How empathy and touches reduce pain, according to scientists
Love really does have a healing power
Hug me, do you often hear that from your loved ones?
Some people find touching excessive, a relic of youth, touchy-feely, and awkward.
Others just don’t have the habit of hugging and touching each other.
Honestly, I have underestimated the importance of touch until now.
I believe this article will make many people reconsider their attitude toward touching and empathy
Love, emotional support and empathy reduce feelings of pain on a physical level, according to a study by researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Haifa.
What’s more, the researchers were able to uncover the mechanism behind this mystery.
There is an expression
“to share the pain with someone”.
Modern findings show that this is not just a metaphor.
Researchers have found that a comforting person can synchronize brainwaves with the person in pain.
The more he feels empathy for the sufferer, the stronger this synchronization is.
Even more surprising is that the more brain waves sync, the more the intensity of pain decreases in the person who is suffering.
Pay attention to the high role of the giver. Giving means sacrificing something — your well-being, your time, success.
Of course, when you love someone, part of your happiness is to reduce the suffering of the one you love.
The study is about 22 heterosexual couples, ages 23 to 32, who had been together for a year or more at the time of the study.
Both subjects had their brainwave activity measured with an electroencephalograph.
They had to do several scenarios of 2 minutes each
1. sitting next to each other not without touching
2. to sit in different rooms
3. sitting next to each other holding hands.
During all three scenarios, the woman’s hand was exposed to a little heat pain
Just having a loved one close to her increased the synchronization of the partners’ brainwaves related to focus of attention.
The strongest synchronization was recorded when the woman experienced pain while holding the man’s hand. When a man was unable to touch a woman in pain, the connection was diminished.
Dr. Pavel Goldstein states that this peculiarity suggests that pain without touch reduces the connection between the couple’s brainwaves, whereas touch brings it back.
Could it be that not being able to touch a loved one during pain increases that pain?
After the observation, the man took an empathy test.
A doctor overlaid the observation data on the test results and found a clear relationship between the level of empathy, brain activity, and the level of pain.
The higher the man’s empathy was, the more synchronized the couple’s brains were, and the more the woman’s pain eased.
Scientists don’t know exactly what reduces pain during touching and from empathy. But they do suggest that this is most likely due to the fact that the empathic feeling gives a person a sense of being understood.
In turn, these feelings are connected to reward brain areas the activity of which can reduce pain.
No matter how this mechanism actually works, one thing is certain, empathy and empathic touch are manifestations of love.
This means that
love and empathy suppress pain.
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