Broken heart syndrome: causes, symptoms and treatment

Love can give way to moments of great emotional pain that you need to be able to manage.

Love relationships can be a roller coaster of emotions.. Moments of euphoria can be followed soon after by bad seasons marked by couple crises.

That is why, sometimes, what we could call the "broken Heart syndrome" appears.. Of course, it is not a disease, but a set of symptoms that go hand in hand with a marked emotional pain that, on the other hand, is not so uncommon throughout life and is experienced by many people at one time or another.

Now, just because the broken heart syndrome is not a disease does not mean that we should give up trying to alleviate its effects; it is perfectly legitimate to wish to be well and save ourselves a good deal of suffering. To do this, we should start with a definition.

What is broken heart syndrome?

The broken heart syndrome is the set of psychological states and processes by which the discomfort generated by a disappointment in love or a breakup of a couple is expressed.

It can appear, for example, in cases of unrequited love, after being aware of an infidelity, or when discovering that the person for whom we had feelings is not what we originally believed.

In short, the broken heart syndrome is composed of emotional and physiological elements (such as anguish and stress), cognitive (such as recurrent thoughts) and behavioral (such as the desire to physically meet again with that person or some nervous tics produced by anxiety).

How to feel good again after a disappointment

As always, when it comes to intervening on the psychological problem there are more specific aspects to be studied on a case-by-case basis and others that are more general. The former, in case the discomfort is very intense and persistent, it would be useful to address them with the help of psychotherapy, but in many other cases it is possible to focus on certain basic rules so that the emotional pain decreases more effectively through strategies that one is responsible for implementing oneself.

Let us look at some of the possible situations in which the broken heart syndrome may appear.

1. The one-sided breakup

In cases where our partner has ended the relationship unilaterally, there are two things that cause discomfort: the fact that we will no longer enjoy our partner's company in the usual way and, at the same time, indecision about what to do.

Regarding the latter, in the medium and long term the best thing for everyone is to assume as a fact that the relationship is over and that it is not up to us to re-establish the ties of before. Believing that one can bring the other person back and everything will be just as it was in the best of times is not only unreasonable; it is to have a possessive view of the other person..

Therefore, in this scenario our efforts should concentrate on getting back to feeling good about ourselves beyond whether one is in a relationship or not. You may find this article helpful in doing so:

2. Infidelity and cognitive dissonance.

Both in cases where the other person has committed an infidelity (understood as a transgression of the fundamental pacts on which the relationship has been built) and in cases where we discover a facet of the other person that we did not know and that we reject, the idea is similar: there is a new piece of information that does not fit with our beliefs about what we thought the relationship was about..

This phenomenon of "mismatch" between ideas is called cognitive dissonance, and it can generate a lot of anxiety.

In these cases, it is necessary to reflect on the belief system on which our idea of the relationship is based and see if what we know now is irreconcilable with our feelings. To do this, for example, we can explore alternative explanations for what is happening, ones that serve to arrive at a conclusion opposite to the one we originally held..

Then, we judge which of the explanations is more reasonable and describes reality better, in a simpler way and without leaving so many loose ends. That belief system, which may or may not be new, will be the most adequate to integrate this new information and to act accordingly.

3. Unrequited love

Broken heart syndrome can also occur when there has not even been when there has not even been a real relationship..

In these cases it is important to focus on preventing irrational and unfounded beliefs from undermining our self-esteem. This can happen because, as we lose sight of a possible future scenario that we had hoped for, we may perceive this as a personal loss, something that speaks to our own "failure".

It is necessary to examine what happened and the way in which our expectations gradually made us start living in an imaginary world in which the relationship had already begun to exist (long before it did in the real world).

In the same way, we have to ask ourselves why it should affect our self-esteem if we do not build a stable relationship with that particular person. with that particular personAfter all, many people live perfectly well without even knowing them or knowing them by sight; no one is predestined to know a specific person and not the others.