Suffering for love It is part of those kinds of experiences that are difficult to imagine when starting a relationship.
Falling in love can cause practically everything that happens to us on a daily basis to be perceived in a different way, since its emotional impact influences our way of perceiving what happens to us. But this is true for good and bad. Heartbreak or frustration caused by relational problems in love also cause suffering that reaches almost all areas of our lives.
So, suffering for love It is one of the most damaging types of psychological suffering, given that, just as falling in love deeply affects almost all of our mental processes, the problems derived from it also do so. What can be done to make this discomfort disappear or subside almost completely?
The tips you will read below can be a very useful help in times when hopelessness and sadness that produces heartbreak seem to fill everything. However, it must be clear that each case is different, and when applying these steps to follow it is necessary to adapt them to the context in which one lives.
1. Assume that you will need time to improve
As happens in everything related to emotional problems, to stop suffering for love there are no easy and instant solutions. This is because our nervous system, which is the basis of emotions, does not usually experience sudden changes that leave sustained long-term changes, unless it is due to injuries.
Mental processes, among which are those responsible for emotion, occur thanks to the interaction of millions of neurons interconnected with each other, and to overcome suffering for love it is essential that the necessary time passes for these nerve cells to depart. “learn” to interact with each other in a different way.
Obviously, knowing that you will need time to recover will not make you recover. However, it will help prevent the problem from getting worse or entrenched, since anyone who expects improvements overnight can become so frustrated that this makes them obsessed with the issue. The fact of feeling “blocked” emotionally for the simple fact of not recovering instantly makes us think all the time about how to get rid of that emotional entanglement, and this in turn makes our attention increasingly focused on that discomfort: a vicious circle.
2. Assess your case to make sure you do not have depression
It is one thing to suffer for love and another to experience depression. The latter is a mental illness that can be very serious and, although it can be triggered by events that happen to us, its causes are to a certain extent independent of the love problems we may have.
It should be noted, however, that in the vast majority of cases in which one suffers for love, depression is not behind it, so at first there is no reason for alarm bells to go off. But if you think that you suffer in an extreme way and in a constant and sustained way, you should not assume that you have depression either; In that case, the next step is to see a mental health professional to carry out a psychological diagnosis.
Between the first hours and the first few days after having begun to suffer for love, if it is an “acute” case caused by a specific event (a breakup, a heartbreak, etc.) it is very possible that you will not have the strength to propose big changes, not even those that have to do with feeling better. Therefore, it is good Give yourself a margin of time to recover a little physically and mentally.
To do this, it is good that you set a time in advance when the initial recovery stage is over and you begin to actively act to feel better. When that date arrives, which may be three days, for example, it is necessary to assess whether progress has been made, even if the emotional suffering is still there.
It must be taken into account that this step is not mandatory, since in some cases the discomfort is not so intense as to require it, but it is advisable to follow it to have that symbolic reference that marks the beginning of the change.
4. Break the cycle
Once you have gone through the initial recovery stage, what is necessary is that you break the cycle of habits associated with discomfort
To do this, start new routines and customs. Starting from scratch in something that is not mastered but that can be stimulating and that fits with our abilities allows us to train our attention span so that it gets used to, little by little, stopping focusing on the cause of suffering for love.
Thus, habits such as drawing, walking through new areas, training in a new sport, learning a language… are positive because if we modify our actions and our contexts, our mental processes change too
In the event that one or more of the new habits are related to an idea of progress (such as, for example, when we propose to learn a language), it is necessary to have realistic expectations and assume that our vulnerable emotional state will surely make us progress further. slowly compared to how we would have done it while always feeling good.
5. Don’t forget to socialize
Relating to other people is positive because allows you to express in words what you feel and because, in addition, it makes it easier for us to expose ourselves to stimulating situations, capable of making new interests and concerns attract our focus of attention and “detach” it from suffering.
6. Have healthy habits
This step has three basic pillars: sleep well, eat well and do moderate exercise. In this way, the state of the body will make the nervous system also predispose us to feel better and not fall into anxiety and discomfort, something that happens among other things when the body sends us signals that something is wrong.
