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Recovering From A Breakup
How To Dust Yourself Off And Try Again After A Tough Break
Though the feelings are quite similar, claiming a breakup “hit like a ton of bricks” is an inaccurate analogy. Physical injury at the hands of bricks isn’t a common occurrence, unless it’s a hazard of your occupation or you’re Wile E. Coyote.
The unlucky individual never sees the ton of bricks coming, until it's too late, while most failed relationships are on the brink of collapse for a long time.
The destruction of most relationships is a much slower process — the bricks are removed one by one — until the entire structure comes tumbling down.
While it’s not always possible to prepare for a breakup, there are ways to soften the blow and manage the painful months that follow. Here are some tips to getting over an agonizing separation.
Think It Through, But Don’t Obsess Over ItIt’s completely healthy, and natural, to replay the relationship repeatedly in your mind, but you should try to keep your emotions in check.
“Thinking it through might mean understanding your role in the relationship and the breakup,” explains Dr. Susan K. Whitbourne, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and author of the Psychology Today blog “Fulfillment at Any Age.” It might also mean that you try to get your emotions under control. When people go through a breakup, they let their emotions get out of control, and the process becomes much more painful and difficult.”
Thinking back on the failed relationship always brings the finger of blame. You blame yourself. Or you blame the other person. But it’s not healthy to place all of the blame on one person or the other. If she were completely responsible for everything toxic in the relationship, wouldn’t you have been the person initiating the break-up?
It’s important to think about what happened but, over time, it’s imperative that you stop dwelling on mistakes of the past and allow yourself to continue living your life, so you can have new emotional experiences and make new memories.