Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory explains why the grief of a broken heart isn’t just a feeling, but a hostile occupation of your body. The phone doesn’t ring. The other side of the bed is a landscape of cold, undisturbed sheets. You find yourself standing in the middle of the grocery store, frozen by the memory of how they used to peel an orange for you, each segment a small, sweet gift. It’s a stone in your gut, a relentless clench in your throat, a ribcage that has become a cage, holding a wild, screaming thing that used to be your joy. You replay the conversations, the final moments, the first signs of the fracture. You dissect your own words, their words, searching for the exact moment the poison was introduced. The mind's frantic attempt to build a fortress of understanding around a wound that lives deeply in the body is futile. And so Dick Schwartz's Internal Family Systems model becomes so useful, helping us see these warring parts not as enemies, but as protectors trying to manage unbearable pain. I’ve sat with people who live trapped in this loop—trying to think their way out only to find it’s the body