Heartbreak is a common experience that can cause intense emotional pain, leading to insomnia, changes in appetite, depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts and behavior. Coping with and recovering from heartbreak has remained unchanged for millennia, relying on time, social support, and substances like alcohol, drugs, and food. However, new studies have revealed that other steps can soothe emotional pain and expedite recovery.
Reducing love feelings towards an ex-partner is necessary to heal from heartbreak.
Breaking the Cycle
One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming that giving it time is the only way to recover. Although time helps, and social support can be beneficial, negative emotions linger.
A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology examined cognitive and behavioral strategies for recovering from heartbreak. The study discovered that reducing love feelings towards an ex-partner is necessary to heal from heartbreak.
To recover from heartbreak, it is necessary to reduce love feelings towards an ex-partner. Negative reappraisals of the ex-partner, including thinking about their annoying habits, are one strategy. Reframing loving feelings as less problematic, such as endorsing the prompt ‘It’s okay to love someone I’m no longer with,’ is another strategy.
Distraction to take the mind off heartbreak is a third strategy. The study found that negative reappraisals were effective in reducing love feelings, but increased feelings of unpleasantness.
The Science of Negative Reappraisals
Unpleasant feelings make it challenging to use negative reappraisals as a way to recover from heartbreak. The mind creates highly idealized snapshots, memories, and thoughts about the ex-partner and the relationship, which makes negative reappraisals feel wrong, unbalanced, unfair, and disloyal.
To recover from heartbreak, it is necessary to reduce love feelings towards an ex-partner.
Two things can minimize unpleasant feelings and enable negative reappraisals of an ex. Firstly, framing the task differently helps to consider that the mind bombards the person with highly idealized perceptions, memories, and thoughts about the ex-partner and the relationship. Secondly, negative reappraisals should include not just perceptions and memories of the ex-partner but of the relationship as well.
How to Make Negative Reappraisals Work
People grieve both the person and the relationship, including the experience of being a couple, having a significant other, companionship, and partnering. Thus, it is necessary to address idealized perceptions of the relationship by introducing negative reappraisals of the couplehood and the ex-partner to reduce feelings of attachment and love.
Creating a list of the person’s faults and the shortcomings of the relationship and keeping it on a phone is one way of balancing perceptions and reminding oneself that the ex-partner was not perfect, and neither was the relationship. Recovery from heartbreak also involves recognizing the voids and filling them, such as social circles, activities, physical space, and other losses.
In conclusion, heartbreak is a form of grief and loss that can cause emotional pain. Recovery mechanisms like time and social support are not enough to reduce negative emotions. New studies reveal that negative reappraisals of the ex-partner and the relationship, including recognizing voids and filling them, can expedite recovery. Negative reappraisals may feel unpleasant, but they can balance perceptions and remind individuals that the ex-partner and the relationship were not perfect.
