Erika (not her real name) could not stop crying. After six years of cohabitation, Rosy (not her real name), her partner, left her without a “why”. That “why” was tormenting Erika, who could not think anything but spend long hours looking at photos and checking Rosy’s FB page and Twitter.
Rosy had ghosted her for months; she said she needed her space.
Erika, my client, told me that she felt sick, had chest pain, and often, at night, she was breathing faster. She also felt constantly ill. In addition, she was always stressed and depressed.
Rosy and Erika met seven years ago on Campus at their university Queer Room, and from there, their relationship moved fast to a partnership.
“Gabe, how can this breakup make me so sick?” she questioned in one of our sessions. “I thought to be stronger, and this is not the first breakup as you can imagine, but I am sick; my health is deteriorating, and I have brain fog too”. Erika could not make complete sense of her emotions. She thought that emotions are just that: emotions, things that are just in your mind.
When Erika shared with me the list of symptoms she was suffering, I explained that breakups are not just a matter of emotions or cognitive processes and feelings. They are a matter of the heart and brain. Therefore, she was ill since humans cannot separate the heart from the mind and the mind from the body.
What does breakup do to your body?
A breakup, in particular, when unexpected, affects the brain, nervous system, cognitive capacity and, not metaphorically, the heart. So let’s start with the brain.
Have you heard the saying “love is an addiction”? And this one, too, is not a metaphor as we may have thought. Rather neuroscientific research shows a substantial similarity between the experienced rejection from someone we love and the experience of withdrawal from addictive substances.
Researchers showed some brave volunteers, who had experienced unwanted breakups, their former partners’ photos while inside an fMRI scan. The images revealed the activation of several areas of the brain, such as the ventral tegmental, the ventral striatum, and the nucleus accumbens involved in the reward/motivation system, which uses dopamine as a neurotransmitter.
If this was not enough, more than one neuroscientific study has provided evidence that a breakup hurts no less than a broken bone. For instance, Columbia University cognitive neuroscientist Edward Smith completed a series of studies and tests in 2011 that proved the pain we feel during heartbreak is similar to the physical pain we might feel due to a severe burn or broken arm. A study compared the fMRI of people who scored eight on a one-ten pain scale to others talking about their breakup. They were the same! Breakup pain is real, physical and measurable at least as much as body injuries.
For some of us, like Erika, the heartache may become a long experience, with months of anguish and an increased sense of depression and low self-esteem. Some studies show that prolonged experience causes brain patterns consistent with depression, such as decreased activity in the insula and the anterior and posterior cingulate cortices.
Finally, if you believe that the breakup experience affected your cognition and intelligence, you guessed right: Case Western Reserve University suggested that those who felt rejected in a relationship have shown a temporary drop in reasoning by 30% and in IQ by 25%.
Can breakups break your heart?
Yes, they not only can, but they often do! For example, broken heart syndrome (also known as stress cardiomyopathy, stunned neurogenic myocardium, takotsubo cardiomyopathy, and apical ballooning syndrome) can occur when a person experiences emotional distress, such as in a breakup. The good news is that usually, it resolves after a month.
Shams Younis-Hassan, MD, senior researcher, Unit for Heart and Lung disease, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, has noticed, “There is [an] unequivocal link between the state of mind and the development of takotsubo syndrome”.
Above, we have seen how a breakup can cause the brain to experience withdrawal and activated acute pain equivalent to physical pain. Yet, while pain tends to subdue or come in waves, a breakup is linked to your thoughts and continued rumination about the lost love relationship.
What can I do to reduce the pain of a breakup?
First, people differ in their natural capacity to react to rejection. During a breakup and the consequent distress, your brain will realise opioids which will trigger in two areas of the brain; the amygdala, which processes the strength of the emotion, and the pregenual cingulate cortex, which determines mood changes to address the event. Research conducted at the University of Michigan discovered that humans vary mu-opioid receptors and their brain’s natural painkilling response. Some individuals realise more opioids, which mitigate the sense of rejection, so they adapt better to it. Others are not so fortunate, and the impact of the breakup or rejection is less mediated and more damaging.
The positive news is that resilience can be learnt and improved. You can use this breakup to start the process. You can do several things to ease and learn from the breakup’s pain. Statistic shows that 90% of humans go through more than one breakup, with three being the average.
1) Prevention: See a relationship counsellor before the minor issues turn into a breakup. In my experience, even brief counselling of four sessions can make a difference to the survival of a relationship. As in the case of Erika and the Netflix mini-series “Uncoupled”, breakups are processes that happen during a period of time, even when the actual breakup surprises you, often caused by those little misunderstandings and lack of listening (80% of anyone’s thoughts are about themselves). In Uncoupled, Michael and Colin reach for a relationship counsellor, but far too late, and any viewer may grasp the couple’s problem.
2) Avoidance: The breakup happened. So now what? The lesson from neuroscience is that you are addicted to the relationship. As in any addiction, we need to avoid the addicting substance. In this case, it means not to look at pictures of your ex-partner or another sentimental reminder. No FB, Twitter, or other social media can reactivate your dopamine-related cravings and feelings of withdrawal. By the way, no alcohol, and be alert for new addictive behaviours appearing during this period of time.
3) Exercise: This is not a stereotype. Again from what we discussed above, we know that the individual who copes better with breakups has more mu-receptors. Still, another way to increase endogenous opioids, which can create feelings of contentment and help resilience, is through exercises. Increase the amount and the vigour of it, and if you can, do resistance exercises (please check with your primary care physician that you can safely exercise).
4) Remember that you will move on: Remind yourself that you will move on. The pain you are suffering will become a memory.
5) Make a list of your ex-partner’s defects: You tend to idealise your former partners during a breakup, and we are in a phase where we try to understand the “why”, often ending in blaming ourselves. So sit down and write on a piece of paper all the things you know your ex-partner was less than perfect, all the little things you had to put up with. Now give it a title like it was a book (it can be a serious title or a funny one, it is up to you). Keep this piece of paper with you and when you catch yourself in the idealisation process, take it out and read your notes. Do this each time, and you will notice a reduction of the idealisation and a more realistic view of the relationship with time.
6) Practice self-compassion: I wrote about self-compassion in another post, but it is even more relevant in the case of a breakup. Be also kind to yourself and remember if somebody loved you, you were worthy of that love. Things change, and everything is impermanent; even the most beautiful and loving relationships one day will have to end. That means to be human.
7) Speak to a counsellor: If the breakups, like what happened to Erika, start to have physical and psychological symptoms, it is time to seek help. We are trained and specialised in helping people like Erika to use their psycho-physical resources to find themselves and their values and come out from the breakup more resilient for the future.
Breakups are not just emotionally painful; they are real crisis that often needs help. Although prevention is better than facing a crisis, and relationship counselling is very effective, sometimes breakups are inevitable. Yet you do not need to go through it by yourself. There are resources and support available; among those, there is us.
