Emotional & Physical Pain Are Almost The Same - To Your Brain
Neuroimaging reveals that the brain activates the same regions when experiencing emotional pain as it does with physical pain.
Understanding Somatic Symptoms
Physical symptoms of emotional distress are called somatic symptoms. Most people relate to somatic symptoms in examples like butterflies in the stomach or a racing heart when nervous.
However, for some, dysregulation/ineffective emotional processing causes physical changes and sensitization in neurons responsible for sensing pain.
Through conditioning, complex physical symptoms develop in response to certain emotional triggers. Over time, this becomes habitual and “how your brain works", posing a challenge to break.
Examples include routine migraine headaches or pain elsewhere on certain days of the week/important dates in the year or predicting that certain activities will result in pain.
Pain reprocessing therapy intervenes to disrupt this cycle.
