Edit: I wanted to clarify that when I said on purpose I meant for comparison to the accidental one, not as self harm
In: 8
I guess it’s more measured when you do it knowingly.
You know how much your biting, and how hard.
With the accidental one, it’s the opposite.
Lol. Could one actually intentionally bite their own tongue in any kind of a meaningful way? If the answer is yes, there’s something wrong with you.
When you chew food, you aren’t holding back on those muscles, you’re just going for it.
When you’re deliberately biting your tongue, your brain is telling you “what are you doing, idiot? This is going to HURT!” and so you are much more hesitant and reserved
You don’t follow through on intentional bites. It’s very hard to commit to actually hurting yourself because your body has self preservation instincts.
What everyone else has said. and also: something you are prepared for and expecting is going to feel different psychologically than something unexpected out of the blue, even if both are painful.
there’s two parts to this as far as i see it.
you know how you can’t really tickle yourself? your mind knows what your body’s doing and it compensates however and just shuts that response off.
the other part is that *everything* hurts *much worse* if you *do not expect it*. when you’re biting your own tongue, you’re expecting it. that signal goes past your brain and your responses adjust. when you’re chewing food and accidentally bite your tongue, it’s the last thing your brain expects so it starts throwing danger signs at you in the form of pain.
It takes the same amount of force to bite through your finger than it does a carrot. The brain doesn’t usually want to hurt itself intentionally and will stop you from doing such things.
Long ago I read a psych article about things like this, it’s been so long I can’t point anyone to it sorry, but I remember the basics.
So when you do something like pinch yourself, it doesn’t hurt too bad. But if someone else did that the exact same way and same pressure it hurts. The brain has some mechanism which can mute pain and sensations which you cause to yourself. It’s easy to reproduce of course, just try a few pinches as opposed to biting your own tongue.
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