Withdrawal from the relationship: why do you feel like you are going to die?
You just broke up with your boyfriend/girlfriend and you can’t eat, sleep, you’re panicking, you’re disoriented, you can’t concentrate at work and you feel like you’re going to die. Maybe you feel nauseous, have headaches, feel depressed, can’t function at home or at work, have cravings for the person, have suicidal thoughts, feel shaky, forgetful, or a host of other symptoms that make you feel horrible. .
Welcome to withdrawal from the relationship. Yes, the symptoms you feel are the same symptoms a person addicted to drugs or alcohol or any other addicted person feels when their “substance” is removed from their lives.
How can this be so? And why is it so intense?
I have written several articles on the effects that dopamine has on the brain. Dopamine is the “feel good” transmitter that our brain produces in response to something that triggers it. The trigger can be positive: exercising, falling in love, being surprised with a wonderful gift from a loved one; and it can also be triggered by something negative: spousal abuse, an unexpected response or event, drug/alcohol abuse.
The bottom line is this: our brains like dopamine and don’t care what we have to do to give it to them as long as they get their “fix.”
When we find ourselves out of a relationship with someone, it doesn’t really matter to the brain whether it was a healthy or destructive situation. As long as the brain met its dopamine needs, it felt good. But once that supply is gone from our lives, the brain goes into a bad mood and starts inundating us with all sorts of physical and psychological symptoms. Sometimes these symptoms are so severe that we willingly go back to the supply we left off, including horrible and painful relationships, just to hit that dopamine level and thereby calm down and quell the terrible withdrawal. This is one of the reasons why some people cannot leave a bad relationship. It’s also why we feel like we’re dying when we’re fired from what we thought was a good relationship. It’s like being on a treadmill running 5 miles per hour for a long period of time and then all of a sudden the treadmill shuts off. We are still moving, even though the treadmill is no longer moving us. Instead of euphoric dopamine production, we crash and burn in a dysphoric state.
The brain knows that there are many ways to get our dopamine “kicks”. But as creatures of habit, we will search for the same thing over and over again until it destroys us; Or, instead, we can change the addictions and leave the drama-filled relationship and do other things to satisfy our dopamine needs. With each episode of addiction comes the need to up the ante because the brain will need more and more as it gets used to the ever increasing levels of dopamine. The pattern becomes a brain disease that constantly talks to us and tells us to feed it more and more. This explains why people literally feel like they are going into withdrawal when they end a relationship. The brain is asking for a solution.
Anyone who has ever been through drug or alcohol rehab knows that it takes time to go through withdrawal. Time has a graceful and eloquent way of calming us down if we let it. If you or someone you know is going through relationship withdrawal, please share this information with them. Be as supportive as you can, and if you’re going through it yourself, don’t isolate yourself. Isolation will magnify symptoms and prolong recovery. Get active and stay busy doing something positive. Start walking, jogging, volunteering with animals, working out at the gym, or taking a class to positively activate the dopamine levels in your brain. And do this every day, whether you want to or not. If you wait for your feelings to catch up with you, you’ll never make it! Get a notebook and journal about your feelings each day, then put the notebook away and be proactive by doing something positive for yourself. Allow yourself just 5 minutes twice a day to cry, and then get on with your life between crying episodes. Seriously, schedule and time out your crying episodes. Then move on. Learn from the relationship and make a solid plan of what you will, won’t do, allow, won’t allow the next time you’re in a relationship. Know that in time, you will remember your withdrawal period and it will be over…for good.
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