It can be quite challenging to deal with a breakup. You may feel that you won’t be able to love someone else ever again, but these are only emotional symptoms. In addition to feeling emotional pain, you may also feel physical pain, depending on how grave your breakup is.
Thus, below is a list of things which can happen to your body when you break up with someone you love.
- You are more likely to self-medicate to cope with the dopamine withdrawal. When you break up with someone, your dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin levels become lower. Therefore, you are more likely to feel sad and hopeless.
- Your weight changes. When you break up, you may want to eat a lot or you may lose your appetite completely, which can result in sudden weight changes.
- You lose sleep. A lot of people start suffering insomnia after they break up. When they go to bed, they overthink what went wrong in their relationship and how to get their partners back, which doesn’t allow their minds to relax.
- Your facial muscles subtly convey regret. Scientists have found out that after a breakup, our face muscles become more tensed, especially around the eyes.
- You forget who you were. When you lose someone you love, you can’t define who you are anymore since you shared a lot of interests and personality traits with your partner. Now that you aren’t together, it can be quite easy to forget who you truly are.
- Your sex drive declines. Because you gave your all to your partner, you don’t feel that you can bond with someone else easily. Therefore, you become less interested in sexual relationships even if you think that an easy rebound could heal your broken heart.
- Your life is at risk. If it takes a long time for you to get over your ex, it may be a sign of depression. Thus, it is important to take care of your mental health in order to heal faster after a breakup.
- Rejection stimulates your brain’s reward center. Even though your organism doesn’t produce a lot of “feel-good” hormones after a breakup, the reward centers of your brain are still functioning.
- You experience chest pain similar to a heart attack. Chest pain which you feel after breaking up with your loved one is called stress cardiomyopathy. You may feel a fast heartbeat and your blood pressure may get higher after a breakup.
- Your stress hormone levels increase. Because you experience a lot of stress, your body produces more stress hormones, known as cortisol. Because of excessive amounts of cortisol, your heartbeat becomes faster and your breathing becomes rapid.