Healing Heartbreak: How to Survive a Breakup
Breakups are universally challenging experiences, often triggering some of our deepest core wounds and fears, particularly those related to abandonment and rejection. Understanding the emotional and physiological processes that occur during a breakup can help you navigate this difficult period more effectively. Here’s how to cope with a breakup using evidence-based strategies.
The Emotional Impact of Breakups
Breakups can feel devastating because they directly challenge our sense of security and belonging. These events can bring up fears of abandonment and rejection, rooted in our early attachment experiences. When a relationship ends, it often leaves a void and triggers anxiety about being alone and unloved. This emotional turmoil can be intense and long-lasting.
Social Media and Breakup Advice
These days, social media is flooded with coaches and influencers offering advice on attachment styles and healing from breakups. When a relationship ends abruptly, people with an Anxious Attachment style are often told to focus on healing themselves and loving themselves more. This advice, while well-intentioned, can overlook the intense anxiety and self-blame these individuals typically experience, as they often assume they must have done something wrong.
When someone with an Anxious Attachment style goes through an abrupt breakup, they naturally experience significant distress. This level of distress is normal for anyone because it taps into our fundamental fears of abandonment and rejection, crucial for survival. Despite this, they are often told that their distress is due to not loving themselves enough, which only reinforces their self-blame and self-criticism.
The truth is, the sudden ending of a relationship is distressing for anyone because it triggers our deepest fears of abandonment and rejection. Human connection is vital for our survival, as evidenced by our evolutionary history. In the past, being betrayed or abandoned by someone you trusted could significantly decrease your chances of survival, such as being left alone to fend off a wild animal. This historical context underscores the importance of human connection and explains why being left suddenly is so distressing.
A person can only love themselves so much. At the end of the day, the distress from an abrupt breakup is real, and what individuals need are the right tools and techniques to navigate their distress and grief.
The Brain’s Response to Breakups
Neurologically, the end of a romantic relationship can resemble withdrawal from addiction. Research using brain imaging techniques has shown that the same areas activated during romantic love are also activated during drug addiction. When a relationship ends, these areas are deprived of the dopamine and oxytocin they once received, leading to feelings of pain and longing similar to withdrawal symptoms.
Coping with a Breakup: Evidence-Based Strategies
So, how do we cope with the distress of losing a partner? Unfortunately, the following suggestions won’t stop you from experiencing the pain of the loss, but instead, it will help you move through the grieving process as quickly as possible and let you move on to ultimately have more satisfying relationships in the future.
Don’t Fight the Feelings
Accepting your emotions and allowing yourself to grieve is crucial. Suppressing feelings can lead to more prolonged and intense emotional distress. A break-up is often accompanied by a wide variety of powerful and negative feelings including sadness, anger, confusion, resentment, jealousy, fear and regret, to mention a few. If you try to ignore or suppress these feelings, you will likely only prolong the normal grieving process, and sometimes get totally stuck in it. Healthy coping means both identifying these feelings and allowing ourselves to experience these feelings. As hard as it is, you cannot avoid the pain of loss, but realize that by experiencing these feelings, they will decrease over time and you will speed up the grieving process. The
stages of grieving frequently include: shock/denial, bargaining, anger, depression and eventually acceptance. Extreme grief feels like it will last forever, but it doesn’t if we cope in some healthy ways.
There are several conditions that will likely intensify your negative feelings, including:
Not being the one who decided to break up.
Not seeing the break-up coming.
This being your first serious relationship.
Your ex being your only real close friend.
Continuing to run into your ex.
The relationship having made you feel whole or complete.
Your ex starting to date someone right away.
Thinking about your ex being sexual with their new partner.
Believing that your ex is the only one in the world for you.
Journaling, talking to friends, or seeking therapy can help you process your emotions healthily.
Practice Self-Compassion
Treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer a friend going through a similar situation. Self-compassion can mitigate the feelings of self-criticism and worthlessness that often accompany breakups.
Prioritize Meeting Your Basic Needs
Self-care refers to ensuring that your basic needs are being met, despite the fact that you may be feeling upset and depressed due to the break-up. You may not feel like eating but do it anyways, and try to make some healthy choices in what you eat. Give yourself ample time to sleep, particularly since this may be difficult for you. The short-term use of some herbal alternatives or sleep medications may be necessary to ensure you get the sleep you need. Sleep deprivation will only compound your negative emotional state.
Stay Physically Active
Exercise is a powerful way to cope with stress and improve your mood. Physical activity releases endorphins, which are natural mood lifters, and can help reduce feelings of depression and anxiety.
Maintain a Routine
Keeping a regular schedule can provide a sense of normalcy and stability. It helps to focus on daily tasks and responsibilities, reducing the tendency to ruminate on the breakup.
Since going through a break-up can create a sense of chaos in many areas of your life, continuing on with your routines will give you a better sense of stability or normalcy. Although taking some expectations off yourself temporarily can help, returning to routines shortly after the initial blow can help calm you down and give you a returning sense of control. This might include routines around wake-up and bedtimes, meals, school or work related activities, exercise, and time with others to mention a few.
Limit Contact with Your Ex
“I’m not ready for a relationship but i’d like for us to stay friends”.
Oh no, we’re not doing that. While it might be tempting to maintain contact, it often prolongs the healing process. Giving yourself time and space away from your ex allows you to emotionally detach and start the recovery process.
Make A List Of Your Ex’s Annoying Qualities
If you have been feeling bad because you keep thinking about how much you miss your ex or how well suited you were to them, it can be helpful to make a list of all of their less endearing qualities. Particularly if you didn’t initiate the break-up, it’s easy to focus on everything about your ex that you will miss, which can only magnify your suffering. If you spend some time reflecting, you may come to see incompatibilities in the relationship that make it easier to let go and come to see that there is likely a better match out there for you.
Engage in New Activities
Trying new hobbies or activities can distract your mind from the breakup and help you discover new interests and passions. It also offers opportunities to meet new people and rebuild your social network.
Connect with Supportive Loved Ones
Talking about your feelings related to the break-up is an equally powerful tool to manage them. As we talk to supportive friends and family members, we can come to some new understandings and relieve some of our pain. Social support and connection is a critical factor in emotional healing and can help you feel less isolated.
Examine What You Can Learn From The Relationship
We can learn a lot from all the relationships we have been in, particularly ones that are painful. It’s very helpful after a relationship ends to spend some time thinking about and writing down what you have learned so that you can have better relationships in the future. However, don’t use this as an opportunity to beat yourself up or blame yourself for the relationship not lasting. Learning promotes growth, while self-blame (i.e. feeling you’re a failure) only extends your suffering.
Perform A Closure Ritual
At some point in the process of letting go and grieving the loss, it can be very helpful to have a closure ritual. This symbolic gesture can be very meaningful if it is well thought out and considers the right timing. This could involve such things as: writinga letter to yourself or to your ex with your final words regarding the relationship, removing all of the photos you have of your ex, or burning some reminders of your ex in a ceremonial fashion.
Write Out Your Thoughts and Feelings
In addition to talking to others, it can be very helpful to journal your thoughts and feelings related to the break-up. People are not always available when you need to get out your feelings and some feelings or thoughts may be too private to feel comfortable sharing with others. The act of writing your feelings out can be very freeing and can often give you a different perspective about them.
Avoid Unhealthy Coping Strategies
There are several ways of coping with a break-up that are considered quite unhelpful and will likely only compound your problems. These include such l choices as drinking excessively, doing drugs, overeating, self-harm, gambling excessively, or l becoming a workaholic. You may be tempted to do whatever you can to avoid feelings of loneliness and pain, but it is essential to find healthier ways to cope.
Practice Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques
Techniques such as meditation, deep breathing exercises, and yoga can help reduce stress and promote emotional balance. Mindfulness, in particular, can help you stay grounded in the present moment and reduce obsessive thinking about the past.
Seek Professional Help
If the emotional pain feels overwhelming or persistent, consider seeking help from a therapist. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and other therapeutic approaches can provide strategies to cope with negative thoughts and emotions effectively.
Conclusion
Breakups are inherently painful and can trigger deep-seated fears and emotional wounds. However, by understanding the emotional and neurological impact of a breakup and employing evidence-based coping strategies, you can navigate this challenging time more effectively. Remember, healing is a process, and it’s important to be patient and kind to yourself as you move forward.
Let me know in the comments what tips and tools have worked for you if you’ve been through a breakup or experienced a difficult loss.
