[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead ¤ milky moon ¤ • View topic - Literal Heartbreak
I recently thought of this, and then asked a friend: Have you ever been so sad, your heart literally hurts? He said no, and was confused, so I thought I'd come here.
It's only happened twice to me, one time being when I found out about the miscarriage. When I'm feeling a really deep sadness, on and off throughout the whole day, it feels like my heart is being squeezed. It's not unbearable pain, but it's like this twinge, right where my heart is located, that gets far more intense when I'm actively thinking about what is making me sad, or start crying. I imagine it's a psychological effect?
Anyway, I wondered:
1. Have you ever experienced this, and do you think it's relatively common? (i.e, that I'm not a weirdo)
2. Does anyone have a better explanation for why it happens?
Yes. Once for weeks when my newborn was in the hospital with meningitis (he's fine now) and once when I found out my step dad died. It hurt inside. I'm sure it's common. I have no clue why it happens. The body/mind/soul connection is stronger then we think.
When you say "right where my heart is located", where exactly do you mean? The reason I ask is that sometimes people have different ideas about where the heart is actually located. The location of the pain could indicate stress-related pain or spasms in something other than the heart, like the stomach or esophagus.
Oh, and yes I have felt the way you describe...when my first wife left me, when the dog I had in my 20's died right before my eyes, and probably a few other times I may have to think about to remember. Not fun at all.
Yeah, I get that tight heart feeling very often... Not only when I'm sad. I get anxious for no reason at all sometimes and it's there... That tight squeezy feeling accompanied by palpitations.
I think it could be to do with a mix of tightening the chest muscles as a response to fear/disgust (to protect the heart and lungs) and a quickening of the heartbeat as a response to a perceived danger (the source of the sorrow). The same sort of thing as how your abdomen tenses up to make a wall of hard tissue between the thing your sad about and your innards. I've been so sad I've writhed with the physical pain of it, been unable to breathe, etc.; fortunately only once. I think the mental stress triggers a primal reaction in the brain - the systems that regulate such things assume that the activity in the amygdala is a response to an attack or injury, so they respond as if it was. I can't really see how writhing and shaking would be beneficial in a situation like that, though - maybe damage control, or something. Or the fight/flight mechanisms get overwhelmed and you just break down for a while.
This feels like a strange question to answer for me. Because now I've given it some thought, I realised that I have felt this way, but it wasn't after my boyfriend died (an event that affected me so deeply my life may as well be divided up into before and after), but when he cheated on me. After he died I felt this empty, raging grief but it was nothing to do with my heart. But I remember that when I found out he cheated on me everytime I thought about him being with the other guy it felt exactly like a freezing cold hand was reaching into my body and closing over my heart and squeezing until I could no longer bear it.
The distinction might be that the reaction to being cheated on belongs to a category of disgust responses, while bereavement has its own range of behaviours.
His having cheated on you may have altered the way you eventually responded to his death. The breaking of trust seems to play a major role in everything that follows.
I think I've felt two kinds of chest tightening that could be related to the topic so eloquently raised by Ann [and, my apologies, I had forgotten it was you who wrote so movingly about the miscarriage that I felt compelled to write my only previous not-directly-JN-related posting].
The first type is associated with rage: the kind of blind, all-consuming rage at an injustice or situation that one is totally powerless to do anything about. I haven't felt this since I was a teenager, but I feel I still have the capacity to do so, should I be wronged or harmed in a way that was fundamentally imporant to me now as those long ago situations were to me then.
The second type is what I call (to myself) a "heartswell" ... someone says something unexpectedly appreciative of me, that cuts through all pretence and grasps me at my core - and that is exactly as Ann describes it: a tightening of some place in the centre of the chest and below the ribcage.
As for a physiological cause, the only explanation that comes to me is the release of some enzyme or neurotransmitter (such as adrenaline or an endorphin) that the body is adapted to react to in some active way ... but to which such a reaction is inappropriate or impossible.
The rage is directed at a person departed, or a situation engineered by someone not within striking distance (literally! - though I am as far from a violent person as it is possible to be). The kind words come through a wire, or are written down, or are uttered in a public place, so that a physical demonstration of reciprocal feeling is impossible or forbidden.
Therefore, without the opportunity to display its "natural response" (aggression or affection; struggle or cuddle; clash or clasp), the body somehow uses the substance internally, and the effect is a tightening of the chest.
Well, the primordial brain has no idea whether the stimulus is next to you or on the Internet or over a phone. After all, it has no awareness of technology or anything like that - it just responds mechanically to the information it receives from the parts of the brain that do process that information (like the frontal lobe). It reacts as if the stimulus for the emotion were right next to you, because in nature it only could be next to you - there was no way to be stimulated by something that wasn't immediately present. Wikipedia says that rage behaviours are related to chemicals called corticoids whose primary function is the suppression of the immune system to prevent inflammation. From what I've read, the amygdala and the insular cortex appear to be most involved in the chest-tightening response to emotion. Noradrenaline seems like the likely hormone - it increases heart rate and redirects blood to skeletal muscle as part of the fight-or-flight reaction. Both the increased activity of the heart and the expansion and tension of the chest muscles due to increased blood flow could produce a tight-chested feeling. This would also explain the broad range of situations in which people have felt this tightness - loss, digust, joy, disappointment, etc. - its release is stimulated by adrenaline, which can be released due to almost any high activity in the brain (including any strong emotion), and angiotensin, which itself increases blood pressure.