Heartbreak: why some breakups shatter us completely (Therapy practice in Paris 10 - for Expats)

Some breakups take a few weeks to get over. Others last months — waking you in the middle of the night, seeping into every corner of your life. Breakups that feel disproportionate, even to yourself. Why do some separations cause so much damage?

The answer doesn't lie in the length of the relationship, or in the "logic" of what happened. It often runs much deeper.

A breakup is never just a breakup

When a relationship ends, it isn't only a person you lose. It's a version of yourself — the one who existed within that bond, within that shared project, within that particular way of being seen and recognized. Sometimes it's also the hope of a family, of stability, of a future you had imagined together.

And for some people, the breakup reactivates something far older: a fear of being abandoned, a deep-seated belief that they are not "enough," an attachment wound rooted in childhood that was waiting, somewhere, to be struck again.

Why does the pain seem to linger?

Several reasons can explain a grief that sets in and refuses to lift:

• Anxious or disorganised attachment: certain relational patterns learned early in life make separations particularly destabilising

• Enmeshed relationships: when the boundaries between self and other were porous, losing the other person feels like losing yourself

• Ambivalent or toxic relationships: paradoxically, the most difficult relationships are often the ones we recover from most slowly, because they activate mechanisms of traumatic attachment

• Grieving the ideal: we don't mourn only the real person, but the person we believed they were — or hoped they would become

What the body and emotions go through

Science has confirmed it: the pain of a breakup activates the same regions of the brain as physical pain. This is not a metaphor — it genuinely hurts. The body may respond with insomnia, loss of appetite, deep fatigue, a restlessness that won't settle.

These reactions are not signs of weakness. They tell you that you are grieving a bond that truly mattered.

The role of therapy after a breakup

Therapy isn't there to erase the pain or fast-forward through grief. It offers a space to:

• Name what you are feeling without judging yourself — the anger, the shame, the relief mixed with guilt, the longing

• Understand what this relationship taught you about yourself and your needs

• Explore the relational patterns you repeat, and what they reveal about your history

• Rebuild an inner foundation — not to "stop needing others," but to stop losing yourself entirely in the need for someone else

If any of this resonates, I invite you to my practice in Paris 10th arrondissement for therapy sessions in English. Please feel free to contact me to book a first session.