Edvard Munch "Parting"Life is an unpredictable thing, filled with inspirational meetings and bitter breaks. And if a new acquaintance or falling in love fills the individual with joyful hopes and positive emotions, then parting is inevitably connected with anxiety, fears and gloomy thoughts.
People deal with gaps in different ways, someone finds relief in work or in an exciting hobby, someone immediately tries to build new relationships. There are those who are so deeply immersed in love that at the end of a relationship they are able to commit suicide (if a person completely dissolves in another person, it means that he, as a rule, does not have his life), and someone starts a classic depression after divorce.
The editors prepared an article about depression after a divorce. How to survive a divorce without depression and what to do to feel good again.
Depression after divorce: reasons
The roots of depression after a divorce lie in the fact that each person is inextricably linked with society. From the moment of birth, the child has been gifted with attention and care from mom, dad and next of kin. It is they who make every effort to introduce the child to the social rules, adequately educate him and instill acceptable norms of behavior.
As they grow older, the individual becomes more and more independent, trying to create for himself the most comfortable conditions in the surrounding world. One of the important parts of this basic comfort is the search for a partner. Because the need to love is associated with pleasant memories from childhood. Not everyone, by the way, is able to love. It is difficult to know what it is if you were not loved as a child.
Relationships are often associated with certain expectations and hopes brought in from the outside. In fact, the reality is more prosaic, so it is not surprising that gaps occur so often between people.
The end of love often negatively affects a person, leading him to severe depression after a break, suicidal thoughts, a sense of the hopelessness of his position. The individual separates from the environment, closes in his dark fantasies, reliving the moment of separation again and again. If he is not helped in time, then everything can end in an attempt at suicide or severe psychosomatic diseases.
Depression after a divorce: has it really begun?
A person is not able to independently detect depressive disorder. Moreover, during parting, not everyone wants to openly admit that he was greatly hurt by the break with the former partner. Therefore, negative emotions and experiences are sometimes hidden from the environment, which only aggravates the problem.
Depression manifests itself in symptoms such as:
1. A person reluctant to attend work, he does not enjoy the usual hobbies and entertainment.
2. Permanent depression, expressed in the desire to feel sorry for yourself and cry, listen to sad music, watch sad movies, jam.
3. The individual prone to depression, ceases to monitor the appearance. He does not want to follow even the simplest hygienic procedures, change clothes, use cosmetics. It is precisely in such carelessness that the chaos that reigns in the soul of a person experiencing a break with a favorite partner is expressed.
4. Friends and relatives can notice frequent changes of mood, abrupt transitions from chaotic activity to complete indifference to everything around.
Experts did not agree on how long a depression lasts after a divorce. It all depends on the individual characteristics of a person, his sensitivity, vulnerability and strength of the nervous system. In some cases, the experience of the gap takes from 1 month to 2-3 years. The statistics showed that most people recover from their loved one's care within 1 year, only after this stage does they are ready to re-build relationships with someone.
How to completely avoid depression after a divorce (break)?
How to completely avoid depression after a divorce (break)?Parting with your loved one, especially if the relationship was long, always a lot of stress, even for a trained person. A world without a partner seems faded and empty, nothing pleases a person and he does not want anything. Summarizing the advice of psychologists, you can create a "survival instruction" after a break with your loved one:
1. Activate the mode of "mourning"
Parting is a serious loss. Instead of that part of life where your thoughts, plans and feelings were in relation to the former partner, now there is a huge gaping hole. You feel pain and pain from the wound even at the physical level. Allow yourself to grieve and mourn the loss. This is the most important stage after breaking up! When weeping losses, the brain is gradually rebuilt and adapts to the situation of the absence of a former partner in life. It's like with the launch of a metabolism for weight loss - until you start, the weight will not move. Also with a loss. Grieve, cry and mourn, but remember that this will pass. Do not dissolve in these feelings. Treat them like therapy. A loss that is not fully experienced is like an emotional vampire inside you, it blocks and takes the energy needed for new beginnings and new relationships.
2. No need to try to “burn off parting” for a certain period
People often seek to artificially shorten the period of experience, ignoring or denying their feelings. Where there is a denial or neglect of one's own feelings - passive aggression is quickly formed, directed at himself. The motive wheel of emotional self-destruction, which inevitably leads to depression, is triggered by the negation of one's own feelings. Think about the fact that in nature there are certain periods of each phenomenon. A day lasts exactly 24 hours, and children form in the womb for exactly 9 months. You can not artificially affect the timing of certain things, including the period necessary for your brain and your body to restructure after a long relationship. The recovery period will take more than one week and not two. But in the future, the gap will be fully meaningful and experienced, and will not deliver depressive episodes.
3. Start keeping a diary
Every day, write down all the feelings, thoughts and plans that you have. Describe them in detail and do not be shy about the most self-deprecating details. Turn off censorship completely! The first time your former partner will appear in each record, and sometimes several times a day or an hour. No problem. So you are free. It will take a little time and you get bored. Your notes will be less and less devoted to your former lover, and more and more to you! Your thoughts, your plans and even new sympathies will appear. This is a very effective psychological exercise for experiencing a divorce or separation.
4. Get involved in life
Work actively, take care of yourself, take initiative in all spheres of life. In a couple of months it will become much easier and no depression will be terrible anymore.
Psychological recommendations for women
For women, there is a deep "dissolution" in the elect, idealizing it, as well as unfounded hopes that the meeting will be "once and for all." This is due to the fact that in childhood girls were often told that she should “take care of herself” for her only thing, and so on and so forth. In fact, you don’t owe anything to anyone and you have your own life.
The collapse of hopes during a break has a stronger effect on women's well-being than men's. Psychologists give such advice to women faced with a severe divorce:
- try to avoid obsessive desire to hide from the whole world alone. It is better, on the contrary, to spend more time in the company of friends and girlfriends, to visit those places where it was not possible to go, “hang out” to the fullest and change wardrobe
- buy a gym membership or go jogging every morning. Firstly, playing sports effectively drives out heavy thoughts, because they contribute to the appearance of endorphins in the body - the hormones of joy, and secondly, the sports body will not hurt anyone
- to develop in a professional field. Psychologists say that those women who, after the breaks, began to work intensively, more quickly managed to overcome depression.
- search for new hobbies, development of creative skills. The appeared free time should not be wasted on self-blame and self-pity, it is much better to learn something new or to master a craft that gives maximum pleasure.
- go on vacation. Changing the situation allows not only to get rid of painful memories, but also opens the way to new acquaintances.
From the Editor Our site recommends reading one simple and short book by Julia Rubleva “Girl and the Desert”. In the book, the author shares his experience of experiencing a divorce in the presence of a child and gives clear and clear step-by-step instructions for women on what to do next. This book has helped more than one thousand women to look at the world and life after a divorce differently.
If all of the above tips do not help, then it makes sense to seek help from a specialist. A program developed by a qualified psychologist in a relatively short period is able to cope with such a scourge as a depressive disorder after breaking up.
Claude Monet "Walk to the cliff"Psychological recommendations for men
The peculiarity of depression in the male sex is that its intensity directly depends on who initiated the separation. So, if the man himself decided to part, then the sadness will be much weaker than that which would arise under the option when the woman made the decision to divorce. Psychologists explain this by saying that in the second case, the problem is complemented by suffering for the wounded self-esteem. Forms of depression in representatives of the "strong" sex range from attempts to stifle mental distress with alcohol to moving to another continent, away from the beloved one.
The general rules for experiencing depression after a break are the same as the recommendations for women: change the situation or go on vacation; Do not keep worrying about yourself and try to engage in life in proportion to the resources that you have at the moment. Do not expect great victories and Nobel achievements from yourself right after parting, give yourself the opportunity to recover.
Also, given the psychological and physical differences between women and men, during a divorce or separation it is worth trying the following:
- mastering a new activity, such as climbing or archery
- start pampering yourself with endorphin from playing sports
- go deep into work (but without sublimation)
- expand the circle of communication (it is not necessary to start a new novel right away!)
- under no circumstances should you try to alleviate the suffering with the help of alcohol or narcotic substances, they will give relief for a short time, and after the effect ends, the condition only worsens.
Finally, I would like to say that separation is not an apocalypse and not a natural disaster, but the reality of human life, without which new meetings are impossible. Much better to the end of the relationship, as to the test of strength, after which the person is enriched with new knowledge and experience. It is through such events that the individual becomes wiser and does not repeat past mistakes. Love yourself!
