5 Crucial Things to Do When a Heart Breaks
It can be incredibly painful and difficult to recover from a broken heart, and if you’ve experienced heart break in love, it’s natural to wonder how you can numb the pain. After all, that despair can be hard to live with, and most people search for a quick escape, especially when it’s fresh in their mind.
The good news is, it’s possible to move forward. You CAN heal from your pain. The emotional pain doesn’t have to be something that you ruminate on for years and years.
Instead, heartbreak can be something that leads you to becoming a better version of yourself. These 5 steps will make it easier to manage the loss.
1. Allow Yourself to feel the Heartbreak
When you experience heartbreak, it’s crucial to feel your feelings. During the early stages of being in a heartbreak spiral, you might consider avoiding the sensation entirely, trying to make it seem like you’re doing just fine. This process of denial is one of the five stages of grief, and while it’s something you may have to go through, it’s not a safe place to stay in for long.
You need to recognize that the pain of a romantic relationship ending hurts. This is normal and healthy, and allowing yourself to express that pain is much healthier than avoiding expressing it. Whether it’s by crying, inviting over friends to watch sad movies, writing sad poetry, listening to sad music, or something else, embracing this sadness can be a crucial part of recognizing and accepting the heartbreak.
2. Understand That Being Heartbroken Is Something to Take Seriously
Emotional pain is not “less serious” than physical pain. Your emotional pain is important, and you need to recognize that the emotions you’re feeling are as valid as someone expressing discomfort after breaking a bone. Even though the emotional pain you’re feeling may not be something that you can see from the outside, it’s still important, and you deserve to treat it as such.
Allow yourself to treat your heartbreak with the same weight that you would treat a physical injury. Give it the care and value that you would give any wound - because your brain thinks about heartbreak the same way it thinks about other types of pain. The sooner you give your pain legitimacy, the sooner you can move on from it.
3. Seek Support for your Heartbreak
When heart break happens, a common struggle you may experience is the fear of social rejection. Are people going to treat you differently because you no longer have a partner? Will you end up with a completely different friend group because you were friends with all your partner’s friends?
This is why support structures are a necessity during heart break. These support structures may include your friends, but they can also include:
Support groups made up of people who have also experienced heartbreak
Licensed therapists who can help you work through your problems
Family members who will be on your side
These people can provide some support when you’re dealing with the emotional pain of heartbreak.
4. Take Care of Yourself After Heartbreak Physically and Mentally
It’s an easy habit to fall into, especially when you’re hurting or feeling despair: letting yourself and your self-care fall apart. However, taking care of yourself can have a huge impact on your health, even if you don’t feel like doing it. When you get extremely bad news, like negative news about the state of your relationship, it can make you not want to take care of yourself at all. However, doing so can make it easier for you to bounce back.
When you eventually try to move forward after heartbreak, it’s easier if you already created a basis of looking out and caring for yourself as an individual. It’s simple (and tempting) to get caught in the trap of thinking of yourself as only one half of a whole. Therefore, you may feel like you have no personal identity after a heart break. However, even without a romantic relationship, you deserve to take care of yourself.
5. Look for Resources About Heartbreak and Coming Back Stronger
Though it may not feel like it, it’s possible to use your heartbreak to come back as a stronger person. Sure, heartbreak can be an upsetting and painful thing to experience, but it doesn’t have to completely destroy you as a person. You can use your heartbreak to build yourself up into a better, stronger person – someone who’s able to push back against the pain you’ve experienced.
An excellent approach is to work with someone who’s experienced heartbreak and knows how to numb the ache of a broken heart. Grit & Grace: 7 Steps to Survive Heartbreak is a great tool for anyone who wants to be stronger after their heartbreak than they were before. You can get Jillian Turecki’s groundbreaking program delivered to your inbox, so you can work through the program at your own pace.
How to Numb the Pain of a Broken Heart Over Time
To some extent, time is one of few things that really works to heal a broken heart. Sure, there are ways to get over your broken heart more easily, cutting down on the time necessary to heal. However, you can’t get it past it in a single night. At some point, you will need to let time run its course.
During that time, you have the choice: either try to forget this experience or use it to make you stronger. If you’re part of the second camp, you’ll need information that can help you transform this heartbreak into a form of strength. With some support and extra knowledge, you can not only numb the pain - but use it to your advantage.
