Content warning: Discussion of pain and suffering with causes and actions. Real awful stuff.
This is a model that explains the experience of distress and comfort.
People can experience seven baseline levels. A baseline level defines your average experience most of the time, it’s what you are comfortable with.
PEG: Peak Enlightened Growth
General Health
Neutrality
Irritation
Pain
Suffering
Writhing
Baselines can relate to a person’s mental health, physical health, relationship health, environmental health, or even political or cultural health. I only wrote an example for mental health; this idea is something to be discovered rather than developed so if you are able and interested in making examples in any other other categories I feel free to do so!
Many people believe that feeling good is ideal and feeling pain is distressing. But it’s more complicated than that; people can be comfortable or routinely drawn to any level. This comfortability is involuntary. It is what the body is drawn to even if it is against the will of the person- an example is a situation like assisted-suicide level pain, where the body returns to excruciating pain even though the person experiencing that will go to any length to escape it.
People can have lots of different baselines for different things. In the example above, a person’s body’s baseline may be different from their mental baseline, which might even be different from their environmental baseline!
How can pain and suffering be baseline? People who experience chronic stress are used to it, it’s where they are all the time. Feeling happy or relaxed can be really stressful because it’s not familiar. People often call it cortisol addiction.
This can happen in a physical health context. There are many times where people who are disabled for significant periods of time, then are healed, have serious crises about their identity and the new experience of being able-bodied to the severity that they might attempt suicide or die from stress.
On the baseline level scale, people have an average. There are many that have temporary experiences in other levels before returning to their baseline.
Among these levels people have tolerance points at what levels they can experience without feeling distress. Distress can be experienced at any level- it is the level that is outside their comfort, regardless if that is pain or joy.
People in different baselines can have a wide tolerance ranges. A baseline of Peak Enlightened Growth or Health can be comfortable with irritation or pain. They may be from a culture or family where they were taught to be in tune with all their emotions, even stressful ones. They accept that being dysregulated is often a healthy response to dysregulating situations. Some people may have personal interests and passions that are stressful- journalism, activism, social work, healing/healthcare work, philosophy, etc. Some people may hold themselves to a very high standard of morals- doing the right thing can often be difficult. Pursuing interests and morals, despite the stress, is very fulfilling.
Many people might only have a tolerance point for moving down the levels. Many others might have two tolerance points, one for going up and one for going down. People who are sensitive to baseline changes might have a tolerance point directly above and below their current level.
People who feel distress from a level use escapes. The most stereotypical types of escapes are drugs, self harm, self sabatoge, and suicide.
Taking drugs, self harm/sabatoge, and suicide is seen as a choice. This is because of “say no to drugs” campaigns, suicide prevention campaigns, and toxic self-help & hustle culture that frames self sabotage as something that can be stopped.
In some cases, it is a choice. But for many people, doing these things is not a choice. People use “escapes” when the threshold for distress tolerance is surpassed. It’s “distress torture” that you will do anything at any cost to stop the excruciating distress, and it is not a choice. People who experience torture do not chose the actions they take under it’s influence. Distress torture might not involve actual pain, but it is similarly excruciating and involuntary to escape.
Suicide that is not a choice can happen at any point of surpassing the threshold of distress. A common area where it happens is in the transition between suffering and writhting. A person who is writhing is in too much pain to be physically capable of suicide, but a person transitioning in or out of that state has physical capacity end their life and is in the maximum amount of suffering that can be experienced without losing that physical ability. (However, it is important to note that someone who has a disability such as paralysis might not be physically capable of escaping at any distress point)
People take drugs when their distress tolerance point moving in a downward direction has been surpassed and they need to move to a higher level.
People self harm or self sabotage when their distress tolerance point moving in an upward direction has been surpassed and they need to move to a lower level.
Now let's get into ethics.
It is not ethical to non-consensually move people from one baseline to another. Examples include abusing someone or forcing them into treatment.
It is also not ethical to keep people from choosing to move from one baseline to another. If someone wants to leave an abusive situation, seek treatment, or destabilize their life (as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else in the process) it is wrong to prevent them from doing so.
To be ethical in providing assistance or improving a situation, you have to be mindful about baseline levels in the following ways:
Providing mental health services to homeless people or any service to domestic violence victims is unethical when it is not comprehensive, and gives people a taste of a world they will never be allowed to join or given the support they need to participate in- this is particularly important for ACT, “wraparound services”, and holistic treatments that rarely address even a single piece of support; most services are ironically worse than domestic violence situations due to the nonprofit industrial complex. What I’m referring to is a single aspect in a program that might be higher quality than a domestic violence situation.
This unethical situation can appear in a few ways.
The person gains an understanding of what baselines they are missing out on with the realization that they can never achieve that baseline. This is a terrible and avoidable grief in of itself, and providers can make it worse when they don’t take on the emotional labor required to understand why their client can never reach that baseline and gaslight them for disagreeing or pressure them to participate in a hopeless task.
Or, the person rapidly moves up to a much higher baseline in a relatively short amount of time only to rapidly fall back into the situation they were in before, and it is much more painful than the abuse because they are falling from a much higher place.
Or, they wish to achieve the baseline despite the challenges and are faced with a “sisyphus” problem where in order to reach the baseline they want they have to continuously struggle to reach it, and because it is unsustainable they easily lose progress and fall back into previous baselines. Sisiphus is the Greek myth of someone who was forced to push a boulder up a hill for eternity, only for the boulder to fall down the hill once they got close to the top.
Given the baseline levels it’s important to understand that for many people, the effort it takes to achieve a new baseline can be a process that is extremely difficult, painful, degrading, and/or not worth it.
It’s also important to understand a person’s sensitivity to changing baselines. Going on a rollercoaster from suffering to Peak Enlightened Growth to suffering may feel so much worse than simply suffering because rapidly going up and down is a long, hard fall.
For a person with an extensive trauma history, the recommended treatment might be to develop a life worth living. But if their baseline is suffering and they happen to have the freedom of time to engage in life-worth living activities, they might feel worse because of the rollercoaster. It can be comparable to withdrawing from drugs, which is another example of a rollercoaster.
For those with severe, chronic mental health issues (this is especially relevant to Gen Z) the solution is to find a way to guarantee stability and basic needs, then use mental health skills to learn to tolerate the positive emotions of a higher baseline. Current mental health treatment focuses on tolerating stress and negative emotions, and that's not helpful for someone who has that as a baseline. Guaranteeing stability and basic needs would require major policy changes on a government level.
Here are descriptions of baseline levels:
PEG (Peak Enlightened Growth) This is a pure state, it is the most perfect health possible. It’s pretty difficult to stay here all the time.
General Health. Healed. Healthy. Past emotions linger in the back of the mind as something that had impact on life, or might even be forgotten
Neutrality. This is where results of healing begin to show.
Irritation. Has minor symptoms in situations where it isn’t warranted. It interferes with life. Not disabling. Treatment is focused on resolving symptoms completely, and it is possible as long as there is willingness.
Pain. Has symptoms that are really difficult to deal with, but not impossible. Treatment is focused on improving quality of life with symptoms. Disabling. Many of these experiences can be laughed about later as a way to cope. (if the person chooses)
Suffering. Has symptoms so extreme, assistance or treatment is very difficult to receive if it is even possible to. Treatment is focused on survival or end-of-life care. Gravely disabled.
Writhing. This is the culmination of the worst situations and symptoms possible. The pain is so great it is not physically possible to commit suicide.
Now I'm going to give some examples.
Trauma:
1. Peace
Is completely at peace with self and the world. A deep state of forgiveness. (forgiveness not to be confused with poor boundaries or lack of accountability)
Lives in a safe environment.
2. Confident.
Doing well in life. Is able to manage triggers and help others with similar experiences if they wish. Has mastered setting and enforcing boundaries.
3 .Gaining Stability
Positive-psychology based healing is starting to work, gaining confidence.
4. Conflict Attraction
Frequently in conflict with others and in content of thoughts.
5 .Traumatized
Is experiencing flashbacks, nightmares, physical health issues, low self esteem, rumination, and related symptoms that are frequent and interfere with life.
Infrequently experiences trauma. Might suffer from continuous small traumas, such as low-level discrimination.
6. Continual trauma
Repeatedly in extremely traumatic situations.
Attempting to use mental health skills may trigger symptoms such as panic attacks, hallucinations, or seizures.
7. Active torture.
Is currently being tortured.
Extensive, continual panic has caused severe neurological and autoimmune disorders that may cause writhing or result in death.
Anxiety:
1. Relaxation
A state of deep, meditative relaxation.
Lives in a safe environment.
2. Laid back. Confident doing exposure therapy, it is a skill that comes naturally. Is in a life situation where exposure therapy has corrective experiences.
3. Excitement. Anxiety is present but is turned into something positive.
4. Worry. Frequently concerned.
5. Fear
Anxious. Exposure therapy is difficult to do.
Is repeatedly exposed to everyday, low-level stress without a break.
6. Panic
Continual state of terror.
7. Writhing. Extensive, continual panic has caused severe neurological and autoimmune disorders that may cause writhing or result in death.
Or in a continuously dangerous situation with no end, and has resulted in deadly health problems from sleep deprivation.
Depression
1. Hope
Is able to identify the positives of the world and finds all opportunities available.
While there is some level of ‘if opportunities don’t work, find opportunities elsewhere’ reaching this state means an environment where some opportunities have worked.
2. Relaxed Action
Is not impacted by depression, can take action without extensive effort.
Can view things realistically instead of pessimistically and sees the positive in the world.
3. Joyful experiences
Can experience joy with others or in specific activities, anhedonia is not an issue
4. Sadness
Feels sad, but not depressed.
5. Misery
Classic, moderate depression
6. Chronic Suicidality in urges or action
7. Writhing. Is too depressed to commit suicide or use the bathroom, while simultaneously in the deepest excruciating hopelessness they have ever felt.
I had one more example but I'm tired of copy and pasting.
So what does this all mean?
The first thing to think about is that maybe the world isn't as painful as it looks. There are a lot of people who have difficult lives, and for many of them that may be way less difficult than an easy life.
In a world filled with suffering, it's really beautiful to realize that suffering isn't necsessarily a bad thing. The darkness in the world isn't bad, it's another side of the same coin. In the most literal sense, people who grow up wealthy suffer because they don't- having everything handed to you can lead to some serious mental health issues. A little struggle is always good.
The second thing to think about is that we need to make it easier for people to reach higher baseline levels. We need a world where people who want out of a life of trauma aren't condemned to never achieve it. We need to get both creative and tangible on how to achieve this- things like mutual aid, intentional communities, unconditional labor, responsible distribution of social services, dismantling the non-profit industrial complex- that's just the start. We need people working on these things now.
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