‘Clinically awful’: why the pain of a broken heart is real

In the winter of 2004, women began arriving at Japanese hospitals complaining of chest pains and breathing difficulties. The doctors in the emergency room saw the same changes they would expect with a heart attack. Their arteries were not blocked as they would be by a heart attack. Their hearts were different. These cases were diagnosed as takotsubo cardiomyopathy quickly.

It isn't just a metaphor for sadness. Up to 7% of sudden cardiac hospital admissions in Japan are diagnosed as takotsubo, when stress hormones cause a weakened left ventricle, meaning it can't pump effectively for a while. It makes you feel bad. It shows the link between stress in a person's life and their heart.

One of the things that is leading to heartbreak being taken seriously is its understanding. There have been songs about love. Scientists are starting to look at the end of love after years of focusing on the process of falling in love. There are books written about the science of heartbreak and memoirs about how to heal in a nice hotel in the Peak District. They are trying to understand this slow torture. Rachel Cusk wrote in her divorce memoir thatRomance's estranged cousin was a cruel character.

When Annie Lord's boyfriend said he needed to be alone, she broke up with him. She wrote a long love letter to him but never sent it. She finds solace in the fact that she doesn't have to forget her boyfriend in order to get over her pain. She remembers looking out of the window and seeing that most of the people she saw were in pain. The world was still working. In A Grief Observed, about the loss of his wife, Lewis says grief comes from the frustration of so many impulses. Lord saw that she was waiting for something that wouldn't happen. He asked where the towels were or felt his leg hit me in bed. Knowing other people had gone through the same thing made me feel less alone.

It was the science of heartbreak that had the biggest effect. I felt like saying, 'I'm going through a break up' didn't do what I was feeling justice. It felt like it was too small. Lord sought out studies such as, "The way your breathing adjusts to another person's when you're together for a long time, how in grief some people's hearts really do break, or the fact that your brain craves that person the same way you would cocaine"

Helen Fisher studied people who had been dumped and found the parts of the brain that were activated were related to addiction. A person rejected feels the same kind of pain and craving as someone who uses drugs or alcohol, and they can go through withdrawal and come back again. All of this made me realize I was justified. I was going through a really bad experience.

Hundreds of studies have been done into the beginnings of love, but why has it taken so long for scientists to investigate its end? Florence Williams says that science has become more sophisticated when it comes to looking at genes. We're used to relegating heartbreak to cultural melodrama. There is more than one type of heartbreak. We need to take it seriously for our mental and physical health because it is one of the most painful experiences we have. She felt "imperilled" when her husband left her. She was able to feed her kids and sometimes meet her deadlines as a science journalist, but she was always sick and unable to sleep. She had never experienced anything like it. She wanted to figure out what was happening to her body and how to improve. 15% of people don't recover after a big break up. She was going to start working.

Steve Cole said that "heartbreak" is one of the hidden dangers of existence. It explodes at an unexpected moment, over dinner, at Christmas time, at a wedding, in bed. Fragmented sleep, increased anxiety, poor impulse control, depression, cognitive decline and early death are among its documented effects. The findings of this strange pain are often shocking and poetic. The parts of a person's brain that light up when scanned are the same ones that light up when someone burns. It was like returning to a fire when you reached across a double bed.

Williams was surprised by how bad the pain is in our body. Emotions like grief, loneliness, and anxiety are monitored by our nervous systems and immune cells in order to prepare for confrontations. She said that their cells listen for loneliness. That really changed my mind. It explains why people who go through a big break up are more likely to die early and have a number of diseases if they don't work hard. Williams spoke to a behavioural neuroscientist who studies prairie voles. Around 75% of prairie voles stay together for the rest of their lives, which is more than humans. The voles live in boxes with their partners, hiding their lover behind a door in Donaldson's lab. There is a set of grief. The vole wants to be with its mate. How long will it take for him to accept that she's gone? The researchers continued to monitor what was happening in the vole's brain as it pressed the lever to open the door. The nucleus accumbens is a part of the brain associated with emotional learning and addiction. Williams writes in her book that the region is a sponge for the hormones that get released during sex. It's one of the main differences between prairie voles and their sluttier meadow vole cousins. The meadow voles don't have a lot of cells in that part of their brains. Humans that are broken show a lot. While looking at pictures of lost loved ones, the nucleus accumbens is busy. A strong emotion attached to memories is what love boil down to. Meadow voles like to have sex, but memories of their lovers don't carry the same emotion. It doesn't matter if you're sad or happy. Let us all return as meadow voles.

I’m more in touch with my emotions – that’s an unexpected lesson…

I don't know how it feels for Williams to have become entwined with the worst moments of her life. She says she likes it. I love that I have been able to help so many people and make them feel better about themselves. vulnerability leads to connection and growth She tells me that she has found a sense of purpose through her broken heart.

A psychologist named Alice Haddon arrived there on a different path. Haddon's mother died at the start of the Pandemic and she couldn't find a way back to the way she'd worked for 20 years. She closed her practice after referring her clients. She was listening to a radio show about romantic fraud and financial infidelity when she woke up. A man ran off with a womans money and her voice came out of the radio so distraught. She said, "I don't know what to do, I don't know where to get help." Haddon opened her eyes and said, "'Oh!'" She co-founded the hotel.

There is a waiting area. Guests who have been through financial betrayal, guests whose husbands have left them for younger women or who have been seeing sex workers for years are some of the guests Haddon has had. There is a moratorium on talking about the betrayer from the following morning through long walks and therapy sessions.

Betrayal has a particular way of thinking. Something that was safe has become very dangerous. We keep asking ourselves questions. What time did it occur? I don't understand why I didn't see it. I don't know if I saw it or chose to ignore it. We know from a psychological point of view that we have to feel the pain of the loss in order to accept it. We need to get the person who betrayed them out of the picture. The guests are focused on themselves for the rest of the weekend. She says there's a lot of laughing.

There is a particular context in which women sit and within which their betrayal happens, which is why the hotel only invites women at the moment. She defines women in service to others as mothers or caregivers. Their sense of themselves is created by that context. They haven't checked in with themselves since a betrayal happened. The aim of the programme is to take women away from their heartbreak and into the next chapter of their lives. She says it is equivalent to six months of one- to-one therapy. Women get to stay in their process and watch each other do it. They look after one another in a group.

Haddon is very passionate about getting women back together with themselves. You can't take the pain away. You can place someone in a position where they can focus on themselves and support each other.

Williams was able to navigate through the pain through her research. The healing is divided into three categories: calming, connecting and finding purpose. Therapy, spending time in nature, and a happy rebound relationship were some of the things she did. She liked getting off with someone under a tree. She felt less afraid of being alone when she saw herself and her emotions as beads in a curtain. I feel more alive because of that. I feel more confident in my ability to cultivate beauty. I feel more connected to the people in my life. When we are lucky and work at it, we learn about heartbreak.

The science behind heartbreak gives clarity to its horrors, as well as offering something else, something bigger. Falling in love is hard. It makes us more sensitive in ways that can bring both joy and pain. People who are able to climb inside the grief and guts of heartbreak then dig their way out, whether using pop songs, therapy, science or patient friends, find themselves better. The stakes have gone up. Williams says that his heart is more open.

Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord is available at guardianbookshop.com. Go to theheartbreak hotel.co.uk for more information.

• The anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex are located in the same part of the brain.

• Images of exes can cause the brain to respond to addiction.

• White blood cells can listen in on our moods via our nervous system and can increase inflammation.

• The broken heart syndrome can cause the heart's left ventricle to be larger and weaker, meaning it doesn't pump blood as well as it should.

• A break-up can cause a reduction in dopamine and oxytocin, which can cause withdrawal symptoms such as tremors, palpitations and even depression.