Even if my heart tries to pull its broken self together to tell me it’s for the best, and my head – foggy and sad – tells me the pain will pass, the agony of a breakup can be relentless. When I was recovering from a breakup, it was important not to hurry things along – it was my time to reset, recharge, and draw wisdom from the experience – but what if my healing could be strong and complete … and quicker? Science may have just found the way.

From my own journey, I’ve discovered that reflecting more on my relationships over time had a stronger overall impact on my recovery from breakups.

An important part of my healing journey has been a process called ‘self-concept reorganisation’, which involves rebuilding and strengthening the sense of who I am, independent of the relationship.

Relationships have had a profound impact on the beliefs I have about myself, whether I realised it or not. During the course of a relationship, it’s very normal to ‘intertwine’ with a partner. Goals and directions change, as well as wants and needs for now and the future.

This isn’t because I lost myself, though certainly that can happen, but because intimacy involves opening up to another person – opening up to their love, wants, needs, feelings, opinions, love, goals, dreams. When that happens, I can’t help but be influenced and eventually move in the same direction. Sometimes that involves adjusting my own sails. It’s all a healthy part of being with someone fully, and part of the unpredictable magic of relationships.

A breakup means the undoing of this merging, which is painful to go through. However strong and independent I may be, the fracturing of a relationship can also mean the fracturing of the self-concept. One of the most painful parts of a breakup is that it upends things as I’ve come to know them. The familiar is gone, plans are changed, and the future all of a sudden has too many blank spaces where happy things used to be.

Part of my healing has been re-establishing who I am without my partner. Anything that can repair and re-strengthen the self-concept will accelerate healing.

So, to get me back to strong, based on my own experiences…

Talk it Out

There are a couple of ways that talking about a breakup might help to facilitate healing. The first is that talking about the relationship will help to bring a different perspective to things. It’s not called a ‘breakup’ because it’s working well. Being in love or being in like-a-lot can blur things, hide things and dress things up, sometimes at the cost of clarity. There will be a level of insight that will throw itself at my feet when I talk about the relationship from a more distant perspective.

Find your Story

Talking helps to construct a story of the relationship that gives meaning to the experience – including the experience of the relationship, the breakup, and perhaps most importantly for healing, the recovery. Let me explain…

If I tell the story of my breakup as one of rejection and a lost happy ever after, recovery will be slow, kind of like ‘walking through quicksand’ type of slow. It’s really easy to get stuck in this narrative when the thoughts are locked in my head and want to be with me at 2am. On the other hand, talking to people in my tribe will help me find a way to understand my story from a position of strength. This might involve finding the lessons, the learning, and reframing the experience as, say, an ending, rather than a rejection.

Emotional Release – Journaling

Having an emotional release is an important part of healing. Journaling is one way to do this as it allows me to capture and give definition to the thoughts and feelings that are swirling around inside. Journaling doesn’t have to be done every day to have an effect. Even a few times a week will help the healing.

Write – as though you’re talking to a stranger

Writing repeatedly about the process of the breakup as though speaking with a stranger about it is another way to move towards healing. As well as being an emotional release, it also encourages a fresh perspective and new insights.

Reclaim Yourself – What’s been Neglected?

Reclaiming a strong self-concept – establishing who I am outside of the relationship – is critical and will be enormously supportive of a recovery. Think about the parts of yourself that might have been pushed aside during the relationship. When I’ve found these, find ways to build them and nurture them.

And Expand Them

Find new ways to expand my self-concept. When I feel ready (or maybe a little before then), take up new interests, establish new goals, or re-establish my direction. Given that my need to connect has been messed with, anything that will give me the opportunity to connect with others who will also see me as my own, unique person will really help the healing process.

A breakup is an ending, not a rejection. It might not feel like that initially, but it’s an important thing to remember. When my heart has been broken, it can take a while to find my way back to whole, but I will get there. Healing from a broken heart is as much a physical process as it is an emotional one. It’s very similar to recovering from an addiction, which is why it feels so hard and so damn painful.

Above all else, remember that there were things about you that were beautiful, strong, vibrant, and extraordinary before the relationship. Nothing has changed.

As a long-standing psychotherapist and counseling specialising in mental health for men, I can definitely assist you professionally to recover from the loss and grieve of a broken heart, and all that entails. Feel free to contact me directly at Counselling and Psychotherapy Services for Men here in Sydney.