Social pain is stronger than physical pain
There are two types of pain: physical and social.
“What really makes a great teacher great is the willingness to spend more time being a student than being a teacher.” – Veli Ndaba
From a neuroscience perspective, one of the profound discoveries about the human brain is that pain and pleasure govern us in all we do, in all we say and in all we think.
This is a prime brain motivator and when we look around, we usually can make sense of other people’s actions in some way in terms of pain and pleasure.
And if you take this to its extreme, it suggests we have no other end in all our actions than our private self-interest or at least rational self-interest.
Over the millions of years, our brains have evolved to get larger and larger and the front of our brains, the prefrontal cortex, seems to give us a very special capacity to update our definition of who we are.
So we can be strategic about the way we get things for ourselves that we selfishly desire, and that’s kind of the economic or rational self-interest view of human nature.
Another important discovery about the human brain is that it’s highly social. As human beings, we are social creatures. As social beings, our social brain is more highly active than it was ever thought it is.
Pain is divided into two: physical and social.
Physical pain is caused by a physical stimulus, e.g. somebody beating you up or pinching you.
Social pain is when somebody treats you in a bad way or say something demeaning. Understanding the social brain and pain will help you treat others with compassion and help others grow.
