Breakups are a rollercoaster of emotions, often really painful ones. They can make you feel anger, sadness, and even stress. So what do you do when you feel this way? Keep reading to find out:
- How to Stop Stressing Over a Breakup
- Stressing Over Something – What Does It Mean?
- 3 Ways to Deal with Breakups When You’re Still in Love with Them
- And much more!
How to Stop Stressing Over a Breakup
Before stepping into things that can help you stop stressing over a breakup, it is really important to understand what we mean by “stressing over” something.
Stressing Over Something – What Does It Mean, Literally?
In the dictionary, stressing over something means that you are experiencing stress, tension, and/or anxiety over a situation. But I want you to sit down and ask yourself:
What do you mean when you say you’re stressing over the breakup?
Can you try to point out the emotion underlying it?
Is it sadness? Anxiousness? Anger?
Why is Understanding Your Version of “Stressing Out” Important?
Breaking up with a partner is a significant event in everyone’s lives and the breakup can make you feel a lot of different emotions. You could feel very sad, irritable, angry, anxious, stressed, or even numb at times.
When you say you’re stressed out, you might mean you’re really sad. People understand and define words differently for themselves.
Knowing what kind of emotion you are feeling will help you figure out how you can cope with that specific emotion. Feeling sad because of a breakup is going to look and feel very different from feeling stressed out because of it.
Now that we know, let’s talk about ways you can help your stress, and anxiety resulting from the breakup:
1. Understand that This is A Normal Feeling
Being in a significant relationship changes the way you look at yourself. It changes your idea about yourself because you begin considering your partner in things as well. You go from a “me” to a “we”
This is why breaking up can easily rattle that sense of self you developed along the way and it can cause you to feel lost and anxious. There is a fear of losing yourself, feeling lost forever and how breaking up means you might never be able to find love.
All of this is a normal reaction to a romantic relationship ending. It feels like a loss because, to some extent, it is.
Knowing that you’re not wrong for feeling “one way” and not the “other” helps lift a lot of weight off of your shoulders.
2. Self Care – Put Yourself First
I cannot stress enough the importance of self-care whenever there is a stressful situation. We find ourselves overthinking everything so much and feeling so stressed out, that we tend to forget to look after ourselves in the process.
Maybe a part of us might feel like we don’t deserve to put ourselves first. Neglecting yourself should never be the case.
Doing the simplest of things can help reduce stress and anxiety a lot. This can include:
- Taking a shower
- Eating properly
- Trying to sleep regularly
- Exercising regularly
3. Have a Balanced Outlook – Consider Other Factors and Possibilities
Breakups tend to make us overanalyze every little detail of the event, and almost everything leading up to it.
We might feel rejected because of what happened and it can often cause us to doubt our sense of self, leading to anxiety.
It’s also fairly common to paint your ex as the “evil” person, especially if they ended things. While this can help you get over them faster, there is a chance that it could leave you experiencing and getting stuck with negative emotions for longer.
It is important to understand that relationships end due to many reasons, often things that we are not in control of. Having a balanced view of the possible personal and external factors that could have led to the breakup can help reduce our stress.
3 Ways to Deal with Breakups When You’re Still in Love with Them
Sometimes, relationships end when both partners or at least one of them are still in love with the other. This can make it especially hard to move on. Here are 3 ways you cope with the feeling despite still being in love with them:
1. Take Your Time
The end of a relationship is painful enough, it gets especially more painful if there are still feelings involved.
It is important to understand that breakups can feel like a loss because they are. Processing a loss will always be difficult and will take time.
Some days will feel better than others. You will most likely feel like you’ve made more progress or some days, you’re back to square one.
Everyone has a different process of recovering and takes different amounts of time. Take your time to do what you need to do.
2. Eliminate Reminds of your Ex
While it is important to take your time to heal, it is equally important to get rid of anything that brings back memories of your relationship.
Reminiscing over the past can make us relive the emotional rollercoaster that we worked so hard to process. We can’t always avoid it, but we can do our best to actively eliminate things that take us back.
3. Talk to a Professional
If things get overwhelming for you, consider reaching out to a mental health professional for help.
Being able to talk it out with an expert in the field can help you make sense of a lot of information and even help you understand where your thinking processes might be making it more difficult to move on.
Conclusion
Breakups are emotionally overwhelming rollercoasters. Understanding that the feelings are normal, taking care of yourself, and avoiding overanalyzing things can help you feel less stressed as you heal from the loss.
When still in love, understand that it will take time, and make sure to get rid of things that remind you of them. Reach out to a professional if things get too overwhelming.
