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Anger, abandonment, guilt: there are many emotions that can come into play when you are in experiencing the end of a relationship. How to get out of it unscathed? There is no antidote but help can come from mindfulness, or rather from ability to train our awareness.
“I have been working with couples for a long time and over the years I have been able to observe the difficulties that are encountered more frequently in relationships: prejudices and misunderstandings about love that often end up doing much more damage than you can imagine”.
To speak is Nicoletta Cinotti, psychologist, psychotherapist, mindfulness expert and author of the new book Love, Mindfulness and Relationships – Mindful qualities to love without misunderstanding, published by Hoepli.
In the volume, the author accompanies readers to the discovery of all stages of a relationship, from falling in love to love to building a lasting bond, with exercises and food for thought for face the trials that may be encountered along the road and clearing the field from erroneous beliefs.
The main misconception about love? Just to think that it must be forever.
«We come from an era in which marriage was indissoluble – says the psychotherapist – so if you got married you had to hope that that love would last forever. Afterwards we did everything to ensure that love was restored its quality of emotion and feeling, without accepting the inevitable consequence: if love is an emotion we must take into account that it will meet all the ups and downs of our emotions, including their end “.
Indeed, accepting it is not always easy. How then theto awareness and mindfulness can they help us?
“We must make a distinction – continues Nicoletta Cinotti – whoever lets an aspect of awareness that is letting go alive, whoever is left lives a completely different dimension which is the difficulty letting go and difficulty responding to what’s going on and it is in this sense that mindfulness offers many tools ».
In fact, the basic assumption is that awareness can help us not only to get better but also to avoid engaging in toxic behaviors, typical of those that are in effect emotional addictions.
«Generally, when a relationship ends, two important aspects take over – continues the psychotherapist and mindfulness expert – we cannot give up the pleasure that the relationship gave us and we reject the pain that that situation causes us. By rejecting the pain we end up like this or for persecute those who have left us or for persecute ourselves, giving us blame ».
How to save yourself from this type of harmful dynamics? there 6 mindful tips from the expert for coping with the end of a relationship.