Great question. How does the brain functions in the presence of physical pain or social hurt depends largely on your mindset and how you manage the discomfort. Unmanaged, your brain can become overwhelmed with the load of sensory decoding and find it difficult to concentrate on anything else. When you fight against the discomfort, sometimes it even increases, as the brain wants you know that you are experiencing physical pain or social hurt. I tend to talk to my brain in such situations. I thank it for notifying me via the discomfort that I am experiencing physical pain and move into it, using a variety of strategies to manage it. I thank my brain for notifying me via the discomfort that I am experiencing social hurt. I acknowledge it and draw on my past learned experiences and Emotional Intelligence skills to manage it. Note that social hurt may be experienced in the heart as well as the brain. Those two organs–brain and heart–continually communicate and can reinforce each other negatively or positively. You may need a good counselor or healthcare professional to help you identify which is which and learn to apply helpful strategies. Either way, healing takes time.
Studies suggest that the brain generally dreams, and it can be healthy to dream. A 2015 study of dreamlike behaviors reported in the rare non-recallers category, reported that there is convincing evidence that non-recallers do produce dreams but do not recall them. Studies have suggested that you have 20 seconds when you first recall a dream to say or do something to fix it in conscious memory, otherwise the brain may never give it back to you. What has been found to contribute to dreaming?
Oh, my. Talk about a complex question! In the English Language, the words hurt, and pain are not only used as synonyms but also as nouns, verbs, or adjectives. If I use the words as nouns and define hurt as a social injury and pain as a physical injury, then my brain’s opinion is that the brain may know the difference–since it does not process physical and social injuries identically. There is a differentiation in the brain between where pain versus hurt is decoded. However, brain imaging studies have shown that overlap between the two regions also exists. Metaphorically, think of these as mashed potatoes and baked potatoes. The brain knows there is a difference in appearance and somewhat in taste and consistency, yet ultimately still identifies them both as potatoes. Bottom line: social hurt and physical pain both create discomfort. Make no mistake, a broken heart may ache as much as a broken bone.
Sensory data is sent to the brain via the nervous system and is decoded in the brain. The data travels along the nerve pathways as nerve impulses and at differing speeds. Signals such as the ones for muscle position, travel on extra-fast nerve impulses at speeds of up to 390 feet per second. Pressure signals related to touch physical travel about 250 feet per second. Signals related to physical injury travel even more slowly, at the rate of only about two feet per second. You stub your toe, the brain decodes the pressure signals first, followed rapidly by the extreme physical discomfort caused by the injury.
Social hurt including loss, rejection, and other adverse experiences, likely arise in the brain itself. The amygdala registers the perceived affront and emotions are triggered in the brain’s limbic or mammalian layer. The emotion may be anger, fear, or sadness and the emotions may even change or rotate rapidly. However, there can be overlap between regions that decode physical pain versus emotions-social hurt.
The prefrontal cortex in the 3rd brain layer now assesses the experience and comes to a conclusion. Feelings is the label for the brain’s conclusion: its analysis of what the experience really means, how important and impactful the experience is for you–and the weight you give to it. You can decide whether you want to keep experiencing that feeling or choose to feel something else. To change the way you feel, you must change the way you think because feelings always follow thoughts. You also decide the amount of time, energy, and weight, you want to devote to the episode or situation.
