Episode 2: Those Who Pursue Authenticity Experience Less Chronic Pain

Our results show that people who experience pain the most also said that when they look back on their life they would like to have had a pleasurable life. This finding asks the following questions: Does what you want out of life define who you are in some meaningful way? And does it help you cope (or even thrive) with the most important of life’s challenges?

What do you want out of life?

We asked people who experienced chronic pain to imagine they were very old and were looking back on their lives. How would they like to have lived? In a sense, what would they like their life to have been in the ‘pursuit of’? What, once life was almost over, did they think was the ‘best’ way to have lived their lives? We formulated the question this way to try to get people to ignore the immediate demands life places on them, and think about what was truly important.

At the same time they answered questions about their chronic pain. If there was no relationship between the way they answered about the point of life and their pain, we’d expect to see approximately equal amounts of pain for each answer. But this isn’t what happened. As you can see from the graph, the life goal answer that was associated with the most pain was “Pleasurable” and the one associated with the least chronic pain was “Authentic”.

We ran the appropriate statistical tests and can be sure that there are real differences between the pain levels of the answers (that is, the differences are not just what you’d expect by chance). While we don’t know the direction of the causality arrow, the average pain reported by those who are pursuing a pleasurable life were more than 65% higher than that reported by those who are pursuing an authentic life. That’s a lot.

Pain vs. Looking Back Graph

Is there something that links the responses?

Do you think there is any link between the life aims that are associated with high pain, and those associated with low pain? Our previous findings make us look at this through the lens of uncertainty. Let’s consider the top two answers associated with higher pain: a life that is Pleasurable and Without Fear. We suggest that these two goals are consistent with a lower risk appetite. Conversely the two answers most associated with low pain are a life that is Authentic and Adventurous. Maybe these goals indicate people who are more comfortable with uncertainty, and more prepared to take risks. This would be consistent with our other findings that those people who are more tolerant of uncertainty report lower pain. It would be fascinating if this tolerance to uncertainty drove both subjective pain responses and also influenced the purpose of their entire lives!

What does this tell us?

As always, the question is who cares? How can we, as individuals, apply these insights to our own lives? The answer seems to be: First: discover the reasons, or principles, that guide your decisions. Second: be honest about what that reason is! These are difficult to achieve because we are often blind to ourselves and rarely challenge our story of who we are.

At any moment in time, your brain is really only making one decision: “Do I go towards, away or do I stand still?” Everything you do, every decision you ever make, has a reason. Most of the time the reason is unknown to you - though it doesn’t usually feel this way. This is because your brain tells you a post-hoc narrative about why you did what you did. Often, that narrative supports the assumptions and biases which secretly dwell inside you. The challenge is that many of your hidden reasons can result in negative or unkind behaviour towards yourself or others, including the feeling of chronic pain. If you assume, for example, that everyone is against you, then you’ll find evidence to confirm that belief, quite apart from whether or not it’s valid. We often avoid looking objectively at these biases, since to do so could result in a significant threat to our sense of identity, and possibly force us to face some uncomfortable truths. But becoming aware of the reasons for why you see and do what you do is essential to living well. 

What is more, not all reasons are equally good. Our Lab of Misfit’s research has shown that some reasons are better than others. This is especially true in times of uncertainty. We have previously shown that those whose life pursuit is happiness, were the least happy, most stressed, most lonely in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, which was a great time of uncertainty. A corollary of this work, means that one of the worst ways to achieve happiness is to pursue it directly. Instead, happiness is a consequence of pursuing something else. What is that something else? Our research suggests that it is “Authenticity”. Those who pursue authenticity in their life not only experienced more happiness, more creativity and less stress during 2020. According to our new study presented here, those who pursue authenticity also experience less chronic pain. 

In short: If you value happiness, creativity and want to lower your chronic pain, proactively choose authenticity, not simply in words, but in ACTION. 

How can we pursue authenticity?

The first step is to better understand what authenticity is. 

Authenticity is not simply ‘broadcasting’ yourself and ‘your truth’ on social media as some might suggest. It’s about being someone who is in the pursuit of self-honesty (the emphasis here is on pursuit, since pursuit is an action and not just an intention). And it can be an uncomfortable process.

The second step is to increase your Perceptual Intelligence.

You can do this by educating yourself about how and why you see what you do. We believe that The Lab of Misfits website is a great place to start. 

The third step is to practice ‘seeing yourself see’ in every decision, especially when in conflict. 

When you become an observer of your own perceptions, you increase the activity of your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the tendency for reflexive, unconscious behaviour. Only then do you have a real choice. Remember, the meaning of what happens to you isn’t contained anywhere in events themselves. The meaning is generated entirely by your brain (and your subsequent behavioural response). Activating your prefrontal cortex gives you agency over this meaning. When a child - whose assumptions and biases about the world are yet to be fully crystalised - falls and skins their knee, the first thing they often do is to look at the expression of their parents to figure out how they should feel - to figure out what this event ‘means’. If the parents react with fear, often the child will then respond by crying, at which point the skinned knee will feel even more painful than if the parents had responded calmly and with care.

If you haven't taken part in the Map of Pain experiment, you still can. Click here to participate.

Written by: Richard Clarke and Beau Lotto.