Bereavement and loss of love

Key ideas on how to manage psychological grief caused by a breakup.

There are many forms of psychological grief caused by major losses. For example, loss of a job, loss of a partner, change of school, loss of a loved one, loss of health, and perhaps even loss of a pet.

In this case I want to delve into the loss of a couple's relationshipwhich has its own characteristics.

The keys to mourning a love breakup

It is very habitual that, when they finish a loving relation, in very little time the persons believe and feel to be recovered or as if nothing bad had happened to them.They even start looking for a new partner again, as if they were "sweeping the rug under the carpet". That is to say, taking their own emotional problems to the next relationship.

Those emotional problems or personality factors that played a 50% role in that breakup are likely to remain with people, unresolved, long afterward. And they may even lead to codependency or an undesirable quality of life.

Also it is also common for friends or family of people involved in that breakup to invite the person in question to distract themselves, have fun, go out, or even go out with other prospective partners. even with other prospective partners, in an effort not to see them cry or suffer; obviously they do this out of love, however, most of the time those who love us most, are the ones who are most likely to end up hurting us.

It is harmful to pretend that nothing happened and ask the person who suffered a loss to act strong, to be distracted or simply to look for someone else to fill the void. It is harmful because they are not allowing you to grieve in a correct way, since the only thing that generates the fact of playing the strong one is a backlog of negative emotions and unprocessed.

What to do?

The normal thing for people who lose a partner should be to wait a considerable amount of time (at least 6 to 9 months) alone, learning to deal with their own loneliness, understanding it, processing it, and thus diminishing the great feeling of emptiness. Allowing yourself this time alone means going out to the movies, theater, shopping, doing the hobbies you usually enjoy, but with yourself. And of course, when you feel the need, crying and feeling sad, angry, wanting to recover the relationship and finally accepting the breakup..

Precisely these last emotions represent, according to some authors, the stages of mourning. There are researchers who propose more stages, but in summary, the phases of grief are: Denial, sadness, courage, bargaining or desire to recover what has been lost and finally acceptance. These stages do not have a chronological or precise order, but it is essential to go through them all in a constant back and forth and let the respective emotions flow in each one of them.

The loss of a partner is an enormous opportunity to rework emotions, triggered in the present but which have their roots in the early stages of the person's life. So far from what is believed, the best thing to do when being in love mourning would be to cope with such intense emotions, learning to enjoy one's own company.

The ideal when something like this happens will always be to get rid of all traces that remind us of that person (negatively or even positively), so that the only thing that remains is the memory of that person.so that the only thing that remains at the end is a more emotionally neutral memory. It is worth mentioning that the key words to go through this process and end it in an ideal way are: I love you, I forgive you, thank you and I am sorry.

Once these words can be said in a sincere way (and in an imaginary way), very possibly the person will have overcome that loss.

What can happen in the face of a poorly managed breakup grief?

On the other hand, when a grief is not elaborated in an adequate way, the consequences of this can be quite serious, since this can become pathological and can become part of the person's life without him noticing it. In addition, the person will be repeating the same behavioral patterns, he/she will be repeating the same behavioral patterns as long as he/she continues to avoid the breakup..

Sometimes, some people who do not process a loss correctly cannot be relieved with the support of psychotherapy alone, but require psychiatric and pharmacological support.

Clinically speaking, in such cases, problems such as anxiety crises or depression may arise. The latter psychopathology involves several months of experiencing irritability, sadness, eating problems, lack of interest in things that used to interest them, lack of hygiene... with the result that the person will not be able to live the dignified life and with all that he/she would wish for.that he really deserves just for the fact of being human.

It could be the case that all the deficiencies or issues that could be improved in a person's life revolve around one or more previously unresolved duels. It happens in people who are very much anchored in what could be called melancholy or despondency most of the time..

For all of the above reasons, we should consider it very important to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and ask for professional psychotherapeutic help without any kind of prejudice, since it is a process focused on our own well-being and to build a life as well as possible, without repeating harmful behavioral and perhaps even family patterns, learned from unresolved emotional deficiencies or processed from the first years of life.

Of course, no person is born with all the skills to enter life in the best possible way, but he or she is more courageous and stronger than anyone else.but the one who accepts help in an intelligent way is braver and stronger...