How To Heal Your Heart After A Breakup
These steps will help you heal your heart after a breakup so you can move on with your life in an empowered way.
If you are reading this, chances are you are going through the pain of a breakup. I wrote these steps for you based on my own experience and working with clients, to help you process your grief so you can heal your heart and move forward with your life in an empowered way.
Breakups can be very hard and painful for many reasons. There is this person you love, with whom you shared so many memories, maybe lived together, and who broke up with you. All your hopes and dreams about a future together get shattered instantly. You are in shock, confused, frustrated, hurt, angry, and crying.
The pain from a breakup can be unbearable.
You may blame or unconsciously torture yourself by playing “what-if” scenarios in your heads. You start doubting yourself. Your mind may be consumed with a desperate need for answers. It can be hard to concentrate, let alone tend to your basic needs. You may also feel the fear of never finding another love partner ever again and spending the rest of your life alone.
All of these feelings are normal, it is called grief.
Breakups can also unearth old trauma or unhealed issues from past relationships. So without realizing it all of a sudden we are dealing with the current experience compounded with wounds from the past which can make a breakup even more overwhelming.
And the truth is, breakups are inevitable.
Your family and friends will try to console you and give you advice that while well-intended, most times it’s unhelpful.
The most common advice I’ve heard is “time heals all wounds.” In my experience, time doesn’t heal all wounds. In fact, it may prolong the pain longer than needed.
My good friend, and grief counselor, Courtnee says “if you have a flat tire, do you sit by the road and wait for it to get fixed?”. The same is true for healing after a breakup. Time may help but it is feeling your feelings and doing the grief work what heals your heart.
The second most common advice I’ve heard is “get busy” which distracts you from feeling the pain temporarily, but it doesn’t really take the pain away. When we stop our busyness we find that the pain is still there.
The main reason why heartbreaks are hard is because we don’t know how to truly heal from them.
In order to heal remember there is nothing wrong with you, everything you are feeling is valid, and you will get through this.
Step 1: No-contact
Have no contact with your ex unless you have kids together. What that means is, stop all contact with your ex, do not initiate contact or respond to their communications (texts, phone calls, WhatApp’s, etc). If necessary, block them from your phone, apps, social media, etc.
The reason behind no-contact is so you can focus on yourself and your healing. Continuing contact with your ex is like pouring salt on an open wound. Or it can feed your hope that one day you may get back together dragging your heart along for months or maybe years.
If there is ever an opportunity for the two of you to reconcile, it is best if your heart has healed (do all steps below) and the two of you make an agreement to learn from the past, make the changes you both need so you don’t go back to what caused the breakup in the first place.
If you have kids together and no-contact is not possible, keep the communication strictly around your kids and agree on one method of communication (it can be text or email) so you are only checking one place.
There are apps specifically for divorced or separated parents you can use to help you manage contact with your ex and keep it limited to the kids.
Step 2: Train your mind
While you are in a relationship, there is a release of “love hormones” (oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin) which stop because of a breakup that is why a breakup feels like a drug withdrawal.
Your mind wants to avoid pain and seek pleasure so it will distract you by thinking of them or memories from the past. Whenever you catch yourself thinking of him/her, redirect your attention back to you. Our minds can be like an untrained puppy. The good news is you can train your mind by redirecting your attention back to yourself.
That is why it is so important to keep redirecting your mind, and focus your attention back to yourself and the present moment to help your brain build new neural networks.
Step 3: Feel all your feelings
Give yourself permission to feel everything that you are feeling right now. Feeling your pain is how your emotions will complete their cycle. When you numb yourself or distract yourself, you stay stuck and dwell on the pain which prolongs the suffering.
It takes 90 seconds for an emotion to move through the body from the moment it is perceived by our brain and travels through the nervous system. Just watch a kid in the playground that falls and scratches his knee, cries, then gets back up and is running again minutes later. That is because kids process their feelings faster than most adults.
The setup:
Find a quiet and comfortable spot and curl up with your favorite blanket. Take several deep breaths and find a memory of a time when you got through something really difficult in your life. Maybe it was a tough situation at work, or you survived an illness, maybe the death of someone you loved.
Close your eyes, breathe and visualize yourself back in that moment of strength and resilience. Locate in your body where you feel your strength and resilience. Remember that you pulled through something challenging in the past, and now you will get through this.
Then as you take deep breathes allow yourself to feel everything from the breakup, the hurt, the anger, everything.
If it is too much or you feel overwhelmed, take a pause and go back to feeling your strength.
Titrate between the strength and the pain.
Do this every day for as long as you can until you feel the emotions subside.
Step 4: Connect with your inner child
Visualize the little girl or boy inside of you, make eye contact with that little one, and imagine that you cradle him or her in your arms. There is a young part of you who is also in pain right now. Breakups can trigger old wounds from childhood, whether you felt rejected by the kids in school or felt abandoned by a parent who wasn’t there physically or emotionally for you. Hold that little one with tender care.
Step 5: Journal
Take a moment every day to journal about your experience, what you are feeling and thinking. Journaling is a healthy outlet and a positive coping mechanism for facing overwhelming emotions.
Step 6: Practice self-care
The practice of self-care is important in your healing because it is how you show yourself you matter. Whether it is taking a bath or eating a healthy meal or getting a massage, do something for yourself every day that feels nourishing to you.
Practice gentle physical movement daily, preferably in nature, it helps move through emotions. You can go on walks, do gentle yoga or Thai-chi.
Commit to doing some physical exercise daily routine for at least 20 minutes.
Step 7: Check-in with yourself
Check-in where you are at with yourself. If after two months you feel you haven't made any progress, are feeling depressed, collapsed, judging yourself, blaming the other person, that means you need help 1-on-1 from a therapist, a counselor, or a relationship coach.
** FOLLOW THESE STEPS ONLY IF YOU FEEL COMPLETE FEELING YOUR FEELINGS**
Step 8: Balance your mind and find gratitude
Do this step only when you feel you have processed your feelings and you are ready to move on.
This step is about balancing the polarization in your brain. Until now, most of what you’ve felt is the pain or anger from the relationship ending. On the other side of pain, there is love for the learnings and the good moments together. Right in the middle is gratitude. So this step is designed to help you feel that gratitude for the relationship and for your ex. So grab pen and paper and write down 100 benefits to the relationship ending, and 100 drawbacks to the relationship continuing. Write down everything and don’t stop until you feel in your heart gratitude for the breakup.
Step 9: Lessons learned
Every relationship is an opportunity to learn and grow. Write down all the things that you learned from this relationship that you want to apply to your next relationship.
Also, update your list of non-negotiable needs or deal-breakers. Did you identify new non-negotiable needs for yourself after this relationship or past relationships?