Rebuilding After Breakup

They don’t call it heartbreak for no reason. 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 heart break is causing actual physical pain. To add to that, when we are in love we produce elevated levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine and the hormone oxytocin (which make us feel good) but when we experience heartbreak these levels drop. This drop in these chemicals can feel like you are withdrawing from addictive drugs. If this isn’t enough your body will also increase its cortisol levels (stress hormone) which can contribute to anxiety, nausea, acne and weight gain – all those unpleasant mental and physical symptoms associated with heart break.

Like when we experience other types of losses, there will be a grieving process with heartbreak. Often the grief is not over just the relationship break up, there can be many secondary losses associated with it such as being a wife or husband, having future children together, planned events in the future, your place in your partner’s family and so on. People can also feel like they have lost part of their identity so the grief really can really feel very overwhelming.

Unfortunately, it does take time to heal from a break up but there are many strategies you can implement to help you get through it and start to rebuild who you are again.