‘It honestly felt like my body had given up – I barely ate for the first two weeks after he dumped me, I had a raging headache and just felt exhausted, there really is no pain quite like heartbreak’.
Unfortunately, what Amy*, 27 from London experienced when her boyfriend split up with her out of the blue will be something many of us can relate to.
Heartbreak is very much part of the human experience and no matter how hard we try to avoid it, almost all of us will have felt not just the mental pain, but also intense physical pain of having had your heart broken by someone you loved.
Over the days, weeks and months that follow a relationship breakdown, physical symptoms of heartbreak can come and go as we process what has happened and adjust to life without the person we thought was ‘the one’.
The last time I had my heart broken I felt nauseous for weeks, lost an alarming amount of weight due to the same lack of appetite that Amy describes and felt as though I’d fallen down a set of stairs – but why does heartbreak cause so much chaos in our bodies as well as our brains?
Although there’s no clean cut answer as to why this physical pain is so intense, there are theories, and many studies have been carried out in a bid to understand why heart break feels like that.
According to Alice Gray, neuroscientist and science communicator, rejection can be seriously traumatic for our brains as humans are social animals and designed to seek out close connections.
‘The impact of a breakup on our brain can spill out into physical symptoms as our brain is so intricately connected to physical health and wellbeing,’ she explains to Metro.co.uk.
‘Stress hormones like cortisol are released after rejection and a breakup, and this can impact our muscles due to changes in blood flow. It can even impact our immune system – making it more likely that we might get a breakup-induced cold.’
Rejection and emotional pain are processed in the same part of the brain as physical pain, says Alice, and that’s why when you are going through an emotionally painful time, you can almost feel a sense of physical pain.
And there’s a whole lot more to it than just stress hormones. When you’re in love, your time with the other person may feel intoxicatingly addictive.
‘Love and relationships give us a regular source of feel-good brain chemistry. Physical touch, quality time, sex and bonding cause the release of chemicals in our brain called dopamine and serotonin,’ says Alice.
The two chemicals are the same ones that are released when we eat something delicious, do something we enjoy and even when we take certain drugs.
So when they suddenly stop – like during a breakup – we go into withdrawal.
And what does this mean for us? According to Alice, it doesn’t make for a fun time: ‘This can trigger anxiety, stress and depression. Because of this withdrawal, we often see people trying to replace those chemicals in other ways – casual sex, comfort eating and binge drinking.’
But before you use this reasoning as a way to justify your post breakup questionable behaviour (we’ve all been there), Alice advises that risky actions won’t help you recover from a broken heart.
‘Often after a breakup, due to the change in brain chemistry, we often go into isolation, shying away from social contact. This is the opposite of what we should do,’ Alice urges.
‘Seek out connections with friends and family and do things you enjoy, as this will help to bring back the dopamine and serotonin doses that we are missing so much after the breakup.’
So the next time you feel the dull ache which comes with rejection, remember that what you are feeling is completely normal – heartbreak will always be a transitory period of your life and the best thing you can do is be kind to yourself.
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