“Treat Everyone like they have a Broken Heart, because they probably do,” Kathy Norris said in a recent Grosse Pointe News article by Jody McVeigh. “People look cool on the outside, but they could have something painful on the inside,” she said. “Maybe it’s old stuff, like dreams that were thwarted or maybe they lost someone. Everybody has something like that.” I think this quote is going to stick with me for the rest of my life. It really resonates with me.
I had a friend a while back who thought she was the only one suffering from a broken heart. She could not understand that our seemingly happy go lucky friends, who appeared to have the “perfect life,” were also suffering from a heartache, because she could not see it. She thought that because she was the only one sharing her heartache, that others did not suffer from one. I knew she was wrong, because I was keenly aware of what was going on in my other friends’ lives as well as my own. We just were not vocal about it. I think most people are carrying a heartache. That is just life. Sometimes you see it, and sometimes you don’t.
Imagine if we could all treat each other as if we knew we each carried heartache? Like Kathy, I think we would find more empathy, show more kindness, be more patient. Being human, we cannot avoid heartache. It is the human experience.
In a new book, How to Fix a Broken Heart, Guy Winch pours through research and scientific studies, to reveal how and why heartbreak impacts our brain and our behavior in dramatic and unexpected ways. “Real heartbreak is unmistakable. We think of nothing else. We feel nothing else. We care about nothing else. Yet while we wouldn’t expect someone to return to daily activities immediately after suffering a broken limb, heartbroken people are expected to function normally in their lives, despite the emotional pain they feel.“ I think this book is a must read for anyone looking to heal a broken heart.
Watch Guy Winch’s Ted Talk on How to Fix a Broken Heart here.
Read about the science behind a “broken heart” here.
Read about moving from heartache to something better here.
