Which kind of breakup is easier to get over: a breakup from a healthy relationship, or a breakup from an unhealthy one?
Conventionally, you would think the unhealthy one is easier to get over because it’s like “good riddance”, right?
However, that’s not the case.
Unhealthy relationships are harder to get over, because there’s more for the brain to have to make sense of in unhealthy relationships.
Standard breakup advice doesn’t cover how the quality of your romantic/platonic relationship drastically affects the getting-over process.
In other cases, sometimes the relationship itself was healthy but our beliefs about it weren’t. Or the relationship/breakup brushed up against childhood wounding somehow. In these cases, too, it will be harder to get over it.
A breakup borne from a healthy relationship actually has a pretty straightforward getting over process, although not necessarily * easy *.
But if you’re not just feeling sad, but legit tortured over it?
Well… there’s definitely more going on there.
i.e, most likely it was a unhealthy relationship, and/or you have unhealthy beliefs around it.
How to get over a breakup if 👉🏽
🌹 IT WAS A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH HEALTHY BELIEFS AROUND IT
- Grieve the death of your relationship as you knew it, and the death of the future together. Allow yourself to miss them and to feel sad: feeling the feelings is what transmutes them.
This step is an easy step to get stuck in if we don’t allow ourselves to feel our feels. Especially so because we live in a disassociated culture that urges us to “get over it” already, and one that pathologizes natural feelings.
- Tada! Eventually, you get over it.
🌹 IT WAS AN UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP
The above of “feel your feelings” also applies here. And then there are extra steps, depending on the flavour of unhealthy:
Emotionally inconsistent?
⭐ Stop seeing only the times when they were love-bombing you/giving you breadcrumbs of attention, and see them holistically with the good AND the emotionally withdrawn times. Reprogram the part of yourself that finds the push-pull dynamic enticing (because of an emotionally inconsistent childhood), and train yourself to see emotional consistency as hot instead. Also recognize that it’s likely you pick emotionally unavailable people because of a fear of intimacy, so work with that too.
Communication was held hostage?
⭐ Release all of the things within you that were unsaid. Write a letter. Have a friend stand in as your ex, say the things to your friend as they hold your gaze.
You can also consider actually having a conversation with your ex, but that requires a lot of discernment. I would recommend doing all the closure conversing immediately post-breakup and then having a period of no contact for at least six months.
Gaslighting?
⭐ Instead of being in a limbo between your truth and your ex’s truth, believe in your own truth first. Help your brain settle on a narrative by getting validation for your experiences. Get the entire story out of yourself by either writing it out, talking it out to yourself on video, or to a friend/therapist/coach. As your brain gets a solid narrative, also process emotions that come up. Learn to feel for your own truth in your body instead of just in your head.
Critical or emotionally abusive?
⭐ Build up your self-esteem again, release your ex’s projections of you. Forgive yourself, because society trains people to blame themselves for the tough situations they get into. Work with the aspects that your ex weaponized against you and own them to release their power over you. You can also do timeline therapy, where you imagine standing up for yourself within certain incidents.
Physically abusive?
⭐ Work on the nervous system level to restore a feeling of safety to your body. A somatic therapist can be really great with this. You can also do timeline therapy and act out the movements of fighting off your ex for somatic release. Release potential learned helplessness responses. Also, please forgive yourself, because society trains people to blame themselves.
These are just some of the most common unhealthy relationship dynamics, but unhealthy relationships can come in a multitude of unholy flavours. And if there were multiple types of unhealthy dynamics going on at once(which is the norm) the breakup will be harder to get over.
The most important thing is if you can recognize it was unhealthy, then you can recognize that your getting-over process isn’t going to be standard.
🌹 YOU HAVE UNHEALTHY BELIEFS AROUND THE BREAKUP
The above of “feel your feelings” also applies here. After that, it’s simple, in theory—identify the unhealthy belief, rewire the belief. The hard part is always identifying the belief in the first place. The key question to ask is, “What am I making this breakup mean about myself, or about life?”
The most common unhealthy beliefs around a breakup are: “I’m not enough”, “I’m not loveable”, “People will abandon me,” “I will be alone forever,” “Fulfillment is within my relationships with others and not myself,” and “I won’t find anyone as good as my ex”.
Methods of rewiring: tapping, hypnosis, CBT, theta healing, inner child work, among others.
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Some of you may have caught this but—the separation between unhealthy relationships and unhealthy beliefs is actually false. Almost certainly if you’re in an unhealthy relationship, you’ll have some unhealthy beliefs going on as well (none of which is your fault–it just is).
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And if you’re struggling with the (platonic or romantic) breakup and wanna make your breakup process a million times smoother and less tortured, let’s chat!
❤️ Tasmia (thuss-me-ah), Smia for short