Why do sensations such as heartbreak/sadness/anxiety feel like physical pain?
In: Biology
To grossly oversimplify, negative emotions like heartbreak, rejection, and embarrassment, trigger some of the same regions in the brain as physical pain. Specifically, the secondary somatosensory cortex and dorsal posterior insula.
Processing these emotions as if they were physical pain helps your brain teach itself to avoid the feelings in the future.
When emotions are strong enough they can trigger your fight or flight response. During this blood is pulled from your digestive system/stomach (to prepare to fight or run) and creates a physical sinking feeling in your chest/stomach.
Usually, feelings make your body have a physical response, this happens for a bunch of reasons, like a primal instinct of self preservation. They make your body release more hormones like adrenaline and others, and these are the ones that make you feel physical pain amongst other stuff.
Basically, these emotions trigger some of the same pathways that physical pain triggers.
In fact, it has been shown that painkillers such as acetaminophen (paracetamol) can actually help reduce social pain such as rejection. [Source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20548058)
Because we have to feel it physically or else they don’t mean anything…something something Im15andthisisdeep
Being in love releases dopamine, and drugs like heroin create the same sort of warm, amazing feelings. So it’s a type of literal withdrawl.
When you feel an unwanted sensation, you or parts of you contract. Someone pokes you? You either completely release because you trust the touch, or you contract to shield yourself from the pressure (and of course there are seemingly infinite variances between the extremes).
Some people may even contract from feelings of love or concern for reasons such as a belief that they do not deserve them or do not trust them. You tighten to avoid a signal, such as loss, a communication which is either external or internal saying something like “I don’t love you.” You reject that notion and squeeze upon it to shield yourself from something you perceive to be false. Flex something or push/hit against something hard enough and you will experience something we call pain. A bombardment of atoms causing a “disruptive” or “uncomfortable” wave pattern.
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as a literal ELI5, they are registered in the same area of the brain. getting called “worthless” would register as much as being hit in the stomach with a baseball bat.
this statement is true– over the counter pain killers double as emotional pain-killers. That’s something not everyone should know. That’s why people get so addicted to pills. They’re anti-depressants.
Secondary somatosensory cortex and posterior insula. Basically, your brain releases the same chemicals that it would otherwise with physical pain from injury.
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