Being disconnected is painful - like a broken hand

​I listened to a book on the way to Georgia last weekend. It was the perfect book to read on my way there. A book I picked out at the very last minute. I believe that wasn't an accident.

The book is called: `Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired To Connect'

At the heart of the book is this idea that the pain we feel when we experience social pain - the pain from a breakup or the pain from losing a loved one or the pain from loneliness - that pain gets processed in the same parts of our brain as the pain we feel from a broken hand.

It's interesting - and again, not coincidental in my world - that while I was in Georgia I received word that my son Ian had broken his hand playing football. When something like that happens, we can all feel our kid's pain. We've experienced our own physical pains enough to feel their physical pain.

And we feel powerless to stop it.

At some point in that, I thought to myself, I feel like there's a difference between the pain of a broken hand and the pain of loneliness or the pain of missing someone dear to me, but the brain doesn't feel that way at all.

The brain processes those pains the same.

This is important to know about each other. The brain is wired that way because we need one another. I say it all the time, life is a WE thing. As much as we need bread and water, we need one another to survive. That social pain is necessary to nudge us to find our WE.

Only that's not easy for all of us. For many reasons, we struggle to connect. We struggle to express our social grief or our feelings of social rejection or social abandonment. And we suffer on. In pain.

Maybe we will feel a little more inclined to interact with one another - connect - if we begin to imagine some of us are living with hidden pains that are as pounding and relentless as the pain of a freshly broken hand.

Only that pain - that social pain - isn't healed by a doctor. It's healed by each other.

You know, this book talked about the healing power of each other as well. When we are connected to one another in a meaningful way, the brain releases natural opioids. Pain killers. We are quite literally wired to be each other's pain killers.

I wonder how many people are turning to synthetic pain killers in this pain killer epidemic to replace that natural pain killer found in togetherness.

I needed Georgia this weekend. I needed a weekend of being with other beautiful people - connecting.

Lieberman says in his book: “In Eastern cultures, it is generally accepted that only by being sensitive to what others are thinking and doing can we successfully harmonize with one another so that we may achieve more together than we can as individuals.”

Our western culture has promoted this idea of going it alone. Independence.

We've promoted it to the point of not recognizing we aren't designed to go it alone. We've promoted it to the point that we aren't sensitive to the pain many people are living with while socially disconnected.

A hidden broken arm pain that feels like it will never be unbroken again.

Unless we enter in. Unless we harmonize. Unless we feel that natural pain killer our WE brings to one another.

I felt that in Georgia last weekend. The book I read on the way there explained why. And my hope is now that we can be more of that to one another.

Because in so many ways, we are long overdue for harmony.