Here’s How To REALLY Heal After A Breakup
When we fall in love with a person, we don’t just fall in love with them, we fall in love with how they make us feel. We fall in love with the way our energy connects with the other person’s energy and what transpires in the overlap. We fall in love with the opportunity to be in love. The occasion. The sense of purpose and meaning relationships bring to our lives.
So when we go through a break up, we tend to experience it not just as the loss of a particular person but as the loss of all the feelings we associate with that person. It’s the loss of the platform for our passion. For all the expressions of love and understanding.
In our reeling, hurting minds, the other person held the power to make us feel those deep, juicy, joyful feelings we once felt, and without that person, we are now denied access to the abundance of these feelings.
Breakups don’t just bring pain to our lives. They bring scarcity.
There is real power in understanding, with precision, what it is we’re mourning when we’re mourning. To make it strictly about the other person is to give that power away.
During a breakup, we want to regard ourselves ultra tenderly and consciously build back our inner reserve of love, which can feel like a well run dry in the face of heartache.
Keep the focus on the feelings, not the person. What are the specific feelings you’re mourning? Feelings are fluid. We can work with and influence our own feelings limitlessly.
The same is not true about our ex.
As the saying goes: You can’t control the other person but you can control how you regard the other person.
Once you’ve identified the feelings you’re mourning, see if you can bring a spirit of curiosity (which is extremely abundant in its very essence) to them.
How might you experience the feeling of passion in ways that have nothing to do with your ex? Going for a jog, submerging yourself in nature, taking on a creative project, connecting with friends, cooking something decadent, creating a vision board or an altar‚something that makes your heart sing with a sense of purpose again.
Louise Hay’s advice to “take yourself as your own lover” is so relevant here.
How might you experience feeling beautiful and meaningful? Is it time for a makeover? A haircut? A change to your look? Is there a place you could volunteer your time to help another creature and connect with them? Generosity is the opposite of scarcity.
Could you initiate deep-breathing, slow-moving embodiment practices in order to lovingly claim and inhabit your body again, just for yourself?
Post-breakup, treat yourself to flowers, to new sheets and pillow cases. Flip your mattress and maybe move the bed or other furniture in your space around to create a sense of newness. Bring in new smells—candles, incense, or essential oils are also deeply helpful.
Remember: Our minds remember through our senses. We want to give ourselves permission to turn the page by removing as many of the triggers of the past as we can and usher in a completely different, inspired momentum to our daily lives.
Creating fresh associations in the sacred areas of your life is not only a beautiful way to lovingly support yourself while going through the difficulty of a breakup, but it’s also a way to meet the scarcity of loss with the abundance of expansive newness.
See if you can get creative. Keep bringing the focus back to feelings, asking: How can I align my life to feel the feelings I long to feel? (Rather than: How can I get my ex back!?!) And take heart—by its very nature, loss creates new space in us to receive.
