How Do You Mend A Broken Heart?

Perhaps one of the best ways I can illustrate what I mean by the heartbreak of an attachment injury is my describing the experience of a client I’ll call Ruth, who participated in my research study on resolving attachment injuries. I’ve altered many identifying characteristics in the following account to preserve her confidentiality. Ruth was an attractive, intelligent, professional woman in her late thirties whose life had been shattered four years ago when she found out her husband had been having an affair with her best friend. Although they attempted to patch things up in couples therapy, finding out her husband was continuing to lie and cheat on her led Ruth to leave the marriage and file for divorce. She went through a period of significant depression for one year that she recovered from with psychotherapy and medication.

Now four years down the road, Ruth had put her life back together and was actually enjoying life and excelling in her profession. She had many friends and close relationships with most of her family members. The only remnants of her old heartbreak, and the reason she was coming to see me for therapy, was her avoidance of a romantic relationship. Although she was an attractive, articulate, creative woman who had been pursued by several men, in our first session she shared some of the hallmarks of an attachment injury, “I always hold men at arm’s length. I know at some level that I just don’t want to get hurt again. I know that I am stronger than I was during my marriage, but I just can’t seem to let myself really trust a man again. Some part of me always seems to be saying, ‘Watch out! Be careful! You don’t want it to happen again!”

During our second session Ruth was able to get in touch with and express the literal and metaphorical extent of her heartbreak after I suggested we use a technique called Focusing to help her become aware of aware of the more subtle physical and emotional sensations associated with her unresolved feelings related to her divorce. Although her eyes were closed for the exercise, Ruth’s face lit up with a smile as she got in touch with a sense of strength and pleasure that she experienced in her stomach and led to associations of the strength and calmness she experienced in doing yoga, her passion for dancing and her connections with friends and family. When I asked her to place her hand over her heart and to breath into this area, the smile dropped away and tears appeared in the corner of her eyes and she said, “You know, my heart feels really tender, almost like it is bruised. It is like it is saying, 'touch lightly, don’t hurt me again'.”

On a hunch that maybe this tender place needed more contact with the strength and resilience, I asked Ruth to let her awareness move back to that place in her stomach. Once a sigh of relief and her returning smile indicated that she had reconnected to that place, I simply asked Ruth to imagine looking up at her heart. I don’t think either she or I were prepared for the intensity of her response. The smile quickly faded from Ruth’s face and then she put her face in her hands and started to sob intently for several seconds. When she finally sat up she said in a voice raw with emotion, “I just saw this big, purple bruised heart that was in so much pain. And then it was like I saw white light, just beams of while light bursting out of it! It is like I realize that I still have so much love to give. I’m just held back by the bruise of the betrayal and the fear it will happen again.”

While we still had much work to do in therapy, Ruth and I agreed that this experience in our second session was transformative in her being able to both physically and emotionally experience the lingering pain and fear of her heartbreak while also accessing her longing to love and to be loved that had been held back for years. Towards the end or our therapy together, I asked Ruth to once again try the Focusing exercise, she reported a sense of lightness and the image of green shoots of new grass sprouting in her heart. She also experienced a poignant image of her and her ex-husband standing by a large table in an ancient library. On the table was a book of their life together. They leafed through the book the book together, once again experiencing their passionate courtship and first years together, their up and downs, and their final heartbreak and the death of their marriage. Ruth shared that there was more of a sense balance, remembering and honoring the good without forgetting the bad. Then she saw her and her ex putting the book of their life back in place upon a shelf. Then they embraced and turned and walked off in opposite directions.

Shortly after this session, Ruth finally began to date again and soon settled into a relationship with a man she shared similar interests with as well as a great deal of physical chemistry. When I saw her at a follow-up session a year later she shared that she had decided to end the relationship on good terms and had continued to date others. “The main difference now, is that I don’t feel desperate and frightened. I actually have a feeling that I’m fine as I am and can keep exploring till I find someone who is a good fit for me.” She smiled, “And the main thing is, I feel like I have all my heart back! No more bruises.”

Dr. Michael R. Bridges is CFR's Co-Director of Research and Senior Staff Therapist. He has presented and written extensively on the topic of healing a broken heart, and enjoys working with individuals and couples. He can be reached at 215-382-6680 x3121.

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