Love and heartbreak in the new India | Dr. Shyam Bhat | TEDxSIULavale

Love is one of the most beautiful experience in one's life. Over the years, the feeling of heartbreak has intensified because of the way the younger generation experiences love is very different from the arranged marriages of pervious generations.

Dr Shyam K. Bhat, MD, is a psychiatrist, integrative medicine specialist and writer. He has postgraduate training and American Board certifications in two usually disparate specialties: psychiatry (American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology) and internal medicine (American Board of Internal Medicine). He is also board certified in psychosomatic medicine, the study of conditions at the interface of body and mind. Dr Bhat combines these qualifications with deep study and understanding of Eastern philosophy and healing practices.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

This is as fragile as the human heart
when you lose love.

(Audience) Aww!

Thank you, thank you.

Ishad. Thank you.

I still remember, you know,
what it was like to be your age.

It's not that many years ago.

(Laughter)

It is, actually, but ...

I still remember
what it's like to be in my 20s.

I fell in love with a girl,
chased her halfway across the world,

found out she was dating someone else.

(Laughter)

And my heart was broken
for the first time.

And it wasn't open.

It didn't open like Rumi said.

When the heart was broken, it was painful.

It was so painful that I just started
my psychiatry training program,

dealing with other people's pain.

I started wondering
what is this strange nature of pain

that heartbreak causes,

where I can't sleep, I can't eat,
I don't feel good,

I feel like I'm a terrible person,

unlovable,

I don't even feel
like life's worth living,

everything is colourless and meaningless.

And I wondered,

Why don't we talk
about heartbreak in psychiatry?

Why don't we deal with this problem
which so many people face?

And then, like so many of us,
I put it out of my mind,

I kind of healed; I went ahead
with my clinical work and my psychiatry.

And then many years later,
as a practising psychiatrist,

I would see this recurrently.

And after moving back to India,

I saw that heartbreak
is rampant in this country.

(Laughter)

I'm not sure why that merits
applause and laughter,

but, you know, I think you recognize that.

Look, every one of us
has either a broken, you know,

we've had our hearts broken, or we might.

For those of us who've not had
our hearts broken,

we know that perhaps we've missed out

on one of the most epic
human experiences ever.

Am I right?

(Applause)

So, you know, I came back
to this country and I found

that many people in this country
suffer from depression

and that 20% of people commit suicide
in this country because of heartbreak.

More than 20,000 people,
young men and women like you,

kill themselves because
of heartbreak every year.

It is a serious problem.

Many people don't kill themselves,

but I've seen how their lives
spiral out of control

into addictions, into meaningless
relationships, into emptiness.

And people who,
when they're much older,

have told me, "I look back
at that time when I broke my heart,

and I now know that that changed me,

not necessarily in a positive way,

but made me more cynical,

more angry, and perhaps,
I don't believe in love anymore.

In fact, I sometimes think

that one of the marks
of maturity and adulthood, sadly,

is a cynicism towards love and romance.

But that's not true,

because if we ask ourselves,

What is the most important
thing in the world?

What is the one reason we are alive?

It is to be loved and to love.

To be loved and to love
is something that money can never buy,

but it is something that is
so essential to human happiness,

but because it's not
entirely under our control,

we sometimes think it's not important.

But you, as the young,
you know it's important.

You're probably falling in love already
or may have had your hearts broken.

I'm tempted to ask how many of you
have had your hearts broken.

I'm going to do that
if you feel free to raise your hands.

How many of you had your hearts broken?

You guys are brave,

because I know the rest of you
have had your hearts broken.

What happens in heartbreak?

Why is it such a powerful experience,

and how can we use this experience
to become a better human being?

Because that is what I realized,
that this amazing experience

can transform us
in an incredibly positive manner.

But first, let us understand
why it happens, what happens,

and in order to understand heartbreak,
I think we have to understand love.

What is love?

What is love?

We thought, I mean, yes,
the famous song comes to your mind.

What is love?

First of all, love is the topic
without which we'd have no poets,

no philosophers, no artists, no music,
no painting, no Elisha, nothing.

(Laughter)

Right?

(Applause)

Thank you.

Love is an energy.

You know what love is when you feel it,
but there are different kinds of love.

There's a love you feel
for your mother, your parents;

there's a love you feel for a friend,
for your community;

there's a love you feel for objects;

and there's a love you feel for a person.

And then, the philosophers tell us,

there is a deep, unconditional,
abiding love that you can feel

and that is not contingent on anything.

And when you connect with that deep love
that is a part of every one of us,

then you can never lose it,

because it's not dependent
on someone else.

That kind of love
does not need a catalyst;

it just needs a connection
with what we actually have inside of us,

which is pure, unadulterated,
unconditional love.

Now, the fact is that all of us,
right, all of us,

whether you've fallen in love or not,
you have experienced the bliss of love.

You've experienced it -
although you don't remember it, maybe -

in your mother's womb.

When you were not yet born,
but you were aware as -

When you're eight months old
in your mother's womb,

your brain, actually, is developed.

Your brain is developed.

You cannot see, you cannot
exactly feel the way you feel now,

but you have feelings,

and every need of yours is taken care of

by the nutrients that are coming
into your umbilical cord.

They're taken care of so amazingly

that you don't even know you have a need.

Whatever little need there is,
it's, it's - you feel comforted,

you feel you're bathed
in warm amniotic fluid.

There is no sense of me and you.

There is no sense of I and the other:

"I am the universe in my mother's womb."

And that is pure, unadulterated bliss,
which we all experience,

and then we were born,

and we start crying.

We started crying

because we realized when the cold air
of the environment hit us -

that, hey, maybe I'm not safe,
maybe I'm not secure;

oh, I need something to eat,
I'm going to cry,

and my mother comes to me -

I realize that, maybe,
I don't always get what I need.

For the first time,
we've been thrown out of paradise,

and we've come face to face
with existential loneliness -

the fact that each one of us
is born alone -

and I hate to break the party up,
but we're all going to die alone.

Okay, now that - by that I mean
that we are the only species,

the only animal species,

that is acutely aware
of our existential position in the world.

There's no other animal, there's no dog

that is contemplating its future
and saying, "Hmm, will I die alone?"

(Laughter)

Maybe your dog is,
but I think most dogs don't.

As long as they have a good person
taking care of them, they're happy.

But not you and me,

because we learned early on

that this is a world which doesn't
necessarily fulfill our needs.

And so we go through life,

you have good parents perhaps,
inadequate, whatever.

You go through life,
and then you meet someone.

Your eyes lock.

You see her, you see him,

some energy goes through
your, you know, the air.

He's giggling; he knows
what I am talking about.

(Laughter)

Right? And you feel that electricity,
and before you know it,

you feel like you found your soulmate,

someone who understands you completely,

someone who completes you.

Like Plato said, you know,
in the Greek mythology, that -

he said, all human beings
were cut into half,

and we spend the rest of our life -

he said we're all male and female, right,
and we are cut into half,

and we spend our lifetime
or many lifetimes

searching for the other half of us
who will complete us.

Psychologically, that is true.

Because what happens when you fall in love

is that what psychologists call
"ego boundaries" are dissolved.

You actually merge with the other.

In your mind, you and the other person
have become a third entity, an us.

And in that us,

it feels wonderful, it feels complete,
but there is also a sense of insecurity.

Right? Who hasn't faced insecurity
in relationships?

There is a sense of insecurity
because you now need the other person

to feel complete,

to feel that same feeling
you might have a distant memory of

where you were, you know,
blissful in your mother's womb.

And then, sometimes,
for many people, unfortunately,

you break up.

And when you break up,
it is really, psychologically,

as if a part of you has been amputated,

as if a part of you has been cut.

In fact, neurologists
have done brain scans

of people who've gone through heartbreak.

They found that the same part of the brain
that is responsible for physical pain

is activated in heartbreak.

As far as the brain is concerned,

heartbreak is the same as if someone
had stabbed you in the heart.

Other things happen.

Endorphin levels in the brain go down.

They've done studies
where they've given someone morphine,

and that takes away the pain of heartbreak

because there's a real change
in the chemicals in the brain.

There's a part of the brain
that is stimulated

when people use
a drug of abuse, like cocaine.

It stimulates a part of the brain
called the mesolimbic system,

which releases dopamine,

and when dopamine is released,
which is a neurochemical,

we feel pleasure, we feel a reward.

Just like cocaine,

love, romantic love, releases dopamine
in the mesolimbic system.

And so when we go through heartbreak,
it's like we are cocaine addicts

going through withdrawal,

seeking and desiring that drug,

and we cannot live
until we get that drug back.

So heartbreak causes changes,
amazing changes, in the brain.

It affects the body.

People who've gone through heartbreak,

their cortisol levels rise up,

which is a stress hormone
that decreases your immune system,

you can get infections more easily,

heart rate goes up,
blood pressure goes up,

the blood vessels start constricting,
the stomach gets tight,

the digestive system
is completely in disarray.

All kinds of changes happen.

In fact, heartbreak is also
beknown to, literally, break your heart.

There is a condition called
"takotsubo cardiomyopathy."

Takotsubo is a Japanese word
which means octopus pot.

An octopus pot
has a little globular thing

with a narrow opening.

And what happens with people
who suffer from severe emotional stress,

like heartbreak,

there's a release of stress hormones,

it weakens the walls of the heart -
they dilate and thin out -

and people can actually die,
literally, from heartbreak.

So, heartbreak is serious,
heartbreak can kill, heartbreak hurts,

and it hurts thousands of people
in this country and across the world.

And it is my belief that India,
in particular Indian young men and women,

are particularly prone to heartbreak
because of our cultural history.

You see, we are not like the Westerners.

We've come from a collectivist society.

By collectivist society,

I mean that each one of us
defines ourselves a little bit

by how other people treat us.

They've done studies, interesting studies,
saying that a Westerner,

when they look at a school of fish,
they describe one particular fish.

Whereas Easterners look at that,
they describe the whole school of fish.

That's just the way we see the world.

And so for us, rejection hurts
much more deeply than for Westerners.

We have a variant of a gene,
called a "serotonin transporter gene,"

which makes us
more susceptible to criticism,

to disapproval, to rejection.

The second thing is,

I don't think we've seen
heartbreak in our parents,

or at least not the romantic kind
we might experience.

Theirs is a very different
kind of heartbreak given all.

Because most of our parents
have had arranged marriages,

the kind of love, deep love,
that developed in those marriages

lacks the, perhaps,
the intense passion of romantic love,

but it is, perhaps, more long lasting.

So we haven't really understood,
we haven't seen heartbreak,

and this is the first generation
that is really dating more,

that is going to have
romantic relationships,

that you're going to choose
your own partners, many of you,

and therefore, you are probably
more susceptible to heartbreak

than any previous generation in India.

But the good news is that you can
use heartbreak and the pain of heartbreak

to get insight about yourself.

Forgiveness is really important.

As someone says,

forgiveness is a funny thing.

It warms the heart and cools the sting.

So if you forgive,
you take away your pain.

The first thing to remember

is that the act of forgiveness
is first and foremost an act of strength,

and it is something
that you're doing for yourself.

So no matter how bad
the guy's treated you,

you're forgiving him because it helps you.

As long as we hold anger
in our hearts, in our bodies, it hurts us.

There's no doubt about it.

You know, heart attacks, cancer, etc.

So the first thing to say is, look,

this is my opportunity
to find my strength,

to forgive another human being
who has hurt me,

and I can do that if I have compassion
for that human being

and understand
that person's not a villain,

they have their own issues,

and they've hurt me because we got close
and something happened as humans.

Do we hurt each other?

But once I forgive myself,

I feel cleansed and I approach
the next relationship fresh.

We don't want to carry wounds
from one relationship to another,

and we embark into that relationship
just like, in a sense,

what Krishna told Arjuna
in the battlefield.

He said, "Don't ask
what the reward and punishment is."

You love this person, you think it's good,
then that is what you do.

Enjoy the process,
immerse yourself in that love,

and that love, remember,
comes from your heart.

The other person is a catalyst
but that love is yours.

It's always yours,
it will always be yours.

Thank you very much.
You guys have been amazing.

Thank you very much, thanks.

(Applause)