How to survive the parting with a loved one? Step-by-step instructions from a psychologist

individual and family psychologist, CPT therapist

“Breaking up with a loved one is a process that will be difficult and painful. Don’t blame yourself for your emotions. You are experiencing a loss and your psyche is already doing its job as best it can and is able. Pain and vulnerability do not make you weak and pathetic. They only illuminate the importance of your values, meanings, and needs embedded in the romantic relationship. There’s nothing wrong with you, no matter what you’re experiencing right now. I will only suggest what you should do to get through this period with minimal loss and even learn valuable lessons from it. How to survive a breakup in five steps?”

Step 1: Legalizing your experiences

Going through a breakup is a whole complex of feelings. You have to say goodbye not only to a specific person, but also to the picture of an already impossible future, general plans, hopes for change, individual pieces of the image of your former partner. It’s painful, hard and unpleasant. However, the most damaging thing you can do is to put a ban on certain feelings, thoughts and memories. So what is important for you to take action on?

1. Accept any emotion. Don’t suppress or ignore difficult feelings. Allow yourself to experience them. It may seem strange, but accepting emotions allows you to process and release them more quickly, even if you are feeling rage and hopelessness.

Yes, people go from one side to the other after a breakup. First they fantasize about the cruelest revenge, then they sniff their partner’s shirt and sob from helplessness, and afterwards they stare at the wall from devastation, feeling a huge loss. These are all normal reactions to loss, common to millions of people. It would be strange to rejoice and exult in this situation. Stop judging yourself for being alive and in pain.

2. Allow yourself to “experience” the relationship. Sometimes it’s good to give yourself space to warm up to what you’ve lost. Schedule yourself strictly limited time to look at photos together, listen to “your” songs, and walk around “those” places. Such a confrontation with the past sometimes helps to overcome the pain faster. However, don’t go to the extreme – it is important to “snap out” of this state. That’s why I recommend scheduling these moments and switching to real life as soon as your alarm clock rings.

3- Use self-regulation techniques. Accepting any feelings is fine, as long as they don’t become completely agonizing and lead to harmful behaviors that you regret.

What will help you “surface” from the abyss? It could be self-regulation skills, including: deep, square breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, washing your face with cold water, or taking a brisk walk. It sounds simple, but it is techniques like these that instantly trigger the parasympathetic nervous system. It is responsible for controlling emotions and reducing overreactions.

Why is it harmful to forbid yourself to think about your ex-partner after a breakup?

1. Suppression of emotions. How does it affect life? Suppressed emotions can accumulate and manifest themselves after a while. For example, in the form of increased anxiety, depression and other psychological problems. Recognizing and processing these feelings is an important step in the healing process.

2- The effect of “paradoxical intention”. The essence of this psychological phenomenon is this: the more we try not to think about something, the more we end up thinking about it. Such behavior only aggravates suffering and inhibits the transition to a new stage.

3- Lack of reflection. Thinking about an ex-partner can be part of the natural process of reflection and realizing what happened in the relationship. This is a time to analyze, understand the conclusions and lessons that can be learned from the experience.

4- Distorting reality. This prohibition can lead to idealization of the past or, on the contrary, to its demonization. This will distort the perception of the relationship, and you will not be able to objectively assess what happened.

5. Slow recovery process. It will still be good to acknowledge and process emotions – a key aspect of healing. If you don’t allow yourself to think about the past, you can slow down the process, leaving unhealed wounds.

Step 2: Accepting Reality

The first step towards healing is accepting the fact of the breakup. It seems obvious, but many people get stuck in denial, continuing to hope that the relationship will return. It’s important to spend this time to your advantage: to realize and accept that it’s over. You now have a new reality. So what should you do if you keep getting swept away in hope?

1. Stop communicating with your former partner. At least for a while. According to research, cutting down on contact helps you reduce emotional pain and move on. I would recommend not communicating at all for a few months or leaving “general business” without diving into personal communication. Right now, your goal is to separate as much as possible. Even if you want to break up on a good note, you can say: “I’ll block you for two or three months to trivialize the breakup: it’s not a statement or punishment, it’s just easier for me to cope with it”.

2. Stop idealizing the past. Often after a breakup, people begin to see the former partner exclusively in positive colors, completely forgetting about the problems. Don’t deny the warm, good, and kind things between you, but also keep in mind the hurtful moments, the tough mismatches, the fundamental differences, or anything else that made you a not-so-happy person in that relationship.

If you didn’t initiate the breakup, think about this: would you want to be around someone who didn’t want to be with you? How would it feel to see your loved one suffering in a relationship that is not right for them?

3. Conduct a “ritual of goodbye.” This could be a letter in which you express all your feelings and then burn it. Another option is to throw away personal items that remind you of your ex-partner. Saying goodbye to the past through symbolic actions helps to end the emotional attachment.

4- Limit access to social media. Keeping tabs on your ex-partner’s life can interfere with your recovery. Even if you block him, you can still sharply on a wave of feelings to go to his page and see something wounding. So don’t be afraid to take drastic measures: limiting the time you spend on social media or even temporarily deleting certain apps will help you focus on yourself.

Step 3: Create a support group

After a breakup, it’s important to surround yourself with supportive people: friends, family members, coworkers. This way you’ll get warm emotional validation and avoid isolation and loneliness.

1. Talk to others who have similar experiences. When I was divorced and going through the most difficult period, I gathered a kind of “ex-wives club” at work. The experience provided an incredible amount of empathy and sympathy. Most surprising was the confession from each of them: “The only thing I regret is that I didn’t get divorced even earlier.”

2- Use social media, support groups, chat rooms and forums. If you find it hard to share with friends and acquaintances, then the online environment will be your mainstay. In such places you can find people who are going through similar situations. They will definitely understand you and will not judge you, no matter what is happening to you right now.

3. Please don’t be alone. Many people are hampered by the attitude that you need to be a strong person, save face and in any case do not take the litter out of the house. Believe me, this has nothing to do with resilience and decent behavior.

Find at least one person in your environment with whom you feel comfortable. Otherwise, it is fraught with a sense of total helplessness, hopelessness and loneliness. A psychologist can be such a person. Think of seeking professional help as your strength: you are taking action in the name of self-care.

Step 4: Self-care

After a breakup, it’s more important than ever for you to surround yourself with enjoyable activities and important routines that will keep you energized. However, a big mistake would be to mindlessly throw yourself at everything in the world just to have something. Let’s do it the smart way.

1- Identify your resources and needs. Let’s not pretend that you’ve always been single. Completed relationships shut down some important needs and gave you a lot of footing. You don’t want to leave them behind. Now that you don’t have a partner, you’re going to have to fulfill those needs in a different way, and to do that, you need to label them.

Write out everything that this relationship has given you – everyone will have something different. Acceptance, love, support, security? Hope for the best, self-confidence, deep understanding, mutual interest? A feeling of strength, a sense of security, an image of home?

2. Consider how to give yourself what you have lost. Lifehack here is that much of the above you already have. If you made a cozy home together with your spouse, you already have the ability to create this comfort around you. Can you empathize with your loved ones? Then you will be able to treat yourself with love and sympathy. If there is at least one person in the world who believes in you, then there will be others. By the way, think right now, have you met such people on your way before? Was it really unique?

3. Do things you couldn’t do in a relationship. More good news: not only have important pillars been taken away from you, but new opportunities have opened up for you. Yes, it’s likely that the relationship was giving you something valuable and important. Now you have ways to mine it in a different way.

But wasn’t it the case that the relationship took something away? What can you afford to do now that you no longer have anything to do with that person? Show some sides of yourself, pursue a particular endeavor, shift your focus from the relationship to your career, fulfill a dream? Even if there was no resentment or inhibitions on your partner’s part, what did he or she inhibit you from doing and what is available to you now?

Step 5: Refresh

Step five is designed to help you analyze your meanings, values and desires to think globally about yourself in the context of your whole life. I give you this so that you don’t torment yourself with meaningless activities just to shift your focus. What is the usual advice in such cases? Lie in the bathtub, get a massage, meet friends, play sports, go to work? All this makes sense only when you understand what these actions mean for you personally: how they are connected with your values, what goals they move towards, what deep needs they fulfill, what inner state they strengthen.

1. Revise your views on the future. Sometimes a breakup is a good opportunity to rethink life goals and priorities. Let’s dream and try to plan a new stage based on the conclusions from the previous step. Try to focus on the future and what you can slowly do now to live the life you dream about.

2- Set specific goals and strategies. This is also an important point to cope with a breakup: spell out specific steps, prioritize them, and do the very first one as soon as possible. Planning new interests and accomplishments helps channel energy in a positive direction and restores a sense of control over your life.

3. Take time for non-judgmental observation. Breaking up involves reflection and a whole lump of feelings – this will stretch on for a while. Allow thoughts and emotions to be present, but don’t merge with them or stop moving forward. To do this, I suggest you practice “non-judgmental thought observation.”

The essence is to allocate yourself time and simply observe everything that comes into your head. The main thing is not to try to evaluate, analyze or criticize it in any way. You can observe the natural flow of thoughts.

Another option is to toss to yourself what has been bothering you lately. The key is to realize that in this moment, the thought is not ruling you. You are sitting there and just looking at it from the outside as an independent entity. The thought is not the whole you, and it doesn’t define you entirely.

4- Look for enjoyable, fully immersive activities. If you feel too stuck in drudgery, try switching to something that matters to you (or has mattered/interested you in the past). The general rule of thumb is that the activity should leave no room for worry or reflection. Most often, these are creative, work or play activities during which you need to think hard with full focus – otherwise the exercise just won’t work.

That’s all. If the emotional state is completely unbearable, contact a psychologist. Professional help will help speed up the healing process and help you understand the complex feelings you have to wade through. Don’t go through this alone. According to research, seeing a counselor can seriously help you through a breakup, especially if you’re struggling to cope emotionally or facing long-term depression over the breakup.