Heartache
Heartache is the group of physical and mental sensations that tends to accompany highly emotional, negative events. It can occur in response to many situations, such as a breakup or the loss of a loved one. Heartache is caused by many nodes in your network feeling the need to physically express their frustration with the situation. This can create a long backlog of needs very quickly, however, you can get ahead of the problem, and even prevent it entirely.
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Current Literature
See Broken Heart.
See Grief.
Observations
It can be hard to go through a breakup, to grieve someone dying, to deal with an extreme event such as a cheating spouse. The pressure in your chest. The inability to focus. It can feel terrible. However, the heartache sensation is not about you. You are going through something difficult, but you are not the only one going through the difficult situation that you find yourself in. Certain parts of your body's network are trying to process it too. In doing so, some of its population suddenly come up with a long list of new needs. Some of those needs help, and some of those needs are small motions that are complete nonsense and inconsequential to anything. However, it is important that every need be quickly identified and acted on. Every node in your body that is expressing a new need in that moment must be able to express themselves physically or with your attention in whatever manner that they individually see fit at the time. They must feel like they have agency in their own body, just like you do. They must be able to express some form of control over their own body; the body that you are all sharing. Remember, it was not just your relationship. It was not just your friend or family member. You share a body and a life.
After those nodes see that the action they directed you to perform is inconsequential, they likely will not ask you to perform it again during the next heartache. These systems do learn quickly. Stopping that first heartache before it occurs is the difficult part. You must check for needs often, and you must act on them quickly, to prevent a need list backlog. Doing so will prevent depression and both short long-term issues regarding the event that caused your heartache. Cognitive deficits caused by heartache are prevented entirely, and you may deal with your messed up situation calmly and clearly.
