What's Your Threshold of Social Pain? 

Curated by Kris Campbell, Managing Partner at BoldWork

I'm sure most of you know what I mean when I talk about our threshold of pain. We all know people who have a very low threshold - stub a toe and the wails of pain sound like there's a need for 911. On the other end of the spectrum, I have a friend who broke her foot and continued hiking with friends, limping only slightly. It wasn't until that evening that she was persuaded to go to the emergency room, her foot swollen to twice its normal size. She simply wasn't in much pain.

We accept that there's a complicated and varied biology that each of us is born with that deals with physical pain. We cut one another slack and express empathy and sympathy for others' aches, twinges and pangs that we can...well, locate. The broken foot, the throbbing head, the sore muscle. We understand this kind of pain in others and most often offer patience and support. Medical professionals even acknowledge different kinds of physical pain: somatic (body), neuropathic (nerves) and visceral (organs).

But what if the pain is intense, the impact devastating and we can't point to it, touch it or x-ray it? This is the pain we experience at the emotional and social level. The pain we experience at work when we're berated by an irate manager, an uncooperative co-worker or an insensitive customer. The incident that brings on this pain can also be subtle - not being invited (ignored, rejected?) to what we perceive is an important meeting. The same significant threshold of pain exists in these cases, but we typically don't offer the same degree of support and we're more apt to suppress - and most of us hide - the intense impact of social pain.

However, recent research (2012) challenges our traditional views that have created this disparate distinction between physical and emotional/social pain. It's time for a whole new SEE regarding pain. Scientists have now discovered that our brain's neural pathways that process physical pain and emotional/social pain are one and the same. The pain from an unexpected job performance review, or a public angry outburst between you and a co-worker you consider a friend and trusted colleague can feel as painful as any broken bone. It hurts. Period.

These experiences of pain run along such a common pathway in our brain that researchers at UCLA have discovered that a well known pain reliever, acetaminophen (Tylenol), actually reduces people's emotional/social pain by acting upon the neural area that plays a role in both physical and emotional/social pain. Likewise, people who experience physical pain also experience a significant reduction in their pain when emotional comfort is offered.

This new research says it's time to cut ourselves some slack and realize that the difficulties and stress of everyday work have personal, individual thresholds. Yours will never be exactly the same as the emotional/social pain threshold of your co-workers.

Take a look at a brief overview of this remarkable research confirming the common neural pathways of physical and emotional/social pain. And the next time you see a colleague in distress, realize that they may experience this pain differently than you do...and offer some support.