Hurts So Good: Pain as an Emotion Regulation Strategy

In the field of emotion regulation studies, cognitive reappraisal has been established as the preferred strategy for coping with painful negative feelings. For some, however, asking them to think more about an already distressing situation can be quite literally "like pulling teeth." Indeed, many people voluntarily cause themselves physical pain during upsetting situations (e.g., getting a deep tissue massage after a stressful week or hitting a punching bag when angry); however, there is currently little empirical evidence of the relative effectiveness of such behaviors. The present study tested two primary hypotheses: (a) some people will choose to inflict pain to regulate negative emotional states; and (b) pain provides effective short-term relief from negative emotion. The findings from these two studies demonstrate that, given the opportunity, participants will choose to use physical pain in addition to other strategies, like reappraisal or distraction, to cope with various sources of negative emotion. We further show that physical sensation in general, and pain in particular, are equally effective in coping with negative emotion. These results suggest a reconsideration of the dominance of cognitively based emotion regulation. We discuss the implication that benign physical pain may be a broadly effective and underrecognized coping strategy.