The name will not flash across the screen again. There’s a phantom limb where their presence used to be, an ache in the empty space on the passenger side of your car, a silence in your apartment so loud it screams. Your thumb hovers over their icon, a tiny digital ghost, and the urge to press it, to see their life moving on without you, is a physical craving, a hook in your gut. You trace the arguments in your mind, a relentless, looping prosecution of yourself. What if I had said this? What if I hadn’t done that? The questions are a form of self-flagellation, a rosary of regret. This is not just sadness. Let’s name it for what it is. It’s a profound dysregulation of your nervous system. A primary human attachment has been severed, and your body, your ancient, animal body, is screaming that you are fundamentally unsafe. As Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory explains, the tightness in your throat, the hollowness in your solar plexus, the exhaustion that settles deep in your bones—that is the felt experience of heartbreak. It’s a grief that lives in your tissues. And into this raw, gaping wound, the world pours its