How to Heal After a Breakup – Why Heartbreaks Are So Painful!

In today’s article we would be discussing how to heal after a breakup. Perhaps you’re going through a divorce as a result of a betrayal, some sort of heartbreak or whatever. One thing is sure that the end of a relationship is such a difficult thing to go through.

It’s even more painful when we’ve been blindsided or something happens to us that you know up a trail or something like that that causes a relationship to end.

All this time you’ve been just living your live as if something’s happening and then all of a sudden it’s gone! It’s not happening anymore and obviously this is very similar to grieving of a death. This is the reason why psychologists say that when a relationship ends you need to grieve.

“Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart do not know how to laugh either.”
– Golda Meir

So in this article I want to talk about some things that you can start doing to heal from this heartbreak that you’re feeling. This will enable you really start loving yourself through this healing journey.

Loving yourself after a heartbreak

These are two things that are truly essential in the recovery process. Loving yourself is a hundred percent essential towards healing but real, true healing comes in the things that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis. Now you’ve heard it said that time time heals all wounds.

I actually disagree and one of the reasons why is because there are so many people who are staying stuck in anger, blame, unforgiveness, guilt and shame. These are emotions that are a result of what someone did to them and they have been carrying these negative emotions for months and years. The pain is still there years after these things have happened.

I don’t think time does heal. I think time helps you heal as long as you’re doing the things that you need to do to heal so that you can survive and regain the self-confidence and self esteem you probably lost when your trust was broken.

What are some of the things you should be doing on a day to day basis to help yourself heal through this process?

1. Allow yourself to feel.

You need to be very patient with yourself and sit down everyday and really be with yourself and how you feel every single day. And know that it’s an emotional roller coaster. There are some days where you’re gonna be totally fine, you feel you’re over it and be in such a good spot and so hopeful.

Then there are other days where you’re gonna be angry, frustrated, have some resentment and you might be a little bitter. Or you know you might feel like a victim at some point. You might have these ups and downs and that’s okay.

That’s perfectly normal to have these moments of going back and forth between all of these emotions. So being very patient with yourself in this process is absolutely huge. If you’re feeling a feeling you know let’s say we’re feeling loneliness, sadness or anger or whatever it is that we’re feeling.

If you don’t sit in it, it’s going to stay with you and never leave you. So until you sit with how you feel and parent yourself and love yourself through that feeling and tell yourself the stuff that you need to be telling yourself to move through that feeling, you’re never gonna get rid of it.

What you’re doing is you’d just be suppressing your feelings and not experiencing it. There are lot of renowned life coaches who attest this. One such person is Lisa Romano.

What you need to understand is that your feelings are just your feelings. It’s not who you are.

What you’re doing is you’d just be suppressing your feelings and not experiencing it. There are lot of renowned life coaches who attest this. One such person is Lisa Romano.

So don’t suppress that feeling that is coming. Allow it to come, process it and move through it in a healthy way. So how to parent yourself through this feeling, whatever it might be?

If you were sitting down with your best friend, someone you love unconditionally and they’re going through something really painful say they’re experiencing sadness, anger or frustration whatever the case may be.

The first thing you would do is you would probably validate what they’re feeling. You’d tell them is that they’re absolutely right to feel that way. That is perfectly okay. You would hug them and comfort them or let them lean on you.

The next thing you would do is talk them through the feeling, thereby giving them the reality of the situation. You’re giving them the bigger picture because your outside looking in.

You would be telling them things they wouldn’t normally be telling themselves. If your friends says you know ‘I really want to meet someone because I’m just really lonely and sad’. The the reality is you would be telling them that they would meet someone someday because they’re taking care of themselves, keeping their standards.

Basically would be parenting that person, your friend through their feelings. And that’s the stuff that we have to do to ourselves when we’re having a feeling that’s uncomfortable.

What are you telling yourself? Because most the time we’re telling ourselves something negative that’s keeping us stuck in that feeling that we’re having rather than giving ourselves this little help we need. To move through that feeling it’s absolutely crucial.

Real healing is to be able to do that for yourself. This comes with practice You’re not gonna always have a feeling and know how to parent yourself through that it. There are going to be days where you might need a relationships coach, or you might need a friend to do it for you or help you through that feeling. That’s perfectly fine. The goal is to start being able to be your own coach and do it for yourself.

2. Don’t jump into another relationship.

You know if we were in a relationship, or a marriage for a long period of time you’re used to a dynamic. You’re used to your wife or husband, partner, boyfriend or girlfriend. When the relationship ends, you remove yourself from that and all of a sudden you’re single again!

It’s really hard to accept but you need to figure out what you need to do to get yourself back to being single and being single in a healthy way. The sad thing is most people jump from relationships to relationships. They are trying to fill a void and so they marry or date or meet someone right away.

They got divorced last month or whatever and boom before you know they’re now diving into this other new relationship instead of taking a step back, reflecting, giving yourself time to be alone and be single, which no one ever wants to do. Read our article with tips on when one can start dating after a breakup.

You need to take a step back, ask yourself why that relationship ended and what you need to learn from that past relationship to really get the lesson. So you don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over again and getting yourself back into another relationship.

Get yourself to a really good and healthy place. You know we all want to attract healthy love. We all want a great relationship. But you can never have a great relationship if you’re not good yourself. So if you want an amazing partner you need to be completely good by yourself.

Almost so good that you know that the person that you meet needs to enhance your life even more because you’re perfectly fine by yourself and in the life that you have. Anyone else that’s coming in is just adding to what you already have, they’re not draining you. They’re wanting you to conform into a person that you’re not. They love you for exactly who you are because you love you exactly in the way you are.

3. Acceptance and forgiveness

In learning how to heal after a breakup, this is something that just like healing; it takes time. This isn’t something that we’re gonna wake up one day and all of a sudden we accept and we forgive someone. Forgiveness and acceptance is a process and processes take time.

So acceptance and forgiveness for me is one in the same. You can’t forgive unless you’ve accepted. When you start practicing both you will get there over time because forgiveness especially if you have to see a person that you just ended a relationship with every so often, it makes more difficult.

Sometimes it’s easy to forgive because out of sight out of mind. But when you constantly have to see a person again for example if you’re co-parenting or things like that then it’s a little bit more difficult because that person’s constantly a reminder of the situation.

Here’s the great benefit of forgiveness: when you’re forgiving you’re not doing it for the other person. You’re doing it for yourself.

You’re forgiving someone not saying that what they did was okay. You’re not letting them off the hook you’re not telling them that okay I forgive you so you can just walk away and be okay in your life now, and I’m still here.

You know you’re suffering because the fact of the matter is they don’t need your forgiveness. Most people think they do but the reality is they don’t because if someone really wants to hear the “I Forgive You”, that’s really just their ego talking.

In order for them to heal, they need to forgive themselves. They need to deal with probably the guilt and the shame that they have for doing what they did to someone else, you. Someone that betrayed you doesn’t need your forgiveness and quite frankly a lot of the times they don’t even care if they get it because they’ve moved on.

Whereas, you’re still kind of sitting in what has happened to you and you’re struggling to forgive? And you’re not forgiving them again like I said because you know saying that what they did was okay. You’re forgiving them because you’re ready to move on. You’re ready to not think about the experience anymore.

And again easier said than done, but it takes time and practice.

Bottom line: How to heal after a breakup

Whenever those feelings come up, or those thoughts come up of reliving that experience over and over again, take a step back.

1. Don’t fight those feelings. Accept them, process them and let them go. They are not what defines who you are. Feelings come and go but you remain.
2. Reflect and learn the lessons you need to learn from that relationship. Be completely comfortable with who you are now that you’re single again. The new person that will come need to add to you and not complete you.
3. Accept that the relationship has ended. Regardless of what happened forgive yourself so you can be ready to move on.
4. Know that each of these steps is a process and thus takes time.

I trust you’ve learned some nuggets that will help to move on. All the best!