Healing a Broken Heart
When a relationship ends, most of us get fed the usual statements from our friends and family; “There are many fish in the sea”, “You’ll find a better one”, or “Time heals all wounds”. Familiar words, right? From personal experience, these words usually don’t do much to heal a broken heart, and usually sound empty to our ears. Here are some of my own recommendations for those with broken hearts:
1) Live in the present moment. Seems easy, but it isn’t. Most people keep rolling that romantic film in their heads, the one about the first kiss, or the great trip to Cuba that year with uncle John and aunt Jenny, or that supper that he cooked on Valentine’s Day, or… Those films in our heads are the weights that keep us from living the present. In the now time, the relationship has ended, for whatever reason, and it is time to start rolling a new film. A movie where you are the star, where you are meeting new people, doing new things, and becoming happier as each day passes.
2) See friends and family. This really helps to deal with the shock of losing that one special person whom you thought would be with you for all of eternity. Seeing friends and family will remind you that in fact, your world did not gravitate only around your ex, but gravitates around many other people that love and care for you very much. Perhaps here is a good time to remind the reader that you should never make one person the center of your world. Instead, make the people you love and the things you love to do the center.
3) Create new hang-outs. Instead of returning to that lake where you first kissed or that restaurant where you had delicious clams for your birthday, build a new repertoire of hang-outs. After a break-up, it’s your chance to re-invent your world, try new things, eat at new places, visit new countries. Don’t torture yourself by returning to those places that contain memories that bring you pain; go and draw yourself a new map.
4) Write a diary. It’s not just because I’m a writer that I say this; writing liberates the mind and allows us to see more clearly certain situations. When my ex left me, I wrote every day in my diary and eventually, months later, saw to what extent I had grown stronger, happier and even relieved that I was no longer with that man. A diary is like your personal psychologist, and it’s free!
5) Exercise. I advocate exercise to nearly everyone I know who has lived through a break-up because when you exercise, the blood circulates and toxins evacuate better. More than that though, when you exercise one hour a day, it is the equivalent of taking one anti-depressant pill a day. Exercise is free and it’s less damaging in the long run than pumping your system full of pills.
Heart-ache doesn’t dissappear over-night. It does take time to get over that person whom you loved so much just earlier, and it will take some effort on your part to move along to that new film, that film where you are the star and happier than before. You can do it!
August 28th, 2008 at 2:30 am
Hi Nora, I just want to say thank you for this article. I had just recently been left with a broken heart. It hurts and I’m trying hard to follow your advice and I think it’s working even though just a little for now. I exercise almost everyday (except when I have dinner plans or outings), i write to myself, i ask new friends out for fun, i try not to think of the past. I also work hard at my job to get rid of the hurtful thoughts I might have. It only has been less than a week. But i hope i will feel much better soon. Thank you.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Thanks for the good advice. It’s nice to know someone cares.
September 26th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Wanted to say thank you for the advice. I have lost a best friend(guy) of 10yrs. to another girl. It has been very hard
for me to get myself back on track….I’m a fighter and I know somewhere along the way I will get past this. I just
can’t believe he’s gone. I have been experiencing lonliness for the first time in my life. I have no friends like maybe
2 but they are busy. I do believe in excercising but no motivation. Like everything I do to make someone love me gets
shot down and feel I have nothing more to offer. I feel like I am done. My mind goes all over the map emotionally, and just
thinking too hard or too much. It has the tendacey to freak me out or find myself crying when I am home alone. I have no
kids, never been married and single again. This stuff is scarey, this was the strongest of feelings I had for this guy. Never thought I could feel this way so strongly. I’m slowly getting around into finding new things and people to do and meet. I look at the beauty of nature and let God speak to me when I am not being stubborn. Something has got to give…and by reading about other people’s struggle with a broken heart helps me out too and reminds me that I’m not alone. Thank you, once again.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Dear Nora,
Thank you for the guidelines to better emotional stability after a loss – I too suffured the loss of my love for the past two years. We were recently looking at wedding rings and he threw me a birthday party with both of our families there becasue “they needed to get better aquanited with each” all along he was seeing someone else and planning to leave our home. How devastated I was when it all hit the fan. I tried to work it out for 2 months and then the ultimate came – he left and move in with her. He chose her over me. How could he throw us away or better yet me away like yesterday’s garbage? It’s been 5 months now and I’m progressing for the better. It’s been not only difficult emotionally and physically, but financially too. He was trying to leave me destitute. I still cannot believe what would make a person go so far with manipulation and deceit. It’s mind boggling to me. It hurts but I am better for it! 1 day at a time!
November 26th, 2008 at 3:54 am
I was with my love for three years, no fighting,just one that lasted maybe ten min,we laughed, wacthed movies together talked we were best freinds and great lovers..For a short peroid of time i tryed to help my daughter wheil she was leaveing a cheating husband..but i was always there for my love but I guess he started talking to some one at work and then he left me after holding me for three days and wacthing me cry untill i was throwing up. Then two months later he called crying and then we saw each other for two days, no sex just holding hands and making new plans for our life, then he left again….It has taken me a whole year to come to terms with this,I’ve written him emails telling him how much I love him and only some times get two or three line replys. I’ve gone the gament. deprrsion, thoughts of death,crying in the shower for hours.So very hard to let the one you love go..Your advice is very good,,i now exercise every day and I have started living for the day making my own movie,i emailed him finely after almost a year and really said good bye. i wright every day and have my family near.It’s so hard to let some one go that you truely loved.It is such a dark thing that once was so Beautiful.. But my life is to precious to waste..
March 18th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
This is the way things should be, get off what we are on now