There are a number of meditation exercises that have components where you try to focus on a painful sensation and stop experiencing it as aversive. I don’t know if this would counteract the negative affect of noticing pain. Of course, there might be actual reasons why you’re in pain; posture, not exercising enough, not stretching, exercising too much, etc etc. My brain wants to say that it’s worth being aware of pain because then you can try to find the cause and fix it, but this is optimizing for my brain and not yours.
...There are definitely days when I ignore physical states because I’m busy at work. This doesn’t help in the long run; it ends with me being really cranky and not knowing why and it being obvious from outside view that it’s because I forgot to drink water. It’s more efficient to be paying attention to thirst the whole time, even though then I have to suffer and be thirsty a bit when I’m stuck in my patient’s room.
I have no idea what the causes of most of these pains are, they’re very mild, and they tend to go away on their own once I stop paying attention to them.
I do seem to have frequent trouble with pain behind my ears that probably comes from my eyeglasses, though. Having my eyeglasses adjusted doesn’t seem to help very much, and I can’t focus more than six inches away from my face without them, so I just live with it and take over-the-counter painkillers when it gets bad.
There are a number of meditation exercises that have components where you try to focus on a painful sensation and stop experiencing it as aversive. I don’t know if this would counteract the negative affect of noticing pain. Of course, there might be actual reasons why you’re in pain; posture, not exercising enough, not stretching, exercising too much, etc etc. My brain wants to say that it’s worth being aware of pain because then you can try to find the cause and fix it, but this is optimizing for my brain and not yours.
...There are definitely days when I ignore physical states because I’m busy at work. This doesn’t help in the long run; it ends with me being really cranky and not knowing why and it being obvious from outside view that it’s because I forgot to drink water. It’s more efficient to be paying attention to thirst the whole time, even though then I have to suffer and be thirsty a bit when I’m stuck in my patient’s room.
I have no idea what the causes of most of these pains are, they’re very mild, and they tend to go away on their own once I stop paying attention to them.
I do seem to have frequent trouble with pain behind my ears that probably comes from my eyeglasses, though. Having my eyeglasses adjusted doesn’t seem to help very much, and I can’t focus more than six inches away from my face without them, so I just live with it and take over-the-counter painkillers when it gets bad.