5 Tips to Healing From a Breakup / Separation / Divorce
Healing from heartbreak is painful. Extremely painful in fact. The longer you were with your significant other, the harder it feels to heal from the loss. You may never feel ready to grieve, but it is a requirement in order for you to move forward. Grieving is a normal part of being human as much as creating something anew. We can’t avoid it. So prepare yourself to not be okay for a while as you learn to tender your broken heart. It is my hope that by sharing with you the 5 below tips, I can show up for you in some way to help guide you along this healing journey.
1. Stop asking “why?” Shift your focus to “How can I help myself heal from this heartbreak?”
It is in our nature to want to know the “why.” Why did you hurt me? Why don’t you want to be with me? Why wasn’t I chosen? Why am I not good enough for you?
If you think that getting answers to your whys will help heal your heartbreak any faster, then think again because unfortunately it won’t. Wanting to know why things went wrong won’t help you find closure. It may even catch you in a downward spiral of obsession and depression. The more you’re obsessed with the whys, the more your wound will ache. So, I encourage you to shift your focus from the why stance to the how mindset. You can’t undo the damage that caused your heartbreak, but you can learn how to grow and thrive from it. Focus on what you can control, aka re-shaping your thoughts, and not on what you can’t. I know it is easier said than done, but it is an essential part of healing well.
2. Embrace the pain. There are no other ways around it.
One of the ways you may attempt to embrace your pain is to intentionally visit all of the places you and your significant other have been and reclaim them instead of avoiding them. The coffee shop where you first met her. The sushi restaurant where you two were regulars every Friday night because that was “our favorite spot.” The place he proposed to you. The movie dates, the walks around the lakes, the bed and breakfast trips. You allow yourself to experience all of it. But this time, it’s just you.
I know it sounds like a horrible idea to re-experience the places or the routines that remind you of your sorrow and loss. The reality is that you’re going to be uncomfortable for a while and there are no other ways to bypass it. The longer you delay the inevitable step of feeling the pain, the more festered your wound will become.
3. Allow yourself to grieve.
When thinking about grief, our society tends to refer the loss to the death of someone we love. In a case of a breakup, separation, or divorce, we grieve the loss of someone we love, who is still alive, yet we may never cross paths with again. In his book “Learning How to Heal a Broken Heart: Transforming Breakdowns into Breakthroughs,” Marvin Scholz summed up well what the end of a relationship is: “It’s the death of all the dreams you two shared. Death to a million promises. Death to hope for the future you had planned and had envisioned with that someone.”
So, allow yourself time, a lot of time, to grieve. Don’t rush through the process by entangling yourself from one distraction to another. They will just slow you down from healing properly. Don’t cheat by running away from your problems. They’ll eventually catch up. Find your courage that I know you have in you to stay still, mourn your loss properly, and then come out stronger on the other side. This is an arduous process, so pace yourself and find professional help to be alongside you on this journey.
4. Stay away from unhealthy / toxic coping mechanism.
Everyone copes differently with grief and loss. You will find a way to grieve your loss that fits you. I promise you that. But it is essential that you do your due diligence to heal yourself properly. That’s how you show up for you. That’s how you choose to love you. Coping mechanisms that are utilized to numb the pain or to distract you from healing genuinely often results in prolonged attachment wounds and unresolved relationship trauma, one of the most complex forms of trauma to treat.
So take a step back to consider when you find yourself wanting to lean on alcohol, sex, food, or drugs to comfort yourself. Rushing back into dating or hooking up with random people on dating apps is not going to give you a felt sense of safety. Seeking the company of something else (i.e. addiction) or someone else (i.e. a rebound) to avoid solitude is probably one of the worst things you could possibly do to your mental health. Unhealthy coping tools tend to cause setbacks, often leading to self-hatred and other reckless behavior. So please take a step back to evaluate yourself honestly and find a therapist near you to guide you along on this journey.
5. Choose to let go.
This is probably the hardest part of your healing. It sounds like awful advice because you have invested so much into your relationship. But in order to move forward, you have to let the person you loved or still love go. It’s tempting to hold on to the hope that something might change and you would be able to reclaim your past. While it is true that in certain situations, some couples decide to reconcile after going through a period of separation, holding on to that hope may cause you more grief than offering you a sense of inner peace. If you and your partner decide to reconcile in the future, then it would be the time for you two to figure out how to start a new chapter of your relationship. Right now, the person you need to take care of is you. Choose to prioritize your mental health and do the deep healing work to tend to your broken heart. You won’t be able to show up wholeheartedly for anyone until you show up for yourself first.
It’s scary to take a leap into the unknown. I get it. I’ve been there. But you know what, instead of letting fear stop you from choosing yourself first, take a deep breath and an honest look at what you’re scared of. As devastating as it is to face the end of your marriage, to let go of the person you loved or still love, or to let go of the comfort of being in a relationship, it also offers you a clean slate. You have an opportunity to start anew. It may not feel like it right now because you’re in a lot of pain, but I promise you that things will get better. You will feel better. But right now, you must promise yourself that you will do the actual healing work to care for your tender heart.
