It happens on the playground, in the park, at the corner hangout. It happens in the office, in the academy, in professional organizations. It happens in our romantic relationships, in our personal relationships and in our families.
What happens? Lieberman and Eisenberger ran studies with adults that showed our brains deal with social pain in the same ways it deals with physical pain. In other words, we hurt when we feel rejected or not accepted. Our emotional pain is both psychological and physical because it is processed in our brains even though we may think these two types of pain are not connected. Social and emotional pain is not as evident as physical pain. It is more difficult to point to a particular place on our bodies where we hurt emotionally, because at that stage it is also physical pain. Do we treat the symptoms or try to get to the root cause? Aspirin can help this pain, but that is temporary as it deals with the symptoms.