Post Breakup Survival Guide
So the worst has happened. The dreaded breakup. The stuff of sad songs lamenting lost love and the way the world seems to fall apart without that one person around. It’s a tough place to be and a lot of the advice we hear isn’t always the most helpful.
Some standouts in the unhelpful responses include:
You’re better off without them anyway!
There’s plenty of fish in the sea; you’ll find someone even better.
Thank goodness! I never liked them.
I knew that one was never going to last.
You’ve just got to move on.
Go have your hoe phase and forget about them.
Give yourself a break from relationships, you don’t need them anyway.
While all of these responses come from a place of good intentions, they are often not what a person who just ended a relationship wants to or needs to hear. They may work for some folks, and if they do, that’s wonderful. What we’ll be exploring in this blog are some of the ways we can take care of ourselves after a relationship ends.
Let Yourself Grieve
One of the most important things to acknowledge is that this is going to suck. Break ups hurt, whether you are the one who ended things or they are, or even if it was a mutual decision. It’s okay to feel sad and to grieve the loss of the relationship. In those moments, we don’t always realize that it isn’t just that person being in our lives that we are mourning. We are also grieving the potential future life we thought we might have with them. This is true for individuals in both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. Having more than one partner doesn’t make the loss of a relationship not hurt. This blog will include information for individuals in all kinds of relationships and relationship structures because break ups suck for all of us. It’s important that we give ourselves the time and compassion to feel and acknowledge what we have lost and that it is normal to feel whatever feelings we feel.
Take Some Space
When a relationship first ends, it can be tempting to reach out to try to understand or reconnect, or even just to check the person’s social media to see how they’re doing. Are they as hurt as you are? Have they already moved on? When they see this picture, do they remember how good things felt between us that day? Do they want their stuff back? The list of questions and ways to stay connected to them goes on.
Constantly checking their social media does not help with the healing process. It’s important to be intentional about not reaching out via phone or text as well as actively hiding their social media posts. It’s not enough to just tell ourselves that we’ll avoid their content. That’s setting ourselves up to fail because inevitably, something is bound to pop up when we’re scrolling and then down the rabbit hole we go.
Even if the aim is to still be friends, it’s important to take some time apart to work through the breakup. Moving straight into friendship may make for some hot sex, but it won’t actually give the folks involved time to sort through what it really means to make that kind of relational transition.
Get Therapeutic With It
While formal therapy can be very helpful during times of distress like during or after a breakup, there are many other ways to do things that feel therapeutic for each of us. In addition to seeking therapy from a trained therapist, we can also intentionally fill our lives with things that feel helpful for us. This could be mindfulness, mediation, yoga, time outdoors, video games, art, dance, puzzles, pets, or friends to name a few. The options are endless and are different for each of us. Taking time to fill our lives with meaningful and rewarding experiences can help keep us from focusing on the person who no longer fills our time (the ex-who-must-not-be-named...unless you’d like to name them).
Negativity is NOT Always the Enemy
Once the initial pain and shock of a breakup ends, it can be easy to start looking back on the time we spent with someone through rose-colored glasses. We sometimes forget the negative and remember the positive, which can draw us right back to wanting to be in a relationship with that person. Whether we were the one who broke things off or we were the one who was broken up with, it is often helpful to remember both the positive and negative aspects of a relationship when we look back. Sometimes this can help us fight the urge to idealize the partner we are no longer with when we look back. If it feels hard to remember the reasons we might want to avoid reconnecting with our former partner, it can sometimes be helpful to leave ourselves reminders -- a post-it note by the computer or where we charge our phone at night can do wonders for reminding us not to creep on their social media or send a late night text message.
Reconnect With The World
When we experience difficult times like the ending of a relationship, it can be tempting to withdraw and disconnect from others and the world around us. This can look like pulling back from the dating scene, which can be perfectly understandable, but part of the healing process can involve plugging back into the process of meeting people and talking to folks, whether we end up wanting to engage in a romantic relationship again or not. The purpose of re-engaging is more to remind ourselves that we can feel positive emotions and enjoy going out with folks. All is not lost because our relationship ended. We can let ourselves have fun and enjoy ourselves.
Additionally, our loved ones can be a huge support. Leaning on friends and family to help us find other ways to fill our lives or engage in activities that we enjoy. They can remind us of the positive qualities they see in us and the reasons they care for us. In non-monogamous/polyamorous relationships, other partners can be supportive and aid in reminding us that we are desirable and loved. Whatever kinds of relationships make up our support network, they are to be valued and can be an integral part of our healing.
Final Thoughts
This blog is by no means an exhaustive list or an authoritative document, but hopefully it can provide a starting point for the post-breakup coping and healing process. It’s important to remember that there are professional resources available for when we feel like what we are going through is too much to hold on our own or is more than what we feel comfortable or ready to confide in our loved ones. Therapy can help and it is totally normal to seek out following this kind of a loss.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that we each have our own process and there is no “right” way to grieve or to heal. It’s important to have compassion for ourselves and to make space for whatever feelings come up as we work through the loss of an important relationship in our lives.
By: Sejdaras Psy.D & Associates Team
If you’d like to work with one of our Therapists we are currently accepting clients and you can reach us at Our Office. We provide a free 15 phone consultation to determine if we are a good match for one another. For more information on anxiety and depression treatment check out our website at www.chicagopsych.org