There is something comforting in physical pain. At least there is for me. Physical pain can be measured. Textbooks tell us it takes a certain amount of force to break a bone. Take a knife to your arm and press just so, and you'll draw blood. Press harder and you'll leave a gash in your arm. I understand physical pain. How many hits it takes for me to flinch, to struggle to breathe, to cry. Logically, the next step would be uncontrolled sobbing, but physical pain doesn't do that to me. That's emotional pain.
Emotional pain is what I don't fully understand. You can't measure emotional pain. How many lies until trust is irrevocably broken? How many people leave before abandonment issues? How many secrets shared before you stop sharing anything? There is no definite answer.
It's irritating that emotions are so connected to physical touch. Slap someone enough and her reflex will be to flinch or at the very least, expect a hit when you raise your hand. Conditioned response.
Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov conducted an experiment in which he rang a bell while feeding his dogs. He was testing the natural output of saliva in response to food. He would ring the bell, signaling food and the dogs would salivate. Eventually, he removed the food and rang the bell. The dogs would salivate even with no food because they had been conditioned to expect food with the bell.
Just as the dogs were conditioned, humans can be too.
In relationships, if one person has a history of cheating and he or she hides their phone, the other partner in the relationship will get suspicious. Now, let's take the one being cheated on (Person A) and put them into a relationship where there is no cheating, but the other person (Person B) is still hiding his or her phone. Person A is going to see that behavior and think, "Person B is cheating." Conditioned response.
The conditioned response to physical pain varies just as the conditioned response to emotional pain does. In my short life, I've experienced a fair amount of both physical and emotional pain. I've come to accept the pain. I even seek it out in some cases. I find it's way easier to deal with physical pain than emotional pain.
As children we learn not to put our hand on a hot stove or we will be burned, but what happens when people become your emotional stove? They didn't teach us how to react to that so we do what comes naturally. People create in us conditioned responses that become instinct, and our instincts are all we have to go on when it comes to emotions.
So what happens when pain of some form is constant? What happens when your conditioned response to emotional pain is acceptance? What happens when your conditioned response to physical pain is relief? For some, the answer is to go to therapy and talk to a doctor. For others, the answer is not so easy. I can admit that I repress my emotions. If it's not a happy emotion, I try not to let it show. I don't let my emotional pain show. I don't like to deal with it. So what do you do when you can't ignore the emotional pain anymore? Having a hard and fast set of rules for emotions would be helpful. Instincts can be wrong ... conditioned responses ... they'll only get you so far, and if you're not careful, they hurt you even more than you already are.
