Broken Heart: Hypnosis Helps

Edwin Selij
August 10, 2018

Heartbreak, grief, the loss of a loved one, there are all kinds of reasons for a broken heart. A broken heart is mostly linked to being heartbroken, but so that's not the only thing you can get a broken heart from. That's why in this blog I discuss what a broken heart is, what you can do about it, and how hypnosis can help with this

Broken Heart Syndrome

A broken heart is something called Tako-tsubocardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome in medical science.

When you suffer from a broken heart, you suddenly have a weakening in the muscular part of your heart. This causes your heart to behave like a balloon being inflated.

This symptom is triggered by significant emotional stress, such as breaking up with a partner, divorce, the death of a loved one, arguments with a partner, financial problems, and fear of public speaking or other similar intense fears.

Postmenopausal women, in particular, may suffer from this syndrome, often during a period of significant emotional stress. This is usually triggered by negative events (in just over 95% of cases), but sometimes also by a positive event or emotion (in nearly 5% of cases).

A broken heart is often characterized by chest pain, which can resemble the pain of a heart attack. The same medication often helps with a broken heart as well, but in the long term, treatment focuses on lifestyle changes and coping with stress or emotional events.

Emotions and a broken heart

When you suffer from a broken heart, you often enter a kind of grieving process, as it is usually related to the loss of a loved one. In a grieving process all kinds of negative emotions come to the fore and it depends very much on how you deal with this how your heart will develop. These include, for example:

  • Grief
  • Anger
  • Anxiety

A broken heart isn’t limited to the loss of a loved one; serious financial problems can also cause you to suffer from it. This may stem from a fear of poverty or having to drastically change your lifestyle all at once.

Your job and work-related stress can also lead to a broken heart. Continuing to work even while you’re experiencing burnout is an unwise choice.

So even positive emotions can lead to broken heart syndrome, which is then referred to precisely as happy heart syndrome. The probability of this happening on your birthday, for example, is 27% higher than on any other day of the year.

Tips Against a Broken Heart

As mentioned, medication can help with the acute symptoms of a broken heart, but it’s also important to take a close look at your lifestyle and to really relax.

To do this, you can first apply some practical tips:

Lavender Foot Bath

Research shows that weekly lavender foot baths are relaxing and promote recovery from heartbreak. So treat your feet to the soothing scent of lavender.

Massage

Stress often shoots people in the muscles. That weight pressing down on your shoulders? Nothing but tense muscles in your body. By getting a weekly massage for the first month after a broken heart, you are already creating an incredible amount of relaxation that will benefit recovery.

Healthy Nutrition

Healthy eating is incredibly important for a healthy body. Some people sometimes say you are what you eat, and what would you rather be an apple or a potato French fry? What will benefit your body more to heal itself again?

Hypnosis can help you maintain a healthy diet if that’s still very difficult for you right now.

Rest

Sleep is incredibly important, but the emotions caused by a broken heart can make it difficult to sleep. Try to get some sleep anyway. Pay attention to your sleep hygiene and, if necessary, use hypnosis techniques to fall asleep more quickly.

Hypnosis and a broken heart

The majority of broken heart patients have it due to negative emotions, such as through the loss of a loved one. There are then a number of emotions that go through to process this loss, namely:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. What if...
  4. Depression/dip
  5. Acceptance

Denial

Initially, you may deny the situation as it is. It is difficult to process that something is not going the way you expected and that you need to rearrange your life.

It also helps you cope with the flood of emotions that come with sudden changes that are difficult to handle.

Anger

At some point, denial no longer works, and that’s when you might get angry —angry at the partner who has abandoned you in one way or another, angry at the world, and angry at the people around you.

What if...

Then come thoughts about how you could have avoided this situation. What if you had done this now or if you had done that. It's incredibly frustrating because you can't do it now anyway.

Lingering in the past only makes the current situation more painful.

Depression/dip

If the “what if” phase goes on for too long, it can make you incredibly depressed. You lose your appetite, you cry a lot, and it’s hard to sleep.

This phase drains both your physical and mental energy because you’re often filled with regret. On top of that, you can feel incredibly lonely, even when you’re surrounded by family and friends.

Acceptance

Over time, you come to accept that you can’t change the situation and that this is now your new reality. You have to move on with your life; of course, you sometimes look back and feel sadness for what was, but what is becomes more important.

These stages are gone through by each person at different speeds, and it is also important to allow yourself to grieve the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship or going through a divorce.

Hypnosis Against a Broken Heart

Hypnosis for a broken heart is particularly important for reducing stress and improving how you cope with it. The loss of a loved one or something dear to you can initially make you feel very insecure, which in turn causes additional stress.

That’s why you’ll first leave with a boost to your self-confidence. The most important thing is to instill the belief that a person’s self-worth does not depend on the relationships they have.

This can be done by first asking questions about what was good about the relationship and what influence the person themselves had on the good aspects of the relationship. Then you can use the answers as hypnotic suggestions that can be repeated during self-hypnosis.

These may include suggestions such as:

"I'm social."

"I am thoughtful."

"I can stand up for myself."

"I get things done."

Back to your power

Another way to boost self-confidence—and thereby reduce the stress of suddenly having to handle everything on your own or in a different way—is to use hypnosis to return to a moment when you achieved success in your life. This is very similar to regression, but it’s still slightly different.

Indeed, recalling this memory focuses attention on what a person himself did and thought in moments of success. This reinforces the feeling that a person can do something about their situation and face problems themselves.

When you are in hypnosis you say where you were, when it was and how it went. To improve your sense of self-confidence, the hypnotist repeats your phrases and gradually changes them to the present tense.

For example:

Client: "I was in Amsterdam."

Hypnotist: "You were in Amsterdam and then?"

Client: "We walked over the dam."

Hypnotist: "You cross the dam and then what happens?"

Client: "...

Etc. etc.

These two hypnosis techniques work well against a broken heart because it helps a person remember the good from the cause of the broken heart, from the relationship and to remember what influence they themselves had on this good.

Secondly, these techniques help because it helps them to live in the here and now again, moving more quickly to the final step of acceptance. Especially when the what if phase leads to true depression, it is important to reach the acceptance phase so that you can get on with your life again. Hypnosis can offer a helping hand in this.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis actually works? Then come to an event or sign up for a course at the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.

Sources:

https://search.proquest.com/openview/1e977a829ea254f8608a6a81294621fb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1036412

https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/37/37/2823/2469928

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1847940/