Bouncing Back: A Guide to Rebuilding After a Breakup

If you're recovering from a breakup and you're trying to build self worth, this is what you do. I don't think it matters whether or not you were the one who did the breaking up or you were the one that was left behind. Both sides of a breakup hurt. We're going to go through four steps to help you rebuild. First, you need to acknowledge the loss. Even if you don't want to, Even if you want to pretend everything's fine. So there's loss. There's always loss and sadness and grief after a breakup, even if you don't like the person anymore. Sadness is the feeling of losing something valuable. It's painful. It's supposed to be painful or else we wouldn't invest in relationships in the first place. Our human relationships are so important to us. They've helped us evolve, they've helped us stay together. They've helped us, you know, raise children, stay alive, build communities. So acknowledge that you've lost something. Whether or not you wanted to lose it. It's still a loss and you're still feeling it. And if this was a significant relationship or you were deeply in love, you might be feeling grief, which is a deeper sense of sadness. And it's a much slower moving sadness. And it takes forever for grief to go through its course. So if sadness is like a river, grief is like a glacier. It basically sucks your vitality out of you and makes you just want to lay down and cozy up. And that's exactly what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be radical with your self care. That is when you cocoon, that is when you nest. That is when you watch tv. That is when you just lay down and put a cover over your head. That's what you do first. The message behind grief and sadness is, is I lost someone that mattered to me. And so when you acknowledge that they mattered and you acknowledge that you had a loss and you are sad and that you are working through it, that is how you let sadness naturally take its course so that it can run slowly or quickly through your life and help you let go. 2. You might be feeling rejection, which might be creating shame. They're kind of connected to each other, but rejection and shame are the next thing I want you to look at. So shame is the feeling of being something bad or wrong or not good enough. But rejection, oh baby, that one's hard. That one actually activates our pain center. Like if you got your finger cut, rejection feels like that pain because it activates the same part of our brain. As physical pain. And I don't know about you, but one of the worst things that ever happened after a breakup for me is that my ex went out and, like, lived life very publicly or openly, seeming so happy to be rid of me or so willing to go on, and it just, It. I just collapsed into shame because I. It looked like to me, if I'm that easy to throw away, what are people going to think about me? So I want you to know, if you're feeling rejected, if you're feeling ashamed, if your ex is out there being weird and acting like you're not a big deal to lose, your worth has nothing to do with their actions. I'm going to say that again. Your worth has nothing to do with their actions. That's where I was very wrong. I did not understand that somebody acting dumb out in public actually said more about them than about me. So remember, your worth has nothing to do with whether you were dumped, what they're doing, who they are, whatever. Your worth is your worth, and you are the only one in charge of it. If you're feeling rejected, if you're feeling ashamed, what it wants you to do is connect. The action it wants you to take is to connect with someone who cares. Do not connect with someone who does not care. That just drives this in harder and makes you feel worse. So after you've gone through your little grief cocoon, we're going to move into the shame rejection zone. And that's when you're going to reach out really carefully and find someone to connect with that is kind to you, who cares about you and will kind of keep you safe. And once again, the message for shame and rejection is your worth has nothing to do with what's happening now. The next feelings that you might be feeling abandonment and. Or loneliness. So I want to talk about those. Both are triggered by feelings of disconnection and isolation. Abandonment feels or comes from a more helpless feeling where loneliness is more about a loss of power or this powerless feeling. So if you think about abandonment is like a little kid who's been left behind and they're all alone in the universe. And that might be what you're kind of feeling like. Loneliness is more like a depression or a sense of powerlessness where all the energy's kind of been drained out of you and you don't want to leave the house, or you feel like nobody wants to know you. So both want you to get stronger. Both of those painful feelings are there actually to, like, kick you in the butt, make you move forward. So if you put your hand over a flame and it hurts, right? You can't hold your hand above a flame for very long. You're going to want to pull your hand away. That is what a negative feeling is designed to do. It's designed to make you hurt, so you pull away from that painful thing. Abandonment and loneliness are both supposed to hurt. And why? Because you're not, not supposed to be feeling helpless and you're not supposed to be feeling powerless. Both want you to become stronger. That's your hand pulling away from the flame. Hurts to feel abandoned, hurts to feel lonely. Boom, I'm out. I'm going to get stronger. The action for abandonment and loneliness is to take back your power. And what I mean by that is nobody gets to abandon you and nobody gets to isolate you and make you lonely without your consent. They don't have that power over you, so don't give it to them. So take back your power. And I'm not going to be abandoned. I'm not going to be lonely unless I let this person make me feel this way. And why would I? They're gone. So it's almost like a healthy dose of anger. That's where you get your power from. And the message is you don't get to have that power. So if you found yourself feeling that kind of abandonment, loneliness and you're just like, oh, I just want to lay here and cry, no, you don't get to have that power over me. X, I'm going to go make something happen here. And the last one I want you to look at number four is uncertainty. This kind of feeling like, oh God, I thought this was where my life was going. And now I have no idea if we're going to get back together. I have no idea if I'm ever going to meet somebody again. I have no idea if I'm going to be, you know, 90 years old, living by myself, who knows? So this uncertainty can spiral into anxiety, it can spiral into worry, it can keep you up at night, it can escalate into full on panic. All of those are in the family of fear. And fear, believe it or not, is all about control. So when you're feeling uncertain and anxious and worried after a breakup, you're probably not thinking, wow, I'm total control freak. But you might be. I say that with love. So if fear is about control, what the heck are you trying to control? You're not trying really to control your ex anymore. Probably not. I hope not. What you're trying to control is the completely uncertain future. Oh, man, that's. You're never going to win that one, right? So we have to learn how to surrender the future and go, okay, Future is going to be what it is. And if I'm just sitting here spinning out, that's doing nothing for me. It's not getting me closer. It's not. I can just sit and spin and totally flip myself out and not sleep and be a weirdo. So when you find yourself in those kind of fear situations, the worry, the anxiety, all of that kind of uncertain feeling, what you need to do is get clear on the threat. It's coming from fear. You're wanting to control something. You can't control something. What you can do is get clear on the threat. What am I really afraid of here? Get very clear about it, articulate it, and then figure out what action you can take, if any, to actually solve that problem. So if you're recovering from a breakup and you're trying to build self worth, this is what you do. First, you acknowledge your loss, the sadness and the grief. Don't skip this step, even if you feel like it. The message is, I lost something that mattered. The action you take, massive radical self care until the sadness naturally passes. Second, acknowledge rejection and shame. The message is, my worth has nothing to do with this. And the action is to find someone safe to connect with. Third, acknowledge a sense of abandonment or loneliness. The message is, you've lost your sense of power and you feel helpless. So the action you need to take is to take your power back and remind yourself that your ex doesn't get to have power over your healing. And fourth, acknowledge your uncertainty, worry, or fears. The message behind that is, I'm trying to control the universe and I can't and that's okay. And the action you need to take is to get clear on the threat. Just articulate the threat. Where are you in danger and what are you actually afraid of? And then take action based on that specific fear. What's usually the hardest part of the breakup for you? Tell me in the comments below.