Have you ever had to let go of a person you loved the most?

Aches in your heart, as you read that question and the memories that flash through your head, are clear answers that you have.

Breakups hurt, whether you are brave enough to admit that to yourself or not, because they echo of rejection. No matter how hard you may try to smile and act as though your world still goes on as it does, you know you are scrambling for balance deep inside. You are not okay. You feel lost as you try to figure out the best way to respond to the shift in your reality. Such disorientation is normal, and the denial, anger, and hurt you feel after a breakup are all part of the healing process. While it may feel comfortable to lock yourself up with your denials indefinitely, you also realize that you cannot keep running away from reality.

So, if you have just been through a particularly horrible breakup, how do you get a grip on your sanity? How do you respond to the pain as maturely as possible?

1. Acknowledge the gap between the two of you

More often than not, people try to act as normally as possible after a painful breakup, if only to hide the fact that they got hurt. In fact, both parties may play the pretense of staying friends right after they part ways. The desire for pretense is a normal response as you refuse to acknowledge the pain. However, is it mature to act as though nothing happened? Will it help to keep up the pretense that things are still okay between the two of you even when it’s killing you inside? No.

The first step toward healing would be acknowledging that you are in pain. You have to acknowledge that you are in the awkward situation where one of you wants to be friends, and the other yearns for something more. You do not have to be okay immediately. Instead, you have to accept that things are not the same between you and that it would be close to impossible to go back to being ‘just friends’.

The bottom line is this: You cannot truly be friends immediately after breaking up. Friendship may develop again in the future, but that will take time—lots of it.

2. Don’t bottle up the hurt

You may feel like a loser for tearing up on the breakup when you feel that you’re the only one who feels the sting (especially if your ex is just playing it cool with another fling). “After all, “you may reason, “What’s the point of moping around when my ex is obviously fine with everything?” So, you force a smile on your face and snag the nearest person for a date (revenge, actually) because you want to prove to your ex that you are just as okay as he or she may be.

But let’s be truthful about it. What you truthfully want to do is just lock yourself up in the room with a pile of Kleenex beside you and cry. So give yourself time to cry. It’s okay not to be okay. Acknowledging the hurt is strength in itself. If you bottle all your tears inside, sooner or later you are going to explode and lose control of yourself.

Ashley Sotelo

Ashley Sotelo is a pro-active health enthusiast; she does research for various leading health companies–focusing mainly on the different alternative treatments available for chronic illnesses. Writing health articles has grown to become her passion, becoming the author of roughly a hundred of such articles and currently writing at BRI Nutrition whose sole purpose is to provide natural and safe supplements. When she is not writing or engaging in her regular fitness routine, she could be found curled up in a nook and reading her favorite books.

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