Pain can consume us, dull our senses and affect us so much that we are no longer in our right mind. The crazy thing is that our brain can't really tell the difference between suffering from a broken disc and a broken heart. Pain is pain. And it can hurt like hell.

And the fatal thing about the broken heart is that it can feel worse than a damaged body part. And, depending on how quickly or slowly we move through the five stages of grief, the pain in the heart can last even longer.

Heartbreak makes you more sensitive
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For example, researchers have found that the same parts of the brain are active during emotional pain as during physical suffering. Even when we are socially excluded - be it through a break-up or in social networks - the same pathways in our brain become active. Wolf et al. (2015) also found that in times of emotional pain, such as when we feel lonely, our sensitivity to physical pain also increases.

But there is also something good about this. The University of Michigan, for example, assumes that a person's resilience (i.e. the ability to survive difficult life situations) can also help us deal with physical pain. In other words, if we can cope well with mental suffering, chances are good that we will also be able to get through a broken leg better.

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Did you know? Our brain cannot really distinguish heartbreak from physical pain. In resilience, this can also have advantages.

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Heartache or slipped disc: Your brain hardly knows the difference