Designed to support your body’s fight-or-flight response, too much cortisol over a period of time can contribute to anxiety, nausea, acne and weight gain – all those unpleasant mental and physical symptoms associated with heartbreak. Then, when heartbreak happens, these hormone levels drop and are replaced with the stress hormone cortisol. Dopamine and oxytocin in particular are hormones which make us feel good and want to repeat behaviours, and are released at elevated levels when we’re in love. Love can be addictive, like a drug, because of the hormones our brain releases when we become really attached to someone or something.
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Hormones aren’t just for randy teenagers – our bodies produce a long list of hormones every day for different purposes, including falling in and out of love. The language we use to describe heartbreak – “I feel like my heart’s been ripped out”, “it was gut wrenching”, “like a slap in the face” – all hint at the way we associate physical pain with emotional pain. Studies show that your brain registers the emotional pain of heartbreak in the same way as physical pain, which is why you might feel like your heartbreak is causing actual physical hurt. While there’s still a lot to discover about how and why we experience love and heartbreak and the effect these have on our bodies, scientific study has provided us with some clues about why heartbreak makes you feel so rubbish, and some strategies to use if you’re feeling really down. This stress can affect how we feel emotionally and physically, and may take weeks, months or even years to recover from. Heartbreak can cause a large amount of stress, especially if the loss is a sudden one. We feel heart broken when we lose someone or something we loved or wanted very much, like a romantic relationship or a friendship, a family member, a pet, or a job or opportunity that was very important to us. We’ve all been there, and it’s safe to say we all want to avoid experiencing heartbreak ever again.
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Heartbreak is an unfortunately common part of the human experience, and it really, really sucks.