To feel emotions as physical pain

[washingbasket1]

Does anyone else feel emotions really strongly?
when going through difficult situations to feel physical pain and can’t function normally.
i see other people who seem to just get on with things.
why do I feel things so intense

where do you feel the physical pain?

In my stomach mainly, as an ache, can’t focus or eat,

I do since my daughter died 3 months ago. I have chest and stomach pain and joint pain too. I welcome it in a strange way. I cannot conceive of feeling this much emotional pain without some corresponding physical pain.

I think that’s perfectly normal when going through something difficult, but, as there’s absolutely no alternative (for me) other than getting on with things and I have a child, I just keep going regardless.

Yes. When my Dad died suddenly I honestly felt pain throughout my body for days after, it felt as though I had been beaten up. I have had other huge losses since then, including my perfect Mum, but didn’t feel that exact feeling other times. It may have been the shock of it I don’t know but it definitely was pain.

Yes, and same with embarrassment/shame and when my kids get hurt.

Stomach/chest for emotions & back of my legs for my kids.

I do, heart, chest, arms.

I think it's pretty normal OP - strong emotions cause hormones like cortisol to flood your body and can cause pain in the chest, stomach etc and anxiety often causes an upset stomach and nausea. Grief definitely has physical symptoms - I felt like I had a heavy weight in my chest for months. Often we carry our emotions in our muscles, which can manifest in stiff neck & shoulders, back pain and aching limbs.

Yes I think it's normal to feel physical pain for emotional hurt. People talk about it all the time. It's why they say love hurts.

No, it's real. A psychologist said it's because good social relationships are/were vital to our physical health (if you were thrown out of your group pre-civilisation, it really could mean you'd die). It is also true that loneliness raises the risk of several diseases, and that a heart patient who ate/exercised well was told by his doctor that a divorce literally posed a risk to his health.
We used to ignore mental health. Now we're thinking about the link. Feeling sick/in pain when you get bad news is normal for many.

Yes but extreme stress/ shock / anxiety, not day to day emotions

I am so sorry for your unimaginable and unfathomable loss. Please be kind and gentle with yourself!

Yes OP, I too get physical sensation when experiencing emotions, pain with negative and even positive ones can be crippling, like I'm going to fizz over with energy when I'm super happy.

Oh, I totally get that. Sometimes when stuff hits me, it feels like my whole body is in pain, and I can barely think straight. Then I see other people who just seem… fine, and it’s confusing. It’s not that you’re overreacting, some of us just feel everything more intensely. You’re not alone in this.

I have the opposite issue - for the most part I don’t feel emotions in my body at all. I feel them in words & images. I also can’t detect a lot of bodily sensations other people can, like my heartbeat. For me it’s to do with low interoception. I hardly ever cry, either. We’re all put together in our own individual ways I guess.

I did feel exhausted and very heavy (and unusually tearful) after 2 major bereavements - and a kind of nauseous feeling in my chest. But aside from traumatic losses, day to day upsets and disappointments leave me physically unaffected for the most part.

I feel lucky, but also wonder if I miss out on some highs as well as lows. Do you feel positive emotions in a pleasant way physically, OP?

Totally normal.

Interesting. I have always been curious about people who really lean in to things like weepy songs or sad movies, and 'like a good cry'. Irrespective of the fact that the movie characters and the sentiments of musical tear-jerkers are fictional, I still experience the impulse to cry in response to these as intense pain -I feel as if I'm going to dissolve in grief and it hurts! I avoid them if at all possible, it doesn't seem to matter that it's not 'real', to some primitive part of my brain, it 'reads' as real. I've always been like it, running out of rooms where the radio or TV were broadcasting sad stuff as a child.

Conversely, I have a tendency to get a bit emotional in relation to my work -I'm a teacher. I see my amazing pupils and the brave ways they keep on showing up for their learning and their friendships every damn day, in the face if challenges great and small, and I often find myself, when relaying their DC's brilliance (yes, I genuinely feel this way about all of my pupils, especially the very challenging ones) to parents in parents' evenings or in the playground (yes, I also believe that parents need to hear amazing things about their DC, especially the parents of the very challenging ones), I can feel tears welling up in my eyes, and I find myself apologising if I feel it's too obvious. This kind of tearful doesn't hurt, but it is definitely an uncomfortable physical sensation associated with it which I'd rather be without.

It's absolutely normal. And people who "just get on with it" are doing it despite experiencing the same.

Yes I feel this. Grief is a physical pain in my chest/heart/stomach sometimes so intense I call out or have to resist calling out.

I always assumed everyone has the same feelings.

@SixteenFortyeight I have the same reaction to pain and sadness in fiction. How people can watch horror or weepy films is beyond me. Lassie did for me as a child.

Exactly. There’s an odd tendency on threads like these, or ones about being ‘highly sensitive’ or an ‘empath’, to think that people apparently ‘getting on with things’ are only doing so because they somehow feel things less than the OP. When there’s no reason at all to think this is true.