A broken heart (or heartbreak) is a common metaphor used to describe the intense emotional pain or suffering one feels after losing a loved one, through death, divorce, moving, being dumped, or other means. It is an extremely old and widespread metaphor, dating to at least the Indian Ramayana writings (400 BC - 200 AD).[1]
Heartbreak is usually associated with losing a spouse or loved one, though losing a parent, child, pet, or close friend can also "break one's heart". The phrase refers to the physical pain one may feel in the chest as a result of the loss. Although "heartbreak" is usually a metaphor, there is a condition -- appropriately known as Broken Heart Syndrome -- where a traumatizing incident triggers the brain to distribute chemicals that weaken heart tissue.And then we have our philosophical point of view:
For many people having a broken heart is something that may not be recognized at first, as it takes time for an emotional or physical loss to be fully acknowledged. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson states:
Human beings are not always aware of what they are feeling. Like animals, they may not be able to put their feelings into words. This does not mean they have no feelings. Sigmund Freud once speculated that a man could be in love with a woman for six years and not know it until many years later. Such a man, with all the goodwill in the world, could not have verbalized what he did not know. He had the feelings, but he did not know about them. It may sound like a paradox — paradoxical because when we think of a feeling, we think of something that we are consciously aware of feeling. As Freud put it in his 1915 article The Unconscious: "It is surely of the essence of an emotion that we should be aware of it.' Yet it is beyond question that we can 'have' feelings that we do not know about."I feel as if someone dug their hand in my chest...and ripped out my heart and have left my internal organs inside out. To be continued...
That is a very familiar feeling to me.
ReplyDeleteBut it will go away.
Time heals all wounds.