Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, and we're all feeling
Speaker 1: rather chipper today. And this is stuff you should not know.
Speaker 1: Not emotionally painful is not at all true. I'm just
Speaker 1: really good at masking mine. Oh how about you. I'm
Speaker 1: feeling pretty good today. I'm glad man in this moment.
Speaker 1: But this is a This is an interesting topic because,
Speaker 1: as we'll see when we cover our history section here
Speaker 1: at the beginning. And thanks to Olivia for helping out
Speaker 1: with this one, right, wouldnt Olivia? Yeah? This was she
Speaker 1: wrote this right around Christmas. Kind of bad. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like one of puppies next right, Uh. We will soon
Speaker 1: learn and there's probably no surprise that things like emotional
Speaker 1: pain in and mental distress have quite often and still
Speaker 1: quite often take a back seat in the West and
Speaker 1: then the medical world. And it's just sort of that's
Speaker 1: sort of it's incredibly sad that that's the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just to do it just a brief sketch, emotional
Speaker 1: pain is exactly what you've always thought it was. There's nothing,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no new concept to it that you
Speaker 1: was gonna be like, oh, that's emotional pain. Anytime you
Speaker 1: felt like heartache, sadness, embarrassment, something where you felt like
Speaker 1: your body was responding to a sudden emotion, that's that's
Speaker 1: emotional pain, right, um. And it's just a part of life.
Speaker 1: People have said it's a part of life for a
Speaker 1: very long time. If you're a Buddhist, it is definitely
Speaker 1: a part of life. Same with Christians. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of how people have approached it. But you said something
Speaker 1: that I didn't realize that here in the West. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I realized this part here in the West.
Speaker 1: If you go to a doctor and you say I'm
Speaker 1: having emotional pain, they're like, actually, no, you're not. It's
Speaker 1: it's real pain and your leg is missing right now
Speaker 1: and I need to sew it up. And you're like no,
Speaker 1: but I'm emotionally affected by this. They'd be like, shut up,
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter. And there's a reason for that. And
Speaker 1: you can trace it all the way back to Decartes,
Speaker 1: that's right. I studied decart in college a bit um
Speaker 1: and the and this was a big deal. But in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, Renee Decart proposed the idea of dualism
Speaker 1: with the mind and body, and you think, like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, great, that kind of makes sense in a way,
Speaker 1: especially in the seventeenth century. But that was a big
Speaker 1: deal that really it was sort of a sea change
Speaker 1: in in a fundamental split that happened, which in which
Speaker 1: European medical science, uh was was trying to separate from
Speaker 1: the Church as far as their oversight goes. But what
Speaker 1: the real effect was was what I was talking about was,
Speaker 1: you know, mental illnesses were really good distinct separate thing
Speaker 1: from physical maladies. Yeah, and still today in the in
Speaker 1: in Western medicine, we do not combine those two, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, there's other cultures like traditional Chinese medicine, um,
Speaker 1: Indian I are Vedic medicine that they see mental and
Speaker 1: physical pain as pretty much, at the very least deeply connected,
Speaker 1: not too completely separate things, one of which may or
Speaker 1: may not exist like we believe in Western medicine. And
Speaker 1: to to be able to trace it back to like
Speaker 1: this point where um, the early medical doctors were like
Speaker 1: I call body and the Church is like I call mind,
Speaker 1: and they just kind of went their separate ways. I
Speaker 1: just find that fascinating, and it's landed us in this
Speaker 1: problem where we are in the United States and other
Speaker 1: Western countries where we don't we really give short shrift
Speaker 1: to emotional pain. But we're learning more and more that
Speaker 1: it is just as real and just as sometimes unbearable
Speaker 1: as physical pain, sometimes worse because there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of recognized treatments for it. Yet when they called mind
Speaker 1: and body, who was shirts and who was skinned? Uh
Speaker 1: they were both skins. Oh yeah, it was a sixty
Speaker 1: day Uh. People like Sigmund Freud. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: like no one ever talked about emotional pain in the West,
Speaker 1: or it was studied or anything like that. It's just
Speaker 1: that separation. Freud he did write about psychological pain, as
Speaker 1: did a lot of people that followed Freud or you know,
Speaker 1: not sorry acolytes of Floyd, but people that followed after him. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know kind of wrote about, you know, more
Speaker 1: in the terms of like mourning, like mourning someone's death
Speaker 1: or maybe a big romantic loss or something. And this
Speaker 1: emptiness or loneliness or sadness you might feel. But that's
Speaker 1: still not where we're what we're talking about today, which
Speaker 1: is this mind body connection where and as we'll see
Speaker 1: where study after study kind of um. And again it's
Speaker 1: a very hard thing to kind of prove outright, but
Speaker 1: strong correlations between physical conditions and emotional distress. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think Freud was still talking about it. He was saying, like, yes,
Speaker 1: you actually feel pain when you suffer a loss, like
Speaker 1: a death or a breakup or something like that. But
Speaker 1: it's become a little more a lot more sophisticated since
Speaker 1: Freud's time. Um, there's a term called psychic that a
Speaker 1: guy named Edwin Schneidman coin and m is psychic. It's
Speaker 1: so nineties. That is a nineties term, psychic all one word, right,
Speaker 1: And Edwin Schneidman, Um, he did coin in ninety three
Speaker 1: and um he he basically said it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's just another term for psychological anguish um and that
Speaker 1: he and he was a suicideologist, UM. And he believed
Speaker 1: that psychic was essentially behind every single um suicide that
Speaker 1: was ever attempted or completed. UM. And he kind of
Speaker 1: chalked it up to a few different things. And you'll
Speaker 1: kind of see in the nineties and then kind of
Speaker 1: expanding today, it's kind of expanded in contracted until we
Speaker 1: finally arrived at a decent definition. But all of it
Speaker 1: has to do with you are suddenly experiencing a terrible
Speaker 1: discrepancy between the way you think things should be and
Speaker 1: the way they suddenly are. And you are, you are,
Speaker 1: you're you feel like you yourself are at fault somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's you know again. And as we'll see, it's
Speaker 1: a very hard thing to study. Uh, it's pain period
Speaker 1: as super subjective. As we all know, physical pain is subjective.
Speaker 1: Emotional pain maybe, well it's probably about equally subjective now
Speaker 1: that I think about it. But there's not, as Olivia
Speaker 1: points out, there's not a one to one relationship between
Speaker 1: like an event and what he refers to his psychic Like,
Speaker 1: somebody may be really good at getting over stuff like
Speaker 1: that a lot better than someone else. Um, the level
Speaker 1: of the event may not necessarily always correlate to a
Speaker 1: level of emotional pain and any given individual. Um, some
Speaker 1: people maybe can process somebody's passing or death really really
Speaker 1: well because uh, they just get drunk all the time.
Speaker 1: That's a joke, but we will talk about that. That's
Speaker 1: a big component of all this stuff, definitely, But the
Speaker 1: point is like what Freud was talking about is something
Speaker 1: like an event happens or a loss happens. We realize
Speaker 1: over the years that it's not always just that, and
Speaker 1: there can be chronic, a chronic emotional pain that people
Speaker 1: feel that's UH tied to certain disorders of obviously depression
Speaker 1: UH can be a big factor. But all these things
Speaker 1: aren't mutually exclusive either now and the other thing that
Speaker 1: emerges is what we've all always known. All of us
Speaker 1: experience emotional pain to some degree or another, like you said,
Speaker 1: at different times, and some people chronically unfortunately, And they finally,
Speaker 1: I guess in the last ten years maybe have come
Speaker 1: up with a consensus definition for what I can tell.
Speaker 1: They say that emotional pain, which by the way, is
Speaker 1: interchangeable with psychological pain, psychical pain, psychic it's all the
Speaker 1: same thing. But emotional pain is a lasting, unsustainable and
Speaker 1: unpleasant feeling resulting from negative appraisal of an inability or
Speaker 1: deficiency of the self. So that the basic emotion of
Speaker 1: psychic pain, psychological pain, emotional pain is self disappointment because
Speaker 1: you're in an adversive state where you have a high
Speaker 1: self awareness of inadequacy, and that that is what you
Speaker 1: can kind of trace all of it back to yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about physical symptoms. There can be very
Speaker 1: specific things at times, like upset stomach or you know,
Speaker 1: things that might be brought on by what you might
Speaker 1: think of his stress. But if you experience sort of
Speaker 1: h chronic mental anguish and emotional pain, a lot of
Speaker 1: times it is just a an oh, we're all um
Speaker 1: body uh wounded nous that you might feel that you
Speaker 1: can't specifically, And that's sort of one of the issues
Speaker 1: is it's you don't walk into a doctor in America
Speaker 1: and say, my, I just my whole body feels off
Speaker 1: because I'm an emotional distress. They're gonna say, you've called
Speaker 1: the wrong doctor right here, take these sugar pills at home,
Speaker 1: but also give me five thousand dollars and I'm sorry
Speaker 1: about the weight. So they're not really sorry about the way.
Speaker 1: They may say that chuck, but they don't mean it.
Speaker 1: What's a social pain? Social pain is either the same
Speaker 1: thing as emotional pain, or it's kind of a subset
Speaker 1: of it. But it's they seem to strictly um. They
Speaker 1: say it's strictly from social interactions like rejection, being dumped, um,
Speaker 1: damage to your social connections. I saw m fomo that
Speaker 1: would be one. Yeah, it's like a joke that people say,
Speaker 1: but that that is very real with some people now, right,
Speaker 1: And so like when you when you feel fomo, right,
Speaker 1: you you feel bad? You don't it's not just in
Speaker 1: your head. It's so hard to get across, and it's
Speaker 1: almost totally unnecessary to get across because all of us
Speaker 1: have experienced emotional pain at some time or another. But
Speaker 1: if you've ever stopped and thought about it, why why
Speaker 1: would your body feel at all weird? Why wouldn't it
Speaker 1: just be strictly in your emotions are strictly in your
Speaker 1: head or strictly in your mind, like I've got this
Speaker 1: problem and I can't stop thinking about it instead or
Speaker 1: in addition to that, because that definitely happens to your
Speaker 1: body actually feels bad, wrong, off, pain, tense because of
Speaker 1: this emotional pain. And they actually believe this, to me,
Speaker 1: is the fact of the podcast. They believe that emotional
Speaker 1: pain came along as a result of our increasing socialization
Speaker 1: from the time we were primates up until now, and
Speaker 1: it piggybacked on our existing uh physical pain system. And
Speaker 1: because social bonds were so important to um survival that
Speaker 1: it was. It became a thing where you felt pain
Speaker 1: when those social bonds were threatened or broken. Right Like, uh,
Speaker 1: took took very sore from long hunt today, but took
Speaker 1: took feel especially painful today because Took Took not invited
Speaker 1: the main fire. It took. Took doesn't use prepositions, should he?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It depends if he's like unfrozen caveman lawyer. Yes. So.
Speaker 1: So the thing is is what took Tuk would have
Speaker 1: learned from their chuck from that experiences, I need to, like,
Speaker 1: I need to pay attention to this. There's something I'm
Speaker 1: doing wrong, There's something somebody else is doing wrong, and
Speaker 1: I need to remedy. I need to do something different
Speaker 1: in the future. And then in that way my social
Speaker 1: connections will be stronger. And when a saber tooth tired
Speaker 1: comes along, I'll have my crew to take care of
Speaker 1: it rather than its just making a meal out of me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great setup, I think so too. Should
Speaker 1: we take a break, Yes, let's all right. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back to talk more and hopefully make a few
Speaker 1: other little jokes about emotional pain. This is a tough
Speaker 1: one to joke. About. Yeah, no it is, but I
Speaker 1: think more than anything, to me, it's a tough one
Speaker 1: to talk about, and I don't I don't understand why.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because it's not fully understood. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble understanding or explaining it, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And when I say joke about, of course I mean
Speaker 1: joke alongside. Uh. None of this is is joke worthy.
Speaker 1: But we're a part part comedy show, so we try
Speaker 1: to work in these angles when we can, right. Yes,
Speaker 1: the funniest is when we explained that making jokes about
Speaker 1: it and why why we really should know that they
Speaker 1: don't really count. I think new people come along. Uh,
Speaker 1: did you see somebody was very upset about your awesome,
Speaker 1: awesome Midwest joke for which one from Edmond Fitzgerald podcast.
Speaker 1: Somebody wrote in and I didn't even remember because we
Speaker 1: recorded a lot to get ahead for Christmas, but I
Speaker 1: didn't even remember the joke. Somebody was very offended, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, what happened? I said, I feel like
Speaker 1: it was probably a joke that I could explain, but
Speaker 1: just let me know what happened and then rot back
Speaker 1: and it was a great joke, I said. I was
Speaker 1: trying to think of the game, the card game yuker.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's in tarot tarot cards. And I said,
Speaker 1: what was that game? I said that Midwesterners often played,
Speaker 1: and you get me out of here. And then this person,
Speaker 1: as I said, it was just a joke, of course,
Speaker 1: and that you're from the Midwest, you can say that
Speaker 1: in this person, I think felt a little bad, even
Speaker 1: which I then felt bad about. Uh, And that's no
Speaker 1: good for anyone. Now the rest of us feel bad
Speaker 1: because you shared it, and we all feel bad for
Speaker 1: you and the other person. All right, Can we talk
Speaker 1: about how mental pain affects the body? Yes, because here's
Speaker 1: the point. It's not just that mental pain exists. It
Speaker 1: actually is real pain. And thanks to our friend the
Speaker 1: Wonder Machine, the f m R, I, we actually know
Speaker 1: that the same parts of your brain that are responsible
Speaker 1: for experiencing different types of physical pain, uh, they light up,
Speaker 1: they become active in the presence of emotional pain. And
Speaker 1: they did this by basically inflicting emotional pain poor participant
Speaker 1: studies and then seeing what their brains did. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: here's the thing with a lot of these studies, what's
Speaker 1: important I think to know is that uh, it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily in an an exact in an exact time of crisis,
Speaker 1: like you know, we wanted to gather up people who
Speaker 1: had been dumped the day before, because of course you're
Speaker 1: going to be in that sort of state of mind
Speaker 1: at the time. Like most of these studies, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: see it's like studying your brain during resting rates or
Speaker 1: your heart during resting rates, and it's you know, it
Speaker 1: feels like it's more. And I'm not saying, you know,
Speaker 1: they're all in emotional pain still, but they didn't like
Speaker 1: juice these studies by getting just these like recently devastated people,
Speaker 1: I guess is what I'm trying to say right at first.
Speaker 1: And some of the techniques they use is just take
Speaker 1: an average person off the street and say we want
Speaker 1: to inflict emotional pain on you. They would um, in
Speaker 1: the experiment, they would be playing a game with other subjects,
Speaker 1: and um they would exclude the actual study participant from
Speaker 1: the game, or they would tell them that one of
Speaker 1: the other participants um admitted to not liking them and
Speaker 1: and they would show him rejection theme pictures stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and it was coming up with some pretty tepid results.
Speaker 1: But then there was a guy named Ethan Cross from
Speaker 1: University of Michigan. Yeah, he'll make you jump jump for
Speaker 1: his study results. I wonder if he wears his clothes backwards.
Speaker 1: When those kids made like a million dollars from wearing
Speaker 1: their clothes backwards at the mall once, just to go
Speaker 1: out there and do that. That's how they I mean, no,
Speaker 1: that's how they. That's how they were discovered at the
Speaker 1: mall discovered them. Yeah, it is a world. But anyway,
Speaker 1: back to Ethan Criss Cross. He used the Wonder Machine,
Speaker 1: but he did recruit people who were in an intense
Speaker 1: negative emotional state who had just been recently dumped and
Speaker 1: we're not taking it very well. And he put them
Speaker 1: in the Wonder machine and he said, hey, here's a
Speaker 1: picture about your ex that just dumped you. For a
Speaker 1: picture of them. Now think about some memory of them
Speaker 1: dumping you and how bad it feels. And then he
Speaker 1: sat there with a clipboard and a pencil and went
Speaker 1: very interesting, I see, and watched their brains do different
Speaker 1: things and they said, how did you get that picture?
Speaker 1: Don't ask about that. They give him a zap when
Speaker 1: they asked too many questions. Uh yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: there were about forty people in this study. Uh, and
Speaker 1: again he eventually used he used the fm R I eventually, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: And what he he found out was that the negative
Speaker 1: emotional state uh lit up the sensory and effective brain
Speaker 1: areas just like putting like hot heat on their arms.
Speaker 1: So this physical heat and this sort of made a
Speaker 1: little sense to me as far as like if you
Speaker 1: get like, if I get really really intensely upset about something,
Speaker 1: I feel like my head is on fire. Uh, So
Speaker 1: that I think there's something about heat, and then maybe
Speaker 1: that's why I used it. But they would like I
Speaker 1: don't think they would burn them, burn them, but they
Speaker 1: would put what was called a painful heat on their forearm.
Speaker 1: And found that the FMR I lit up just the
Speaker 1: same as with the emotional pain. Yeah. And so that
Speaker 1: supported something that he had also found in a review
Speaker 1: of existing literature that, um, they're the brain regions associated
Speaker 1: with our effective experience about the aversive quality of pain,
Speaker 1: which is, um, we like, if you hurt yourself physically, right, Um,
Speaker 1: you are you're suffering. That suffering is your desire for
Speaker 1: that pain to stop. You wanted to go away. It's
Speaker 1: like hurting you um existentially, it goes beyond just the
Speaker 1: actual physical experience, the sensory experience of it. That's them,
Speaker 1: that's the effective experience of physical pain. And that region
Speaker 1: of the brain definitely lights up the same for emotional
Speaker 1: pain and physical pain, because we're suffering from both equally.
Speaker 1: But what Cross said or showed was that, no, your
Speaker 1: actual sensory experience, like what your body feels when you're
Speaker 1: physically in pain, is the same when you're in emotionally
Speaker 1: in pain. So he said, ipso facto, my research shows
Speaker 1: emotional pain and physical pain, as far as the body
Speaker 1: is concerned, is the same thing. It's really just your
Speaker 1: doctor in the United States that is having trouble admitting
Speaker 1: this whole thing. All the evidence is showing your body
Speaker 1: is fully aware that they're the same. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's so frustrating because, like I said,
Speaker 1: when I think everybody, when they get really emotionally upset,
Speaker 1: the first thing that happens is your body is going
Speaker 1: to start physically reacting. Like I said, my head gets
Speaker 1: flush and hot, and like the heart races, and it's
Speaker 1: this almost like this fear response in me. Uh So
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe that you know, something like fight
Speaker 1: or flight, it's just so universally accepted. But something like this,
Speaker 1: which to me is the same thing going on, it
Speaker 1: can still be pooh pooed. Yeah, poop poo for now,
Speaker 1: but not much longer, I predict and for me, chuck,
Speaker 1: since we're throwing out our own stories. If I suffer
Speaker 1: some sort of emotional injury or whatever, right usually like
Speaker 1: embarrassment or something like that, it washes over me. Is
Speaker 1: the best way I can put it, basically, from the
Speaker 1: back of my head down the front and then through
Speaker 1: my chest and abdomen. And I actually saw research that
Speaker 1: suggested UM the vagus nerve that connects the brain through
Speaker 1: the chests and your abdomen and into your I believe
Speaker 1: your JOHNK area because it's activated during orgasms. From our
Speaker 1: orgasm episode, you'rs back. I think the medical term is
Speaker 1: your bits, but they okay, so they they they found
Speaker 1: that the anterior singular cortex activates the vegas nerve, which
Speaker 1: UM can over become overstimulated in the presence of a
Speaker 1: huge jolt of emotion, which can transfer to the vegas nerve,
Speaker 1: which can make you feel in your chest and abdomen
Speaker 1: like there's some sort of discomfort or sensation. Again, an
Speaker 1: emotion created a physical response. You're not You're not crazy,
Speaker 1: you really are feeling that way. Yeah, And like I
Speaker 1: remember feeling this stuff from the time I even knew
Speaker 1: what feelings were. You know, nobody likes to be picked last.
Speaker 1: As far as the social pain, Uh no, one likes
Speaker 1: to be embarrassed in front of people. But that stuff
Speaker 1: doesn't stop, you know, um, the social thing. Like when
Speaker 1: we were talking about it, it might sound like, um,
Speaker 1: obviously something you will experience an adolescence and growing up,
Speaker 1: but that stuff doesn't go away. Uh No, it really doesn't.
Speaker 1: Me No, no, same here. I thought about making that joke,
Speaker 1: but then I pulled it back from the edge. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe some people have really squared themselves away such, but
Speaker 1: to me, it's just seems like part of in you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the history that we kind of truncated
Speaker 1: at the beginning. Talked about it being part of the
Speaker 1: human condition, and I just think that's so obviously true,
Speaker 1: It's totally true. I think people who don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with that are really just dealing with it less
Speaker 1: than other people. I don't think anybody's ever managed to
Speaker 1: eradicate emotional pain from their lives, you know, But in
Speaker 1: the people that seem like they've got it all together
Speaker 1: could be suffering the worst. You never know, they might
Speaker 1: just be really good at at burying that stuff or
Speaker 1: what have you, like Flanders types exactly. There's one other
Speaker 1: thing about the the comparison, though, of physical pain and
Speaker 1: emotional pain, that really is a difference, and that is
Speaker 1: that when you're experiencing physical pain, there's usually something you
Speaker 1: can do to kind of stem it off immediately. Do
Speaker 1: you put your hand like a hot of it, You
Speaker 1: can pull your hand away. But if you experience like
Speaker 1: an emotional injury, uh, and you feel emotional pain, you
Speaker 1: can't like hold your hand, you can't run it underwater,
Speaker 1: you can't. There's nothing you can do right then to
Speaker 1: stop it except for essentially self soothed as best you
Speaker 1: can until it subsides. Whereas with physical pain there's often
Speaker 1: stuff you can do to kind of treat it immediately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what I think, and that's an acute thing, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: But what I think it's interesting is that like evolutionarily speaking,
Speaker 1: emotional pain is a signal, just like a physical pain
Speaker 1: is a signal to like tend to yourself in some
Speaker 1: way and whenever. And we get a lot of emails
Speaker 1: from people that are suffering great deals of emotional pain,
Speaker 1: like listeners, you would not believe some of the emails
Speaker 1: we get of people that are in such distress. And
Speaker 1: I always try to say the same thing, which is
Speaker 1: like and usually it's in reference to the podcast, kind
Speaker 1: of help can calm them down in some way, which
Speaker 1: is really nice to hear. But always tell people the
Speaker 1: same way as which is like, hey, listen, get some
Speaker 1: help and treat yourself right, like drink a lot of water,
Speaker 1: go for a walk, Like these are literal physical things
Speaker 1: that you can do that will it's not a cure,
Speaker 1: but it will certainly help alleviate acute symptoms. You know,
Speaker 1: self soothe. Yeah, but it's it's more than self suit
Speaker 1: to me, because it's like it's it's like, no, you
Speaker 1: need to treat it like there's a physical problem, Like
Speaker 1: that's why you should drink a lot of water and
Speaker 1: go outside, and uh, it's soothing, but it's also doing
Speaker 1: something to your body. And interestingly, we'll talk about things
Speaker 1: you can do and you just nailed a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: But apparently walking outside in nature, um is a really
Speaker 1: great way to, um, I guess, alleviate emotional pain. And like,
Speaker 1: if you have a forest, great, walk around the forest.
Speaker 1: If you have a meadow, walk around the meadow. If
Speaker 1: you have a public park, walk around the park. Just
Speaker 1: getting outside can help a tremendous amount. Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really nice thing that you say
Speaker 1: to people that chuck My pat responses, hey, man, keep
Speaker 1: on trucking? Is hey just like that mud flap says Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one ever writes back, although or if they do,
Speaker 1: they're like even matter than they were before, They're more
Speaker 1: upset than before. It's weird. People are strange. Uh. Do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about drugs? Yeah, this is really
Speaker 1: interesting to me. Uh, this first bit on a seat
Speaker 1: a menafin because they and I had no idea about
Speaker 1: any of this, but they have found out through studies
Speaker 1: that a seeda menafin like thailand are or other types
Speaker 1: of you know, generic pain killers, it actually can dull
Speaker 1: you emotionally. UM. I'm wondering about to what degree, because
Speaker 1: they say it can dull that like the social pain
Speaker 1: that you might feel if your pomoed or left out
Speaker 1: of something, Uh, it can emotionally blunt your reactions that
Speaker 1: other Like if somebody tells you about something bad, you
Speaker 1: can be I guess less empathetic if you're taking a
Speaker 1: seat a menafin, And that was really surprising. The converse
Speaker 1: is true too, You're because you're less empathetic, you experience
Speaker 1: fewer positive emotions too. So the weird thing is is
Speaker 1: it's not like it affects your brain or your processing
Speaker 1: of events you're fully aware of, Like, this is a
Speaker 1: really great thing my friends telling me, and I understand
Speaker 1: that my friend is uh is proud, reasonably proud for this,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel at all happy for them because
Speaker 1: of the sea a menafin. That's a really weird effect.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much and how pronounced, Like I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to I want to follow up on that guy.
Speaker 1: I don't really ever take that stuff that much. But
Speaker 1: but I feel like, even you know, just a few
Speaker 1: times you have taken it, if it was a pronounced effect,
Speaker 1: you probably would have noticed it. Probably, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like if you're if your hand is suddenly
Speaker 1: making trails of itself, even though that's the first time
Speaker 1: I mean you've taken this, you noticed that that happened.
Speaker 1: I would because it was a pronounced effect. Same thing
Speaker 1: with you know, emotions being blunted with a Sina benefit
Speaker 1: probably good point. Opioids obviously is something we can't not
Speaker 1: talk about, uh such an you know, we we should
Speaker 1: probably tackle bits and pieces of the opioid epidemic in
Speaker 1: full episodes. But uh, opioids are interesting in that sometimes
Speaker 1: you might be taking them for a real physical malady
Speaker 1: and you happen upon the um the emotional relief that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden feels good to you when you
Speaker 1: take an opioid, whereas other people that is exactly what
Speaker 1: they're seeking when they're like med seeking or buying pills
Speaker 1: on the black market or whatever. Yeah, which is a
Speaker 1: huge problem. And it's you know, obviously not just opioids,
Speaker 1: but alcohol and food, um, basically, anything that can give
Speaker 1: you some sort of positive feeling can be you know,
Speaker 1: used to stave off emotional pain. That that is not
Speaker 1: the way to do it, though, but you know a
Speaker 1: lot of people do do it that way, and it's
Speaker 1: tough to blame them, especially if they haven't found a
Speaker 1: better way yet to deal with them. So you know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned before that pain, all kinds of pain is
Speaker 1: very subjective, and especially emotional pain, and obviously because of that,
Speaker 1: it's a really hard thing to to quantify. Uh. We've
Speaker 1: talked about the physical pain scale that was developed, but
Speaker 1: there have been various attempts over the years at mental
Speaker 1: pain scales, and they've never really all agreed like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the really really good one because there's scores
Speaker 1: of data behind it, and they talked with a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who live with mental pain and at all
Speaker 1: they kind of signed off on it. It's weird that
Speaker 1: they haven't really done that, but they've The long story
Speaker 1: short is they've never been able to land on a
Speaker 1: really great one, although I think one they do kind
Speaker 1: of use, right, the Orbach one. Yeah, they used the
Speaker 1: Orbach and michaelins Or mental pain scale pretty frequently. But
Speaker 1: the problem is there was a review of ten major
Speaker 1: scales that are used around the world, um that was
Speaker 1: published in two in the British Medical Journal, and they
Speaker 1: said none of these seem to be valid, Like they're
Speaker 1: all they might as well all be like tea leaves
Speaker 1: and lizard guts, like that's that's as as good as
Speaker 1: they are. At really nailing down emotional pain or quantifying it.
Speaker 1: So they said, don't we shouldn't give up or anything
Speaker 1: like that. We just need to figure out how to
Speaker 1: do it better. So essentially the upshot is there's no
Speaker 1: way at the moment to accurately measure emotional pain, and
Speaker 1: then I guess figure out how to treat it depending
Speaker 1: on the measurement from there. Why else would you want
Speaker 1: to measure it? Yeah, I guess so, Because I was
Speaker 1: about to say why, I feel like sometimes a discipline
Speaker 1: can get so hung up on something like this that
Speaker 1: it thwarts progress. Uh. So I hope that's not the case.
Speaker 1: It's called getting wonky. Uh. It's no surprise. We mentioned
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier about other conditions related to mental pain.
Speaker 1: I guess code morbidities for lack of a better word.
Speaker 1: But heartbreak you mentioned is obviously one of the big ones.
Speaker 1: What I found interesting in this is that some people
Speaker 1: have UM like in heartbreak two drug withdrawal. And it
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense because when you are in
Speaker 1: love UM and especially if you've ever been sort of
Speaker 1: that new love, if you've ever been newly in love,
Speaker 1: but that really flamed out fast, and it's taken away
Speaker 1: from you. UM, that's sort of like drug withdrawal, because
Speaker 1: you've got all sorts of uh dopamine and oxytocin and
Speaker 1: things firing when you have that fresh new love happening,
Speaker 1: and if that's taken away, then it's like taking away
Speaker 1: a feel good drug. Yeah, welcome to six to ninth grade,
Speaker 1: six ninth man boy through through college. Okay, sure, fair enough.
Speaker 1: Welcome to sixth grade through the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: About that, the thing is is, because you're experiencing this,
Speaker 1: and because you're experiencing stress, like when you when you
Speaker 1: undergo rejection or a sense of betrayal or a sense
Speaker 1: of loss, your body actually does reliefs cortissolve, So you
Speaker 1: actually are experiencing stress, and you actually can have physical
Speaker 1: symptoms from that, like digestive problems, tough to sleep, your
Speaker 1: immune system is down, you might get sick. And then
Speaker 1: we did an episode a long time ago UM called
Speaker 1: can you die of a broken Heart? And then yes
Speaker 1: you can. There's something called taco subo cardiomyopathy, which is
Speaker 1: a sudden emotional or physical stressor basically weakens the heart
Speaker 1: and you basically have a heart attack from it, possibly
Speaker 1: from being dumped. If it's bad enough. I knew that
Speaker 1: sounded super familiar. I say, before we go any further, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we take our last break. How about that, let's do
Speaker 1: it so. I think, UM, one of the first things
Speaker 1: people think about when they think of emotional pain is depression,
Speaker 1: Like there's you know, there are people out there who
Speaker 1: have depression, and you can make an argument that with
Speaker 1: depression you're suffering chronic emotional pain. What they found, though,
Speaker 1: is that people with emotional pain, if you if people
Speaker 1: with depression, if you have really high levels of emotional pain,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily correlated with the UM the largest burden
Speaker 1: of depression. So if you put ten people together, you've
Speaker 1: got one guy who's the most suppressed of all, he's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the person with the greatest levels of emotional pain,
Speaker 1: which suggests that depression, UM and emotional pain are not
Speaker 1: one and the same. Depressions its own thing has other symptoms.
Speaker 1: It's just correlates very strongly with emotional pain, which seems
Speaker 1: to be one of the leading symptoms of depression, but
Speaker 1: not with depression. Is they're not interchangeable. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: a lot of these that we're talking about here, like
Speaker 1: they're weaving in and out of each other all the
Speaker 1: time in some cases. And but I think the distinction
Speaker 1: is still important to make though you know it, rather
Speaker 1: than just lumping it in as all one kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And eating disorders to a lot of people are like,
Speaker 1: you've got any disorder, you really like the food, huh.
Speaker 1: And most people who treat eating disorders are aware that
Speaker 1: it has very little to do with food. Food just
Speaker 1: happens to be something that, um, these people can use
Speaker 1: to cope, that they can use to uh feel better
Speaker 1: about themselves or forget or distract themselves for a little while.
Speaker 1: But really what they're doing, it's dealing with um, emotional
Speaker 1: pain that they don't have a better way to deal with,
Speaker 1: so they turn to food. That's what eating disorders are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a study in that I'm surprised it wasn't higher, honestly,
Speaker 1: that found that of disordered eating patients experienced significant mental
Speaker 1: pain compared to six percent of the control So that's
Speaker 1: quite a jump. Yeah, I mean that's huge. It's pretty
Speaker 1: much all you need to sing, uh, well, we've got
Speaker 1: well this is sort of the big one. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean they're all big, but borderline personality disorder bp D. UM.
Speaker 1: This maybe sort of at the top of the ladder
Speaker 1: as far as what might cause the most consistent and
Speaker 1: the worst kind of mental pain that someone UH might
Speaker 1: suffer because a lot of times, for many reasons, but
Speaker 1: a lot of times, UH, you suffer from bp D
Speaker 1: because of childhood abuse or childhood neglect. Uh. Sometimes it's genets.
Speaker 1: There's some gener edics thrown in there, but you know,
Speaker 1: this is stuff that's very very deeply rooted in somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the it's chronic mental pain UM, especially those
Speaker 1: related to narcissistic wounds, where you feel a sense of
Speaker 1: rejection in It just completely undermines your sense of self
Speaker 1: worth and pride. But the way that it manifests itself
Speaker 1: and people with borderline personality disorder is that they might
Speaker 1: have inappropriate anger, They might UM dissociate from themselves or reality.
Speaker 1: They might feel emptiness. UM there are emotionally unstable in
Speaker 1: most cases. And what I saw it UM ascribed to
Speaker 1: is that essentially because of that childhood neglect or abuse
Speaker 1: or trauma of some sort there, they become so afraid
Speaker 1: of being abandoned that they actually alienate people with their behavior.
Speaker 1: That's that, which that sounds to be like a old
Speaker 1: medieval curse essentially, like the more you try to keep
Speaker 1: people around, the further way they're going to get and
Speaker 1: you're really gonna want them to be around you. That
Speaker 1: sounds about as awful and affliction as you can have. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, you shouldn't be surprised that if you
Speaker 1: suffer from borderline personality disorder, uh, you're way more likely
Speaker 1: to abuse or missuse substances. Uh, maybe suffer from that
Speaker 1: eating disorder we were talking about, have obviously anxiety depression, uh,
Speaker 1: and even be at risk or suicide. Yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: think we should do a BPD episode someday. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot there, for sure. There's also something called non
Speaker 1: suicidal self injury and it is a fairly new diagnosis
Speaker 1: as far as the d s M is concerned. UM,
Speaker 1: and it can be its own symptom, it can be
Speaker 1: a symptom of other things. Like people with BPD, UM
Speaker 1: often engage in non suicidal self injury. But essentially what
Speaker 1: it is is self cutting, UM, punching a wall like
Speaker 1: a bunch of times. UM. What you're what they've frequently
Speaker 1: thought was that they they're these people are overcome with
Speaker 1: emotions and the only way to release that tension from
Speaker 1: that emotion is to cut themselves or punch that wall.
Speaker 1: And more recent research has found that actually they think
Speaker 1: that what they're what they've stumbled upon is this kind
Speaker 1: of innate mechanism humans have where when you experience a
Speaker 1: painful stimulus, when it subsides, you don't just go back
Speaker 1: to how you felt right before the painful stimulus, You
Speaker 1: actually have a bit of a sense of euphoria, and
Speaker 1: that they're actually doing they're actually going for that sense
Speaker 1: of relief in euphoria by cutting themselves or by punching
Speaker 1: the wall or whatever self injurious behavior. They're engaged and
Speaker 1: that that's really what's behind it. But that what differentiates
Speaker 1: them from people who um don't engage in that behavior
Speaker 1: that they feel like they deserve it, they deserve punishment,
Speaker 1: or they're defective, there's something wrong with them. So that's
Speaker 1: why they respond in that manner where they hurt themselves
Speaker 1: to kind of cope, rather than say turning to food
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, it's just devastating, And that's that sense
Speaker 1: of self that it seems like we just keep going
Speaker 1: back to when it comes to this emotional pain. It's
Speaker 1: something is wrong with me, and maybe I deserve this.
Speaker 1: It's just I've never had these kind of feelings, and
Speaker 1: I just my heart breaks to think about someone walking
Speaker 1: around feeling this way. You know. UM, rejection sensitive dysphoria
Speaker 1: is something that I had never heard of, because it
Speaker 1: seems like it's really sort of on the leading edge
Speaker 1: of what's being studied. Now that's that. In fact, that
Speaker 1: phrase rejection sensitive dysphoria isn't even part of the medical community. Um,
Speaker 1: Like they haven't even UM. I guess what would you
Speaker 1: call that? Well, the medical community a lot of it,
Speaker 1: except that it's it exists, but it's not in the
Speaker 1: d s M. So it's technically not an actual diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Is that what it is? Yeah, that's my understanding, all right,
Speaker 1: And this is UM and this, you know, obviously go
Speaker 1: along with some other neurodivergences, other mood disorders. Like we said,
Speaker 1: a lot of these are sort of criss cross each other,
Speaker 1: but they might experience mental pain or discomfort and feel,
Speaker 1: you know, this rejection that we keep talking about. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that really stood out to me or
Speaker 1: interpret like something ambiguous as rejection, right, so when they're
Speaker 1: when they're rejected. When you feel rejected and you have
Speaker 1: rs D, you have a full body sense of being
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the emotions that you feel. Nobody likes to
Speaker 1: be rejected. Now take that feeling of being rejected and
Speaker 1: amplify it a million times so that it completely saturates
Speaker 1: every fiber in your being, and then make it so
Speaker 1: that just about anything anyone says to you is a
Speaker 1: form of rejection. Correcting you for something that you you
Speaker 1: you misspoke about, UM, telling you that you're doing something wrong,
Speaker 1: anything like like breaking plans with you because you have
Speaker 1: to take your ailing mother to the hospital. Like, all
Speaker 1: of that is considered rejection, and all of it is
Speaker 1: met or responded to by this overwhelming flood of negative emotion.
Speaker 1: UH suicide We've talked about UM kind of here and
Speaker 1: there throughout the episode. UM. Obviously that's a big risk
Speaker 1: if you're suffering from depression and uh bp D. But
Speaker 1: emotional pain, and again this is something that we want
Speaker 1: to draw distinction. Emotional pain is a real major factor
Speaker 1: and it's not everyone, but many Many people who have
Speaker 1: died by suicide or attempted suicide had reported previously that
Speaker 1: they it was a psychological pain that they were trying
Speaker 1: to escape from or end. Right. One thing that I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about but makes total senses. There's some suicidal
Speaker 1: ideation um and that that that can be a coping
Speaker 1: mechanism for people who are UM risk at risk of
Speaker 1: suicide UM, and that they're they're basically saying, like, I can,
Speaker 1: I can keep making it. It's not quite bad enough yet.
Speaker 1: And I always have that out of taking my own
Speaker 1: life if things get too bad, and that suicidal ideation,
Speaker 1: and some people just use that to get by um
Speaker 1: and get through emotional pain, to just remind themselves that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not that bad yet. Right. Well, I
Speaker 1: had not heard of that, but I mean I get
Speaker 1: I get the basis of it. It's very very saddening,
Speaker 1: but I get the strange logic behind it, you know,
Speaker 1: yeah for sure. Um. All right, So we would love
Speaker 1: to end on a bit more of a positive note,
Speaker 1: which is there are treatments for these things. Uh. Like
Speaker 1: we mentioned it, it is an evolutionary signal when you're
Speaker 1: feeling emotional pain too uh to do something about it.
Speaker 1: It is your body saying, hey, this is uh not
Speaker 1: just this is no way to live. But like, this
Speaker 1: is dangerous for you, and you need to take care
Speaker 1: of yourself and self soothe and do all those things,
Speaker 1: but also seek treatment. And there are quite a few
Speaker 1: treatments that are that are out there for you. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's cognitive behavioral therapy, which basically says, you, Um, we
Speaker 1: don't know why you're feeling the way you're feeling. Who knows,
Speaker 1: We might never uncover it. The point of what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do is to teach you how to live
Speaker 1: a better life with being saddled with these negative emotions,
Speaker 1: learn to deal with them better, learn to think of
Speaker 1: them as less powerful than they are. And CBT has
Speaker 1: been around for a while and it is probably the
Speaker 1: most successful, UM psycho psychological therapy there is, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of given birth to some subsets of it, and
Speaker 1: a couple of them are really specifically geared towards treating
Speaker 1: emotional pain. Once called dialectical behavioral therapy, it's been around
Speaker 1: since the seventies. A psychologist named Marcia Linahan UM came
Speaker 1: up with it. Yeah, this one's interesting, UM, And they
Speaker 1: say that this is one of the best treatments if
Speaker 1: you suffer from borderline personality disorder to undergo and uh,
Speaker 1: if you everyone experiences emotional pain, but if you experience
Speaker 1: these things really, really really intensely, then this, uh DBT
Speaker 1: might be for you. It's called dialectical because, um, it's
Speaker 1: about sort of accepting your behaviors, accepting your situation that
Speaker 1: you're in, but trying to change them. So the acceptance
Speaker 1: part is a big is a big piece to DBT
Speaker 1: as well as a c T Acceptance and commitment therapy. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dialectical means like things that are concepts that are in
Speaker 1: logical opposition to one another. And then this one makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. I thought it was pretty cool. Um.
Speaker 1: They Also one of the big things about DBT is
Speaker 1: there's group therapy and you practice your skills in it,
Speaker 1: so you're like, watch this emotional regulation everybody, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure what the groups are like, but
Speaker 1: I saw that it was more akin to a classrooms
Speaker 1: setting than a group therapy setting. There's also acceptance and
Speaker 1: commitment therapy. It has a lot of the same ideas
Speaker 1: behind it. Basically that you need to um accept that
Speaker 1: you feel emotional pain and and kind of move on
Speaker 1: without and move on with it make make make the
Speaker 1: best of your life using mindfulness techniques typically, and both
Speaker 1: of those things they center on the idea of, um,
Speaker 1: you have emotional pain, there's not a lot you like,
Speaker 1: you're never going to free yourself from emotional pain. So
Speaker 1: let's teach you, the person, how to deal with emotional
Speaker 1: pain better. And that makes a lot of sense, and
Speaker 1: it actually is effective for a lot of people. But
Speaker 1: there's also another school of thought that says, like they're
Speaker 1: those things are wrong because they're coming from a premise
Speaker 1: that you have emotional pain, you just have to accept
Speaker 1: it and deal with it. There's a guy named um
Speaker 1: Mark Rigo. He's a psychiatrist at Yale, and he's on
Speaker 1: the other side and says, we need to figure how
Speaker 1: to treat emotional pain. You're not gonna get any great
Speaker 1: signals or any great understanding from your emotional pain. We
Speaker 1: need to get rid of it however we can, um.
Speaker 1: And that's a kind of controversial because people are like, well,
Speaker 1: you're pathologizing maybe emotional pain that everybody has, and he's saying,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, some people have way more acute or way
Speaker 1: more chronic emotional pain that's actually debilitating and rather than them,
Speaker 1: you know, going to group and practicing their skills. Let's
Speaker 1: figure out some medications to help them get back on
Speaker 1: their feet, and then they can go to like CBT
Speaker 1: or DBT or a c T H and work it out.
Speaker 1: But they're they're so far beyond that. We need to
Speaker 1: bring them back to the place where that therapy can
Speaker 1: actually help. Yeah, I mean, I guess if that helps you,
Speaker 1: that's great. I think I identify a little more with
Speaker 1: the um the previous ones we were talking about, the
Speaker 1: acceptance because it kind of ties into the whole I
Speaker 1: am not my behaviors line of thought, Um, like I
Speaker 1: can be this and also be something else totally, which
Speaker 1: is I think could be very empowering. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: learned a tremendous amount for my therapy and it's essentially
Speaker 1: geared towards that of like you said, I'm not my behaviors,
Speaker 1: I'm not my thoughts, are not my feelings, like I
Speaker 1: am the kind of the sum total of all of
Speaker 1: those things. And also just um, you know, learning not
Speaker 1: to be such a negative nelly. Same here, my friend,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about emotional pain, sit
Speaker 1: back and wait because it'll come sooner or later. And
Speaker 1: since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener phone call. What first ever um
Speaker 1: our old or old pal? John Hodgman, friend of the
Speaker 1: show and friend of ours in real life, ye called
Speaker 1: me as he still listens to our show some really yeah,
Speaker 1: which made me feel really good. I doubt if he
Speaker 1: listens to him all. He probably sturfs through and skips
Speaker 1: around and listens to what might appeal to him. But he, uh,
Speaker 1: he listened to the episode on the word and phrase origins,
Speaker 1: which you know, John of course is in talented orator
Speaker 1: and wordsmiths, so it's not surprising that when jumped out
Speaker 1: at him. But he called because he wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about the peu remember when something stinks, And he said,
Speaker 1: I think that might have come about And it made
Speaker 1: sense to me when because that's sort of the sound
Speaker 1: you make when you spit something out that might be
Speaker 1: bad for you. So like evolutionarily, if you put something
Speaker 1: in your mouth, it's like super bitter, which evolutionary and
Speaker 1: speaking means it could be poisonous. You go to you know,
Speaker 1: like like spit something out and he thinks, p you
Speaker 1: may have evolved from that. I saw other places that
Speaker 1: it's kind of a nuanced version of the where like
Speaker 1: when you get smacked in the face by a disgusting smell,
Speaker 1: Like the exclamation you make involuntarily is like pure kind
Speaker 1: of that kind of thing. It makes sense and just
Speaker 1: something I think you'll enjoy. I've been holding out on
Speaker 1: this to tell you, he said. And by the way,
Speaker 1: he said, did I ever tell you, Chuck that for
Speaker 1: the first couple of years I listened to the show
Speaker 1: before I knew you guys, I thought you had a ponytail. Oh,
Speaker 1: that just tickled me. I would pay good money to
Speaker 1: see you with a ponytail. Yeah, I thought that was
Speaker 1: good stuff. This Halloween's coming up, Chuck, you never so
Speaker 1: thanks to Hodgi. Good good guy, good friend. Yeah, great guy.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Hodgi for the first ever listener phone call.
Speaker 1: And if you want to be like Hodgman, see if
Speaker 1: you can find Chuck's phone number and give him a call. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can also send us an email
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. H