There’s no doubt about it. Breakups, falling-outs with friends, and all types of endings are usually deeply painful experiences for all parties involved. Most of us avoid thinking about it until it happens to us, and then, bam! We are taken for an emotional roller coaster ride when the next ending presents itself. We find ourselves heartbroken & speechless, or maybe we have too much to say! We are shocked, surprised, depressed, embarrassed.
What can we do for ourselves when it seems an ending is upon us? At any stage of the breakup or parting, there are some tools that can be incredibly helpful and clarifying. Even if major mistakes have been made in communication, arguments have gotten loud, and tensions are on the rise, take heart, because regardless of how messy it all seems, these tools can help smooth things internally, and subsequently, the outer can resolve more easily.
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Take Space and Give Space.
I put this #1 because inevitably, you are going to need to be away from the person you’re parting ways with in order to heal fully. Trying to stay fully connected and tracking of one another during a split gives the energy field a mixed message: we’re together, and we’re not together. This keeps us confused at a deep, subconscious level. If you can instead give as much space to yourself and the other person as possible, this will start to imprint your energy system to the feeling of “I exist without this person.” Which can lead to the feeling of “I can go on without this person.”
If you live together, share children, or have other extenuating circumstances which make it hard to let go of contact right away, try to build in times for yourself where you just feel yourself and take care of yourself, even if you do have to see your ex in a few hours.
When you feel your thoughts and heart chords drifting towards your ex, try a practice of coming back to your breath and to your surroundings. Feel your humanness, your aliveness. The feeling of your body on the chair you’re sitting on. Coming back to presence is your strongest tool for feeling ok, or even peaceful, despite everything. Reaching out to energetically check on them will not help either of you move on.
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Let it Rip so that you can let it R.I.P.
It’s important to find a safe space where you can let yourself vent, rage, cry, complain, whatever you need to do. If you try to stifle your feelings or remain cool and collected, you may find those unprocessed feeling biting you in the derriere somewhere down the line. And if you don’t choose the right individuals to share your process with, this will also come back to haunt you.
By a safe space I mean somewhere where you know that you will be held with respect and love no matter what state you show up in. A space where you know the time will be about you and your healing, and where what you share won’t be repeated to others. So many times I hear people venting post-breakup to anyone who will listen, and this creates a chaotic feeling where deeper healing can’t take place. Breakups and endings are an important time to create strong support for yourself so that you can actually heal, understand the patterns, and move forward with a clean slate.
If you let it rip in a more social setting, the tendency is for rumors to start, and for the energy of the relationship to never fully resolve. This, as we know in energy work, dooms us to repeat the pattern we are trying to escape in the next relationship.
Examples of safe spaces to bring your pain/venting:
– A trusted healer or mentor
– A trusted friend
– A support group like Al Anon or other group you’ve already established trust with
Typically not helpful spaces to share post-breakup:
– To coworkers
– To your ex/the person you’re experiencing the ending with
– Friends who you don’t know for sure will hold you/the interaction with integrity
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Stay in Your Corner.
It’s so easy to go into blame when relationships end. “He did this!” and “she said that!” and “what a _______________(you fill in the blank with your favorite)!”
Getting heavily into blame and gossip is so very tempting during a breakup. We are drawn to it because it actually does decompress some of our pent-up, frustrated energy. And it is an easy escape from facing our own feelings, words, and actions. Focusing on what the other person did wrong is a nice break from feeling like a failure, feeling ashamed, embarrassed, rejected, etc. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help us move on, and it can kill the positives that we did experience in the relationship.
Instead, can you remember the positives, what the relationship gave to you? What the person’s good qualities are?
Ultimately, the story of the relationship doesn’t matter that much when it is ending. Perhaps later on you can look back and reflect, but when it’s in the splitting phase, it’s more about separating your energies as fully as possible.
What will help you grow during a split is not recounting how much your partner messed up, and exactly how they messed up. Or how you messed. While some venting of this style can feel purgative and therefore stress-relieving for a brief time, ultimately it will entrench you more in the pain and suffering of the broken connection.
What will get you through it more gracefully is staying in your own corner, with your own feelings. If you are able to do this, the ending can actually become a positive thing. You may come to realize how monumental the breakup is for your personal growth, for example. Breakups are at time when entire concepts about life and what it means to be one’s self, and to be in relationship, can finally change, opening new pathways for a better way of being in the future.
But if you stay focused only on what the other person did wrong, or obsess endlessly about what you did wrong, you will miss out on this deeper reality that is moving through the situation.
What I’ve learned
In my practice, over the years I’ve shifted from thinking of breakups as terrible to thinking of them as times of immense potential for personal transformation. In my personal life this has been 100% true. If you face the reality of the breakup, with as much consciousness as you can muster through the pain, with good support, the potential for new patterning is amazing! So often, breakups are when you can find your deepest breakthroughs about ways in which your ideals, fears, and limiting beliefs have been running the show. If you approach your breakup with consciousness, it is a very important step in ultimately creating the type of sustainable relationship that you truly want, that will truly support and sustain you.
If you would like to learn more about how to transform yourself through the process of your relationship ending, please contact me for a free consultation.