For all of its dramatics, heartbreak is a chaotic, overwhelming experience. From having a frustrating tangle of emotions lodged inside to even feeling physical pain, people often feel like their heartbreak controls them more than they can handle.
Science shows that it just might.
Florence Williams, a prominent science writer, went through a sudden divorce after a long marriage. To better cope with her pain, she set out to investigate exactly how the body and mind react to heartbreak, as recounted in her book, Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey. In her search, she found that heartbreak has a more severe impact than people might expect.
In a 2010 study by Helen Fisher, author and biological anthropologist at the Kinsey Institute, she scanned the brains of 15 people who weren’t over their recent breakup. As they looked at a picture of their ex-partner, the subjects’ activated brain regions were those needed to experience romantic love. At the same time, these regions are linked to drug addiction, creating a feeling similar to withdrawal when that love is taken away. There was also activity in the insular cortex and anterior cingulate, areas linked to physical pain, and subjects showed a lack of emotional control that continued for weeks or months. This can grow into more serious issues, such as depression and suicidal tendencies.
In an article Williams wrote for The Atlantic, Fisher explained that these results line up with the two main neurological stages of a breakup. The first stage is protest, where people try to win back their partner. Caused by extra dopamine and norepinephrine, people feel threatened and agitated because they think they’re missing something, which can lead to insomnia, weight loss, and other consequences. The second stage is resignation, where people start to give up as the dopamine and serotonin wear off. Lethargy takes over if they retreat to various unhealthy coping mechanisms.
These two stages are similar to the five stages of grief, and that isn’t a coincidence. In a separate study by Zoe Donaldson, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Colorado, she studied how heartbreak affects prairie voles’ neurochemistry by stimulating yearning, an important aspect of grief. Prairie voles exhibit the same social habits as most humans, preferring to be devoted to a single partner for life, and they are often greatly impacted by partner loss. One experiment separated a group of vole couples, some of them paired as siblings, in half. Their neurochemistry changed; voles who were separated from their partner produced more corticosterone, a stress hormone, than those separated from their siblings. They also exhibited behaviors representative of depression and anxiety as the male voles became more passive and withdrawn after separation.
At the same time, these regions are linked to drug addiction, creating a feeling similar to withdrawal when that love is taken away.
However, regardless of whether the voles were separated, their brains produced more corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a stress hormone, than voles who were never partnered, but CRF never activated unless they were separated. According to Oliver Bosch, a colleague of Donaldson, the same phenomenon happens in our bodies when we fall in love and is why we feel miserable after breaking up. Our brains produce the stress hormones in advance as an adaptive response to compel us to find our partners when they leave or feel relieved when they return.
Our brains produce the stress hormones in advance as an adaptive response to compel us to find our partners when they leave or feel relieved when they return.
Health issues arise when those stress levels increase excessively. An extreme example is takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or broken-heart syndrome. A large influx of stress hormones stuns your heart, reducing its ability to pump blood efficiently, causing heart attacks in otherwise healthy people. It’s common in women who have experienced a tragic emotional event, such as a spouse or a pet passing away. Beyond this condition, people who have lost a lover in some way face a higher risk of medical issues. A little after William’s own divorce, she was diagnosed with type 1.5 diabetes, a condition in which the immune system attacks the pancreas, despite not previously having shown any symptoms.
This isn’t uncommon. As our body sustains high-stress levels, our brain thinks we are in danger, so neurotransmitters prioritize sending resources to systems like respiration rather than those that fight off disease. In the long term, this can lead to failing immune systems, mental disorders, and cognitive decline.
While there’s no escaping the pain of heartbreak, time seems to be the most effective form of recovery. Research shows that it takes about a few months to a couple of years to stabilize emotionally and physically after a separation, depending on the person’s individual experience. As Williams writes in her The Atlantic article, “We are built for heartbreak just as we are built for love.”
Sources:
Journal of Neurophysiology (2010). DOI: 10.1152/jn.00784.2009
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104847
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