Dear Gianna

Q: "I dated a guy for about three months. We never got very serious. We went on dates and were getting to know each other; I was looking forward to how it could develop. I thought this relationship had potential and hoped it could become serious. However, he broke up with me over text. I am really devastated; I can hardly drag myself to work. I don't have the energy to go out and have fun. I just want to cry. My friends, though, listened to me cry once and straight away told me to move on, that he was not worth it, that it wasn't that serious and that I should just get over it, go out and have some fun. When my friend divorced two years ago, I spent many nights at her place watching rom-coms over pizza and prosecco to just be there for her and look after her. I understand a three-month fling is not as hard to get over as a divorce, but being judged by everyone because I'm sad over it makes me feel even worse".

A: I'm sorry your relationship didn't work out, but most of all, I'm sorry that you have to go through the disappointment alone, without a support system.

Maybe knowing that you're not, really, alone will make you feel a bit better; in fact, so many people find themselves in your shoes that psychologists came up with a name for what you are experiencing: this phenomenon is called disenfranchised grief.

The term was coined by Dr. Kenneth J. Doka and indicates a type of grief not fully recognised by society. If someone is widowed, for example, everybody will recognise their pain and their right to grieve; friends will be involved in providing moral support, and everyone will try to do their best, and rightly so.

If someone loses a goldfish and lets this loss affect their mood and how they conduct their life, they will be judged for being dramatic and overreacting.

Most of us are very engrained in the idea that there are valid and not valid reasons to be sad. I disagree as we might not always understand where someone else is coming from.

What might seem silly to me might be devastating to someone else. While we all have a responsibility to find help and not let our emotions overwhelm us, we all have a right to feel sadness and loss.

The research around grief in psychology has historically revolved around the death of a loved one; however, psychologists have finally started to recognise that the same feelings of loss, fear, and despair experienced when facing death can be present during a breakup.

Any significant life-changing event can cause us to feel deeply vulnerable and unsafe because the world like we once knew it, doesn't exist anymore, and the people who we could rely on have been taken away.

Professor and Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Director Matthew Lieberman has conducted extensive research into the neural bases of the social experience. In his book "Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect", he argues that our need to connect is as fundamental as the need for food and shelter.

Thanks to the help of MRI technology, it has been possible to observe that our brain reacts to social pain in the same way as it reacts to physical pain. Basically, when our closest connections are severed, our brain reacts as if our own survival is being threatened: freaking out for the end of a relationship is not a matter of being a drama queen; it's an experience programmed in our brain.

However, while it's entirely accepted that we are sad and need our friends and family's support for the end of a marriage, for example, if we tell our friends that we are struggling to get over that guy that we dated three times, we'll be ridiculed at worst and not listened to at best.

What some fail to realise, though, is that when we mourn the end of a short-term fling, we're grieving what could have been: yes, you didn't have a mortgage together, you haven't spent the past 10 Christmas holidays with his family or opened a joint bank account; maybe you haven't even been on a long trip together. Or perhaps not even become Facebook officials.

But you are grieving possibility: you were hoping to have all these things with him one day, and now that hope is dead. You were looking forward to winter Saturday nights in matching pyjamas, watching crime documentaries while ordering takeaways. Or lazy Summer mornings followed by brunch by the canal. And now that has been taken away from you, and you really don't have it in you to go back to that horrible dating app. I feel you.

Look after yourself; your feelings are valid. Try to explain to your friends that you need support and why. Try to find the right words, and I really hope they will be the good friends you need right now.

Feel free to contact me if you need to; I will be more than happy to provide coaching sessions.

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