Break Up Healing Mistakes

Breakups can make life miserable. Unfortunately, many of us resort to ineffective or self-defeating attempts to hasten our healing, or try to reverse the process. We only end up making matters worse. Some self-destructive things we may resort to are:

Denial:  Denying the breakup, or ignoring your hurt, pain, confusion, and feelings of rejection only compounds it. Like cancer, it slowly eats away at you, silently, painlessly, and unnoticed . Acknowledge your pain. Accept that the relationship is over.

Attack their pride or good-character: Often times, to lessen our own painful feelings of rejection and failure, we finger-point. Placing blame on the other person. We need to learn to attack the 'issue', instead of the person. Name-calling, fault finding, or finger-pointing only builds the wall, hides the issue, and prevents us from bettering ourselves for future relationships, and salvaging our current ones. 'Devaluing' their mate is an abuse tactic often used by narcissists in a breakup. To read up about narcissists and why they demonize or devalue their mates - plus their other 'subtle' abuse tactics, please visit Breaking Up With Your Narcissist.)

Manipulation: There are many forms of manipulation, from openly dating others to feelings of hopelessness and abandonment. Sometimes we are very much aware of our manipulative ways. Such as sending cards, flowers, or others gestures of relaying our love (need). But, more often than not, we are unaware. We may cry, beg, threaten, insult, belittle, or even blackmail our ex - all with hopes of manipulating them into helping us get what 'we' want. Our main goal is satisfying our own personal interests  - we ignorantly think, 'to hell with what is good or right for them'. We only see things our way.

Calling in the forces: We try to recruit friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and both our ex's and our own families as allies on our quest to 'make it stop' or 'make it all go away'. Whether our motives are to belittle and insult our ex, find out 'if they are seeing anybody', or looking for a translator to get our message of misery or woe to the ex. Eventually, all we really end up doing is losing our own self-respect and dignity.

Over-analyzing: Are you dwelling on your breakup, your relationships, and the if's, and's and but's? Do you keep reliving the last moments over and over again? The problem is you are doing all this through one state of mind - that of a wounded child who did something wrong and wants to make it right. The problem is, just as with children, you aren't seeing clearly. You aren't really hearing what is being said to you. Close your prejudiced thoughts up. Empty you heart out. And open your ears.

Neglect to give ourself, and our ex, time: You may instantly try to salvage the relationship, undo a breakup, change your ex's mind, or alter a certain course of events. Your thoughts are so clouded and unreliable right after a breakup. Give yourself time to 'come down' from the emotional roller-coaster so that you can think, act, and even react with a more relaxed state of mind. This always gives your ex time to unwind from the pain and think more clearly, too. If they were the one to opt for the breakup, odds are they are set on leaving it and the quicker you engage them with the ideal of getting back together the more adamant they will be to leave. Allowing time to pass gives them the needed space to think more rationally and get out of that 'wanting out' state. The webBook, This Side of Good-bye, available in our library here, explains more about what kind of mode people are in when they choose to leave a relationship.

Rebound: "Oh, just forget it. I'm moving on and putting this man/woman behind me!" These thoughts can be very damaging. Dating again heals your heart about the same as placing a mere band-aid on a broken arm would heal the arm. The damage will remain! Before you move on you should learn to fully understand what issues were yours, where you could use 'fixing-up', and learning to be comfortable with being by yourself - a must for any future successful relationship. Without these you will see history repeat itself over and over again. You will know that the healing is complete and you are ready to date again when you can find happiness - alone and with yourself! And when you can find that then any relationship you have after that has got to be great because you eliminate these relationship busters:

1. ANXIETY - you are FREE from that panicky 'need' to have someone

2. DEPRESSION - you know to create your own happiness

3. ABANDONMENT FEAR - there is no 'fear' of being left, because even that would be okay with you

4. CODEPENDENCY - you've healed to the point where you do not 'unhealthily' ATTACH to someone

5. HURT FEELINGS - you learn to listen without 'defending' (yourself) and speak without 'offending' (the other person). You also learn to hear the 'fear' behind their words - and yours

6. DISCONTENTMENT - you learn to appreciate them for who they are. You don't try to change or alter them. And you allow them to be themselves

7. NERVOUS INSECURITY - only 'you' are the 'be-all' to your life

8. RESENTMENT - you love unselfishly

9. PERFORMANCE ANXIETY - sex is no longer a 'tool'

10. ANXIETY - when you are a peace with yourself, your relationship is one of serenity and security - not anxiety, worry, hurt, and pain

Alcohol, drugs, food, one-night stands: Oh, my! Argh! The pain is gone temporary, and maybe that sounds really good right now - to stop the pain...but, boy does it come back ten-fold. Additionally, we are even more depressed as a result of the chemicals we have put in our body, our loss of self-respect, fear that we may have harmed ourselves, and the realization that we are right back where we started from! In fact, we are two steps back! The best solution is to not try to end the pain, but to just go through it. Think of it as a dark tunnel  you have stumbled across while journeying through a dark and dismal land. You start out in a really bad place. In fact, it is such a bad, evil, horrible place that you can't even phantom that the tunnel ends in a bright, beautiful land rich in hope, love, and laughter. 

But to get there you have to go through the tunnel, and right now that black, endless-looking hole doesn't look anymore inviting than the dismal land you are in. So, someone comes along, someone who has journeyed through that tunnel, and they tell you, "this tunnel ends in the land of golden sun and bright rainbows, and many beautiful things". So you look at the tunnel and it is still dark and foreboden looking, and there's no way you're going to go through that. So you try to skip around it, or hop right over it in your hurry to reach the dream land. But every time you do that, you end up even farther away from the tunnel's entrance. And you have to work even harder, fighting yourself back through the dark and dismal land of dread to reach the tunnel's entrance again.  If you would just walk through it, you will soon see that the tunnel is starting to take in light. And then the light gets brighter and is laced with golden rays of sunshine. And at last you see the end. But the only way to reach the end of the tunnel is to go through it.  

Yes, we can make the pain of our breakup far worse than it already is. But, although these are trying times, the grief can be lessened and the healing hastened if we follow these simple rules above.

~by Tigress Luv

For more information about getting over the pain of breakup, please read How to Get Over a Breakup

Article published by Glass Slipper publishing, the Breakup Gurus. For more breakup advice and forums please join us at the Lifted Hearts Breakup Support Forums & Community at http://liftedhearts.com.