It hurts our feelings and hurts our pride. Leaves scars on the heart and makes you feel unwanted. Gestalt therapist Anastasia Gurneva helps to look at the situation from a different angle and gives practical advice on how to return to yourself.
The experience of abandonment is difficult: shock, resentment. A painful and swing-like state: from the desire to devalue everything to a violently flaring attachment and readiness to return everything and change yourself. I want to run back into a relationship. But they are not. And so on in a circle.
Still abandonment hits self-esteem. After all, the good ones are not abandoned. But is it?
Is it possible to leave a person at all? After all, in order to be «thrown», he had to belong to someone. Like an animal that was brought in and then thrown away. But are we responsible for other people’s attachment to us? Are they for us?
The relationship of two is a partnership of equals, if we are not talking about the connections of the sick and the healthy, children and parents, husbands and pregnant wives. And if we are to look for the exact words to define the separation of adult autonomous people, then rather it will not be “he left me”, but “he left our relationship.”
Such a view is more careful in relation to self-esteem, which objectively becomes fragile when experiencing a break with significant people. The vulnerability of self-esteem is that when parting, many images of oneself, social roles, joint plans and habitual rituals suddenly become irrelevant.
A revision of everything begins: if these relationships do not exist, then who am I — and what? What can I do with my free time? Am I free or still abandoned? What about shared vacations? And what about our common children, plans, hopes, mortgages? And so I want to catch up and return everything, or at least explain what the other is wrong and how good I really am …
What to do if you are abandoned?
1. Do not call, even if you really want to, and even if you have drunk. Even though the question «why?» you are very tormented, despite the desire to win back or simply unbearable longing, despite the fact that you are right, but he is wrong, and you want to urgently tell him this — everything is useless, just say nasty things to each other.
2. Do not monitor social networks. Although this is obvious, for some reason it is extremely difficult to resist. After all, the mind wanders where you are together, and it needs new food for fantasies.
And the second reason is the growing anxiety: where is he, with whom. I just want to know and calm down. But it harms you, because it binds attention even more tightly to the one who quit.
3. Accept that the world is not like a movie about love.where everything ends with a kiss against the backdrop of sunset.
Perhaps this is the end of the relationship. This is quite difficult to accept, especially when it seems to you that the breakup happened suddenly. Hint: “suddenly” is extremely rare, most often there were processes that went unnoticed. From quiet discontent to change.
4. Recognize that you have no control over the will of the other person. This allows you to stop feeling guilty about everything that happened.
And then you can, without losing self-respect, see the attitude towards you and accept this choice without trying to change it. See how much of your inner life is devoted to this person. How much time do you mentally talk with him, how much you argue or share the plots of your life. To think and make it a rule for yourself in any situation, when you find yourself in a dream world, to return to the here-and-now.
Mindfulness techniques work very well for this, such as focusing on what you are doing in the moment or focusing on your breath.
5. Find out what «black holes» your life has been filled by relationships. Do you have a favorite (this is important) work or study? Are there close people who are definitely on your side, and are you in touch with them often enough? Are there any favorite activities, preferably related to adrenaline and novelty, maybe a driving school or kayaking? Something that will captivate you strongly enough, but at the same time does not destroy.
If there are no such activities and people, your first priority is to dive into the search. This will give a good outlet for internal stress, will direct activity not towards trying to offer oneself again to the one who has left, but to improve one’s own life, to start putting things in order in it.
6. Recognize that the source of pain is within you. This is the most difficult, because the very experience of the pain of a breakup is associated with the action of a person, but the source of the experience is inside you.
Sounds too easy. But such a view makes it possible to turn not outward in search of a way to return a person, but inward — to oneself, one’s pain. Notice her, become her friend, accept her as a sick child who needs you to be there and console her. And start taking care of yourself, not the relationship. After all, there is no relationship, but you are.
Taking care of yourself means starting to experience the loss of a person, the image of yourself with him, relationships and a possible future. Look for what made you happier before and will do now. For example, you can restore old friendships and go to a psychologist. Yes, it is important and necessary to seek help in a situation of separation.
But the main thing is not to rush yourself with renewal, not to run away from suffering, as well as not to cling to them.