“I want to thank the man who this record is about, who I fell in love with last year. Thank you so much for breaking my heart because you got me four Grammys,” said Sam Smith last Sunday as he accepted his gramophone-shaped trophy for record of the year at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
I’m sure Smith’s statement must have brought hope to many across the world suffering the pain of heartbreak that not all is lost when a romantic relationship goes wrong. However, it cannot be forgotten that when it comes to such an experience as romantic heartbreak, each one of us will respond to it differently.
“When heartbreak happens in romantic terms the impact is different from other kinds of heartbreak because of the nature of the relationship,” explains Dubai-based clinical psychologist Tanuka Gupta.
Gupta, who works with special needs children at the Al Noor Centre, also deals with couples — helping women coping with troubled or broken relationships.
She says that the impact also varies because of the different interpretations people have on how to cope with the after-effects of a break up. “The main impact of a romantic heartbreak is on the person’s interaction with future partners because of the memories they have and experiences they had of this relationship.”
“The pain is associated to the sense of betrayal and disappointment in realising that the person that you love is gone. For some people heartbreak is even more difficult to accept than a death, because the physical existence of the loved and lost one reminds them of what they lost, and it might dysfunctionally reinforce the desire or the hope to get that person back. For these people acceptance of the reality becomes more difficult,” says Dr Valeria Risoli, clinical psychologist at Dubai Physiotherapy & Family Medicine Clinic.
As far as the physical, emotional or medical implications of a romantic break-up are concerned, they may not be much different from other kinds of heartbreak. Yet due to the distinct nature of the relationship, it often becomes more difficult for the sufferer to emerge from it. Each of us will go through a cycle including anger, guilt, denial and depression — along with disturbed sleep and eating patterns — but what’s important is how we finally accept it.
Emotional and mental manifestations
The first few things one would experience after a relationship ends are depression, anger and a strong sense of guilt. Often denial is prominent.
“Women [more than men] go through a lot of rationalisation to give reasons or excuses to continue maintaining the relationship,” says Gupta.
“They analyse and over-analyse situations to give meaning to their life. They may not specifically say ‘it’s not happening to me’ but are justifying signs and symptoms of separation and heartbreak. It’s a defence mechanism to cope with the growing anxiety and apprehension. Depression is there but lesser than anxiety. There is also grief and anger. If they are able to cope during counselling, it’s slightly better for them to cope with the heartbreak.
“However, if they use an excessive amount of defence mechanisms to analyse and tell themselves things are perfect and will work out, then the feeling of being betrayed or coping with a loss is much more because they are forced to experience the reality, which is, the absence of the person. Physical manifestation — actual body pain, constriction of the heart, loss of breath — also happen. Sometimes, people are known to lose consciousness, go into severe depression, affected sleep and food habits.”
Risoli says the loss “destabilises” them, especially those with low self-esteem may suffer most because they feel abandoned and guilty for it.
“Those who tend to blame themselves might turn to self-destructive habits such as substance abuse, casual sex or a superficial relationship aiming at finding relief and comfort. These destructive behaviours can lead to negative and long-term consequences such as serious medical and psychological conditions. It is not so easy to control these behaviours because it requires the individual to become aware of their own weak tendencies and bad habits and understand the reasons behind these dysfunctional behaviours”.
When do I seek professional help?
While a decline towards self-destructiveness is a clear indication that the sufferer needs intervention from family and friends, it may not always be necessary that professional help needs to be included.
“When one doesn’t have friends or family around to help, then the need to speak to a professional in order to resolve the conflict becomes necessary. Many women are aware regarding seeking help before it happens, as after experiencing the loss, there is a phase when they aren’t really in a position to seek help immediately,” says Gupta.
“One of the major signs that they need help would be when one cannot concentrate on work because of the relationship, their attention is diverted, they are crying more than ever. It’s easy to say one is ‘feeling the blues’, but it needs to be taken very seriously. Anything out of the ordinary more than a week or ten days should be taken seriously”.
“I advise to see a professional to those who have difficulty to accept the reality, those who are self-destructive, those who don’t love themselves enough to move on, those who have physical pain and develop medical conditions, those who lost the desire and the interest in life and in very activity they used to enjoy,” advises Risoli. “These are signs of depression and they cannot be ignored. Professional help may be the key to overcome heartbreak faster”.
Go with the emotion
A friend once told me the best way to get out of heartbreak was to “simply accept what you are feeling at the time — anger, frustration, sadness — and let it envelope you. You hear people saying take up meditation it helps. What is meditation? Sitting in lotus position with eyes closed? Maybe for them. But this too is meditation — to simply give in and let it heal you,” she had advised.
“What I’ve seen is women are in general more open about their emotions and are able to process what they feel,” says Gupta. “In coping with grief or heartbreak there’s no one size that fits all. We need to respect individual differences. People process information differently. Some get immense relief by crying. Yes, I recommend crying but it’s only one of the ways of coping. It all depends on the intensity with which you have experienced the relationship. If it was really just worth a cry and moving on, you will move on. Giving into any emotion is a form of catharsis, but be conscious of it.
“Next step would be to learn how you are interpreting yourself, how it would impact future relationships. When grief is real, trauma is real — each person goes through the same feelings of loss. But, when one has a healthy or spiritual outlook to life, enriched with thoughts that are self-loving, coping with any kind of loss will definitely become easier as opposed to having a self-destructive, self-sabotaging, negative thoughts.”
Family is support
Here’s where family and close friends come into play. If you have a dear friend or a family member coping with heartbreak the best thing to do would be to support them, not advise them, says Gupta, because they don’t want to be told what they should do. They just want you to understand.
“Often support tends to become advice, then lecture, then one’s own interpretation about the experience and comparison of how others coped with it,” says Gupta.
“It makes the person feel more miserable because what he/she is going through at that moment others usually do not — cannot — understand. It is an extremely personal experience. You may mean well but for the person who’s experiencing it, it’s added agony to be told what to do, how to feel — you can’t tell a person how to feel because there’s no right or wrong in that. Just be around. Sometimes people don’t need to talk, they don’t want to talk. They just want you to understand. Just the assurance that ‘I’m there for you’ is the best medicine for the person at the time.”
