Why does your heart actually hurt when you are sad

Then, these sadness-pain words were determined to be selectively related to specific sadness situations; for example, the high level of sadness implied by zukin zukin is related to loss-situations funeral. Third, the situation-sensitive sadness-pain words were determined to be associated with specific body parts and pain properties, respectively; for example, the high congruency between zukin zukin and loss situations was related to high congruency with specific body parts, such as the chest and heart.

Thus, sadness and physical pain can be represented by single verbal concepts based on features related to physical and situational properties.

Exteroception is defined as sensing stimuli that originate from environments outside the body, while interoception is defined as sensing the internal bodily condition [ 43 ]. The interoceptive inference theory [ 44 ] posits that emotional experiences are based on both interoceptive and extroceptive changes in physical conditions.

Both sadness and pain possess extroceptive aspects, as they are dependent on the perception of external stimuli in specific environments, and they enable us to execute appropriate responses to such situations [ 4 , 27 , 45 ]. Sadness and physical pain are also fundamentally related to interoception occurring within the body. Sensitivity to subtle changes within the body modulates subjective and emotional experiences, including sadness and pain [ 44 , 46 ], which explains why individuals encountering the same external situations can have differing subjective experiences.

The present findings suggest that sadness-pain concepts are represented by memorizing features of not only internal physiological changes, but also information on body parts and the relevant social situations. In this sense, the body is the essential reference site for integrating interoceptive and extroceptive aspects of emotional experiences, yielding the psychological foundation for sadness-pain concepts.

Representing a psychological state by using a sadness-pain concept is advantageous for describing not only self-emotional states, but also cognitive e. Such integrated aspects of the sadness-pain concept are also supported clinically. Inadequately referring to and appropriately integrating extroceptive and interoceptive information has been found to evoke emotional dysfunction because identifying specific emotional states has adaptive value [ 47 , 48 ].

People with depressive symptoms, for example, change the way in which the self is situated in social situations, showing less sensitivity to situational information in their emotional processing [ 49 ] and a diminished ability to appropriately differentiate emotional experiences [ 47 ]. It can be concluded that topological interaction between the body and mind, and the situation in question is fundamental for constructing emotional concepts that guide us towards taking functional actions in response to the demands of the situation.

Specifically, several such concepts can represent the unique relation between sadness and physical pain profiles. Zuki zuki throbbing, grinding pain is related to loneliness-sadness and represents throbbing pain, which is generally transmitted by group C nerve fibers and is evoked by both tissue and nerve injuries [ 50 ]; consequently, zuki zuki should be applicable for expressing pain in a wide range of body parts.

Accordingly, the present results show highly congruent associations between zuki zuki and numerous body parts; its congruency with loneliness is associated with a congruency with a large cluster of 18 body parts see Fig 3A.

Throbbing pain in specific parts of the body e. However, when people possess higher sensitivity to the congruency between loneliness-related body parts, they can also more appropriately judge congruency with other body parts, because it is likely that they have the ability to detect slight state changes within their bodies. Additionally, sensitivity to loneliness-sadness is probably important for maintaining a good social life. Social connectedness is crucial for maintaining psychological well-being [ 51 ], and, in order to maintain well-being, people must monitor and recognize loneliness as an alarm signal for social rejection or isolation [ 13 , 52 ].

Therefore, people with high interoception can sensitively recognize the relation between specific pain and certain body parts and use specific pain-related terms to describe loneliness-sadness; this allows them to more easily identify their sadness states and consequently maintain well-being. On the other hand, the control variable of sex also predicted the congruency rating of loneliness-sadness.

Sex-related differences regarding perceiving physical pain have been widely reported; for example, women have been found to possess greater sensitivity to pain stimuli than do men [ 53 ]; women have also been found to show greater stress responses to social rejection, evoking loneliness-sadness, than do men [ 54 ]. Therefore, women may, more sensitively use pain-related words to represent loneliness-sadness than men would.

Zukin zukin continuous throbbing pain is another expression for throbbing pain, and is related to loss-situations; specifically, zukin zukin represents incessant throbbing pain. Loss-sadness yields a continuous arousal response [ 16 ] and, when it is prolonged, often leads to depressive symptoms [ 55 ].

The continuous nature of the term provides the psychological basis for the high congruency between zukin zukin and loss-sadness. The congruency for loss-sadness was predicted by two body parts, the chest and heart.

Therefore, the present finding regarding zukin zukin also confirms that the chest and heart are associated with awareness of interoception, and referencing them can be considered a symbolic expression reflecting a common belief that emotion is grounded in bodily responses [ 46 ].

The congruency rating of shiku shiku continuous spasms of dull pain for breakup-sadness was predicted by two body clusters: 25 body parts and five body parts see Fig 3C. Shiku shiku represents dull pain, which is predominately transmitted by group C nerve fibers that also transmit blunt pressure [ 50 ] and radiating pain [ 58 , 59 ].

The cluster comprising 25 body parts was a negative predictor, indicating that the use of shiku shiku for breakup-sadness is not applicable for a wide range of body parts. On the other hand, the five body parts eyes, tooth, chest, internal organs, and heart were a positive predictor; people with more sensitive localization of extroceptive stimuli perceived through these body parts are more likely to use shiku shiku to describe breakup-sadness feelings.

Further, among these body parts the chest and heart were found to be related through zukin zukin to loss-sadness, indicating that breakup-sadness shares some properties with loss-sadness. The congruency between c hiku chiku repeated pricking pain and failure was significantly predicted by four body parts: the stomach, heart, abdomen, and chest Fig 3D. Such neural-based discrepancy also supports the theory that loss- and failure-sadness possess different features, comprising different subtypes in the major emotional category of sadness [ 3 , 16 ].

It is likely that internal body parts such as the heart or stomach function as fundamental body parts for integrating extroceptive and interoceptive information, as stressful life events can cause stomach aches [ 61 ]. Another predictor of the congruency between chiku chiku and failure-sadness is the intensity of the pain.

However, if the pain level becomes intense, interoceptive information is useful. Therefore, people who experience a more intense pricking pain tend to consider chiku chiku to be more applicable to failure-sadness because they can more closely attribute it to their internal states. The present results have implications for the efficacy of representing mental states in terms of verbal knowledge.

Quantitatively identifying emotional states may be often difficult even for ourselves due to subjective ambiguity and variation. As revealed in the present study, on the other hand, specific physical pain words can represent subtypes of sadness.

Affect labeling leads to better psychological outcomes because it facilitates the identification of own feelings accurately, which decrease negative emotions [ 63 ]. Therefore, sensitively verbalizing various types of sadness via physical pain words may contribute to healing sadness. In conclusion, sadness and specific physical pain can be represented as unique emotional word.

Each sadness-pain word is selectively related to a specific sadness situation and specific body parts. We gratefully acknowledge the work of participants. We are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments. We would like to thank Editage www. Second author is now moved to Graduate school of advanced integrated studies in human survivability, Kyoto University.

Browse Subject Areas? Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field. Materials and methods Participants Sixty-nine undergraduate students 36 male, 33 female with a mean age of Experimental stimuli The present study featured pain-expressive word stimuli, with their respective congruency with four factors being determined pain-related: body parts, characteristics of pain expressions; emotion-related: types of emotions, sadness-related situations , as described below. Pain-expressive words From an overall pool of 4, onomatopoeic and mimetic words, 28 words e.

Download: PPT. Table 1. The 28 pain-related onomatopoeias used in the present study. Characteristics of pain expression Overt pain-expression properties were categorized into four types based on [ 38 ]: continuity acute—chronic , activation activation—deactivation , intensity weak—strong , and acuity sharp—dull. Types of emotions Four basic emotions sadness, happiness, anger, and fear were selected based on the previous study [ 41 ].

Sadness-related situations Six sadness situations were chosen: loss, failure, breakup, loneliness, disease, and family rift; these were reported in [ 26 ] as situations that notably evoke sadness.

Data analysis The analysis aim was to reveal how the relations between pain-expressive words and sadness emotion are instantiated into verbal expressions. Results Analysis 1: Sadness-expressive words Hierarchical cluster analysis observed the four main clusters, which corresponded to the classification of the four major emotions Fig 2 ; Table 2 shows the averaged congruency ratings between each emotion and the words in each cluster.

Fig 2. The 28 pain-onomatopoeias were grouped into four clusters based on similar emotion-expression patterns. Table 2. Analysis 2: The relations between sadness-pain words and sadness situations Multiple regression analysis for each word predicted the sadness congruency by the congruency for sadness situations and sex as a control variable see Table 3. Table 3. Multiple-regression analysis results for the predicted congruency of the sadness-pain words regarding the sadness situations specified in Analysis 2.

Analysis 3: The relation among body parts, pain-expressive properties, and sadness situations for the sadness-pain words For analysis 3, a hierarchical cluster analysis was first performed for each sadness-pain word in order to group body parts that have similar word-body properties. Fig 3. Body maps for each situation-dependent sadness-pain word. Discussion The present study aimed to elucidate how psychological foundations support the shared mental representation between sadness and physical pain as a single concept in our long-term memory.

Supporting information. S1 Data. Data for Analysis 1. Congruency ratings between the sadness-expressive words and the four majour emotions. S2 Data. Data for Analysis 2. Congruency ratings between the sadness-expressive words and the sadness-related situations. S3 Data. Data for Analysis 3. Situation-congruent ratings between the sadness-expressive words and the body parts, characteristics of pain expression.

Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge the work of participants. References 1. Duncan G. Mind-body dualism and the biopsychosocial model of pain: what did Descartes really say? J Med Philos. Basic objects in natural categories. Cogn Psychol. View Article Google Scholar 3. Knowledge of Sadness: Emotion-related behavioral words differently encode loss and failure sadness.

Curr Psychol. View Article Google Scholar 4. Barrett LF. Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Pers Soc Psychol Rev. Herbert BM, Pollatos O. The body in the mind: on the relationship between interoception and embodiment. Top Cogn Sci. Moors A. Theories of emotion causation: A review.

Cogn Emot. So while being happy definitely feels better than being sad, it can also result in less focused and attentive processing, which can cause us to incorporate false information into the recollection of our memories. So there you go — your sad memories may feel clearer than your happy ones simply because you were paying more attention during your sad times. If you've ever been through an especially devastating breakup , then you already know how sadness can mess with your appetite — but you may not know why.

Experts claim that intense sadness results in high stress and a weakened immune system — since our immune systems are located in our guts, it's not surprising that our appetites change when our immune systems do.

When we're going through heartache, it puts our bodies in a state of repair — this means they have to work overtime until we're back to a state of repose, and it also means our appetites aren't likely to go back to normal until then, either. So while this means that you should take extra special care of yourself when you're sad, it also means that sadness is more than just a bad mood that you can just shrug off or "get over," as some of your less helpful friends might think.

Sadness is very real — and like every other very real event in our lives, it takes some time to get over. Images: Fotolia , Giphy 4. By Elizabeth Enochs. See All Health Relationships Self. Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy is the medical name for a syndrome that can be caused by heartbreak, or more accurately, the stress of a heartbreaking situation. While it will be different for every person and every circumstance, there are some scientifically sound methods of heartbreak healing you can try.

Tips for dealing with general stress can help you in times of heartbreak, and set up healthy habits for an ongoing, healthy lifestyle. But getting out and about, spending time with positive and supportive people, eating well and exercise can all help boost your mood and distract you from your upset.

Over time, as the stress eases and you begin to calm down and recover, you should expect your bodily systems to gradually return to normal. Skip links and keyboard navigation Skip to content Skip to site navigation Skip to footer Use tab and cursor keys to move around the page more information.

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