Neta Bar is a business administration sophomore and opinion columnist for Mustang News. Her views reflected in this piece don’t necessarily reflect those of Mustang News.
Allow me to paint you a quick picture of my first quarter of college: in the span of three glorious months, I was diagnosed with a sizable liver tumor (which I would later find out was benign), my maternal grandfather passed away and, of course, I was dumped. All undoubtedly delightful events, but you may be surprised to know which of them turned out to be the most emotionally crippling.
Dealing with a health crisis and a death in the family are both circumstances deemed reasonably excusable by not just Cal Poly professors, but evidently the greater community. The third matter, however, is perceived as a condition worthy of rom-coms, ice cream and nothing more.
When I spoke to my instructors and employers about my extenuating circumstances, I was, for the most part, met with an abundance of empathy and understanding. While relieved, I couldn’t help but find irony in the fact that the stressor that was weighing on me the hardest (and with which I was coping the least) was one that would never be given the time of day.
The fundamental issue of this runs deeper than pure dismissal. The fact of the matter is that no one in their right mind would ever approach an employer, professor or any superior in their lives and cite a breakup as the reason for needing an extension or extra support.
Some might find this phenomenon to be a rational one; after all, it’s just a breakup. In the name of a rational perspective, let’s take a look at the neuroscience that occurs when someone emerges from a long-term relationship (read: gets their heart broken to the point of emotional disintegration).
In healthy relationships, humans consistently release a variety of chemicals that are known to be the “happy hormones” that keep our brains stimulated and content: serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin. When we endure a breakup, we become dysregulated and, in many cases, go into actual neurological withdrawal. The sudden deficit in these neurotransmitters can cause immense psychological (and even physiological) distress, impairing our daily functioning in a way much like an actual diagnosable illness.
This is merely a surface level, tip-of-the-iceberg overview of what goes on in the brain when we separate from a significant other. One could dive even deeper into the neurobiological processes that occur right after a breakup, such as tangible reductions in activity within the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for cognitive functions such as attention and decision-making.
Neuroscience jargon aside, the truth here is simple: when we go through breakups, we feel like shit. It’s hard to focus and even harder to engage. It’s not always at the forefront of your mind, but even so, there seems to be a permanent dark cloud over your head, dismal and unrelenting. Distressing to the point that ice cream and rom-coms simply will not suffice.
And yet, we’re expected to go about our days like normal –– working and socializing as if nothing has changed. This theme is ingrained in our culture far beyond breakups alone. Mental health dips, financial problems, familial fallouts –– all incapacitating in their own respect, yet still dismissed as not quite valid enough, not quite excusable.
We have a selection of norms set in stone for what we deem sufficiently distressing, facilitating a toxic assumption that a struggle must pass some sort of invisible threshold in order to be perceived with sympathy instead of judgment.
We glorify self care and preservation of emotional health, but nonetheless delegitimize the very stressors that might lead to mental decline. In turn, people have no choice but to lie, displacing the root of their sadness because the genuine cause isn’t up to par by society’s standards. They isolate, they suppress, they avoid — anything to take cover from the dark cloud.
If we were to allow people the flexibility of social support, an adjustment of the unforgiving threshold, we could foster an environment conducive to actual, honest healing – to make the dark cloud feel just a little less unrelenting.