Physical vs. Emotional pain - which is worse?

(please note I didn't write this nor am I trying to take credit for it...I just thought it was intresting and wanted to share...)

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Emotional pain hurts more than physical pain, researchers say?

Pain caused by emotional distress is more deeply felt and longer lasting than that caused by physical injuries, according to a new study. By Chris Irvine

In a finding that calls into question the old saying that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me", psychologists used four experiments to discover how people get over emotional or physical pain.

In their paper "When Hurt Will Not Heal: Exploring the Capacity to Relive Social and Physical Pain", the authors propose recent discoveries suggesting social or emotional pain is as real and intense as physical pain.

The researchers asked participants to relive their past painful experiences by writing in detail what had happened and how they had felt.

In the first two studies, students were asked to relive both emotional and physical pain, answering a series of questions and then recalling in detail an experience of physical injury, or an experience of betrayal by a person who was close to them, or both.

Each experience was to have occurred in the previous five years.

The students were asked to note how long ago the event happened, how much it hurt at the time, how many times they had talked about the experience, and how painful the experience felt now.

Participants in the emotional pain condition reported higher levels of pain than participants in the physical pain condition, found the researchers from Purdue University in the US and Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales in Australia.

The students also reported less pain when they relived the experience than they had reported before writing the account.

In experiments three and four participants were given cognitive tasks with different levels of difficult after reliving a socially or physically painful event.

Again, those in the emotional pain condition performed worse than those thinking about physical injury.

One of the authors, Dr Kip Williams from Purdue, said: "While both types of pain can hurt very much at the time they occur, social pain has the unique ability to come back over and over again, whereas physical pain lingers only as an awareness that it was indeed at one time painful.

"Why aren't we always suffering pain by recollections of social betrayal and other forms of social pain? Because we are pretty good at keeping these memories at bay.

"We had to induce our participants to think about the details of the social painful event in order to get them to feel pain at the present. Merely saying, 'oh yeah, my boyfriend cheated on me once...' is insufficient to cause current pain. They have to steep themselves in the memory, and that's something we don't ordinarily do."

The results are published in the August issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Emotional pain is far, far worse because it keeps on giving you pain. Physical pain is far more transient and temporary...and probably better handled by most people.

Of course, if you are talking about "play pain" - then I think that physical pain is more painful than being called a pig or a slut when you are in a scene.

The question is a little ridiculous, "which is worse, physical or emotional pain?"

Both can be bad.

All pain is relative and is impossible to measure. Pain can only DESCRIBED, not measured.

When you ask some people to rate their pain on a 1-10 scale, one being just noticeable and 10 being the worst possible pain, people often rate very moderate pains like chronic back pain or shoulder pain as 10--the worst possible pain. When you then say, is it as bad as tearing the arms and legs from your body, THAT being a REAL "10", people look at you like you are crazy.

The truth is, most people will exaggerate how severe their pain is, the degreee to which is often dependent on WHO is asking.

Emotional pain as well as physical pain, does go away.

I do not like any pain but a couple of years ago I ripped a tendon from it's anchor in my shoulder. out of 10................574!!!

DT

When comparing the two types of pain, teens who cut will often say they do so because the physical pain is easier to tolerate that the emotional pain it stands in for.

Emotional pain is worse, it is there day in and day out no matter when it first occured untio uyour brain purges it

People who self-harm often explain that they find it easier to deal with physical than emotional pain. Liability-aware disclaimer: unless you're talking about the old Jane Fonda "feel the burn" relating to physical exercise this is not a solution!

Cutting for me was a way to deal with the emotional pain and turn it into physical pain for a little bit and then it would heal. But the feeling would only last so long and it would seem as more pain would cave in and soon I was doing it again. It's sort of funny because I hid it so well but once in a while someone would see it and the old my cat scratched me and other nonsense excuses would hold them off at bay and now all I have left are the scars and the memories of it. Physical pain is a temporary relief from the emotional pain but it's not a permanent solution!

How did you get rid of it Mystic? Do you sometimes still have the urge to do it?

My sub utilizes some physical-pain to try and overcome bits of emotional-pain. The wall(s) she has built are being chipped away at. Her happiness must be achieved before I can be at peace with myself. It never hurts to ask a person why, for what, etc, they think about physical and emotional pains being connected.

If emotional pain includes embarrassment, the latter predominated in my youth whenever I had to drop trousers, pull down pants and bend over the lap of a medical assistant for injections. No matter how much the shots hurt, I was overwhelmed by the humiliation of a girl watching me get them in my vulnerable bare bottom. I always feared the embarrassment more than the physical pain.

As someone that has suffered from both bouts of depression and severe anxiety I can tell you that emotional pain has always been worse for me . I suffered in silence and hiding for years .

Because of the stigma that goes with mental health issues I surpressed a lot of feelings that ate away at my self image and my self esteem. At times I felt like I was living a double life , acting " normal" in front of my colleagues, friends, and most family members. Over the years it became more and more difficult to fight and to hide, to the point of finding a place to be alone to break down, to not being able to leave my bedroom and the thought of leaving the house became terrifying.

On SwitchableSusies comment about rating physical pain, I totally agree . One persons 10 may be another persons 3 .

I have a very high threshold for physical pain, Ive only hit a 10 probably twice in my life, once when having a mini stroke and it literally felt like my head was in a vice being squeezed to death and once with an abscessed tooth so badly infected that it spread thru my jaw and I became septic. ( I was ready to shoot myself) .

If I had a choice I would chose physical pain over emotional any day. Yes emotional pain goes away , eventually but it can eat you up and the scars take much longer to heal .

Emotional pain is much worse than physical pain. Unfortunately emotional pain takes a long time to fade and even then there might be triggers to make you remember. Physical sexual pain is different. It may hurt during receiving but eventually it will fade after time and very arousing to both partners.

Physical pain is difficult to remember exactly what it felt like at that time. Emotional pain keeps on giving. One simple thing can trigger a memory and send me on a downward spiral. When I'm on that downward spiral, I sometimes resort to self-harm because I feel like I'm going to implode if I don't--it's the only way to diminish the “rage” I feel.

I have had plenty of physical pain especially over the past 25 years and over that time I kind of got use to dealing with most of it. With emotional pain however I don't think theres any getting use to it. So while both types of pain sucks, I put emotional pain higher on the sucks meter.

Physical pain most can deal with. The emotional ones are the worst.

Hmmm. . .🤔💥

Emotional pain can cause physical pain. It’s called somatization. For the weak of heart?

Wouldn't this depend on what causes the pain?

It's like saying what's faster, a car or an airplane? Logic says an airplane, so you get the Wright Brothers plane vs any car built in the last 20 years.

I win.

Again more details needed

No winners here. It’s a fair discussion

When they become one.

They can become where you lose control or gain an ability to overcome. A little experience for that my self.

When things gang up on you, breath.

I have had plenty of physical pain especially over the past 25 years and over that time I kind of got use to dealing with most of it. With emotional pain however I don't think theres any getting use to it. So while both types of pain sucks, I put emotional pain higher on the sucks meter.

I agree. I can work through my physical pain, as things need to get done no matter how I feel. I have been brought to my knees more often by an emotional pain than any physical pain. But working through an emotional pain can be very cathargic…uplifting sometimes. To get that “burden” off of my shoulders. Release it from the place I had been keeping it locked away.

I'm thinking the consensus is emotional pain and I'd have to agree. I grew up enduring various sports injuries and at 19 I was a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam and was wounded twice which for me was the ultimate physical pain I endured. And yet I would say that emotional pain hurts more and lasts longer.

I'm thinking the consensus is emotional pain and I'd have to agree. I grew up enduring various sports injuries and at 19 I was a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam and was wounded twice which for me was the ultimate physical pain I endured. And yet I would say that emotional pain hurts more and lasts longer.

Thank you for your service. That was a tough and unappreciated time to be in the military.

Emotional pain can cause death, Sudden Broken Heart syndrome. The shock of a loved one dying or critically hurt can cause your heart to stop, not necessarily a heart attack in the true sense( usually no heart damage) but death from cardiac arrest. We all have baggage and damage we carry through life. No one leaves this rock unscathed. I've lived with physical pain all my life and you'd be surprised what you can get used too, becomes normal. Emotional pain is more painful as it can take years to dim. Always a land mine around the corner, trigger's that may send you down a dark path. Most find ways to manage it or get help learning how to heal. Pain just sucks either way..

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