Oh, what a painful experience! Having your heart and dreams broken into “a 1000 pieces” while feelings of despair, longing, loneliness, confusion and pain all blend into a mixed blur. Not to mention how you feel when you see your ex at school the next day or clean your room and discover items your ex gave you. This brings us to the question, “How do you deal with all this pain?” Well, let’s start with what you should not do:
- Don’t just try to forget it and put it behind you. If you cut a finger, you doctor it and then give it time to heal. The same applies to a broken heart.
- Avoid drinking and using medication or drugs because once their effects wear off, you will still be stuck with the pain you tried to get away from.
- Don’t consider hurting yourself or taking your life. If this was the right person for you it would have worked which means the right person is still out there. If you kill yourself, you will never get to know the real love of your life.
So, what can you do:
- Let it all out. Talk to a friend or someone you trust and blurt out exactly how you feel. This may seem silly, but the only way to get the pain to go away is to get it all out of your system. Allow the person to comfort you and a long hug in this case is always recommended. (If you are a guy and don’t like becoming emotional or talking to buddies about how you feel, speak to a female teacher, family member or friend. Alternatively, cry when nobody is around. Just get it out of your system. If you don’t it may find another way out. For example, you may become aggressive, get angry quickly or feel depressed. You do not want this to happen, do you?)
- Bit-by-bit. The key to getting over a break-up is to deal with it little-by-little. It is when you face it all at once that it becomes overwhelming. For example, thinking about it all the time will create an emotional overload, which, because there are too many emotions involved, will make it feel as if it is just too much to handle.
- Take a mental break. Because the emotional pain may seem to fill your entire life, it is necessary to give your brain and heart a break. Do something that can take your mind off the heartache. Go to the movies, spend time with a friend, work on your hobby or help someone with some chores. You may not feel like doing it, but taking a mental break will help a lot to reduce and make the pain go away.
- Invest in tomorrow. Breaking up can dampen your desire to care about anything. For example, you may not feel like eating. The problem with this is that if you do not look after your body you can mess up your chemical balance which in turn can make it easier for you to become ill or feel depressed which will only make this “painful” time in your life last longer. So, try to eat as healthy as possible, drink enough fluids, exercise a bit and get as much sleep as possible. If you find this difficult, speak to your doctor to see if there are some vitamins or medication you can use.
- Keep busy. This may seem difficult to do at first, but once you start you will find that it not only takes your mind off the emotional pain, but you begin to fill your life again with things that make you happy. For example, paint your room, bake a cake for your friends or have a movie night at your home.
- Give it time. Like any wound, emotional wounds also take time to heal. Allow your body and mind to surprise you – give them time and in return they will give you back happiness.
How long will it take to get over the break-up? The stronger the emotions you felt for the person the longer it can take. There is however no timetable for how long it will take. It can be a few days or even months. The only way to move it along is to get stuck in the tips in the list above. The sooner you begin to “live” again, the sooner you will be able to get the strength to deal with the emotional pain which should help you to get over the break-up.
Should you find it really difficult to deal with the break-up you can always consider speaking to a professional, like the school counsellor, your doctor or pastor. These professionals are not only well trained, but they do what they do because they care about and want to help people who is hurting.
