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Surviving a breakup can be a serious test of your recovery. This type of event can generate a whole gamut of negative emotions, including rejection, loss, anger, resentment, betrayal, and guilt. It can also be a huge knock to your self-esteem. When a relationship fails, you may feel as if your life is spinning out of control so it is vital that you regain control as soon as possible in order to protect your sobriety. Here are a few suggestions for how you can do this.
Don’t Allow Self-Hatred to Take over Your Thinking
It is common for individuals to continue suffering from low self-esteem even after giving up alcohol or drugs. This can mean that you are still dealing with an overly negative inner dialogue that will make you feel even worse about what happened. It is important that you gain control over this soundtrack and change it to words that are supportive and encouraging. You do this by deliberately telling yourself positive things and making optimistic predictions for the future.
Feel Your Pain but Don’t Add to It
It is understandable that you are going to be feeling a lot of pain due to the breakup. It is okay to feel these feelings and to spend a bit of time licking your wounds – this is all perfectly natural. What you do not want to do is add to your pain by beating yourself up over what happened or by refusing to let yourself grieve. Ideally, it is best to just feel what you are feeling but not allowing your thoughts to add to your suffering.
Self-Soothe
You are in pain and you deserve to be comforted, so the most important person who can give you this comfort is yourself. This means you need to be kind to yourself and engage in a little self-pampering such as having a massage, easing up on your commitments, or eating your favourite food (although you want to avoid comfort eating) – whatever it is that gives you comfort.
Choose the Best Interpretation on What Happened
You will never be able to know what any other person is thinking. If it was your ex that decided to end the relationship, you can never really know their real motive – it is common for vague excuses to be given in this type of situation. It is tempting to assume the worst possible motive for the breakup, especially if you are dealing with a lot of self-loathing, but there is no reason for why you need to accept this interpretation. It makes far more sense that you pick a more favourable interpretation of what happened because it is just as likely to be true.
Learn from the Relationship Breakup
It will be much better if you can learn from your relationship breakup rather than feeling bad about it. Do not waste your time blaming it all on the other person because you can learn nothing from doing this; if you are convinced that the problems in the relationship were mostly due to the other person, you can still learn about making a better choice of partner next time. By learning from this breakup, it can increase the likelihood of you enjoying a much better relationship with somebody else in the future.
Accept the Breakup
If the other person has ended the relationship, the worst thing you can do is to put your hope in them having a change of heart. You need to accept what has happened so you can begin to heal – there can be very little healing done while you are still in denial about what has happened. It is only by letting go of this other person that you can start to move forward again in your life.
