A major breakup, such as a divorce or broken engagement, devastates you in every conceivable way.
Not only do you lose your relationship, you also lose your lifestyle, your goal of raising your children in a healthy family, and any other dreams you had for your future. Each loss feels like another blow, sinking deeper and deeper into the depths of heartbreak and despair.
I know there are many people who have survived divorce, but I wonder what they knew about how to recover from a breakup that you don’t. And you think that maybe your breakup was much worse than what the other person went through and what they did won’t work for you. And your painful thoughts will change as you wrestle with your worries about how to get through your divorce.
The problem is, the more you worry, the harder it becomes to recover and the cycle starts all over again. It’s a vicious cycle that keeps you stuck.
But you can get out of it. You can stop self-destructive thinking. And you can move on with your life. All you need is a willingness to put in the effort mentally, emotionally, and physically to achieve your goal of getting over a divorce or major breakup.
Here are 19 ways to quickly get over a breakup and ultimately move forward with your life.
1. Know that getting over the end of a relationship is difficult.
Divorce hurts everyone involved in different ways and at different times. This truth is easily known by the amount of divorce information found on the Internet, the number of songs written about the end of relationships, and the number of TV shows, movies, and books about breakups of all kinds.
Please be kind to yourself as these are very difficult times. Showing yourself compassion as you work through the pain of a breakup will help you get over it much faster than being impatient with yourself.
2. Allow yourself to grieve.But don’t throw regular self-pity parties
Having compassion for yourself includes feeling sad about everything you’ve lost, but that doesn’t mean you should focus on what you no longer have.
Paying too much attention to what you’ve lost will only lead you out of heartbreak.
3. Ask for help
Divorce in particular is one of the most difficult things to go through. There’s no reason you have to go through it alone.
ask for help. Just ask Google. Ask your friends. Ask your support expert questions. Build a support system for yourself to help you recover from your divorce as quickly as possible.
4. Don’t be stuck in the past
Three thoughts about the past usually prevent people from recovering from a serious breakup.
- They want to understand exactly why their relationship ended.
- They blame themselves for things they could have done, should have done, or would have done.
- They blame their ex exclusively for everything that happens.
If you dwell on the past, you will stay there. Just as you can’t move your car forward by staring in the rearview mirror, you can’t move forward in life by focusing on the past.
You can’t change the past. The best thing you can do is learn from it.
5. View relationship failures simply as important lessons you have to learn.
You and your ex-lover had a relationship that wasn’t working out. The relationship failed, but you can learn from it if you choose.
If you decide to learn from your failed marriage instead of labeling yourself a failure, you can regain your confidence in yourself and your ability to have successful relationships in the future.
6. Stop seeing yourself as a victim
It’s easy to feel like a victim when someone breaks up with you. But that’s the worst thing you can do. (When I got divorced, I also had a lot of trouble with victim mentality.)
When you think of yourself as a victim, you deny yourself the strength and power you need to overcome your heartbreak. Change the subject and take responsibility for what you did (or didn’t do) that caused the relationship to end.
7. Neutralize toxic people
While it’s often your ex who is toxic, there are many other people who can be toxic as well.
Learning how to distance yourself from their drama (and hatred) is one of the most important ways to get over a divorce or recover from a breakup.
8. Embrace change
There are no two ways about this: divorce = change. A big breakup = big changes in your life. The longer you struggle with the necessary changes, the longer you will be stuck.
However, this does not mean that you should simply reshuffle your divorce negotiations. You should fight about what’s important, but not about who gets the music in your iTunes account.
Life will be easier if you just focus on the changes that need to be made and the starting point of where you are going from here.
9. Accept the emotional turmoil of divorce as normal.
No one likes to feel out of control of their emotions and unable to predict how they will feel from one moment to the next. But that’s what heartbreak is like.
No matter how it feels, you don’t lose your mind. You’re just dealing with a lot of stress. And stress has a strange effect on people.
10. Take time to relax
Divorce or separation can be very difficult, so you need to set aside time to relax.
Relaxing is not the same as being depressed and stuck. Relaxation is when you intentionally take time out of your day to relax and pause everything else.
11. Exercise
One of the best ways to deal with stress (and the situational depression of a breakup) is to exercise. Exercises can be as simple as going for a walk, or as extreme as training for or competing in an Ironman triathlon.
12. Get enough sleep
Yes, sleeping in the middle of a heartbreak is a pipe dream.
But the more you can get your sleep habits and schedule back on track, the better you’ll be able to cope with stress.
13. Limit caffeine
This may be difficult to do if you aren’t getting enough sleep, but too much caffeine can make you all overstimulated.
You’re already stressed enough dealing with a breakup, so adding caffeine fuel to the already raging stress fire isn’t in your best interest.
14. Develop a strong, positive and flexible mindset
This is the real goal for anyone who really wants to learn how to recover from a breakup.
They know (just like you) that habitual thinking and inflexibility are what keep you stuck.
15. Choose to work on your divorce recovery every day, no matter what setbacks come your way.
When you want to accomplish something, set aside time every day to work on it.
Do the same for recovering from a divorce or breakup.
The more time you spend focusing on doing what it takes to get back to normal, the sooner you’ll feel that way.
16. Become emotionally intelligent about yourself and others.
The better you can become aware of what’s going on with your emotions and why you feel the way you do, the faster you’ll be able to calm down from your emotional roller coaster ride.
And the better you can understand other people’s emotions, the easier it will be to avoid triggers.
17. Develop confidence
Divorce can damage your self-confidence.
Either way, you still have great qualities and you can and should feel great about them.
Find what you love about yourself and remind yourself of it every day. This will help you build your confidence.
18. Don’t wait for an apology to forgive.
One of the most difficult parts of recovering from divorce is forgiving both your ex-husband and yourself for everything that contributed to the end of your marriage. The obstacle most people run into is equating forgiveness with forgetting or acknowledging what happened.
That’s not real forgiveness. True forgiveness is when you release the past so that it no longer controls you.
We need to remember what happened so we can learn from it and make better choices in the future.
19. Remember why you are working so hard to learn how to bounce back after divorce.
Some days you just want to stay in bed, pull the covers over your head and let the rest of the world go on without you. In moments like these, remembering why you want to get through your divorce will give you the motivation you need to get through the next day, no matter what you’re facing.
These 19 tasks are the basics of what you need to do to cope with the end of your marriage.
Some days it’s easier to tackle a task than others. And that’s completely normal because divorce recovery is a process.
As you continue to work on these tasks, you’ll gradually notice that they become easier and you don’t struggle with worry as much as you used to.
Once you start forgetting about how bad the divorce is or what happened in the past, you will be able to get back up faster from the blow that divorce has dealt you and have a new life ahead of you now that you have discovered how to bounce back after divorce. can be accepted.
Dr. Karen Finn is a life and divorce coach and divorce survivor. She works with individuals at every stage of their divorce.
This article was originally published at: good person project. Reprinted with permission from the author.