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I've seen the term used a few times and I'm not sure I understand what it means.

It kind of comes across to me as a rationalization or justification to "rug sweep" (which is a term I do understand).

It usually appears when someone says something along the lines of "things have been going great, but then I decided to [insert activity here] and just got upset; I realized I was 'pain shopping.'"

I read that and think, well, maybe things were only "great" on the surface but there were/are underlying issues that aren't being addressed and unconsciously one is setting things in motion to bring it up and out to actually deal with and not ignore.

But, then again, maybe I'm totally missing what is meant by that phrase and how it is a "bad" thing.

Pain shopping is when you go looking for things to be purposelessly hurt over.

Looking up the OW's facebook page is an example of pain shopping.

Digging for more information for no good purpose is also pain shopping.

By that definition, though, wouldn't asking for a timeline or for any details about the A be pain shopping?

I mean, one knows that any answer is going to hurt, so asking any questions would be purposely hurting oneself.

If there is a difference, then where is that line drawn and why?

Freetogonow is right. Why do we do it? Various reasons I guess. For me it's because of many unanswered questions I have, and trying to figure out what was so great about MOW that my WH had a LTA with her. Like finding missing puzzle pieces. I've noticed many similarities between her and I.

Pain shopping also is like a wake up call to myself to face what my WH has done. To believe that what seems unreal is unfortunately all too real.

To me finding information that you need for your healing or to help understand what happened isn't pain shopping. It is a necessary but painful part of the process after DDay.

Pain shopping to me is looking at things like the OW's Facebook page when you know you won't get any helpful information just pain.

I also agree that the term is used to encourage rug sweeping or by WS who are still hiding things by that is a different arguement.

Often I feel SI is pain shopping.

On dday I took screenshots of all of the texts (sexts) I was able to recover and I kept copies of them in an email I sent to myself, in a file on my computer and in hard copy in my file box.

In the beginning I would go and read them and re-read them. I knew what they all said, they were already burned into my memory, and I knew it was going to hurt like hell to see them again, but I still did it. Over and over and over.

That, to me, was pain shopping.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of rugsweeping.

To me finding information that you need for your healing or to help understand what happened isn't pain shopping.

I think HardyRose is right. I take pain shopping to mean looking for things that you know are going to be painful without any upside. If it something that will eventually lead to healing, it isn't pain shopping, its processing.

Definition:-

Something that hurts in a visceral, gut-wrenching way and serves no useful purpose.

And yes, we all do it, even though we know perfectly well that we shouldn't.

You know you have recovered when the urge to painshop becomes less urgent and you rarely succumb to it.

It's generally used in a perjorative way, as in "why are you pain shopping?" asked of someone who asks after the details of the betrayal. And of course the answers can be extremely painful, horrible, disgusting, shocking and traumatizing. And the asking is a searching, a looking a shopping so the term literally applies.

But those who use the term generally mean the BS should not be asking, seeking, probing. In that sense they're suggesting it's not answers the person wants, not truth, not understanding, comprehension, honesty. Not asking to find out who and what they are really dealing with so they can begin to heal and then, untimately figure out what they want to do but, for some reason they are asking just for the pain, which seems very unlikely, or that they don't realize that by asking they are creating more pain for themselves. And I suppose that's really what some who use the term really mean.

But while some therapists will discourage the BS from asking questions, there is research that suggests the more questions are asked and answered patiently and honesty, the better the chances the BS can process and heal even though the answers can be painful and even when the truth can result, at least for a time, in awful mind movies, thoughts and feelings and give greater potential for triggers.

The pro-question view is that the betrayal is so intertwined with, so dependent on deceit, upon a secret double life, that the revelation of truth is essential to healing. So what some call "pain shopping" others would call truth seeking.

I suppose there are some who are looking for things "to be purposely hurt over" but I suspect those BSs are rare. I think most of us ask, seek, probe because we want to make sense of it, know exactly what was going on, know what and who we are dealing with. So yes, digging "for no good purpose" is what some call "pain shopping" but discovery of betrayal is so traumatizing, the betrayal so destructive that it seems unlikely we dig for no good purpose. Mostly we're digging to find out and to regain some sense of balance of confidence of sanity.

So if WH uses, the term I'd be wary. If my H, instead of answering my questions, said I was "just pain shopping" I would take that to mean he wanted to cling to his secret and to his power.

MalibuBayBreeze, you're one of the first people I've seen put a "positive" spin on the phrase. The majority of the time it is used in a pejorative way, to encourage others to not do it.

I have never seen anyone enthusiastically exclaim "hey, you know what you should do right now? Go on a pain shopping spree."

The intention of the phrase is to encourage the opposite.

Onlytime, telling someone that whatever they are doing is just "pain shopping," is, to me, telling them to stop what they are doing entirely (and, therefore, encouraging rug sweeping).

theakronborg and Geranium, but how do you know, particularly in the moment, whether it will serve a "useful purpose" or not? Who defines what the useful purpose is? What if the useful purpose isn't immediately evident but comes about hours, days, months later? What if, after much processing, one purpose (out of many possible purposes) is that the individual simply decides for themselves that they no longer want or need to do whatever activity anymore (as Geranium pointed out that many people eventually get to)? Isn't that a "useful purpose"?

marji, yes, I understand and agree with what you've posted. Particularly the part about purposely hurting oneself for no good purpose after infidelity being an extremely rare thing.

My WH never used the term "pain shopping" with me, but he did, in the beginning, ask me why I wanted to know certain things and what possible good could come from that. He gave that up pretty quick.

I usually see the term used on forums from one BS to another. And I think to myself, isn't it up to the individual to decide for themselves when/what purpose something serves to themselves (even if extremely painful) without implying that they are some kind of masochist for doing so?

FrostedSoul - that is a tough call. There is no perfect answer. I think it maybe it has to do with the intention behind the questions/searching. Why do you want to know X? Or look at Y? Is it from a "need to understand" perspective or something else, like a need to make someone else unhappy or maybe validate your anger. Some reasons are good and some are not as good and you may not even know why you do something. But hopefully, if you do something once and realize it does nothing but hurt, you may think twice about doing it again.

It is funny, I guess it is pejorative, but I don't necessarily get that. I think its more cautionary - something to remind you to be thoughtful in your approach.

Oh Thea by perjorative I just meant that the term wasn't neutral; it has a serious negative connotation--as you said, said its meant as a caution. Don't think it's meant to be unkind. I think its often meant as, "your questions won't be helpful but will just cause more hurt" when it's not the WH saying it although some WHs might mean it that way.

But as FrostedSoul asks, how is purpose really known? I agree that a question might be asked to cause the BH discomfort but that motive itself stems from the extreme pain the WH has caused and might have some therapeutic value for the BS. I think that short of physical violence, short of making awful scenes infront of children, there is not much a BS say or do that is any more painful than what the WH has already done. So phrases such as "pain shopping" or "pouring salt on a wound" seem to me to be wrongly discouraging and nonsupportive.

I define pain shopping as days I apparently really hate myself

It's when I start down the rabbit hole to hell with no other purpose than to feel really, really bad. I'm not learning anything, I'm not evolving as a human, I'm doing it simply to feel miserable and if I'm not careful I will get stuck there for a good week.

OTOH, if I can find a life lesson or transform it into something positive or a way forward then I would not consider it pain shopping. If I can use my pain to help someone else feel not so alone, that's even better. For me, there was nothing worse than feeling isolated because my life was so miserable with ex psycho asshat.

Pain shopping is when you search for information with the knowledge that the results will probably cause you pain. To me pain shopping is looking at the AP's FB page for example. You don't really get a lot of the truth, but just looking causes you pain.

I see it used more in the S/D forum. We tell someone the fastest way to heal is to go NC for example. Then the BS lets the WS call/text them about things other than the kids/finances. Or the BS calls the WS and tries to make them feel remorse and then comes away feeling worse than before the BS called the WS.

Basically it is doing something that you know will probably hurt YOU, but you do it anyway and then you are hurt again by the WS/AP/IL's/etc... Then you come on SI and tell everyone what you did and they tell you not to "pain shop" because it accomplishes nothing but gives them a chance to make you feel worse than you already did.

How do we know if the information we are "shopping" for will help us or not -- before we find it? I would define pain shopping as revisiting the same information over and over when there are no changes. But even then, there are facts that I have seen in context that I missed several times before, even though I have visited the fact over and over again.

In fact, I might have been pain shopping earlier this week. I wanted to review the activity on my WW's Facebook page again. I had this gut feeling there were missing pieces to some of the questions I continue to have. I learned two things I didn't know before. Are they material, and do they change anything? They change how I feel about the answers I have been given that evidently were not true.

And now I have some follow up questions for my WW. And yes, in order to process some of the things she did, and when she did them, I need to know . . .

Pain shopping is common after betrayal. So, I honestly do think there's purpose for it in terms of brain function. We're having to reorganize information in our neural circuitry and who knows exactly what all is entailed by that. For most of us, the amygdala (emotional brain) is still hyper-vigilant, looking for signs of danger.

For those of us in R, we're not completely sure that we really are safe yet or that we made the best decision for our future. For those who have suffered abandonment or selected D, there's probably an underlying need to become more certain of the decision. Reminding yourself that your ex is a giant jackass can be a comfort in that situation, even though it might be painful in the moment.

I do think though that it's probably akin to the brainspotting technique, where we locate and process the information by bringing it up to greater emotional intensity and then allowing it to slide back into the morass again. This would be sort of like immersion therapy typically recommended for phobias.

There are some schools of thought that avoidance is best, and therapists often recommend techniques designed to distract ourselves like "putting up a stop sign" or "snapping a rubber band" so as to not allow our brains to ruminate on the trauma. The thought behind that is that we're wearing in a pathway in our neural circuits when we ruminate.

Ruminating and pain shopping are ubiquitous though. Almost ALL of us do it. So, I'm thinking there probably IS a natural purpose for it, even if we don't quite understand exactly what that purpose is.

These two methods, "immersion by pain shopping" and "avoidance techniques" might not necessarily be at odds though. It could be, that both are necessary ingredients for healing and that the issue is timing. Maybe there's a time to pain shop and a time to hold up our stop sign. Possibly it's all part an organic healing process??

MalibuBayBreeze, you're one of the first people I've seen put a "positive" spin on the phrase. The majority of the time it is used in a pejorative way, to encourage others to not do it.

I have never seen anyone enthusiastically exclaim "hey, you know what you should do right now? Go on a pain shopping spree."

Maybe I'm reading this the wrong way, but I don't think I put a positive spin on pain shopping and certainly didn't come across as saying "hey you know what you should do right now? Go on a pain shopping spree."

Pain shopping is just that, pain inducing. I don't sit here thinking I should go on a shopping spree. Most times I fight not to do it because I know it will only make me feel worse. But when I do, I'll say it again, it's to force myself to face what my WH has done. I'm only a little over a year out and having a very hard time with all of this.

I cannot understand or accept what has been done. It is unreal to me. I would never have a cavalier attitude of "hey let's go pain shopping." There's nothing to spin about my broken heart.

I think painshopping can serve a purpose. When I used to have a good day back early days - I wanted to reread the texts to "protect" myself - to refrain from rugsweeping - pain can protect us from buying into R before it's earned.

I think there's a big difference between being told by the WS you are "pain shopping" and self-determining that you are doing it.

I agree with a number of the definitions put forward. To me opening up yourself to hurt as part of understanding or processing is in no way PS. But at some point you will get as much information as you are going to get and you will have analysed everything to the point where there is no more insight to be wrung out. If you keep revisiting after that and it does you harm rather than good, then you are straying into PS.

It's easily done - we all go there from time to time - and only you know the threshold and when you find it counterproductive to your wellbeing.