Pain Avoidance and Self Preservation Bias

We touched on this in the previous article when we talked about primary gain. Still, I think it’s really also important to discuss pain avoidance in a bit more detail, simply because it is one of the most instinctual and powerful instincts we have. It’s hardwired into your DNA, it’s running constantly in the background, and it’s influencing almost every decision you make without you even realising it.

Pain hurts for a reason. It’s there to drive us to avoid further hurt. Put your hand onto something too hot, and that pain gives us an instant lesson. It’s a survival mechanism, and it’s there to help us learn and avoid future harm or harmful situations. This is pain working exactly as designed, protecting you from immediate physical threats.

The Background Program

Mentally, our self-preservation and pain avoidance programs are running in the background of our mind all of the time. These instinctual programs are ready to alert us whenever we are in danger and to keep us safe.

LeDoux’s (1996) research on the fear circuitry in the brain shows that the amygdala processes threats before conscious awareness kicks in. You can start feeling afraid, start having a physiological response, before your conscious mind even knows what the threat is. This instant reaction kept our ancestors alive when a split second could mean the difference between survival and death.

Our self-preservation and pain avoidance bias is there to keep us alive, to keep us safe, to alert us to danger, and to make us wary of harmful situations. It’s one of the most powerful forces in human psychology, and when it’s working properly, it’s absolutely essential.

We mess with our pain avoidance and self-preservation bias when we do risky things. If we go on a theme park ride, the adrenaline starts pumping, and that’s our self-preservation instinct kicking in. Your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, your muscles tense. Your body is preparing for fight or flight even though consciously you know you’re safe.

The Spectrum Problem

Our self-preservation instinct is a potent driver, and it reacts fast so that it’s there when we need it. And although it may well give us a thrill when we ride a roller coaster, it can also cause us all sorts of issues when it goes wrong.

If we do something slightly stressful often enough, we get used to it, we can get comfortable with that stressor, and inevitably it causes less stress in our lives. In the same way, we can get habituated to our life as it is now, and our self-preservation and pain avoidance biases can also make us avoid change because of the new stress this will bring.

Marks’ (1987) research on exposure therapy demonstrates this habituation process. When people face their fears repeatedly in controlled conditions, the fear response gradually diminishes. The stimulus hasn’t changed, but the person’s reaction to it has. This is your brain recalibrating what counts as a genuine threat.

When you don’t feel secure in the world around you, your pain avoidance and self-preservation instinct becomes hyped up. You can feel like you are on a permanent state of alert, and your baseline stress levels can rise. In this hyper-alert state, even just everyday activities can produce feelings of anxiety and fear, and even prompt you to avoid everyday life.

I had a patient who developed such severe anxiety after a minor car accident that he eventually found it very difficult to leave his house. The accident itself was relatively minor, but his self-preservation system went into overdrive. Every car became a threat, then every street, then eventually any situation where he felt out of control. His world shrank to the four walls of his home, because that was the only place his hyperactive self-preservation system registered as safe.

The Wrong Place on the Spectrum

We all sit somewhere on this pain avoidance and self-preservation spectrum. At one end, we can get used to doing some genuinely risky stuff, whilst at the other end, we can withdraw and shut ourselves away from the world.

The problem occurs not just when we are polarised at either end of this spectrum, but also when we are at the wrong place on this spectrum for what we are doing. If these instincts are blunted, we could be putting ourselves at risk. If they are too sensitive, we could be hiding away from the life we could be leading.

Most commonly, I see people continually avoid doing what they need to do to help themselves, and often this is fuelled by an over-sensitive self-preservation response. There’s an avoidance of the pain and stress that’s inevitable when change happens, and there’s no personal growth without these new challenges.

It’s also worth remembering that sometimes the immediate discomfort of your present situation is less painful than the pain of really making the changes you need to make. For most people, success never comes easy. It’s up to you to leave your comfort zone, and undoubtedly this may be at times uncomfortable. Your instincts are going to tell you to shrink back to where you are now, but remember the past is only the past if you stay there, and the future is still up to you.

This isn’t therapy. If you’re dealing with clinical depression, severe anxiety, or trauma, please see a professional. I say this as a doctor, not as a disclaimer.

Further reading

• LeDoux, J. (1996). The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life.
• Marks, I. M. (1987). Fears, Phobias, and Rituals: Panic, Anxiety, and Their Disorders.
• McGonigal, K. (2015). The Upside of Stress.
• Gilbert, P. (2009). The Compassionate Mind.
• Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score.