What To Do With A Broken Heart

We walk around in a daze. We make up lies and we tell them to ourselves. We go over and over it again in our minds as we attempt to decipher exactly what went wrong and who is to blame. We wonder if there’s any way possible we can fix it. We agonize, stop eating, agonize some more, find we cannot concentrate on work, pull away from people, and go through an intense mourning period. Some folks even go as far as to want to give up.

If we’re not careful, we can give up on ourselves.

That’s the way it works when we have a broken heart and we don’t know how to fix it—when we don’t know how to make someone we love more than life itself love us.

As the speaker in the Ted Talk below notes, we have all probably been there at one time or another…or another. Perhaps we’ve been there several times. We become like a broken record playing it over and over again in our minds. Sometimes the pain is so intense, we don’t know how to tend to it.

I wish this Ted Talk had been around when I’d been through a few doozies. I may have actually listened to Guy Winch because he makes so much sense. He tells it like it is, and as we listen, his ideas sink in. I thought I’d share this today for anyone who may need a little push to find himself or herself again.

As Valentine’s Day is around the corner and tons of people are celebrating the somewhat ridiculous holiday, there are many who will be sad and broken-hearted. There are some folks who are trying to get over a lost love or broken relationship. Patience is advised to those of us who act as friends during these trying times as you will see. Patience and understanding.

Remember how it felt when you went through it, and promise yourself to be there for someone who needs you.

It’s true–we can’t make people love us. But we do have the power to be there for people who have lost love and their hearts are breaking.

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Stephanie Verni is Professor of Business Communication at Stevenson University and is the author of Inn Significant,  Baseball Girl, and Beneath the Mimosa Tree. Along with her colleagues Leeanne Bell McManus and Chip Rouse, she is a co-author of Event Planning: Communicating Theory and Practice, published by Kendall-Hunt.