The Sensory Study
I've been inspired by Kate's blog to tell my own story of having been a subject in a research study. I've always been always intrigued by the classifieds, and in grad school, reading them often stoked my smoldering fantasies of escape: What heretofore unimaginable job could I quit my own to start doing? Or they tempted me with fascinating objects with strange histories: what are people giving away or selling or losing or seeking, and why? The ads sometimes also expressed rather unsavory desires, and what surprised me was not that people had such impulses, but that they advertised them in the newspaper. I'd never read the classifieds in a university town before, and the location added a whole new dimension of interest.
One day, I read an ad seeking participants for a "Sensory Study." It sounded like a minimal time commitment, and the pay was generous; the purpose was to track people for a number of years, so they had to pay well enough to keep people coming back. So I signed up. It turned out to be a study on pain perception. At the dental school.
Woo-hoo! Just my thing. (Here I'm being sarcastic, but I don't know of any punctuation-based emoticon for that.) To be honest, the people were incredibly nice, and it wasn't that bad, even if the instructions were a bit alarming, to wit: "We can assure you that none of these procedures will cause any permanent damage. When the discomfort becauses entirely unbearable, press this button and it will stop immediately."
In various tests, they put pressure against the side of your face, then heat on your wrist, and then a tight band around your arm. I realized after the first round that actually the maximum amount of discomfort they would cause was not all that bad, and then I just pretty much relaxed and let them do their thing. At the end, they said admiringly, "You have a really high pain tolerance."
(Julie, you can get up off the floor and stop laughing now.)
In truth, I'm a total wimp about pain--the kind of person who flinches and says "Ouch!" before somebody actually touches your finger with the tweezers they're going to use to get the splinter out. But I guess it's the threat of pain, or the fear of pain, that's more troubling than the actual pain itself--at least on the level I have experienced it. Knowing that they weren't going to do anything really bad made it fine.
It would be nice if my faith in God's mastery of his world were as complete as my belief that the testers would follow their own self-authored rules (and, I guess, the rules of the people who approve testing on human subjects). I was so certain that they wouldn't do anything really painful or damaging, even if what they were actually doing hurt in the moment. Theoretically, I believe the same thing about God--I believe not only that He wouldn't hurt me, but also that He is actively seeking my good--and yet often my theoretical faith is not substantial enough to salve my fear of things that might, in a larger sense, be good for me. It's a question of trust, I suppose, as embarrassingly trite as that is.
I'm often mystified by people (believers and outsiders alike) who think that faith offers us easy answers. On the contrary, I think having faith--gaining knowledge of God and receiving the grace to allow Him to operate in our lives--is the only really hard thing, even if it is also the only really worthy one.
One day, I read an ad seeking participants for a "Sensory Study." It sounded like a minimal time commitment, and the pay was generous; the purpose was to track people for a number of years, so they had to pay well enough to keep people coming back. So I signed up. It turned out to be a study on pain perception. At the dental school.
Woo-hoo! Just my thing. (Here I'm being sarcastic, but I don't know of any punctuation-based emoticon for that.) To be honest, the people were incredibly nice, and it wasn't that bad, even if the instructions were a bit alarming, to wit: "We can assure you that none of these procedures will cause any permanent damage. When the discomfort becauses entirely unbearable, press this button and it will stop immediately."
In various tests, they put pressure against the side of your face, then heat on your wrist, and then a tight band around your arm. I realized after the first round that actually the maximum amount of discomfort they would cause was not all that bad, and then I just pretty much relaxed and let them do their thing. At the end, they said admiringly, "You have a really high pain tolerance."
(Julie, you can get up off the floor and stop laughing now.)
In truth, I'm a total wimp about pain--the kind of person who flinches and says "Ouch!" before somebody actually touches your finger with the tweezers they're going to use to get the splinter out. But I guess it's the threat of pain, or the fear of pain, that's more troubling than the actual pain itself--at least on the level I have experienced it. Knowing that they weren't going to do anything really bad made it fine.
It would be nice if my faith in God's mastery of his world were as complete as my belief that the testers would follow their own self-authored rules (and, I guess, the rules of the people who approve testing on human subjects). I was so certain that they wouldn't do anything really painful or damaging, even if what they were actually doing hurt in the moment. Theoretically, I believe the same thing about God--I believe not only that He wouldn't hurt me, but also that He is actively seeking my good--and yet often my theoretical faith is not substantial enough to salve my fear of things that might, in a larger sense, be good for me. It's a question of trust, I suppose, as embarrassingly trite as that is.
I'm often mystified by people (believers and outsiders alike) who think that faith offers us easy answers. On the contrary, I think having faith--gaining knowledge of God and receiving the grace to allow Him to operate in our lives--is the only really hard thing, even if it is also the only really worthy one.
posted by Tara | 1:40 PM
2 Comments:
Indeed - the comment about your pain tolerance launched me into a small fit of laughter. I firmly believe that I have a high tolerance of pain, but since I've not gone through labor, I don't feel like I've really been tested. In my book, Kate's the real champ.
Oooooooohhhh. Nice application of the lesson!
I think (as relates to the nonspiritual discussion of pain) that it's a question of two things: 1) putting yourself through pain when you DON'T HAVE TO. (say, for the study.) I will forever be amazed at the people who, say, run marathons. Ugh. Why? To see if you can? To overcome? But it huuuurts...
But also, knowing that pain is for your good, or at least isn't damaging you (being given a shot at the doc's, for instance), is helpful. I try to imagine sometimes what it must be like to be tortured. Knowing that the damage is just bad, bad, bad. It serves no purpose. You might not recover from it. Yuk.
Childbirth -- our bodies are (so they say) intended to go through with it, and so, though I cannot honestly imagine a worse pain, maybe it's a "good" pain? It might have actually been cathartic, on some level.
And yet, I will not take up running. :)
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