Why a Breakup Can Feel Like Drug Withdrawal--and How You Can Use Tools from Addiction Recovery to Help You Get Over Your Ex
Telling someone to go no contact after a breakup is pretty much like telling someone in withdrawal to stop drinking, or using. It only works, some of the time.
Just telling yourself to go no contact after a breakup isn't enough.
The same brain regions that get activated in withdrawal from drugs and alcohol are activated when we go through a breakup or romantic rejection. While some people are able to power through powerful urges, others struggle with repeated relapse. In the context of a breakup, the relapses can look like texting your ex late at night, sleeping with your ex and then regretting it later, or failing to pursue new dating opportunities or life opportunities in the hopes of reconcilation.
Drugs and alcohol in excess can result in missed opportunities and self harm. But these are not the only addictions that can cause harm. Breakups and withdrawal from romantic love can also have a negative affect on a person’s life. When we go through a tough breakup, we might isolate from friends or family, might struggle to get work done, might make poor life choices, and might fail to take proactive steps to heal.
On-again-off-again relationships not only result in lost time and opportunities, but can also lengthen our recovery period post breakup. You might know intellectually that talking to your ex isn’t helpful, but when he calls, you can’t bring yourself to let it ring.
There’s science to back up this phenomenon.
Researchers Helen Fisher and Lucy Brown published a study in the Journal of Neurophysiology that explores the addictive nature of romantic love and offers some evidence that romantic withdrawal can be just as powerful as drug withdrawal. Fisher and Brown performed brain imaging studies of college students who had recently gone through a breakup. When the study participants looked at a photo of their former partner, the same parts of the brain associated with craving in cocaine addiction were activated. This part of the brain region known as the nucelus accumbens and the oribitofrontal and prefrontal cortex are in charge of the brain's dopamine reward system and are connected to craving and addiction.
The researchers hypothesized that the process of going through romantic rejection or a breakup was similar to going through addictive withdrawal. In the aftermath of a breakup, a powerful survival system gets activated--it's not something you can just ignore.
This is why telling yourself to go no contact after a breakup isn't enough.
Telling someone to go no contact after a breakup is pretty much like telling someone in withdrawal to stop drinking, or using.
While it is possible to successfully override the brain systems that will drive us to reach out to our ex, there’s a big mental load involved in resistance. For some of us, the urge to reach out will sometimes overpower even the strongest commitment to go no contact.
People who succeed in quitting their addictions often get support.
And yet, short of seeking expensive therapy and counseling (which sometimes doesn't help), we don't offer much real research-backed support for people going through breakups. All the internet articles and videos telling you that you have to "just do it" when it comes to going no contact after a breakup aren't going to help at one a.m. when the urge to text hits you, or when he calls you on Sunday morning.
Given that breakup and romantic rejection are so similar to addictive withdrawal, why aren't we approaching our breakups like we approach addiction recovery?
A breakup can be one of the most painful things we go through in life, and yet we have so few tools to help us cope. We're just told to go no contact after our breakup and to distract ourselves by focusing on hobbies and friendships, but for so many of us, this just doesn't work.
If you've told yourself that you're going to go no contact after your breakup, but then struggled to follow through, you're not alone.
But given the difficulty of going no contact, what does work?
By using the same tools individuals with substance dependencies use to fight their addictions, we might be able to be more successful in staying no contact and surviving the difficult withdrawal period post-breakup.
SMART Recovery (Self Management and Recovery Training) offers some powerful tools that can help individuals “with substance dependencies and problem behaviors.” If we start to approach contacting our ex like a problem behavior we want to quit, we can start to use the same powerful tools that help individuals with substance dependencies manage cravings, triggers, and urges to help us manage the desire to text our ex and help us pause before reaching out to our ex after a bad date or stressful life event.
SMART Recovery uses four key tools to help individuals break the habits and dependencies holding them back. These tools include:
Building Motivation: Getting clear about why you’re quitting a particular behavior. In the context of a breakup, this would involve getting very clear about why the relationship ended.
Manage Urges and Triggers. Keeping a log of situations, people, places, and things that make you want to use or in the case of a breakup, text your ex or get back together.
Manage thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Our feelings don’t have to govern our thoughts or our behaviors. In the context of a breakup, this means labelling our feelings when they arise, and getting mindful about the thoughts we think and the things we do when we feel a certain way.
Balance. Ultimately, the goal is to live a happy, balanced life, that involves healthy choices aligned with values and goals.
Let’s look briefly at how the tools of SMART Recovery can be applied to helping someone who is struggling to stay no contact with their ex.
With SMART Recovery, the first step is to “build and maintain motivation.” For individuals with substance dependencies this might look like reflecting on the costs and benefits of using a substance of choice and reflecting on one’s larger values and goals. Often, substances offer short-term rewards with deep long-term costs. Similarly, a person who has recently broken up with their ex might perform a cost benefit analysis of the relationship as whole, reflecting on the reasons why the relationship didn’t work out (for example, disrespect, infidelity, lack of alignment of long-term goals, not feeling like a priority, or drifting apart). Then, a person who has recently gone through a breakup can contextualize the urge to text, reach out, or get back together with an ex as offering short-term relief from the withdrawal of the breakup, with high long-term costs (finding a relationship characterized by mutual respet or trust; finding a partner who wants a serious relationship, marriage, or a family).
Next, the SMART program offers practical tools from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy to help individuals cope with triggers and urges. If we see a breakup as involving a withdrawal period, there will be a period of time where we might have urges to contact or get back together with our ex, or we might have to be extra careful around triggers (a bad date, a certain cologne, or certain places). Individuals with substance dependencies are encouraged to keep a log of when they are tempted to use, and to note down what they were doing, where they were, and who they were with. This way, they are better able to identify triggers and urges. They are also encouraged to avoid people, places, and things that might lead them to use.
Individuls getting over an ex can do the same thing. What are you doing, where are you, and who are you with when you feel the urge to text or get back together with your ex? Certain things might also be triggering for a while—like a bad date, stress at work, finding a photo from happier times in your desk drawer, big anniversaries, and even certain locations where you spent time together. Being aware of these triggers, and taking steps to avoid the ones you can control, can help you be more successful in staying no contact, and speed up the breakup recovery process.
SMART Recovery also teaches individuals how to manage their thoughts, their feelings, and their behaviors. Feelings arise and cannot be stopped, but the thoughts we have about our feelings and the actions we take when we feel a certain way can be controlled. If you feel lonely and sad, you can tell yourself that you’re going to be alone forever if you don’t reach out to your ex because they are the only person on this planet who will ever love you, or you can tell yourself that feeling lonely and sad is a normal part of the breakup recovery process and that with time, the feelings will subside, and you’ll eventually find someone who truly meets your needs.
Finally, SMART recovery helps individuals contextualize their goals and values with practical tools to help them live healthy balanced lives. Simple things like getting enough sleep, eating healthy food, exercising daily, and connecting with other people socially can make a big difference in the breakup recovery process. Yet, for a person getting over a breakup, balance after a breakup often looks like breaking old dating patterns.
Healing from a breakup is just the beginning. Many individuals find that they do the work. They go no contact. But then, when they start dating again, they find themselves in the same kind of relationship with someone new. Different body, same relationship.
Breaking these patterns requires deeper work.
If you find yourself dating the same unavailable people, or with partners who don’t match your deeper values or goals, you’re not alone.
The Conscious Dating Coach offers subscribers research-backed strategies to help you break their dating patterns, along with systems of accountability to keep you on track even when you’re tempted to get together with someone you know deep down inside isn’t right for you.
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