Breakups are rough. Your heart feels like a tennis ball after a match between the Williams sisters. Jumbled knots of anxiety tie up your stomach like a kitten’s been in your knitting project. Here are some things that helped me get through the hard times.

1. Mental bridges
   There is a certain amount of mental processing that is necessary and helpful in healing from a breakup, but I soon realized I was unnecessarily revisiting painful thoughts over and over. So eventually, I found resolutions to each of those loops and I told them to myself the next time the tortuous thoughts came up. I call these resolutions “mental bridges.” For example, whenever regret gripped me because of something I did or didn’t do while with her, I told myself, “Ross, you did the best you knew to do at the time. Now you can only learn from it for future relationships.” Reminding myself of this whenever the regret came up helped me to set that thought aside and move forward.
   Another common one was worry about who she was now dating or if I would find someone else like her. At those times I reminded myself, “I cannot really control that. I have to trust God with that.” And it was easier to let it go.

2. Turn thoughts into prayers
   Whenever a thought wrecked me, I’d go on a long walk. I would try to tell every thought to God, as if I were telling a friend. I would picture God very close to me, like sitting in my chest cavity holding my heart like when my mom used to rock me in our old rocking chair. He was the only one who really knew what I felt at that moment. These prayer walks didn’t really make the pain go away, but they brought comfort.

3. Prioritize personal growth
   After breakups it has really helped me to set my sights on how I want to grow and be better. Not that it would have changed anything about the relationship, or was anything to regret, but it is so much healthier to think about what I want to become instead of ways I wasn’t good enough. For me this was realizing I wanted to eat healthier, work out more, and bring more fun to whomever I am with.

4. Unfollow them
   I was confident I could keep her on my social media feed and things would be OK. But every time she posted, I found myself wondering, Who is she with? Is she getting ready for a date? Does this mean she’s over me or just trying to make it look that way? It was ridiculous what my brain was doing. Agonising over what she was doing post-Ross wasn’t even a little bit helpful. She is still my friend, but I don’t need social media tossing me imagination grenades while I’m tenderly nursing my slowly mending heart.

5. Be with good people
   It’s not any fun to be at home on a Friday night after a breakup, even if you’re embarrassed to bring a bleeding heart out of doors. Let your friends minister to you. Redeem all those friend points you invested in them when they were going through difficult times. Leave the house even if you don’t feel like it. Go to a party, go to those swing dance lessons with your friends, play a game, have a group meal. But also have good talks with people who listen well and care for you.

These are just some of the things that helped, but honestly, time has been the most effective medicine. Hopefully, if you practice these things, it will enable time to do its job well.

© 2024 Focus on the Family. Originally published on the Boundless website in English as “5 Tips for Healing From a Breakup” by Ross Boone. Translated and published with permission. https://www.boundless.org/blog/5-tips-for-healing-from-a-breakup/