Many of the people who go to psychotherapy do so due to experiences that have left a very painful emotional mark on their memory: a psychological mark that conditions in a harmful way their way of behaving, thinking and feeling in the present.
The fact of having gone through a breakup is, many times, what triggers these forms of discomfort. Luckily, psychologists have been developing methods for decades to overcome these emotional disturbances. Let’s see what it consists of through a summary about How the consequences of relationship breakups are addressed in psychotherapy.
What is done in psychotherapy to help overcome a breakup?
Here we will see what are the most important processes that take place throughout the psychological therapy sessions when you want to help someone who is suffering from a relationship breakup. Yes indeed, Not all of these therapeutic resources are used in all casessince each patient is unique.
1. Self-knowledge exercises
Especially in the first sessions, it is essential to explore the main causes of the patient’s discomfort. This person usually makes an appointment for the first meeting with the psychologist having a vague idea about what is happening to them, but it is necessary for them to see it in a clearer way and even detect aspects of their initial experience that were leading them to deceive them about it. What is the root of your discomfort.
And the fact of feeling an emotional alteration firsthand does not automatically make us aware of what the real problem is that generates this psychological phenomenon. That is why, among other things, there is the figure of the psychologist, who helps to understand the logic by which this discomfort is maintained and emerges in certain day-to-day situations.
How do you get patients to understand which aspects of the breakup hurt them the most? Training them in Emotional Intelligence and self-knowledge exercises.
Most of these have to do with writing down in a kind of personal diary (or self-record) what they feel at key moments, as well as what they were doing just before, during and after those experiences. Creating this routine allows you to have a global vision of the emotional imbalance and detect common patterns in most of them.
In any case, it is the psychotherapist who gives the instructions to apply this exercise on a daily basis, depending on the particularities of the patient and their life context.
2. Discomfort management exercises
One of the key aspects of psychotherapy applied to cases of discomfort due to the breakup of a couple has to do with teach the patient to manage the unpleasant and emotionally painful sensations they feel. This involves avoiding falling into very common traps, such as trying to completely “block” certain thoughts and feelings that generate discomfort. Trying to keep this type of content out of consciousness only gives them more power over us.
Therefore, in psychotherapy exercises to manage anxiety and intrusive thoughts are carried outwhich include principles of acceptance of a certain degree of discomfort.
3. Mindfulness Training
In people who suffer due to the end of a romantic relationship, it is common to feel an emotional ambivalence that is painful: melancholy and the desire to return to the happy moments spent in the company of that person are mixed, on the one hand, and resentment and frustration over what triggered the breakup, on the other.
Therefore, it is important learn to keep these emotional lurches at bay and not give in to Manichean interpretations of what happened, which lead us to see everything in black and white and to look for absolute culprits and absolute victims. That is, you have to be able to see the situation from a perspective that does not always seek to make very clear moral judgments, but rather to describe and adopt a constructive perspective.
To achieve this there are different techniques and strategies, and one of the most notable is Full Attention, or Mindfulness. It is a set of attentional state management practices that lead to valuing experiences as they come to us, without prejudice or interest in whether they fit into a specific narrative.
4. Questioning dysfunctional beliefs
Much of the discomfort caused by a breakup comes to us from a series of inadequate beliefs to which we have been clinging for some time. An example of this type of belief is the myth of the better half.: the idea that we are incomplete if we are missing that special someone.
In therapy, to achieve this, what is known as cognitive restructuring is applied.
5. Promotion of a personal development program and closing of the cycle
The breakup of a couple is, in many ways, a type of psychological grief, like the one we suffer when a loved one dies. That’s why You have to know how to redefine the memories in which that person appears and know how to close them.without trying to keep ourselves clinging to a world with that person who exists only in our memory, for good and bad.
And part of the pain from a breakup usually comes from the contradictions we experience when focusing our attention on what we can no longer do, given that we still have as our main reference what we did when being with that person in a loving relationship. You have to know how to let go of that everyday organizing reference and welcome new ones.and this is achieved by searching for new exciting life projects, and creating stimulating routines that we had either left aside or had never dared to explore.
Beyond the therapeutic resources used to treat the specific problem of the consequences of a breakup, measures are also adopted to ensure that the patient follows a lifestyle that includes habits to prevent psychological problems in general.
This is important, because Neglecting makes it easier for disorders of this type to arise.and once a psychopathology has begun to develop, it is easier for others to also appear, since they reinforce each other.
In this way, in the therapy sessions patients are helped to be informed about what these habits are, and it is made easier for them to incorporate them into their daily lives, so that everything does not remain in good intentions and nothing further.
Are you interested in attending psychotherapy and receiving help?
If you are thinking about seeking professional help from psychologists, we invite you to contact us. In Advance Psychologists We have been offering psychotherapy services for 20 years, and currently we have a complete team of mental health experts that covers all areas of emotional well-being: individual therapy for people of all ages, couples therapy, family therapy, sexology , etc. You can find us at our center located in Madrid, or you can arrange online sessions by video call. On this page you will find our contact details and more information about our way of working.
