Can Travelling Really Cure a Broken Heart?

Oh, the pain of heartbreak, it doesn’t discriminate between colour, race, gender, or country. It transcends through cultures. We have all felt the pain after the intoxicating feeling of love and have traversed the rough waters of heartbreak at least once in our lives. How we manipulate the dark alleys of heartbreak depends on the individual— some decide to reshape their ex’s belongings, some run to their friends others seek solace in solitude, and some chose to travel.

We think Travel is the fix-it-all solution to our problems. A change in the surroundings can have a positive impact on your mental health, but can it fix a broken heart?

Science of a Broken Heart

Emotions affect physical health more than we realise. According to science 2.0, when a person suffers from heartbreak, they feel secluded and lost, which changes the blood flow to your brain. That way feelings like anxiety and stress manifest into physical symptoms that can cause havoc to your body. Experiencing the loss of appetite or insomnia after a breakup are all real symptoms of a heart break.

When in love our brain secretes the feel-good hormones, oxytocin, and dopamine, which can make you feel on cloud 9. When going through a heartbreak, the lack of these hormones leaving you more vulnerable.

A broken heart isn’t any folklore. A connection can be found between emotional pain a literal form of heartbreak- heart attack

Traveling With a Broken Heart

At the first glance, travel is the perfect solution to all your pain and agony. New surroundings, different scenery, the sunshine, sangrias, maybe that unexpected rendezvous with a stranger, it seems like travel can help your broken heart, but can it heal it?

Travelling offers distraction and perspective post break up, but lest we forget that once you land back in your motherland reality awaits your arrival. The idea of becoming the crazy cat person can be a little distant while sipping sangrias in Madrid.

Your problems won’t disappear as you step into a new land and your emotions won’t switch off when you take off. Emotions are much more complicated than that and require time to process through it all. One should travel when they can appreciate their surroundings

The loss of the person you love will leave its mark on your heart. The sadness will be within you when you walk through the souks in Morocco or hike the mountains in the Himalayas. This will hinder you from being truly appreciative of your surroundings. One can smile and laugh through all of it, but how much of it is coming from within?

Finding Yourself in the Crowd

When the loss of love is knocking on your door, this isn’t the time to find yourself. No, India or Thailand isn’t going to heal that broken heart. While you sit on the beach in Pattaya, your pain still exists. Your mind hasn’t forgotten it and you cannot command it to be happy.

If Elizabeth Gilbert could do it in Eat Pray Love and Cheryl Strayed could overcome the loss of her mother in Wild, it only seems logical to pack your bags, grab that passport and look for the strange land. But alas, there is more to the pain.

The goal of healing a broken heart is by creating peace, so if you cannot just leave everything behind, create this peace within you. Your friends and family are more understanding than you give them credit for.

So, in truth, while traveling can aid the recovery of a broken heart, it cannot heal it. The only true antidote for a broken heart is time.

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