Friday, July 11, 2014

How We Should Feel After a Breakup

Now that pop culture has eased up a bit with its viral phenomena, providing me with fewer blogging bandwagons to jump, I have lately been able to focus more on the lives of those around me…just in time to watch many of my friends go through some dramatic changes in their lives. Unfortunately, many of those changes have been negative. As a result, just as I've started noticing how great my life really is, I begin to wonder if I'm just doing really well by comparison. Either way, I should be grateful for the hand I've been dealt.

But I'm not one to ignore the elephant in the room for too long, so I'll just say that most of these friends are going through hard times in the form of broken relationships. It's difficult to see the turmoil they're going through, and it's even more difficult because I know I'm absolutely helpless to do anything for them. Nothing will help. And yet, as a guy, I like coming up with solutions, so of course I've slipped and spoken some of those cliché words of comfort, such as "You can do better than him," and "You need to move on and get over her." What was I thinking? I've been through more than one breakup, and I remember feeling hurt and minimized by such statements. The worst feeling for me comes the morning after the breakup. It's as if the prospect of sleeping gives me hope that this was really all just a dream. When I wake up, however, the flood of reality comes rushing back in, and my life is back to having no meaning. From that perspective, "You need to get over it" sounds pretty insensitive.

And yet there I was, saying those exact same things to people whom I wouldn't dream of hurting. To be fair, it's not like we expect those pills of wisdom to produce instant results. I think many of us are very cognizant of the long process that it entails, not to mention the irony and condescension loaded into those clichés. It's as if we're giving the person a life-changing revelation that they need to get over the pain they feel inside. "You need to stop thinking about her, or it will destroy you." Really? I thought for sure that obsessing over the agony of yet another failure in my love life would certainly help me mentally, intellectually, and physically. But since you just told me it won't, I can totally go back to being happy. Thank you for that!

So if we don't mean any of that, why do we do it? While I've already used a gender stereotype as one explanation, I'm convinced that it has more to do with the fact that we still don't fully understand the purpose of emotions. We too often assume that positive emotions are always good and should therefore be sought after, while negative emotions are bad and should therefore be avoided. And that is wrong.

An old friend of mine who is a therapist once spoke in a panel at my church many years ago. She spoke on how feelings of anxiety and depression, etc. are actually quite normal during stressful situations. If you just moved to a new city, of course you're going to feel lonely. If you just lost your job, of course you're going to feel anxious about the future. And if you just ended a long relationship, of course you're going to be depressed and angry, as well as the rest of the five stages of grief. If you don't feel those kinds of emotions at least on some level, then people should start worrying about you.

These days we understand that the human brain is a body part, just as capable of injury as any other. But I feel like we still approach the concept of emotions as something abstract. Not only do they have a chemical basis, but I would say that negative feelings like sadness and depression are the equivalent of bleeding. We often use the metaphor "broken and bleeding" after a breakup, and speak of how we "need time to heal," but we forget that the emotions we feel during that process play a major role in it. Emotions aren't an obsession or reflection on the pain we feel. Emotions are the pain.

I think most of us realize that, but we still don't understand just how parallel emotional pain runs with physical pain. If you cut your finger, the size and severity of the cut affects the amount of blood and the size of the wound. This in turn affects the length of the healing process, which varies from person to person, especially based on the person's history. You certainly wouldn't expect a person with a really deep knife wound to heal in just a few days, so you can understand why they're walking around with a huge bandage on their hand. You certainly wouldn't tell that person to stop having a knife wound.

How difficult is it to understand that emotions work the same way? Why would we grow concerned for a person who still won't get out and socialize a month after ending a year-long relationship? Why would we scoff at the bandage that person insists on keeping over their heart, when it was just recently severed from perhaps the strongest bond it has ever known?

In the end, our emotions do serve a purpose, including the negative ones. Just like it says in the song Turn, Turn, Turn, there is a time to laugh and a time to weep, etc. Instead of seeing negative emotions as a problem, we should look at them as part of the solution. They're not always a sign that something needs to be fixed, but oftentimes they are how our body chooses to fix things. The body is protecting itself and figuring out ways to prevent something like that from ever happening again. If we can recognize that in ourselves and in others, it will be easier for us to fix our problems, because, well, we're actually allowing ourselves to fix them.

So how should we feel after a breakup? However we darn well please.

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