How to Fix a Broken Heart
Guy Winch · 2018
How to Fix a Broken Heart (2018) is a book by Guy Winch on Heartbreak & Emotional Recovery. Psychologist Guy Winch argues heartbreak is a genuine psychological injury we're taught to ignore. He shows why the mind sabotages recovery, and gives concrete first aid for romantic loss and the loss of a beloved pet.
It takes the one wound everyone is told to "just get over" and treats it like the real, brain-level injury it is, with actual first aid instead of platitudes.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of How to Fix a Broken Heart pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Heartbreak is not a metaphor. Brain imaging shows social rejection lights up regions involved in physical pain, and studies of the recently rejected show activity in the brain's reward and craving circuitry, the same system implicated in drug withdrawal.
- Romantic loss is a form of **disenfranchised grief**: society grants no bereavement leave, no ritual, no casseroles. Because the loss is unrecognized, sufferers conclude their pain is disproportionate and hide it, which makes recovery slower, not faster.
The other 5 — and the full 10-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 8 chapters
The whole summary runs about 10 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Wound Nobody Treats
- Why It Actually Hurts
- The Search for Meaning That Never Ends
- The Highlight Reel Problem
- Withdrawal Management
- Losing a Person, Losing a Self
- Grieving a Pet Without Apology
- First Aid You Can Actually Use
Finish How to Fix a Broken Heart tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 10 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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