Six Psychological Strategies for Getting Over a Bad Breakup

“Tell me on a Sunday,” the old Broadway standard goes.  The singer knows that her relationship is ending, and wants the breakup to happen in person, in a quiet, honest way, in a setting where she’ll have the space to feel and express all the emotions that it provokes.  But these days, most people expecting a breakup can count themselves lucky if they even hear the news in person.  Breakups by text are on the rise, as they require very little in the way of social skills, honesty, or clarity.  Even worse, the trend toward “ghosting” has relationships ending without even the vestigial grace of a text message: the loved one simply stops responding and won’t return calls or texts, becoming instantly, and irrevocably, unavailable. 

Source: Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons

For better or for worse, the emotional tone of a breakup can powerfully affect the recovery process that the “dumped” or “ghosted” partner goes through after the relationship’s end.  Bad breakups usually instigate long recoveries involving depression, self-doubt, and a reluctance to move on.  Even the normal breakup process is hard enough; some say there are seven stages to recovery, with each one roughly analogous to the seven stages of grief first described by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.  This makes sense, because after all, a breakup is first and foremost a loss that requires grieving.  To get over it, one often first goes through a desperate need for answers, then through denial, bargaining and anger (punctuated by occasional relapses of romantic feeling or emotional contact), until one finally arrives at acceptance and the ability to redirect one’s hope.  Mutual friends are often lost, and loneliness becomes a reliable companion.  Quite often, the dumped partner continues to feel doubts about his or her own ability to attract someone new. 

Internally — inside one’s brain — bad breakups can lay waste to neurological homeostasis.  It’s very difficult not to think about the people who left us behind, taking our happiness with them, even though doing so activates areas of the brain that make it harder to get through the breakup.  To name a few of these areas: the ventral terminal region (which is associated with motivation and reward); the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex (which are both part of the dopamine system and associated with addiction); and the insular cortex and anterior cingulate cortex (which are responsible for handling physical pain and bodily distress).  Thus, a bad rejection in one’s social life will light up the same region of the brain that handles reactions to physical pain.  To put it simply: breakups hurt the way they do because your brain processes them just like injuries to your body.  Worse, one reason why it’s often so difficult to “get over” your ex-partner is that neurologically, your experience is analogous to going through withdrawal from a powerful, addictive drug. 

So what can you do about this social, emotional and neurological assault?  Unfortunately, there are no real “life hacks” that always work to get you over the hard times.  The only way out, as they say, is through.  You’ll need to consolidate all of the positive and negative memories of your ex-partner as a component of your past, not your present; accomplishing this feat constitutes the main task of grieving.  Self-care at a time like this is absolutely paramount, as well, and it often also helps to remind oneself of the reasons why the relationship didn’t work out.  And lastly, it usually helps to manage one’s environment, to cut down on painful reminders of your loss.  Here, then, are five key suggestions for anyone who’s going through a bad breakup right now. 

1)    Stay away from your ex — as far as you can.  Don’t reach out to him or her to help you understand why the relationship ended, don’t indulge in following his or her social media feeds, and of course, don’t succumb to the temptation of post-breakup sex.  These highly charged behaviors will only help to prolong your feeling of being intensely emotionally connected to your ex-partner. 

2)    Make a list of your ex’s bad qualities.  Petty though it may seem, listing every reason why your relationship would never have worked (i.e. “He’s too controlling,” or “She’s always late to meet me,” or “We disagree politically”) can help shore up your certainty that the relationship is over for good, and should also build your resolve to stay away from your ex. 

3)     Refresh your living space.  Move your furniture around, buy some new art, or paint your room a different color.  Naturally, you should put away any physical reminders of your ex — anything he or she bought you, or you bought together, that you now see every day.  (This includes those items that may be the most difficult to part with.)  No matter what you do, the goal is to create a fresher, less memory-soaked space for you to inhabit. 

4)    Take up new activities.  Of course you’ll need to fill your schedule, so that you don’t end up spending too much time alone.  But it’s also worthwhile to create new memories, which take up more mental space than falling back on the same old daily routine.  These new memories can broaden the psychological distance between you and your ex. 

5)    Stay healthy.  Get better sleep, eat well, exercise more.  It’s harder to feel terrible when your body feels great.  Do this even if you it very difficult to get motivated.  If nothing else, exercise can serve as a welcome change to your routine, and will productively fill your schedule. 

6)    Try mindfulness meditation.  Find five to ten minutes every morning to sit, breathe, and stay in the present moment.  Meditation can help with stress, improve your blood flow, reduce your anxiety, and simply help you become more comfortable with the flow of your own thoughts. 

As I’ve said, there are no real shortcuts to getting over the end of a significant relationship.  Good self-care will help you through the times when you feel your lowest, and a sensible restriction of people, places and things that remind you of your ex-partner may be able to keep you from feeling that way for very long.  Lastly, opening yourself up to new experiences can both alter your perspective and help you put valuable psychological distance between yourself and the breakup.  Although nobody can say exactly how long it will take, eventually, you will see the world differently and begin to feel like yourself again.


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