How Do I Get Over My Breakup? Santa Rosa Therapist’s Top 3 Ways to Cope with a Breakup
Breakups can sometimes be a slow, extended “break” from our partners, and sometimes it is fast and unexpected. Regardless of how your breakup is evolving, the pain can be debilitating and hard to cope with.
As a therapist who specializes in working with adults in midst of breakups, I have heard a lot of different ways people cope with a loss of a relationship, some healthy, some not so healthy. I’m a Santa Rosa based therapist in private practice who is absolutely passionate about all things breakup recovery, so this is a topic near and dear to my heart.
Besides spending time with friends and family, allowing time for your self-care and being compassionate with yourself, what are some other ways you can begin moving through this grief process and find closure, and be able to move on?
Here are my top 3 tips that I have found most helpful for my clients in my therapy practice in Santa Rosa:
1) Mind Dump
A mind dump is defined in many ways, but in this context, it is any way you can release all the thoughts and emotions into a tangible format without any constraint, judgement or filtering.
Freewriting your thoughts and feelings without self-editing can be a powerful way to express ourselves during a breakup. It allows our thoughts to have space outside of our minds which can reduce negative ruminating.
The reason I recommend people utilize some type of free flow expression during this time, either by writing, music, speaking, arts, etc. is to allow these thoughts and feelings to pass through and not “get stuck” inside of us.
It could be our own expressions, and it might also include engaging in the expressions of others that reflect our feelings (such as singing along while listening to a sad song, or re-writing a poem by an author that encapsulates our emotions about the breakup).
This is a really unique time for creative expression and production. Think of some of your favorite songs, paintings, books, poems, etc. They often come from artists during times of significant pain or heartbreak.
If there was a small silver lining to this huge pain you are suffering, it might be an openness to creative expression that could be really beautiful.
But more importantly, these reflections can be powerful and informative to us as we are able to make sense of a painful situation in the context of our lives. It’s ok if it doesn’t make sense right away, but often by doing this practice over time helps us organize our thoughts and feelings into a format that can provide some important insights about ourselves and our relationship that offers closure.
This leads to my next tip:
2) Reframing
Reframing helps us take the “blurry” experience of the breakup when we are too close to the raw emotional distress and take a new perspective to find more clarity. Being able to take a step back from the experience and see the bigger picture in the context of your whole life often helps us move forward from the breakup.
Another benefit of allowing ourselves to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas during the grief process of a breakup is that it helps us create meaning from the pain. Maybe even develop some source of appreciation of the lessons we learned from the relationship and the value it provided us during that distinct phase of our lives. This is the process of reframing- it’s looking at the situation with a different lens, or perspective.
What does this look like? Here is a strategy I teach my clients in my therapist practice in Santa Rosa. Look at some of the common narratives in the boxes below and how we might “reframe” them with the statements in the arrows:
Tip: start by trying to write down your thoughts to reframe first and keep the list of reframes in a place you see often.
I know it can feel like a stretch to move from anger and sadness to peace and even appreciation. But even finding just one positive can help us get unstuck from the negative ruminations.
Even if it feels unrealistic to find positives about your breakup when it is fresh and raw, try finding a few things every day that you can be grateful for and write them down. There is research showing that people who practice “gratefulness” in gratitude journals can experience improved mood and happiness over a short span of time. [1]
If you are finding you are too stuck with your negative thinking and ruminations about the breakup/relationship to do this strategy, this might be a time to consider therapy. Sometimes we do need the outside perspective for reframing to come from a licensed therapist who is trained in this psychological intervention. If you are wondering more about if you need therapy after your breakup, check out my blog post about this topic.
3) Marking this new phase of life with changes:
Even if in our minds we are still stuck with the grief of the breakup, we can still take action steps through our behaviors to begin in separating our old life with our ex to this new phase of life. This is all about embracing the change as a newly single person, rather than fighting against it.
So if you always went to the gym with your ex-partner at a certain time, try going at a new time, go a new gym or even better, try out a new work-out class. If you lived with your partner, or shared some space together, try re-arranging your furniture, paint your walls a new color or buy new items that really reflect what brings you joy.
I’ve also found some type of appearance change can be super impactful for my clients going through a breakup, particularly for women. This could be as simple as buying a couple of new items of clothes that make you feel great, getting a new hairstyle, or even just painting your nails a fun color. Getting a physical change to reflect the internal change of this new chapter in life can be powerful! Though be mindful of the level of permanence of the change because deciding to cut our hair with new bangs at 3 am is easier to fix than deciding to get a permanent tattoo on a whim.
The appearance change can be big or small, but make sure you are mindful to not let this get into an obsessive/unhealthy behavior. As Santa Rosa therapist who has worked with individuals with eating disorders, I caution against clients who seek getting a “revenge body” after a breakup or losing excessive weight/ changing body appearance in order to elicit an emotional response from an ex-partner.
This is an emotionally vulnerable stage of life, so even a new change with a positive intent, such as getting “healthier” needs to be done in careful moderation and slowly- so that it does not to develop into an obsessive or rigid pattern of behavior such as an eating disorder, or exercise addiction.
So have fun with making some changes! *That you won’t regret a year or two after this time 😉
[1] Emmons RA, McCullough ME. Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2003 Feb;84(2):377-89. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.84.2.377. PMID: 12585811.
Get Connected with a Breakup Therapist Today
I hope this gives you a few more ideas to help get through this difficult time in life.
If you are wondering if it might be time to get the extra support of a therapist, feel free to read my blog about this topic, or contact me for a free 15-minute consultation where we can discuss what is going on and how therapy could help you.
I offer in-person therapy services in my office in Santa Rosa and online therapy for individuals residing in California.
Want more information on breakup recovery therapy?
Angela Sitka, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist has a private practice based in Santa Rosa, CA and specializes in toxic relationships, breakup recovery and divorce counseling for women.