One Simple Thing to Significantly Reduce the Pain of a Break Up

Does it seem like after your break up, you just can’t get your mind off of the pain you’re feeling? I’ve been there myself and I know how difficult it can be. It seems like no matter what you do you can’t stop thinking about your girlfriend or calling her up and wondering if she’s seeing someone new. Maybe you’ve even been checking her Facebook profile frequently, trying to see if she is up to anything new, only to discover that she actually is dating someone new and it just makes you feel sick to your stomach. I’ve been there, so I’m not going to try to tell you that stuff isn’t good for you. You probably even know it isn’t good for you, but you just feel compelled to do it anyway. Why is this? And what is something you can do to get your emotions under control? Well, the first thing you need to know is that this is all based on resisting the break up. That is to say that you are emotionally fighting against the break up. Okay, maybe you’re thinking “of course I’m fighting against the break up! I want to save the relationship!” But, you see that doesn’t change the fact that the break up happened. You see, you really have two options. First, you can resist and fight against the break up, which is probably what you’re doing at this point if you’re like most people. Or secondly, you can accept that it happened. The first option creates a lot of suffering and negative emotions on top of the pain you are probably going through. The second options lets you bypass most of the extra pain that we create for ourselves. If you can be emotionally okay with the break up, you put yourself in a better mental frame of mind to handle what you actually need to do to save your relationship. If, on the other hand, you fight and resist the thought that you broke up, you may fall into depression or become so immobilized by the emotional pain that you can’t take action. Now, it’s important to understand that I’m not suggesting that being emotionally okay means that you simply take a passive roll and don’t take action. You can be emotionally okay with something but still take action, just like how you get up and go to work every morning. You don’t fight and resist the thought of going to work (except perhaps on Mondays). How do you do this? Well, the easiest way to practice meditation on a regular basis. By doing this, you have the time to watch your thoughts. Through awareness of how you are thinking, you can start see how the damaging effects of resisting the break up are making you feel bad. Once you can really “get” this, it will just be almost impossible to do something that doesn’t serve you and causes you pain. There is a very subtle difference between these tow frames of mind. I hope you can understand them. If you can adopt this same attitude toward your break up, you will instantly cut the suffering you are going through in half and you’ll be in a much better position to take the actions you need to help you save your relationship.