Grieving and Moving on After a Relationship Ends. Why are breakups so painful? After cancelling my wedding, I worked really, really hard to save my relationship. Act 4 Tomorrow are separation & divorce specialists. Save yourself stress & thousands in court costs - call us on 1300 228 486 for a free consultation. Life After Divorce: 3 Survival Strategies. How ex-spouses and their kids can cope after divorce and move beyond the pain. All humans experience anxiety, it serves as a means of protection and can often enhance our performance in stressful situations. Children who are able to. Dealing with a Breakup or Divorce Grieving and Moving on After a Relationship Ends. A breakup or divorce can be one of the most stressful and emotional experiences in. THE MALE BORDERLINE Surviving the Crash after your Crush. By Shari Schreiber, M.A. You'll be learning about. Even when a relationship is no longer good, a divorce or breakup can be extremely painful because it represents the loss, not just of the partnership, but also of the dreams and commitments you shared. Romantic relationships begin on a high note of excitement and hopes for the future. When a relationship fails, we experience profound disappointment, stress, and grief. A breakup or divorce launches you into uncharted territory. Everything is disrupted: your routine and responsibilities, your home, your relationships with extended family and friends, and even your identity. A breakup also brings uncertainty about the future. What will life be like without your partner? Will you find someone else? Will you end up alone? These unknowns can often seem worse than being in an unhappy relationship. However, it’s important to keep reminding yourself that you can and will get through this difficult experience and move on with your life as a stronger and wiser person. You may also feel anxious about the future. Accept that reactions like these will lessen over time. Even if the relationship was unhealthy, venturing into the unknown is frightening. Give yourself a break. Give yourself permission to feel and to function at a less than optimal level for a period of time. You may not be able to be quite as productive on the job or care for others in exactly the way you’re accustomed to for a little while. No one is superman or superwoman; take time to heal, regroup, and re- energize. Don’t go through this alone. Sharing your feelings with friends and family can help you get through this period. Consider joining a support group where you can talk to others in similar situations. Isolating yourself can raise your stress levels, reduce your concentration, and get in the way of your work, other relationships, and overall health. Don’t be afraid to get outside help if you need it. Source. Mental Health America. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of the relationship. Grief is a natural reaction to loss, and the breakup or divorce of a love relationship involves multiple losses: Loss of companionship and shared experiences (which may or may not have been consistently pleasurable)Loss of support, be it financial, intellectual, social, or emotional. Loss of hopes, plans, and dreams (which can be even more painful than practical losses)Allowing yourself to feel the pain of these losses may be scary. You may fear that your emotions will be too intense to bear, or that you’ll be stuck in a dark place forever. Just remember that grieving is essential to the healing process. The pain of grief is precisely what helps you let go of the old relationship and move on. And no matter how strong your grief, it won’t last forever. Tips for grieving after a breakup or divorce: Don’t fight your feelings – It’s normal to have lots of ups and downs, and feel many conflicting emotions, including anger, resentment, sadness, relief, fear, and confusion. It’s important to identify and acknowledge these feelings. While these emotions will often be painful, trying to suppress or ignore them will only prolong the grieving process. Talk about how you’re feeling – Even if it is difficult for you to talk about your feelings with other people, it is very important to find a way to do so when you are grieving. Knowing that others are aware of your feelings will make you feel less alone with your pain and will help you heal. Writing in a journal can also be a helpful outlet for your feelings. Remember that moving on is the end goal – Expressing your feelings will liberate you in a way, but it is important not to dwell on the negative feelings or to over- analyze the situation. Getting stuck in hurtful feelings like blame, anger, and resentment will rob you of valuable energy and prevent you from healing and moving forward. Remind yourself that you still have a future – When you commit to another person, you create many hopes and dreams for a life together. After a breakup, it's hard to let these aspirations go. As you grieve the loss of the future you once envisioned, be encouraged by the fact that new hopes and dreams will eventually replace your old ones. Know the difference between a normal reaction to a breakup and depression – Grief can be paralyzing after a breakup, but after a while, the sadness begins to lift. Day by day, and little by little, you start moving on. However, if you don’t feel any forward momentum, you may be suffering from depression. Helping your kids during a breakup or divorce. When mom and dad split, a child can feel confused, angry, and uncertain as well as profoundly sad. As a parent, you can help your kids cope with the breakup by providing stability and attending to your child's needs with a reassuring, positive attitude. See: Children and Divorce. Reach out to others for support. Support from others is critical to healing after a breakup or divorce. You might feel like being alone, but isolating yourself will only make this time more difficult. Don’t try to get through this on your own. Connect face- to- face with trusted friends and family members. People who have been through painful breakups or divorces can be especially helpful. They know what it is like and they can assure you that there is hope for healing and new relationships. Frequent face- to- face contact is also a great way to relieve the stress of a breakup and regain balance in your life. Spend time with people who support, value, and energize you. Surround yourself with people who are positive and who truly listen to you. It’s important that you feel free to be honest about what you’re going through, without worrying about being judged, criticized, or told what to do. Get outside help if you need it. If reaching out to others doesn’t come naturally, consider seeing a counselor or joining a support group (see the Resources section below). The most important thing is that you have at least one place where you feel comfortable opening up. Join a networking group or special interest club, take a class, get involved in community activities, or volunteer at a school, place of worship, or other community organization. Taking care of yourself after a breakup. A divorce is a highly stressful, life- changing event. When you’re going through the emotional wringer and dealing with major life changes, it’s more important than ever to take care of yourself. The strain and upset of a major breakup can leave you psychologically and physically vulnerable. Treat yourself like you’re getting over the flu. Get plenty of rest, minimize other sources of stress in your life, and reduce your workload if possible. Learning to take care of yourself can be one of the most valuable lessons you learn following a breakup. As you feel the emotions of your loss and begin learning from your experience, you can resolve to take better care of yourself and make positive choices going forward. Spend time with good friends, go for a walk in nature, listen to music, enjoy a hot bath, get a massage, read a favorite book, take a yoga class, or savor a warm cup of tea. Pay attention to what you need in any given moment and speak up to express your needs. Honor what you believe to be right and best for you even though it may be different from what your ex or others want. Getting back to a regular routine can provide a comforting sense of structure and normalcy. Try not to make any major decisions in the first few months after a separation or divorce, such as starting a new job or moving to a new city. If you can, wait until you’re feeling less emotional so that you can make decisions with a clearer head. Avoid using alcohol, drugs, or food to cope. When you’re in the middle of a breakup, you may be tempted to do anything to relieve your feelings of pain and loneliness. But using alcohol, drugs, or food as an escape is unhealthy and destructive in the long run. It’s essential to find healthier ways of coping with painful feelings. Help. Guide's free emotional intelligence toolkit can help. Explore new interests. Take the opportunity to explore new interests and activities. Pursuing fun, new activities gives you a chance to enjoy life in the here- and- now, rather than dwelling on the past. Making healthy choices: Eat well, sleep well, and exercise. When you’re going through the stress of a divorce or breakup, healthy habits easily fall by the wayside. You might find yourself not eating at all or overeating your favorite junk foods. Exercise might be harder to fit in because of the added pressures at home and sleep might be elusive. But all of the work you are doing to move forward in a positive way will be pointless if you don’t make long- term healthy lifestyle choices. See: Healthy Eating, Getting Better Sleep, and How to Start Exercising and Stick to It. Learning important lessons from a breakup or divorce. It can be difficult to see it when you’re going through a painful breakup, but in times of emotional crisis, there are opportunities to grow and learn. You may be feeling nothing but emptiness and sadness in your life right now, but that doesn’t mean that things will never change. Try to consider this period in your life a time- out, a time for sowing the seeds for new growth. You can emerge from this experience knowing yourself better and feeling stronger and wiser. The more you understand how the choices you made affected the relationship, the better you’ll be able to learn from your mistakes—and avoid repeating them in the future. How did you contribute to the problems of the relationship? Do you tend to repeat the same mistakes or choose the wrong person in relationship after relationship? Think about how you react to stress and deal with conflict and insecurities. Could you act in a more constructive way? Consider whether or not you accept other people the way they are, not the way they could or “should” be. Examine your negative feelings as a starting point for change. The Initiation of Relationship Anxiety « Conscious Transitions. We’re tested in many ways in this life. At each transition, each tenuous juncture where the familiar lifestyle, identity, thought processes or feelings fall away, we’re offered an opportunity to face our small mind – our ego, programmed, fear- based self – and learn ways to bring compassion and curiosity to our inner world. In indigenous cultures, the male adolescent members are often initiated into manhood by venturing into the forest and facing their physical and mental fears in solitude. Women are tested through the initiation of pregnancy, childbirth, and new motherhood. Marriages are tested when the build- up of unmet needs, fears or expectations – realistic or otherwise – reach a breaking point. But it seems that the most common way that the modern mind is tested is through the onslaught of anxiety and panic. We can cruise through our lives for years, comfortably stuffing anything comfortably into the shadow spaces of our souls, but eventually the soul reaches capacity and the anxiety spills up and out into consciousness. This is when people find me, and it’s most often around the excruciating initiation of relationship anxiety. Relationship anxiety generally manifests in two ways, either of which can occur at any point in the relationship, from early on or years into marriage. The first brand of relationship anxiety occurs in a defining moment when the thought “Do I love my partner enough or at all” enter the person’s mind. Prior to this thought, the person describes their relationship as “wonderful, loving, everything I’ve ever wanted, amazing love between us, and pretty much perfect.” They often had a long honeymoon period and a very healthy relationship. The early stages of this type of relationship anxiety are characterized by the desperate need to “get back the feelings,” as the loss of the in- loveness feels like their heart has been cut out of their chest. The second type of relationship anxiety occurs more gradually and may have even been present in the very early stages of the relationship. This type of anxiety is characterized by a pervasive feelings of doubt, lack of attraction, the sense that you’re really “just friends” and you’re only staying in the relationship because you’re too scared to be alone. This can be particularly disconcerting because, in a culture that exalts the in- love feelings as the sole indicator that you’re with the “right” partner, the lack of those feelings in the beginning stages can easily spell doubt and doom (until you learn better). I often receive emails from people asking me if my work and e- courses apply even if they had doubt from the beginning. The answer is obviously yes. Anxiety is anxiety; it doesn’t matter when or where it hits or even how it began. What matters is how you address it once it’s here. In either case (and if your anxiety falls somewhere between these two examples this applies to you as well; the Wounded Self is perpetually attempting to convince you that you’re an exception : )), living with anxiety often plummets people into what is referred to “dark night of the soul.” This is when everything familiar falls away and you’re invited (or dragged) to let go aspects of yourself that aren’t serving you, die several deaths, and eventually emerge into a new, more compassionate, wiser version of yourself. You can resist the call. You can numb the pain. Or you can walk through the center of the fear- storm and surrender to the most transformational ride of your life. As Elizabeth Lesser writes about dark night of the soul in “Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow” (and I strongly advise you NOT to read this book if you’re struggling with relationship anxiety): Our lives ask us to die and to be reborn every time we confront change – change within ourselves and change in the world. When we descend all the way down to the bottom of a loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth. When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self – the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey. The key defining factor between those who “pass” the test of relationship anxiety and move on to experience real love and sustaining joy in their relationships and those that don’t is the deep desire to learn about and address the fear. There are those who remain committed to the belief that they wouldn’t be struggling so much with someone else, which is really another way of abdicating responsibility for their fear- based and wounded self. There are those who desperately want someone to fix it for them, some perfect therapist, psychic or healer who will give them the answers and left them out of their suffering. Again, this is another way that the person remains a victim to their fear and refuses the call to become a fear- warrior. And then there are those who take on the challenge. There are hundreds of fear- warriors on my e- course forum, women and men who are ready to attend to their inner world with complete responsibility and, in some cases, even a sense of adventure. Here’s a recent post from a Conscious Weddings E- Course member who is meeting the call (quoted with permission): I was doing what my therapist told me not to do (good thing I never listen) and googling all sorts of crap . I am, and always will be, grateful. I prayed the other night and thanked god for not granting me the wish . What I got instead was the means to take it away myself, meaning that I’ll never be at sea again. I am my own saviour (with a little help from Sheryl) and that is the greatest gift I could receive. I saw a friend last night, a fellow . She was amazed at the difference in me. I seemed calmer, in control, happier, more sure. Not sure of how much I love him, not sure that Im making the right choice, even. But sure that this is the loving choice. More sure that I know what love is. More sure that I have it within my power to change, and not be buffered by the winds of emotion. I’ve still got a looooong way to go, but I know that I can get there. I no longer dread my wedding day, or my honeymoon. I accept the challenge – bring it on! This is what it takes: the recognition that you, and you alone, can attend to your suffering, be your own savior and the commitment to show up every day, several times a day, listening to what you’re telling yourself, tuning in to how it makes you feel, and making a choice to ride compassion into the truth of loving thoughts. My mother shares the story that when she was learning how to replace the constant running commentary of self- judgement with self- love she wore a little device around her wrist called a Motivator that would vibrate every five minutes as a reminder to tune inside to see what she was thinking and feeling. She did this for two years! I’m thinking about several of my clients who engaged in similar levels of commitment and devotion to their inner work, sometimes dialoguing every hour to attend to the fear- based thoughts, stand up to them, make room for them, and replace them with the truth. If this isn’t our modern day initiation process, I don’t know what is. It’s hard, yes. It’s supposed to be hard. That’s the definition of initiation. Like all initiations, when we’re in the thick swamp of fear and anxiety we have many, many moments where we feel like we can’t go on. This is normal and the time to take a deep breath, sound the alarm to your circle of support (for many people on my e- course the forum is the only place they feel safe enough to talk about the depth of their anxiety surrounding their relationship and, as such, becomes their lifeline in the early stages), and then find the courage and strength to keep going. Often it’s knowing that others have made it through and are now happily committed to their partners that provides this courage and strength. When we’re enduring dark night of the soul, we need to know two things: that we’re not alone and that there will be a light once we emerge through the dark forest. The wounded self will, of course, try everything in its power to convince you to leave. The entire function of the wounded self/ego/small mind is to avoid emotional risk at all cost and to protect you from the possibility of pain. There is nothing in our lives that creates more risk of emotional pain than intimate relationships with other human beings, and it’s for this reason that the wounded self makes such a valiant effort to convince you to run. Just when your fear- warrior makes the commitment to face this battle, you’ll often hear statements like, “You’re only staying because you’re too scared to be alone” or “You’re not leaving because you’re too scared to hurt him” or, if the wedding plans are in motion, “You’re staying because it’s too hard to disappoint too many people.” And if you Google about your thoughts (which I HIGHLY recommend you DO NOT), you’ll find plenty of support on the side of the wounded self. Our culture generally doesn’t understand relationship anxiety and adheres staunchly to the “doubt means don’t” philosophy. Are you ready to learn and grow? Are you ready to rise to the immense challenge of learning effective ways of addressing your thoughts and meeting your fear with compassion? Are you ready to become a fear- warrior? If you’re here, it’s likely because you’ve received the calling. When you recognize that this calling is an invitation that will help you grow, you’ll see it as the blessing that it is and find the courage to dive in, sit in the darkness, and eventually emerge as a closer version of the person you’re meant to be.
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