Pain is not the same as Harm.

Pain doesn’t always equal harm.  But our brains do a terrible job of differentiating the two by themselves.  

You see, the brain’s opinions and warning mechanism are 100% instinct combined with learned experience.  When a threat is perceived, logic is combined with analysis of a previous outcome, and neural pathways are created out of the resulting conclusions about the safety of whatever happened.  This then allows or overrides (basically acts as the gatekeeper) the instinctive, protective mechanism of our brain to do it’s job and get us to safety, or calms it down to let you proceed with caution.  This interplay doesn’t apply only to perceived physical threats, but to emotional threats just as fervently. 

The human brain has a couple different parts at play during threat analysis:

Amygdala

The amygdala is a cluster of almond-shaped cells near the base of the brain.  In humans, there is one of these in each hemisphere of the brain.  The amygdalae’s job is to define and regulate emotions.

These two amygdalae are part of the brain’s limbic system, which is a group of complex intercommunicating brain structures responsible for a person’s emotional and behavioral responses.

I am sure you have heard of “fight or fight” mode.  Well, this is initiated by the amygdala!  (So please blame my brain, not me, when I yell next!)

This fight or flight response was designed to help us avoid real threats to survival.  Early humans would have relied on this a lot in a time of limited resources, a high amount of environmental dangers, and primitive communication.

Something important to note is that the amygdala activates this fight-or-flight response without any purposeful or direct involvement by you.  It is an instinctive reaction.  When it senses danger, it signals the release of stress hormones (adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol) which prepare and alert your body to either fight for survival or to escape to safety.

So while this is critical when in real danger such as being chased by a rhinoceros, emotional threats also stimulate the same amygdala response.  The fight-or-flight response can be triggered equally by feelings such as stress, fear, anxiety, aggression, and anger.

Frontal lobes

The amygdala doesn’t cause us to freak out and panic all on it’s own, however.  It’s initiated behaviors are (more or less) kept in check by our frontal lobes.  These two, large areas are located at the front of your brain and are part of the brain’s cerebral cortex. 

They also preserve memories and attach those memories to specific emotions, which are called emotional remembrances.

Whereas the amygdala regulates involuntary stimulation, the frontal lobe regulates voluntary actions.  More rational than the amygdala, it enables thinking, decision-making, planning, movement, and interpretation.  

Rather than being instinctive and automatic like the amygdala, the frontal lobes allow us first to evaluate whatever emotions have arisen.  Using memories of past experiences, learned information, and judgement, we are then able to consciously decide how to react most appropriately to a situation.

In charge of brain activities such as reasoning, thinking, movement, decision-making, and planning, the frontal lobe is far more rational than the amygdala.

In the event of a perceived threat, the amygdala jumps immediately to the fight-or-flight response, but the front lobes process the information first, and help you determine the severity of the threat and appropriate response. 

For low- to moderate-grade threats, the frontal lobes can usually override the amygdala, which enables you to approach the situation rationally. But in the case of strong real or perceived threats, the amygdala will win out every time.  That’s it’s job, and likely how you are still alive today.

This is why strong anger, fear, anxiety, intimidation, physical pain, and life stressors can cause panic-driven, illogical, and sometimes completely irrational reactions.

Amygdala Hijack

In his 1995 book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ,” psychologist Daniel Goleman named this emotional overreaction to stress “amygdala hijack.”  In these instances, the amygdala responds so acutely to the perceived danger that it actually (temporarily) disables the frontal lobes. The activated fight-or-flight response disables rational, reasoned-through responses.  The amygdala literally “hijacks” control of your brain and your responses!  (Again, please blame my brain and not me for the broken plate.)

So what does this all have to do with pain vs harm?

Well, pain is perceived by the brain.  It is 100% created by the brain in response to a perceived physical or emotional injury.   Pain is the resulting discomfort that the brain creates through neurochemicals and inflammatory feedback processes within the peripheral and central nervous system.  While this may lead you to believe pain isn’t “real”, let me assure you that all pain is 100% real.  Pain is the response from the brain.  And what causes that response for one person may be of greater or lesser intensity than what would be required to evoke the same pain for another person.  (I speak more about individual sensitivity in my post The gift and curse of being a HSP.)

Harm, on the other hand, is actual injury or damage. 

Britannica Dictionary definition of HARM: physical or mental damage or injury : something that causes someone or something to be hurt, broken, made less valuable or successful, etc..

Harm means not only was a part of you in imminent danger, known or unbeknownst to you, but that an action was carried out that inflicted some form of injury.  (And, yes, emotional harm is a very real thing.) 

Pain is physical or emotional discomfort, while harm is injury or damage.

No doubt, harm and pain oftentimes come hand in hand.  Any kind of harm will cause the brain to produce pain in response.  

But there can also be pain without actual real harm: getting a flu shot, working out (unless you get an injury), giving birth, heartache after a breakup, “painful” lessons, and neuroplastic pain (when the brain has been in acute pain for long enough it continues sending pain signals even after the injury is healed).

Likewise, there can be pain (physical or emotional discomfort) when a harm is perceived, but not actually real.  This is what happens during an amygdala hijack.  

So how does this relate to eating?  After all, my coaching business is oriented towards helping people overcome disordered eating, chronic dieting, body image dissatisfaction, and similar struggles!

At some stage, you started dieting, or using food “management” as emotional “management”.  Initially, this approach likely brought feelings of satisfaction, superiority, success, control, and peace.  Whether restricting in a general, overarching manner (anorexia), dieting through macronutrient avoidance, engaging in orthorexic behaviors masked as “healthy eating”, or attempting to “make up” for perceived indulgence through purging (bulimia and over-exercise included), black and white, good vs bad thinking governed decision making.  

The desired outcome (typically fundamentally unhealthy and unattainable) established the goals to be pursued, and the rules for eating that would render the goals most easily- and readily-attainable.  Over time, with repeated and rational (at least according to the desired outcome) frontal lobe- inputted information and computation, the approved foods and behaviors are established as “safe”.  The forbidden and restricted foods and behaviors are, likewise, determined to be “unsafe”.

Learned information about diets, nutritional principles, and societally-deemed acceptable body shape and size (regardless of validity) are interpreted by the frontal lobes.  This conglomerate of external information is then combined with the desired outcome, irrespective of its appropriateness or ability to achieve the true peace sought after, and dietary constructs are formed.   The fight-or-flight threat-based mechanism of the amygdala gets activated as a way to avoid the perceived danger of x,y,z foods since they have been “logically” determined to be detrimental to the decided-upon mission.  

So you can see that, over time and depending on life’s experiences, past traumas and resulting memories, and even repetitive behaviors, the amygdala’s life-preserving function can expand and become inadvertently overactive.

Can you stop an amygdala hijack?

We know that amygdala hijack is an automatic response, the initiation of such being either truly instinctive, or “learned” instinctive.  Once activated, this fiery little part of the brain takes action without any conscious input from you.

However, that does not mean you have no say whatsoever and will never be able to abort or prevent an amygdala hijack.  It just takes a conscious effort to deactivate your amygdala and activate your frontal lobes, the part of the brain responsible for logical, rational thinking.

Just as some of the amygdala activity can be learned through controlled, conscious thought by the frontal lobes to overpower it and make it sense and react to the pain (discomfort) of innocuous mental or emotional stimulus, the amygdala can be taught not to react.

With respect to recovery from chronic dieting behaviors of any kind and the associated mindset, careful reassessment and re-evaluation of what is true vs perceived harm must by undertaken.  This is where having a coach or therapist can be helpful. In my post “Are you seeing clearly?” I wrote about perception and circumstances that render us unable to accurately discern the limitations of our learned constructs.  Before we can correctly establish some truths on which to base our frontal lobe decisions we must become aware and acknowledge that we may or may not be basing our beliefs and following actions on solid truths. 

Reconfiguring the frontal lobe- amygdala interaction is called “brain re-wiring”. Tabatha Farrah wrote an excellent book on just this, as applied to eating disorders: “Rehabilitate, Rewire, Recover! Anorexia Recovery for the Determined Adult”.  In recent years, pain-reprocessing therapy (PRT), had taken a forefront in both research and practice, using brain re-wiring to essentially unlearn pain.   And whether it is understood as being such or not, things as simple as breaking a bad habit, forming a good one, stopping OCD behaviors, or freeing oneself from addiction all use this method of re-wiring.  I wrote a bit more on this in my post “A prison that open from the inside”.

Is Re-wiring painful?

Yes… in so much as it can create tremendous discomfort.  Anytime we do, or don’t do, something the brain is accustomed to, we feel safe.  No distress.  But the amygdala isn’t going to get the message to “shut the hell up already!” because you force yourself to change a behavior, eat a feared food, or skip the gym one time!  It took a while to form all those neural networks.  And it’ll take some time to break them apart and replace them with healthier ones.

In the process it’s completely expected to feel pain. But there will be no harm occurring. And this recognition of true safety must be a constant reminder from self’s brain to self’s brain.  

Brain re-training isn’t all that complicated.  But it does take tremendous dedication.  It takes more than an admirable measure of discipline to fight through this productive pain to get to the victory, change, or the growth.  When we think of all pain as bad, we tend to either give up when things start feeling uncomfortable, or we avoid things we think will hurt altogether.

Yet if you are truly honest with yourself, there is a lot of pain living with an eating disorder or in a state of distant emotional turmoil and food restriction.  The difference is that this pain is actually representing potential harm. This kind of pain and suffering is meant to be a guide, letting you know “Something isn’t right here. Pay attention.”  I wrote extensively about this concept in my post “Tension isn’t meant to move you, not to break you”. 

If you were dedicated and determined enough to change your brain in the first place, enduring all kinds of incredible pain in the process and ongoing, you are more than capable of changing it back.

If you’d like more information on strategies to fight back against the fight-or-flight response, reach out to me.  Learn to take back control over your amygdala that’s run amok, and take back control of the pen writing your food and body image story.