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.]

Fathoming The New Human Civilization

Wikipedia defines technology as "a broad concept that deals with a species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment." Strictly speaking then, technology has been present in human beings as far back as they, as a species, have been able to use their immediate environment to serve their purposes.

Examples of the earliest forms of technology can be wooden branches used as crude extensions of the arm or maybe even the skin and fur of animals to serve as heat regulators for our ancestors. All across human history, we see the progress of the genus homo from bipedal ape to modern man. Truly, the contrast between the Stone Age and the Modern Age is confounding. But the Modern Age without the internet seems unfathomable to us now. And it's only been around twenty years. How can man do so much in relatively so little time?

Of course now, we think nothing of this simply because we understand the world in the present. We immerse ourselves everyday with the technology at our disposal and while it advances in our midst, we hardly really notice; at least up until retrospecting.

We apply many labels to the umbrella term Modern Age, in an attempt to put structure in the way our civilization moves ahead. One of the most popular is the title Information Age because it describes most precisely the fact that information is so readily available for anyone with an internet connection.

Note the emphasis: anyone with an internet connection. While on the surface, the statement speaks about inter-connectivity and predicts and proves the mechanics of greater globalization, it also implies discrimination of those without an internet connection. This statement speaks volumes about how our civilization functions in the present.

Ironically, the Information Age is already a couple of years behind us in that it fails to properly describe what is now happening to our civilization. True, this new age (if I may be so bold as to claim its existence) is built heavily, fundamentally upon the Information Age. But that is the way with all technology and advances.

What we are experiencing right now is what can be most accurately described as an age of reintegration. And what is oddest about it is that it is no longer so much built upon physical technologies such as the nanorevolution and "environmentally-aware" revolutions going on around us. Rather, it is hinged upon the development of ideas and the sharing of values over a network that encompasses, Internet willing, the entire world.

Thus, your photoshopped pictures can be transmitted around the globe via internet-powered devices and people Stumbling onto it, finding it interesting, will give it a thumbs up consequently fueling the activity all over again. Thus, and in the same manner, personal movie reviews will reach total strangers from the opposite end of the globe and it will help them decide whether to watch the movie or not. Thus, blog posts about anything at all, upon being deemed worthy of the initial attention, will spread and influence individual minds, and eventually actions.

New global cultures have formed entirely out of the internet solely through this process. The internet is now a means of connecting ourselves; not just with cold, hard information and statements of facts, but with and through subjective values. Whether the value itself is accepted by the community is of course of no certainty, but the phenomenon of communication and expression as a real phenomenon is undeniable.

Indeed, this heightened level of expression itself is gradually proving the presence of a unified body of people, linked by the internet. Word of mouth for example, the oldest means of affecting influence, has finally caught up with physical technology. This means that the inherent value of a good idea, no matter how small, has once again been put at a premium simply because it can spread to everyone like a viral meme. Once substantially prolific, the humble idea can easily become the new standard. And there lies its power.

While this is widespread knowledge and more or less obvious, the implications, I think, are not. Potentially, we can again apply all the "old rules and values of the community" to our situation--albeit in a more complicated manner due to all the changes that occurred between then and now--because there is a similar Oneness now in our context as there was then. Creation and creativity turns the great overmind that is the world wide web. In this new Age of Reintegration we have, truly, the makings of a global human Community.

To test this theory (because it is, in spite of all my hubris presenting it, just a theory) I'll share with you a practical application of it. But not now because this is tiring. =)

[I apologize if I appear to jump from one premise to another. It was a spur of the moment thing that urged me to write my thoughts, just so they're written. Don't forget to check out my other posts.]

The Top 10 Dumbest Superhero Get-up Goof-ups

Being a superhero is hard work.

We all understand how tough it must be to work around the clock with no tangible, economic compensation; no superhero charges for his task of saving lives. We can all appreciate the effort of being that somebody who is always watching and always willing to get complete strangers out of trouble. We all know that sometimes the very people superheroes strive to protect can sometimes add to the problem themselves by turning against their defenders and becoming spoiled and unappreciative, unforgiving of mistakes, hostile, even villainous. Yup, deciding to become a superhero is almost superheroic in itself.

Superheroes, we acknowledge your dedication to the Greater Good. Nevertheless, may you forgive us our trespass now, oh noble defenders of virtue, if we derive just a little more happiness at your expense. Oh but we know you will, that is what makes you superheroes, and us, only human.

Here is the The Top 10 Dumbest Superhero Get-up Goof-ups.*


10. SupermanYou probably saw it coming. Superman serves as the prototype for every superhero out there. And being the first superhero out of the mold, you can actually expect and forgive his archetypal costume blunders. The tights, the red cape, the primary colors--these are all just statements. Something he could use to differentiate himself as a superhero. But on that fateful day when he looked in front of the mirror, naked, and decided, "I'll put my pants on and then my underwear!" he just plain went too far. It's alright, Superman, we don't mind. In a weird, numb, blind kind of way, it actually looks kind of good. Like a classic.


9. Batman


Coming out of the scene shortly after our beloved big boy blue, Batman is the dark, brooding, almost anti-heroic alter-ego of Bruce Wayne. What makes him so different from Superman though is his complete lack of superhuman powers. That doesn't excuse him from the goof though. If anything it actually makes him more liable for it. "I'm an alien, I'm supposed to be weird," Superman could say. But Bruce Wayne does not have that excuse; he's a billionaire, a socialite, and a playboy, but apparently, none of his social sense spilled into Batman. For a superhero that's supposed to be dark and all, you'd think that the tights and the underwear would be enough; but what's with the big over-adorned "utility" belt? (It's definitely not just a utility belt--it's bright yellow! It's a fashion statement.) Well, that belt's almost as big a faux pas as...



8. Robin


...almost.


7. Wonder Woman
Here's another get-up goof-up for you, courtesy of our amazon queen, Wonder Woman.

Let me break it down for you. We all know that Superman made the "classic" goof-up of wearing his tights before his underwear. Batman contributed to that blunder by wearing a "utility" belt (to add a little yellow to all that shade of black). Robin, in queer shocks of green and yellow, chose to copy Batman's attire while doing away with the tights and opting for something that looks suspiciously like a skirt. Wonder Woman compounded to the mistakes made so far by following Robin's Wonderful idea (no tights, a little slutty but I'm definitely not complaining) and adding an even more Wonderful idea of her own--a belt not on her waist, but on her forehead. That's what I call...ummm...innovative thinking.


6. Spider-Man
You may think that Wonder Woman putting a belt on her forehead was dumb. But look at Spidey here. What's that on his head? That's right. You know it. It's a sock, people. A sock.


5. Hulk (Bruce Banner)


The Hulk has never been known for his intellectual prowess, but Bruce Banner is supposedly one smart guy. That's largely why it's such a mystery to me that he refuses to wear more stretchy clothes. It's simple logic.

Factual premises:

• Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk when angered.
• Bruce Banner is ridiculously easy to anger.
• Hulk tears through Bruce Banner's clothes every single time.
• Bruce Banner has a finite number of lab coats and pants.

Conclusion: Therefore, wearing more stretchable clothing is a good idea.


4. Silver Surfer
I think we've established that superheroes don't exactly have the best fashion sense. Our most beloved caped crusaders have produced nothing but the same type of mistakes. Attempts at recreating the "standard" dress code were almost always in vain; the results only worsened what was already present. Looking at these facts, an analyst would be able to hypothesize that sometime soon a superhero was going to come out with a counter-cultural response. Enter Silver Surfer. Nudist.


3. Martian Manhunter


I know you're Martian and all so the "I'm an alien, I'm supposed to be weird." excuse should apply to you. But c'mon you can change form--altering your body and your "clothes" (the illusion thereof) simultaneously. A fully human disguise may not be satisfactory for you. At the same time, the Nude Martian look may not be for Earth. But of all the outfits in the universe you could choose from, why, my question is, did you have to settle for that one?


2. X-Men


Generation after generation of the multiverse's most capable do-gooders have evolved Superman's fundamental fashion fail into the norm-bending, hyper-mutating aesthetic abomination we now know as the proper and appropriate superhero get-up. However, up until the X-Men came along, superheroes have had to develop their costume changes vertically--that is, one at a time. No more. Now each super-powered character can contribute to the writhing mess of belts, tights, and undergarments (or the lack or modification of the same) by doing it in great numbers. A true get-up gangbang, if there ever was any.


1. Professor XAnd who's ultimately responsible for the new trend in List Item #2? Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Charles Xavier, a.k.a "Professor X," "founder" and "mentor" of the "X"-"men."

Quotes:
"Help me get up."
"I can't feel my legs."
"Scott, I need you in the ""danger" room!""



*adapted from a joke I heard a long long time ago

If you still haven't had enough of superhero get-up goof-ups, then why not try this video I found in YouTube called "Superhero Fashion Emergency" from collegehumor. Enjoy.

Now for those of you still up for more interesting stuff, you may want to check this out.

The "Welcome Travelers from the Future!" Day experiment is scheduled on January 1, 2010 (venue pending.)

We need your help to make it happen!


Read on!