Why You Love Feeling Uncomfortable

We spend so much of our lives chasing comfort. We dream of warm beaches and soft couches. We enjoy cocktails on a summer evening. If you look at the choices we make, it seems obvious. We are wired to seek pleasure. Of course, this also means that we generally avoid pain. We flinch at the slightest hint of discomfort, whether it's a cold shower or a stubbed toe. But if we're so committed to comfort, Why do so many of us voluntarily choose pain? Why do some of us sign up for marathons and take on spicy food challenges? Why do we pay money, sometimes lots of money, for experiences that make us scream and suffer? Here's a real-life example for you. In Mexico City, there's a popular activity that people play. The game, called toques, involves holding metal handles attached to a small hand-cranked generator. The operator turns the crank, and a burst of electric current runs through the player. The game tests who can withstand increasing levels of pain the longest. Watch the players. Their bodies twitch. Their faces twist. But look closer. They're laughing. Their friends are cheering. People are egging each other on. It's painful, But it's also fun. Toques is almost a street-corner rite of passage. Today, you can find countless videos online— teenagers laughing uncontrollably as the electric current rises, soccer fans trying it during halftime breaks, crowds cheering on strangers. Far from being something we always avoid, pain and fear also seem to be forms of entertainment. In 2014, psychologists at the University of Virginia put people in a room, Alone, left with nothing but their thoughts. No phone, no crossword puzzles, no distractions. The subjects could either sit quietly until their time was up, or they could choose to give themselves a mild electric shock. The results? The majority of men and a quarter of the women chose to shock themselves rather than sit in silence. This held true Even after they rated the shock as painful. Why would anyone prefer a jolt of discomfort over the quiet company of their own minds? The first theory is we are bored, and when we are bored, we want stimulation. We prefer discomfort to boredom. Pain in small doses can feel like stimulation, a way to wake ourselves up. Sound familiar? You might not be into electric shocks, but there's a good chance that you seek out small doses of suffering. There's even a term for this: benign masochism. Benign masochism is when we seek out pain and suffering in controlled settings. It's why we enjoy spicy food and sad movies. It's why we willingly sit inside a sweaty sauna or pay a trainer to put us through a tough workout. We flirt with discomfort because it gives us a sense of aliveness. Another explanation is relief. Pain sharpens our appreciation of pleasure. After a grueling workout, a shower feels like ecstasy. Even the simple act of stepping into an air-conditioned room after being out on a hot day can feel euphoric. Psychologists call this hedonic contrast. A little unpleasantness makes the return to comfort sweeter. Low points Make the high points feel higher. One study looked at how people spend their time over the course of a month. And what they found was that people tended to work on a principle of hedonic balance, which is once they did something that was fun, they would do something that was less fun. After a night out, they might clean their house. After watching a favorite show, they might tackle a tedious chore. It's as if our minds crave a balance between—

Mm-hmm.

Ease and effort, between pleasure and discomfort. Too much of one, and we instinctively seek out the other. And then there's the social side of suffering. If you slow down that Tokés video, you'll notice something. The people in the background are not wincing. They're smiling. Shared pain, even mild pain, can be bonding. It signals trust. It creates stories. It turns strangers Into teammates. Anthropologists have long noted that communities around the world use shared hardships, from initiation rites to group challenges, as a way to strengthen social ties. Even modern activities like group fitness classes or escape rooms rely on the same principle: struggle together, bond together. Here's another explanation. We use controlled fear as a kind of rehearsal. Horror movies let us confront monsters and worst-case scenarios from the safety of a theater seat. We scream and clutch the armrest, but deep down, we know we are safe. It's a way to practice feeling afraid without being in danger. If you watch people in a packed theater during a scary scene, the gasps, the shrieks, the nervous laughter, You can see this rehearsal happening in real time. And afterwards, people walk out smiling, even exhilarated. It's almost as if they've survived something together. But there's a darker reason we seek pain. Across cultures and religions, people have used physical discomfort as a way to atone for wrongdoing. Whipping themselves, walking long distances on their knees, fasting for many days. It's not that they enjoy the pain. It's that the pain feels meaningful to them, a way to symbolically reset the scales. Suffering offers a path back to moral balance. When most of us think about the spectrum between pain and pleasure, we picture a straight line. Pain on one end, pleasure on the other. Two opposites, two different worlds. But it turns out the relationship between pain and pleasure is much more complicated. The opposite ends of the spectrum bend toward each other.

Over half the time, when you're free to think about anything you want in the world, people's minds go negative, and we think about bad things.

That's Paul Bloom, a psychologist at the University of Toronto. One of Paul's favorite books is called Pictures and Tears. It's by an art critic named James Elkins.

He became interested in pictures that make us cry. And so he'd ask people to send him stories about pictures that brought them to tears. And he had all sorts of stories. People would look at Rothkos in a chapel in Houston, Texas, and they would sit on a bench and look at the Rothkos and they would weep.

The book shows how beauty and sadness can overlap. A painting can break your heart and fill it at the same time. A piece of music can make you cry, but also lift you up. We don't just tolerate emotional pain. Sometimes we seek it out because it deepens our experience of the world.

We cry at a pain and we cry at a joy.

In studies where people film themselves experiencing intense pleasure, their faces are surprisingly hard to distinguish from people in intense pain. Even the facial expressions associated with sexual orgasm are remarkably similar to the expression of someone in agonizing pain. We often laugh maniacally when we're under too much stress, and we laugh maniacally when we're having the time of our lives. What does all of this tell us? The circuits in the brain that process pleasure and the circuits that process pain don't live in separate neighborhoods. They share borders, pathways. Sometimes they're the same circuits.

Obviously, pain and pleasure have clear differences, but there is a similarity. There's a similarity intensity, and the facial expressions don't reflect quite as well in which direction this shift has happened.

It seems simple, doesn't it? We chase what feels good. We avoid what hurts. But Paul Bloom's work suggests something else, something called motivational pluralism. The idea that we don't just want one thing. We want comfort, but we also want challenge. We want safety, but we crave excitement. We want pleasure, but need to have meaning in our lives, even when that meaning requires discomfort. Now, I want to be clear about one thing. Pain and discomfort can produce positive effects when we choose them, not when they're chosen for us. If I jump out of a plane on a skydiving adventure, I can scream and love it at the same time. If someone pushed me out of a plane, It would be pure terror. If you have an illness or a disability that causes you chronic pain, all you want is for the pain to go away. You're not going to sit there going, oh, this pain is so redemptive. The point of this video is not to celebrate pain. It's to show that the human mind is far more interesting than a simple machine that seeks out pleasure. The things we love can sometimes be the things we hate. And the things we hate can sometimes be the things we love. The ancient Greeks talked about 2 kinds of pleasure. The first, think of a bowl of ice cream or a relaxing massage, just pure pleasure. The other kind is the joy you get from successfully raising a child or creating a work of art. It can involve things that are difficult, even painful. But in the end, they are much more meaningful to you than a bowl of ice cream. It's a reminder that discomfort isn't always something to wave away; it's something that can shape us. The things that challenge you don't just make your life harder; they can make it richer. Pain, in the right context and in the right dose, can teach us and connect us to others. It can sharpen our senses and reveal what we value most. Yes, we are wired to avoid pain and suffering, But we're also drawn to it, at least the transformation that sometimes lies on the other side. If you enjoyed this video, you're someone who is curious about how your mind works. Please check out our audio podcast on Apple, Spotify, or at hiddenbrain.org. Every week, we explore the science of the mind. We feature real experts. We combine Accurate science with great storytelling. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.