Why Emotional Pain Hurts

Ever wonder why you feel pain in your chest when  your feelings have been hurt? Terms like “heartache” and “gut wrenching” are not just metaphors — they describe both physical and emotional pain.

If you feel heartache, for example, what you are experiencing is emotional stress and the resulting stress-induced sensations in your chest — muscle tightness, an increased heart rate, uncomfortable stomach activity, and shortness of breath.

Physical and emotional pain are intimately connected, You may be a bit surprised to learn that emotional pain triggers the exact brain regions that physical pain lights up.

How do emotions trigger physical sensations? A 2009 study conducted at the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland found that activity in a brain region that regulates emotional reactions (the anterior cingulate cortex) helps explain how an emotional insult can trigger a biological cascade.

During a stressful experience your brain’s anterior cingulate cortex increases the activity of your Vagus nerve. This huge nerve is the pathway connecting your brain stem to your neck, chest and abdomen.

When this nerve is over stimulated, it can cause pain, abdominal “butterflies,” and even nausea.

But heartache is not the only way emotional and physical pain intersect in our brain. Other studies show that even feeling emotional pain on behalf of another person — that is, having empathy for that person — can also influence your pain perception. And this effect is NOT limited to humans. A recent paper published in Science Magazine revealed that when a mouse sees its cage mate in agony, that mouse’s sensitivity to physical pain increases. But when it comes into close contact with a friendly, unharmed mouse, its sensitivity to pain is reduced. 

A recent brain scan study of humans supported the finding in mice — showing that simple acts of social kindness, such as holding hands, can blunt the brain’s response to threats of physical pain, and thus actually lessen the pain.

The author of this post, Dr. Jill Ammon-Wexler, has developed a remarkable downloadable program that reaches right to the core to eliminates emotional pain=> You CAN overcome emotional pain!

© 2010 by Quantum-Self.com

I Believe by Nikki Yanofsky

“I Believe” by Nikki Yanofsky
(Vancouver 2010 Music Video: Olympic Torch Relay)

How to Survive and Rebuild?

What is a “mental outlook?” It’s the mental window you look out through to view what’s happening in your life.

I think I will always clearly remember the image I saw on CNN of a large group of Haitians singing and dancing in the street amidst the rubble of buildings crumbled by one earthquake after another.

In that moment I had total faith these people WILL both survive and rebuild. Easy? Not by a long shot! But their collective mental outlook will carry them forward, and made me want to donate even more to the rebuilding efforts.

Our Colored Glasses
As individuals we each tend to view life through our own characteristic way. If you wear mental “rose colored glasses,” your mental outlook will tend to be more rosy, or positive. While if you wear blue tinted glasses, the world (and your outlook) will probably tend to be “blue.”

The outward reality is the same in both cases — but its colored by each person’s outlook — their customary mood and expectations.

The problem with a “blue,” or less optimistic, outlook is that it tends to be disempowering. It leads to depression. And what goes hand-in-hand with depression is an inability to take action to improve one’s situation.

A “blue” person may sneer at the optimist wearing rose-colored glasses — but they cannot deny the fact that they are more likely to take a chance and ACT. And action is life embracing!

It’s like that Haitian woman who found a broom and began to sweep the debris laden street in front of what was once her house. Will her sweeping make a difference? It did in her life!

Dealing With Challenges
Most of us are facing one challenge or another today. These are NOT easy times. And the stress of hard times can have a powerful effect on our mental outlook: If you feel worried about something, your brain is then wired to give any related event a worried evaluation. 

And although our feelings are fleeting, our moods are not. Moods are based on a brain-level accumulation of feelings that have been stored on actual physical neural networks.

So if you are in a worried mood, you tend to have anxious feelings. Anxious feelings, in turn, color your evaluations of your options. This is actually brain-based and… And a negative evaluation of a new event will just further strengthen the anxious feeling. This new negative feeling, in turn, helps maintain your worried mood.

This creates a non-productive vicious cycle that will build strength unless broken. Generally such cycles are best broken by changing your feelings, which will in turn change your mood.

Changing a Non-Productive Mood
How to break up such a cycle? One good way to start is to really FOCUS on finding a solution to just ONE of the problems you face. Do not even try to tackle all of it at once — this can just lead to overwhelm, and even more anxiety.

Once you identify one problem you want to solve, allow yourself to sort through your options and actually PICK ONE.

Avoid fence sitting. If you feel a afraid of making a mistake, look at it this way: The sooner you focus and take action, the sooner you will learn from any mistake, and can then take a new corrective action.

Set your sights on a better mental outlook. Life has its challenges — that IS a given. But obviously you have already survived some challenges to get where you are today — and can likewise rise above your current challenges. 

The truth is this: You have the ability to re-create any thought patterns that might be holding you back. Seize the moment, focus, and just go for it.

The author’s popular SUCCESS COURSE is an experience unlike any other. Over an 8-week period you will receive daily guidance and lessons that will truly unleash your personal power and ability to steer your life (or business) in any desired direction.This training is for you if you seriously want to get yourself together, focused, and in action — NOW! Show Me!

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