ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

This is such a huge topic that we've transcribed some of the show. Listen in every Wednesday evening at 9pm for the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 1 Surgery, addressing important issues, answering your texts and getting deep.

Gemma started by asking Dr Radha for the full medical lowdown on whether heartbreak can literally cause us physical pain; turns out there is!

Dr Radha explained-

"There is some evidence that when you break up or split up with somebody that actually you get a really massive release of different hormones, so you get all the stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and those can cause physical effects reactions like sweating, tightness in your chest, a fast heart rate so yeah – these physical things that we talk about with heartbreak happen as well.

I think it’s because there’s a sense of loss, a sense of fear and fear basically causes that flight or fight response where your body releases those hormones to protect you, to fight or get away from something. Except that what we’re trying to fight is obviously emotional pain, not something you can get away from."

Hi Gemma, I’m heartbroken – my boyfriend of five years decided it was best for both of us to end things completely yesterday evening. I hardly slept last night and it made me physically sick this morning and panic attacks. I love him so much and I want to show him that I will work at us and not all is lost. Yet I want to respect his wishes. This is the hardest thing I’ve experienced and yes, I feel desperate and confused. I’m in the middle of my final exams at uni and I don’t know what to do. (From Emily, via text)

Dr Radha: I think when it’s so fresh, it’s just the biggest cloche on the head

And like Emily said, it can affect sleep, you can wake up in the middle of the night feeling anxious, really uncertain. It really affects how hungry you feel, it just feels like it affects everything, you just don’t know what to do.

It’s a really hard time of year, especially with your exams coming up. What I would say to you is if there are things that you feel you don’t understand or that you haven’t resolved in terms of why he broke up or why he said he wanted to break up with you then I think it is worth saying ‘listen, can we talk about this a bit more, can I understand exactly what’s going on with you’?

Because I think a lot of heartbreak carries on because we don’t understand and we don’t really know what’s happened.

Gemma: Clarity is needed.

Dr Radha: Yes, I think clarity is needed and I think also after five years to break and have no other chats of any kind at all is hard. So I think that is worth a try to try and understand where he’s coming from.

It may be that after that you still decide to have a little bit of a break and you need to also focus on your exams so whether or not there is a way of working out when you can come back to it at some point and also just get in touch with your friends, get your friends round. Get people to support you.

Gemma: Have a good cry, like let it out like really let it out. And I always feel like it helps to let it out to people, sometimes it’s not crying alone it’s just being like ‘euuuurwwh!’ and people rubbing your back just for a few minutes just feels much better, the release.

Dr Radha: Crying does release a lot of stress. That’s definitely been proven and we feel better after we’ve cried. So yeah, let it out, definitely.

Gemma’s hero and legendary agony aunt Mariella Frostrup came on the show to talk heartbreak, from her own experiences and in her advice column.

Mariella: It’s the world’s most important topic really when it comes to individual happiness, isn’t it? Because you can’t have love without heartbreak. I mean, there’s very few people – I can’t say I’ve ever met one – who’ve fallen in love and never had to experience the agony of heartbreak.

Gemma: It’s so true. Have you been heartbroken in your life?

Mariella: Oh sooooooo many times! It’s so funny my daughter was just listening to you earlier, you know listening to the promo and she said “why are you going on? What do you know about heartbreak?” and I think it was completely ludicrous to her that I could ever have suffered like that.

But that’s the thing about heartbreak, isn’t it? It’s universal. And even if you don’t seem like it – there’s a lot of thinking that it only affects the young but you can have eighty-year-olds heartbroken. The trouble is, you know, it never ends. If you’re going to dip your toe into the water of romance then at some point, you know, someone’s going to turn round and reject you.

Gemma: Do you think it changes? Because I think about all the relationships I’ve had and I wear them on my back as kind of a weight of experience and some of them really awful and some of them really great but just not right and I think that my response to heartbreak has changed in my 31 years in the world. Do you think that that is ever-evolving? Do you think that – can you protect yourself.

Mariella: You know, I wonder. I haven’t been heartbroken in awhile, I’ve been married the last 12 years and you get a sort of false sense of security where you think ‘oh I’m sure I could deal with it now, I know that it’s only a transitory thing and you know it goes away and time heals it’ but actually in the moment, when you’re suffering heartbreak I don’t know if any of us ever become pros at it.

I think you might get better, you might learn some skills in dealing with it and that’s the important thing that you learn with age and I think also you perhaps learn that there is a future, that this isn’t the end of everything, it’s a sort of momentary blip and that eventually you will come out it.

And it sounds like such a pathetic bit of advice when your hearts been broken to pieces and shattered but to know that it will heal is quite important. So just keep your eyes – even if it’s just a tiny, tiny flickering light on the horizon then there will come a day when the pain is less and the next day when the pain is even less and eventually you’ll feel ok again. In fact, you’ll feel so ok that you’re ready to go all over again.

Gemma: In fact, you might feel absolutely splendid and better than before!

Mariella: Well, that’s the thing that’s really important to remember when you do split up with someone, it’s that that’s what was meant to happen. You know, you weren’t right for each other and it’s not in any way a condemnation of you as a human being, it doesn’t mean that you’re not pretty enough or not clever enough or funny enough or sporty enough or whatever the thing driving the break up, it just means that you and the person weren’t right for each other and the good news about that is that it means there’s someone who is.

Mariella: I think one of the hardest things with being upset in a breakup is that people always want you to snap out of it, so everyone’s going ‘come on you’ve got to just snap out of it, come on, come out, get drunk, you’ll feel better' and actually the thing with that, one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that wallowing in it is quite an important thing to do and I’m not sure it doesn’t make the pain go away faster.

If you bury yourself in your bedroom with the comfiest duvet over you you can and the saddest songs you know and read the saddest stories then actually you sort of overdose on misery and at a certain point you think ‘ok, I’ve had it with this.’

And you step outside the door and breathe the air and remember that the sun’s shining and that the world is going on. There’s something restorative, I think about reading or listening to other people’s pain. I certainly get it with having my column, because you end up reading about so much woe that things that happen to you in your own life start to seem a little less painful.

And I think that’s absolutely true when it comes to heartbreak, I think the more you delve into other people’s misery, the more you think ‘oh well, maybe he was just a bit of a git.’ Or she, of course! It’s not a single-sex issue.

Some of the boys I’ve known over the years who’ve been heartbroken have been far, far worse – because they find it so much harder to talk about. Girls do sit down and tell their girlfriends everything. Men do try and keep the veneer of strength and actually it’s as good a time as any to just let that crumble and let yourself be vulnerable because that’s when you can let your friends help you.

Mariella, Gemma and Dr Radha answered another of your texts-

“I’m absolutely heartbroken, my partner broke up with me last Wednesday. I feel nothing but pain – no sleep, no energy, no food, constant crying, trying to distract myself but everything reminds me of her. I can just about listen to music and go to work. I love her so much.”

Gemma: That is a pit of heartbreak right there.

Mariella: Well that just sums it up doesn’t it? And I think every single it time it feels that unique and that personal and that agonising. And the trouble is, I’m quite a pragmatic person and I always used to try and advise people out of it and actually what you want is someone to give you a cuddle and go ‘yeah, I know, it’s really awful and I know you’re in terrible pain right now’

The only thing I can tell you is that it will pass and that you think you love her more than you’ll ever love anyone else but actually a day will come, even though it’s impossible to imagine at this moment, when somebody else will walk into your life and you’ll think ‘I love her more than anybody else.’ And that’s the sort of confusing thing about it but also the positive thing.

Gemma: It’s just one of the most beautiful things about human existence, that things can change and feel so different and you just don’t know where your path is going to take you.

Mariella: I think you have to relish it – I know that sounds bad and I don’t mean that anyone should be masochistic about it but I think it’s like the sweet with the sour. You have to think ‘Ok, I’m going to really have to sink to the depths here and purge myself of this sadness’ before you can come out of it. Because otherwise love would be so boring, if you fell in love and it just went along a perfectly smooth path forever.