Breaking up

Breaking up
The loss of a relationship can be very painful. There's not only grief from losing someone important in your life but the future dreams and hopes are shattered too. And seemingly, it gets very hard to have faith and trust in anyone. You begin to question yourself if you were wrong to trust your partner and will be wondering how real the relationship was anyways. You feel alone, horrible about yourself even if you were the one who decided to leave. No doubt it will take time but you should rebuild your trust in yourself and others again. Even if this relationship is over take this as a learning experience. Some people experience problems as after break ups they feel they have lost their identity. But things change and people then feel secure again. Break ups shake us immensely and throw us back into our first relationships – either an ex-love or our parents. But if your past relationships have been difficult, you may feel no respite from grief. At the time of loss it is very common for all the past hurts to come back so at this time you are not only dealing with the present loss but also the past losses, that's why it hurts so much. But with confidence, even if it will take a while, one can overcome this grief. The first step is to deal with your grief and then to tell yourself that you will get through this. While it takes time, you can re-build trust in yourself and others again. Grief moves in phases - beginning, middle and end. It might help to know where you are in the process. In the beginning, you may be in a shock, denial, or numb mode. And you try to make sense of why it happened. At this stage you might not be prepared to accept that it's all over. You find it hard to concentrate on your work. But this is a natural reaction to loss. The second stage involves your fear, anger and depression and it lasts the longest. One way some people block their feelings totally while there are others who don't let go. Either way, it's important to feel and at some stage to let go so that you can move on in life. Your feelings will pass. Grief may run as long as a year unless the relationship was short-term. In the last stage you finally begin to accept the reality. You begin to accept that the relationship is over and that you're going to be okay. You've done a lot of thinking about the relationship and the break-up and you realise things that you hadn't before. You understand yourself better, and you aren't as angry or hurt. You find yourself laughing more, and feeling hopeful. You begin to notice that you're feeling better and that you are ready to trust again, or at least to try. Now and then your hurt comes back but you get over it soon enough. It's just a passing phase. Fill your life with activities that you enjoy. Socialise, be creative etc so that you nurture yourself back to emotional health and physical well-being. Breaking-up can feel unbearably hard and seem permanent. But allow yourself to grieve fully. At the end of it you will feel stronger and lighter.