Change your look to get over a breakup

A breakup, especially if it is unexpected or unwanted, is a destabilizing experience that can have a significant emotional impact on the people who experience it.

When we suffer an experience of this magnitude, human beings we need to go through a grieving process, which will help us gradually adapt to our new reality, integrating and accepting the loss suffered. This adaptation period can be extended over time, and is made up of different phases of variable emotional intensity.

Throughout this grieving process, it is not uncommon for us to see many people resort to various strategies and inventions in the hope that they will help them make the transition. One of the most frequent is to make a more or less radical change in aesthetics.

• Related article: "The 8 types of grief and their characteristics"

Why do many people decide to change their appearance after a love breakup?

What makes people tend to this transformation when we are grieving? It is usually an act that accompanies us in adapting to our new reality, helping us to develop and consolidate a new version of ourselves. Colloquially, we would say that

physical changes help us to “clean the slate”, marking a before and after in our life journey.

Likewise, when changes occur in our environment that we have not chosen and that we feel are out of our control, we need to recover the perception of internal control. For it we focus on elements that are under our capacity for action, in order to feel that we regain control of our lives. A haircut would be an example of this.

Finally, we must not forget that grief is an emotionally intense moment where there is often a neglect of self-care. Many people, especially in advanced stages of this period, decide to put aside this habit of abandonment and start spending time to their physical appearance, living it as a gesture of self-care that will make them progressively recover their state of mind and well-being personal.

• You may be interested: "How to start over after a couple breakup: 8 tips to follow"

Can there be any risk in resorting to these practices to overcome grief?

In the grieving process there are usually no actions or decisions that, by themselves, are good or bad, but it will depend on the function they fulfill for each person.

Taking the example of radically changing the look, it is not the same to make said change, understanding it as a help to mark a before and after in our history, than to make that same change. seeking to escape from our reality and pretending that it resolves everything that happens in our present.

As you can see, the change itself is not positive or negative, but depends on the function it fulfills. In the first case, the person is taking a reflective attitude of acceptance and takes changing their hair as an act that accompanies their transition to their new reality.

However, in the second the person is adopting a passive coping attitude, avoiding connecting with what has happened and with the emotions that emanate.

When we feel a lot of discomfort, we usually try to run away from it, since we are not comfortable living with this emotion. For this reason, many people they "self-deceive" telling themselves that a superficial change (such as a haircut) will solve the problem and prevent them from having to deal with said discomfort. In the short term, this self-deception can be very comforting, but later it will take its toll left in the "dead angle" our grieving process, since it can become entrenched and endure in the future. weather.

To end, it is crucial to find what elements help each one of us in the integration and acceptance of the rupture. There is no formula or generic recipe, but each person will have its own tools, which they must use being aware that a duel is a process that takes time and that, as its name indicates, it has to hurt before heal.

Author: Cristina Aristimuño de las Heras, General Health Psychologist at the TAP Center.