How pain boosts mental health

Scientific litsketch on boosting mental health

People who hold onto the negative emotions longer are found to have more depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000) and engage more in binge-drinking, binge-eating and self-harm (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). But is there a scientific way to break away from dwelling in negative emotions?

Research shows that inducing physical pain on our body is an effective strategy for strengthen our mental health (Harmon-Jones et al., 2019). Pain, particularly short term, physical pain that does not cause injury such as intense physical exercise, taking a cold shower or eating very spicy food, can reduce our tendency to dwell on negative emotions after experiencing anger and sadness, thereby improving mental wellbeing.

In an experiment, people were divided into two groups. Group One was asked to put their hand in a bucket of icy water for as long as possible to cause pain, while Group Two was asked to put their hand in a bucket of lukewarm water. Next, both groups were asked to play a computer game of tossing a ball to two other players. The game was programmed such that the ball was thrown to the participants for the first 15 seconds, but the ball was not thrown to them at all for the remaining 1 minute and 30 seconds. This was to make them feel more angry and sad. Finally, both groups were asked to “rest” for 5 minutes to focus on their breathing, during which they were asked to write down their thoughts they had when a tone was sounded for 10 times. This was to measure rumination or how much they repetitively think about the negative emotions they had during the game even after the game has ended.

The results showed that Group One that experienced more pain mentioned less about the rigged game during the rest time than Group Two. In other words, people who experienced pain were able to quickly move on after experiencing anger and sadness. In a similar experiment, consistent results were found when pain was induced by making people squeeze an exercise hand grip for 60 seconds.

Pain is a useful psychological tool that we can use to improve our mental wellbeing.

So start your day with pain using a physical exercise or a cold shower and enjoy the benefits throughout the day! Indeed, our mental strength is made perfect in our physical weakness.

Harmon-Jones, Cindy, Emily Hinton, Judy Tien, Elizabeth Summerell, and Brock Bastian. "Pain offset reduces rumination in response to evoked anger and sadness." Journal of personality and social psychology 117, no. 6 (2019): 1189