New research shows that emotional and physical pain draw responses from the same regions of the brain.
Read To the brain, getting burned, getting dumped feel the same, on CNN.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
(((hugs))) Star ~ so sorry you lost your assistant. I believe that animals DO instinctively know when something is amiss.
I used to have a sheltie who, if I wasn’t feeling well, would come and tuck herself in next to me in my chair and stay there for hours nuzzling my hand. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t come up for more than a minute or two because it was too warm for her. They have very thick coats! We lost her almost 2 years ago at the very young age of 7 1/2, it was heart failure. Yep, that was a tough one. She was my baby. I’m OK with it now. She lived a happy life while she was here, and passed VERY quickly… 20 minutes from playing to gone.
I’m sorry for the loss of your sheltie, as well. My Siamese slept in my shirt (with me wearing it) every night for 10 years. I have one remaining cat. She will be 18 on May 1st (the day I fly out to Costa Rica). She was born on my bed 18 years ago. I don’t know how I will handle it when she dies.
wow – I just lost a post. strange.
I do love Siamese cats. Otherwise, basically I’m a dog person. Have you thought of possibly getting another cat while she is still with you? I’m not suggesting that you can replace her, but it might help with the loneliness when she dies.
Costa Rica for pleasure, I hope?
Yes, I almost adopted another cat last year that looked exactly like the Siamese. I would love to have a pair of Siamese or colorpoint shorthair (look like Siamese only solid colors). But I don’t want to be tied down in case I move to Costa Rica or take off and go travel anywhere. I want to enjoy my freedom, at least until I find a permanent home. I know this condo is not it. Also, I don’t think I could bear the pain of losing another one.
Ladies and hens,
I am bookmarking this article because of all of your interesting and valuable comments.
First: Lesson Learned, my takeaway from the article was that emotional pain is to be taken seriously. Any doctor or lay person interpreting its findings to mean that a complaint of physical pain does not have a physical cause would be completely misreading it! The test subjects being asked to remember their heartache did not report to the scientists that they felt any physical pain, and the only reports of physical pain came from a physical cause: the near-scalding heat. I hope I am correct in feeling that this article does not further invalidate reports of physical pain.
Oxy, please name those books on touch! Just yesterday I was thinking that a good LF article would be one on how to cope without physical touch for awhile, since being alone is the experience of so many people recovering from a P/S, and No Contact also often means no physical contact from any other adult for the time being. And I am not talking about sex. I know that I suffer without touch, and touch is one of the most important and nourishing things I can get froma relationship.
Also, forgive me — I know this is intrusive, but IF you are ever wavering on that tattoo, please consider that this world really needs people like you.
neveragain, I am assuming you had interstitial cystitis. I am so sorry for what you suffered, including from your idiot doctor. I was diagnosed with IC, but I think I was misdiagnosed. However, the diagnosis lead me to a discussion forum for IC sufferers and it was heartbreaking to learn of some other women’s experience and the situations they were in because of their illness or its symptoms. The forum helped me a lot anyway, and I learned things that helped me, and encountered some inspiring women there. I am taking Lyrica now, from a pain management doctor, and my own chronic pain is very muted as a result, except perhaps if I were to have sex.
I have had serious depression, PMS/PMDD, this mysterious chronic pain condition in my lower abdomen that was affecting my life (and sleep) horribly, and I have had breast cancer. It absolutely makes me puke how people who have no concept of what it means to say “My mother has schizophrenia” or “I have interstitial cystitis” or “I suffer from/deal with depression” or “ankylosis spondilitis” or any number of this that people really suffer from will start Oohing and Ahing all over you and turning themselves inside out with compassion or taking you seriously if you say “breast cancer”. It disgusts and angers me! I am so glad your pain situation improved, though!
I’m so sorry about the departed animal companions.
Thank you everyone for this conversation. I will definitely be re-reading.
Dear Raggedy Ann,
There are three books actually
The chemistry of Connection, How the oxytocin response can help you find trust, intimacy and love by Susan Kuchinskas
The Oxytocin facotr, tapping the hormone of calm, love and healing by Kerstin Uvnas Moberg
Touching, the Human Significance of the Skin by Ashley Montagu (3rd edition)
The skin is the largest sensory organ of the body, the largest organ in fact, and touch (sexual and non sexual) can release hormones into our bodies/minds that provide the VERY LIFE GIVING connections we need.
It was noticed during WWII when babies were placed in orphanages where they were “well taken care of” but not cuddled and held and TOUCHED that they DIED. Literally died from lack of touch.
Even as adults, we need touch on our skin. Star who is a massage therapist is well aware of what that TOUCH can do for people, especially people who are suffering.
Just as we can sexually touch ourselves and bring pleasure to ourselves, we can also non-sexually touch and stroke ourselves to provide some of this NECESSARY stimulation to help ourselves heal. We can also hug our friends and our children.
I do feel that touch is ESSENTIAL to our health and well being and to our healing.
I think that touch (sexual and non sexual) that we get from a “significant other” may be a much or more the thing we desire and need in a “relationship” with another person and we are easily “love bombed” to accept someone because of our NEED for this touch.
BTW Raggedy Ann, the reason for the tattoo is that CPR does not bring back BOTH BODY AND MIND in people over 65…there is almost a ZERO chance of any “meaningful life” from A person who has been “revived” by CPR if they are over 65. Most of the time they end up severely brain injured or on life support in an ICU until some kind hearted person turns off the machines. I’ve worked in medicine a long time and I’ve treated some of these poor suffering souls with no chance of a “meaningful life” and I DO NOT WANT TO BE ONE…so when my time comes to go I want to do it FAST not have my dying prolonged by some well meaning medical person or fire man who didn’t read my chart and the DNR order and went ahead and “coded” me anyway.
Life can be wonderful, but life can also be a misery and I have no desire to prolong physical pain and misery if there isn’t going to be some of the wonderful left after the misery is over…just to prolong the “breathing” isn’t to prolong LIFE.
Thank you for that validation of my worth…and I hope that some of the words that I type here do help and comfort others because I have sure been comforted and supported by this blog, and I am still here after 3+ almost four years now because I STILL gain new insight every day from the wonderful people and articles that are here.
Learning ways to meet our need for touch, and to gain oxytocin which is the ultimate bonding and feel good hormone I think, is just another tool in our tool boxes for healing. Knowledge is POWER and the more we know the more power we can have to make our lives and our environment what we want them to be! (((hugs)))) and God bless.
I hear what you all are saying.
Just want to say that the old saying”Least said, soonest mendest” has merit for SOME people too. Working through trauma pain is one path to healing, but I don’t think it is the only path to healing.
There is a lot to be said for the approach that I think M.L. Gallagher took, if I am remembering right. Which was refusing to allow thoughts of the P in her brain, by focusing on the fact, for instance, that what she is doing TODAY to build a wonderful life is so much stronger than anything that happened in the past.
“Get busy, get better” is an AA saying I think.
Another blog a while back talked about the healing power of helping others.
There are many paths to healing. Also depends on the trauma, your history, your personality, etc. Massage, getting emotions out, etc. is not for everyone. Just wanted to mention that so someone isn’t sitting there thinking, omg, I must still have tons of trauma locked up in me, and here I was thinking I was just about healed.
There truly are many paths.
OXY STRONGLY disagree about cpr past 65. Thank god the emts worked on my motherinlaw in the cafe where she collapsed. She had many wonderful years after that, at least 15, before she even began to get Alzheimers. After cpr, she was airlifted, had to have quadruple bypass surgery, officially died on the operating table, and it was a battle to heal, but she did it. I’m so thankful for all the extra wonderful years she had after that.
Oxy, is there research or articles on the internet about that? I guess I can google that. But before I don’t call the ambulance for my husband who is more than 65, I’d want something more to go on…..Respect your opinion, but that is quite a statement to put out there. Almost ZERO chance??!!!?? I guess my mother-in-law was extremely lucky.
Dear Never,
Although CPR and ACLS has IMPROVED GREATLY in the last few years, seriously the statistical chances of FULL recovery is almost zero…there was a study done looking at people who had “sudden cardiac arrest” who were in the hospital for SOME OTHER PROBLEM. And of course, in a hospital they would get the quickest and most advanced ACLS (advanced cardiac live support, including defibrilation quickly) but out of like 700 cases of this studied, NOT ONE lived a single day outside of the hospital.
Yes, your MIL was EXTREMELY FORTUNATE, and I have only seen in my entire career ONE other person who had any life outside the hospital ICU setting. Lots of people get “ress’ed” but then lay in an ICU for days, weeks or months, on a breathing machine because the family can’t stand the thought of “mama dying”—some of those people can feel pain and some probably can’t, but WHY???????? I guess it is my years of standing by and seeing what is done to those people in the name of “saving life” that Makes me ABSOLUTELY NOT want that to happen to me.
The former patient of mine in a psych ward, who was physically “healthy” after 20+ minutes of CPR but his brain was the brain of a LOST 6 MONTH OLD PREVERBAL child who was lost, alone and afraid. He did not recognize any of his family and cried continually wandering around “lost”—I can’t even imagine the pain that poor lost soul was in. I don’t want to take even a chance that something like that happens to me. I also worked in head injuries for several years and I’ve seen people with such severe brain injuries that there was NO hope for them and they were “revived” to live a life of pain, immobility, anguish and so on. NOT for me. I don’t want to put my family through that at my age…or any age for that matter.
When my husband was burned over 95 % of his body (2nd and 3rd degree) he was in no pain, as the nerve endings were cooked, there was NO chance he would live no matter what was done. He was taken by air ambulance to the hospital though, and by the time I could get there they had him intubated etc. He and I had talked and I knew that he did not want that…and he was conscious for about 4 hours before they could legally pull the tube, and he lived another hour or so after that, but we did get our chances to say goodbye etc. while he was alert and oriented though he could not talk due to the burning in his throat. He was NOT in any pain (thank you Jesus!) but they intubated him KNOWING he had no chance of living more than 24 hours at most and if he HAD LIVED a few days more the pain would have been SO HORRIBLE. They were even going to send him to a hospital out of state, a burn center. He was 72 years old, and even if he’d been 27 in perfect health, he could not have lived. I told THEM he was going to die they never told me he couldn’t live. If I had NOT been a medical person, they would have convinced he he had a chance at life….because they did not have the balls, backbone and courage to admit that there are injuries and illnesses too BAD TO ALLOW LIFE OR HEALING.
I have fought my entire career with physicians who would not be honest with their patients….and when my step dad was dx with an incurable cancer I fought with them again, I MADE THEM tell him the prognosis…NO CURE POSSIBLE, but we could keep him comfortable. We did and he had 18 months of a good life before he passed away, but he had NO false “hope” that there was going to be a cure. He had time to grieve, we had time to grieve and to spend QUALITY TIME together. If my husband had been sent out of state what few precious hours we had together before he passed away would have been lost to him flying to an out of state hospital. I still want to bitach slap the fire out of the face of the doctor who was trying to “reassure” me that my husband was going to be “okay.”
Death is not, to me, the “end of life” but just another way station on our journey, and just being able to breathe and feel pain is not “life.”
If my heart stops, OK I’m gone. Okay, that’s all right with me. I’ll keep myself in as good a shape as I can between now and then and have regular check ups, and so on, but if my heart stops, that’s okay with me. I see my physician regularly, get reasonable tests for various problems, have had my heart and arteries checked etc. and I’m finally stopped smoking, eating a low sodium diet, and taking care of myself emotionally, spiritually as well as physically. Life is good for me, and I hope will be until I pass, but no CPR on my dead body please. Just put me in the ground and throw a party!
Vastly different experiences with end of life stuff. My childhood friend’s doctor said to her very ill father in the hopsital “Do you need more pain medication? Do you and all you family members understand that an additional dose could possibly end your life? Ok……you can say your goodbyes, I’ll be back in 10 minutes to try to relieve your pain.”
I think each case, each doctor is different, and it is fine to share opinions, but good to acknowledge, when talking about medical decisions, to be sure to not rely on anyone’s word for something, ask to read the actual research if you are going to base life and death decisions on it, or talk these issues over with a trusted doctor now. Many doctors ARE compassionate about end of life decisions. Not all doctors deliberately deceive the next of kin about the patient’s chances. I guess I have also been very fortunate in most of the doctors I’ve interacted with. At least if you have one you trust and have been with for a long time, you can discuss these kinds of things NOW, to get THEIR opinions.
Also been unlucky with doctors too…..but not on end of life stuff. All I can say is keeping trying doctors until you find one that you feel comfortable with and trust. It took me 15 years to find a good urologist! I sometimes wonder if certain specialties attract certain personalities. But the final urologist I had was COMPASSIONATE, TRUSTING and TRUSTWORTHY!