How to get over a heartbreak

Heartbreak is an intense and unpleasant feeling that arises after a couple breakup or a love rejection. Heartbreak generates many doubts and causes severe pain that is often difficult to handle. However, the vast majority of people have gone through several breakdowns in a relationship and have felt, faced and overcome heartbreak.

If you find yourself in this situation right now, it is normal for the emotional intensity to flood you and you wonder how to overcome a heartbreak. Although each person is unique and each process is different, we can talk about general guidelines and psychological advice that will help you heal heartbreak.

Index

1. Resignation
2. Say goodbye and close pending issues
3. Take distance
4. Apply mental zero contact
5. Understand the pain
6. Understand the process
7. Don't idealize
8. Make a list of reasons
9. Lean on your loved ones
10. Change perspective
11. Respect your time
12. Work your self esteem
13. take care of yourself
14. Trust yourself
15. Take the opportunity to grow

The first step in dealing with a breakup is to give up, give up, stop fighting a situation that cannot be changed. Relationships depend on all the people involved, therefore, it is not enough that you want to maintain the relationship with that person. If he or she does not want to, there is nothing to do.

Continuing to fight and battle a situation that is beyond your control will only increase your obsession and lower your self-esteem due to its continued rejection. In addition to wasting your energy and lengthening the discomfort.

So far the relationship has come. It has been a more or less long relationship, more or less or deep, more or less healthy... Be that as it may, it is no longer the time to blame, it is not the time to find guilty or argue.

It is time to put the past in the past and attend to the present. Thanks the pleasant moments lived and the learnings that you have been able to incorporate thanks to having shared time with this person. Close the pending issues between you, those things that you have in common or that keep you together.

To overcome a breakup, one of the most effective strategies is to apply zero contact until the pain subsides and you move toward acceptance. Taking distance means avoid contact, both physical and online. That means stopping seeing that person, both alone and in a group.

This point is quite complicated for people who work together or who have children in common. In the first case, everything possible should be done so that contact is minimal and that communication is strictly work-related and only when it is absolutely essential. The second case is more complex, but in the same way, a cordial relationship must be maintained only and exclusively. In this article you will find professional recommendations about the separation of a couple when there are common children.

There are people who try to overcome an unrequited love, maintaining friendship. This is possible when the love has ended on the part of both people and a friendship has been forged. However, if one of the two people wants a romantic relationship, friendship is not possibleas it will be very frustrating for her. In addition, there are people who say they want to maintain a friendship, motivated only by the fear of totally losing contact with that person, despite the suffering that the situation may entail. You need to be honest with yourself: if your rejection hurts you, you need to distance yourself.

Sometimes, cutting off face-to-face contact is not enough. If time passes and you keep thinking about that person in great pain, you may still be attached to him / her in some way. To apply mental zero contact, you must stop checking their social networks, publications, images..., everything that this person shares on the network. You should also ask your family and friends not to talk to you or tell you the news about this person.

Another issue to consider are physical and digital memories, such as photographs, letters, objects... You can keep them somewhere out of your reach and sight, so there are no memory triggers to overwhelm you.

Why does heartbreak come? According to the Maslow's pyramidAmong our basic needs are the need for security and stability, the need for affiliation, affection and intimacy, and the need for esteem and recognition. The figure of the couple supports all these needs and, when this figure disappears, the life of the person can be destabilized.

We are social beings, we need the group, we need others. This is the answer to why unrequited love hurts so much. Feeling rejected makes us feel displaced and connects us with the fear of being alone. Human beings are afraid of loneliness, because in prehistoric times, staying alone meant dying. The tribe was necessary to survive. Understanding how the mind works in a situation of rejection helps us understand the pain we feel.

What is very important to understand is that romantic love has given the wrong weight to the relationship. All our relationship and love needs can be met with other people, activities, projects, and so on. In this article you can find the myths of romantic love.

On the other hand, we have the neurochemistry of falling in love. Falling in love is a physiological reaction: the release of dopamine, oxytocin and vasopressin in the presence of the person we like produces the sensation of relaxation, well-being and pleasure. If that person withdraws, they switch the release of pleasant hormones to hormones like cortisol, the stress hormone. The brain suffers like a withdrawal syndrome. For this reason, heartbreak behaviors are impulsive, obsessive and compulsive like those of an addiction.

A heartbreak is still a loss, so overcoming a heartbreak will involve a grieving process. The phases of love grief are as follows:

1. Shock
2. Denial
3. Hostile reactions
4. Guilt
5. Sadness
6. Acceptance and reorganization

Therefore, It is normal to feel different emotions such as surprise, loneliness, emptiness, frustration, anxiety, sadness, disappointment, despair, disappointment, apathy... Also having intrusive thoughts, longing to regain the relationship, crying... All of these are common heartbreak symptoms. Going through the phases of grief takes time. In addition, the grieving process is not usually linear, nor is it the same in all people.

The mind tends to have good memories more present and forget the most unpleasant situations. It's about a cognitive bias called affective bias fading (fading affect bias), which makes the memories associated with unpleasant emotions fade earlier and the memories of good experiences last. It consists of a defense mechanism that helps us easily forget bad experiences, however, it can play against when you try to overcome a breakup.

Knowing that this effect exists, keep in mind that what you remember is distorted and that you miss a person and a relationship that are not exactly how you remember.

How to overcome an unrequited love? As we have commented, due to the needs we have as human beings and the cognitive biases that distort memories, it is easy to fall into wanting to reconnect. However, it is necessary to remain firm in the decision that has been made to separate from that person. To help us, we can use some resources such as writing a list with all the reasons the relationship didn't work out and all the advantages of separation. You can have this list close by for when you need to remind yourself.

Talk, unburden yourself, share time with your family, your friends and trusted people. Let yourself help. Showing yourself vulnerable does not make you weak at all, it takes a lot of strength and courage to show the most unpleasant emotions and express the pain.

However, the ideal is not to be constantly talking about the same topic. You can spend time together doing any activitythat you fancy.

Although it may seem unfortunate, it is a great gift for a person who does not love you to get away from you. If a person does not love you, it is no luck that they are still by your side, it may be a source of frustration and suffering. That he gets away from you is a gift, it sets you free. In this way you can continue your life, you will have the opportunity to meet new people and the possibility of starting a relationship in which love is reciprocated.

As we have seen, overcoming a heartbreak is going through a grieving process, confronting fears, facing changes, changing expectations, redefining the idea of ​​the future... It is a big change that takes time. Therefore, a great deal of patience and self-compassion is necessary. In addition, each process is different, so it is not not beneficial to compare it with that of other people. Each person has their own rhythm and you should respect yours and not compare it with that of others. The chemical storm slowly brightens and little by little the brain returns to normal.

To overcome an unrequited love, it is necessary to work on self-esteem, which can be affected after rejection. The need for love, acceptance and recognition is intrinsic to the human being, but it does not have to be met through the couple. It is important to first build a healthy and stable self-esteem.

• know yourself: spend time with you and observe yourself.
• Observe your internal dialogue: listen to how you talk to yourself.
• Observe your beliefs: what do you think about yourself and why.
• Reflect on who you are: describe yourself in a third person.
• Reflect on the value you give yourself and why.
• Reflect on the image you are trying to show and what you try to hide.
• Don't compare yourself: all people are unique and just as valuable.
• Take your values ​​into account and respect them.
• Learn to be assertive: to respect both others and yourself.

During the process, it is very important that you practice self-care at all levels:

• Feeding: try to maintain a healthy diet with stable schedules. It is normal that you present variations in your appetite, respect your hunger signals, within a healthy margin, avoiding fasting and bingeing. If you see that your diet is losing its adjustment, do not hesitate to go to a professional.
• Dream: you need a restful sleep and the ideal is to sleep between 7 and 8 hours a day. It is normal to have difficulty falling asleep in an anxious and / or depressed mood. You can apply these sleep hygiene guidelines and also consult with a professional.
• Physical activity: Performing physical activity on a daily basis is necessary for general health. In addition, it will help you generate endorphins and improve your mood.
• Emotional self-care: attend to your mood, allow you to express your emotions, take care of your internal language, surround yourself with people who bring you well-being ...
• Leisure and relationships: You also need to spend time practicing hobbies and enjoying social relationships.
• Avoid self-destructive behaviors: to ease the pain, it is easy to use tobacco, alcohol, drugs, compulsive shopping, pathological gambling, compulsive sex, work... You should know that all of these are patches that will momentarily evade you from pain, but can have serious consequences in the medium and long term.

Nature is wise and the body is prepared to face changes. Our organism has two very clear functions: to survive and to perpetuate the species. Falling in love, biologically, serves for reproduction, a key issue in the survival of the species. Therefore, your brain will do its best to reestablish normality and what to prepare so that you can fall in love again.

On the other hand, you can reflect on all the complicated situations that you have overcome: the skills that you have required and have developed to cope with adverse situations. On this occasion, you can rely on the skills you have already developed or on developing new ones. Trust your ability. Trust that recovery will come.

You can take part in this whole situation to make sense of it. The unpleasant symptoms of heartbreak will bring out another part of you. Take the opportunity to get to know yourself better, to observe you, to learn to handle yourself in painful situations and to learn to manage unpleasant emotions. You can also observe the reactions of others to your pain to learn more about them. Bad times are great teachers. Take advantage of to leave transformed and strengthened of the situation. That's what the well-known resilience.

Finally, if you have the possibility, do not hesitate to go to a psychologist. It will help you understand what you feel and will accompany you through this process with more tools.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to How to get over a heartbreak, we recommend that you enter our category of Feelings.

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