Mending your broken heart

Many weeks ago, a dear friend had to be rushed to the hospital. The doctors could not diagnose what she had. At the time of her confinement, her blood pressure was really high and she had all the symptoms of a pending heart attack. One week after her confinement, her condition stabilized and she was released. When I visited her at her luxurious home, she confessed to me that she had been depressed for some time. Rich, accomplished, with everything going for her, I wondered how anybody in her position could be depressed. She confided that her boyfriend of three years, whom she adored and worshipped like a god, walked out on her and no amount of pleading could lure him back. She felt rejected, dejected, and humiliated. I reasoned that he was not worth her love, he was a playboy, and was incapable of loving, etc., but to no avail. She was in love with him and she was suffering from a broken heart! I guess most of us can easily identify with her feelings as depression over the loss of a loved one (a husband, lover, child, friend, even a pet) is a daily occurrence in life. But how do we cope and move on? Some of us are more successful in moving on than others. I did not really know what to advise my dear friend, but I stayed with her and kept her company till we exhausted the topic of her lost love.

I realize one thing: whether one is the "dumper" or the "dumpee," a broken relationship is always sad. The impact on the "dumpee" is greater and some of them take longer to move on than others. But there are ways to help yourself get healed. According to therapist Alan Konell, the first step is to accept the fact that a breakup is indeed a real loss, whether you were involved for six weeks, six months, six years or a lifetime. "Give yourself permission to go through all the stages of grief. Denial, hurt, anger, acceptance, the challenge is to get through every one of those stages." He continues, "As depressed as you may feel when your loved one walks out the door, try to focus on the present. Feel your feelings, but don’t believe them. Don’t think that you will never ever fall in love again and that you are destined to spend every Valentine’s day forever by yourself. Think positive, and hard as it may seem, believe that you will fall in love again one day soon!"

Professor Daniel Wegner offers his own take on getting over the loss of a loved one: Don’t try to stop thinking about the other person. Contrary to popular thought, that will only keep the embers burning. If you cannot get your ex out of your mind, just give in to it. But that doesn’t mean lying around all day with your tears dripping into a pint of Cherry Garcia (Ben and Jerry’s popular ice cream flavor). There are other things one can do, such as:

• Spend time with friends and family who will nurture you and keep you from getting lonely.

• Do something for others. Volunteer in a hospital, orphanage, etc. Giving your time to help someone else helps take your mind off your troubles and makes you feel really good at the end of the day.

• Learn something new. Take a class, learn ballroom dancing, start a business, write a book.

• Make a clean break. Don’t continue to call your ex!

•Change your look. Get a new hairstyle, buy some new clothes. Start an exercise program and look smashing.

• Visit a therapist to help you put things in perspective.

• Accept every invitation that comes your way.

• Attend a religious service.

• Change your routine. Don’t give yourself too much time to mope.

• Establish new activities and schedules that don’t have too many associations with your ex. Avoid your favorite haunts. This is not the time to walk down memory lane.

There is really nothing you can do to change the nature of the loss. Grief, anger, and frustration are normal reactions to the circumstances. But you must try to get to the point of acceptance and move on. Nobody can help yourself, really, but yourself. And you must use your mind to help the heart heal. For there is a strong connection between the mind and the heart.

My friend’s brokenhearted condition led me to read a powerful book, The Heart Speaks by Mimi Guarneri, a practicing cardiologist. In this book, Dr. Guarneri writes that "broken heart syndrome" is a medical condition and is the perfect example of the heart’s vulnerability and power. "This condition seems to be caused by high levels of hormones that the body produces during severe stress and can be temporarily toxic to the heart." In her book, Guarneri aims to help people cope better with life-threatening emotions like grief, anger, anxiety, stress. She explains that when we experience anger or other emotions, it triggers a cascade of negative reactions throughout the body. For example, anger causes a surging of stress hormones that raise our blood pressure, heart rate, and stress hormone levels. So the doctor gives the patient beta blockers to slow the heart down. But Guarneri would rather teach her patients to gain control over that stress and help them cope without drugs to help them heal their own hearts.

Her findings, from 140 medical studies and other writings, shed light on what she calls the "whole heart." "The heart has layers that don’t appear on a stress test or electrocardiogram, that are not taught in medical school: the mental heart, affected by hostility, stress, and depression; the emotional heart, able to be crushed by loss and grief (as in my friend’s condition); the intelligent heart, with a nervous system all its own; the spiritual heart, which yearns for a higher purpose; and the universal heart, which communicates with others. Doctors and researchers must address this fact in order to better serve their patients."

It is most enlightening to know about these layers of the heart. But what is the heart, really?

The ancient Greeks and Chinese believed that the spirit resided in the heart. To the Egyptians, the heart was an inner book, storing a person’s entire life – emotions, ideas, and memories. In these modern times, scientists stripped the heart of its poetry: It is a mechanical pump, requiring extraordinary measures to fix.

The heart is a gland that produces hormones and chemicals, like dopamine and adrenaline, which are involved in emotions. While the brain is the decision-maker and ruler, the 10-ounce heart is more powerful than we ever imagined – functioning as a sensory organ, hormone-producing gland, and information-processing center. Guarneri defines heart brain as the heart’s ability to communicate with the rest of the body. Research shows that it is possible to retrain your heart-brain connection in order to produce a more stable heart rhythm. Negative emotions like rage and frustration will trigger changes in the heart rhythm, creating a chaotic heart problem that adversely affects the whole body. However, positive feelings like appreciation and love can produce a stable heart rhythm, which trains other organs to function optimally.

HeartMath, a non-profit research and education program, has developed a core technique that is called freeze frame. When in a stressful situation, you must stop the moment "as if you’re freezing a frame in a movie." Then consciously shift to a positive emotion in order to reverse the effects of hostility and stress.
"People who are able to practice this self-management technique are able to generate consistent changes in their heart rhythm. By consciously shifting to a positive emotion, they can reverse the negative effects on the heart," explains Dr. Guarneri.

Take a journey into your heart and analyze what situations put you under a lot of suffering and stress. Recognize those situations so when confronted by them again, you know that you have to put yourself in a freeze-frame mode. Henceforth, we should always be conscious of our hearts.

A broken heart shouldn’t be taken lightly. We all have felt it at one point in our lives. We have to help ourselves heal it, so we can move on and experience the joy of falling in love again.