Understanding a heart break via brain

Once in a lifetime, everyone has been through this what we call a heart break. A heart break tends to stay in the back of your mind sometimes, you might think that it fades away but actually it doesn't. Many of us after a heart break, experience emotional changes in ourselves.

Depending upon the situation the person has been through, some feel strong yet some feel low, some feel that they won’t trust again the person who has caused this and for some it’s just like another day. The point of saying all is that each individual perceives the heart break differently, that is why we say

“Try being in my shoes”

If we could measure emotional pain, it’s likely that we would have observed that a teenager being ignored by his school squad experience the same amount of emotional pain as a 5 year old kid being denied his favorite teddy bear at a toy store.

It’s a common question that can a person die with a broken heart? 

The answer to this is YES! 

The condition is termed as “stress-induced cardiomyopathy” where heart muscles of the person going through heart break (emotional stress) are damaged sometimes causing immediate death. The better part of the story is that person can recover from this within weeks if given proper care by the professionals.

As mentioned above that a heart break sometimes stays in the back of your mind, I’d explain how a human mind works to make it happen.

Let’s just say that when you were in school someone criticized your sketching skills in a harsh manner and it broke your heart, years later you won a sketching competition as soon as you start thinking about your hard work you will suddenly remember that criticism and that now you have succeeded in overcoming that heart break.

Let’s understand the working of brain by assuming it as a computer.

Now what happens is that the Hippocampus (memory part of the brain) stores that event of heart break with the reference of sketching skills and a keyword of sadness. The years pass and the event might have become less important in your life, so we believe that it has faded or has gone missing somewhere between lots of other files (memories). Now as soon as you start thinking about your hard work after winning the competition, brain triggers a random search in the files (memories) referring to the same thing and that’s how it reminds you of the very moment which broke your heart.

To conclude, I’d just say that I hope it has been a productive and knowledgeable read for you people. I believe I haven’t covered the whole because it is a huge topic to talk about, there are many branches and sub branches of it on which I will talk about some other time and please let me know if I have missed any details in this or something which you thought could have been a part of it.

Will be back after a while with some more productive and knowledgeable content till then, TATA!

*Constructive criticism and suggestions are always welcomed*