Why Can You Not Stop Thinking About Your Ex-girlfriend?
Why Can’t You Stop Thinking About Your Ex-Boyfriend? Sometimes you will probably like to have a button that only allows you to erase certain memories and suffering of your choice. Wouldn’t it be nice to press it, lower the intensity of the emotions and stop the person from taking up space in your mind in such an intrusive, painful way? Sometimes love and heartache are stuck in your brain, giving in to obsessive and exhausting mental states.
We all know, or at least have met someone, who is unable to get out of a painful relationship, despite feeling bad. The eager lyrics desperately long for an answer. The person who fails to accept the situation pursues the ex-girlfriend’s social network every day, and suffers for each new post where the other goes on with life or even initiates a new relationship.
What can you do if this happens to you?
Why Can’t You Stop Thinking About Your Ex-Boyfriend?
Many people go to therapy because they have become aware that they have reached an extreme state of mental stress, obsession and exhaustion. Therefore, they feel that they need professional help to stop thinking about their former partner.
These situations can really disrupt everyday life. Working, enjoying your free time or thinking about the future will be a great challenge for many.
In an attempt to stop thinking about their former partner, someone tries to distract themselves by signing up for a new course, sport or self-help. Others start a relationship in a futile attempt to forget. Unfortunately, some also try to forget by turning to alcohol, drugs and self-destructive behavior.
These situations have the same psychological mechanism as an addiction. The brain uses the same mechanisms as someone who cannot quit smoking or gamble every day. Let’s see why.
Sometimes love is like gambling
The metaphor is not very poetic, but still illustrative. Some loves become obsessions. They make us behave like a drug addict or a gambler every day. Thus, one of the answers lies in why you can not stop thinking about the partner in the brain reward circuit for dopamine.
When you are with your partner and everything is going well, your dopamine level is stable. You feel satisfied and have a sense of security, joy and well-being. However, when there is a breakdown, the production of dopamine and norepinephrine is drastically reduced. Despair and withdrawal symptoms follow.
What you should do is get away, block all contact, stop checking social networks and delete the number from your phone. The more you expose yourself to, or look for, ways to get closer to your ex-boyfriend, the more you intensify the addiction and withdrawal syndrome and therefore the disorder.
Separation Anxiety: I Love You More Now!
Anthropologist Helen Fisher has been studying the mechanics of love (and heartache) for decades. One thing that can shed light on why you can not stop thinking about your partner is what Fisher calls “frustration attraction”.
Sometimes separation causes more than obsession. People often idealize what they have lost, and they have a greater need for attachment. Helen Fisher describes it herself as follows: “ Separation anxiety is like a puppy being kept away from its mother. It goes in circles, barks and growls. “
On the other hand, studies such as those conducted at the University of Graz (Austria) tell us that this tendency is more common among men. They are the ones who continue to look at their former partners with love, and often even believe that it is possible to continue the relationship. On average, women tend to focus on the more negative aspects of cutting this bond.
What can you do in these situations?
The most appropriate thing to do when leaving a relationship is to rationalize the reasons that motivated it. If you have been dumped, or if the other person decided to end the relationship, you are no longer loved. While this does not define your love, it is something you need to realize as soon as possible.
Emotional pain: The reason you can not stop thinking about your ex-boyfriend
Ethan Ross, a professor at the University of Michigan, conducted a study in which he showed that the brain interprets social rejection and marital breakdown in the same way as when you are burned. In other words, the emotional pain we suffer is similar to physical pain. This also explains why it is so difficult for you to move on and stop thinking about your ex-boyfriend.
Attachment, memories of the past and the impossibility of accepting reality feed the sadness. Instead of making everything easier with each passing day, the pain becomes much more acute.
What can you do?
After each major breakup, you have to grieve. Grief is a stage where you allow for suffering and pain and then vent it. After grief comes acceptance. This is the last step where we free ourselves from memories to create new ones. Giving way to a new chapter in life full of new projects and goals is always the best option.
Do not hesitate to ask for expert help if you become aware that it is impossible for you to move on, heal the wound and above all, stop thinking about those who no longer think of you.
