Wednesday 9 May 2012

The First Stage of Mending a Broken Heart




You were there sitting alone in the crowded place, deserted, neglected and unloved---yet it was just a mere feeling brought about by your irrational generalization that no body loves you just because you were dumped by someone.
Short with the strength to jump off the building, or overdose yourself with sleeping pills, you resort to something else. Overpowered by your faith that suicide is a mortal sin, and held back by your guilt and the future that awaits you, you can not bear to cut yourself and bleed to death. So you cling into isolation, lie on bed all day long with your bottomless stocks of chocolate bars and black forest cake. Then, beside you is your cell phone in the hopeful case of receiving text messages or even a call from him/her. Yet your expectations turned to disappointments. Text messages were all dropping like raindrops, yet nothing was from him. To your dismay, you focused on your sweets, savouring each bite as you reminisce your times with him at the park. You were relieved with your emptiness. Yet you begin to bloat and get ill---so comes another problem. But, you don’t care. You even wish that the earth would eat you up and be its sumptuous meal or that while sleeping you will traverse the road towards everlasting peace through a medical condition called acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis. So, the moment you wake up, you don’t have to suffer the strong blow of reality. You don’t have to dehydrate yourself from crying an ocean of icy cold tears, brought by the arctic position that you are in. With that painless Passover from life to death, you were able to escape hell in your temporal existence. Yet you will not experience heaven in your eternal life.
Cases like these are not new already, especially to someone with a broken heart. At some point in your life, you had also shared a part in the floods and tsunamis brought about by the uncontrolled transformation of your emotions into torrent of tears.
What do you do?
The key to any form of healing is through the acceptance that there is a problem. In this case, it is clear that you are under the torments of a broken heart. More so, you have to acknowledge that you have to go through different stages in mending your broken heart. Once you realize these things, you are now on the starting point in your pursuit towards complete healing. You can even chart your progress and see that it's only a short trip to recovery.


STAGE ONE: Denial Stage


Symptoms: This is where you are now. You know for sure that everything between you and him has come to an end. Yet you choose to close your eyes on the real thing and create the same world like you had with him before. But, it isn't just the same. Now, it is only you living in it. The fact is that, the two of you are now separate entities treading in parallel directions. Still, you force yourself in making those lines cross once more. You consciously blind yourself because you can not accept the fact that it is all over. The things you used to do, have or experience before that he’s still in your life are completely different now.

You wake up in the morning, grab your cell phone and send him a message saying, “good morning baby, it’s time to wake-up…” Then, his reply would be, “good morning, too but you’re not my baby anymore…” It hurts of course, yet you won’t give up. You’ll think of excuses for his cold reply. Maybe he’s just kidding or is just trying to piss me off. Or maybe he’s just having a bad day from our misunderstanding the other night. This would be your daily habit. Time after time, you send him a message that he won’t bother to reply even with a smiley or a single word. To your despair, you’ll call him every now and then, only to hear the voice saying, “the telephone number you dial is either unattended or out of coverage area, please try again later…” True to it, you try and try.
You go into the nearest internet cafe, open your Facebook account and post on his wall and update your status. Again, you’ll sound as if he’s still yours. Only to find out later that his primary picture only has his face, with the widest grin as if nothing happened. Worse, you opened his photo gallery only to see a picture of him with another girl or even worse, with another man.
Every morning, you pass by his house as you go to school, waiting for him to come out alone or with another man/woman. You pass by his room as you go into yours, waiting for him to notice you and say even “hi” or just throw a smile. At night, silence is killing you. You feel the pain intensifies as it gets darker. So, you'll find a shoulder to cry on and release the burden inside that has been torturing you consciously. Then, you were relieved. The next morning you go back into your daily habit.
You hang-out with friends and sing out your emotions at a karaoke bar.


How to cope: An AB Psychology Professor that I know from school said, “In the early stages, accept your pain. If you'd broken your leg, you'd expect it to hurt for a while and you'd manage your life around it. It's the same with emotional pain: to cope with a broken heart, let your heart be broken for a while. It will heal easier if you let nature take its course.” She also added that you must realise that healing from emotional pain is a rollercoaster ride - not a straight line. Physical injury will get steadily better day by day but emotional hurt doesn't heal like that. You get a run of good days, then WHAM! A bad one hits. Expect these, and you'll discover you can cope with the heartbreak much better.”

These words are really easier said than done, but you must take the risk if you want to save your heart. In any hurting situation, most of us delve into tears. So give in to it. As said earlier, you must feel the pain. You can not go on to another stage unless you were able to pass through the first phase. To really feel the pain, you must give up the things you were used to before. Like if you were accustomed to receiving sweet text messages every now and then starting from the moment you wake up until you close your eyes and sleep at night. Now, you must get used of not having those. Worse, you must not insinuate things to happen again. You will just hurt yourself more. It would just add up to the wound that is still in the process of healing. With that, the curing process will be lengthened; the pain would be more severe as you keep on adding trauma to the lesion. It’s like you have just undergone an open heart surgery and because of straining too much, the site of incision will undergo dehiscence and evisceration. If you would not stop from adding trauma to the freshly operated wound, eventually complications will arise. Before you knew it you were already bleeding relentlessly like the flow of blood in a dying person. If you want to save yourself, then just feel your current pain but don’t add up more. Your pain threshold might be so high to acknowledge that you are that injured already, but later on you will realize the consequences of your actions. Just hope that it isn’t too late to revive yourself once more.
I know there are still lots of ways to cope up during this stage, so I asked some of my friends and co-workers about it. One of them said, “I just eat a lot to divert my attention. But when the pain becomes so severe already, I just cry it out.” Most of what I had interviewed engaged themselves to activities that could divert their attention. Jason, a registered nurse said that during this crucial time, he goes out with friends and just have fun. There are also who really tries to see the bright side of the situation and just think of positive things. Some regain their composure by reminding themselves of how beautiful they are; that this time is a perfect opportunity to give chance to others who are on the line, dying to be with them. Indeed, it can soothe your pain for some time. But still you can’t deny that in your solitude, sadness will still eat you up. So, temporary escape could be a choice. Yet your last option would still be to feel the pain until it hurts no more.
If you are married and you want to save your marriage, then this  SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE eBook would be of great help. 

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