Heartbreak

Heartbreak is a very strange distress. It is exquisitely painful, and yet we cannot find an injury on our body. It is like one big emotional pain but it also seems to spark off hundreds of other emotions. We hate the feeling of heartbreak, and yet we find ourselves compelled to go over and over memories, ideas or fantasies which make the feeling worse. What is going on?.

When an important love relationship ends, a range of different responses is triggered. We feel loss and pain. Our normal ways of thinking about the world are disrupted. Our balance is upset, and our feelings change from one minute to the next. We pine for our ex-lover, then we are overwhelmed with anger at them. One minute we are desperate to see them, the next we can't bear to have anyone mention their name. This volatility and confusion add to the misery.

Heartbreak is caused by the end of a relationship. It can also be caused when we fail to get a relationship we fervently desire. It can even happen slowly when we realize that we are in a relationship from which all the love has gone. However it happens, after the shock, it takes some time for reality to sink in. Then we experience a welter of feelings. We can be angry, sad, devastated, despairing, distraught, desperate, remorseful, regretful, ashamed, embarrassed. The emotional bombardment is overwhelming.

In the long term, we have a natural way of dealing with these feelings. We have an emotional mechanism that allows us to recover from losses and from pain. If we didn't have it, the whole world would be in mourning forever! Bereavement, parting and suffering are unavoidable parts of our life experience. The natural way we recover is by grieving.