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"If you look closely enough at your problem, you will find that you are part of the problem".
Thus Arthur Bloch anticipates with a remarkably acute way of observing a phenomenon as much discussed as the problem of love sickness. Love perhaps more than any other experience, sets in motion imaginations, thoughts, complex and often unpredictable principles ... a combination of emotions and reason, between impulsiveness and will.
«What can I do?».
«A hell of a moment, I just want to disappear! "
Claudia begins in therapy. "When, embracing me, he whispered to me that despite his long efforts and a thousand reflections he could no longer be with me. I felt a sense of disbelief in her words. He had been trapped in our relationship for months and it made him fall apart, he felt like a failure for not being able to crown a life with me».
«Now, what awaits me Doctor?!?»
«It can't be, we were more than ready to promise to stay together forever. We had even sworn eternal loyalty».
These are the words of Claudia, a thirty-year-old girl, who sees her future dissolve without the possibility of a rational and satisfactory explanation.
Unbelief represents a shelter for the heart, as just as Ludwing Wittgenstein said "no hypothetical explanation can reassure me about love". The pain begins, so strong and powerful that it seems to make the chest explode ... begging forgiveness.
What happens in a girl like Claudia, capable of overcoming very difficult things in her life, of not being able to use the same emotional resources anymore? Those same resources that allowed her to process her father's death? Why is she so out of balance and difficult when she needs to recover from a love that has gone wrong? Why do the very mechanisms that make us overcome any kind of challenge that life presents us fail and, I would add, miserably when someone breaks our hearts?
Unfortunately, when your heart has been shattered, the same instincts you used to rely on will guide you to the wrong solution. You simply can't trust what the feeling tells you.
The scientific literature suggests that the person with "broken heart" has a clear understanding of why a relationship has ended, even though the mere statement "I don't love you anymore" is strictly rejected.
It is as if a shattered heart creates such emotional pain that it can also transport the mind into the same drama. It is this dynamic that appears so strong that even a young woman - reasonable and measured - like Claudia, imagines mysteries and illusions where they do not exist.
His fear is that of not being able to recover, of seeing a dark and lonely future, of not being able to have such true and passionate loves outside of him, just as Pablo Neruda's aphorism clearly expresses "Thinking that I have, to feel that I have lost it.
Feeling the immense night, more immense without him. "
Claudia feels that she is literally losing control of her life due to such intense pain that she feels possessed by it. She mentally goes over that phrase "I don't love you anymore", sifting through her mind for every little, irrelevant clue to cling to with all the hopes ... that she can't find. Claudia's mind lies. She tricks her into a ghost hunt with no instructions.
There is a reason we keep falling from one rabbit hole to another, even though we know it makes us feel worse. It is a losing battle from the start, we ourselves are winners and losers.
Il attempted solution of Claudia is represented by the avoidance of pain. Claudia can't stand to suffer, but she continues to idealize her love for her. She wants back at any cost the previous situation as a couple, which the other clearly no longer wants. Refusing such pain is tantamount to not accepting the new situation. Claudia, she would like to extort from her heart, the tragic words of that night, to be able to lock only the smiles, the carefree moments, the passionate kisses and the promises of eternal love like a treasure closed in triple delivery. But the pain in these cases cannot be avoided as the great American poet Robert Frost suggests "If you want to get out of the pain you have to go through it " otherwise the sentence will be to keep it and increase it.
In our intervention model, various techniques help us to facilitate this process, in order to avoid any pathological stiffening:
- Allow yourself the pain to overcome it; «To unleash the arsenal of suffering, going through one's pain, one's history, one's destructive emotions… allowing oneself to suffer in order to let the pain settle».
- Gallery of memories; “Using writing as an ability to heal affective wounds. In order to drive out that demon that grips our thoughts ».
- Rebuild starting from the rubble; "Rebuilding oneself, leaving behind the rubble of a life that has now exploded." Re-establishing who we are.
To heal that crushed heart, you need to identify the gaps that suck up the days, and then fill them with difficulty a piece at a time - on the other hand, Rome was not built in just one day!
The concrete proof of the whole journey with Claudia can be represented by the image of her, hand in hand, with her new partner in the waiting room while she was waiting to be called ... To transform a broken heart into an open heart, one must just being great sailors and explaining the wounds of our heart to then be able to take flight in the immense blue of our new life!
Dr. Francesca Lecce (Psychotherapist and Official Researcher of the Strategic Therapy Center)
REFERENCES
Nardone G., Riding your own tiger, 2003, Ponte alle Grazie
Nardone G., Salvini A., The strategic dialogue, 2004, Ponte alle Grazie
Nardone G., Balbi E., Sail the sea without the knowledge of the sky, 2008, Ponte alle Grazie
Muriana E., Verbiniz T., Psychopathology of love life, 2010, Ponte alle Grazie