Suffering for love: 6 tips to overcome it

suffering for love It is part of that kind of experiences that are difficult to imagine when you start a relationship.

Falling in love can cause practically everything that happens to us on a day-to-day basis to be perceived in a different way, since its emotional impact influences our way of perceiving what happens to us. But this is so for the good and for the bad. Heartbreak or frustration caused by relational problems in love also cause suffering that reaches almost all areas of our lives.

So, suffering for love It is one of the most harmful types of psychological suffering, given that, just as falling in love penetrates deep into almost all of our mental processes, the problems derived from it also do. What to do to make this discomfort disappear or subside almost completely?

• Related article: "The stages of heartbreak and its psychological consequences"

Tips to overcome suffering for love

The advice that you will read below can be a very useful aid in moments in which hopelessness and sadness

that produces heartbreak seem to fill everything. However, it must be clear that each case is different, and when applying these steps to follow, it is necessary to adapt them to the context in which one lives.

1. Assume that you will need time to improve

As it happens in everything related to emotional problemsThere are no easy and instant solutions to stop suffering for love. This is so because our nervous system, which is the basis of emotions, does not usually experience sudden changes that leave sustained changes in the long term, unless it is due to injuries.

Mental processes, including those responsible for emotion, occur thanks to the interaction of millions of interconnected neurons, and To overcome suffering for love, it is essential that the necessary time elapses for part of these nerve cells to "learn" to interact with each other in another way. manner.

Obviously, knowing that you are going to need time to recover will not make you recover. However, it will help prevent the problem from becoming worse or becoming entrenched, since those who expect improvements overnight can become so frustrated that this makes them obsessed with the subject. The fact of feeling emotionally "blocked" by the simple fact of not recovering instantly makes us think all the time about how to get rid of that emotional entanglement, and this in turn makes our attention more and more focused on that discomfort: a vicious circle.

2. Assess your case to make sure you don't have depression

It is one thing to suffer for love and another is to experience depression. The latter is a mental illness that can be very serious and that, although it may be triggered by events that happen to us, their causes are to some extent independent of love problems that we may have.

It should be noted, however, that in the vast majority of cases in which you suffer for love, depression is not behind it, so initially there are no reasons for alarm bells to go off. But if you think that you suffer in an extreme way and in a constant and sustained way, you should not assume that you have depression either; In this case, the next step is to see a mental health professional. for a psychological diagnosis.

• You may be interested in: "Depression and anxiety: symptoms to be able to recognize them easily"

3. rest first

Between the first hours and the first few days after starting to suffer for love, if it is an "acute" case caused by a specific event (a breakup, a disappointment in love, etc.) it is very possible that you do not have the strength to propose big changes, not even those that have to do with feeling better. that's why it's good that you mark a margin of time to recover a little, physically and mentally.

To do this, it is good that you set a time beforehand when the initial recovery stage is over and you start to actively act to feel better. When that date arrives, which can be three days, for example, it is necessary to assess whether progress has been made, even if the emotional suffering is still there.

It must be taken into account that this step is not mandatory, since in some cases the discomfort is not as intense as to require it, but it is advisable to follow it to have that symbolic reference that marks the beginning of the change.

4. break the cycle

Once you have gone through the initial recovery stage, what is necessary is that you break the cycle of habits associated with discomfort.

To do this, start new routines and customs. Starting from scratch in something that is not mastered but that can be stimulating and that matches our abilities allows us to let's train our attention span so that it gets used to, little by little, stop focusing on the cause of suffering for love.

Thus, habits such as drawing, walking through new areas, training in a new sport, learning a language... are positive because if we modify our actions and our contexts, our mental processes also change.

In the event that one or more of the new habits are related to an idea of ​​progress (such as when we intend to learn a language), it is necessary to have some realistic expectations and assuming that our vulnerable emotional state will surely make us move more slowly than we would have done if we always felt good.

5. Don't forget to socialize

Relating with other people is positive because allows you to express in words what you feel and because, furthermore, it makes it easier for us to expose ourselves to stimulating situations, capable of making new interests and concerns attract our focus of attention and “take it off” from suffering.

6. Have healthy habits

This step has three basic pillars: sleep well, eat well and do moderate exercise. In this way, the state of the body will make the nervous system also predispose us to feel better and not fall in anxiety and discomfort, something that happens among other things when the body sends us signals that something is going evil.