How to Heal From a Shi**ty Break-Up: A Step-by-Step Guide

Getting dumped and breaking someone’s heart are equally shitty feelings. Your partnership with this person kept you standing still and now that it’s over, you feel like you’ve been bowled over to the ground. As much as we like to say that we won’t let our boyfriend or girlfriend consume us, they always do. They consume our thoughts, our photographs, our hearts and our beds. They take a little piece of us with them, which leaves you feeling utterly devastated and momentarily empty.

How do you get over this? Unfortunately, I’m going to pull out an old classic here because time does heal all wounds. That’s not what you want to hear, I know. You want me to tell you that you can plan an elaborate scheme to win them back or that by burning anything they ever touched, sniffed or sat on you’ll feel miraculously better? Well, you won’t. I’m sorry. You just need to wait the storm out, but in the mean time, here are a few things that might help just a little.

Allow Yourself Two Weeks of Mourning, Then Plan a Fabulous Coming Out Party

You need to give yourself time to grieve, that’s just the healthy way to go about it, but you also don’t want to get stuck in a whirlwind of tracksuit pants and Gilmore Girls re-runs. By putting a time limit on your sad days you know that it’s something that will eventually pass.

When your fortnight is up, you need to plan something to celebrate the fact that you made it through the hardest part. Maybe a sassy night out with your friends, or a picnic in the park.  Do something that requires you to get a little dressed up and re-birth yourself into the world of the living. Remember, it’s still okay to feel sad after your two weeks have passed. It will probably take a lot longer for you to heal, but after your mourning period, every bad day should be followed by a good one.

Allocate Certain Roles for Your Friends

When you’re going through a really bad break up you need to rely on your friends to perform your basic human functions for the first few days, because you’re about to switch off from the world. You have to be clear about what you need though, otherwise everyone will bring you flowers and chocolate, which means all you’ll put into your body for the next few days is Kit-Kats and wine.

Appoint one of your friends as the General Manager of your break-up. This means they get to make all the decisions about what you need to do and you cannot argue with them. The GM then gets to allocate the rest of your friends with a role. Food and Beverage Coordinator, Activities Manager, the Tough Love Counsellor, and the Cuddle Buddy. Each role is as important as the other and will help you get through those first few days when your body can’t physically emerge from your bed.

Allow Yourself to Lose Your Mind THREE Times

We all do stupid things when we break up with someone and if you tell yourself that you won’t, then you’re kidding yourself. These crazy things range from: looking up their new partner on Facebook and judging their beauty against your own, egging their house or texting them while you’re drunk, and telling them that they’re an absolute dickhead before offering them just one more night of hate-sex.

Now, while I wouldn’t suggest doing any of these things, you’re still going to, so limit yourself to only three crazy ex-partner meltdowns and then you need to stop.

Don’t Do Anything to Excess

Your friends will tell you that it’s okay to eat a tin of cake icing or do tequila shots all day, because you’re sad and you deserve to do whatever you want. The truth is that by partaking in behaviour that you usually wouldn’t, you’ll probably only make yourself feel worse.

Try and keep some sort of routine in your life, whether that be your diet, exercise plans, or television viewing. Don’t rock the boat too much, because your brain is already in a complete fluster and it doesn’t need to deal with the sugar rush that comes along with a tin of cake icing as well as your emotionally unstable mindset.

Reinvent Yourself!

The silver lining to a breakup is the chance to start fresh. You can reinvent yourself, in a way, and start looking after you and you only. Maybe a fresh hair cut will help get the ball rolling or if you’re feeling extra courageous you can dye it a completely different colour. Sometimes by changing your physical appearance you can improve the way you feel on the inside.

Maybe now is the time to start one of those hobbies that you’ve been sweeping to the wayside. You’ve got time to yourself now, so use it wisely. Learn how to make soap or take Spanish classes. You could get back into your roller-skates or take up the piano. Make your new personal project you. Work on improving yourself and making yourself feel fabulous, because you are and anyone who can’t see that, well they just don’t deserve you.