August 23, 2010 • 29 mins
In this episode, Molly and Cristen discuss why breaking up with romantic partners is universally painful -- and offer some consolation to sufferers -- as they explore the brain chemistry of breakups.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From house Stop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm Molly. Now for anyone out
(00:22):
there listening who was going through a breakup or has
recently been rejected in love and it's feeling, you know,
just lingering feelings for a certain someone out there, I
have a wonderful consoling piece of not really advice, it's
(00:45):
more just just a fact for you to to hang
on tightly and fall asleep next to you every night
as you go through this emotional journey. I'm ready, Christen.
It is all in your brain, everything that you're feeling,
all of that, all of that love lost, just that
(01:06):
horrible state where you don't want to sleep, you don't
want to eat, you're trying not to text, your like,
checking their Facebook obsessively to see if someone you know
might have written something suggestive on their wall, all of it.
We've all done it before. Here's the thing, people, you're
not crazy. It's just your brain going nuts. And I
(01:26):
find that to be quite reasure. I do too. We're
going to talk about this study that came out just
a few weeks ago. It was let up by Helen Fisher,
who we talked about on the Why does the Sizzle
Fizzle Podcast, and she worked with researcher's named Lucy Brown,
Arthur Aaron greg Strong and Debora Magic. And the study
is called Reward Addiction and Emotion Regulation Systems associated with
(01:47):
Projection and Love. But if I could suggest an alternate title,
I would suggest something like, if you're broken up, read this.
It will make you feel a lot better. Yes, because yes,
as Kristen says, it's all in your brain and that's
so helpful because it's out of your control for reasons
(02:08):
we're going to discuss. But you know how like you
know the word the deepest, darkest moments and it seems
like they're never going to end. This study just shows
how it's not in your control. It's there are no
rules to a breakup, yeah, or just or just being rejected.
You don't necessarily have to be in a relationship with
someone and be broken up with. It could have just
(02:30):
been you know, you've really been even crushing hard on
somebody and you finally take it out there and the
person says, thanks, but no things. But if you've got
that friend who's telling you, oh, you should be over
this by now, Oh, you're just trying to give you
some kind of time frame. Yeah, Like, this study is
so reassuring in the way that it shows you that
(02:52):
there is no right or wrong way to go through this.
You're just gonna have to wait for these crazy neurons
in your brain to get themselves figured out and time.
The happy ending, I'll go ahead and tell you, is
that time does take care of that. Time does he'll
all wounds. That's not really reassuring when you're going through
the worst of it. But but this is some kind
(03:13):
of explanation for the feelings that you are feeling. And
while yes, I mean we cannot it is very unromantic
to some up are um very heart heartfelt feelings towards
other people in terms of different brain regions and neurotransmitters
and if we're in aspects of our brain just firing
(03:35):
off more more rapidly than normal. UM. And this is
also I should say it could be considered the companion
piece too. Why does the sizzle fizzle? UM? Which I
highly recommend you go back to because this is Also,
this is all dealing with Helen Fisher's work. Helen Fishers
an anthropologists who has studied um how our brains react
(03:56):
to love and what exactly love is and why these
kind of strong driving feelings exists. Because one of the
most interesting things that Fisher points out is that romantic
love is not actually an emotion when you get down
to the physical basis of it, It's actually a goal oriented,
(04:20):
motivational spate state. It's a drive. It is a drive,
and it is actually stronger than our sex drive because
if you think about it, you know, if you are
denied just simply sex, like, it's a lot easier to
sometimes go without sex and be told no just for
the physical act of that, rather than being rejected in
terms of you know, a love partner if you will.
(04:42):
And Fisher also points out that its basis is in
mammalian species, not just in human behavior. Yeah, she likens
it to a puppy that's been separated from a mother
and the terms of how it behaves. And you know,
it might sound, as Kristen said, depressing to think that
it's a ride rather than an emotion love, but she
(05:03):
points out, you know, it's easier to stop being angry
than it is to stop being in love. So it
really is this all powerful drive. So what happens when
that drive is thwarted when the person that you care
about most doesn't care about you back. That's where we're
going to get into this study that we both have
just spent five minutes talking about how much we love.
Let's share our sure, our love whatever, because I think
(05:24):
it's always you know, it's great to have um some
kind of neurological explanation to very inexplicable emotionally driven behaviors. Right,
So what happened with this study is that on the
college campus they put up these posters that said, are
you having trouble getting over someone? If so, call us?
Have you been rejected in love? And people responded and
(05:47):
they got ten women and five men who had been
rejected by a partner. The relationships had been of differing links.
One relationship had lasted as long as four years, but
I think two years was about average. The average age
was about night been because this was a college setting, UM,
and the breakup time really varied. Some people had just
been dump some people have been, you know, dealing with
(06:07):
us for a few months, so they have these people
sort of varying levels of rejection, but all of them
said that they were exhibiting sort of these worst worst
case scenarios of the obsessive emailing, the obsessive internet stalking.
And these participants were so broken hearted that Helen Fisher
actually told one of her fellow researchers. I think she
(06:28):
told Lucy Brown this that interviewing these subjects was almost
so painful she wouldn't want to do a study like
this before, because some of them just broke down because
they had to bring in a photograph of their beloved
or ex beloved, if you will. They had to bring
a photograph with them, and even just looking at the
picture drove some of these people to tears. Yeah, I
mean when you are when you have been rejected, you
(06:49):
are a raw wound. It's awful. You are just gaping emotion,
and sometimes it it uh swings from you know, the
happiness of remembering the ideal. I times when you're just like,
but everything was so perfect, to the anger of course
we should get back together, everything was great, to the
absolute anger of that moment of betrayal of someone cheated
(07:11):
on you, of that breakup, if you didn't get an
honest answer. You know, we have the sense of closure
and you know talking me out. Oh I didn't have closure.
So you can just go from one extreme to the
other in five minutes. And that's what these people were like.
And you know, as Kristen said, it was kind of overwhelming,
but as but they brought up the picture of their beloved.
Then they brought a picture of a person who they
(07:32):
felt absolutely nothing about. Yeah, like someone who has had
a significant you know, like connection in their life. But
wasn't there was that love of connection. Yeah. In fact,
they it was sort of people they found boring because
they didn't want friends who might have had like really
positive emotions associated with them. They got people who were
sort of boring, and uh, they put them into an
(07:52):
MRI machine and and they had to perform certain tasks
while they were in the MRI machine. First, what they
would do they look at the picture of the beloved,
and as Kristen said, people would start to cry. Uh,
people would start yelling and get really angry because while
they were doing this, they were told to reminisce about
different experiences in their relationship. So they're thinking about either
(08:14):
the things that made them happiest the things that made
them angriest. And then while still looking at the picture,
they would have to count backwards by sevens from eight thousand,
two hundred and eleven. And they did that to distract themselves,
and they found that forty seconds is like the optimal
time to distract yourself. So I said, that's a side
(08:35):
tip if you get really if you're like at work
and you're just like I can't focus, have been broken up,
stop and take forty seconds and count backwards from seven
from some random number, because distracting your brain will work.
Then they would spend another minute looking at the picture
of the person they didn't care about, and then they'd
spend another time doing the countdown task. And so then
what they had the researchers was a bunch of brain
(08:57):
scans from when the person was really sort of riled
up about this situation versus times when they were much
more you know, board or just complacent or working on counting.
Just sort of the baseline brain picture. And these were
the five main regions that really went haywire when they
saw the photograph of the person that they still loved.
(09:20):
Number one, we've got the ventral teg mental area the
v t A, if you will, and this is in
the midbrain, and this is linked a lot to motivation
and reward. And this concept of motivation and reward is
going to come up a lot when we talk about
romantic love because when it comes to like we said earlier,
um from early stage, romantic love in particular is a
(09:41):
goal oriented, motivational state where it drives you. So you know,
that's the reason why you know when you first fall
in love with someone, that's all you can think about.
You can skip meals, you can skip work, you can
do whatever, because there is just one thing on your
mind compelling you to breathe from minute to minute. So
after the v t A, we also have the nucleus
(10:02):
incumbents and the prefrontal cortex, and these activated areas bring
up the similarity similarity between love and addiction because Helen
Fisher continually compares the brain pathways of love to the
same pathways that are ignited when you have a cocaine addiction. Yeah,
(10:25):
and I think we talked about this in Sizzle Fizzle,
is that you know when you just can't do anything
because you're thinking about someone so much, it's the same
sort of feeling you might have if you were addicted
to drugs, and when you get a little bit of it,
it takes you up, and when you're taken away from it,
you go through withdrawll, same disease. I mean, there should
be like love rehab. Yeah, and I guess think you
(10:46):
can make the argument this is a totally different podcast,
but if you have replaced one addiction with another, at
the bottom of it, maybe the fact that you're rejecting
to love. But we're not gonna go there yet another
theory for another time. And then we also have areas
in our four rain that deals specifically with processing gains
and losses and also the anticipation of a gain. Because
(11:08):
here's the interesting thing that I was surprised to find
in this study. Adversity and love all right, tends to
actually heighten your feelings of romantic love. And uh Fisher
has this hypothesis that rejection actually activates your reward systems
that mediate emotion and reward, and when that reward is delayed,
(11:29):
i e. Like you have been rejected, then those reward
expecting neurons in your brain actually keep going longer because
they yeah, they're they're they're waiting they're waiting to get
some kind of satisfaction, but it's not coming because you've
been rejected. So it just kind of sends that part
of your brain into overdrive, which I think is why
(11:51):
people get so hung up on fantasizing the way they
will get back together. I know that I'm very gualty
of that. Why you can win a person back. I
remembers and back. But just like act like what they're
gonna say when they come back and beg your for
your forgiveness. That's not you just being like insane. That's
your reward centers going insane for themselves, reward expecting neurons.
(12:12):
People probably think we're crazy by now, but I think
it's interesting. Uh. Then we also have our autonomous nervous
system in the insular cortex, which really is linked to
the intense emotionality surrounding all this. This is why we
can daydream about these people day in and day out
and then finally, um, the insular cortex is also linked
to the emotional pain, because let's face it, this stuff
(12:35):
is painful, yeah, and it feels like it's painful in
your very body, Like you know, heartache is called heartache
for a reason. Because it can hurt. Yeah, and I
think that that really shows how the brain the mind
body connection. When that part of your brain is firing,
it is going to affect you. Sometimes you get a
flu like right after you've been dumped, because your body
is in such a compromised position, all because of the
(12:57):
stupid brain. Right the In response to to extreme breakups,
people's findies will actually release cortisol, which stimulates the immune
system to prepare for some kind of kind of sickness.
I mean, love sickness ain't no joke. Yeah, I mean
all these things that have been put into two songs
and movies, it all goes back to the brain. So
(13:19):
let's talk about We talked a little bit about it,
but let's go into a little bit deeper of why
it matters that these areas were lit up when these
people were thinking about their exes. Because what was surprising
to me is so many of them. I mean, the
people admitted I'm still in love with this person. They
reject me, but I'm still in love. And uh, so
many of the same brain areas that have been scanned
(13:41):
and people who are in love lit up. And it's funny.
How Um, that's why it can be so hard to
get everyone because that part of your brain doesn't stop
firing for a long time. And as Kristen said, it's
that firing has being made more intense by the fact
that you can't satisfy the strive. You can't get what
you want, you're knocking that reward, you're not getting, Uh,
this drive for companionship and love met And that explains
(14:04):
why the major difference in in brain activity between the
rejected lovers and the brains of people who are also
happily in love. Because Fisher has done plenty of f
fMRI I studies also on people who report being completely
in love mutually in love with with their partners, and
the rejected lovers show significantly greater activity in the areas
(14:27):
of the brain that are related to you know, love
as an addiction and also the motivation and reward. So
it's like those kind of those parts are going into overdrive,
where those reward expecting neurons are firing, they're waiting for
their satisfaction, and also kind of the the addictive aspect
of the brain um is going into overdrive as well,
(14:49):
kind of creating those feelings of withdrawal if you will,
and you know, I've heard myself saying a bunch of times, like,
how can I still feel this way about a person
when they've done me so wrong? To borrow a tear?
But it's because, as we said, this adversity heightens all
that love. It's almost like you love someone more after
they're awful to you because of the way the brain
(15:10):
is acting now. But I think that the cocaine thing,
like not to dwell on it, but it's important to
know that. Just as you wouldn't say to a person
who was an addict, like, oh, it's been two weeks,
you shouldn't really still be craving cocaine. You would never
say that to a person. That's why you can't say
it to someone who's going through a break up, because
it's the same thing. Yeah, it takes time, But the
good news from all of this is that over time,
(15:35):
these areas of the brain chill out. Yeah, and it's
probably why rebounds are so common, because I'm sure once
you know, I'm just kind of going off on my
own scientific hypothesis. Is not a hell and Fisher. This
is not a hell and Fisher thought. This is Kristen
Gonger PhD um I'm guessing that rebounds are so common
(15:58):
because it's sort of replaces. It satisfies if you will,
those reward expecting neurons, if only for a night or
a week or a month or whatever. Um, it's like
you're you're I think that some people have like that,
just neurological drive to satisfy it in some way. Yeah. Um.
But as time went on, the people who you know,
(16:19):
the people who have been broken up the longest in
this study, did have less intense firing up the most
central areas related to love and related to addiction as
time went on. So that's why I think it's important
not to put a time limit on yourself, because it's
gonna happen. When it's gonna happen. Eventually, your brain is
going to realize, oh, this isn't the reward anymore. It'll
(16:41):
chill out and life will go on. And one thing
I found Helen Fisher said was that you shouldn't even
be friends with an ex for three years, because that's
how long it may take to get your brain back
to normal. Helen Helen Fish with us a long time.
I'm going to stand with Helen Fisher on us. She
doesn't seem to know what she's talking about. But for
anyone out there who's asking themselves, why are Molly and
(17:04):
Kristen talking about the brain right now? I mean, it's
your it's your heart, and it hurts, and it's just
you know, it takes time for this emotional wound to heal. Well,
I we we bring us up because in some of
these cases, some of the participants who in this study
reported that once they knew what the study was about
(17:26):
and were aware of these connections between their brain and emotions,
came back to the researchers and said, hey, I gotta
tell you, Ever since kind of putting the pieces together
between how my brain is reacting and the you know,
the emotional behaviors that it's producing, I'm starting to feel
a little bit better. But it kind of gives you
a little more agency in this situation, if you will.
(17:50):
And also they were saying that some of these students
were already just by the very process of going under
these brain scans, were undergoing quote unquote reappraisal success, which
is basically when they remember the not so great aspects
of the relationship. Yeah, I mean I think that anyone
from a self help gurup to. Helen Fisher is going
to tell you that part of that reappraisal that your
(18:10):
brain keeps making you do is looking for lessons. And
they say that the people who can find those lessons
are the ones who are going to you know, for
I guess for lack of bet term recover better. Um,
not that I think that there's any sort of gold
standard and breakup recovery, but uh, part of that reappraisal
is figuring out we know why this happened, but just
you know, learning a lesson about yourself. Yeah, and if
(18:33):
it helps at all. Here's the thing everybody goes through this.
There was a large scale study of UM college students
at Case Western Reserve. It's referenced a lot and a
lot of these UM similar types of studies on rejection
and love of both sexes reported that they had been
rejected by someone that they adored and also said that
(18:57):
they had rejected someone who was deeply in love with them.
So no, that's but listen to that though not any
more people had done the rejecting than had been rejected.
So and of course, you know, the trite thing to
say is that the person who would reject you is
not the person you want to be with anyway, So
it would happen for a reason. It's it's better just
to deal with the pain now than to deal with
(19:18):
something that might have happened down the line. But um,
I think that also it's important to note that you
can distract yourself. You can metaphorically count back from seven
every time you need to think about that. Well, first,
I think it is important to acknowledge and uh and
Fisher underscores is a lot is that rejected lovers do
(19:38):
go through two distinct phases. That starts with protests saying,
oh my God, don't leave. These are the ten ways
I'm gonna get this person back, and then despair when
you kind of accept the fact that Okay, you're not
coming back and I'm going to be lonely for the
rest of my life and you're going to sit here
and cry. And you know it was interesting is that
she posits that there might have been evolutionary reason for this.
(20:00):
Let's we we talked about that puppy before. If the
puppy has been separated from its mother and it gets
so depressed that it just can't move, that it's just
in this like pile on the floor whimpering that the
fact that you know this depression is set in might
be an evolutionary advantage because it keeps the puppy still
so that if the mother wants to come back and
find it, it can And uh, you know, because Fisher says,
(20:24):
why would our bodies put us through so much pain?
Why would this um response to this have developed if
there wasn't a reason for it. So it's possible that
you know, you're kind of conserving your energy for the
next big adventure in your life, because that is one
interesting thing that that she points out on some of
her research is that they haven't exactly pinpointed whether or
(20:46):
not all of these love responses, this um, this motivational
drive that we are born with is adaptive or maladaptive,
whether or not it's something that really how helps us
along the way or hurts us. But the fact that
it has persisted for so long, not only in our species,
(21:06):
but also to different extents and other species indicates that
there is a reason. You know, there is a method
behind all of this madness. And the one thing I
do want to say, while we're kind of pinpointing the
fact that you know, a lot of the crazy things
we do when we're dealing with breakups can be sort
of directed back to the brain. There are people who
go through legitimate bouts of depression, and again hell and
(21:29):
Fisher points out that this might be more of a
helpful thing than a hurtful thing, because if it's if
it gets bad enough, maybe that's what will help you
seek treatment for it. So that was another example she
gave of you know, while we're kind of saying that,
you know, the obsessive Facebook stalking or Internet stalking has
a brain you know, rationale, I guess not. Depression. Depression
(21:50):
never has a rationale. It should always be treated and
you should always seek treatment for something that is upsetting
you this much. And on the flip side of this, well,
you know, some people might become really just depressed and
completely heartbroken over this at some point. Other people might
just develop an intense anger towards the person who has
(22:12):
rejected them, are broken up with them. And Helen Fisher
points out that it makes sense that there seems to
be this fine line between love and hate, if you will,
because the primary rage system in our brain is very
close to the reward system in our prefrontal cortex. So
(22:32):
while we have these reward expecting neurons that are waiting
waiting around, you know, after you get rejected, waiting around
to be um fulfilled. That can also set off that
that rage system as well and send you, you know,
just going nuts sober. You know, why this person? How
dare they do this to you? Right? And she has
(22:52):
a line that my mother has also said. One thing
my mother did tell me was to reference the tunnel
of the podcast and that the opposite of love is
not hate in difference because when those things are so connected,
when you say, oh I hate them, that means you
still have feelings about them absolutely, and what you're going
for is some difference. But I will say whenever I
get really angry, and this goes whether it's work or
(23:13):
love or anything else. Uh. Two of the best breakup
coping mechanisms you'll see them recommended across the board scream
and chocolate. I was gonna say, exercise, because you're using
all that excess energy that your anger gives you. Oh,
I completely agree. I mean, like, just go running. I
have run, I have run down some breakups. I am
(23:36):
not a runner, but a breakup will make me run.
And I think that you know you'll see that everywhere.
Just taking care of yourself, you know, allowing yourself the
ice cream and chocolate, but also taking care of yourself
from a healthy perspective too is vital. Yeah, because there
are there are plenty of ways to kind of enhance
yourself through this. There was one tip that we saw
that said, hey, recognize the the amount of time that
(23:59):
you know, I'll have freed up to spend on yourself
now when you're in the pits, that's the last thing
you want to hear. You don't want free time, you
want time with someone else. But you know, if you
if you can try to channel that space into something creative,
into uh, exercising, into taking care of yourself and also
(24:19):
giving yourself to space to to feel the way you feel.
I mean, yes, I could just be more time to
watch TV. Let's be honest. Yeah, I mean part of
it is distraction. Part of it is counting back from
seven over and over again, day by day until you
don't think about them anymore. Because there's gonna be a
point when you wake up and you realize, oh my god,
I haven't thought about so and so in a while,
(24:43):
And that's just that you just have to give that
brain time to run out the clock like the end
of a basketball game. And sometimes it takes our brain
not so long, and other times it takes our brain
months and months and months. And there's always you know,
and and with certain people there's always going to be
some kind of emotional connection. So that was our take
(25:03):
on the Hell and Fisher study. And as you probably
can tell, we love it and feel that it's completely
justified every breakup we've ever had. Well yeah, and it's
just kind of fascinating for us. We like, we like
to dork out on things like this, So dork out
with us and send us your stories of love and
loss if you want, um and maybe it'll help. Maybe
if you've just been a been through a breakup, you know,
(25:25):
just expressing that can can help start the healing process.
So pretend you're in the MRI machine with Helen Fisher.
Let us be your MRI machine. UM Our emails mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com and Momily, I
think we have time for a couple couple of stories
right now. Alrighty, I've got an email from Allison. It's
(25:46):
about the Gorilla Girl Women in Art podcast we did.
She writes, here's ten women artists because we issued that challenge.
Kiki Smith's, Louise Bourgeois, Nancy Sparrow, Barbara Krueger, Psita abbad
Ursa von Writings, Barred Tara Donovan, Mea Pearlman, Jane and
Toni and Yolenna James, and I profusely apologize women artist.
(26:08):
If I've butcher your name, just call it an artistic thing. Um,
that's me, not Allison writing. Allison writes, I'm an elementary
school art teacher, and I try very hard to expose
my students to women artists, as well as other unrepresented
artists in the art world, like Latino and African American artists. Rembrandt,
van Go and Money have their place, but there's so
much more engaging and exciting work out there. I think
(26:29):
it is so important to move beyond the worm canon
where I'm being white old Richmond, and I thank you
for this podcast. Now this is my favorite brother emails.
She writes, Christen. It drives me crazy when people say
I am not an artist and then say how they
can only draw stick figures. Everyone has artistic and creative potential.
And remember that art is not only drawing. It is
so much more, collage, photography, film, performance, painting, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture,
(26:53):
found object. The list goes on and on. So everyone
out there, I say, embrace your creative side. Do you
know more? Stick of your excuses And thanks to Allison,
I will soon be premiering new works by Kristen Conder
multimedia stick figures that at a gallery near you. All right,
I've got one here, um from our Title nine podcast,
(27:14):
and this comes from Whitney. She says, I'm a female
athlete on a men's rowing team and therefore see both
sides of the story and theory. Title nine is an
excellent idea and has certainly encouraged tons of women to
become involved in collegiate athletics and education. However, you mentioned
that men's sports were being harmed by this policy, and
nine point nine percent of the time it's not football.
(27:35):
I know it's upt to school's discretion about which sports
are most affected, but it's unfortunate to see programs like
men's rowing struggle to stay afloat nice pun by having
to pay for most everything themselves. Just on the other
side of the boat house, women's teams have to spend
their a lot of amounts of money by buying excessive
amounts of equipment, dinners, team trips, and even girls who
(27:56):
join and quickly quit just to receive a scholarship. I'm
not saying this practice is sex exclusive, but this is
not equal treatment by any means. Even though I'm a female,
I was not able to take advantage of any of
those things, including a scholarship, just because I chose to
join a men's team. Nonetheless, it's been well worth beings
surrounded by the most passionate and hard working athletes in
my college years. So there, you haven't send us an
(28:21):
email mom stuff at how stuff works dot com or
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And then you can also follow our Twitter feed, and finally,
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works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(28:44):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From house Stop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm Molly. Now for anyone out
(00:22):
there listening who was going through a breakup or has
recently been rejected in love and it's feeling, you know,
just lingering feelings for a certain someone out there, I
have a wonderful consoling piece of not really advice, it's
(00:45):
more just just a fact for you to to hang
on tightly and fall asleep next to you every night
as you go through this emotional journey. I'm ready, Christen.
It is all in your brain, everything that you're feeling,
all of that, all of that love lost, just that
(01:06):
horrible state where you don't want to sleep, you don't
want to eat, you're trying not to text, your like,
checking their Facebook obsessively to see if someone you know
might have written something suggestive on their wall, all of it.
We've all done it before. Here's the thing, people, you're
not crazy. It's just your brain going nuts. And I
(01:26):
find that to be quite reasure. I do too. We're
going to talk about this study that came out just
a few weeks ago. It was let up by Helen Fisher,
who we talked about on the Why does the Sizzle
Fizzle Podcast, and she worked with researcher's named Lucy Brown,
Arthur Aaron greg Strong and Debora Magic. And the study
is called Reward Addiction and Emotion Regulation Systems associated with
(01:47):
Projection and Love. But if I could suggest an alternate title,
I would suggest something like, if you're broken up, read this.
It will make you feel a lot better. Yes, because yes,
as Kristen says, it's all in your brain and that's
so helpful because it's out of your control for reasons
(02:08):
we're going to discuss. But you know how like you
know the word the deepest, darkest moments and it seems
like they're never going to end. This study just shows
how it's not in your control. It's there are no
rules to a breakup, yeah, or just or just being rejected.
You don't necessarily have to be in a relationship with
someone and be broken up with. It could have just
(02:30):
been you know, you've really been even crushing hard on
somebody and you finally take it out there and the
person says, thanks, but no things. But if you've got
that friend who's telling you, oh, you should be over
this by now, Oh, you're just trying to give you
some kind of time frame. Yeah, Like, this study is
so reassuring in the way that it shows you that
(02:52):
there is no right or wrong way to go through this.
You're just gonna have to wait for these crazy neurons
in your brain to get themselves figured out and time.
The happy ending, I'll go ahead and tell you, is
that time does take care of that. Time does he'll
all wounds. That's not really reassuring when you're going through
the worst of it. But but this is some kind
(03:13):
of explanation for the feelings that you are feeling. And
while yes, I mean we cannot it is very unromantic
to some up are um very heart heartfelt feelings towards
other people in terms of different brain regions and neurotransmitters
and if we're in aspects of our brain just firing
(03:35):
off more more rapidly than normal. UM. And this is
also I should say it could be considered the companion
piece too. Why does the sizzle fizzle? UM? Which I
highly recommend you go back to because this is Also,
this is all dealing with Helen Fisher's work. Helen Fishers
an anthropologists who has studied um how our brains react
(03:56):
to love and what exactly love is and why these
kind of strong driving feelings exists. Because one of the
most interesting things that Fisher points out is that romantic
love is not actually an emotion when you get down
to the physical basis of it, It's actually a goal oriented,
(04:20):
motivational spate state. It's a drive. It is a drive,
and it is actually stronger than our sex drive because
if you think about it, you know, if you are
denied just simply sex, like, it's a lot easier to
sometimes go without sex and be told no just for
the physical act of that, rather than being rejected in
terms of you know, a love partner if you will.
(04:42):
And Fisher also points out that its basis is in
mammalian species, not just in human behavior. Yeah, she likens
it to a puppy that's been separated from a mother
and the terms of how it behaves. And you know,
it might sound, as Kristen said, depressing to think that
it's a ride rather than an emotion love, but she
(05:03):
points out, you know, it's easier to stop being angry
than it is to stop being in love. So it
really is this all powerful drive. So what happens when
that drive is thwarted when the person that you care
about most doesn't care about you back. That's where we're
going to get into this study that we both have
just spent five minutes talking about how much we love.
Let's share our sure, our love whatever, because I think
(05:24):
it's always you know, it's great to have um some
kind of neurological explanation to very inexplicable emotionally driven behaviors. Right,
So what happened with this study is that on the
college campus they put up these posters that said, are
you having trouble getting over someone? If so, call us?
Have you been rejected in love? And people responded and
(05:47):
they got ten women and five men who had been
rejected by a partner. The relationships had been of differing links.
One relationship had lasted as long as four years, but
I think two years was about average. The average age
was about night been because this was a college setting, UM,
and the breakup time really varied. Some people had just
been dump some people have been, you know, dealing with
(06:07):
us for a few months, so they have these people
sort of varying levels of rejection, but all of them
said that they were exhibiting sort of these worst worst
case scenarios of the obsessive emailing, the obsessive internet stalking.
And these participants were so broken hearted that Helen Fisher
actually told one of her fellow researchers. I think she
(06:28):
told Lucy Brown this that interviewing these subjects was almost
so painful she wouldn't want to do a study like
this before, because some of them just broke down because
they had to bring in a photograph of their beloved
or ex beloved, if you will. They had to bring
a photograph with them, and even just looking at the
picture drove some of these people to tears. Yeah, I
mean when you are when you have been rejected, you
(06:49):
are a raw wound. It's awful. You are just gaping emotion,
and sometimes it it uh swings from you know, the
happiness of remembering the ideal. I times when you're just like,
but everything was so perfect, to the anger of course
we should get back together, everything was great, to the
absolute anger of that moment of betrayal of someone cheated
(07:11):
on you, of that breakup, if you didn't get an
honest answer. You know, we have the sense of closure
and you know talking me out. Oh I didn't have closure.
So you can just go from one extreme to the
other in five minutes. And that's what these people were like.
And you know, as Kristen said, it was kind of overwhelming,
but as but they brought up the picture of their beloved.
Then they brought a picture of a person who they
(07:32):
felt absolutely nothing about. Yeah, like someone who has had
a significant you know, like connection in their life. But
wasn't there was that love of connection. Yeah. In fact,
they it was sort of people they found boring because
they didn't want friends who might have had like really
positive emotions associated with them. They got people who were
sort of boring, and uh, they put them into an
(07:52):
MRI machine and and they had to perform certain tasks
while they were in the MRI machine. First, what they
would do they look at the picture of the beloved,
and as Kristen said, people would start to cry. Uh,
people would start yelling and get really angry because while
they were doing this, they were told to reminisce about
different experiences in their relationship. So they're thinking about either
(08:14):
the things that made them happiest the things that made
them angriest. And then while still looking at the picture,
they would have to count backwards by sevens from eight thousand,
two hundred and eleven. And they did that to distract themselves,
and they found that forty seconds is like the optimal
time to distract yourself. So I said, that's a side
(08:35):
tip if you get really if you're like at work
and you're just like I can't focus, have been broken up,
stop and take forty seconds and count backwards from seven
from some random number, because distracting your brain will work.
Then they would spend another minute looking at the picture
of the person they didn't care about, and then they'd
spend another time doing the countdown task. And so then
what they had the researchers was a bunch of brain
(08:57):
scans from when the person was really sort of riled
up about this situation versus times when they were much
more you know, board or just complacent or working on counting.
Just sort of the baseline brain picture. And these were
the five main regions that really went haywire when they
saw the photograph of the person that they still loved.
(09:20):
Number one, we've got the ventral teg mental area the
v t A, if you will, and this is in
the midbrain, and this is linked a lot to motivation
and reward. And this concept of motivation and reward is
going to come up a lot when we talk about
romantic love because when it comes to like we said earlier,
um from early stage, romantic love in particular is a
(09:41):
goal oriented, motivational state where it drives you. So you know,
that's the reason why you know when you first fall
in love with someone, that's all you can think about.
You can skip meals, you can skip work, you can
do whatever, because there is just one thing on your
mind compelling you to breathe from minute to minute. So
after the v t A, we also have the nucleus
(10:02):
incumbents and the prefrontal cortex, and these activated areas bring
up the similarity similarity between love and addiction because Helen
Fisher continually compares the brain pathways of love to the
same pathways that are ignited when you have a cocaine addiction. Yeah,
(10:25):
and I think we talked about this in Sizzle Fizzle,
is that you know when you just can't do anything
because you're thinking about someone so much, it's the same
sort of feeling you might have if you were addicted
to drugs, and when you get a little bit of it,
it takes you up, and when you're taken away from it,
you go through withdrawll, same disease. I mean, there should
be like love rehab. Yeah, and I guess think you
(10:46):
can make the argument this is a totally different podcast,
but if you have replaced one addiction with another, at
the bottom of it, maybe the fact that you're rejecting
to love. But we're not gonna go there yet another
theory for another time. And then we also have areas
in our four rain that deals specifically with processing gains
and losses and also the anticipation of a gain. Because
(11:08):
here's the interesting thing that I was surprised to find
in this study. Adversity and love all right, tends to
actually heighten your feelings of romantic love. And uh Fisher
has this hypothesis that rejection actually activates your reward systems
that mediate emotion and reward, and when that reward is delayed,
(11:29):
i e. Like you have been rejected, then those reward
expecting neurons in your brain actually keep going longer because
they yeah, they're they're they're waiting they're waiting to get
some kind of satisfaction, but it's not coming because you've
been rejected. So it just kind of sends that part
of your brain into overdrive, which I think is why
(11:51):
people get so hung up on fantasizing the way they
will get back together. I know that I'm very gualty
of that. Why you can win a person back. I
remembers and back. But just like act like what they're
gonna say when they come back and beg your for
your forgiveness. That's not you just being like insane. That's
your reward centers going insane for themselves, reward expecting neurons.
(12:12):
People probably think we're crazy by now, but I think
it's interesting. Uh. Then we also have our autonomous nervous
system in the insular cortex, which really is linked to
the intense emotionality surrounding all this. This is why we
can daydream about these people day in and day out
and then finally, um, the insular cortex is also linked
to the emotional pain, because let's face it, this stuff
(12:35):
is painful, yeah, and it feels like it's painful in
your very body, Like you know, heartache is called heartache
for a reason. Because it can hurt. Yeah, and I
think that that really shows how the brain the mind
body connection. When that part of your brain is firing,
it is going to affect you. Sometimes you get a
flu like right after you've been dumped, because your body
is in such a compromised position, all because of the
(12:57):
stupid brain. Right the In response to to extreme breakups,
people's findies will actually release cortisol, which stimulates the immune
system to prepare for some kind of kind of sickness.
I mean, love sickness ain't no joke. Yeah, I mean
all these things that have been put into two songs
and movies, it all goes back to the brain. So
(13:19):
let's talk about We talked a little bit about it,
but let's go into a little bit deeper of why
it matters that these areas were lit up when these
people were thinking about their exes. Because what was surprising
to me is so many of them. I mean, the
people admitted I'm still in love with this person. They
reject me, but I'm still in love. And uh, so
many of the same brain areas that have been scanned
(13:41):
and people who are in love lit up. And it's funny.
How Um, that's why it can be so hard to
get everyone because that part of your brain doesn't stop
firing for a long time. And as Kristen said, it's
that firing has being made more intense by the fact
that you can't satisfy the strive. You can't get what
you want, you're knocking that reward, you're not getting, Uh,
this drive for companionship and love met And that explains
(14:04):
why the major difference in in brain activity between the
rejected lovers and the brains of people who are also
happily in love. Because Fisher has done plenty of f
fMRI I studies also on people who report being completely
in love mutually in love with with their partners, and
the rejected lovers show significantly greater activity in the areas
(14:27):
of the brain that are related to you know, love
as an addiction and also the motivation and reward. So
it's like those kind of those parts are going into overdrive,
where those reward expecting neurons are firing, they're waiting for
their satisfaction, and also kind of the the addictive aspect
of the brain um is going into overdrive as well,
(14:49):
kind of creating those feelings of withdrawal if you will,
and you know, I've heard myself saying a bunch of times, like,
how can I still feel this way about a person
when they've done me so wrong? To borrow a tear?
But it's because, as we said, this adversity heightens all
that love. It's almost like you love someone more after
they're awful to you because of the way the brain
(15:10):
is acting now. But I think that the cocaine thing,
like not to dwell on it, but it's important to
know that. Just as you wouldn't say to a person
who was an addict, like, oh, it's been two weeks,
you shouldn't really still be craving cocaine. You would never
say that to a person. That's why you can't say
it to someone who's going through a break up, because
it's the same thing. Yeah, it takes time, But the
good news from all of this is that over time,
(15:35):
these areas of the brain chill out. Yeah, and it's
probably why rebounds are so common, because I'm sure once
you know, I'm just kind of going off on my
own scientific hypothesis. Is not a hell and Fisher. This
is not a hell and Fisher thought. This is Kristen
Gonger PhD um I'm guessing that rebounds are so common
(15:58):
because it's sort of replaces. It satisfies if you will,
those reward expecting neurons, if only for a night or
a week or a month or whatever. Um, it's like
you're you're I think that some people have like that,
just neurological drive to satisfy it in some way. Yeah. Um.
But as time went on, the people who you know,
(16:19):
the people who have been broken up the longest in
this study, did have less intense firing up the most
central areas related to love and related to addiction as
time went on. So that's why I think it's important
not to put a time limit on yourself, because it's
gonna happen. When it's gonna happen. Eventually, your brain is
going to realize, oh, this isn't the reward anymore. It'll
(16:41):
chill out and life will go on. And one thing
I found Helen Fisher said was that you shouldn't even
be friends with an ex for three years, because that's
how long it may take to get your brain back
to normal. Helen Helen Fish with us a long time.
I'm going to stand with Helen Fisher on us. She
doesn't seem to know what she's talking about. But for
anyone out there who's asking themselves, why are Molly and
(17:04):
Kristen talking about the brain right now? I mean, it's
your it's your heart, and it hurts, and it's just
you know, it takes time for this emotional wound to heal. Well,
I we we bring us up because in some of
these cases, some of the participants who in this study
reported that once they knew what the study was about
(17:26):
and were aware of these connections between their brain and emotions,
came back to the researchers and said, hey, I gotta
tell you, Ever since kind of putting the pieces together
between how my brain is reacting and the you know,
the emotional behaviors that it's producing, I'm starting to feel
a little bit better. But it kind of gives you
a little more agency in this situation, if you will.
(17:50):
And also they were saying that some of these students
were already just by the very process of going under
these brain scans, were undergoing quote unquote reappraisal success, which
is basically when they remember the not so great aspects
of the relationship. Yeah, I mean I think that anyone
from a self help gurup to. Helen Fisher is going
to tell you that part of that reappraisal that your
(18:10):
brain keeps making you do is looking for lessons. And
they say that the people who can find those lessons
are the ones who are going to you know, for
I guess for lack of bet term recover better. Um,
not that I think that there's any sort of gold
standard and breakup recovery, but uh, part of that reappraisal
is figuring out we know why this happened, but just
you know, learning a lesson about yourself. Yeah, and if
(18:33):
it helps at all. Here's the thing everybody goes through this.
There was a large scale study of UM college students
at Case Western Reserve. It's referenced a lot and a
lot of these UM similar types of studies on rejection
and love of both sexes reported that they had been
rejected by someone that they adored and also said that
(18:57):
they had rejected someone who was deeply in love with them.
So no, that's but listen to that though not any
more people had done the rejecting than had been rejected.
So and of course, you know, the trite thing to
say is that the person who would reject you is
not the person you want to be with anyway, So
it would happen for a reason. It's it's better just
to deal with the pain now than to deal with
(19:18):
something that might have happened down the line. But um,
I think that also it's important to note that you
can distract yourself. You can metaphorically count back from seven
every time you need to think about that. Well, first,
I think it is important to acknowledge and uh and
Fisher underscores is a lot is that rejected lovers do
(19:38):
go through two distinct phases. That starts with protests saying,
oh my God, don't leave. These are the ten ways
I'm gonna get this person back, and then despair when
you kind of accept the fact that Okay, you're not
coming back and I'm going to be lonely for the
rest of my life and you're going to sit here
and cry. And you know it was interesting is that
she posits that there might have been evolutionary reason for this.
(20:00):
Let's we we talked about that puppy before. If the
puppy has been separated from its mother and it gets
so depressed that it just can't move, that it's just
in this like pile on the floor whimpering that the
fact that you know this depression is set in might
be an evolutionary advantage because it keeps the puppy still
so that if the mother wants to come back and
find it, it can And uh, you know, because Fisher says,
(20:24):
why would our bodies put us through so much pain?
Why would this um response to this have developed if
there wasn't a reason for it. So it's possible that
you know, you're kind of conserving your energy for the
next big adventure in your life, because that is one
interesting thing that that she points out on some of
her research is that they haven't exactly pinpointed whether or
(20:46):
not all of these love responses, this um, this motivational
drive that we are born with is adaptive or maladaptive,
whether or not it's something that really how helps us
along the way or hurts us. But the fact that
it has persisted for so long, not only in our species,
(21:06):
but also to different extents and other species indicates that
there is a reason. You know, there is a method
behind all of this madness. And the one thing I
do want to say, while we're kind of pinpointing the
fact that you know, a lot of the crazy things
we do when we're dealing with breakups can be sort
of directed back to the brain. There are people who
go through legitimate bouts of depression, and again hell and
(21:29):
Fisher points out that this might be more of a
helpful thing than a hurtful thing, because if it's if
it gets bad enough, maybe that's what will help you
seek treatment for it. So that was another example she
gave of you know, while we're kind of saying that,
you know, the obsessive Facebook stalking or Internet stalking has
a brain you know, rationale, I guess not. Depression. Depression
(21:50):
never has a rationale. It should always be treated and
you should always seek treatment for something that is upsetting
you this much. And on the flip side of this, well,
you know, some people might become really just depressed and
completely heartbroken over this at some point. Other people might
just develop an intense anger towards the person who has
(22:12):
rejected them, are broken up with them. And Helen Fisher
points out that it makes sense that there seems to
be this fine line between love and hate, if you will,
because the primary rage system in our brain is very
close to the reward system in our prefrontal cortex. So
(22:32):
while we have these reward expecting neurons that are waiting
waiting around, you know, after you get rejected, waiting around
to be um fulfilled. That can also set off that
that rage system as well and send you, you know,
just going nuts sober. You know, why this person? How
dare they do this to you? Right? And she has
(22:52):
a line that my mother has also said. One thing
my mother did tell me was to reference the tunnel
of the podcast and that the opposite of love is
not hate in difference because when those things are so connected,
when you say, oh I hate them, that means you
still have feelings about them absolutely, and what you're going
for is some difference. But I will say whenever I
get really angry, and this goes whether it's work or
(23:13):
love or anything else. Uh. Two of the best breakup
coping mechanisms you'll see them recommended across the board scream
and chocolate. I was gonna say, exercise, because you're using
all that excess energy that your anger gives you. Oh,
I completely agree. I mean, like, just go running. I
have run, I have run down some breakups. I am
(23:36):
not a runner, but a breakup will make me run.
And I think that you know you'll see that everywhere.
Just taking care of yourself, you know, allowing yourself the
ice cream and chocolate, but also taking care of yourself
from a healthy perspective too is vital. Yeah, because there
are there are plenty of ways to kind of enhance
yourself through this. There was one tip that we saw
that said, hey, recognize the the amount of time that
(23:59):
you know, I'll have freed up to spend on yourself
now when you're in the pits, that's the last thing
you want to hear. You don't want free time, you
want time with someone else. But you know, if you
if you can try to channel that space into something creative,
into uh, exercising, into taking care of yourself and also
(24:19):
giving yourself to space to to feel the way you feel.
I mean, yes, I could just be more time to
watch TV. Let's be honest. Yeah, I mean part of
it is distraction. Part of it is counting back from
seven over and over again, day by day until you
don't think about them anymore. Because there's gonna be a
point when you wake up and you realize, oh my god,
I haven't thought about so and so in a while,
(24:43):
And that's just that you just have to give that
brain time to run out the clock like the end
of a basketball game. And sometimes it takes our brain
not so long, and other times it takes our brain
months and months and months. And there's always you know,
and and with certain people there's always going to be
some kind of emotional connection. So that was our take
(25:03):
on the Hell and Fisher study. And as you probably
can tell, we love it and feel that it's completely
justified every breakup we've ever had. Well yeah, and it's
just kind of fascinating for us. We like, we like
to dork out on things like this, So dork out
with us and send us your stories of love and
loss if you want, um and maybe it'll help. Maybe
if you've just been a been through a breakup, you know,
(25:25):
just expressing that can can help start the healing process.
So pretend you're in the MRI machine with Helen Fisher.
Let us be your MRI machine. UM Our emails mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com and Momily, I
think we have time for a couple couple of stories
right now. Alrighty, I've got an email from Allison. It's
(25:46):
about the Gorilla Girl Women in Art podcast we did.
She writes, here's ten women artists because we issued that challenge.
Kiki Smith's, Louise Bourgeois, Nancy Sparrow, Barbara Krueger, Psita abbad
Ursa von Writings, Barred Tara Donovan, Mea Pearlman, Jane and
Toni and Yolenna James, and I profusely apologize women artist.
(26:08):
If I've butcher your name, just call it an artistic thing. Um,
that's me, not Allison writing. Allison writes, I'm an elementary
school art teacher, and I try very hard to expose
my students to women artists, as well as other unrepresented
artists in the art world, like Latino and African American artists. Rembrandt,
van Go and Money have their place, but there's so
much more engaging and exciting work out there. I think
(26:29):
it is so important to move beyond the worm canon
where I'm being white old Richmond, and I thank you
for this podcast. Now this is my favorite brother emails.
She writes, Christen. It drives me crazy when people say
I am not an artist and then say how they
can only draw stick figures. Everyone has artistic and creative potential.
And remember that art is not only drawing. It is
so much more, collage, photography, film, performance, painting, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture,
(26:53):
found object. The list goes on and on. So everyone
out there, I say, embrace your creative side. Do you
know more? Stick of your excuses And thanks to Allison,
I will soon be premiering new works by Kristen Conder
multimedia stick figures that at a gallery near you. All right,
I've got one here, um from our Title nine podcast,
(27:14):
and this comes from Whitney. She says, I'm a female
athlete on a men's rowing team and therefore see both
sides of the story and theory. Title nine is an
excellent idea and has certainly encouraged tons of women to
become involved in collegiate athletics and education. However, you mentioned
that men's sports were being harmed by this policy, and
nine point nine percent of the time it's not football.
(27:35):
I know it's upt to school's discretion about which sports
are most affected, but it's unfortunate to see programs like
men's rowing struggle to stay afloat nice pun by having
to pay for most everything themselves. Just on the other
side of the boat house, women's teams have to spend
their a lot of amounts of money by buying excessive
amounts of equipment, dinners, team trips, and even girls who
(27:56):
join and quickly quit just to receive a scholarship. I'm
not saying this practice is sex exclusive, but this is
not equal treatment by any means. Even though I'm a female,
I was not able to take advantage of any of
those things, including a scholarship, just because I chose to
join a men's team. Nonetheless, it's been well worth beings
surrounded by the most passionate and hard working athletes in
my college years. So there, you haven't send us an
(28:21):
email mom stuff at how stuff works dot com or
share your thoughts with so many of us on our
Facebook page. You can find that at Facebook dot com.
And then you can also follow our Twitter feed, and finally,
you can check out our blog during the week. It's
stuff I've Never told you, and it's at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(28:44):
other topics, is a how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
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