Can You Die From a Broken Heart?

We use the words 'broken heart' all the time, usually when a relationship ends or we lose someone we love. But can you actually die from one?

It turns out that having a broken heart isn't just a saying. There is a real medical condition called broken heart syndrome, or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which can happen after the body experiences extreme emotional or physical stress. Bereavement can trigger it, but so can other major shocks and stressful events.

Before anyone starts panicking, broken heart syndrome is relatively uncommon, and most people recover. But I think the fact that it exists at all tells us something we don't talk about nearly enough: grief doesn't just happen in your head. Your body goes through it with you.

Anyone who has experienced real heartbreak will probably understand exactly what I mean. You don't sleep properly, your appetite can change, and you're exhausted even though you've done very little, and concentrating on the simplest thing can suddenly feel difficult. Anxiety can appear from nowhere, and sometimes you wake up with that horrible feeling in your stomach before you've even had time to remember what you're upset about. Your mind might be trying desperately to carry on as normal, but your body can be telling a very different story.

What is broken heart syndrome?

Broken heart syndrome is a temporary heart condition that affects the heart's ability to pump normally. Doctors don't yet fully understand exactly why it happens, although it is thought that a sudden surge of stress hormones may temporarily affect the heart.

The symptoms can look very similar to a heart attack, particularly sudden chest pain and shortness of breath. Some people may also experience palpitations, dizziness or fainting, which is why it is incredibly important not to decide for yourself that chest pain is simply grief, stress or anxiety. If you experience sudden or unexplained chest pain, difficulty breathing or symptoms that could indicate a heart problem, you should seek urgent medical attention.

Most people diagnosed with broken heart syndrome recover, but it is still a genuine medical condition and needs to be properly assessed and treated.

Why women over 50 should know about it

One of the things that really caught my attention when I started reading about broken heart syndrome was that it is much more commonly diagnosed in women than men, particularly women over the age of 50.

Researchers are still trying to understand exactly why, although hormonal changes after menopause may play a role. But I also find it interesting when you look at what can be happening in a woman's life around this age. A marriage may end after twenty or thirty years, children leave home, parents become ill or die, careers change, menopause arrives and financial circumstances can change almost overnight. Sometimes several of those things happen at exactly the same time.

We talk a lot about the physical changes women experience as they get older, but perhaps not enough about the emotional load that can accompany them. We can become incredibly good at carrying on. We go to work, look after everybody else, answer the messages and tell people we're fine because explaining how we actually feel can be exhausting in itself. Then we wonder why we're anxious, why we're not sleeping or why we simply don't feel like ourselves anymore.

Divorce can leave you with a broken heart too

I think one of the biggest misconceptions around grief is that somebody has to die before we're allowed to call what we're experiencing grief. Divorce is grief too, and when a marriage ends, you're often losing far more than the relationship itself.

You may be losing your home, your family unit, friendships, financial security, routines and the identity you've had for years. There is also another loss that people don't talk about nearly enough, and that is grieving the future you thought you were going to have. The holidays, Christmases, retirement, grandchildren, growing old together and all the little things you had already assumed would be part of your life can suddenly disappear.

Even if you were the person who wanted the divorce, you can still grieve it. Making the decision to leave doesn't magically remove sadness, guilt, fear or uncertainty, and knowing something needed to end doesn't mean you're immediately ready for whatever comes next.

This is where people can become frustrated with themselves. Everyone around them appears to have carried on with their lives, and they feel as though they're still standing in the same place, wondering why they haven't managed to move on yet. But healing a broken heart isn't about forgetting what happened or pretending it didn't hurt. It's about processing what happened so that it doesn't continue to control what happens next.

You can't keep outrunning a broken heart.

After heartbreak, one of the easiest things to do is keep yourself busy. You work more, go out more, book another holiday, start dating or fill every weekend so there isn't enough silence for your brain to catch up with you. For a while it can even feel like it's working because you're functioning again and, from the outside at least, it looks as though you've moved on.

The problem is that there is a big difference between moving forward and keeping yourself distracted. You can change your relationship, your house, your job or even the country you live in, but if you haven't dealt with what happened, you can take all that grief straight into the next chapter with you.

I've seen people wait years for closure from somebody else before allowing themselves to move forward. I've seen people carry anger from one relationship into the next, and I've seen people slowly lose confidence because somewhere along the way they stopped believing that another version of their life could actually be better than the one they lost.

Time absolutely gives us distance, but I don't believe time does all the work for us. At some point we have to look at what happened, understand how it affected us and decide what we want to take forward and what we're finally ready to leave behind.

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Why asking for help matters

I wish more people asked for help before reaching the point where everything feels completely overwhelming. You don't have to wait until you can't get out of bed or until the anxiety becomes unbearable before deciding that perhaps you need some support.

For some people, regular one-to-one therapy is exactly what they need. For others it might be grief counselling, speaking to their doctor, joining a support group or simply beginning to talk properly about what has happened rather than constantly telling everyone they're fine. There isn't one correct way to heal a broken heart, and different forms of support can be useful at different stages.

What matters is recognising when you're stuck. There is a huge difference between allowing yourself time to grieve and spending years waiting for something outside of you to change before you give yourself permission to start living again.

Why stepping away from home can help

This is one of the reasons I believe a divorce or grief retreat can be so useful after heartbreak and loss. It isn't about escaping to a beautiful hotel for a week and hoping everything has disappeared by the time you come home, because grief simply doesn't work like that. What a retreat can give you is something that is incredibly difficult to create while you're still inside your everyday life: distance and uninterrupted time to focus on yourself.

Weekly therapy can be incredibly valuable, but the reality for many people is that they have an important conversation for an hour and then walk straight back into exactly the same environment they're struggling with. You may be returning to the house you shared, dealing with solicitors, sorting through finances, looking after children, going to work or simply facing the constant reminders of the life you used to have. Before you've even had time to process what came up during therapy, normal life has taken over again.

Stepping away for several days gives you the opportunity to continue that process without constantly being pulled back into your usual responsibilities. There is time for therapeutic work, but there is also time afterwards to think about what has been discussed. You can walk, rest, practise yoga or meditation, eat properly, sleep and have conversations with people who understand why you're there. Sometimes the space between those conversations can be just as important as the conversations themselves.

There is another part of a retreat that I think is often underestimated, and that is simply being around other people. Grief can be incredibly lonely, particularly after divorce, because your life may have changed dramatically while everybody else's appears to have carried on as normal. Friends and family can be wonderfully supportive, but unless someone has experienced that kind of loss themselves, they don't always understand why you're still struggling months or even years later.

Being surrounded by people going through their own experience of divorce, bereavement, heartbreak or loss can take away some of that isolation. You don't have to explain why you're having a difficult day and you don't have to pretend you're fine because everyone around you understands that healing isn't a straight line.

A retreat isn't a medical treatment for broken heart syndrome

It is important to make the distinction between experiencing heartbreak and being diagnosed with broken heart syndrome. A retreat cannot diagnose or medically treat Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, and anyone experiencing chest pain, shortness of breath, fainting or symptoms that could indicate a heart problem should seek medical attention.

But if you arrived at this article because you searched for how to heal a broken heart after divorce, bereavement or another major loss, then perhaps the question isn't how quickly you can get over what happened. A better question might be whether you've actually given yourself the time, space and support to deal with it.

We can become so focused on getting back to normal that we forget something important: sometimes there isn't any going back to the old normal. Life has changed, and healing is about finding out what comes next rather than spending years trying to recreate what has gone.

That is what we try to create at Mending Hearts Retreats. We bring together people navigating divorce, grief, heartbreak and loss and give them the opportunity to step away from everyday life and properly focus on themselves. Therapeutic support sits alongside yoga, meditation, good food, rest and connection, but the bigger purpose is to give people enough space to understand what has happened and begin thinking about the life they want to create from here.

You can't change what broke your heart, and healing doesn't mean pretending it didn't matter. It means reaching a point where what happened becomes part of your story rather than something that continues to decide how the rest of your story is going to be written.

If your heartbreak or grief is keeping you stuck, you don’t have to work through it alone. Mending Hearts Retreats bring together people navigating divorce, grief and loss, with daily therapy, yoga and meditation in a supportive environment designed to help you move forward.

Find out more about our upcoming retreats www.mendingheartsretreat.com.