How to Get Over a Breakup & Deal with Breakup Pain

You desperately want to know how to deal with breakup pain and work through getting over your breakup, and I want to help you!  

The pain you’re experiencing right now can be absolutely devastating and feel like it will never end.  If you let it, the pain can become overwhelming and take over your life.  And if it continues to grow, it can begin to define you, however, there is a way to end this cycle of pain, and it begins by pressing pause.

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But pressing pause on pain is not just about a moment in time, it’s a process – a journey of healing, and the way you’ll get through it is by moving forward each day, step by step.  As you go through this process, you’ll find that each day, as you work through the pain and the reasons you’re feeling it, you will find that you’re growing stronger than you were before.  

And soon, as you continue to let your healing continue and your strength grow, you will be defined by your moments of strength instead of your moments of weakness. 

Why I Want to Help You Get Over Your Breakup

A couple of years ago, I started this blog to help women get through their breakups.  Although I’ve been married for several years now, the breakups I experienced while dating had a huge impact on my life — not just in my relationship with men but in my relationship with God.  I know how much a breakup can make you feel so outside of yourself and make you do things you wouldn’t normally do so I desperately wanted to give women back the gift of themselves.

In the breakup industry, so many people sell products to women about how to get their EX back.  They teach the “right” words to text to get his attention, how to create desire and get him to call you back.  Even great techniques, like the 30 Day No Contact Rule are taught as ways to sweat him out and get him to reach out to you.

However, getting the gift of yourself means doing things to get yourself back, not to get your EX back.  Even if a relationship is restored, a breakup means something was wrong in the relationship.  So, the relationship is either dead, with no means for recovery, or dead with the need to be resuscitated.  Either way, it’s not just about creating desire in your EX or sending him the right text message.  It’s about figuring out if the relationship is the right relationship and if being with him makes you into your best self.

While dating, I often found myself in the wrong relationship trying to make it right.  Those relationships would cause struggle in my relationship with God.  So, when the relationships ended, sometimes I would feel reluctance in approaching God.

Even with these feelings, I found refuge in God and I believe this is because the moments of my breakups were clear moments of vulnerability.  They were the moments I approached God with the most humility, openness and willingness to grow and change and this has always benefitted my relationship with God.

I’ll use this experience, as well as what I’ve learned from going through counseling to guide you through how to get over your breakup and deal with the breakup pain you’re experiencing right now.

1.Acknowledge what you’re feeling.

During the next few months, you’re going to go through a lot of emotions.  Some of them will wash over you like a wave and they will be overwhelming.  Some times you’ll feel like you’re just gulping for air, and you may not feel like you’re going to survive it.  Other days, you may just want to crawl into the darkness of your closet and not come out because you’re so overcome by sadness and feelings of worthlessness.  

Don’t be scared of these emotions.  Don’t give into the emotions.  They represent something you feel or something you fear, but they are not you.  You will be especially empowered to deal with them when you can anticipate they’re coming.

As a Christian, one of the ways I deal with fear is through my relationship with God.  So many times in the Bible, the characters in the Bible are told not to be afraid.  Other times, they’re encouraged not to worry or to feel anxious.  God knew that life on this earth would be tough so He warned us in advance not to be afraid.

So as you’re going on this journey, give yourself the space and the grace to feel what you’re feeling, whether it’s happiness or sadness or breakup pain or anger, or loneliness.  Acknowledge what you’re feeling.  

Avoidance (I’ve learned the hard way) is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.  Just because you pretend it’s not there doesn’t make it go away.  So, acknowledge and deal with what you’re feeling.

2. Help yourself feel better in the short term

Do you ever feel exhausted from trying to feel better and speed up the healing process?  You’re a smart woman!  You know that it takes time for your heart to heal, but people keep saying it over and over and over again.  “Give it time.  Time heals all wounds.”

Unfortunately, you can’t control time.  You can’t speed up this part of your life and skip to the part when it doesn’t hurt so bad.  So what you need right now, is something to control.  You need some way to experience comfort right now.  You need something to soothe your pain and help you ease the craziness you feel inside.

I want to share a few things that have worked for me when I experienced a breakup or even now when I feel like life is overwhelming – simple comforts that help me feel better in the short term.

Deep Breathing with Cinnamon Apple Spice Tea

Right now, deep breathing with Cinnamon Apple Spice Tea is the truth for me!  I discovered it randomly while…while staying at my dad’s house, I noticed he had three boxes of tea (pictured below). I’m not a huge tea fan, but while at his house, I was experiencing some anxiety and I remembered my brother told me before to drink a cup of tea.  So, I decided to try it to see if it could help me calm down.

Someone else had recommended that I try to do some deep breathing to help me calm down.  They said deep breathing (think 4 counts in and 8 counts out) can help settle your nervous system and reset it back to a normal level.

So about this tea + deep breathing.  I started breathing in deeply and I happened to have my cup of tea right in front of me, and it really helped me to slow down my breathing and in turn to slow down my life.  Each long breath in was filled with the savoury aroma of cinnamon goodness – and cinnamon gives me good memories of my childhood.  This combo has been lifesaving for the last few days.  If you wanna give it a go, try the Celestial Seasonings Cinnamon Apple Spice kind (though I’m sure it’d be wonderful with whatever flavour tea tickles your fancy.  I’m definitely going to stock up and take some back home with me.

3. Understand why you’re feeling such intense pain 

If you’re wondering, yes! The pain is real.  During a time like this, it can be natural to question what you’re feeling and wonder if something is seriously wrong with you.

You may ask yourself why you don’t feel like sleeping or eating or getting dressed in the morning.  You may wonder why it seems to actually hurt!  I want to assure you that you’re not going crazy.  Your senses are not off.  Your body is processing the pain the best way it knows how.

Did you know that your body registers emotional pain in a similar way to how it registers physical pain? So, the pain you feel is real and your body is responding to it the same way it would if you had sustained a physical injury.

4. Allow yourself to press pause and take a break from what you’re feeling

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to take a breakup from the intensity of the emotions of the situation and this means giving yourself some space from your EX.

From past experiences, I know that one of the most natural things for many of us to do after a breakup is to run to our EX to get answers, get comfort or even to bargain and try to get the relationship back.  But the best thing we can do is to move away from the intensity of the flames of the relationship and retreat to a safe place.

Some people call this time 30 days of no contact, and it can be useful for a variety of reasons, but the most important reason is to give yourself a fresh start and to give your heart some space to heal.

5. Use this time to reinvent yourself

Some might see a break-up as a negative thing, but when you experience a break up, you have the opportunity to hit the pause button and re-evaluate what you’re looking for.

While there will be many times that you feel lonely and all alone, this is an opportunity to reconnect with who you are, with old friends and with God.

Pause from all the of rush and busyness of your life to learn to balance love and life.

6. Deal with your emotional health – 

Breaking up can be a really emotional time.  Lots of ugly crying, tissues, nose dripping…I get it.

It’s like a death  in your life.  So you may want to get some counseling to deal with it and other things that may need addressing.

Eventually when you’re ready and your heart is healed, you’ll be able to head out and love again.  Don’t feel pressure to do this sooner than you can deal with it and process it.

7. Take Back Your Power

Break-ups make us feel powerless.  

Why not take back your power?