How to mend a broken heart

When stress, fear or sadness weigh on us, our hearts can suffer — even break. But there are ways to mend our broken hearts. This hour, TED speakers share stories and ideas about soothing heartache. Guests include cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar, law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, pediatric nurse Hui-wen Sato, and social worker Knut Ivar Bjørlykhaug. This episode originally aired October 1, 2021. TED Radio Hour+ listeners now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and deeper conversations with Manoush. By signing up for Plus, you directly support our work and public media, so all your episodes (like this one!) come to you without sponsor breaks. Learn more at plus.npr.org/ted. http://plus.npr.org/ted See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and today, we are starting the show with a case of heartbreak.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  A patient of mine was admitted to the hospital. And weeks prior, her husband had died. And a couple of weeks after the funeral, she took a look at his picture, and all these emotions came back, flooded back. Sadness, the grief over their life together.

• 1:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  She developed chest pain. And she got short of breath. And by the time she was in the hospital, she had distended neck veins, water in her lungs, she was visibly panting. All signs of congestive heart failure.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  So we suspected that she had actually had a heart attack, that she had blockages in the arteries that feed her heart. But when we checked with a angiogram, her coronary arteries were pristine. There wasn't a hint of blockage anywhere. But her heart had weakened to less than half its normal function. And it had a very unusual shape.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  And what we found was that it was the syndrome Takosubo cardiomyopathy, or the broken heart syndrome.

• 2:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  Wait, what is that?

• 2:29Speaker 03

  So, Takosubo is a special pot that's used in Japan to trap octopuses. And it has a sort of wide base and a very narrow neck. And that's exactly the way her heart looked on the ultrasound that we did. The base was constricted, the apex of the heart had ballooned out into this distinctive shape.

• 3:03Manoush Zomorodi?

  Whoa, that is crazy. So her heart was swollen, and this is what heartbreak can look like, literally?

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so emotions and the responses that they engender can have a direct effect on the heart. And the heart can acutely weaken in response to heartbreak or grief, such as after the death of a loved one or the end of a romantic relationship.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  So, we told her that very likely this would improve, you know, once her emotional state had returned to normal, and that's exactly what happened. You know, once the grief has subsided and she came back to her baseline state, we repeated the ultrasound and her heart had returned to normal. So, you know, it's just a fascinating syndrome. We too often think of the emotional aspects of the heart as purely metaphorical or symbolic. But emotions can have a direct disruptive effect on the heart. And there really is such a thing as heartbreak.

• 4:29Manoush Zomorodi?

  The average human heart beats nearly 3 billion times over the course of a life. But when stress, fear, or sadness weigh on us, the heart can suffer, sometimes even break. There are, however, ways we can mend it. And so today on the show, stories and ideas about soothing heartache. From the connection between our emotions and our health, to protecting our romantic relationships, and facing our anxiety about the future, we'll explore ways we can nurture our most vital organ. Sandeep Jauhar's fixation on the heart stems back to his family history, and a story about

• 5:13Manoush Zomorodi?

  his grandfather from 1953, before Sandeep was even born.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  It was a summer day in July. My grandfather was working in a tiny shop in Kanpur, which was a rural community in North India. And he was bitten by a snake. Now, snake bite is fairly common in India. And when my grandfather came home for lunch, he was feeling fine. But some neighbors brought in the snake that they claimed had bitten my grandfather. And it was a shiny black cobra.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  And my grandfather took one look at it, and he slumped to the floor and died. At the hospital, a doctor pronounced him dead on arrival and said that it wasn't a snake bite that killed my grandfather, but it was a heart attack, probably induced by the sudden tremendous fright of looking at the snake that had bitten him, and the fear that he was not going to be able to survive the snake bite.

• 6:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  So it's not just grief or romantic heartache that can affect our hearts. It can be any really extreme emotion.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  Was this a story that you heard a lot when you were growing up?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. That event was profoundly tragic in our family. And I sort of grew up with this fear that something would happen to my own father. And that fear translated into sort of an obsession. I remember I would lie in bed and sort of monitor the thudding of my heart in my chest. I would look up at the ceiling fan that was rotating and try to synchronize the rotations of the blades with my heartbeat. And I sort of became obsessed with this sort of dichotomous nature of the heart,

• 7:37Speaker 03

  that it was constantly moving and yet so vulnerable. And in the process, made us vulnerable. In other words, there was such a thing as sudden death. And the fact is that sudden death almost always occurs because of the cessation of the heartbeat.

• 8:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  Here's Sandeep Jauhar on the TED stage.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Heart syndromes, including sudden death, have long been reported in individuals experiencing intense emotional disturbance or turmoil in their metaphorical hearts. In 1942, the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon published a paper called Voodoo Death, in which he described cases of death from fright in people who believed they had been cursed, such as by a witch doctor or as a consequence of eating taboo fruit. In many cases, the victim, all hope lost, dropped dead on the spot. What these cases had in common was the victim's absolute belief that there was external force that could cause their demise

• 8:48Speaker 03

  and against which they were powerless to fight. This perceived lack of control, Cannon postulated, resulted in an unmitigated physiological response in which blood vessels constricted to such a degree that blood volume acutely dropped, blood pressure plummeted, the heart acutely weakened, and massive organ damage resulted from a lack of transported oxygen.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Today, death by grief has been seen in spouses and in siblings. Broken hearts are literally and figuratively deadly.

• 9:29Manoush Zomorodi?

  You know, Sandeep, I think we hear a lot these days about how stress is bad for us. It's bad for our health. But do you feel like people just don't take that seriously enough? Or they don't understand the stakes of like how much stress and emotions are connected to our physical well-being?

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know, the American Heart Association, for the longest time, did not list psychosocial stress as a key modifiable risk factor for heart disease. Now, why is that?

• 10:04Speaker 03

  I think the reason is that it's so much easier to lower blood pressure than it is to lower emotional stress.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  You can take a pill to lower your cholesterol or your blood pressure, but psychosocial stress is just entirely a different beast. And, you know, it's interesting that I went through a three-year training program in cardiology, and not once did we talk about the effect of stress or the emotions on the heart.

• 10:39Speaker 07

  And so how do we, what do we do, Sandeep? How do we get to this middle place where we feel, I mean, is it, you know, you open a magazine and you'll be told to meditate, basically. But I think what you're talking about is both on an individual way, managing our own stress, and also a systemic way that we need to care for ourselves differently.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  So there are a lot of ways to go about it. But I think the first step is to recognize that there's a problem.

• 11:13Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Do you know how long a typical American doctor allows a patient to speak before interrupting them? About 16 seconds. I was one of those doctors. But nowadays, I'll walk in and I'll let the patient talk. And increasingly, I see that if I let the patient really describe what's bothering them, you can get deeper, you can get to the sort of root cause of things. I've just recently, actually, learned about a patient who was having heart failure symptoms

• 11:56Speaker 03

  and, you know, all sorts of physical trouble. And it turned out that he had a tremendously disrupted relationship with his two daughters. And that grief over that disrupted relationship just came out in the office visit. He was weeping. So we actually reached out to the daughters, you know, and talked to them about what was going on, at his request. And, you know, the improvement in that relationship with his daughters had tremendous effects on his physical health. So I would say that this is a very fertile area.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  And, you know, I think we would do well to act in ways, change our lifestyles, to pay, you know, respect to the intense sort of effects of emotions on, you know, this organ that we need to survive.

• 13:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  That's cardiologist Sandeep Johar. He's the author of the book Heart: A History. You can see his full talk at ted.com. On the show today, heartache. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from ProLon with their five-day fasting-mimicking diet, a clinically-developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Learn more at prolonlife.com/NPR. This message comes from Avalara Aviator. Aviator is the agent hub for tax and compliance. If you've listened to enough podcasts, you know a confident answer isn't necessarily a correct one. Sources matter. The same goes for AI, tax, and compliance. Aviator is grounded in 20-plus years of Avalara tax intelligence and delivers source-backed audit-defensible outcomes with human oversight built in. Because the AI said so, won't pass an audit.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Visit avalara.com/aviator. This message comes from Schwab. Investing with Schwab is like a hike with endless trails. Go solo with self-directed investing, take stops along the way with trading, or choose a guide with full-service wealth management. Whatever trails you take, you can invest your way with Schwab.

• 14:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  Hey there, listener. Did you know that NPR's app is better than ever? With live radio, digital stories, podcasts, and new videos, you can get everything in one place on the NPR app. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and on the show today, heartache.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  OK, let's sit down.

• 14:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  So one of our producers, James.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Tess, Tess.

• 15:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  And his partner, Joanne.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Tess, Tess, how does that sound?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  It looks good.

• 15:05Manoush Zomorodi?

  Well, they just got married last year. And so we gave them an assignment.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  So are you ready?

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 15:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  We asked them to peer into the future and talk about what issues, relationship issues, they think might come up.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  I mean, we're about to move to a really expensive part of the country.

• 15:30Manoush Zomorodi?

  Money, childcare, careers, buying a home, the big issues that can cause a lot of heartache for couples.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know when we'll be able to afford to buy a house there.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  I mean, we want to have kids soon and daycare is also really expensive.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  My mom was a stay-at-home mom, so it's going to be tough.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  We're moving close to your family, but my family lives all over the place.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, and one of us might have to give up our career to be a parent full-time.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  It's a lot.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a lot.

• 16:06Manoush Zomorodi?

  So we weren't just being callous by pushing James and Joanne to have this difficult conversation. We asked them to do this because our next guest says discussions like these are crucial to preventing heartache later on.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  I think it's fair to say that most people live marriages without thinking about divorce.

• 16:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk-Gerson. She teaches family law.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  In fact, at the height of your love for somebody, when you're really looking forward to the life that you're going to build with this person, that is the best time to start thinking about these relationships in a way that is divorce-conscious.

• 16:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  Jeannie continues from the TED stage.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  The reason that I think this is so important is that I think everyone should be having some of these very painful conversations that divorce people experience. These are painful conversations about what we contributed, what we...

• 17:07Speaker 07

  Oh, what we are willing to give and what we give up. Those conversations should be happening in a good marriage, not after it is broken. Because when you wait until it's broken, it's too late. But if you have them early on, they can actually help build a better marriage.

• 17:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  In your TED Talk, Jeannie, you actually break things down into three examples, three principles that you think couples need to consider.

• 17:43Speaker 07

  That's right. First, marriage is an exchange of sacrifice. And that that sacrifice has to be thought of as a fair exchange. The second one is the idea that there's no such thing as free childcare. And the third is what is starting out as each person's property probably is going to become part of the general property of the marriage. The first one, sacrifice should be a fair exchange. Take the example of Lisa and Andy. Lisa decides to go to medical school early in the marriage, and Andy works to support them. And Andy works night shifts in order to do that,

• 18:25Speaker 07

  and he also gives up a great job in another city. He does this out of love. But of course, he also understands that Lisa's degree will benefit them both in the end. But after a few years, Andy becomes neglected and resentful. And he starts drinking heavily. And Lisa looks at her life, and she looks at Andy, and she thinks, this is not the bargain I wanted to make. A couple of years go by, she graduates from medical school, and she files for a divorce.

• 19:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  That is rough, Genie.

• 19:03Speaker 07

  Yes, when you look at that situation, which I think is extremely common, you think to yourself, did this couple, did these two people ask themselves and each other what they were exchanging? And how fair that exchange was? What was each giving up? What was each giving to the other? What was each going to owe the other person? Right? And these, of course, this language of owing and giving and exchange is, for many people, anathema to a romantic connection. But that is, I think, a delusion to think that a marriage can be devoid of those things.

• 19:46Speaker 07

  And in fact, that is what a marriage ultimately is when you strip it down. It is an exchange.

• 19:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  You know, it's making me think of people I know and what they say like, well, we just have to get through these next few tough years. And then, like, as though utopia will arrive once the degree does.

• 20:05Speaker 07

  Exactly. And maybe, you know, if you get through those tough years, of course, many marriages go through tough years and then they have a better period. That's wonderful. But if those tough years end up harming the connection and the intimacy, which sometimes it can, that's when they're going to be forced to talk about these questions about exchange and who owes what and who gave what and who sacrificed what. And that is when Lisa's going to realize she is owing Andy financial support. And then, of course, Andy might get financial support from Lisa. But is he going to truly feel compensated for the things he gave up?

• 20:48Manoush Zomorodi?

  So if Lisa and Andy had followed Genie Segerson's rules, what would they have thought about? What would they, what would this, what conversation would they have had prior to or early on in their marriage?

• 21:00Speaker 07

  Well, if they had thought about this, it's possible that Lisa would have looked at the situation that I mapped out and would have thought, well, maybe it's not a good idea for Andy to give up his job that he likes. And it's better to take on loans now than to have Andy give up his career. That is a possibility. Or she might have thought, let me see if I could get a part-time job in order to defray the costs so that Andy is not entirely responsible.

• 21:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's more fair, you're saying. That's the part that, yes, we're both going to have to sacrifice, but we're going to have to sacrifice equally.

• 21:39Speaker 07

  That's right. And to understand what the sacrifices are, which also breeds less resentment.

• 21:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  Ah, resentment.

• 21:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, resentment is like the big killer. Resentment is the big marriage killer.

• 21:58Speaker 07

  So let's take another couple, Emily and Deb. They live in a big city. They have two children. They both work. Emily gets a job in a small town, and they decide to move there together. And Deb quits her job to look after the children full-time. Deb leaves behind an extended family, her friends, and a job that she really liked. And in that small town, Deb starts to feel isolated and lonely. And 10 years later, Deb has an affair, and things fall apart. Now, the marriage mediator, who would have come in before they moved and before Deb quit her job, might have asked them,

• 22:43Speaker 07

  what do your choices about childcare do to the obligations you have to each other? How do they affect your relationship? Because you have to remember that there is no such thing as free childcare.

• 22:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  So Deb and Emily, what specifically should they have talked about when planning to start a family?

• 23:06Speaker 07

  They might have thought about how much Deb relied on the network of family, friends, and work colleagues in terms of her general happiness. And how that is precisely the kind of social context in which full-time parenthood actually works well. Maybe Emily, the one who got the job in the small town that everyone... When moved there for, she might have thought to herself, on the one hand, I love this new job offer. It's so exciting. On the other hand, I have to factor in what the cost is for my partner. And if Deb incurs this cost, what will be owed to her? Right? What will I owe to her?

• 23:53Speaker 07

  So let's go back to Lisa and Andy. Lisa had an inheritance from her grandmother before the marriage. And when they got married, they bought a home. And Lisa put that inheritance toward a down payment on that home. And then Andy, of course, worked to make the mortgage payments. And all of their premarital and marital property became joint. So in a split, what's going to happen? They're going to have to sell the house and split the proceeds, or one of them can buy the other out. So this marriage mediator, if they had talked to them before all of this happened, that person would have asked, what do you want to keep separate? And what do you want to keep together?

• 24:35Speaker 07

  And how does that choice actually support the security of the marriage? Because you have to remember that what's yours probably will become ours unless you actually are mindful and take steps to do otherwise.

• 24:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  I can see Lisa thinking like, this is incredibly unfair.

• 24:58Speaker 07

  That's right. That might seem incredibly unfair. And in Andy's mind, if a different rule were to pertain, he would think, hey, I made all that money and we were able to make mortgage payments. So that, it would seem unfair to him.

• 25:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  Right.

• 25:12Speaker 07

  If somehow now the inheritance that went into the down payment, like, got separated out and given to Lisa. So there is a lot of potential for strife, for resentment, and for a feeling of being aggrieved.

• 25:28Manoush Zomorodi?

  You're sort of saying you should decide with your partner before you even get close to being in a position where the law might decide for you.

• 25:38Speaker 07

  That is exactly what I'm saying.

• 25:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  Jeannie, I feel I would not be doing my journalistic duty if I didn't point out that not only are you a family law expert, but that you are also divorced.

• 25:53Speaker 07

  I am. I am divorced. And I got divorced less than 10 years ago, and then I got remarried. In my TED Talk, one of the lines that I quote is something that someone once told me, which is, "You should always marry your second husband first." And the important thing that I draw is not that you can only meet the man of your dreams or the woman of your dreams the second time, but rather that the mindfulness about what a marriage is, the sacrifices that are exchanged, all of those principles become more, more easy to think about once one has been through a divorce. And I would really

• 26:35Speaker 07

  like to have people not have to go through a divorce to learn those things.

• 26:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  Jeannie Suk-Gerson is a mediator and family law professor at Harvard. You can watch her full talk at ted.com. And as far as James and Joanne, they're on board with Jeannie's ideas.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  So do you think after all this divorce talk, you are still excited to be married?

• 27:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so. I think we can stick it out.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  On the show today, stories about heartache and how we live with it.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  I did not expect to be in pediatrics. I never thought that I was someone who was playful enough to be in pediatrics. But I found that I was better at it than I realized. And there was something about the innocence, the tenacity, and also the vulnerability of children that I just really wanted to be a part of, and also having the opportunity to support their parents and care for them.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  It just fit.

• 27:56Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Weiwen Sato. She's a pediatric nurse in the intensive care unit, which means she's helping the littlest patients at the toughest moments.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Sometimes it feels like, for a moment, I am watching another person's story as I would on TV. But then I quickly realize I'm in the room with them.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  And in whatever time I have with them, whether it's this one shift or if I come back in future shifts as their nurse with them, that for this time, I am primarily watching their heartbreak and their story and their grief. But I am also a part of it.

• 28:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  Weiwen has to be there for her patients and their parents. But the heartache can feel overwhelming for her, too.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  There was a patient we had where the patient had drowned and was not going to pull through. And the parent was at the bedside and was just utterly devastated by the prognosis and had just collapsed to the floor when this parent realized this was not going to get better. And I felt my own sadness well up. And I allowed some tears to begin to flow. But I knew that this was primarily about the parent's grief and it wasn't about mine, that my focus had to be on the parent and supporting them.

• 29:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  For a pediatric critical care nurse, tragedies are part of the job. But there are joyful moments, too, when children recover. And all those ups and downs, they began to wear on way when? Here she is on the TED stage.

• 30:06Speaker 04

  Like many of my colleagues, I went into nursing because I wanted to be a therapeutic presence for others. I envisioned the profession to be one where I lived on the highs, feeling like I was always doing something meaningful and helpful for others. I thought that the highs alone would be enough to help me cope with the intense stress and heartache that come from taking care of so many sick and sometimes dying patients. But as I rode the roller coaster of suffering with my patients and their families, I quickly understood that I was going to need something more than the intermittent feel-good moments to sustain me through the lows.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  There would be shifts where we thought we were on the road to recovery and the patient suddenly doesn't do well. They suddenly crash. And all of our expectations for things to go well go the other way. And it made me realize there's a lot here that I can't fix. And I didn't think this is what I signed up for. And I'm not, there was certainly a point where I didn't know what to do with that.

• 31:24Manoush Zomorodi?

  Did you ever try to talk yourself out of it? Did you ever say to yourself, "Well, look, it's a job. This is the way it is. Just do your best and go home at the end of the day"?

• 31:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I think there's often this sense that I clock out at the end of my shift and, you know what? I just need to leave what happened behind. And, you know, shift gears. Go home to my family, enjoy my family. I did everything that I could. But I began to realize there wasn't, there wasn't an easy separation. And there wasn't just a way to clock out and shut it down.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  And this isn't just true for me. Nurses everywhere are battling this challenge. In our times of weakness, vulnerability, and helplessness, we need nurses who have found a way to preserve meaning and commitment to their work. While many external factors contributing to burnout have been studied, I have been asking what we nurses are to do with the internal issue of grief. Not in terms of caring for others in their grief, but working through our own grief on a deeper level as we are affected by the suffering of our patients and their families. How do I endure through the lows that come with this profession?

• 32:49Manoush Zomorodi?

  Howe Wen Sato confronted that question in just a moment. On the show today, heartache. I'm Anoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stick with us.

• 33:18Manoush Zomorodi?

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from ProLon with their five-day fasting-mimicking diet, a clinically-developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Learn more at prolonlife.com/NPR. This message comes from Avalara Aviator. Aviator is the agent hub for tax and compliance. If you've listened to enough podcasts, you know a confident answer isn't necessarily a correct one. Sources matter. The same goes for AI, tax, and compliance. Aviator is grounded in 20-plus years of Avalara tax intelligence. And delivers source-backed audit defensible outcomes with human oversight built in. Because the AI said so, won't pass an audit.

• 34:03Manoush Zomorodi?

  Visit avalara.com/aviator. This message comes from Schwab. Investing with Schwab is like a hike with endless trails. Go solo with self-directed investing, take stops along the way with trading, or choose a guide with full-service wealth management. Whatever trails you take, you can invest your way with Schwab.

• 34:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anusha Marodi. On the show today, heartache. And we were just talking to pediatric nurse Weiwen Sato. She works in the intensive care unit, a place where grief and tragedy are unavoidable.

• 34:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  Weiwen, in your talk, you ask an important question, which is how to endure the lows that come with your profession. And I can imagine that there are lots of ways that nurses may answer that. Like, some might choose another specialty, or maybe even find another job altogether if it gets too much.

• 35:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  Others, I can only assume, compartmentalize, like, just push through the day, try to treat it like a job. But you decided you needed to face the grief head-on.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I can understand why people say, you can't take your patients' stories home with you. If I let myself think about it, or if I let myself talk about it with other people, it's just too much. I can't do it. And I began to realize that that's just not the human experience. That the things that we do and encounter in nursing are all about the human experience. And it only makes sense that it would overflow into my thoughts in my daily life.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Because what I see as a nurse is all about love and loss, and what makes for a meaningful life when life doesn't go the way you want it to go.

• 36:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  So what does that actually look like in practice? How did that change your behavior?

• 36:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a patient's story that will always stay with me. This patient had just already a very tragic sort of backstory that ended up landing the patient into our ICU. And while the patient was physically alive when I left work, we knew that the outcome was not going to be good. And we basically were sustaining the patient physically so that family could come and say goodbye.

• 36:48Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, gosh.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  And so the day after that shift, I was with my younger child at the playground, and I saw some other moms and kids there. And I was pushing my child on the swings and just began to weep quietly and couldn't really engage with the other moms, because that's really awkward, you know? It's really awkward to be at a park and just be standing there, you know, with people doing normal, daily things and just be crying. And so I also knew that I was supposed to get together with a friend for coffee in about an hour.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  And I was kind of a mess. I was hurting and crying. And so I texted her and I took a chance and I just said, you know, I know we're supposed to meet for coffee. I had a really heartbreaking shift yesterday and I'm just really hurting right now. And so we can either reschedule at a time when I'm not feeling this as acutely, or if we get together, I'm going to be pretty raw. And her reply to me was, "You don't have to protect me from your grief."

• 38:12Speaker 04

  That astounded me because I think that especially for us nurses, we feel like we are supposed to be the ones to just carry it all. And we do, we feel like we were supposed to protect other people, that other people don't want to hear what we actually go through and what we experience. And to have somebody so generously give that space to me was phenomenal. And so we met and she sat with me and just heard me lament for my patient and for what I see at work.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  And curiously, that let me go on with my day and my week, I would say, much better than if I had just put on a brave face and tried to pretend, oh, work was hard yesterday.

• 39:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Manoush Zomorodi?

  You know, it's making me think of how you say that grief can actually be life-giving. Because I guess I'm surprised that it's not paralyzing. Like, as a pediatric ICU nurse and the mother to two little girls, how are you not like, I don't know, fearful all the time for their well-being?

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do have to say it's certainly an ongoing an ongoing process in terms of keeping a sense of paranoia at bay for my own children. That's a real struggle that certainly hasn't gone away. But I think that I have learned to not see grief as the only voice in the room. And that its voice is not 100% evil, destructive, entirely dark. It is very heavy, absolutely. But I think that it teaches us also some very, very weighty

• 40:22Speaker 04

  lessons and foundations that we don't get from just living lightly all the time.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  We tend to think that it's only happy people with perfect circumstances that can have whole lives, that can have rich lives. That's just not realistic. What makes my time with my children so meaningful? Is it that we're just happy all the time? Or is it the realization also that we are frail? And that our time together means something because it's not invincible to suffering? And so, you know, even this past year, having my children in distance learning.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  I know what that's like. Yes, I mean, it was, you know, they've been home with me for a year and a half, and they have done great. They've been very happy. And I have really struggled to not take them for granted. And it has actually been the voice of grief from my work that keeps coming in and saying, stop. And remember what a gift this is, even when they are driving you insane. And I think that if I didn't have that extra voice, that I would, I would take them more for granted. And it's not about saying that I capitalize upon other people's suffering

• 41:50Speaker 04

  so that I can be a better person and I can grow. I, but I, I think that there are certain things that grief can teach us that a light life just can't.

• 42:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  That's Weiwen Sato. She's a critical care nurse at Children's Hospital, Los Angeles. You can see her full talk at ted.com. On the show today, how we can soothe our heartache. As we know, a lot of heartache starts with love. And in this next case, a love of nature.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's the starting point? I would say, once upon a time when I was a child. I spent most of my days with my grandmother. Her name was Signe. She lived in a small wooden house with my grandfather Knut, very close to the little school in our village Grytastrand, at the west coast of Norway. A village where we had time to be, not much to do, nowhere to go.

• 42:56Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is social worker and climate advocate Knut Ivar Bjørlekaug.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  And I remember once I was hanging out with her in the garden, I was about six years old, and she shouted, a joyful, magnetic shout to me, "Knut Ivar, come here, come and look." It was late springtime, early summer, and all the flowers in the garden had started to bloom. And she said, "Look, ah, look, look at the bumblebees. Look at their hind legs. Can you see the yellow? Like, the little bags of yellow on their hind feet." And I looked closer and I could glimpse their little bags of pollen. And she said this to me, "Imagine that these creatures facilitates our lives."

• 43:44Speaker 02

  And I didn't quite understand it, but I could kind of feel it.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  And I think maybe this was my starting point to feel a deeper connection with all living beings, especially all flying creatures.

• 44:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  But then you started noticing changes to the western coast of Norway, that place you described so lovingly, where you spent time with your grandma. What did you see happening?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, only during my short lifetime, there's been dramatic changes. And that means decline considering bird life, and some species are completely gone. And this is due to the ocean pollution, industry, overfishing and climate change. It's heartbreaking to see in my short lifetime, and of course, very frustrating that the negative trend just continues.

• 44:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  As Knut witnessed the destruction of the land he loved so much, he also learned more about Norway's role in the oil and gas industries.

• 44:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oil every day for the world markets. When the country's fossil fuel production took off in the 1970s, the government was flush with cash. Norway has been investing its oil wealth in its society's future since black gold first started pouring out of the North Sea in the 1970s. As of 2026, the Norwegian Oil Fund, as it's called, is worth more than $2 trillion.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  That money was made from the country's vast oil reserves and Norway's sovereign wealth fund.

• 45:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  It made Norway one of the wealthiest countries in the world, one that could provide all its citizens with healthcare, a higher education, and a pension.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Norway's sovereign wealth fund for the benefit of current and future generations.

• 45:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  But the fund also created what's called the Norwegian paradox.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  But now the Norwegians have discovered their green conscience.

• 45:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  How can Norway be a leader in stopping climate change and make so much money off of fossil fuels?

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Environmentalists are not happy. The fund's investments have become a topic of heated debate.

• 45:55Manoush Zomorodi?

  For Knut, that paradox made him feel a deep shame.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  About 10 years ago, I had this really deep existential crisis. I went into a deep depression. And I was kind of on the edge, to make a long story short. I remember that what was going on in my body was kind of the feeling of being ashamed, of being human. How to cope with being a part of this species that destroys so much? And especially if, I think maybe that's a concern for those of us who is kind of unwillingly integrated

• 46:43Speaker 02

  in nations that are getting super rich on oil and gas. Yes, exploiting nature.

• 46:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's a very sad but beautiful way to describe it. I don't think I've heard it described that way. This idea that it sort of made you disgusted with yourself, the humiliation of being a human being who has contributed in some way to the destruction of our planet.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so for me, for a year or so, I was kind of in this state. And the heartbreak of the loss and nothing is getting done. I think the really important core here for me to get out of it was to see that there is still some hope. And for me, as long as there are birds, there is hope. And often we forget this, but it's there and it's so strong.

• 47:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  I wonder, as you went and spoke to your fellow climate activists and you talked to your clients, the people you saw as a social worker, did you hear that same sentiment from people around you in Norway? This sort of almost repulsion, this heartache that you're talking about?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Especially the last five, six years, I have met many youngsters who have climate anxiety and feel a lot of despair, considering the situation that we're in. One of the most important things that we kind of experience and see is that society still doesn't have the room to kind of quite understand this. And that's why it's so important that we talk about it.

• 48:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  Knut Ivar Bjorlekaug continues in his TED Talk.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Understanding our emotional and physical reactions better can create the opportunity to reclaim the fact that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature. I sometimes get this question, what can we do? With our ecological love and sorrow. And why should we do anything? Why should we care to continue at all? If our land is lost and gone? This is a hard reality. Some get killed protecting their home and forests. The most vulnerable are being affected the most. For example, First Nation people and climate refugees.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  I believe we need to make room for this sorrow, this pain, to make room for our vulnerability, to make room for all the complicated feelings related to the ongoing nature and climate crisis. Because this room potentially also creates an opportunity to act.

• 49:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  I love how you're acknowledging the heartache. You're acknowledging the grief. But saying you can, you can hold that in your mind and you can also hold the idea that you can take action. You can keep talking about it to people. You can, that you can do those two things at the same time.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. If you survive a really deep existential crisis, and I want to say this to those of the listeners who maybe are in that state. There's always a way out. We need to reach out and try to find some social support. So we need to take one day at a time and to create that room for hope. We need to, to spend time outside and see that life is still going on. And when I'm trying to take care of the forest that I live next to, then I'm also taking care of myself. And I think it's really important to point out

• 50:43Speaker 02

  that this is not an individual task. Connect with a community that works on this issue. We need to stop the destruction. We need to cut our emissions and we need to do it now. But I also think that we need to explore.

• 51:08Manoush Zomorodi?

  Our relationship with nature once again and reclaim it. That social worker Knut Ivar Bjorle Kaug, you can see his full talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show today on soothing heartache. To learn more about the people who were on this episode, go to ted.npr.org. And to see hundreds more TED Talks, check out ted.com or the TED app. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, James Delahoussaye, Matthew Cloutier, and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour and Rachel Faulkner. Our production staff at NPR also includes Jeff Rogers, Deba Motisham, Sylvie Douglas,

• 51:52Manoush Zomorodi?

  and Harrison V. J. Choi. Our audio engineer is Daniel Shukin. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Phelan, Michelle Quint, and Mica Eames. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

• 52:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast. This message comes from EasyCater, the workplace food platform. EasyCater helps organizations order food from favorite restaurants, meet dietary needs, and stay on budget with employee meal programs, flexible payment options, and 24/7 customer support, all on one platform. Learn more at easycater.com.