Research into the neuroscience of social rejection has shown that the brain regions that activate when a person is excluded, rejected, or grieving a lost relationship are the same regions that activate during physical injury, with the overlap being so substantial that a standard over-the-counter painkiller measurably reduces both kinds of pain, because the human brain has co-opted the physical pain system to register damage to social bonds

The popular framing of emotional pain treats it as something metaphorical. The broken heart of unrequited love, the sting of rejection, the ache of grief, the cutting remark, the wound that will not heal: the language of physical injury used to describe emotional injury is so widespread across cultures and languages that it has been [...] The post Research into the neuroscience of social rejection has shown that the brain regions that activate when a person is excluded, rejected, or grieving a l