Breakup Ideation: Thinking About the Worst Case Scenario
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Conflicts in relationships are inevitable and might cause significant emotional distress to partners. Partners can feel various intense negative emotions afterward, such as anger, sadness, or hopelessness. The intensity might be hard to carry, especially when the conflict is not resolved. In order to take this heaviness, we can employ some coping mechanisms. These mechanisms aim to relieve emotional distress and help us to deal with potential threats, such as breakups. However, we can not say that every coping mechanism is adaptive for the regulation of the nervous system. Some maladaptive coping strategies can cause deeper miscommunication. One of these strategies is “Breakup Ideation.” Breakup ideation is contemplating ending the relationship, and it can provide some relief after the conflict with one’s partner because it eliminates uncertainty. However, it can cause severe communication issues between partners and lead to more negative emotions being experienced. In this therapy sketch, we will review breakup ideation as a coping strategy.
What is Breakup Ideation?
Breakup ideation is referred to as thinking about leaving the relationship. A person who experiences breakup ideation might imagine what the breakup discussion would be like, what would happen afterward, how to cope with this breakup, and what their partner would do. These ideations breakup might probably come to your mind without intention, and they appear after a negative trigger, such as conflict or miscommunication between you and your partner. Since the ideation is unintended, you might be curious about why you are thinking about this scenario at first. The answer for this might be breakup ideation because of your way of coping with the negative emotions experienced, such as sadness, anxiety, or fear. Imagining those details and maybe thinking about the breakup ideation might relieve you for some time from the intensity of sadness, anxiety, or fear you are experiencing. Experiencing emotional overload during a conflict is called “Flooding” by Dr. John Gotmann. Another reason for having breakup ideation might be catastrophizing, which means thinking about the worst-case scenario and preparing yourself for it. Let’s take a closer look at using breakup ideation as a coping mechanism during conflicts and catastrophizing closely.
What is Flooding?
Intense emotional conflicts can lead to an experience called flooding, which is described by Dr. Gottman as the emotional state the body enters to cope with the stressors. Flooding, also known as diffuse physiological arousal, triggers the nervous system to enter a hyperarousal state, which creates a psychological and physical reaction to the presented stress. These maladaptive defense mechanisms provide short-term relief and a sense of control. This triggers a faster heartbeat, a rush of stress hormones, and the frontal lobe, which is responsible for logical thinking, to “shut down.” As a result, it becomes harder to communicate and solve problems efficiently. Due to your cognition not working like when you are calm, you may not understand the consequences of their words and actions during the conflict.
Flooding and Its Relation to Breakup Ideation
When you are flooded, you experience several physiological changes, such as hormone release, physiological changes, an increase in energy, and cognitive changes. You can learn more about flooding in our “Navigating Flooding: Managing Emotional Overload During Conflicts” article. These changes imply that you are dysregulated, and this dysregulation overloads a lot of pressure on your body and your mind. Due to being regulated again, you might employ some coping mechanisms. This coping mechanism might be “Breakup” ideation. Thinking about breaking up might relieve your body because it means you can get away from the stressor. Also, thinking about breaking up might mean you are able to take control of the situation, and that might cause some relief as well.
- Seeking Regulation: During the flooding, you might employ breakup ideation as a coping mechanism, or you can even say this ideation directly to your partner to find some relief from the physiological arousal you are experiencing. At the moment, threatening to end a relationship provides a false sense of hope the problem and pain will “go away.” This does not address the real issue but is a passive way to attempt to see a change.
- Sense of Control: Breakup ideation can be used to offer mental relief to feel calmer when feeling out of control, but this coping mechanism creates greater issues in the long term. Although it may provide a sense of control by being able to reduce feeling dysregulated for a short period of time, these powerful statements prevent the opportunity to talk through the issue at hand or build a tool kit of coping mechanisms to help calm down in these situations. This is an unproductive way to achieve that, as not communicating unmet needs in an effective way causes no opportunity for change. Breakup ideation creates greater harm in the relationship as the presenting problem escalates.
What is Catastrophizing?
Also, as you may have noticed, breaking up is the worst-case scenario in most relationships. Thinking about the worst-case scenario is known as catastrophizing as well. Catastrophizing helps us to prepare ourselves for a potential threat that might happen in the future. Although it seems to be functional, it might have some damaging effects when we employ this often in our relationship. Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that causes a person to think negatively about a situation. When we catastrophize a future event, we think about the worst-case scenario without considering other possible outcomes. Even if the probability of a worst-case scenario is very small, our minds jump to the most extreme negative outcome, such as breaking up. This way of thinking comes from experiencing intense negative emotions such as anxiety and fear at the moment. In the relationship frame, these negative emotions might stem from negative experiences such as conflict.
Catastrophizing and Its Relation to Breakup Ideation
During and after conflict, your brain is trying to cope with several stressors, including flooding, dealing with uncertainty, preparation for future threats, and past experiences. Even though breakup ideation might help us cope with negative emotions experienced after a conflict, it might also really impair our communication with our partner. Here is how breakup ideation functions to relieve our negative emotions and how they impact our communication.
- Dealing with Uncertainty: Our minds generally struggle with uncertainty because our brains are wired to seek stability to keep us safe. When we don’t know what to expect, we can not prepare ourselves efficiently, which might create serious levels of fear and anxiety. To avoid this emotional distress, our minds automatically shift to negative scenarios to protect us from unknown risks. Managing the conflict healthily creates significant uncertainty because you can not say what your partner thinks about the conflict. As we mentioned above, conflicts can already cause flooding, and anxiety due to uncertainty might seriously impact your information process. In order to eliminate this level of emotional overload, you might think of a worst-case scenario.
- Preparation for future threats: Although this concept is closely related to dealing with uncertainty, the action or content of ideation might vary. If you are thinking about how you won’t survive this breakup, you might want to be better prepared to handle challenges. You might contemplate what your next steps are, how to cope, or whom to talk to. Thinking about those might prepare you for a breakup but might cause serious unhealthy communication styles with your partner, such as criticism or contempt.
- Past Experiences: Negative past experiences trigger us to anticipate similar results. If you have had negative experiences in your current or past relationships, you might associate the negative outcome with your present situation.
How Does it Affect the Relationship?
Stressors such as flooding, past experiences, future threats, or uncertainty in relationships might lead you to contemplate breakup ideation and direct you to employ some negative communication styles with your partner, such as criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling, as Dr John Gotmann addresses in his research. You can visit our “Communication Breakdown: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” article to get more information about unhealthy communication styles during conflict. Here are some examples of this:
- Breakup Ideation and Stonewalling: Stonewalling is an unhealthy communication style in which one partner withdraws from the conversation to avoid emotional distress. Breakup ideation might cause serious emotional distress during the conflict and might cause you to shut yourself down. For example, you might feel triggered and experience a lot of emotional distress after what your partner said during the conflict. This distress might cause you to contemplate the possibility of breaking up because, eventhough the outcome is negative, this ideation provides you with clear information about what to expect in the future.
- Breakup Ideation and Criticism: Criticism is an unhealthy communication style in which one partner targets another’s partner’s personality rather than their actions. Breakup ideation might lead to criticism during conflicts, such as thinking about your partner’s negative traits while thinking about breaking up. For example, you might contemplate your partner’s unfunctional personality traits, such as selfishness, and reflect on this thought during another conflict.
- Breakup Ideation and Contempt: Contempt is an unhealthy communication style in which one partner expresses superiority toward another. Similar to criticism, breakup ideation might trigger contempt, contemplating that you deserve better. For example, you might start rolling your eyes or using a mocking tone while you are having a conflict.
- Breakup Ideation and Defensiveness: Defensiveness is an unhealthy communication style in which one partner counterattacks another. Past experience can influence defensiveness. When you contemplate the possibility of breaking up, you may become more guarded and perceive conflict as a threat to their relationship security. This might lead you to protect yourself by deflecting blame on your partner.
Having these types of miscommunication one after another might cause a phenomenon called a self-fulfilling prophecy, which means a person’s expectations about a situation lead them to behave in a way that makes those expectations come true. In short, breakup ideation might affect how you act within the relationship or during a conflict with your partner. Therefore, addressing this ideation might help you to improve your relationship with your partner.
What to do while having a Breakup Ideation?
If you are experiencing breakup ideation frequently and notice that you are employing unhealthy communication styles with your partner, you can consider some points to understand its nature:
- Main Cause: Consider what is triggering them. You might consider whether specific issues in relationships are contributing to this ideation or whether there are some general cognitive thinking patterns, such as catastrophizing.
- Having a More Balanced Perspective: Instead of thinking about what will happen if you and your partner breakup, identify steps you can take to address the situation. If the thought of breaking up is a worst-case scenario for you, you can reframe your thoughts, such as, “This will be a great challenge for me, but I can handle it and learn from it.”
- Open Communication: We explain that some of the elements that cause catastrophizing lead to miscommunication, but some miscommunication patterns also cause breakup ideation. These factors can mutually affect each other. To avoid that, you or your partner can employ antidotes for unhealthy communication styles, such as gentle start-ups, taking responsibility, describing your own needs and feelings, and also practicing self-sooting.
- Seek professional help: A mental health professional might help you find the main cause of the breakup ideation and how to handle this ideation.
Takeaways
After experiencing emotional distress, such as flooding during a conflict with your partner, you might experience breakup ideation to be physiologically regulated, feeling in control of the situation, avoid uncertainty, protect yourself from emotional harm that might caused by a possible breakup, or prepare yourself based on your past experiences. Eventhough they all have a function to protect yourself from potential threats, it can seriously affect the way you communicate with your partner. Therefore, exploring the main cause of this ideation and addressing it might help the course of your relationship.
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This page is also part of the Roamers Therapy Glossary; a collection of mental-health related definitions that are written by our therapists.
While our offices are currently located at the South Loop neighborhood of Downtown Chicago, Illinois, we also welcome and serve clients for online therapy from anywhere in Illinois and Washington, D.C. Clients from the Chicagoland area may choose in-office or online therapy and usually commute from surrounding areas such as River North, West Loop, Gold Coast, Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lake View, Rogers Park, Logan Square, Pilsen, Bridgeport, Little Village, Bronzeville, South Shore, Hyde Park, Back of the Yards, Wicker Park, Bucktown and many more. You can visit our contact page to access detailed information on our office location.