Why Can’t I Stop Thinking About My Ex? 4 Keys To Understand It
He lovesickness is one of the most painful phenomena that human beings can suffer and that we have all had to experience
Surely at this moment there are many people who are having a hard time and who still think about that person they have loved and with whom they cannot be.
Unfortunately, socially it is not well regarded for an individual to suffer for another person, as many associate it with a weak personality. Actually, forgetting about that special someone, that someone you loved, is a process that has its phases and that must be overcome over time. Now, heartbreak is not linear, since we can relapse and suffer at different times in our lives. With time, however, everything is overcome or at least it hurts less. Believe it or not, most people carry it inside.
love is like a drug
Understanding heartbreak and stopping thinking about your ex may not always be easy. And to understand that it is not a linear phenomenon and that there can be relapses, we must take into account that love, like drugs, use the same neural circuits. It is clear that we cannot explain this phenomenon solely with biological factors, since cultural factors have a decisive influence.
But what love is like a drug I’m not saying that, but a study by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which sought to learn more about heartbreak, concluded that when love breaks, just like what happens to a drug addict**, the separation of The loved one has serious consequences on our behavior**, such as depressive and obsessive behaviors.
Now, love and heartbreak are such complex topics that there is no great consensus among scientists, but over the years conclusions have been provided from different research that have helped to better understand these phenomena.
Love sickness hurts just like physical pain
But what exactly happens in the brain when we fall out of love? Some experts claim that culture has a great influence on our tastes, for example, whether we like a person who surfs or who is sapiosexual. But the experts too They warn that there are inexplicable things and that, as you have seen throughout your life, you fall in love and that’s it Sometimes you don’t have to look for an explanation.
But when we fall in love, The brain undergoes a neurochemical cascade in which different neurotransmitters and hormones are involved, such as serotonin, norepinephrine (norepinephrine), dopamine or oxytocin, among others, which are responsible for changing our perception of life. When we are in love we are euphoric, we continually think about the other person, we sleep less, etc.
And of course, When love breaks down, the neurochemical imbalance causes a change in behavior that requires time until it stabilizes Different research has concluded that the same part of the brain that functions as a physical pain processor also has the task of processing emotional pain.
Psychologists recommend losing contact with the other person to overcome the breakup. In other words, in this situation you have to apply “all or nothing” so that the brain pathways related to heartbreak (and drug addiction) are weakened.
In addition to the obsessive and depressive behavior characteristic of the lack of love in the first months, It is common to remember your partner at certain times when some time has passed Those shows you watched together, a car just like your ex’s, those places you went together, those songs… can bring back memories of who was once your partner.
To understand this, you only have to think about the associative learning of classical conditioning, which can remind us of our partner months later and which can make us relapse and cause pain when we thought we had overcome it. Something that also happens in drug addicts. In the case of drug addiction, this phenomenon is called conditioned withdrawal syndrome.
Open wounds and their acceptance
But does it take a long time to forget the person you have loved? Well, that depends on each person’s situation and the intensity of their feelings. But what is clear is that if we do not accept the breakup, the pain remains. Our beliefs are to blame for keeping us clinging to that person who is no longer part of our lives. If they have left us, the decision the other person has made must be to respect them despite not liking them.
The breakup may have been traumatic and we need more time to forget that person. We may need to work on ourselves and our self-esteem before meeting another special person. But the first step to forgetting your ex is to accept that it’s over. After your ex, life goes on It is in your hands to get back on track with your life, emotionally distancing yourself from the person who is no longer there, and grounding your happiness in yourself, in your own options and possibilities.
