Okay, so that’s NOT what we’d tell a friend who is suffering the pain of romantic or social rejection. But it DOES have a solid scientific basis.
Researchers at UCLA did a study in 2011 that showed that when people were subjected to physical pain OR recalled emotionally painful events under fMRI, the same pain-processing areas of the brain were activated. Naturally, this led to some interesting speculation. And another study or two.
The researchers then gave daily doses of over-the-counter pain relievers to a volunteer group, and a placebo to a second group. Over the next 3 weeks the study participants rated the daily pain caused by routine social rejection. Ten days into the study, those taking actual pain relievers reported significantly less emotional pain. That reduction in pain persisted through the end of the study. The placebo group showed no change.
In a third study, researchers again used daily doses of OTC analgesics and then subjected the participants to an fMRI scan during which they were asked to participate in a video game. During that game, the participants experienced sudden exclusion after several sets, missing 45 consecutive “turns” to play as the virtual players excluded them. Again, those taking the analgesics showed significantly lower neural activity in the pain processing regions of the brain, while those taking the placebo showed a spike in activity as they were excluded from participating.
So what does it all MEAN? Well, for one thing it means that emotional and physical pain are, for practical purposes, the SAME THING. Pain is pain. Mind is body. Body is mind. We talk a lot about the mind-body connection without having a clear definition of it. But remove the hyphen and you may have a more accurate verbal representation of the reality.
Every thought has a biochemical signature. Stressful thoughts produce stress hormones. And those stress hormones increase the experience of pain in a myriad of ways, producing all sorts of physical AND emotional discomfort.
In reality, thinking and talking about our emotionally painful experiences reactivates them, in essence re-traumatizing us and leading to MORE pain. This phenomenon has been well-documented in other studies showing that talking about our problems with a friend was actually detrimental to our happiness, and talking to a trained therapist only marginally more helpful. UNLESS that friend or therapist was skilled at redirecting our attention to our own internal resources, and helping us to discover our core strengths, values, and creative problem-solving skills. Remarkably, recovery times skyrocket when we shift attention AWAY from the problem and focus it squarely on the solutions. Note that I’m not talking about Pollyanna cheerfulness or “friendly advice”, but a set of strategies designed to uncover, verbalize, demonstrate, and amplify internal strengths that already exist and are simply not being experienced at that moment.
The other interesting thing to note in the studies above is that taking the “cure” relieved the problem BEFORE it occurred. I’m confident that you can see the value in that.
http://sanlab.psych.ucla.edu/papers_files/Eisenberger%282012%29CDPS.pdf
Researchers at UCLA did a study in 2011 that showed that when people were subjected to physical pain OR recalled emotionally painful events under fMRI, the same pain-processing areas of the brain were activated. Naturally, this led to some interesting speculation. And another study or two.
The researchers then gave daily doses of over-the-counter pain relievers to a volunteer group, and a placebo to a second group. Over the next 3 weeks the study participants rated the daily pain caused by routine social rejection. Ten days into the study, those taking actual pain relievers reported significantly less emotional pain. That reduction in pain persisted through the end of the study. The placebo group showed no change.
In a third study, researchers again used daily doses of OTC analgesics and then subjected the participants to an fMRI scan during which they were asked to participate in a video game. During that game, the participants experienced sudden exclusion after several sets, missing 45 consecutive “turns” to play as the virtual players excluded them. Again, those taking the analgesics showed significantly lower neural activity in the pain processing regions of the brain, while those taking the placebo showed a spike in activity as they were excluded from participating.
So what does it all MEAN? Well, for one thing it means that emotional and physical pain are, for practical purposes, the SAME THING. Pain is pain. Mind is body. Body is mind. We talk a lot about the mind-body connection without having a clear definition of it. But remove the hyphen and you may have a more accurate verbal representation of the reality.
Every thought has a biochemical signature. Stressful thoughts produce stress hormones. And those stress hormones increase the experience of pain in a myriad of ways, producing all sorts of physical AND emotional discomfort.
In reality, thinking and talking about our emotionally painful experiences reactivates them, in essence re-traumatizing us and leading to MORE pain. This phenomenon has been well-documented in other studies showing that talking about our problems with a friend was actually detrimental to our happiness, and talking to a trained therapist only marginally more helpful. UNLESS that friend or therapist was skilled at redirecting our attention to our own internal resources, and helping us to discover our core strengths, values, and creative problem-solving skills. Remarkably, recovery times skyrocket when we shift attention AWAY from the problem and focus it squarely on the solutions. Note that I’m not talking about Pollyanna cheerfulness or “friendly advice”, but a set of strategies designed to uncover, verbalize, demonstrate, and amplify internal strengths that already exist and are simply not being experienced at that moment.
The other interesting thing to note in the studies above is that taking the “cure” relieved the problem BEFORE it occurred. I’m confident that you can see the value in that.
http://sanlab.psych.ucla.edu/papers_files/Eisenberger%282012%29CDPS.pdf
Leave a Reply