Relationship breakup: how is it treated in therapy?

These are the therapeutic resources used to help people suffering from a breakup.

Many people who come to psychotherapy do so because of experiences that have left a very painful emotional imprint in their memory: a psychological mark that conditions in a harmful way their way of behaving, thinking and feeling in the present.

The fact of having gone through a breakup is often what triggers these forms of discomfort. Fortunately, psychologists have been developing methods to overcome these emotional disturbances for decades. Let's see what it consists of through a summary about how the consequences of breakups are dealt with in psychotherapy..

What is done in psychotherapy to help overcome a couple's breakup?

Here we will see which are the most important processes that take place during psychological therapy sessions when we want to help someone who is suffering from a breakup. Of course, not all of these therapeutic resources are used in all cases, not all of these therapeutic resources are used in all cases, since each patient is unique.Each patient is unique.

1. Exercises of self-knowledge

Especially in the first sessions, it is essential to explore the main causes of the patient's discomfort. The patient usually requests an appointment for the first meeting with the psychologist having a vague idea about what is happening to him/her, but it is necessary that he/she gets to see it in a clearer way and even detecting aspects of his/her initial experience that were misleading him/her about what is the root of his/her discomfort.

The fact of feeling an emotional disturbance in our own flesh does not automatically make us aware of the real problem that generates this psychological phenomenon. That is why, among other things, there is the figure of the psychologist, who helps us to understand the logic by which this discomfort is maintained and emerges in certain day-to-day situations.

How do you get patients to understand which aspects of the breakup hurt them the most? By training them in Emotional Intelligence and self-knowledge exercises..

Most of these have to do with writing down in a kind of personal diary (or self-recording) what they feel at key moments, as well as what they were doing just before, during and after those experiences. Creating this routine allows to have a global vision of the emotional maladjustment and to detect common patterns in most of them.

In any case, it is the psychotherapist who gives the instructions to apply this exercise on a daily basis, depending on the particularities of the patient and his or her life context.

2. Discomfort management exercises

One of the key aspects of psychotherapy applied to cases of distress due to a breakup of a couple has to do with teaching the patient how to manage the unpleasant and emotionally painful sensations he/she feels.. This involves preventing the patient from falling into very frequent traps, such as trying to totally "block" certain thoughts and feelings that generate discomfort. Trying to keep these kinds of contents out of our consciousness only gives them more power over us.

For this reason, in psychotherapy exercises for the management of distress and intrusive thoughts are carried out.which include principles of acceptance of a certain degree of discomfort.

3. Mindfulness Training

In people who suffer due to the end of a love relationship, it is common to feel an affective ambivalence that is painful: melancholy and the desire to return to the happy moments spent in the company of that person, on the one hand, and resentment and frustration for what triggered the breakup, on the other.

Therefore, it is important to learn to keep these emotional swings at bay and not to give in to Manichean interpretations of what happened, which lead to seeing everything in white.that lead to see everything in black and white and to look for absolute culprits and absolute victims. In other words, it is necessary to be able to see the situation from a perspective that does not always seek to make clear moral judgments, but to describe and adopt a constructive perspective.

To achieve this there are different techniques and strategies, and one of the most prominent is Mindfulness. It is a set of attentional state management practices that lead us to value experiences as they come to us, without prejudice or interest in fitting them into a particular narrative.

4. Questioning dysfunctional beliefs

Much of the discomfort caused by a breakup comes to us from a series of inadequate beliefs to which we have been clinging for a long time. An example of this kind of belief is the myth of the "better half": the idea that we are incomplete.the idea that we are incomplete if we lack that special someone.

In therapy, what is known as cognitive restructuring is applied to achieve this.

5. Promoting a program of personal development and closing of cycle

The breakup of a couple is, in many respects, a kind of psychological mourning, like the one we suffer when a loved one dies. For this reason We must know how to re-signify the memories in which that person appears and know how to give them closure.Without trying to hold on to a world with that person that exists only in our memory, for better or for worse.

Part of the Pain of a breakup usually comes from the contradictions we experience when we focus our attention on what we can no longer do, since we still have as our main reference point what we did when we were with that person in a love relationship. It is necessary to know how to let go of that organizing reference of the day to day and to welcome new ones.And this is achieved by looking for new exciting life projects, and creating stimulating routines that we had either left aside or had never dared to explore.

5. Maintaining habits that promote mental health

Beyond the therapeutic resources used to treat the specific problem of the aftermath of a breakup, measures are also taken to ensure that the patient follows a lifestyle that includes habits to prevent psychological problems in general.

This is important, because neglect makes it easier for disorders of this type to emerge.Once a psychopathology has begun to develop, it is easier for others to appear as well, since they reinforce each other.

Thus, in therapy sessions, patients are helped to be informed about what these habits are, and they are facilitated the incorporation of these habits in their daily lives, so that it does not remain all in good intentions and nothing more.

Are you interested in attending psychotherapy and getting help?

If you are thinking of seeking professional help from psychologists, we invite you to contact us. At Advance Psychologists We have been offering psychotherapy services for 20 years, and we currently have a complete team of mental health experts covering all areas of emotional well-being: individual therapy for people of all ages, couples therapy, family therapy, sexology, etc. You can find us at our center located in Madrid, or you can arrange online sessions by video call. On this page you will find our contact details and more information about the way we work.

Bibliographical references:

• Aragón, R.S. and Cruz, R.M. (2014). Causes and characterization of the stages of romantic grief. Acta de investigación psicológica, 4(1): pp. 1329 - 1343.
• Campuzo Montoya, M. (2002). Pareja humana: Su psicología, sus conflictos, su tratamiento. Mexico: AMPAG.
• Kübler-Ross, E. (2006) Sobre el duelo y el dolor. Ediciones Luciérnaga. Barcelona.
• Lopez-Cantero, E. (2018). The Break-Up Check: Exploring Romantic Love through Relationship Terminations. Philosophia (Ramat Gan), 46(3): pp. 689 - 703.
• Martell, C. et al.(2010). Behavioral activation for depression. The Guilford Press.
• Verhallen, A.M. et. al. (2019). Romantic relationship breakup: An experimental model to study effects of stress on depression (-like) symptoms. PLoS One, 14(5): e0217320.