Anticipatory Pain: Worse than Reality?

Jonathan Lemon’s Unrealistic Quest to Run Faster has me noticing I have a strong aversion to running intervals. Intervals are short bursts of near-max effort, followed by bursts of average effort. Sometimes I’ll totally bail out and do some other exercise instead. Yet when I do the intervals, the pain is never as bad as I imagined.

My experience left me wondering whether imagined pain is worse than actual pain. Do my thoughts increase the pain I experience?

Turns out the answer is yes. Anticipatory pain can be worse than physical pain.

Anticipation produces dread. Dread adds a layer of pain over physical pain. You can read about a research study here.

A quote by Dr. Giles Story, the study’s lead researcher, describes my interval problem: “We believe people often procrastinate in the hope that maybe painful events will just go away altogether. But if an event is inevitable, the pattern of wanting to get it over with seems to hold.”

Procrastinating works because I’m in control of whether I run or not. It gives my brain time to convince me NOT to run intervals and do something else.

Anticipatory pain manifests itself in other areas as well. Another study shows the dread-pain relationship in students anticipating math tests.

The research clearly shows it’s not my fault for not running intervals. It’s my brain’s fault and there is nothing I can do about this. Well, I wish anyways.

Positive self-talk, relaxation, and meditation decrease anticipatory pain. Mandating a task and eliminating discretion works as well, as described in the quote.

Runners know that running can be as much a mental challenge as physical. The mind has many tricks up its sleeve, and it doesn’t even have sleeves. That’s how tricky it is.

I’ll need to devise some strategies to get me over the interval hump. If all else fails, I have one idea.