Grieving Broken Love

Grief is my LEAST favorite emotion. It’s unpredictable, volatile and unstable. It is enough to make anyone question their emotional well-being and it’s on a time frame that is all it’s own. It can last a week, a month or years. When love is broken through a break-up, the ending of a friendship or a divorce, you are going to grieve. The avoidance of grief can actually cause more problems than grief itself. When we avoid grief, we often defer to unhealthy coping strategies such as abusing drugs or alcohol, engaging in casual sex, overeating or lashing out at the person who hurt you. In lieu of avoiding grief, we are going to look at ways in which you can embrace grief and lean into self-compassion and self-love. Refer to the newsletter titled Lessons in Love: Learning to Love Yourself for more information on self-love.

You may have heard about the five stages of grief. This theory was based on the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who studied the grief responses in patients who were terminally ill. In her research, she found a trend toward five distinct emotional stages for these patients: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While these are common emotions associated with grief, there are misunderstandings around the application of these stages. First, Kubler-Ross’ work was done on patients who are dying. She did not study the acute grief response to a spouse mourning a divorce. Second, there is some thought that the stages are linear. THEY ARE NOT nor do they build on each other toward acceptance. I shared Kubler-Ross’ work with you to validate that grief can and does have distinct emotional stages. Sometimes understanding this alone, can decrease the distress associated with riding the waves.

When we embrace grief, we accept all that it has to bring us. We accept the tears, confusion, anger, and fear. If you are anything like me, the hardest thing to accept about grief is the complete an utter lack of control you have over this emotion. Reestablishing a sense of control, is actually one of the first steps in leaning into grief. We cannot control grief, but we can control how we love ourselves through grief. Listed below are some common strategies and techniques that I recommend to my clients who are experiencing grief.

1. Rally the troops. Holding grief by yourself can feel almost impossible. I highly suggest surrounding yourself with loving and supportive people who can listen to your story without judgment. If you do not have anyone in your life who can do this for you, consider finding a therapist who can hold that space for you while you work on developing relationships.

2. Treat yourself like you have the flu. How do you show up for yourself when you are sick? I personally enjoy comfy pajamas, cheesy movies, lying in bed, and eating something yummy. It is okay to baby yourself, especially when the grief is fresh.

3. Journal your thoughts and feelings. Get it out of your head. Because grief is such a tornado of big emotions, leaving it in your head to process can be exceedingly difficult. Getting it out and onto paper to interact with, gives you back that control of understanding your own mind.

4. Set boundaries with yourself. Do you need to see your former friend or lover’s social media? Do you need to text back and forth with this person if the relationship is done? Do you need to structure communication to only be about the business related aspects of your relationship (i.e. kids, bills, and household issues).

5. Set boundaries with the person you are no longer in a relationship with. Do you need to close shared bank accounts? Do you need to block text messages and only allow for email communication? It’s okay to protect yourself and begin your healing journey.

6. Create a healing environment. This may include removing pictures of the two of you from the home. This could also be taking a break from social media and cancelling social engagements where the both of you were to attend. You may not be able to control for every situation. Look for where you can exert control over your environment so that you feel safe and peaceful.

7. Embrace the mess. Some of the messiest times in my life have been when I was acutely grieving. I would be lying if I said that every choice I made while grieving was healthy. They decidedly were not. I also know that I cannot change my past and that every soul’s journey looks like a cross-stitch project in the making; pretty and precise in the front and a mess on the back. If you made or are making messy choices during your grief, acknowledge that you are reacting from pain and ask yourself, are there other ways that I can hold this more effectively?

Recap of Topic: Grieving Love

Grief is a powerful human experience that is the unavoidable cost of admission when we love. While it is a natural tendency to avoid experiences, objects, people and emotions that hurt us, the avoidance of grief can actually cause more problems and often leads to the use of maladaptive coping strategies. Conversely, leaning into grief allows us to heal. The emotional process of healing from grief can be aided through the use of supportive relationships, self-compassion, boundary setting, journaling and acceptance.

Learning From Broken Love

Every experience in life, has the potential to teach us a lesson, if we are receptive. The lessons learned from a broken relationship can be profound, emotion laden and life-altering. It is through these lessons that we can embrace the unintended gift of a lost relationship. In this section, we will explore how to find these lessons through reflective questions. Most of these questions will pertain to you. I want to be clear in stating that if the relationship you are recovering from was abusive or exploitative you were not responsible for being mistreated. Part of the self-reflective journey is understanding how we allow for others to treat us and why. Some questions to help you through your journey are:

1. What was your role in the end of the relationship? Were you the dumper or dumpee? If you ended the relationship, what brought you to place of thinking that this was the best decision for you?

2. Is there anything you would have chosen to do differently in the relationship? If so, why? To be clear, doing something different doesn’t equate to staying in the relationship. It may be choosing to end it sooner.

3. What were behaviors that you exhibited in this relationship that you both liked and disliked? What changes, if any, do you want to make for future relationships?

4. Do you see a trend in relational dynamics throughout your life? Have you lost other relationships for similar reasons? If so, what were they? I would encourage you to spend some time evaluating this answer if you have one.

5. How did the other person behave in the relationship that you both liked and disliked? What honorable traits did he/she possess that you want to look for in others? What traits do you want to be cautious of in others for the future? Why were these traits a concern for you?

6. How did you allow yourself to be treated in this relationship? Do you think you honored yourself in how you allowed for yourself to be treated? If no, what would you want to do differently next time?

Recap of Topic: Learning From Broken Love

Broken love has the ability to teach us invaluable lessons about ourselves and others if we are willing to ask the hard questions. While we are never responsible for abuse we may have received in a relationship, we all have a role in our relationships. Identifying your role in a broken relationship can aid you in understanding how you show up in other relationships and empower you to decide if this is how you want to present in future relationships.

Healing the Self and Others From Broken Love

Fred Rogers had a famous line that he used to reassure his viewers during periods of hardship. He would say, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” I love this quote and the sentiment behind. Our pain, trauma, loss, and adversity is not meant to be experienced in a vacuum. Suffering is a basic human condition and it is guaranteed that we will all suffer. Your loss and the lessons learned from this loss, are meant to be shared with others. Not only is it healing for you to share your story as it validates that you did not go through pain for nothing, it has the potential to guide another who may be struggling with something very similar. Learning from your loss, imparts wisdom upon you that you could not have gained through any other means. You couldn’t have read about, been told about it or seen a movie about it. You had to feel and experience exactly what you did to know and love yourself more fully. My hope for all reading this is that you heal from your losses and someday have the privilege to share this knowledge with someone who is suffering.

Recap of Topic: Healing From Broken Love

When you share the lessons you learned from broken love, you have the potential to heal both yourself and others. Suffering is a foundational human experience shared by all. Your knowledge of how to navigate pain can be imparted to another to guide them through a similarly dark period in life.

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