Losing Out On Love?

Irrespective of the circumstances, breaking up is always a painful process. Even if at the moment of the break up you may have thought it was the best thing to do, the fact remains that you did invest a part of yourself in that relationship and when it falls apart, it can be hard. Breaking up tends to trigger off a slew of strong emotions, the most overwhelming of which is grief. There are days where you feel consumed by grief and find it difficult to do even the simplest of tasks or even get out of bed.

If you are in the post break up stage and this is what you are experiencing, you should know that this is not at all unnatural. Almost everybody who has been through a breakup has gone through this period of grieving.  However, no matter how broken up you may feel, life goes on and you are going to have to pull  yourself up by your bootstraps and get on with it. You may have lost your partner but you still have a lot of people who love you; you have your family and friends; your job.  You cannot just withdraw into yourself and ignore all of these people and things. If you isolate yourself from everybody and everything, you will only end up feeling worse and all alone.

So how do you get over someone you’ve loved and lost? I agree it is not easy. Everything you do or see or hear brings back a flood of memories. The song to which both of you danced together for the first time plays on the radio and you fall to pieces. You walk by the restaurant where both of you want to on your first date, and you cannot stop the tears from flowing. You meet a common friend and though you’d love to stop and chat, you feel too choked with emotion to have any conversation so you duck out of sight.

While all of these reactions are normal soon after the break up, you should make an effort to get over it with the passing of time. If you feel that the grief shows no sign of diminishing, you should seek professional counseling. If you’ve never been to a counselor before, you’d be amazed after your very first session itself. A trained counselor will listen to what you have to say and will be very objective about the whole situation. After you’ve poured out the whole story, you can expect to get a few tremendously effective coping strategies. Amongst the many tips you will receive, one of them will be about avoiding the many little and large things that work as triggers. For example photographs of both of you together should be kept away in a box in the attic. Similarly, all the little gifts, romantic cards and other knick knacks that you received during your time together should also be  stashed away, out of sight.

The one thing you should never do when you are trying to get over someone you love is to ask your family and friends for their advice. They will naturally be prejudiced and will end up saying something like “you are better off without that jerk.” That’s not what you want to hear and that does not help at all. When you want to know how to get over someone you love, seek professional help.