You won’t be down for long. Trust.
If you’re suffering from a broken heart after a bad breakup, learning how to get over someone while figuring out how to love yourself at the same time is the fastest way to heal. Whether you initiated breaking up and ended the relationship, or your girlfriend or boyfriend did the dumping, it’s your job to do the hard work of mending your heart.
Heartbreak is something most of us will face at one time or another. And unfortunately, getting over a breakup takes the one thing we can’t alter — time.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t get over a breakup more quickly than you might think, even without the aid of Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s time-traveling DeLorean.
Speeding up the process simply requires taking the simple, yet surprisingly difficult, first step of having an honest conversation … with yourself.
Talking to yourself might get you some weird looks if you try this out in public, but regardless, it will help you heal from the pain of a broken heart.
Often times, people forget how to have an honest conversation. They embrace a knee-jerk reaction that leaves them wondering why they’re stuck in this position or even leaves them admitting that they deserved to get dumped.
Either way, people in the midst of a breakup tend to resist the experience and tell themselves that they don’t deserve to go through so much pain. They act as though they’re immune to life’s sorrows and believe that need to get through the breakup as quick as possible — then everything will be fine.
Having an honest conversation with yourself allows you to feel the experience.
Rather than running from the pain of your broken heart, this honest conversation with yourself requires you to sit in your experience and allow it to marinate.
Now let’s be clear: You don’t need to wallow in it. But you should face your fears and truly feel them. Try freeing your mind from judgment and letting yourself be still with your emotions, even the bad ones.
Then, once you’ve had this difficult conversation with yourself, you’re ready to take the next crucial steps.
Here are six ways you can learn how to get over someone after a bad breakup — and fall back in love with yourself at the same time!
1. Ask for support.
Even though your heartbreak is a personal experience, you don’t have to go through all of it alone. Sure, you can’t make others feel what you’re feeling, but you can rely on them for support.
Everyone from family to friends and from coaches to therapists, can offer a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on or provide a safe space where you can blow off a little steam. You need to grieve the loss of your relationship and your ex before you can truly move on, and a strong network of supporters can help you do that.
2. Practice self-love.
No, this doesn’t mean lotion and tissues — it means self-care. After a breakup, look at your wants and needs and take care of yourself on an emotional level.
Self-care varies for every individual, so establish a self-care regimen that works for you. Maybe it means joining a hiking club or signing up for a yoga class. Maybe it means meditating or taking a cooking class or getting a massage.
What it boils down to is this: If there is something that will help you improve yourself, go out and do it. When you’re working toward your goals or self-improvement, you’ll feel happier, even if you’re still on the mend after a bad breakup.
3. Don’t allow yourself to get stuck.
The worst place to deal with a breakup is on your living room couch, where you’re prone to getting stuck in your emotions.
Instead, open yourself up to new connections (even if it’s with old friends) and new experiences (even if it’s outside of your comfort zone) as a way to help you get over your breakup fast. You can only get true fulfillment when you’re willing to let yourself go out and feel.
Remember, objects in motion stay in motion. And emotion is a motion. Just like clouds floating across the sky, your emotion doesn’t stay idle. Your emotions will pass by you eventually, which is why time can heal all wounds.
4. Spend time in nature.
Even if you find the outdoors more mediocre than great, getting out in nature is an excellent way to deal with a breakup. Use the woods or a desolate beach as a place to reflect.
Write down the things you want to let go of and then, quite literally, let go of them — burn them, tie them to a balloon, put them in a bottle and toss them out to sea.
Allow the solace and serenity of Mother Nature to be your wing-woman as you work to heal your broken heart.
5. Process your thoughts with audio journaling.
Traditional journaling in a diary isn’t an effective strategy for everyone. So if you feel more comfortable talking through things than putting them down on paper, consider audio journaling — where you record your thoughts, rather than writing them.
This cathartic process can help you to get things off your chest and better process the emotions you’re feeling post-breakup.
6. Learn how to sit with your emotions.
As part of your healing process, make an active choice to feel and experience your emotions when you have them. Deal with them. Acknowledge them. Be mad at them or sad at them. But allow yourself to exist with them in the moment.
Need help with sitting with your emotions? There’s an app for that! Insight Timer is an app you can use to give yourself a small block of time (start with 15 minutes or so) and allow yourself to simply sit with your emotions.
So to help you get over your breakup more quickly, practice sitting with your emotions, accepting them, and then going on with your day.
Sitting with your emotions on a regular basis helps you remind yourself that, no matter how painful your breakup was, you are strong enough to survive it.
By Clayton Olson for YourTango