Unrequited love: 3 keys to overcome it

Romantic love can become a feeling that hijacks attention, the senses and all the options we choose to act. If this is also an unrequited love, the consequences are even more negative; To these limitations of freedom itself are added a series of psychological phenomena that worsen the quality of life in general; the low self-esteem, frustration and anxiety that accompanies them, among others.

However, knowing what to do when unrequited love appears and managing the situation with emotional intelligence It will help us to come out of the experience not happy, but reinforced. Following strategies that enhance resilience, it is possible to learn from these experiences to become emotionally stronger.

Let's see what this is change process through which unrequited love is overcome.

How to overcome unrequited love?

The first step before starting to work on strategies to get out of the vicious circle of thoughts that produce anxiety and sadness is to be clear that in cases of unrequited love there are no culprits.

This is important, since it is extremely simple that, even if we do not realize it, we look for an excuse to express our anger towards a specific goal. The fact of being translating that discomfort into an activity that is externalized towards a target can cause tensions to be discharged for a while, but it certainly hurts others, and for that fact alone it is worth taking care not to fall into this trap.

Specifically, the person who does not correspond to us with her love is a habitual victim of this projection of anger and frustration, since beliefs and thoughts appear related to the idea that we have the right to be loved by that particular person and that, therefore, that person is breaking a kind of pact that never really it was sealed. Of course, this idea is absurd, but in the most emotional situations the wildest premises may seem totally reasonable.

To prevent these cases, a good idea is to imagine, at the beginning, possible contexts or scenarios in which that we (fictitiously) blame this person, in order to reflect on what is most likely happens. In this way, If the first signs of gratuitous guilt appear, we will know how to identify them the first time and, thus, it will be easier for them not to repeat themselves.

1. Breaking rumination

A good part of the mission of putting in check those negative feelings produced by unrequited love and rejection is to lower the levels of general anxiety.

In practice, this consists of ending the rumination, which is the vicious circle that our thoughts follow when there is something that causes us concern, anguish, stress and / or fear. In this way, we will gain the ability to manage our focus of attention without constantly returning to those ideas or memories that cause us discomfort.

To do this, it is advisable to start habits that we did not do before and, especially, to disconnect by walking and resting in physical spaces without noise; and the more natural they are, the better.

Actually, the idea is quite simple. Staying away from that person makes our brain less exposed to the stimuli that make us think about them. In this way, the activation dynamics of brain neurons it adapts to what it's like to live without spending a lot of time keeping that person in mind. As a result, in turn, as this organ "adjusts" to this new reality, the number of episodes in which we do not find ourselves spontaneously thinking about her, until in the end she is almost part of our past. totally.

To find out in more detail how you can end the rumination produced by unrequited love or thus any type of stressful thought in general, you can access this article.

2. Stay away from that person

Coping with the feeling of discomfort that unrequited love generates and at the same time knowing how to act in the presence of the person who does not love us as we wanted it can become too complex to be able to cope with it at the same time, at least during the early stages of overcoming.

Therefore, if you want to overcome unrequited love, the ideal is to stay away from this person (if necessary, explaining it to them), so that we can focus only on what happens to us.

This idea may generate a feeling of guilt, but it is important to keep in mind that the person experiencing unrequited love is usually more hurt than the otherSo a time to worry about your own problems is fully justified.

3. Cognitive restructuring

This part of the management of love frustration is typically done in therapy and with the help of a person specialized in the area of ​​psychology and with the appropriate certificates.

The idea is that the patient and the therapist work together discovering the cognitive schemes by which beliefs are distributed, interpretations of memories and abstract ideas that make the experience of unrequited love so painful.

By modifying the ordering and organization of these cognitive schemes, discomfort is reduced, especially with regard to improving self-esteem and managing expectations. We get used to using, in this way, cognitive schemes in which the other person does not have an important role and is not part of the structure of our own identity.

• You may be interested in this article: "10 tips for choosing a good psychologist"