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When you’re going through a breakup, it’s natural to desperately chase happiness at times.
You search for the magic solution that will make the pain disappear, frantically grabbing at anything that might make you feel better — rebound relationships, forced positivity, constant distractions, cocaine fuelled champagne orgies.
However, the harder you chase that happiness, the more it seems to slip through your fingers. It’s like trying to hold water in your hands — the tighter you grip, the more it leaks away.
What if I told you that the solution isn’t to try harder to feel good, but to stop trying altogether? This approach might sound strange at first, but it’s actually backed by both psychological research and the real-world experiences of countless heartbroken people who’ve found their way back to normality.
So, what does this mean practically? Well, let me break down five solutions that might work.
Solution #1: Stop Trying To Avoid Pain And Start Accepting It
This isn’t about wallowing in misery or glorifying suffering. No, it’s about acknowledging that pain is a natural part and actually a necessary part of the healing process. When you resist emotional pain, you actually amplify it and extend its duration.
Instead, try just sitting with your feelings for a few minutes each day without judgment. Find a quiet place, close your eyes, and simply notice what emotions are present. Say to yourself, “I feel like shit right now. And that’s okay.” Don’t try to change it, don’t try to fix it, just try to acknowledge it.
You might be surprised to discover that when you stop fighting your emotions, they become less overwhelming. It’s kind of like quicksand — the more you struggle, the faster you sink. But if you relax and spread out your weight, you can avoid being pulled under.
Solution #2: Replace Forced Positivity With Radical Honesty
Instead of saying or thinking “I’m so happy we broke up,” try “Hey, this fucking hurts and I’m struggling right now.” The relief that comes with honesty like that is often immediate and powerful.
This doesn’t mean you should be negative for the sake of being negative. It just means being truthful about your current emotional state, both with yourself and even with your trusted peers, friends, family members, and other people.
Obviously, don’t dump your raw emotions onto everyone in your life. But having at least one person with whom you can be completely authentic is incredibly valuable.
Ultimately, when you stop performing happiness that you don’t feel, you free up enormous amounts of psychological energy that can be redirected toward actual breakup recovery and activities that promote it.
This cheat sheet lays out 40+ solutions to overcoming a breakup so you can create a new opportunity for love — be that with your ex or someone completely different.
Get The Free Cheat SheetSolution #3: Use Distraction Strategically, Not Constantly
There’s nothing wrong with taking a break from your pain, but recognize that’s all you’re doing — taking a break, not solving anything. Distraction becomes problematic when it’s your primary or only coping strategy.
Instead of constant distraction, try scheduled distraction. Set aside specific time to feel your emotions, then a specific time to engage in activities that take your mind off your emotions. This more balanced approach will probably help you recover faster and not let you get overwhelmed so easily.
For example, you might decide that from 7:00 to 7:30 p.m. each evening, you’re going to journal about your feelings about the breakup, or meditate, or go on a walk and just talk to yourself about these things. During that time, allow yourself to fully experience whatever emotions come up.
But then from, say, 7:30 to 9:00 p.m., make a deal with yourself to fully engage in an activity you enjoy, like watching a movie, calling a friend, or working on a hobby. This structure should give you both the space to process things and the relief of temporary escape without letting either approach dominate your recovery.
Solution #4: Drop That Timeline
There is no breakup recovery schedule. Some people take weeks to feel good again, others take years, and a multitude of factors influence the duration, including the length and intensity of the relationship, your circumstances, attachment style, support system, and more.
The more you pressure yourself to “just be over it,” the more you’re reinforcing the idea that your natural emotional process is somehow wrong or broken. And then this judgment becomes yet another layer of suffering on top of the breakup itself.
It’s like meta-emotions: you feel bad about a breakup, and then you feel bad about feeling bad, and then you feel bad about feeling bad about feeling bad. It’s a never-ending cycle of misery.
So instead of asking yourself, “Why am I not over this yet?” try asking, “What do my mind and heart need right now to continue my recovery?” This shifts your focus from an arbitrary timeline to your actual needs in the present moment, hence recovery tends to accelerate.
Solution #5: Redefine What Healing Looks Like For You
Healing isn’t about never feeling sad about a breakup again. It’s about integrating that experience into your life in a way that doesn’t dominate your thoughts or emotions.
You might always feel something when you think about your ex, whether it’s good or bad, or a mix of both. That’s completely normal. Many people have this idea that they’ll know they’re healed when they never think about their ex anymore, or when they can think about them with complete neutrality and detachment. But that’s not how human emotions or memory work.
Instead, healing looks like being able to think about your ex without spiraling into intense emotional pain. It looks like being able to acknowledge the good and bad aspects of the relationship with clarity, perspective, and fairness. It looks like being open to new connections without constantly comparing them to your ex.
The Common Thread
If you noticed, all of these solutions are about letting go of control.
The harder you try to control your emotional experience post-breakup, the more it actually controls you. It’s only when you surrender to the process, when you accept that healing is messy, nonlinear, and painful as shit, that you actually open up the doors to real recovery.
So do that.
Stop trying so damn hard to feel better. Chillax more. Give yourself permission to feel exactly how you feel right now. That’s your first step to actual healing. Good luck.
This cheat sheet lays out 40+ solutions to overcoming a breakup so you can create a new opportunity for love — be that with your ex or someone completely different.
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