metonymy4u

Emotional pain is often stigmatized in our culture. It is seen as something that is just “in your head,” and conveniently dismissed. So tell me, if you can, is there any pain that isn’t “in your head?” If you cut your finger, does your finger feel the pain or does your brain? If you block all the connections between your brain and your finger (with local anesthetic, for example) does your finger still feel the pain? Of course not. So why is it so surprising to us that pain of any kind should be felt “in your head?” And yet when the pain is in the finger in your head, we don’t assume that it isn’t real do we? Why then assume that the pain that is in your broken heart in your head is any less real?