Getting Past Your Breakup

December 5, 2006 by susangpyp Getting Past Your Breakup: 10 Things To Do To Move On NOW! Even when we see a breakup coming, it can be devastating to suddenly be alone. Perhaps we were still holding onto hope that it would last. Perhaps we were just deep in denial about everything that was going wrong. Perhaps we were trying to get it together before the clock chimed midnight and werent fast enough.

Even if its a breakup we wanted and think is for the best, it can be devastating. Gone are the hopes and dreams that you had at the beginning, gone is a person who became part of your life. There are shared memories, shared friends, shared traditions and often, shared children. It can be tough whether it was a welcome sigh of relief or the most devastating thing that has ever happened. Its even harder around the holidays. Whether you broke up today or last March, the first holidays can be rough.

Ten Things To Do After The Breakup To Get On With Your Life:

1. Know that grieving someone and missing them does not necessarily mean you want them. It means you hurt because youve had a loss. Perhaps that loss is the best thing but its still a loss. Dont mistake grief for love. Its normal and natural to grieve any losseven if the relationship was the worst in the world. Dont let your grief cause you to second guess your feelings. Part of the grief process is review and relinquishment where it is necessary to process through the relationship. Unfortunately this review comes in the form of having the ex on your mind constantly. Its a working through and it doesnt mean youre not going to get over it, or that you still love the ex. It means your mind is doing the work it needs to do to process through it and get over it. 2. Even if you do still love him or her, you dont have to act on it. You dont have to make contact or find ways to see the other person. Grief is a long, hard process and often contact will TEMPORARILY alleviate the pain or take your mind off the pain youre in. But its not really alleviating it. Its just postponing the inevitable. If you are afraid of the pain, it most likely means that you have unresolved grief or abandonments in the past and that makes this loss hurt all the more. Take this as an opportunity to grieve your losses and face them and get through them once and for all. Running from unresolved losses does not make them go away. TIME does NOT heal all wounds. Only working through the grief and loss and allowing yourself your feelings heals all wounds. Your life will be so much better if you work through unresolved loss. The emotions of grief are anger, pain, confusion, searching, pining and anxiety. There is a roller coaster ride of confused emotions before you end the process. Be

gentle with yourself. Sometimes you think you are done and then you recycle. Its normal. Youre not doing anything WRONG. Trust the process. And remember this is about YOU. This is your work and your getting over it. Detach from the ex and what he or she is doing. Its none of your business and what you are doing is none of their business. Do your work for you and concentrate ON YOUnot on them or what he or she is doing. If people are telling you what they are doing tell them to stop it. If youre communicating with the ex, stop it. Concentrate on YOU. Its hard but dont text, dont call, dont email, dont send jokes or chain emails or funny emails and if they send them ask them nicely to stop. Just dont communicate. 3. Try not to date or get into another relationship right away. Its tempting but know that another relationship is not going to help until you get over this one. Everyone does the rebound relationship once or twice in their life but its usually not the best thing. When that ends, you might have two relationships, instead of one, to get over. Not dating includes not sleeping around. Many times we use physical attraction and the chase as a distraction for our pain. Its a very temporary salve. Afterwards we might feel used and even worse than we did before (or we might contract an STD making us feel MUCH worse and MUCH less attractive!). Having sex with people youre not terribly emotionally attached to is never a good idea, but its a fact that people do it when theyre scared, bored, hurt, have low self-image etc etc etc. There are a myriad of reasons why people wind up having sex with people they are not in a relationship, but the worst time to do it is when you are emotionally vulnerable because it can add to the problems instead of alleviating them. It is human nature to want to prove we are still attractive and can still get someone to have with, but try to avoid physical entanglements because the person you get when you are on the rebound is usually not a great choice. Some people will say, I just want someone to hold me. and use that as an excuse to bed down with Mr. or Ms. Wrong. The price for someone to hold you is very high. It brings emotional and maybe physical consequences. Right now you need to be healing from your breakup and not adding any fuel to the fire. 4. Journal. Pour your heart and soul into a journal. Write letters to your ex in the journal. BUT DO NOT SEND THEM. Write down the things you wish were differentthe things youre angry about and hurt aboutwrite down the things you would like to be forgiven forwrite down any significant statements youd like to makework on the letter a little every daypour your heart out. When you are getting to the end of the lists, write a letter to the ex asking for forgiveness for what you did, forgiving them for what they did and again DONT SEND IT but read it out loud to a friend or a therapist. Then burn the letter. Rituals like this help you move on. This is about YOUR closure and you moving on. It is NOT about them. Other ways to journal is to make lists about things you want to do. Buy books on grief and loss and relationship recovery. Journal about passages that resonate in you. The journalling is a processing of the relationshiplet it out.

5. Take a relationship inventory. Write down all the pros and cons of the relationship. All the good points and bad points of your ex. All the highs and all the lows. Look at it as objectively as you canUse this breakup as a LEARNING experience. LEARNING ABOUT YOU. Ask these questions:how this person was like other people you had unsuccessful relationships withwhat does this say about you? What early warning signs did you ignore? Why did you ignore them? What will you do next time if the same early warning sign comes up? What do you need to work on in you and in your past? Is this person like a parent? What unresolved issues with your parents or early caretakers (could be teachers or older siblings) are playing themselves out in your life. What do you need to look at/ work on. How did you get into it? What unmet needs of yours were running the show? What does that say about you? How can you avoid this in the future? What work needs to be done? 6. Find support groups. If you have a therapist, ask him or her if there is a group (for women, womens groups, for men, mens groups) that you can join. It doesnt have to be a therapy group. Find a hobby group, a reading group, some social group to be involved with. This is not the same as keeping busy. This is rediscovering who you are and that there are people like you out there. Remember, social and hobby and therapy groups are not the singles scene. Go with a clean objectiveto rebuild your lifeand not to be on the prowl. 7. Putting yourself out there is hard. Oftentimes we have no energy. Ending a relationship and doing grief work is hard. Sometimes we go out with high expectations that we will feel better and come home feeling worse. We didnt like the people, the group was awful, no one liked us. There were other people who were clicking and that makes us feel more alone. Maybe theyre not your people. You will find your kind of people. Trust the process. That doesnt mean that no one will ever like you or that you should stop putting yourself out there. It only means THAT group wasnt for you. Keep looking. And when youre journaling ask yourself if youre giving everything enough of a chance or are you at a point in your life where you just hate everything and everyone that is not the ex. If so, just keep going out there. One day you will wake up and find youre not so cranky and finicky. 8. Be good to yourself. Give yourself a treat. Buy a new book or something nice to wear. Take a bubble bath. Go to a movie. Play a rousing game of golf, or pool, or basketball or raquetball. Join a gym. Make sure you are eating right and exercising. This will not only make you feel better, but look better. Do something that says, This is important to me. If its something that your ex loathed, EVEN BETTER. Do things for you on a daily basis, but also schedule a me night once a week and stay committed to it. If you need to relax, do that. If it makes you feel better to be active, do that. But give yourself ONE NIGHT A WEEK where you make a date with yourself to do good, validating things for you.things that say, Im okay and I deserve this. Sometimes after a breakup, our self-esteem takes a big hit. We start to think that something is wrong with us. We start to blame ourselves for things. If our ex is the type to tell us what is wrong with us, we feel not only dumped but dumped on. Two things to stop this particular train wreck: a) stop communicating with the extell the ex what she or he thinks of you is none of your business and b) do positive self-talk and affirmation exercises to keep your selfimage up. Dont buy into any scenario that places this breakup squarely on YOUR shoulders. Dont let this breakup drive your self-esteem into the ground.

Being good to you includes positive self-talk and rejection of criticism by others (esp the ex!). Know that you will not always feel this way. There is life after a breakupa very good life. Stay optimistic that maybe today is not the day youre over it, but that day will come. And be good to yourself in the meantime. 9. Avoid revenge. As hard as that might beas many scenarios play out in your mindavoid it like the plague. It will just come back to haunt you. You can write about it, talk about it and dream about itbut dont DO anything about it. Similarlyavoid trash talking and spreading rumors. These are destructive behaviors that will only get to you in the end. Suppose your trash talking or rumor spreading or revenge story gets around and months later you become interested in someone who had heard about itdo you think theyre going to want you? Do you think healthy people will be attracted to you? No one wants someone who has revenge / getting even in their portfolio. Everyone will know (friends and lovers alike) that if youre capable of that, you can do it to them. But the most important reason to avoid it is because its not good for you. Its just notso talk about it, write about it, think about itbut dont DO anything about it. 10. Remember the only thing that is the end of the world is the end of the world. Breakups are inherently painful. Your hurt is not necessarily a measure of your love for the other but rather a measure of your humanity. The fact is that we are humans and we love and we become attached and when we lose a love and have to un-attach, we hurt. Pain after a breakup is normal and natural.even searing pain and abject misery is normal and natural..pacing the floors, not being able to sleep, having anxiety attacksdifficulty concentratingthese are are normal and natural grief reactionswhat is not normal are suicidal thoughts and deep depressionif you have these reactions, SEE A PROFESSIONAL. Everyone going through a breakup can benefit from a counselor or therapist but if you are plunged into a deep depression or have suicidal thoughts, GET HELP IMMEDIATELY. If youre not suicidal or clinically depressed (just feel really really awful and incredibly sad), know the pain is temporary and that the only way out is THROUGH.