Emotional Pain: Why Does My Body Hurt When My Feelings Are Hurt?

Have you ever experienced sadness or anger and felt it in your gut or chest? Ever heard people in your life say “that was gut-wrenching” or “my heart hurts”?. These phrases are more than just metaphorical explanations of somebody’s experience - they are emotional AND physical experiences that one is having. Research studies have found that the brain regions that light up when one is experiencing emotional pain, are the same brain regions that light up when one is experiencing physical pain. 

An experience of social rejection isn’t just experienced emotionally, it quite literally makes your heart rate drop, and slows it down for a moment, sometimes even longer than a brief moment.  Research conducted at the University of Amsterdam & Leiden University suggests that the autonomic nervous system, which controls functions like circulation and digestion, is heavily involved when people experience social rejection. Heartache too, is a concoction of emotional stress that induces abnormal activity in our chest such as increased heart rate, muscle tightness and construction, troubling stomach activity and an experience of airway construction.  

Psychologists have found that physical pain has two major components. There’s the sensory aspect, which gives one basic information about the injury, such as its sensory intensity and location on the body. Then there is the affective component, which is a qualitative experience of the injury, such as how intense or distressing it is. 

Studies conducted by Kross & colleagues found that physical, social and emotional pain have more in common than just causing distress within oneself, they even share sensory brain regions. These new findings redefine what “feeling hurt” means to human beings. It cannot be said with certainty that emotional and physical pain are identical, in fact, emotional pain is said to be experienced with much more intensity in the long run. 

Social rejection and heartache are not the only ways in which emotional and physical pain overlap in our brain. Recent studies show that even experiencing empathy, that is - experiencing the pain of others - can impact our pain perception. Beyond just human beings, a paper published in Science in 2006 found that when a mouse watched its cage mate in agony, its sensitivity to physical pain also concurrently increased. On the flip side, when that same mouse comes into close contact with an unharmed, friendly, unthreatening mouse, its sensitivity to pain minimizes. 

So the next time you ask yourself “why am I overreacting, I should just snap out of it” remind yourself that your body is experiencing your pain with you. It needs compassion, and kindness. It needs to be acknowledged. It needs to be tended to. These studies validate the very real connection that emotional pain has with physical pain, and the importance of reminding ourselves of the fact that we are complex systems, with multilayered existences. With each layer requiring care and tenderness.

If you feel ready to start to peel back the layers, and offer yourself solicitude, schedule a 15-minute consultation to learn more about online therapy and our therapists that see therapy as treating the whole system. Our therapists offer a multitude of therapies - some of which use a bottom-up approach, some which use a top-down approach, and some that use a mix of both.

Your journey begins today. 

- Prerna Menon, LMSW, CTP