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Physical and emotional pain are closely related
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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American scientists, in the process of studying human feelings, found out that a person's pain threshold directly depends on his mental state. Simply put, happy and contented people tolerate physical pain easier and calmer than those who are preoccupied with experiences. This dependence is traced due to the fact that both emotional and physical pain are processed in the same part of the brain, which sends signals to the body.
Self-confidence, self-sufficiency, a sense of joy and need also affect the perception of pain. The thought arises that if a person is happy, then he does not have time to pay attention to unpleasant sensations and focus his thoughts on physical pain. Internally calm people usually have enough patience to endure pain without unnecessary inconvenience.
The feedback is also noticeable: scientists have discovered that anxiety, a feeling of strong fear or self-doubt can cause sharp physical pain. Surely you have noticed a stabbing pain inside when you suddenly hear a loud sound in a dark room. It is also not for nothing that they say that fear makes everything shrink: if you listen to your body, you can notice an involuntary strong contraction of the internal organs at the moment of fear, which causes pain.
Read also: Mental pain
It can be noted that people who lack self-confidence, as well as people with low self-esteem, are often more susceptible to chronic diseases than those who live happily and do not worry about trifles.
Researchers also found that a lack of understanding of oneself and other people can lead to the appearance of periodic, unrelated pain sensations. People who feel needed and in demand are free from such feelings.
The following experiment was conducted: ten strangers were asked to choose from a list of personal human qualities 2 of those that, in their opinion, should speak about them most vividly. Then the test subjects got to know each other, communicated, they had to fill out the same questionnaires about each other: write down several qualities that, at first glance, suited the interlocutors. Thus, the scientists received two lists of personal qualities of each participant in the experiment: the first is what he thinks about himself, the second is what the other participants think about him.
The study showed that those people whose opinion of themselves coincided with the opinion of others were more self-confident and, therefore, less susceptible to sudden pain sensations, and also had a higher pain threshold. Those participants who formed an opinion of themselves that differed from the opinion of others could hardly bear physical pain and complained of periodic attacks of fear and uncertainty, which were accompanied by painful sensations.
Scientists advise working on yourself, cultivating self-confidence, perhaps attending personal growth trainings or a psychologist, since inferiority complexes and excessive fearfulness can cause not only emotional distress, but also physical health problems.
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