Breakups HURT.

Sure, everyone will tell you that the pain is all in your head…

Well, you know what?

They’re right!

But probably NOT in the way that they meant:

[via ScientificAmerican]How does the brain react to a romantic breakup? ~by Chelsea Brennan, Minneapolis

Xiaomeng (Mona) Xu, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University and at the Miriam Hospital, responds:

You’re in the midst of a breakup and feel like a different person. You find yourself spending a lot of time longing for your ex, constantly checking her Facebook updates, and wondering what went wrong. This shift in patterns of thought and behavior may be caused by neural changes that occur after a breakup.

Neuroimaging studies have found that being rejected, even by a stranger, activates many of the same regions in the brain as when experiencing physical pain. In one study, biological anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University recruited brave participants who held still in a functional MRI scanner while they looked at pictures of the person who had recently dumped them. These participants exhibited increased brain activity in several regions associated with reward, motivation, addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder, which helps to explain why you might struggle to let go after a romantic relationship ends.

…[Read More]

Breakups are literally painful.

The areas of your brain that are activated when experiencing physical pain…

Are the SAME areas that are activated when someone dumps you.

But no need to break-out the Ex Voodoo Doll just yet, to get even…

Cracked.com has just the thing for YOU:

[via Cracked] 5 Simple Ways to Trick Yourself into Not Feeling Pain ~By Elorm Kojo Ntumy

In today’s pill-popping culture, it’s almost an involuntary reflex to reach straight for the meds whenever something ails us in the slightest. But it turns out there are other, unexpected ways to reduce pain, and we’re not referring to your grandpa’s preferred method of “suck that shit up like we used to back before the world transformed into one giant pussy.”

So for some easy pain reduction, remember to …

#5. Drink Coffee (Or Another Caffeinated Beverage)

Let’s say you have one of your bi-annual urges to unglue yourself from the couch and get into shape. So you head to the gym and hit that shit hard — treadmill, exercise bike, weight lifting, the rack … just, everything. You feel pretty damn good about yourself — right up until the next day, when holy shit your everything hurts. That’s when you reach for the over-the-counter pain relievers or, depending upon your area of residence, maybe a more holistic approach. But it turns out you could have prevented the need for pain relief altogether by simply hyping yourself up on caffeine beforehand.

In one study, two groups of healthy volunteers signed up to perform some “damaging eccentric exercise” and have their level of pain intensity measured by researchers, who were presumably wearing scary clown masks. One group was given caffeine capsules equivalent to drinking two-and-a-half cups of coffee, while the other group was given placebo pills. At the end of the series of exercises, the researchers found a significant increase in the level of pain tolerance of those subjects who took the caffeine pills. The subjects also reported feeling more able to perform everyday activities like walking, sitting, climbing and descending stairs, otherwise known as all the shit you can’t do the day after a suicidal workout without sobbing uncontrollably.

Holy crap, the ads were right! Mountain Dew really can let you do extreme sports! Or, at least make you feel less like shit the next day.

And, in fact, if you’re less the “damaging eccentric exercise” type and more the “sit your ass in front of a computer screen” type (hey, we know where you’re coming from), there’s still good news for you. In another study, scientists had volunteers perform 90 minutes of fake computer tasks similar to the everyday tasks you might perform at an office — tasks meant to generate pain in the shoulders, neck, forearms and wrists of the volunteers. Before the start of the experiments, scientists allowed the volunteers to drink coffee … not to study the effect of coffee on pain, but “to avoid unpleasant effects of caffeine deprivation, e.g. decreased vigor and alertness, sleepiness, and fatigue.”

And that’s when they noticed something unexpected in their results: The people who drank coffee reported a lower intensity of pain than the people who didn’t. Whether or not the subjects reported chronic pain before the study, those who drank the coffee reported less pain on average than those who didn’t. And there, dear Office Sociopath, is proof positive that you are causing your co-workers actual physical pain by not refilling the office coffee maker after you take the last cup.

…

#3. Laugh

Picture this: You awaken in the middle of the night. You have to pee. Bad. You stumble out of bed … and immediately stub your toe on the dresser. What’s your first reaction? If you’re anything like us, your first reaction is to howl phrases so vile that your mother (three states away) spontaneously awakens and bursts into tears. What you probably do not do is laugh. Laughing while in pain is what movie characters do to let you know they’re insane (see: The Joker). But you know what? Those crazy bastards have it right.

Because while “laughter is the best medicine” is such a cliche that it pains us to even type it, we do think we have an idea where the saying comes from. While laughter won’t shrink your tumor or make your carotid artery stop gushing, it does increase your ability to tolerate pain. It’s not just because the laughter distracts you from the knife in your chest, the act of laughing releases endorphins, the body’s natural pain killers. You will physically feel less pain if you can make yourself laugh.

In a series of six tests, researchers studied a group of volunteers in both a natural setting and in the laboratory. Five of the studies involved watching funny videos versus, say, a documentary or a game of golf. The sixth study sampled actors and audiences at the live theatrical performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

What the researchers found was that test subjects who watched the funny videos had a higher pain threshold compared to those who watched videos of the un-sidesplitting variety. Furthermore, as little as 15 minutes of laughter was enough to increase pain tolerance by a whopping 10 percent.

There is a catch, though: The laughter has to be a really good laugh — you know, the kind that comes from way deep down in your belly and leaves you feeling breathless, the same effect as a good bout of exercise. So, yes, it has to be a maniacal laugh, it can’t just be a casual chuckle of a sane person. Try it! The confused looks on the faces of bystanders should just make the whole thing funnier.

[Read More - See All 5 Ways HERE!]

Well, that is…

Unless you just WANT to break-out the Ex Voodoo doll.

You know, for the fun of it

And considering how you got dumped and all…