Healing After a Breakup: A Guide to Emotional Recovery
Read it under 7 minutes.
What’s easier; being broken up with or breaking up? Are there huge differences?
It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, in both situations, you’ve got to grieve a fantasy of what could have been. It’s as if there’s a void the size of dark matter that you now have to fill up.
Different break ups have different meanings. Was it out of betrayal? Do you now reevaluate every moment you’ve lived with them? Or was it because you simply wanted had different life paths? Either way it can be tremendously sad and scary to now deal with what was.
Allow yourself to feel: acknowledge and accept your emotions
Grief has many twists and turns, let yourself feel all the feelings. One of my favourite phrases to use when I’m counselling is: if those tears could talk, what would they say? Use this as a prompt:
if this anger could talk, what would it say?
If my heart could talk, what would it say?
If my despair could talk, what would it say?
It’s a way of using the model of internal family systems, Parts Work. It works by giving that part of you a voice and doing so helps you get unstuck.
Practice self-compassion
Be kind to yourself during this challenging time. Treat yourself with the same love and care that you would offer a friend in need. Nature, nurture and all in between.
Set boundaries: contact or no contact?
Only you know the answer to this question. For some people, no contact is easier - it’s less confusing, it gives them a sense of being separate from the past relationship and their now ex partner.
But for other people, no contact feels the same as extreme abandonment, as if they never existed and the past x amount of time was a dream they had. This could be very painful as well, leading to rumination and obsession.
It also depends on the situation; no contact and sharing custody is almost impossible. You work with what you have and what you can realistically create.
Seek support
This is the time where your support system will mirror back to you what you need the most: you. Not you + your ex partner, not you + the relationship; just you.
Sometime we forget that our worth as an individual is separate to our worth with someone else; your family and friends love you for you, and now is a good reminder for this.
Accept that your new found singlehood will be lonely, at least at times
It also depends how toxic your relationship was and if they demanded way too much from you, but that could be for another blog post.
Waking up alone or having to take all decisions by yourself could weigh heavily. There are pro’s and con’s to being single and being in a relationship. Again, you work and create with what you have.
What could I have done differently?
Esther Perel talks about relational accountability - no matter who is ending the relationship, sweep your side of the street.
How did you contribute to the ending?
Could you have done things differently?
What can you be grateful for (either for the breakup or the time passed together)?
In conclusion, healing after a breakup is a process that requires patience, self-compassion, and resilience. It’s a moment to regather, recover and emerge knowing what you want and what you don’t want more than before. Stay hopeful.