes into "sub space", which itself is transcendental. A skilled giver can maintain the state for 10s of minutes and even more. The climax is usually through a combination of diminishing (or sometimes increase) of the pain and ramping up sexual stimulation; it leads to a very powerful culmination . The receiver is usually comforted and pampered during recovery. In a way, it works similar to the Stockholm syndrome, but is consensual and centered on erotism. It creates a strong bond and is highly addictive.

This is why few that experience this lifestyle ever go back to vanilla.

@Vasbyt : Your description is perfect. If I may ask, does your wife stimulate you while paddling?

Also, does she comfort you after? Caressing you, applying ointment, hold you?

You may wish to try extending the "plateau" phase where you're close to release...

Your wife is the perfect angel - me envy you!

I’ve experienced enough pain just dealing with relationships. At this point, I would just be happy to have a tiny bit of soreness from a rectal thermometer going up my butt. That’s my limit.