A Contract With Pain - A Masochist's Triumph

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Everyday idea of masochism is based on the stereotype that "masochists are people who enjoy pain."

This is wrong. Nobody takes pleasure in pain!

Masochism is a complex of specific psychological defenses. Ways to live. Rather, to survive in the environment to which a person adapts, becoming a masochist, negotiating with pain.

At the heart of moral masochism lies the fear of the alleged terrible, painful event. The kind that has most often been in human experience.

Based on his experience, a person knows for sure, he is sure that this terrible event will happen to him. But, he does not know when, and how painful it will be.

When the sadistic father is not in the mood and there will be a "parenting session"?

When will the controlling and suppressive mother once again find something to devalue, suppress, yell for?

When will classmates again decide to cruelly "play a trick", make fun of, declare a boycott?

The masochist is afraid.

It is difficult for him to predict the consequences. And the irreversibility of events is depressing. This wait is excruciating.

As a result, he realized that one of the means of dealing with this agonizing expectation in fear is a way to cause, initiate a frightening event.

Let it happen!

Thus, the masochist knows at least when and how this will happen.

And he has the opportunity to control at least something in his life. After all, the feeling of chaos, and the unpredictability of events, life is an intolerable experience. A paralyzing feeling of powerlessness and helplessness.

Thus, the masochist causes the event itself. Rather, in a learned way, APPROACHES what will happen sooner or later.

If a child suffers from abuse and the hands of his father, and he does not have the opportunity to leave, or how to avoid systematic violence, then having made an unconscious decision to "forget to take out the trash", he seems to think: "it would be better now to clean up the garbage that was not thrown away, and the father" will throw steam "than it is not known when and for what.

If there is no way to hide from the stinging nagging of the mother, then it is better to come home with torn trousers and a broken nose, so that “in advance” punishing yourself and hearing from the doorway about your worthlessness, it would not be so painful.

The masochist does not provoke the offender with the aim of obtaining perverse pleasure, as many think, accusing the masochist of "as if on purpose"!

He tries to bring an irreversible, unpleasant or terrible event closer, in order to control it!

Now he controls the time, place, context and intensity of these events, their consequences.

The masochist is confident that he is in control of his life when he endures his suffering with courage. He lives in an environment where other needs are denied to him.

When, all that you can suffer is, then in which you can find satisfaction, pleasure. How to maintain your fragile core of personality, which is under pressure, devaluation, and attacks, and maintain a sense of self-worth?

The psyche of the masochist also finds a way out here: he "chooses" to be proud of the measure of his own suffering. Their quantity, quality. After all, their uniqueness!

"No one has ever endured as much as I have!"

The more pain a masochist organizes for himself, the less he fears life. He does not know what it is like to live differently.

But he knows that others cannot hurt him as much as he inflicts on himself. He has nothing to fear anymore, because he is his own worst enemy. In this paradoxical way, he is less dependent on others and circumstances. I will organize my own suffering. My own master.

This control over his pain allows him to control others.

"I will punish myself so that you cannot do it."

Due to the fact that the masochist associates the concept of suffering with the concept of managing his life, he becomes inaccessible to the variety of pleasures that anyone else can understand.

He is not looking for them. And he is looking only for new, more and more severe and painful tests.

It looks like a real drug.

So, contrary to popular belief, the masochist doesn't take pleasure in pain!

But from the ability to control it.

And a special valor to endure your suffering with courage. Having a unique opportunity to experience moral triumph in this way!