If you have gone through a heartbreak -- what are the 'recovery stages'?

[iBelieve In Symmetry]

From what you've read, or from personal experience. I understand this may vary.

There are usual stages that people go through while heartbroken and I am curious to know what stages you went through, or anything in that area.

 

I am currently trying to cope with the end of my 3 year relationship that ended about a month ago. I feel I need to be assured that this won't be forever, 'cause my moods have been all over the place. They go up and down, and are constantly changing and I'm terribly afraid that my moods are never going to be stable again! One moment I feel hopeful for the future, another I feel simply okay, other times I feel down and sad, and so far about once a week (usually Friday nights... weird), I feel downright depressed and hopeless. And all these moods changing all the time is just completely overwhelming.

 

Anyways, any insight?

 

Please, and thank you. We'll get through this together, Strangers.

[ConfusedPanda]

I went (and am still going) through the stages of grief. Sat in shock/numbness for about a week. Literally sat there for a week and couldn't think, couldn't eat, shook like a leaf at times and would go to bed worn out from being so tense. Then came the panic, feeling like I'd be alone forever, that the ex was gone forever, that I'd lost the best thing that ever happened to me. Then the lonliness and missing him, not being able to see or talk to him killed me, feeling like no one knew what I was feeling. Then there was some anger thrown in, angry at him for what he had done, angry at myself for ignoring the signs. But the worst was depression, everything felt hopeless, nothing sounded fun and all I could think was "oh my gosh, this is all I have to look forward to for the rest of my life, just getting by day after day" And like you, my moods were all over the place, even within a given hour. In the last couple of days, I've started feeling some acceptance, like ok, he's not coming back and I'm ok with that, I'll be ok. Its helped to start making goals for myself and look forward to achieving them (buying a new house and hopefully taking a trip by the end of the year, though the trip is bittersweet b/c I wish he could be with me).

 

I have seen a marked change in the last few days though, like the good hopeful feelings are more frequent than the crappy feelings and I assume it will continue to do that until I quit feeling the crappy feelings.

[dobler33]

there are stages of grief. i am a therapist, i should know. denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. DABDA, as we call it in the trade. we learn these stages like equations, like geography; these are the territories through which people must pass on their way to "healing". what they don't tell you in all those hallowed halls and all those smudgy photocopied readers is how real, how endless, how inescapably ****ing concrete it feels to be in it. my training - all 85 grand of it - taught me how to help others through each stage. there is no article or class that can tell you how to get through them yourself. nobody tells you about the psychotic disbelief, the mad unfounded hope, the delusional rawness that comes when every single thing - the birds, the sidewalk, your own breath, your own body - reminds you of the one you lost. there is no preparing for this. the toddler inside kicks and screams and insists that it is not so - anyone who has tried to put a 2 year old to bed will know what i'm talking about. the exhaustion is there, defeat written all over the damp defiant body, but the brave and bloody-minded little heart fights on. no no no no no nononononononono........ i made those sounds the day it ended. shameful but true. i fought it like the toddler fights sleep, fights the dark, fights being left alone. it did no good. so i am grieving.

 

today i went to church. this is actually quite hilarious - i am a staunch and near-militant atheist, card carrying member of the major atheist political organizations and obnoxious ranter at dinner tables on the subject of the fantasy of religion, opiate of the masses. in my city there is a church that is well known for its music and its progressive politics, and for the fact that you do not have to believe in god to go there and get in on the love. a non-religious friend of mine has been telling me i have to go, "just for the clapping", and last night as i wracked my brain for some way of getting a moment's relief from this grief i decided to give it a shot. she had warned me that you want to sit next to someone you wouldn't mind hugging and holding hands with, because apparently there is quite a lot of this sort of thing going on during the service. ushers come around with fans and kleenex; it is expected that you will have some kind of massive emotional event in which you will sweat and weep and love on the people around you. my knees were weak with the relief of it, of not having to look like i'm ok and whole when i feel like a picasso woman, broken and reassembled into something unrecognizable even to myself. i started crying almost immediately. in this church there are addicts and homeless people and flamboyant queens and little old ladies, children running wild on the steps of the stage in a state of joyful noise. the pastor welcomes everyone, including me - atheism is among the list of belief systems rattled off in the beginning of the sermon as a way of reminding us that they love us all, no matter what or who we are. the band is tight and perfect and the choir must have about 100 people in it, all colors and ages. big open harmonies roar up to the rafters and shake you down into tears, and you are not the only one. for a minute, regardless of what you believe or disbelieve, you are not alone. amazing grace that saved a wretch like me, if only for a sunday morning.

 

my husband is also an atheist. he is in addition a nihilist and an existentialist, which makes for kind of a removed and isolative person. he is highly intellectual and generally suspicious of human emotion and human interaction, and the fact that he is married to a therapist seems oddly to affirm his grim view of the psychic landscape. i believe he sees me as a doctor, a fixer of broken people who have failed to contain themselves or have become too needy. despite the fact that he episodically exhibits classic depressive behavior - not leaving the house, or showering, or moving away from the computer for many, many hours, losing all interest in food or sex or the outside world in any form, including me - he has consistently refused therapy or any kind of treatment. this, he believes, is the way people truly are. all the rest, all the closeness and intimacy and exchange and vibrancy and tremor and shake of the way we poor lost apes interact with one another, all of this is a construct. he sees no point in trying to understand others. no one will ever really understand anyone, he says.

 

the man i fell in love with, that i had an affair with, was the exact opposite. his capacity to love the people he loved and his willingness to open himself to those people was a miracle to me, an inspiration. "i am fighting for your heart," he once wrote to me. "i will do this by opening mine as wide as i can." in the face of pain or uncertainty or confusion or fear, in the face of all those terrors that make us withdraw and defend and shut down, he opened his heart further. love was the defining and motivating force in the world for him. i cannot see my husband standing in those pews with me, clapping and weeping and weak-kneed with gratitude in that sea of love, but i can see him. i can't have him, but i know that i want that love and life and joy in my relationships. i want to live my life with someone who thinks the world is worth loving.

 

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. i move in and out of these places from moment to moment, a blind woman stumbling from room to room in a house i cannot escape. the myth is that you progress, that if you can get through one you will then live through the next and the next until you are out of the woods. total bloody ****e, that. it is never really over. breath by breath, gutwrenching wave of loss after gutwrenching wave of loss, you just get used to it. eventually i will just get used to the way the world feels after.....after what? after love? does that mean that there will never be anything like that love again? after loss? does that mean it really is lost for good? this is how it goes, you see. depression to denial, moving backwards, and this morning a fair bit of bargaining as i sat in the church wondering if what they were all saying is true - that prayer brings miracles - and trying to calculate the odds of it bringing him back. if it could, i thought, you'd never get me up off my knees.

 

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