An excerpt from my new book, The Deep Work:
Psychology professor and researcher, Dr. Alan Fogel, shares that “over the course of evolution, our bodies decided to take the economic route and use a single neural system to detect and feel pain, regardless of whether it is emotional or physical.”[1] Although our brain does not process physical and emotional pain identically, research suggests there is substantial overlap between the two.
This pivotal neuroscientific insight also explains why Tylenol (acetaminophen) can help alleviate symptoms of heartbreak.[2] Physical and emotional pain are like two sides of the same coin. When we bite our tongue or stub a toe, we also become emotional. Damnit!, we might exclaim. Reciprocally, when we’re betrayed, we feel this emotional pain in our body.[3] I’ve had patients break out in tears, or uncontrollable laughter, just from gently therapeutic touch or after an acupuncture session.[4] When physical energy is released, it can translate emotionally. And vice versa, as was the case of the energy coursing down my left arm while grieving during a therapy session.
I’m not recommending that you take Tylenol for heartache but the fact that it can help reveals how intimately connected our mind, body, and emotions are.
Another poignant example occurred during medical school. A thief had broken into my studio apartment while I was sleeping. I woke up to find several belongings missing and my front door ajar. Later that day, a classmate massaged my back during a practice session and I broke out in tears, feeling the pain of the previous night’s invasion. I distinctly remember how my body felt connected to my home. Because my home was broken into, it felt like an extension of my body. This is an example not only of the body-emotion connection, but how our sense of embodiment can extend into what we consider safe space around us.
In so many ways, we are reminded that there is, in fact, no stark division among mind, emotion, and body. This understanding is the basis for the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology, whereby we understand ourselves to be intimately and often invisibly connected with other humans, animals, and with the planet itself.
In a master class on trauma, Dr. Peter Levine described how some clients who have suffered emotional trauma will first seek out medical help. They think something is physically wrong with them, when in fact it’s their emotional pain manifesting as physical symptoms.[5] They are usually unaware because the dissociation from their emotions happened unconsciously. When doctors can’t find anything structurally amiss, many don’t think to consider that emotional trauma may be the source. Understanding the intimate link between emotional and physical pain can help make this connection and lead to healing when other modalities have failed.
When we can’t act out a physical movement, such as running away from an attacker, the flight part of the fight or flight response can become stuck inside us as a conglomeration of physical, emotional, and psychological blockage. It can later manifest as physical pain without our realizing the original cause. The longer and more intensely the impulse to run is repressed, the greater the potential and intensity for repressed pain and its persistent symptoms.
Similarly, when we aren’t able to express our emotions during or after a traumatic event, this emotion can become backlogged. We end up with repressed emotional pain. It follows that if we feel emotional pain in our body, we are naturally going to feel when this emotional pain has been repressed. It seems likely that this derives from both a repressed motor response (such as not being able to carry out the act of yelling or crying) and/or the repression of an emotional experience itself (feeling fear, anger, joy or sadness, for example).
Because our nervous system recruits similar neurons for emotional and physical pain, emotional pain that has been backlogged can manifest as chronic physical pain such as persistent tension, vacuity, numbness, tingling, contraction, or achiness. This is why becoming curious about the uncomfortable parts of our body is a good place to begin looking for backlogged emotional trauma.
This body-emotional overlap also explains why I felt free from many chronic aches and pains, numbness and empty feelings, after I completed the Deep Work. I also maintained my physical flexibility, though I was no longer practicing yoga as much. Intuitively, I had largely stopped practicing in order to be with and feel into these pregnant places.
—from The Deep Work
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/body-sense/201204/emotional-and-physical-pain-activate-similar-brain-regions
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797610374741
[3] Also, recall the example with Dr. Levine in the footnote on page 36.
[4] The tears and laughter were not caused by pain or tickling from the needles.
[5] Note: I am not saying that all, or even most, physical illnesses are due to underlying emotions.
