5 Ways Your Mind Deceives You When Your Heart Is Broken
Hearts can break as easily as bones. Your mind is fooling you when this happens. It drags you into despair and convinces you to hold on to small impossible jumps. Slowly but surely the heart understands reality and our mind returns to its normal state. The state where we with dignity go through the mourning process for our broken heart.
The theme of a broken heart is unfortunately quite frequent, but something we never get used to. In the 70’s, one of the most successful songs was a song from the Bee Gees which included the following lyrics “How can you fix a broken heart? How can you prevent the rain from falling, how can you prevent the sun from shining? ” We can see a small sigh of despair within these words. Words that seem to tell us that a loss of love causes a wound that never really heals.
Something that social psychologists have often pointed out is the fact that people are often much more afraid of emotional and social pain than physical pain. The thought of breaking a leg does not bother us as much as being disappointed, being deceived or having an emotional breakdown.
Our bodies know what to do and how to react to physical injury or infection. But when a relationship has broken down, our bodies and minds will experience a total blockage. Experts tell us that the brain interprets this type of separation as a form of burn.
It experiences emotional pain in the same way as physical pain, but the difference is that we do not know how to repair the emotional wound. This is why our minds sometimes fall into a mixture of contradictions, false hopes and meaningless reasoning.
Your mind deceives you, even if it does not do it consciously. It does so because it is hurt, has lost itself and because it hung on your wounded heart; on a heart that does not know how to handle being rejected or how to say goodbye to someone you love who was all for one. When this happens, we are trapped in a complex network of defense mechanisms that try to deny what has happened. And as if this were not enough, even more sophisticated and difficult processes arise in our brains.
Our brain activates the secondary somatosensory cerebral cortex and the posterior dorsal insula. These are structures that are linked to physical pain. As we have pointed out before, emotional suffering is often experienced in the same way as physical suffering. All this means that we can not think clearly, and that we are deceiving ourselves. Let us now see how this process actually works.
The emotional pain gives rise to anxiety and that anxiety seeks refuge where it can be nourished in all its desperation. During this stage, it is common for harmful thoughts to arise as “I have lost the most important person in my life, the only one who could make me happy”.
Your mind is fooling you. In fact, it catches you. The most important person in your life is yourself. Your ex-partner was someone who was important to you for a time in your life and this time has now come to an end, and that is something we must accept.
Denial is the first part of the struggle and this is where we inevitably grope for straws. It is common for us to blame ourselves and to tell ourselves that we have envied the relationship, that we have done something wrong and that it can still be repaired.
Then we almost obsessively try to convince the other person that we have to try again. Start over with a new ball, go back to the beginning. Because what we had should not be thrown away just like that. But your mind is fooling you here. Your heart hurts and your good intentions blind you. Then you have to accept the raw reality – the other person no longer loves you, and there is no other part.
We live in an era of direct communication, direct help and an inability to tolerate any form of frustration. How can I accept that my loved one is no longer sending me messages? How can I understand that he has blocked me and that he no longer wants anything to do with me?
Our mind will present thousands of excuses to explain the silence, that one has been rejected or how long it takes for him to respond. It will also present thousands of strategies to be able to get one last message from him, or one last desperate request. This destructive dynamic will last until our dignity finally tells us that is enough. And that is when we will take the necessary steps, such as removing our ex from our list of contacts among our social networks.
This is true. Our lives will not be the same again after we have gone through this emotional crisis. However, your mind is fooling you again as it often whispers to you that you will never be happy again. It will tell you that you do not deserve love again, that you destroy everything you come in contact with, that you will never find someone again as that person who has left you.
Such thoughts are a form of absurd torture. Of course, your life will not be the same again. It will be different, it will be new and it will be much better, because we will not have anyone by our side who does not love us. Or maybe he did, but not in the right way.
Let’s be clear about this. Is there ever a clear and objective reason why we have stopped loving someone? Sometimes maybe, but not always. We can become obsessed with this and even despair, but sometimes the flame of love disappears without us really knowing why.
There may be other people involved, there may be many small things that create something big. But most of the time, the breaks can not be turned into words. In these cases, acceptance and honesty are the only way forward. Accept for your own sake that the other person makes it clear that there is no return in the relationship.
We know that we can not always trust our mind when we have a broken heart, but the emotions and reasoning will for the most part be part of a battle. If we have accepted what has happened, this will help us to put the chaos around us in order. Slowly but surely we begin to return to the protection of our own self-esteem. And there begins the sensitive but important task of healing our heart.
