Breakup Advice

Many visitors come to our site wondering how to recover from a breakup. While there is no one formula that works for everyone, there are certain guidelines that are bound to help you come out stronger and healthier in the long run.

Recovering from a breakup is a healing process like most others. It takes time and it often happens in phases. Let’s take a look at each stage and what you can do to get through it optimally.

The Immediate Aftermath

Right after the breakup happens, you may be deeply wounded. Some studies have even shown that breakups can significantly impact our brains and hormones. So expect that you may not be yourself and that you may feel a lot of pain in the early stage right after the relationship ends. In most cases, this is normal.

Your main task in this early phase is really to simply weather the pain and grieve. And it can really be ok early on to do what it takes, minute to minute and hour to hour, to get through this step. Whatever comforts you without being overly unhealthy is alright.

It’s ok to have a little ice cream now and then. It’s ok to spend a day watching your favorite TV shows. It’s certainly ok to spend some time reading good books that can help you feel less alone.

This phase can last anywhere from a few weeks to months depending on how long and intense the relationship was. It may feel like it will never end, but know that it will eventually and persevere.

One thing to note is that if the pain seems abnormally intense or if you are feeling driven to do self-destructive things, you may want to seek professional help. There is no shame in seeking support and it may even help you grow more than you would on your own through this phase.

Readjusting to Life

In this phase, you begin to come out of the fog of the immediate aftermath. You still aren’t necessarily totally stable. You may get hit by heartbreak now and then when certain experiences trigger it. But you’re feeling more and more stable for longer periods of time.

In this phase, you will want to begin getting back to how life was before for you. Start going out more with friends. Start doing the things you’ve always enjoyed. You may find that sometimes you are fully invested in these activities and other times you are going through the motions. This is alright.

As this phase stretches out, you will increasingly find yourself getting lost in life again and only realize later that you forgot to remember to be hurt, so to speak. This is when you know you’re really getting closer to recovery.

Re-Emerging Stronger than Before

At a certain point, you will realize that not only are you going for almost all of the stretches of time without feeling intense grief, but you are even feeling stronger than you were. This is because a breakup can help you go through a form of detoxification. You cry. You process issues both current and past, conscious and unconscious. And after that takes place, just like after you’ve digested a good meal, you feel even better than you did previously.

If you want to know how to recover from a breakup, the answer is to accept that it is a process and focus on doing each step of the process to the best of your ability. Even though a breakup can feel like the end of the world at first, it can ultimately prove to be the beginning of a new and better world.

One of the most important areas of breakup advice is advice on getting over a broken heart.

After a breakup, people may experience a spectrum of emotions ranging from joy or relief at being free to extreme pain that makes it difficult to function. If you are one of those experiencing the more unpleasant side of the breakup emotions, we will be providing support and answers for you on this website over time.

The first question to ask in getting over a broken heart is “What exactly does my broken heart actually represent?” You see, ‘broken heart’ is a very vague term that is used to describe what are in reality several different conditions. These conditions most commonly include healthy heartbreak, depression and relationship addiction withdrawal.

The distinction between these three forms of breakup pain was explored in depth in an earlier piece called “Is it Healthy Heartbreak, Depression or Relationship Addiction Withdrawal?”

The pain of a breakup may also stem, to some extent, from and bring awareness of other underlying conditions ranging from personality and mood disorders to the manifestations of unresolved past abuse or abandonment.

It is important to distinguish which of these conditions is actually behind your experience of a broken heart.

The first secret to getting over a broken heart, then, is that, in order to know the best treatment or action to take to resolve the pain, you need an accurate diagnosis of what underlies that pain. Not all breakup pain is the same!

The second secret to getting over a broken heart is that, in most cases, the goal should not simply be to ‘get over it’, per se. The goal should really be to use the broken heart as a launching pad to longer term health. You see, if you ‘get over’ a broken heart by simply drowning out, suppressing or denying the pain, it may only go underground to haunt you later in various ways. The key to truly getting over it is to undergo healthy grief and healing.

In the future we will discuss more about this important and eternal relationship issue. For now, these two keys will set you on the right path toward getting over a broken heart in the healthiest way possible.