The Emotional Pain and Physical Pain Link

A few months ago, I wrote a post about a widow who did not respond well to my chiropractic adjustments, but instead, had a tremendous recovery after falling in love again.

Click here to read that post.

This premise of love conquering not only a broken heart but a subluxated spine may seem far-fetched and hokey to most. Skeptics may say that her pain might have been psychosomatic in the first place and strong emotions only distracted her from the chronic discomfort.

But there might be more to it than just that.

Pain travels along two pathways from a source, such as an injury, back to your brain. One is the sensory pathway, which transmits the physical sensation. The other is the emotional pathway, which goes from the injury to the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex—areas of the brain that process emotion.

"You may not be aware of it, but you're having a negative emotional reaction to chronic pain as well as a physical reaction," says Natalia Morone, MD, assistant professor of general internal medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Mind-body treatments that involve meditation and relaxation probably affect these emotional pathways. However, Dr. Morone admits that many doctors don't put much stock in this theory. "Anything to do with mind-body medicine around pain is going to be controversial. This is all very new."

(From an article posted on Health.com)

I do not think it crazy to extrapolate that if there is an emotional pain pathway that travels back and forth between the brain and an injured part of the body, resolution of one traumatized pathway may also direct the other pathway towards healing and relief.

It's all connected.  And we are all connected.