Example of a payment for pain and suffering in a brain damage lawsuit – Suppose you are involved in an automobile accident. You present to the hospital with head and back ache. The hospital physician checks you, takes x-rays, and discharges you a few hours later.
- According to your MRI results, you have a post-traumatic axonal shearing damage.
- You inform your physicians that you suffer from memory loss, concentration difficulties, headaches, vertigo, anxiety, depression, stress, and sleep problems.
- Assume that the accident also necessitated surgery on another bodily component.
Possibly, you have surgery to repair your broken arm. Or perhaps you underwent back or neck surgery. However, you can still do your job duties. Even if you seem normal to strangers, your agony and suffering may be worth between $1 and $2 million (or more) in the case described above.
- Inform your physician if you are experiencing memory loss, concentration troubles, headaches, dizziness, anxiety, depression, stress, or sleep problems.
- These symptoms make it simpler for the insurance company to obtain permission to pay you additional damages for pain and suffering.
- The insurance company of the party at blame is more likely to settle your brain damage claim quickly if their policy limitations are smaller.
They are also likely to give you extra to settle your head injury claim if the motorist at fault was on the phone at the time of the collision. This is especially true if he or she was at work when the accident occurred. You may be able to sue him/her and his/her employer for punitive damages.
How can pain affect an individual?
Authored by Tal Ben-Shahar Despite the fact that it is in our nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain, society plays a crucial influence in determining how we cope with suffering. We usually reject pain in the West. We view it as an unwanted impediment to our quest of pleasure.
- Therefore, we resist it, repress it, medicate it, or seek quick-fix methods to eliminate it.
- In certain cultures, particularly in the East, suffering is recognized for the vital role it plays in people’s lives, on the circuitous journey to enlightenment.
- While I am not yet convinced that it is possible to achieve enlightenment or nirvana — a state of perfect and everlasting inner calm — there is much we can learn from the Buddhist perspective on life’s impermanence and defects, losses and disappointments.
Four advantages of suffering are discussed by the Tibetan monk Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen Rinpoche: wisdom, resilience, compassion, and a profound reverence for reality. The experience of affliction produces wisdom. When things are going well, we rarely pause to reflect on our lives.
However, a challenging circumstance frequently breaks us out of our oblivious state and prompts us to think on our experiences. To acquire what King Solomon referred to as a discerning heart and the ability to perceive profoundly, we must face the eye of the storm. A wise man himself, Nietzsche once stated that what does not kill us makes us stronger.
Suffering can make us more resilient and able to withstand adversity. Just as a muscle must undergo pain in order to grow, so must our emotions endure pain in order to strengthen. Helen Keller, who in her lifetime experienced both agony and happiness, observed that “Character cannot be formed in tranquility and ease.
Only through struggle and suffering can the spirit be strengthened, the vision be clarified, aspiration be motivated, and achievement be attained.” Allowing us to experience this common feeling weaves a chain of compassion between us. The dictionary defines compassion as a “deep knowledge of another’s pain paired with the desire to alleviate it,” yet the only way to develop a profound understanding of the suffering of others is to have experienced it ourselves.
To a blind individual, a theoretical comprehension of pain is equivalent to a theoretical description of the color blue. To comprehend it, we must feel it. According to Pastor Fritz Williams, “Suffering and happiness teach us, if we permit them to do so, how to make the empathy leap, which transfers us into the soul and heart of another person.
- In these times of transparency, we are aware of the pleasures and tragedies of others, and we care about their issues as if they were our own.” One of the greatest advantages of suffering is that it cultivates a profound regard for reality, for what is.
- Pain informs us of our limits, but the sense of happiness connects us to the universe of unlimited possibilities.
When, despite our best efforts, we are injured, we are humbled by limitations we sometimes overlook when we’re flying high. It seems more than symbolic that when we are in ecstasy, we prefer to look to the skies, the infinite, and when we are in anguish, we tend to look to the ground, the limited.
Rabbi Bunim of Pshischa states that everyone should carry two slips of paper in their pockets: one with the Talmudic phrase “for my sake the universe was created” and the other with the biblical phrase “I am nothing but dust and ashes.” The healthy psychological condition is midway between the two signals, between arrogance and modesty.
How to Calculate Your Pain and Suffering Settlement (Ep.43)
Similarly to how the combination of arrogance and humility fosters psychological health, the combination of pleasure and misery fosters a healthy relationship with reality. Ecstasy makes me feel invincible: it gives me the impression that I am the master of my fate and that I construct my own world.
- But anguish is likely to make me feel weak and submissive: it makes me feel as though I am the servant of my circumstances and have little control over my reality.
- The sole effect of ecstasy is detached arrogance, whereas the sole effect of sorrow is surrender.
- The challenges of life push us closer to Aristotle’s golden mean.
A profound regard for reality necessitates acceptance of what is, including our capacity, our limitations, and our humanity. We become more tolerant of our suffering when we realize that it is a vital part of our life and that it has other advantages, such as the formation of knowledge and compassion.
And when we embrace sadness and sorrow as unavoidable, we experience less suffering. Self-respect, for which self-acceptance is essential, is the immune system of awareness, according to Nathaniel Branden. A healthy immune system does not mean that we never get ill, but rather that we get sick less frequently and recover more quickly when we do.
Similarly, pain is unlikely to ever fully disappear, but as the immune system of our consciousness becomes stronger, we suffer less frequently and recover more quickly when we do. The fact that suffering generates advantages does not indicate that we should actively want it, just as the fact that illness enhances our immune system does not imply that we should actively seek out opportunities to get ill.
- We naturally seek pleasure in life and want to limit the amount of suffering we experience.
- The flawed and ephemeral nature of the world affords us numerous opportunity to strengthen our immune system without our intentional pursuit.
- The first of the Four Noble Truths espoused by the Buddha is the fact of suffering, which we can either reject or embrace as an inescapable aspect of being human.
And when we learn to tolerate, and even welcome, adversity, our pain becomes a tool, an instrument for development. This post is an extract from Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD’s “Being Happy: You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Live a Richer, Happier Life.” In Maria Sirois’s course The Resilient Quest (When Life Strikes Hard), you will learn how to build your potential for resilience.
- Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, co-founder of the WholeBeing Institute, is an author and speaker who taught the largest course on “Positive Psychology” and the third largest course on “The Psychology of Leadership” at Harvard, with a combined enrollment of over 1,400 students.
- Author of Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, he consults and talks on happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, mindfulness, and leadership to corporate executives, the general public, and at-risk populations throughout the world.
Harvard awarded him a PhD in organizational behavior and a bachelor’s in philosophy and psychology.