How to Get Over a Heartbreak

How to Get Over a Heartbreak

The world may be a beautiful place, but it remains far from perfect. Among other things, such as the atrocities of war, famine and disease, there are simpler much less harmful, but still difficult to deal with realities, such as heartbreak. Most people have felt brokenhearted at some point in their life. Maybe the beauty queen or the popular quarterback look like they have it all, but even people who seem perfect to others face rejection at times.

Rejection hurts, and from a social psychological perspective the pain is quite real. For example, social psychologists conducted an experiment where participants were being rejected. At the same time, using neuroimaging techniques, the scientists monitored brain activity. Interestingly enough, the same areas light up when a person experiences mild physical pain and social rejection. The mild physical pain variable was operationalized using very cold water in which subjects had to submerge their arms.

Lovers often give flowers to the object of their affection. Image: Elena

Ok, so heartbreak and rejection hurt, but what to do to get over the heartbreak? One potential answer is to focus on friends and family who do love you and spend time with them. Feeling loved by one’s close ones may generate enough comfort to make the heartbreak seem less important. Also, going out and partying with friends may distract one from negative thoughts, a much sought after result in such a situation.

How to avoid mistakes after a breakup? Psychology is a fascinating social science with many subfields. Thus, one branch of psychology looks at human motivation in relationships. The theorem states that when people are interested in a relationship, they will pursue it or otherwise show signs of interest. Therefore, it is critical to remain aware of that and avoid translating neutral behaviour from an ex or a potential, but unrequited, romantic partner into interest, when it may just be politeness. In other words, chasing people is usually pointless.