Unrequited love: 3 keys to overcoming it

The love frustrations that arise from not receiving love in return can be overcome with effort.

Romantic love can become a feeling that hijacks our attention, our senses and all the options we choose to act upon. If it is, in addition, an unrequited love, the consequences are even more negative.The limitations of our own freedom are compounded by a series of psychological phenomena that worsen the quality of life in general; the lowering of self-esteem, frustration and anxiety that accompanies them, among others.

However, knowing what to do when unrequited love appears and managing the situation with emotional intelligence will help us to come out of the experience not happy, but reinforced. By following strategies that enhance resilience, it is possible to learn from these experiences in order to become emotionally stronger.

Let's see what this process process of change through which unrequited love is overcome..

How to overcome unrequited love?

The first step before starting to work on strategies to get out of the vicious circle of thoughts that produce anxiety and sadness is to be clear that in cases of unrequited love there is no one to blame.

This is important, since it is extremely easy that, although we do not realize it, we look for an excuse to express our anger towards a specific target. The fact that we are translating that discomfort into an activity that is externalized towards a target can release tensions for a while, but it certainly harms othersIt is worth taking care not to fall into this trap.

In particular, the person who does not love us back is a habitual victim of this projection of anger and frustration, since beliefs and thoughts appear related to the idea that we have the right to be loved by that particular person and that, therefore, that person is breaking a kind of pact that was never really sealed. Of course, this idea is absurd, but in the most emotional situations the wildest assumptions can seem entirely reasonable..

To prevent these cases a good idea is to imagine, at the beginning, possible contexts or scenarios in which we blame (fictitiously) this person, in order to reflect on what is most likely to happen. In this way, if the first signs of gratuitous blaming appear, we will know how to identify them at the very first time and, thus, it will be easier not to repeat them.

1. Breaking with rumination

A good part of the mission of putting in check those negative feelings produced by unrequited love and rejection is to lower the levels of general anxiety.

In practice, this consists of putting an end to rumination, which is the vicious circle that our thoughts follow when there is something that causes us worry, anguish, stress and/or fear. In this way, we will gain the ability to manage our focus of attention without making it constantly return to those ideas or memories that cause us discomfort.

To do this, it is advisable to undertake habits that we did not do before and, especially, to disconnect by walking and resting in physical spaces without noise; and the more natural they are, the better.

Actually, the idea is quite simple. Staying away from that person makes our brain less exposed to the stimuli that make us think of that person. In this way, the dynamics of activation of the neurons of the brain adapts to what it is like to live without spending much time with that person in mind. As a result, in turn, as this organ "adjusts" to this new reality, there are fewer and fewer episodes in which we are not surprised by spontaneously thinking about her, until in the end she is almost completely part of our past.

To know in more detail how you can put an end to the rumination produced by unrequited love or any kind of stressful thought in general, you can access this article.

2. Get away from that person

Dealing with the feeling of discomfort generated by unrequited love and at the same time know how to act in the presence of the person who does not love us as we wanted can be too complex to cope with at the same time, at least during the early stages of theat least during the first stages of overcoming it.

Therefore, if you want to overcome unrequited love, the ideal is to stay away from this person (if necessary, explaining it to him/her), so that we can focus only on what is happening to us.

This idea may generate a feeling of guilt, but it is important to bear in mind that the person who experiences unrequited love is usually more hurt than the other person, so a time to worry about what is happening to us.so a time to worry about one's own problems is fully justified.

3. Cognitive restructuring

This part of the management of love frustration is typically done in therapy and with the help of a person specialized in the area of psychology and with the appropriate certificates.

The idea is that patient and therapist work together to uncover the cognitive schemas through which the beliefs, interpretations of memories and abstract ideas that make the experience of unrequited love so painful are distributed.

By modifying the ordering and organization of these cognitive schemas, the discomfort is reduced.We become accustomed to using the same cognitive schemas as we do in our own lives, especially in terms of improving our self-esteem and managing our expectations. In this way, we become accustomed to using cognitive schemes in which the other person does not play an important role and is not part of the structure of our own identity.

• You may be interested in this article: "10 tips for choosing a good psychologist".