Feeling rejected? Take a painkiller!

Feeling rejected?  Take a painkiller!

By Liz Lockhart

A recent paper by Dr. Naomi Eisenberger from the University of California, Los Angeles, suggests that physical pain and emotional pain have a strong connection and that the term ‘broken-hearted isn’t just a metaphor.

Eisenberger says ‘Rejection is such a powerful experience for people.  If you ask people to think back about some of their earliest negative experiences, they will often be about rejection, about being picked last for a team or left out of some social group.’

Furthermore, the paper says that people who experience social rejection and people who are experiencing physical pain have similar brain activity.  The two feelings are processed in several corresponding regions of the brain.

Eisenberger explains that there are two different aspects to physical pain.  First there is the sensory experience of pain and then the emotional response.  This is when your brain processes the extent of the negative and distressing feelings associated with the pain.

The pain which you may feel in social rejection is akin to the emotional part of physical pain.  Severe social pain may also be dealt with by the area of the brain that copes with the sensory part of physical pain.

The researchers found a connection between individuals who are more sensitive to physical pain and those who are more sensitive to social pain.  By using a computer game, the researchers discovered that sensitive people felt more rejected after playing a social exclusion game.  In this game three players played catch but two of the players refused to share the ball with the third. 

One finding surprised the researchers when they found that individuals who took pain killers for a period of three weeks said that their feelings were less hurt than others who took a placebo. 

Eisenberger said ‘It follows in a logical way from the argument that the physical and social pain systems overlap, but it’s still kind of hard to imagine.  We take Tylenol for physical pain: it’s not supposed to work on social pain’ and added that she does not recommend this.

When discussing her belief that there could be some benefit to experiencing the pain of rejection Eisenberger says ‘I think it’s probably there for a reason – to keep us connected to others.  If we’re constantly numbing the feelings of social rejection, are we going to be more likely to do things that get us rejected, that alienate us?’

She concluded ‘We seem to hold physical pain in higher regard than social pain.  While bystanders understand that physical pain hurts and can be debilitating, the same empathy doesn’t always extend to people feeling social pain.’

The paper is published in Current Directions in Psychological Science. 

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