Anyone who has ever grieved, or felt tremendous emotional upset, is familiar with heartache. You know: you feel a piercing pain in your heart, or your heart feels like lead. Sometimes it seems as though there’s an iron band squeezing your chest.
What is the physiological mechanism for producing such pain? Why should we feel it at all, rather than just feeling sad? My WAG is that it is related to stress, but not all states of emotional stress (i.e. anger) have this result. Does it stem from a particular physical response that’s useful in other life situations, but just produces pain when we’re terribly sad? And is this painful response in any way related to the reason why some folks suffer heart attacks when they are deeply upset?
My vote would be stress, manifesting itself physically. You know that sometimes you have a shortness of breath or tightness when you’re nervous or otherwise stressed. I guess it’s the body clenching up preparing to get slugged.
Although it’s no defense when she reaches into your chest and rips your heart out.
I think it’s stress too…hmm maybe stress hormones?
also, maybe the rate your heart is pumping goes up beyond normal range…(like when you’re feeling panic or fear)…it’s the same with nervousness, when you’re nervous, you get butterflies in your stomach, or you sweat a lot…etc.
So I’m thinking, the hormones that make you cry, are also the hormones that make your chest hurt.
These are just guesses…though when the pain manifests itself physically, it sort of wakes me up as well…so maybe it’s also a defense mechanism for the body?
But if you were in OK spirits, and then caught a cold, if it’s a nasty cold you end up lying around the house, moaning and complaining that you are dying.
For me, a slight feeling of depression almost invariably accompanies physical illness.
A trauma is a mental beating of some kind. So the mind and body do not work independently of eachother.
Conversly, a depressed person usually feels tired, a very good mood, or very good news often make a person energetic.
I can’t explain the mechanism, but I think it would be stranger if you didn’t feel physically ill when you are miserable.