Dealing With Heartbreak: The Real Way To Mend A Broken Heart

One of the craziest experiences a sane person can go through is that person falling in love. At the same time, failing in love is one of the most irrationally painful. I've been in and out of this whole business a number of times, and through it all I've learned the specifics of how to effectively deal with a heartbreak. Here are some pointers that I think apply to every situation.

Warning: This is not your typical "Dealing With Heartbreak" set of tips. It's for everybody, boys and girls. Listen up. This is how you really do it.


Tip #1. Accept your emotions. Expect to get hurt--it's only natural.

(If you haven't had your broken heart handed down to you, let me tell you now, it hurts like hell. You won't like the feeling at all.)

You're only human. The reason humans can be categorized into humans is because they have shared qualities, species-universal traits. No, men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. They may be wired differently, but they're still only human beings from Earth. As a result, they will share the same kind of emotions and sensations, say heartbreak. Yes, there will be some deviations on the degree with which individuals feel and express pain, but it's gonna be there. What you have to do is just accept it and deal with it.

Here are some things you can expect from a heartbreak:
-obsessive recalling of past memories, what ifs
-irrational amount of pain (How can this hurt so much!? Where is all this coming from!?)
-sleepless nights, reduced productivity, some level of depression
-some aspect of the person invading your thoughts every now and then, sometimes coming out of environmental cues, sometimes coming out of nowhere
-wish to set things right/straight
-others

The main reason acceptance is so important is because it prepares you to move on and get with the rest of your life. Here is a good exercise: Whenever your emotions kick in tell yourself verbally, "Wow! This hurts." You're gonna do this anyway, but what I want to happen is for you to do it consciously, like it's an observation. Like you're pointing out to yourself a matter-of-fact occurrence. Better yet, do it cheerfully. Like you've discovered how interesting this heartbreak is. It helps a little.


Tip #2. Understand and break your emotions and your situation down rationally.

Let me tell you something about emotions. Emotions are your body's traditional way of making you do things. It's a mechanism animals with sufficiently advanced brains have so they don't have to use rational thought to act appropriately to a situation. Didn't get that? Let me give you an example.

Have you seen how dogs respond to threatening situations? Let's say a dog has been in a fight with another dog and dog#1 loses. Badly. You'll notice that the next time they have to confront each other, dog#1 will display the well-documented act of a dog's submission. He will have his body held close together, his head lowered, his tail between his legs. You can even say that he's feeling something we humans call fear. And it just saved him from getting beaten up again.

Human beings, who were formerly just primitive cave men who were formerly even more primitive than that, are pretty much the same. When a guy gets angry, it's because he's been offended in some manner. So, his body primes him for retaliation--a perfectly "reasonable" act back in the old days. His heart rate increases, adrenaline shoots up, he clenches his fists, he tenses his muscles, his face and body start to look more threatening. And all this is done sub-consciously.

If this guy had been a cave man, it would have been equivalent to us saying something like, "Hey, man. I don't really appreciate what you just did." If he actually went through with the fight itself, it would have been, "Understand?" And if he won. "Don't do it again." If this guy had been born anytime within the last few thousand years, he would have had the option to express his dissatisfaction with his mouth.

It's the same with heartbreak. Your body tells you to never make the same mistakes again by applying a generous flurry of painful emotional hurt. Except this time, the context is different. We have other things to attend to like getting good grades or being productive at work. There are more opportunities for getting another person in your life because we live in cities now, not in caves. We can also think through our errors for a more pain-free (though maybe, less effective?) analysis. So we don't really need the constant and invasive reminders which come in the form of hurt.

Still, it's there. And the solution is two-fold. The first involves learning from your mistakes--whether emotionally or rationally. The second involves pinpointing where the emotions are coming from. As in how they were formed. We did the second part in simile just now with the caveman digression.

This doesn't mean that the hurt will magically disappear. But if you do it right, then you can possibly override your heartbreak the same way you override your anger by finding the underlying mechanics of your predicament. At least to some extent.


Tip #3. Don't do anything that would complicate the matter.*
*the matter per se and not you, although you get worse too

There are a number of things that a person can do to make things more difficult for him/her. Seeking revenge for example, or begging, or befriending prematurely. I'm sure there're a lot more.

How do you know that something can potentially make the matter worse off? Simple. If it involves you surrendering whatever's left of your stability to another person--the object of affection or a third party, then you're taking a risk. If you're creating situations that directly tap into your negativity so you can elicit some kind of reaction from him/her, you're setting yourself up for more trouble. Remember that you cannot force situations to happen. Especially not when you're wits are scattered all over the place.

Ironically, sometimes these things can actually work. This however often requires you to know exactly what you're doing. Do you?


Tip #4. Look ahead. Seek people, activities, and experiences that remind you how good it feels to be alive.

I hear you. You're going to get drunk to forget things. You're going to pamper yourself with expensive gifts and stuff. You're going to force yourself to go clubbing and maybe hook up with a stranger. But what's wrong with these?

With the possible exception of the last one, these are all short term responses that do not respond to the problem but just to the symptom. They may work for that time. But guess what? You're not gonna get over your lost love by getting drunk/getting pampered/getting laid one night (I did say it could be an exception) and then suddenly be OK thereafter. It doesn't work like that. Telling yourself, "It's his/her loss." may boost your confidence while you delude yourself that this is so; but you're still the one that's crying, feeling sorry, going out to make it seem like you're over everything, convincing yourself how wonderful it is to be single, and acting like you got the worse end of the bargain. Yup, it's still also your loss.

So don't focus on your setback. Instead do things that genuinely make you happy--heartbreak notwithstanding. If you think you'll be doing something only or primarily to cover up the terrible feeling, then try to do something else. Don't allow the heartbreak to decide the way you live. I believe you'll agree with me that there's a lot more to life than your love problems. You may be falling apart a little but if you stop and look around, you'll realize that it's just good to be alive. To have so much potential at your reach. Because there's always tomorrow. So just make sure you can get through the night without too much added stress. Get me?


Tip #5. Get a good crush

I'll be honest and tell you that the only real REAL solution to your broken heart is finding somebody else. Unfortunately, doing that so early after your heartbreak is not very intelligent. Neither is it fair to the other person and to you. So what's the next best thing? That's right. A crush.

A good crush is characterized by two things. The good crush must be one, somebody you'd be genuinely attracted to and two, somebody you can see everyday (or as often as possible). Now I'm not saying you go and introduce yourself. I'm not even saying you (desperately) try to make the person notice you. Though these may help if and when they work, for caution's and hence your heart's sake, the advice must be construed as pretty straight-forward and self-explanatory: get a good crush. Just that.

Get someone you can (day/)dream about. Someone who can occupy your mind. No, things don't have to be serious. We both know you're not ready for that yet. Things don't even have to be real. You can do all your fantasizing from far away, thank you. If you do it properly and consistently--meaning you substitute all your depressive personal time with thoughts about this new crush of yours--you may actually forget that your heart is broken.

When you feel you've moved on. Go ahead. Meet your crush. Fall in love. I'm not stopping you.

[The floor is now open for your questions. Leave a comment below.]