How The Mind Deceives Us When We Are Broken Hearted
Just as your bones can break, you can also be heartbroken. When this happens, the mind deceives us, drags us into a phase of despair, where we cling to any breath of small, impossible hopes. However, little by little the heart conforms and the mind calms down, it returns to the place where we reconciled with dignity to overcome grief.
Just as a curiosity, in the 70s, one of the most played songs was by the Bee Gees that said: “How to cure a broken heart? How to prevent the rain from falling or the sun from shining? “ … In these lyrics there was a small breath of despair, letting one see that the lack of love is that wound that apparently never heals.
Another interesting aspect that has been studied by social psychologists is the fact that people, on average, fear social and/or emotional pain much more than physical pain. For example, breaking one or several bones doesn’t scare us as much as suffering a deception, a lie or an emotional break. Furthermore, our bodies know very well what to do and how to react in the face of physical injury or infection.
However, when a relationship ends, the body and mind are blocked. Also, experts say the brain interprets this separation as a burn. In other words, emotional pain is experienced by the brain in the same way as a physical wound, however, we don’t quite know how to “repair” this impact. Therefore, the mind enters for a while in a process of contradictions, false hopes, meaningless reasoning…
How does the mind deceive us when our hearts are broken?
The mind deceives us, but it does it without us realizing it. She acts this way because she is hurt, lost and attached to the broken heart that doesn’t know how to manage rejection, the farewell to a love that until recently was everything. When that happens, we are trapped in a complex web of defense mechanisms where we deny everything that happened. Furthermore, even more sophisticated and adverse processes occur in the brain.
Our secondary somatosensory cortex and the posterior dorsal insula are intensely activated. These structures are linked to physical pain, since, as we mentioned earlier, emotional suffering is experienced in the same way as physical suffering. All of this makes us unable to think clearly. Now let’s see how we usually do this.
1. I lost the most important person in my life
Emotional pain causes anguish and anguish looks for refuge, looks for corners and aspects where it can alleviate its despair. At this stage after the breakup, it is common for these idealized but harmful thoughts to arise, where we can say things like: “I lost the most important person in my life, the only one who could make me happy.”
Your mind is confused and deceives you. The most important person in your life is you. Your ex-partner was someone important during a phase that has already ended, and that is something you have to accept.
2. I did something wrong, I need to tell you that “I can change”
Denial is the first phase of grief and this is where we inevitably cling to contradictory thoughts. The feeling of guilt comes in, we tell ourselves that we’ve neglected the relationship, that we’ve done something wrong that can still be fixed.
From there, we tried almost obsessively to convince the other person that we should try again, erase the past, restart “because our love can’t end like this.” Your mind deceives you, your heart aches, and good intentions run over you while you keep a blindfold on: the other person no longer loves you, and in the face of this reality, there is no room for further attempts.
3. The obsession with connecting and hearing from this person
We live in the age of immediate communication, instant reinforcement, inability to tolerate frustration… How can I accept that the loved one no longer writes me messages? How can I understand that she has blocked me, that she doesn’t want to know me anymore?
Our mind will invent a thousand excuses to explain your silence, your refusal or your delay in responding to us. In addition, you’ll devise a thousand strategies to send one last desperate message or proposal. These destructive dynamics will last until dignity tells us “enough”. At this point, we will take the necessary steps, such as excluding our ex-partner from the contact list and social media.
4. My life will never be the same again
This statement is true, our lives will not be the same after suffering this emotional loss. However, the mind deceives us when it whispers quietly and steadily that happiness has departed us, that we will never find another love, that we will never find someone like the person who left us.
These thoughts are an absurd form of mental torture. Of course, life will not be the same, it will be different, it will be new and it will be much better, because we won’t have someone by our side who just doesn’t love us. Or yes, but wrongly.
5. I need to know why he stopped loving me
Is there a clear, objective, tangible and millimetric reason why we stop loving someone? Not always. We can become obsessed with it and even despair, but sometimes love ends without us quite knowing why.
There may be a second person, there may be many details that bother us, but most of the time the lack of love cannot be translated into words… In these cases, we only have to accept and, above all, the honesty of the person who has stopped loving . It must be made clear that there is no turning back and no future together.
In conclusion, we know that we cannot always trust our minds when we are heartbroken. However, most of the time this feeling and these questions are part of the grief itself. Accepting what happened will put order in the midst of chaos and little by little you will return to your normal life. Don’t let a bad experience spoil your future life. Live through all the steps, enjoy the process and start a delicate and essential task: healing your heart.
