How to Get Through a Break Up

Guest article by Francesca Strazzera

On Your Journey to Find Closure: Many times relationships end leaving one party confused, unsure, and asking a million questions about what went wrong. The answers will not come from reading your horoscope or taking a Buzzfeed quiz that tells you what your soulmate’s first initial is based on your pasta preferences. The best way to gain closure is to face your demons head on, despite our tendency to search for signs from the most obscure places. First, you must take responsibility for yourself and consider your own attitudes and behaviors that may have led to the split. Self-healing can only begin once you are self-aware. Still, there may be a lot of question marks and blurry lines.  If it is a possibility, go to the source and ask your ex to talk. If a conversation can help you gain clarity and move on then it is worth the price of your pride. Prepare questions and write down what you want to say beforehand so that you’re ready to have a calm, cool, and collected conversation. You deserve to know the truth about what happened and it will save you hours of sleep that you’d otherwise spend lying awake late at night wondering. However, if talking to your ex isn’t a possibility, it doesn’t mean you should shut down and shove all your feelings to the bottom of your soul. It also doesn’t mean you should make an appointment with a psychic for a tarot card reading. Instead, find other outlets that will help you work out your heartbreak. Keeping your emotions at the surface is scary and painful, but staying vulnerable allows you to deal with them and save yourself from creating deep-rooted issues. You may find closure through talking to friends, family, or a therapist, or through activities that help you focus and free your mind, like journaling and yoga. Find something that works for you and your personality. Closure doesn’t come quickly or easily, but it comes more lightly when you put in effort to reach it.

Trust time:

You’ve probably heard the expression that time heals all wounds. You listened to that advice and nodded in agreement while secretly screaming in your head, “so like… WHEN!?”. The cruel truth is that no one knows and it’s different for everyone. There is no way to rush through the pain. There are no shortcuts. It sucks, but there are ways to flow with it and grow rather than stand stuck in a rut. Your heart will heal most effectively when you are moving at your own pace. Once you can accept this and accept that you’re only human, you will be able to dump a lot of extra, heavy weight and take it day by day. It will remove that anxiety and pressure to get back to normal as soon as possible. So stop wondering why it’s taking so long to heal or why you can’t just get over it already. Don’t try to rush or take shortcuts because it is counter-effective and will only hurt your self-esteem. Instead, be okay with not being okay for a little while, and believe that you will come out the other end better and stronger. Trust the clock, trust that each day will get easier, and most importantly, trust that time will bring you someone new who will make you forget why this hurt so badly in the first place.

Grieving, Cry!:

Cry it out. Cry if you’re sad or angry or confused or just because you need to. Psychologists say that crying is healthy because it relieves stress and restores balance in your nervous system. You need this release so that you can properly mourn the relationship. Afterwards, you will feel better and have a clearer head. Post-crying is the best time to share your thoughts with a companion or paper and pen because that is when you are most in touch with your core.

Plan GNO’s… or GNI’s: It’s so easy to close the curtains, stay in your pajamas, and shut out the outside world when you’re in pain. Try not to let this happen. While solitude is good for self-reflection, it isn’t the best strategy for healing from a breakup. Don’t force yourself to go through this alone. So when you’re done listening to T-shirt by Shontelle and trying to decide, trying to decide if you really want to go out tonight, call your best friends. They will be your best supporters through this time and they are probably happy to have you back in the single world. You can hit the clubs and let yourself have a wild time or stay in, drink wine, and watch a movie. Whether you choose to go out or stay in, it’s important to surround yourself with people you love. They can help you distract yourself from the pain or help you resolve it within yourself if you really let them in. They can lend you a shoulder to cry on, listen to you take a load off your chest, and give you the reassurance you need. Your friends will remind you that you’re not alone and help you find your smile and laugh once more. They will show you the love that you have been missing from your ex S.O. and make you feel like yourself again.

Remember to Prioritize Yourself, Establish a Routine, and Make a List of Goals:

It might feel like you lost your other half, but it is important to remember that you are a whole person. Sometimes when you spend so much time committed and dedicated to someone else, it’s easy to forget to take care of yourself. Now your attention is undivided and your focus is completely on you. You have extra time, freedom, and space to turn your tragedy into opportunity. This is your chance to self-discover, explore your interests, sign up for something new, and expand beyond your comfort zone. Help yourself get motivated for the future by establishing a routine and making a list of goals. Give yourself a reason to be excited to get out of bed. Think about how you want the next chapter of your life to be along with the other amazing aspects of your life that you’d like to enrich. This might mean setting goals to advance in your career, spend more time with friends and family, or lead a stronger and healthier life. It can be as simple as setting aside an hour to read a book every day instead of spending it scrolling through Instagram. Your routine should be rewarding, give you a sense of control, and allow you to release the negativity in your life along with the heartache. You don’t have to schedule every little thing in your life, but planning your days and weeks will leave you less time to think about your heartbreak and more time to grow. Stay positive and look at this as a chance to truly get to know yourself and who you want to be.

Focus Your Mind:

Sometimes your mind can play tricks on you when you keep playing back moments from your relationship through your head. When you are truly missing your ex during a break up, you might find yourself focusing only on the good times. However, you might only play back bad memories when you are trying to defeat and replace feelings of love for your ex with negative emotions like hate or disgust. In both cases, you are fueling your feelings instead of working towards letting them go. Shifting back and forth between the good and the bad only makes things more confusing and distracts you from your ultimate goal to move on. When you find yourself in this situation, refocus and think about three major questions.

1. What wasn’t working in the relationship?

Feelings can cloud your judgment and cause you to forget the important issues. There might have been a conflict of interests, a difference in romantic attachment styles, lack of trust or commitment, or mistreatment on one or both parts. Ask yourself about any repeating patterns that made you unhappy, and keep in mind that it wasn’t an ideal relationship despite how much you may miss it.

 2. What do I want from my life and from my life partner?

Once you’re able to define the faults in your relationship, you can define what you want to be different in your next one. You probably learned a lot about yourself, life, love, and relationships from your experience. Use it. Now you can set your priorities in order and identify the traits you’re looking for in a partner and relationship. You can also reflect on how you might handle certain situations or dilemmas differently in the future, inside and outside of romance.

3. What do I deserve? You deserve exactly what you answered in Question 2. Remind yourself that you are worthy of love and that you should only be with someone who inspires you and lifts you up. A true partner will not point out your flaws and insecurities or bring you down because of their own.

Make a Self-Love Playlist: Mind over matter… or in this case, mood over dude, plan over man, goals over A-Holes. Your attitude controls how you live your life and the soundtrack that you’re listening to has a great influence on your heart and mind. Please turn off the sad songs that you listen to purposely to make yourself more sad. While grieving is good and encouraged, there is no benefit in making yourself sadder when you can be working towards being happy. An empowering or upbeat tune can change your day, and the proper playlist can give you back your confidence. Below is the start to a playlist curated for moving on, empowerment, and confidence.

1. Stronger by Britney Spears

2. Love Myself by Hailee Steinfeld

3. thank u, next by Ariana Grande

4. Sorry Not Sorry by Demi Lovato

5. Shake It Off by Taylor Swift

6. So Yesterday by Hilary Duff

7. Look At Her Now by Selena Gomez

8. Pretty Girl (Cheat Codes X Cade Remix) by Maggie Lindemann

9. Bad Girls by M.I.A.

10. Cinderella by The Cheetah Girls