How to Heal a Broken Heart

Reflective Thinking

How many times have you told yourself don't think about your ex after a breakup? Everyone struggles to avoid these reflective thoughts. You try everything to get rid of these romantic moments and happy memories, but they just keep coming back no matter how hard you try.

The truth is, the more you resist, the worse it's going to get. It's all thanks to something called ironic process theory. If I told you not to think about something, you're going to think about it; that's just the way your brain works. So when you tell yourself not to think about your ex, guess what happens? Your brain can't think about anything else.

You're trying so hard to resist those memories that you're actually making them stronger. As backwards as it sounds, a great way to heal a broken heart is to think about the person that broke it. Let yourself experience those bittersweet memories. Stop trying to shove them down. Otherwise, you'll spend months hung up on your past relationship when you could be moving on.

Fill Your Life with Laughter

When you're feeling sad and overwhelmed, laughter is the best medicine. It boosts your mood, brightens your day, and clears your head. Each time you laugh, it's like therapy for your brain.

So if you're hurting after a broken relationship, fill your life with as much laughter as you can. Do fun activities with your friends, listen to your favorite comedians, or just watch your pets be their usual goofy selves. A laugh may not seem like much right now, but every time you crack yourself up, you take one step closer to your normal, happy self.

Find Your Independence

After a relationship ends, there's often a huge void in your life. Your ex took up a lot of your time and energy, so without them, you might feel empty or aimless. Naturally, you try to fill that void with anything you can, whether it's hobbies, friends, or new romantic partners. You get desperate to make that emptiness disappear.

But hey, you don't need anyone else to make you happy. You don't need anyone else to give your life direction. You can do that all on your own by rediscovering your independence. You can heal your broken heart and rebuild your self-esteem.

You'll get your confidence back. You'll enjoy your passions more. You'll gradually remember what it means to love yourself and you'll grow stronger for it. So after a breakup, be as active and independent as you can.

Ditch Social Media

When your heart's broken, you might feel like wasting the day away on social media. It might distract you from thinking about your ex, or maybe you're doing the opposite—trying to keep tabs on everything your ex is doing.

Either way, spending that much time on social media is really unhealthy and it isn't helping you heal your broken heart. Not only is it a waste of time, but social media also digs you deeper into that pit of anxiety and grief. Each time you see a picture or post from your ex, it's going to take you one step backwards.

It'll make you angry, sad, and frustrated all over again, digging you into an even deeper hole. After a bad breakup, get off social media for a while. Deactivate your accounts or delete the apps off your phone. It doesn't have to be forever, but until you can get over your breakup, social media is never a good idea.

Mutual Understanding

In times of grief, one of the best things you can do is to find someone else who understands your pain, someone who's gone through a similar experience. Just how challenging it can be.

While it's helpful to talk to friends and family, it might feel a little strange. They're trying to help you, but they don't really get it. There's always a little bit of pity in their voice that just makes you feel worse.

That's why it's incredibly helpful to talk to someone who truly gets what you're going through. Maybe they just experienced a bad breakup of their own. During that time, they might have struggled to fill the void or rediscover their independence. Now that you are in the same situation, they can genuinely empathize and give you the kind of advice that will help you move past your pain.

Discover Your Strengths

Few experiences are as emotionally draining as a breakup. So when you're feeling low, it's crucial that you think about your strengths and concentrate on all the things that you do well. Even though you don't feel like your usual self, those strengths don't just disappear.

Whether you're crafty, hyper social, or just a good friend, use these strengths to remember how tough and capable you really are.

Neutralize Blame

Don't blame yourself. Don't blame your ex. Don't blame the timing or the context. There's a popular misconception that someone has to accept blame when a relationship falls apart, that it has to be someone's fault. But it doesn't. Sometimes relationships just end. Couples just fizzle out and break up.

So don't spend your time searching for someone or something to pin your breakup on. It's not healthy to nitpick everything that went wrong with your relationship. You'll replay those rough patches in your mind, searching for some way to fix them. But you can't change the past, no matter how hard you try. So blaming yourself or your ex won't do anyone any good.

Dispel Self-Judgement

The worst thing you can do after a breakup is judge yourself. You might react in all kinds of ways you weren't expecting. You might feel overwhelmed by feelings you weren't ready for. But that's okay.

Grief strikes everyone differently, and you have very little control over what shape your grief takes. So don't ridicule yourself for having strong emotions after a breakup. It's critical that you wholeheartedly accept yourself because self-judgment slows down the healing process.

It convinces you to stuff down those negative feelings, to pretend like you're not actually angry or sad. That may seem like a good idea in the moment, but holding things in forces you to internalize that negativity. So instead, let yourself really feel your feelings and remember that there's no right or wrong way to get over a breakup.

Everyone experiences a broken heart differently. All you can do is accept yourself and try your best to move forward.

Plenty of Plans

After a breakup, try to keep yourself as busy as you can. Don't leave yourself tons of free time to sit around and do nothing, because in those lazy and isolated moments, you'll fall back into old patterns. You'll drift toward negative thoughts and unhealthy habits.

With nothing there to uplift or entertain you, your grief will take its toll. So make plenty of plans. You might go out of your way to meet new people or hang out with new friends, or maybe you decide to work overtime at your job.

The key is to spend as little time feeling aimless as possible. After a breakup, you never want to find yourself lying in bed and staring at your phone in the middle of the day, because that's when that negativity comes rushing back. If you make plenty of plans, getting over your breakup will be a whole lot quicker and easier than you thought.

Create Distance

A small but effective strategy for healing a broken heart is to create distance. I'm talking about both physical and technological distance. That means you can't see them in person, you can't talk to them over the phone, and you can't text them randomly late at night, even if you're just checking in.

Because each time you make contact with your ex, you're extending the length of time that it takes for you to heal. Just think about your breakup like a countdown. Each day that you avoid talking to your ex, that countdown gets closer to zero. But when you make contact, you're undoing all the progress that you made.

So create that distance and stick to it. Block their number, unfollow them on social media. You can even go on a trip to a different state or country if you have the time. All of these tricks will help you make a clean break, which is exactly what you need to heal your broken heart.

Exercise Your Body

Exercise isn't just good for your physical health. It can be a great way to work through the pain and frustration of a broken heart. As little as 15 minutes of exercise can completely turn your day around. It can lift your spirits, clear your head, and help you work that stress out of your system.

That's why, in the midst of a bad breakup, regular exercise ensures that you stay healthy and keep your head on straight.

Imagine the Future

Sometimes, the only way to heal a broken heart is to give yourself something to look forward to, something that makes you excited about the future. As you think about moving on, don't be afraid to let your mind wander. Let yourself fantasize about new people, new relationships, and new lifestyles.

Imagine what it'll be like when you've met someone else and you're even happier than you were before. Because no matter how hopeless things feel right now, there's a world of opportunity waiting just around the corner.

Summary

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