Science Vs - Heartbreak: Why It Feels So Achy Breaky

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Getting your heart broken sucks — and for some of us, it even feels physically painful. So why does it hurt so bad? And what can science tell us about how to get over it? We dive into all of this with neuroscientist Prof. Lucy Brown.  Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsHeartbreak In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Heartbreak sucks (07:17) What heartbreak does in the brain (12:14) What heartbreak does in the body (15:07) How to get over heartbreak  The episode does mention abuse. Here are some resources if you’re struggling to move on from abuse:  https://resources.byspotify.com/ https://www.loveisrespect.org/resources/why-am-i-struggling-to-move-on-after-abuse/ This episode was produced by Michelle Dang, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, Kaitlyn Sawrey and Lexi Krupp. Editing by Caitlin Kenney and Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Diane Kelly and Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard and Bobby Lord. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all the scientists we got in touch with for this episode, including Professor Larry Young, Professor Tiffany Field, Professor Ethan Kross, Professor Sandra Langeslag, and Professor Naomi Eisenberger. Thanks to Lori Segal. A special thanks to the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.  Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, we're pitting facts against falling out of love as we tackle heartbreak. Science is about to help us with one of our most universal experiences, getting dumped. So let's meet Annabelle. She's a Science Versus listener, and she told us about her big heartbreak. It all started when she was in college. I was a sophomore. He was a junior.

And it was a total meet-cute. It was the first day of English class. And they were told to chat to someone new for an icebreaker. So I just turned to the person behind me and he was sitting right behind me and it was one of those like, oh my gosh, like the world slowed down. I felt like butterflies. I was like, oh, hello. They hit it off. And after that, they made a point of sitting next to each other in every class. And the more Annabelle learned about this guy, the more she started falling for him.

They started setting up some study dates that turned into real dates. She remembered one where everything felt so perfect. It was a day at the ballgame. He was a big Angels fan. I'm a big Dodgers fan. And so that was a cute little like, oh man, my team's going to get your team. No, I'm going to win. And it was so fun. It was just, it was a beautiful day. I was happy and laughing. He was happy and laughing. And just, I'm like, this is

like a country song, I guess, you know, like taking my girl in my truck to my baseball game. And I was like, oh, I love this. I was like, they're going to write love stories about this. And okay, I got to say, the sex was really great. At one point, Annabelle's boyfriend went to study abroad in the Netherlands. She visited him and during that trip, they had a blast. But then the trip is over. It's time for Annabelle to go home. She's packing up her stuff and it's all sad. And it's here where something kind of strange happens. So he asks her if she'll take some gifts back for his family.

I was like, yeah, sure. Is there anything else you want me to pack? And he's like, well, I have a journal. It was a red journal. It's the brand Moleskine. Moleskine? Moleskine, yes, yes. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like a deep red Moleskine. He hands me the journal and he's like, oh, but I don't know if I want you to read it or not. I was like, huh. She packs the journal, gets on her flight. And as soon as she's back in the U.S., Annabelle is desperate to hear from him. Yeah, so I race home. I open up my laptop. I see an email from him and he's like, I hope you made it home safe. I had a great time. Can't wait to see you again. And about the journal, I decided I will let you read the journal.

And I was like, okay. He goes, but it's going to be hard for you to read. And there are some pages that are circled. And if they're circled, that means that's really going to be hard for you to read. What? Clearly he planned it ahead of time. Right. Yeah. He's like, but I don't want this to change anything between us after you read it. I read the journal. He's saying that I'm a party girl, that I'm a stoner. I did forget to mention that during his time in europe there was this girl who kept popping up and i was like i don't i don't i don't really like her she seems to be a little flirty with you

and he was totally gaslighting of like no no she's not. You're just imagining it. Well, shockingly, in the journal, find out he likes her. He's wanted to date her. What the f***? What the f***? Had he circled those bits? Did he know they would be hard for you to read? Yes. Oh, my f***ing God.

Yeah, those were the pages that he circled. Yeah, he was calling me a bitch. What? And he was writing a negative entry about me when I was there. What? Visiting him. When I was done reading it, I threw the journal so hard across the room that it hit the wall and the spine of the journal broke off. A week later, they met on Skype.

And it was done. And even though she knew he'd done this super dicky thing, she was so heartbroken. You would start replaying things of like, well, what if this was different? What if I did something different? I'm feeling this pain, and I'm so sad, and like, I should stop being sad.

Why am I so sad? This is not normal. But it wasn't just feeling crappy in her head. She was in physical pain. She could feel this heartbreak through her whole body. There was like a tightness in my chest that lingered for a while and in my gut. So much so that I did kind of lose an appetite for about a week, where even my friends were like, girl, you gotta eat. So Annabelle was a mess. And of course, when it comes to heartbreak, she is not alone.

In fact, when we reached out to you guys, our listeners, we heard so many stories of you being so terribly heartbroken. People saying they just felt so bad. Like, just quickly, here's another listener that we'll hear from today. Matt. He'd been totally in love with his boyfriend. And when it finally ended, he just felt so awful. I just remember I physically hurt. Like like my heart and my chest hurt. It was hard for my brain to understand, like, why am I physically hurting so much?

That's so cliche. I'm like, oh, like, you're just another country song. Like, get over it. So today, we're going to find out what is happening in our brains and bodies as we are down in the dumps. And critically, what can science teach us about how to get over our exes and get back to that thank you, next happy place. Several years ago, we first dove into the science of heartbreak. But today, we've updated the science and we're dipping our toes back in. When it comes to heartbreak, there's a lot of, This is not normal. But then, there's science.

Science Vess's heartbreak is coming up just after the break. The heart Break. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan 11? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right.

I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jan Eleven. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs,

for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology? And what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Welcome back. Today, we're finding out what science can tell us about heartbreak.

And we wanted to start with what is happening in our brain when someone stomps all over our heart. So for this, we need... My name is Lucy Brown. I'm a neuroscientist. Lucy is a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. And she did this groundbreaking study on our brains on heartbreak. But she said that when her colleagues first found out that she wanted to study heartbreak, there were a lot of haters.

Neuroscientists said, oh, it's too messy, too much emotion. You can't study it scientifically. It seems magical. We said, oh, we think maybe we can. And so Lucy and a few colleagues took a crack at it. Their idea was that if you put heartbroken people into an MRI machine, maybe you could see heartbreak in their brains. Like perhaps their brains would light up in some unique way. So first step, the heartbreak squad needed a bunch of people who were heartbroken. Being at universities, they put out flyers all over the campus saying, have you been rejected in love but can't let go?

Give us a call. And then as puffy-eyed college kids walked through their door, the researchers asked them a ton of questions to make sure that they were truly, truly heartbroken. The main thing is that they can't stop thinking about the other person, that it's really being obsessed with thinking about the other person. They're crying a lot. They can't sleep.

Fifteen sleep-deprived sad sacks fit the bill for Lucy's experiment. Now, step two, the brain scan. To make sure that their guinea pigs would be all sad and heartbroken while they were getting an MRI, the researchers asked them to bring in a photo of their once beloved's face. So they were actually looking into their dumper's eyes while they were in the scanner.

Believe me, when you're in that machine and you open your eyes and it's like right there, you are immersed in that person. Yeah. That must have been awful. Oh, they were crying, you know, remembering the heartbreak, yes. They really came out crying. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tears in the scanner, Tears down their face.

Yes. To then see what was heartbreak and what was just regular brain, Lucy and her team needed to do one final thing. They had the same college kids look at a photo of someone else while they were in the MRI. Someone they weren't emotionally attached to at all. Then the researchers compared the two brain scans. And Lucy remembers when the results from each one started coming in.

I do. I do. When I first put, you know, the first 10 and then 12 and then 14, and I first looked at that, it was pretty amazing. The experiment worked. She could see heartbreak in the brain. And Lucy told us about her very curious findings. One of the things that was interesting is that a part of the brain that registers physical pain was active. So we weren't feeling the physical pain, you know, like a pinch or a cut or a broken bone. But that part of the brain that says this hurts, that's active.

It's so interesting. Like, I think about that as different things, to break my leg, to break up with someone. But it's not that different. It's not that different. It's not just the physical pain. It's not just the emotional pain. Those two are interacting all the time. And this all fits with a growing body of research showing this connection between physical pain and emotional pain. And it's all suggesting that when people say, I'm hurting, they are literally hurting. And this doesn't just happen in heartbreak. It can also happen at other times, like when we get rejected or left out of a game.

It's what science calls social rejection. Okay, so that's the hurting part of a breakup. But Lucy also saw that when those heartbroken saps looked at their exes, another part of their brain lit up. The reward system. This system gets triggered when we do stuff like eat chocolate, take drugs, you know, the fun ones, and when we're in love. So it's this two thing, it's causing them pain, but there he or she is, that face that gave so much pleasure, so many good times, made me feel so good in my heart. So we can see in their brains that they crave their ex,

but they can no longer have them. And that's where the heartbreak kicks in. And so all this stuff is going on in our brain. And it turns out that this can have real effects on our body. The brain is influencing the body, and all these systems are interacting. So researchers found that after losing a partner, certain hormones like cortisol can start racing around our body.

This is a stress hormone. And early research suggests that this cascade of stress can cause real problems. Surveys have found that it can affect your sleep for sometimes months. It can also mess up your immune system. And one more thing. Heartache can quite literally hurt your heart in ways that you can really feel. You do, you feel a deep, sunken, tight feeling in your chest.

Now, in some cases, you can get pain in your heart that's actually quite serious. It's a type of heart failure, and it's known as Takotsubo syndrome. During Takotsubo's, one chamber of your heart balloons up in this very specific way, which is actually where the syndrome gets its name from. Your heart starts to look like a Japanese octopus trap, which is called a Takotsubo. And you can get Takotsubo's after other kinds of stress too,

like public speaking. And there was even takotsobus after other kinds of stress too, like public speaking. And there was even this case report of it happening to someone after they ate too much wasabi. So where does all of this leave us? Well, we now know that heartbreak can cause real measurable effects throughout your body. It can increase your stress hormones, cause sleep problems and even chest pains. So for all you heartbroken folks out there, you're not crazy.

This is your brain. This is a physiological thing. You're not to blame for this. Don't blame yourself for all of this. Both Matt and Annabelle told us that knowing that heartbreak can cause real physical pain, it's really helpful. And it's something they both wish they knew at the time. I wouldn't have felt so stupid or silly for hurting.

Would have been validating. I do feel more normalized. If you're feeling physical pain, that's normal. That's okay. You know, you're not just being a dramatic Disney princess. After the break, the best science on how to get over your ex. Yes, getting rid of the blood-sucking vampire in your life is coming up. Welcome back today on the show Heartbreak. We know it truly, truly sucks to be heartbroken and that you can feel it throughout your body and your brain. And now we want to know, how can you get over it and get to that heartbreak feels good in a place like this place? First up, let's get some answers by looking into research in breaking bad habits.

So one thing which has been shown to help people is to stay away from triggers or cues. So, for example, if you want to stop eating popcorn, don't go to the cinema. There was actually a study on this and it helps. If you want to quit smoking, don't have cigarettes around. And when it comes to heartbreak, applying the same logic, if you want to stop thinking about your ex, clear out their text messages, block them on Instagram. Throw away all of the things that were associated with that person. You should just get rid of them. Go live somewhere else entirely. If you're really having a big problem,

just get away from there. But if you can't uproot your entire life to get over someone, we did find another helpful suggestion in the literature, and it's called negative reappraisal. It's a fancy science phrase for saying, just keep reminding yourself of what a turd your ex was. Annabelle did a lot of this too. You know, like it would be, okay, this was a red flag, so I shouldn't be so sad.

Oh, okay, a little bit of the tightness went away. He never liked my friends, and that's important to me. Okay, a little bit of the tightness went away. And when it came to negative reappraisal, Annabelle's mates were very helpful. You know, my friends being like, yeah, we f***ing hated that guy. Like, good on you for breaking up with him. But it's not all just thinking they were such a schmuck. And trust me, they were a schmuck.

On the flip side, researchers found that it's a good idea to try to reframe the breakup. Like, don't think, oh, I wish I was different and then they would have liked me. Instead, try to see that the relationship was holding you back or that you grew from it or that you couldn't truly be yourself around them.

You know, you realize I can buy myself flowers. I can hold my own hand. I can love me better than you can. Annabelle says looking back, the breakup was absolutely the right step for her. Yeah, it was so hard, but it was so necessary. Like the person I became after that was just the complete opposite of who I was going into it. I feel like if I didn't have relationships,

then I wouldn't have been able to identify what a really good one is. 100%, 100%. And if you're not ready for personal growth just yet, take heart. Time heals all wounds. Or at least it can help. A survey of almost 200 uni students found that people tended to be less distressed if there had been more time since their breakup. And this is true not just for humans, but there's also research about this in voles. So voles are these little potato-shaped rodents that are very cute,

and they're known for partnering up for life. And if scientists take away their lovers, the voles get really stressed. But even they can get over a breakup. And you can see this in the chemicals in their body. So just this year, a study was published that found that while soon after a breakup, the voles would get this dopamine hit if they saw their ex, after time had passed,

when they saw their ex, time had passed when they saw their ex that dopamine surge went away and for matt time was one thing that helped for sure eventually i got to a place where when i did see him again it didn't trigger me in any kind of way in In fact, it was like, I was almost annoyed, like, ugh. Some studies have found that writing or journaling about your emotions after a breakup might help you feel a little better. Therapy is also a good one, and it has been found to help with those pesky, ruminating thoughts. And then, just finally, there are some things that will help you get over a breakup that you can't read about in the scientific literature. So Matt loves to go out dancing, and it's something his ex wouldn't let him do.

Matt's ex could be abusive, like getting really jealous. And for Matt, not going out dancing... That just killed me. I'm like, that's my joy. That's everything. That's where my source of joy really dancing. That just killed me. I'm like, that's my joy. That's everything. That's where my source of joy really is. I love to dance. And he's like, no, you can't do that anymore. And when things ended and Matt was in that pit of despair,

he found something to make him feel better. Or rather, someone. The best way that I knew how to get through my feelings was dancing in my room. There was one set of CDs that I came back to and would go over and over again, and that is one woman, the woman who is every woman, and that was Whitney Houston.

Whitney Houston's greatest hits collection had just come out, and Matt played that album on repeat. First, he listened to the sad tracks that made him cry, like, didn't we almost have it all? And he'd always finish dancing his heart out to one final track. The song that meant the most to me was I Want to Dance with Somebody Who Loves Me because that was really what I felt.

I kept coming back to that moment over and over again where I had started dancing in the club with him and he just looked at me with disgust. When Whitney sings I Want to Dance with Somebody Who Loves Me, that loves me. That was it. That was everything that expressed everything that I ever wanted to express. And that's where I found myself again. And so even to this day, when I hear that song, like it just like it brings me to this place of yes, that's that's what I want. Years later, Matt is doing great.

He's totally over that relationship. And so is Annabelle. In fact, her current partner. He's literally the best person in the entire fucking world. I mean, he introduced me to Science Versus. I mean, clearly, he's amazing. Okay. So when it comes to the science of heartbreak,

here's what we've learnt. It's real. You can see it in our brains, in our hearts, and even in our immune systems. And to hack your way out of heartbreak, try reminding yourself what a twerp they were. Try avoiding triggers like the fun things you used to do together. Don't drive past their house at night.

Olivia Rodrigo, she knew what was going on. And also, don't discount the healing powers of Whitney. That's science. Oh, wait, wait a sec, wait a sec. I still have to tell you about what became of that journal. You know, Annabelle's ex's red moleskin journal? Well, the thing is, after her breakup, she called up her stepmom. I was like, I'm not giving it back to him, but I don't want to just throw it away because I feel like that's not enough justice.

And she just goes, burn it. I was like, I have to go. There's going to be a bonfire. I was already living with one of my best friends. So I call another one of my girlfriends and I was like, Brittany, we're having a bonfire tonight. Yes. She was like, hells yeah. She comes over. We take one of our pots from our kitchen, just like one of our sauce pots. We go outside on the balcony, page by page, Wendy. You did it page by page. Oh, wow. Oh, we did it page by page.

How did it feel as you were burning it? It was phenomenal. It was absolutely phenomenal. One of the things that he had problems with was me smoking weed with my friends. And he wrote about that multiple times in the journal. So my best friend took one of those entries, rolled up a joint with it, and we used the flames of the burning journal to light the joint that I smoked. That is so sweet. Yeah. That's Science Versus.

This episode has 64 citations in it. 64. If you want to read more about the science of heartbreak, then just head to our show notes and click on the link to our transcript and you will see a fully cited, beautiful script full of beautiful science. A huge thanks to all of the listeners who shared your heartbreak stories with us. Oh, my gosh. We read every single one.

We poured over them. We really, really appreciate that you sent those and felt comfortable. Thank you so much. If you want to appear on an episode of Science Versus telling us your story of various things, keep an eye out on our social media. You could go to our Instagram, which is science underscore BS. We often have little call-outs where we want to hear from you. Also, my TikTok, which is science underscore BS. We often have little call outs where we want to hear from you. Also, my TikTok is at Wendy Zuckerman. Now in this episode,

we did talk about some tough stuff. And if you are going through a nasty, maybe even abusive relationship, and you just want to talk to someone, we're going to put some resources in our show notes. This episode was produced by Michelle Dang, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, Caitlin Sori and Lexi Krupp. Editing by Caitlin Kenney and Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly and Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard and Bobby Lord.

Music written by Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all of the scientists that we reached out to for this episode, including Professor Larry Young, Professor Tiffany Field, Professor Ethan Cross, Professor Sandra Lagerslag, and Professor Naomi Eisenberger. Thanks to Laurie Siegel. A special thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you Siegel. A special thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next week.