Jordan Peterson explains how the prefrontal cortex controls pain's emotional impact, not the sensation itself. Instead of avoiding cold, focus on it deliberately to strengthen that neural pathway. Wim Hof adds that breathing exercises manage the anxiety that comes with it.
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If you're in pain and I give you a lobotomy— this was done decades ago for pain control— I cut the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the periaqueductal gray, let's say. You still feel the pain, but it doesn't matter anymore. The emotional significance of the pain is gone, and so you feel much better as a consequence. Now, I'm not recommending lobotomies for pain, although Modified leukotomies are still sometimes used for intractable pain. Now imagine that maybe you're in pain, so you have your hands in the cold, or you're in a cold shower, or you're in a lake. And instead of running away from the pain and distracting yourself, you start to focus and pay really close attention to all the sensations that you're feeling, even though they're aversive. Like you're paying extremely close attention. So I wonder if that is what's producing the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the periaqueduct of Gray. The prefrontal cortex is opening the gates and exploring all the sensations. And learning that it can do that and learning that perhaps in principle also to master it. So maybe when I'm in the shower and I do the 30-second cold exposure, I should do everything I can to concentrate It's weird because I can feel myself fleeing from it in the shower. You know, it's like, God, when this is going to be over? I don't want to feel the sensation of the ice water on the front of my body. I don't want to move it onto my back. It's like, but I guess what I should be doing is turning around and facing the dragon in as much detail as possible. I didn't know that was possible with pain. I know it's possible with anxiety. That's clear. The literature is clear on that. So pain, yes, pain, very primordial.
And anxiety, these breathing exercises, they help very good against anxiety.
