Why do sensations such as heartbreak/sadness/anxiety feel like physical pain?
In: Biology
The vagus nerve get strained when you are under stress so it feels like a heartbreak. The first answer sums it up.
We’ve got this whole complex psyche thing going on that emerges from this organ that’s evolved from jellyfish to lizard to primate, with all the responses it’s needed along the way.
At this point we’ve got this high level functioning consciousness with fine tuned analytic capacity. Feelings are communications from deeper in our psyche, ways of assessing information and communicating it to early rudimentary executive functioning in a way that generates a response (as pain or other sensations in our body.)
Our consciousness can only attend to so much information, this focus possible because much uncertainty is already attended to, responsibilities shared rather than surviving as the single organism of our early evolutionary history. But we still have these early capacities in varying degrees to assess broad amounts of information in much more chaotic environments. The results of this information processing arises as feelings.
A lot, perhaps most, of emotional and behavioural dysfunction exists as a result of higher level capacities being overwhelmed, leaving more fundamental responses to take over. Which were effective a few million or billion years ago, but not so much now.
Not to me or many others. I have no experience in what you are describing. Perhaps end you question with “for some people”
My take on it. We suffer physical pain when the mechanisms within our body that we use to sustain life suffer impairment or injury.
As social creatures, we rely on relationships for survival. To suffer an impairment or injury to that mechanism on which our survival depends, is dangerous. Basically, it hurts our ability to survive and procreate so it feels like it hurts.
An example. A group of cavemen get along well and survive. One caveman starts being a dick and the group ostracized him. He’s gonna feel sad, lonely, and probably a bit heartbroken. What’s this gonna spur him to do? How capable of surviving and procreating is he now? He’s gonna go back to the group, he’s gonna survive, and he’s gonna have babies that feel the same way when they get kicked out of the survival group.
Hope this answers your question.
Back in the day when we were in the hunter/gatherer era, when someone was excommunicated or pushed from a group that most likely meant that the banished individual would die by themselves, and we carry that feeling when we go through similar situations to this day
Also why do we cry bc of sadness ?
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