A broken heart is one of the most mentally and emotionally challenging experiences we can have as humans.
Our social nature ensures that we must bond and connect with other humans.
Dating back to our earliest ancestors, we relied on connecting with other humans as a means of survival and procreation.
The need to connect with other people is a biological system that is hardwired into our DNA.
As we have evolved into a functioning society, our lives have become much more complex than that of our early ancestors.
Aside from no longer having to live in a primitive environment hunting to survive, we have evolved into an emotionally complex species.
The things that we live and experience in life have great effects as to how we percieve reality, our ability to make rational judgement, how we think, and how we behave.
All of the things we experience create emotions in which are correlated to our perception of these experiences.
For example, if we experience something we percieve to be a positive experience, feelings of happiness, and joy are created and we associate that experience with those feelings.
On the flip side, if we experience something that we percieve to be a negative experience, feelings of sadness, anxiety, and even anger are created and associated with that experience.
Heart break is one of the most common negative experiences we have as humans.
We connect and grow so close to another human on an emotional level and in the blink of an eye, they are no longer a part of our lives.
Someone we were once very familiar with all of the sudden becomes a stranger.
The negative feelings of heart break are often overwhelming, especially in the beginning.
All of the time spent and experiences shared feels like a waste, further reinforcing negative feelings we already have - sadness, anxiety, depression, anger etc.
Heart break is extremely painful both mentally and emotionally.
When something like this happens, all we can do is think about it, which can have alrering effects in other areas of our lives.
While I cannot personally say that there is any true “cure” for heartbreak, I do believe there are certain actions to be taken that can help relieve some of the negative emotions that feel like they are never going to go away.
The first step is recognizing that the negative feelings will eventually subside.
By believing it will never end, the more we end up tricking our own brain into believing it, which will in turn set us along a specific pattern of behavior to reinforce that belief.
Only time separated from the situation will give us the clarity that we have been looking for.
We are so quick to want answers right here right now in the midst of a heartbreak, but sadly the answers never seem to be good enough.
In time, what was once unclear starts to become clear.
Think about every breakup you have ever had: you remember those feelings and how bad you felt in the beginning, but now when you look back on it, you see it for what it is - a brief time in your life.
Some hurt more than others, and some take more time than others, but collectively speaking, how you think about the situation now is different than how you thought about it then.
While some people would argue against it, we do change as we continue to age - new experiences will add to our perception of reality over time.
The second thing we can do to help amidst heartbreak is understanding and accepting that it is a part of the human experience.
We all have to go through it at one point or another.
By accepting that it is a part of the human experience, we can open oursleves up to learning new things.
Every time we experience heartbreak, we learn new things about ourselves and what we value in others.
Maybe there were certain qualities you liked and qualities you didn’t like about that particular person.
Only clarity will be able to answer these questions, but acceptance of the situation is a step towards growth.
By accepting what is, the more we can percieve a negative experience as a net positive.