Healing after a break up sounds easy until the time you talk to someone going through the process.

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional” – Haruki Murakami

Love is not forever and breakups are not the end of the world. We all have experienced, one way or another, that breakups are ugly. It might have been you, or maybe your best friend, but haven’t we all sat through the “I am screwed” drama, and cursed ourselves?

So the question is, what to do? Since, certainly, the event is unavoidable, we definitely need hangover pills for heartbreaks.

No matter if you were together for a few weeks or years, the truth is, it hurts the same. Separation, due to any reason, can be emotionally stressful and needs to be handled with care. Many of us start experiencing an identity crisis, we start questioning ourselves beyond reason, and obviously the result is that we find ourselves amid a mess of strange emotions, unsettling grief and absolutely nothing to do. So, we are going to walk you through some very important and easy ways to cope up with breakups, which would help you regain your hold over your life.

1. ACCEPTANCE

The first and the most important part of healing after a breakup is to accept that it has happened. You need to feed it to your mind and body – the fact that this separation is permanent – and that you have to move on. Many people have a hard time even accepting that their romantic partner has broken up with them, and therefore, they can never truly walk away from the mess that has been created in their lives. Look at this as dirty laundry. To be able to wear clean clothes again, you need to first realise that all your clothes are dirty and they need washing. If you fail at accomplishing that you have a load full of laundry, it is almost illogical to assume that you would wash it. So, accept the event, make yourself believe that it is for the best, and slowly walk towards the next step.

2. GRIEVING

There is no way around it, it IS going to hurt. You will cry, you will feel like it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to you, and it’s the most humane thing to do after a breakup. Everyone grieves differently. Some start eating a lot, some just shut everyone out, some cry constantly while drowning themselves in alcohol, and every one of these ways is normal. As long you are projecting your remorse, it’s healthy. The problem is when you pretend like everything is normal, because when you don’t grieve, the unhealthy feelings will bury themselves and come out eventually in a very explosive way. So, after a breakup, give yourself a reasonable time-period, to grieve. Do whatever feels right, and let the feeling settle down. It’s only after this step, that you can start walking towards a normal life again.

3. CUT OFF

Cutting off all contacts with your ex will help you cut off your pain. Now that all of us are so connected, it’s extremely hard for anyone to not come across the regular updates of your ex. But let history teach you, that your ex’s cute picture will make you melt and you will go through all the pain again, only to make you hate yourself for ever falling for the bait. So cut off all contacts, delete their number, block them from all your social handles, block people they hang out with too. Give yourself space to breathe in an environment where they are not there. Breaking all ties is the key to move on, and to truly accelerate the process. The process of healing after a break up takes time.

4. HEALING AFTER A BREAK UP TO – DO LIST

Feeling completely useless and having a lot of free time and absolutely nothing to do, are some mandatory companions of breakups. Because our lives were woven around the schedules of our fallen love interest, after they go, it’s fairly common to experience a sense of isolation and loneliness, simply because we have all the gaps left where they used to fit in. So, in this case, the best thing is to make a to – do list. Take a page, and schedule your day out. Include your favourite activities, visit your favourite places, take out time for some self love, meet your friends, do everything you couldn’t do before. When you’re at this point in your life, doing absolutely anything is better than doing nothing. The busy schedule will give you less time to hop back to the memories of happier times, and keep you from making the same mistakes again.

5. IGNORE ALL ADVICE

Every breakup sees a rise of a highly undereducated advice guru. All your friends suddenly become breakup experts and start giving all sorts of stupid advice to you. Here, ignorance is the key. They are not superhuman and their advice is not your redemption. No matter how unsettling you are feeling, don’t take advice from amateurs, and rather go to someone with experience to talk to and ask for suggestions.

6. GET SET GO

Now that you have accepted the truth, grieved for the loss, followed a time table, and talked out your feelings, it’s time for you to go back to your normal life. You have to start being the way you were, before your ex left you. There is no pressure of going out again, until you feel like it. You have to now push yourself to reach that optimal level of your capabilities, and regain balance of your life. No experience is a waste of time if you learn something from it. So use this opportunity to become a better, more aware, a more experienced person who knows what they are doing.

In a nutshell, no feeling is final and everything that happens, always have a silver lining. Don’t depreciate yourself by wondering “why me”, and rather think that whatever reason you broke up for, the breakup would have happened eventually. So it’s better now than later, when you would have invested even more time in it. Healing after a break up takes time, give yourself that time.

Stop wondering, and start acting. Breathe and follow through