This is life, and we cannot change its rules, sooner or later our companions will leave our lives.
This article consists of information collected from various sources - J. Teitelbaum, F. Vasilyuk, G. Whited. It examines the stages of separation from a psychological point of view. I believe that everyone should have this information, because parting is an inevitable part of our lives. Sometimes, after parting, people do not understand what is happening to them, and bring themselves and their loved ones a lot of grief and destruction. They may feel their situation is hopeless and insane, but in fact it is not.
Awareness and understanding of the reactions of our psyche can help in accepting ourselves and our feelings. This is important for coping with difficult situations. With this information, we can gain the ability to support ourselves and ask others for help when needed.
This article provides a description of examples of how the stages of separation usually go. These stages and states are almost identical both at the break of relations and at parting with the dead. The extreme states are described here for a better understanding of these processes. The stages of grief can be experienced more or less intensely and even change places. I hope that this information will be useful to you.
I often see people going through a breakup close in on themselves and feel like they have to deal with it on their own. Based on my experience, I can say that often such a position only aggravates the condition of a person and makes the process of parting even more painful and long. Why and why suffer so?
For a healthy transition through the phases of a breakup, it is very important to talk about your feelings and share this pain with someone else. It can be a relative, friend, psychologist, etc. In this state, it may seem that everyone is indifferent to your experiences, but this is not so. In fact, there is always at least one person who can listen to you and support you!
The process of mourning is often referred to in the literature as the work of grief. This is, in fact, a lot of inner work, a huge mental work to process tragic events. So, mourning is a natural process that is necessary in order to mourn and let go of a loss. Conventionally, “normal” mourning and “pathological” mourning are distinguished.
Normal mourning is characterized by the development of experiences in several stages with a complex of symptoms and reactions characteristic of each.
The picture of acute grief is similar in different people. The normal course of mourning is characterized by periodic bouts of physical distress, spasms in the throat, choking attacks with rapid breathing, a constant need to breathe, a feeling of emptiness in the abdomen, loss of muscle strength, and intense subjective suffering, described as tension or mental pain.
The stage of acute grief lasts for about 4 months, conditionally including 4 of the stages described below. The duration of each stage is rather difficult to describe, due to their possible reciprocity throughout the work of grief.
A tragic event causes horror, emotional stupor, detachment from everything that happens, or, conversely, an internal explosion. The world may seem unreal. Time in the perception of the grieving may accelerate or stop, space narrows.
A feeling of unreality of what is happening, mental numbness, insensitivity, deafness appears in the human mind. The perception of external reality is dulled, and then in the future there are often gaps in the memories of this period.
The following features are most pronounced: constant sighing, complaints of loss of strength and exhaustion, lack of appetite. There may be some changes in consciousness - a slight feeling of unreality, a feeling of increasing emotional distance with others ( “how can they smile, talk, go shopping when there is such pain”).
Usually, a complex of shock reactions is interpreted as a defensive denial of the fact of what happened, protecting the grieving person from facing the loss in its entirety at once.
Characterized by disbelief in the reality of loss. The person convinces himself and others that “still will change for the better”, that “he/she will be back soon” etc.
What is characteristic here is not the denial of the very fact of the loss, but the denial of the fact of the permanence of the loss.
At this time, it can be difficult for a person to keep his attention in the outside world, reality is perceived as if through a transparent veil, through which the sensations of the presence of the departed break through all the time: a face in the crowd, similar to a departed person, when the doorbell rings, a thought may flash: it is he /she. Such visions are quite natural, but frightening, taken as signs of impending madness.
Consciousness does not allow the thought of loss, it eschews pain that threatens destruction, and does not want to believe that its own life must now also change. During this period, life resembles a bad dream, and the person is desperately trying to "wake up" to make sure that everything remains as before.
Denial is a natural defense mechanism that maintains the illusion that the world will change to follow our yes and no, or better still, stay the same. But gradually consciousness begins to accept the reality of loss and pain - as if the previously empty inner space begins to fill with emotions.
It is expressed in the form of indignation, aggressiveness and hostility towards others. Blaming oneself, relatives or friends, etc.
Being at this stage of dealing with the loss, a person may threaten the "guilty" or, conversely, engage in self-flagellation, feeling guilty for what happened.
The bereaved person tries to find evidence in the events leading up to the loss that he/she did not do all that. He/she blames himself for inattention and exaggerates the importance of his slightest missteps. Feelings of guilt can be aggravated by a situation of conflict before a breakup.
The picture of experiences is significantly supplemented by various reactions. Here are some of the possible experiences of this period:
The range of emotions experienced at this time is also quite wide. A person is acutely experiencing loss and has poor self-control. However, no matter how unbearable feelings of guilt, feelings of injustice and the impossibility of further existence - all this natural process of experiencing loss. When anger finds its outlet and the intensity of emotions decreases, the next stage begins.
This is a time of longing, loneliness, withdrawal into oneself and deep immersion in the truth of loss. It is at this stage that most of the work of grief falls, because a person has the opportunity through depression and pain to look for the meaning of what happened. There is an opportunity to stop, immerse yourself in yourself and rethink the value of your own life. Gradually let go of the relationship with the departed, forgiving him/her and yourself.
This is the period of greatest suffering, acute heartache. There are many difficult, sometimes strange and frightening feelings and thoughts. These are feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness, despair, a feeling of abandonment, loneliness, anger, guilt, fear and anxiety, helplessness. Typical is an extraordinary preoccupation with the image of the departed and his/her idealization- emphasizing extraordinary virtues, avoidance of memories of bad traits and deeds.
Memory, as if on purpose, hides all the unpleasant moments of the relationship, reproducing only the most wonderful ones, idealizing the departed. This process intensifies the painful experience. Often people suddenly begin to think how happy they really were and how much they did not appreciate it.
Grief leaves its mark on relationships with others. Here there may be a loss of warmth, irritability, a desire to retire.
Daily activities change. It can be difficult for a person to concentrate on what he is doing, it is difficult to bring the matter to the end, and a complexly organized activity can become completely inaccessible for some time. Sometimes there is an unconscious identification with the departed, manifested in involuntary imitation of his gait, gestures, facial expressions.
In the phase of acute grief, the mourner discovers that thousands and thousands of little things are connected in his life with the person who left his / her life. “He/she bought this book”, “he/she liked this view from the window”, “we watched this movie together”. Each of these details takes the consciousness into "there-and-then", into the depths of the flow of the past, and one has to go through pain in order to return to the surface.
This is an extremely important point in the productive experience of grief. Our perception of another person, especially a close one, with whom we were connected by many life ties, his / her image, is saturated with unfinished joint affairs, unfulfilled plans, unforgiven insults, unfulfilled promises. It is in working with these connecting threads that the meaning of the work of grief in restructuring the attitude towards the departed is laid.
Paradoxically, the pain is caused by the mourner himself. Phenomenologically, in a fit of acute grief, it is not a person who leaves us, but we ourselves leave him, break away from him or push him away from us. And this detachment, produced by one’s own hands, this own departure, this exile of a loved one: "Go away, I want to get rid of you..."- and watching how his image really moves away, transforms, and disappears, and causes, in fact, mental pain.
The pain of acute grief is the pain not only of decay, destruction and withering away, but also pain birth of a new. The former bifurcated being is united here by memory, the connection of times is restored, and the pain gradually disappears.
The previous stages were associated with resistance, and the emotions that accompanied them were mostly destructive.
In literary sources (see J. Teitelbaum and F. Vasilyuk) this stage is divided into two:
At this phase, life gets back on track, sleep, appetite, and professional activity are restored, and the deceased ceases to be the main focus of life.
The experience of grief now proceeds in the form of at first frequent, and then increasingly rare individual shocks, such as occur after a major earthquake. Such residual bouts of grief can be as sharp as in the previous phase, and against the background of normal existence, subjectively perceived as even more acute. The reason for them more often is some dates, traditional events. « New Year for the first time without him/her”, “spring for the first time without him/her”, “birthday” or events of daily life. “Offended, there is no one to complain to”, “a letter came in his / her name.”
This stage usually lasts for a year. During this time, almost all ordinary life events occur and in the future they begin to repeat themselves. The anniversary of the separation is the last date in this series. Maybe that's why most cultures and religions set aside one year for any breakup.
During this period, the loss gradually disappears from life. A person has to solve many new tasks related to material and social changes, and these practical tasks are intertwined with the experience itself. During this period, people very often compare their actions with the moral standards of the deceased, with his / her expectations, with the fact that "What would he/she say l". But gradually more and more memories appear, freed from pain, guilt, resentment and abandonment.
The normal grief experience we are describing enters its final phase about a year later. The duration of the grief reaction is obviously determined by how successfully the person performs the work of grief, that is, comes out of a state of extreme dependence on the departed, re-adapts to the environment in which the lost face is no longer there, and forms new relationships.
The departure of a person who has evoked strong hostility, especially hostility that has no outlet, can cause a strong grief reaction in which the hostile impulses are most prominent. This happens, for example, after a relationship in which people could not, for one reason or another, openly express their grievances and claims to each other.
It is not uncommon if a person who played a key role in a certain social system leaves (in the family a man played the roles of a father, breadwinner, husband, friend, protector, etc.), then his departure leads to the disintegration of this system and to drastic changes in life and social position of its members. In these cases, adaptation is a very difficult task.
One of the biggest obstacles to the normal functioning of grief is the often unconscious desire of mourners to avoid the intense suffering associated with grief and to avoid expressing the emotions associated with it. In these cases, there is a "stuck" at any of the stages, and the emergence of painful reactions of grief.
Painful grief reactions are distortions of the "normal" mourning process.
If a bereavement catches a person while solving some very important problems, or if it is necessary for the moral support of others, he may almost or not at all reveal his grief for a week or even much longer. In extreme cases, this delay can last for years, as evidenced by cases where people who have recently suffered a bereavement are gripped by grief for people who died or passed away many years ago.
May appear as superficial manifestations of unresolved grief. The following types of such reactions are distinguished:
From the diary: “... I perform all my social functions, but it's like a game: it doesn't really affect me. I am unable to experience any warm feeling. If I had any feelings, it would be anger at everyone.”
The above painful reactions are an extreme expression or distortion of the normal reactions.
Flowing into each other on the rise, these distorted reactions significantly delay and aggravate the mourning and the subsequent “recovery” of the mourner. With adequate and timely intervention, they can be corrected and can be transformed into normal reactions, and then find their resolution.
Passing through certain stages of experience, mourning performs a number of tasks (according to G. Whited):
A person must accept the pain of loss. He must reconsider his relationship with the departed and recognize the changes in his own emotional reactions.
His fear of going crazy, his fear of sudden changes in his feelings, especially the appearance of a sharply increased feeling of hostility, all this must be processed. He must find an acceptable form of his further attitude towards the departed. He must express his feelings of guilt and find people around him from whom he could take an example in his behavior.
The emotional experience of a person changes and enriches in the course of personality development as a result of experiencing crisis life periods, empathy with the mental states of other people.
A person comes to understand that with the departure of a loved one, his own life has not completely lost its meaning. It continues to have its value and remains just as significant and important despite the loss. A person can forgive himself, let go of resentment, take responsibility for his life, courage for its continuation - comes back to oneself.
Even the most difficult loss contains an opportunity. By accepting the existence of loss, suffering, grief in their lives, people become able to more fully experience themselves as an integral part of the universe, to live their own lives more fully.
Getting over a breakup isn't easy. Absolutely all people go through certain stages of parting - someone faster, someone longer. The site site will tell you about each of the stages and advise on how to cope with experiences.
If you find yourself in a situation with a loved one and it’s hard, bitter and bad for you from a variety of thoughts and emotions that have piled up at the same time, this is normal! Do not think that it is only you who is such a “nurse” and “rag”, but somewhere there are “correct women” who easily and simply accept the termination of a love relationship, without nerves and tears.
There are no “correct” and strong ones - the human psyche is arranged in such a way that breaking up relationships is difficult for everyone.
And this also applies to parting at an early, romantic stage, and after a long time - at the stage of a strong habit to a partner.
Relationships are literally a drug that is difficult to quit: hormones released during falling in love - endorphin, dopamine, etc. can be called a narcotic substance. If it suddenly turns out that their production in the previous quantities is no longer relevant, then the person really, in some sense, experiences a syndrome of failure, “breaking”. This, in principle, explains all the classic situations when “I understand with my mind that the former is an asshole, but it’s bad, girls, at least run back to him!”...
In general, the stages of separation in women and men occur in the same way, and the difference in behavior is usually explained not by gender differences in psychology, but simply by human habits. Someone “eats” stress, someone gets drunk, someone goes headlong into work, but the emotions are the same ...
After a love relationship, it is generally difficult for a person to believe that everything is really in the past. It seems that now he / she will change his mind and return, that it will be possible to start from scratch, etc. If you initiated the breakup, and not your partner, then at this stage of separation you may want to forgive, close your eyes to all the reasons why you left, call ex-man back…
What to do?
Mind to realize that everything is really in the past. Do everything so that there is no temptation to enter into communication with the former - leave, load yourself with work, get busy creative project, devote a lot of time to children and / or friends, etc. After some time (weeks or months), the acceptance of the fact of separation will occur.
After the realization of the completed break has come, a new wave of resentment against the former may begin to grow: “Here’s an artiodactyl, he deliberately left me, he is this and that”, etc.
Sometimes it does without anger - and this is a constructive way.
What to do? If a feeling of strong resentment has befallen you, then ... experience this emotion. It’s better to be offended and want a new bright life without this person than to endlessly look for excuses and painfully regret that you couldn’t save your couple.
If at the stage of anger there is no clear desire to stop suffering and live life to the fullest, then the stage of parting may come, when a woman tries to bargain with herself - how to part in such a way as to leave herself at least a little hope of returning or to provide an illusory respite to the final break.
For example, "I will communicate with him, because we have, and he must see that mom and dad do not quarrel, but are friends." Or “today, for the last, last time, I will spend the evening with my ex and vino, but then no, no, I’ll start making new acquaintances!”.
What to do? One of two things - either no “last rhymes”, or without too much romance and hopes, transfer love relationships into purely business ones (for example, if you really need to contact on the upbringing of a common child).
It comes when a person realizes that bargaining with himself and / or a former partner failed, and the separation did take place. The psychology of depressive states is a complicated matter, but if we are not talking about chronic, then it is important to understand that sadness and sadness will inevitably pass - this happens to both women and men!
What to do? Hurry up to the next stage!
This is when you realize that the former is, of course, artiodactyl, but there are so many nice guys around! And in general, there is a new collection in your favorite store, a girlfriend invites you to go dancing on a pole, and an interesting man wrote in Tinder ...
What to do? new hairstyle and the purchase of new clothes in the wardrobe!
Life consists of meetings and partings. A person comes into our life, sometimes changes it, sometimes gives us a valuable lesson and, having played his role in the play called “life”, leaves. It's hard to let go of a loved one, it's hard to say goodbye to someone who was a part of the heart, occupied thoughts and worried the soul, but sometimes it needs to be done in order to live and move on. What are the stages of separation How to painlessly survive the period of parting with a loved one and recover after that?
If a woman broke up with a loved one and is not in the best shape, is experiencing severe stress, even fell into depression, constantly cries, self-flagellation, she should not think that this is happening only to her, and that she is so weak that she cannot "Fine" survive a breakup with a man. In fact, people are so arranged that it is psychologically difficult for them to break the connection with the person to whom they have become attached. It is rare to find women who are completely calm, without any emotions perceive parting. Therefore, it is important for a woman to realize that what she experiences are normal human feelings that need to be accepted in order to fight them later. It is important to know, . After all, relationships are a kind of drug, this expression is especially true for women who have been in a state of psychological dependence on their partner for a long time. And during the period of parting, they often break. It is important in every sense to become free from them and live on.
Immediately after the breakup, the woman falls into a period of denial of what happened. It doesn't matter who initiated the breakup. The fact remains: there is no longer a loved one in life, and it is difficult for the human psyche to accept this fact, therefore it rejects this information in every possible way, refusing to believe in it. At this stage, one of the partners usually tries to reclaim the past, forgive, forget, and renew the relationship. The first stage is the most difficult and painful. It is important to distract yourself from thoughts about your loved one, to do everything so that there is neither time nor energy left to think about him: do work, hobbies, devote more time to friends, family, children, take care of animals, etc.
After realizing what happened, the next separation stage. The woman begins to overflow with anger, her resentment becomes even stronger, and all emotions are sharper and more painful. She recalls everything that was experienced with this man, all his bad deeds, anger in her grows with frightening force. Experts advise not to keep these negative emotions in yourself, but to give them an outlet. These emotions will help you realize that the relationship had no future, and the woman did the right thing by agreeing to break up.
The second stage may be followed by the next, when the woman could not realize that she had no future with her loved one. She has gone through a sharpening of emotions, but cannot come to terms with the thought that this is the end. She is trying to persuade herself, bargaining with herself in order to leave a small chance for the renewal of a relationship that has exhausted itself. For example, does he convince himself that the child should communicate with the father and see him as often as possible, or that the child needs both parents nearby, or that it is possible to spend the night goodbye with the former partner, what if he changes his mind after that to disperse? In no case should you bargain with yourself and try to return the past. Relationships after a breakup, no matter how cruel it may sound, should be businesslike.
The next stage comes after the realization of parting. The woman becomes depressed. It is important that at this moment there are close people nearby who can support her and get her out of a depressive state, consultations with a psychologist will also be useful.
The final acceptance of the fact comes when a woman lets go of pain, negative emotions, internally frees herself from everything that prevented her from moving forward. She lives a full life again, meets new people. A breakup is always stressful, and you need to give yourself time and the opportunity to go through it, only then you can confidently move forward without looking back.
Dealing with a breakup is hard. Not only is it difficult to realize and accept the fact that you are no longer with your loved one, but it is also unbearably difficult to cope with the pain of breaking up a relationship.
But breaking up is a process. And like any process, parting has stages through which a person goes. There is a common expression: time cures". But it is not time that heals, but more or less correct passage through all the necessary stages of living a parting. In the case of a normal living of all stages, a person comes to his senses after some time and returns to life. If there is a fixation on some stage or the stage was lived incorrectly, then you can suffer for a long time.In this article I will describe everything 6 stages of experiencing a breakup, which will help you understand how people experience parting and breaking up relationships.
First, we will list all the stages to make it easier for you to navigate through them.
And now we will describe each stage in more detail and give exercises for analyzing and understanding our behavior at each of these stages.
The stage of denial is characterized by such feelings, thoughts and sensations as: avoidance, fear, numbness, accusation, misunderstanding. Denial is the cry of the soul "nooo"! This "no" reveals the oldest and most habitual defense of the psyche - denial. Its meaning is to cope with the difficult to bear pain of losing a loved and important person, as well as with the loss of the integrity of one's personality. This stage can be compared to the loss of any part of your body. And denial acts on the psyche as a painkiller through persuasion "it's not, it didn't happen".
Denial has several options:
We can deny the loss itself: sometimes it happens in the form - we still meet, we just decided to see each other less often, and sometimes (in pathological cases) - a complete denial of the breakup.
We can deny the irreversibility of the loss: for example, no, he (she) is still with me, we just decided to take a break in the relationship in order to improve it, sort out our feelings and be together again.
We can deny that the loss has happened to us: the most common form of this kind of parting denial is "I don't believe this happened to me"
We can devalue the significance of the loss: for example, we have been moving towards this for a long time (and, unlike the actual acceptance of the fact, this is said only as a small consolation to ourselves)
The stage of expression of feelings is characterized by irritability, anger, anxiety, shame, shame. At this stage, which comes after the first, a person, as a rule, already beginning to feel the reality of what is happening, experiences and lives through all possible negative feelings. Moreover, these negative feelings can be directed both at the departed person and at oneself.
We put this stage in fourth place, although it is present in all the first three stages. It is characterized by constant attempts to find an explanation for what happened, to understand the causes ("thought turn"), an internal conflict (to return or not).
