sure, how about being in a village taken over by the Khmer Rouge, or a concentration camp in Nazi Germany? Someplace where you don’t necessary die quickly but have to endure a long and very unpleasant time with some amount of psychological or physical pain.
Well, to take the concentration camp example. Every day, you’ll encounter various painful things, such as malnutrition, both physical and mental violence from the guards, generally unpleasant living conditions, seeing your companions killed, and so on. Each of these causes a You Should Really Stop This From Happening reaction from your brain, countered by a system saying I Have No Way Of Stopping This. On top of the individual daily events, your attention will also be constantly drawn to the fact that for as long as you stay here, these events will continue, and you’ll suffer from also having your attention drawn to the fact that you can’t actually get out.
Some of the coping mechanisms that’ve been identified in concentration camp inmates include strategies such as trying to find meaning in the experience, concentrating on day-to-day survival, fatalism and emotional numbing, and dreaming of revenge. Each of these could plausibly be interpreted as a cognitive/emotional strategy where the system sending the impossible-to-satisfy “you need to get out of here” message was quieted and the focus was shifted to something more plausible, therefore somewhat reducing the suffering.
sure, how about being in a village taken over by the Khmer Rouge, or a concentration camp in Nazi Germany? Someplace where you don’t necessary die quickly but have to endure a long and very unpleasant time with some amount of psychological or physical pain.
Well, to take the concentration camp example. Every day, you’ll encounter various painful things, such as malnutrition, both physical and mental violence from the guards, generally unpleasant living conditions, seeing your companions killed, and so on. Each of these causes a You Should Really Stop This From Happening reaction from your brain, countered by a system saying I Have No Way Of Stopping This. On top of the individual daily events, your attention will also be constantly drawn to the fact that for as long as you stay here, these events will continue, and you’ll suffer from also having your attention drawn to the fact that you can’t actually get out.
Some of the coping mechanisms that’ve been identified in concentration camp inmates include strategies such as trying to find meaning in the experience, concentrating on day-to-day survival, fatalism and emotional numbing, and dreaming of revenge. Each of these could plausibly be interpreted as a cognitive/emotional strategy where the system sending the impossible-to-satisfy “you need to get out of here” message was quieted and the focus was shifted to something more plausible, therefore somewhat reducing the suffering.