Those of us who are unlucky enough understand the feeling: The physical hurt in your chest, the knot in your throat, the tears on the bathroom floor at 3:00am…
Long story short, it sucks.
Speaking from painful experience, the days following a breakup are the worst. It’s hard going from speaking to someone every day to going no-contact.
Here are some tips and tricks to feeling better from one heartbroken girl to the next:
1) ACCEPT THAT IT’S OVER
While hope and optimism can be a really useful tool in your life, hanging on to the hope of rekindling your relationship is not the way to go right after a breakup. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but the sooner you accept that it’s over, the faster you’ll be able to move on.
If you are hanging on to hope that they can change or that they’ll come back, you are putting yourself through emotional torture. Hanging on to that hope prevents you from being able to get on with your life, and so the first step in moving on is to accept that it’s over.
2) FEEL YOUR FEELINGS
Heartbreak is a lot more complex than just feeling sad. It’s completely normal to feel betrayed, angry, and broken. Allowing yourself to feel your feelings is the best way of finding relief. Pushing them down and swallowing them because you are sick of crying or too tired to feel is not a healthy way of coping after a breakup. It’s so important to let yourself feel and process those feelings.
Something that can really help is writing things down; working through your feelings as you write is a great way of allowing yourself to accept those feelings. Some days you will feel perfectly fine and some days you will feel all the heartbreak and all the sadness again. In those moments, you MUST let yourself feel that pain in order to be able to move past it.
And let me let you in on a little secret: Feeling angry is valid and normal, even if your ex is NOT a piece of sh*t. Feeling angry that someone broke your heart is a logical human response. There doesn’t need to be any guilt on your part for feeling anger and resentment towards someone who made you feel so broken. Anger is simply another step in the grieving process, so don’t feel bad that you are angry. Instead, accept your feelings, allow yourself to feel them, and move on.
3) SURROUND YOURSELF WITH PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU
Going through heartbreak can be one of the loneliest feelings to experience. You just lost someone you had a connection with — someone you loved and who grew to be a key part of your life. That loss is bound to make you feel very alone, especially if it was someone you were in a long-term relationship with.
In those moments of loneliness, it is crucial to surround yourself with friends and family, people who love you and are able to see your worth. These people are your support system and it’s important to let them love and help you. It can be easy to want to push people away after any heartbreak for multiple reasons; you might think no one understands what you’re going through or you don’t want people in your life to see you at your lowest point, but the people in your life who love you genuinely want to be there for you. They want to help in any way they can.
Spending time with friends and family will also keep you busy. Staying busy is a helpful way of moving on with your life. Go out with your friends on the weekends, find a new hobby, binge read an entire book series, join a Crossfit gym with no previous experience (that’s what I did). All these little distractions allow you to move on while giving you the opportunity to hang out with those who love you and meet new people.
4) TAKE YOUR TIME
Let’s get personal for a minute. After my breakup, I hated when my friends and family would tell me that “time heals all wounds.” I was so hurt that I couldn’t even believe I’d ever completely heal or be myself again. I was convinced that no measure of time would be enough to make me feel “normal” again.
But I am slowly realizing that healing is not a cookie-cutter, step-by-step process. Healing can be messy and painful and sometimes it can feel like taking one step forward and three steps back. But after some time, you start to find your new normal, and memories that used to bring you pain no longer bring tears to your eyes. Eventually, the hurt and the heartbreak dissipate and you feel better — you feel stronger.
No one can tell you how long that’ll take for you, because everyone grieves and heals at a different pace. It’s important for you to find your own pace and give yourself time to heal. Don’t rush it.
5) ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR WORTH
A breakup can make your self-esteem plummet. It can make you feel small and insignificant. In those moments of absolute rock bottom, you need to find the strength to see yourself as someone who is worthy of love and respect. A breakup or a heartbreak does not diminish who you are as a person and a significant other should NEVER EVER make you question your worth as a human being. It’s cheesy, but YOU are amazing and you deserve to be with someone who treats you as such.
Heartbreak sucks. I get it. I have been there and I know that it feels like your whole world just came crashing down, but I promise it gets better. You will come out stronger. You will grow and find strength that you didn’t think you had. While it may seem crazy now, you will find a better version of yourself through your heartbreak.