Heartbreak is a type of discomfort that affects or has affected many people, given that the world of falling in love, by frequently leading to very intense feelings about how you feel about someone, can give way to disappointment on numerous occasions. .
Here We will see what heartbreak consists of and how to overcome it from the point of view of psychology and emotional well-being through various tips.
Heartbreak is the psychological phenomenon characterized by the emotional pain that appears when you experience the end of a love story in which you were involved It is an experience that often goes hand in hand with the breakup of a relationship and separation, but this is not always the case.
On the one hand, there are not rare cases of people who remain in a relationship for years despite having suffered a heartbreak and not staying with the other person because of the love they feel for them, but for other motivations. In cases like this, although these people know that they are no longer in a loving relationship (at least, not one in which the feelings are reciprocated), they continue forward making their lack of love coexist with the presence of the other person in their day to day. day.
On the other hand, we must keep in mind that it is technically possible to suffer heartbreak despite not having started a romantic relationship. This is what happens, for example, when someone is rejected by the person they had fallen in love with.
And it is that The important thing about heartbreak is not so much that the love story that we see moving away from us has become real beyond our imagination, but that we have become accustomed to taking it for granted, to integrating it into our daily lives even without the active participation of those we love. In fact, it is common that after a “crush” people spend a lot of time fantasizing about what their life together will be like with the person who has captivated them, which leads to excitement and not conceiving other future plans without that special someone.
Thus, in many cases, heartbreak is an experience similar to the psychological grief that occurs when a loved one dies. However, unlike the case of those who miss someone who has already died, in heartbreak it is common for many contradictory feelings to arise, since seeing how the person we have fallen in love with moves away from us can arouse resentment. .
Thus, in heartbreak, at least two mechanisms of discomfort usually appear: missing the person, on the one hand, and experiencing doubts about how we should feel about them as we will see.
The differential fact: affective ambivalence
As we have seen, part of what makes heartbreak a painful experience is the feeling of loss, the idea that everyday life has lost one of its most important aspects, which is the company of the person we have loved. come to love. But something that also causes discomfort is the indecision about how to relate to what we have left: the memories about that person
And heartbreak forces us to make the decision about whether to continue perceiving that person and our relationship in the same way we did before the heartbreak, or whether to rethink our position on what we have been doing up to that moment: What relationship did we aspire to? Have we been reasonable in setting our expectations? Has that relationship been something authentic, or a mirage that has only taken place in our heads? Is the other person as valuable and special as we thought?
These and many other questions give rise to reconsider both the person we fell in love with and the way they came into our lives and on many occasions this very uncomfortable process leads to a very critical attitude about what happened, from which reproaches arise towards one or both parties.
Here are some tips on how to overcome heartbreak and move on in the best way possible.
1. Don’t base everything on demonizing the other person
If you concentrate all your frustrations and all your sadness by projecting those feelings onto the person who awakened love in you, making them responsible for everything that happened, you will just be hiding your pain under the rug since you will learn to give a lot of importance to that person: you will learn to fear that he or she will appear in your life again and, in a matter of minutes or seconds, make you feel bad again by doing something that does not fit with that artificial and Manichaean vision that you have created yourself from it.
In addition, it will also awaken an unhealthy competitiveness in you, which will lead you to try to “be better than her” to show that you have matured more, which is contradictory.
2. Learn to tolerate your flaws by looking back
When recalling past situations, it is very easy to detect failures and blunders in one’s own behavior, among which we would perhaps include not having detected signs that we were generating overly optimistic expectations about the relationship we were going to have with the other person.
It is important stop to analyze to what extent it is constructive and useful to wallow in self-criticism for self-criticism’s sake, instead of assuming that no one can know everything at all times and focusing on extracting a lesson. Which brings us to the next tip.
3. Focus on learning
Very well, you have suffered an experience of heartbreak, but… what have you learned from that? Emotions are a very powerful way to fix memories and that is why, if you manage to reach an accurate conclusion about what has happened, the experience will allow you to mature more emotionally quite quickly, since you will always have that lesson at hand.
Of course, avoid giving yourself a very pessimistic bias or it will close more doors for you than it opens for you. Consider how this experience can help you be happier.
4. Focus on your well-being, not on feeding narratives
If the heartbreak has arisen in part from having been subject to an overly idealized narrative about what that relationship was or was going to be, it is important not to fall into a trap of that type again but with the opposite sign: a totally pessimistic and disenchanted, practically marked by cynicism, about human relationships.
Ultimately, these perspectives that tend to simplify reality (whether towards optimism or pessimism) only work for themselves, leading us to interpret everything that happens to us in a way that validates that way of seeing things.
We do not want to be slaves to such a flat and totalizing philosophy of life but to obtain a way of perceiving things that has the necessary nuances to give us room for maneuver and have autonomy, assuming that we cannot always be right or know everything that is happening in us and in our relationships.
5. If you don’t progress, go to psychological therapy
Psychotherapy is the most effective way to overcome emotional problems of this type, and offers personalized professional help adapted to each case.
Are you looking for professional help?
If you are interested in going to psychotherapy to overcome emotional or behavioral problems that are being negatively affected, contact us. In Psychology For We have a complete team of psychologists and 20 years of experience caring for patients. You can find us in our center located in Madrid, as well as in online therapy sessions by video call. Our contact information is on this page.
