The Brain in Love: 12 Lessons to Enhance Your Love Life by Daniel G. Amen Page B

painful to extricate, requiring alcohol and painkillers, and they left deep scars.
    When a loved one leaves us, or even when we are the ones who instigate a breakup, many of us feel like Billy Wilens. We have deep wounds, like fishhooks, that leave lasting scars. Many of us use alcohol or any sort of painkillers (such as drugs, sex, or excessive work) to medicate the pain. I have firsthand knowledge of what it takes to survive the painful loss of a love. I have left relationships and I have been left. Being left is definitely harder.
    On one occasion after being left, it felt as though I had many fishhooks in my mind and my heart that were painfully pulled whenever I remembered any good thing my lost lover had done for or with me. Pictures, songs, friends, cars, names (she had a common name), cities, pillows, and restaurants all reminded me of her. I was a neurochemical mess for nearly six months. I even scanned myself in the middle of the process to see what grief looked like in my brain. It showed excessive anterior cingulate gyrus activity (not normal for me), which was partially why I felt so sad and obsessed.
    From my own experience and work with patients who have lost loved ones, here are five tips to survive and eventually thrive through the loss of a love.
    1. Above all, stay healthy. At first, we just want to medicate the pain. We eat or drink too much, stop exercising, wallow, and isolate ourselves. Stop that behavior immediately. Watch what you eat, exercise more, not less (exercise has been found to be as effective as the antidepressant Zoloft for depression), and spend timewith your friends. Make sure you get enough sleep. During my breakup, sleep was very hard for me. The supplement kava kava was helpful on a short-term basis.
    2. Do not idealize the other person. Whenever we just focus on someone’s good qualities, the pain increases; when we focus on his or her bad qualities, the pain decreases as we are glad to be rid of them. Spend time to write out the bad times and your ex’s bad points. Whenever we lose someone we love, there is a tendency to exclusively remember the wonderful things about her. Idealizing people impairs the grieving process and makes us hurt more. Be balanced. You do not have to vilify them, but be honest about their bad qualities and focus on them to help soothe the pain. One helpful technique I found during the loss of a painful love was to make up a mnemonic that helped me remember her bad qualities. That way, when the fishhook memories pulled painfully at my heart, I could immediately remember, and silently repeat to my self, why I was glad she was gone. For example, if her name was Hanna, you could use the letters of her name to label the bad or irritating qualities: Hanna could stand for …
Hairy lip
Argumentative
Never able to say she was sorry
No memorable sex
Ambivalent about our relationship
    You may need these memory skills in the midst of grief to remember why you are happy someone is gone.
    3. Cry, then hide the pictures. In the beginning of the breakup, take some time to allow yourself to feel the pain. Crying can be a wonderful release of the built-up tension in your limbic brain. But after a good cry, eliminate the constant triggers to your nervous system. Go through the house, your computer, and workplace and collect the pictures and gifts, then hide them somewhere. Hidethem initially, rather than burning them, because you never know what will happen in the future. If you get back together, you will feel terrible about having burnt them. Time will tell. A few months down the line you will make better decisions about whether or not you want to keep some of the things that represent your relationship. But, in the short term, get them out of sight.
    4. Love must be tough. When you act weak, needy, or demanding during a breakup, you literally push the other person away. You are no longer attractive or appealing. You seem and act as a victim. Being well is not only the best