Breakups do come with loneliness and sadness which make us reevaluate our sense of being.
Have you ever gone through a break up? The usual routine of moving on deleting their messages, pictures from your phone, changing your netflix password, stalking them on social media, cutting off all ties with them, ranting to your friends about them or listening to really sad songs.
But human beings are social animals; we crave human interaction, friendships, relationships and intimacy. Breakups do come with loneliness and sadness which make us reevaluate our sense of being.
After every drastic change in life such as getting a job, becoming a parent, moving to another city, getting married, etc, we step into a “new role” in our lives and many times a lot of people find it difficult to fit into that new role.
“When we are open to new possibilities, we find them. Be open and skeptical of everything.” –Todd Kashdan
Similarly, after the end of each relationship either romantic or platonic it becomes hard to see ourselves as a single entity without our partner because of the emotional investment we made in that relationship.
This comes with ample self doubt. “Was I not enough?” “Is there something wrong with me?” “Am I unlovable?”
Most individuals after being separated from their partner do redefine their identity. They “Glow up”. While it seems like an easy line, it is an understandably hard task to do.
“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” –Viktor E. Frankl
But how do we get there? Here are a few things that you can work on to bring balance back to your life.
Love yourself
We can only love another person to the extent we love ourselves. Your relationship with yourself sets the stage for your relationship with others.
Question yourself. So how do you treat yourself?
Take it this way, if you’re too critical of yourself, you might notice that you are excessively critical of your partner as well.
I’m sure you remember your parents telling you “bado ki izzat karo” (Respect your elders), but do we teach children to respect themselves?
Self love does not only mean treating yourself with a shopping spree or putting on a cute face mask, truly loving yourself comes with respecting and accepting yourself. Self love or accepting oneself doesn’t mean you don’t want to grow, but you can love yourself while in the process of growth too.
Look for Patterns
Often in life, we do not realize that we follow a set pattern in the way we do things, either, in our relationships or in other areas of our life.
If you’re the sort of person that gives up easily while completing a task and often looks up to others for guidance, you might be more dependent on your partner in a relationship as well or you might easily give up on the relationship itself if things don’t go your way.
Similarly if you continuously find yourself dating certain types of people with similar personality traits that indicates you have a pattern or as we call it in our gen-z lingo you have a “Type”.
Identifying such patterns would guide you towards making wiser choices in future, in relationships and in other life decisions. But it would only help when you actively work towards modifying these negative patterns.
Deal with your emotions
While growing up most of us were not really taught about how to deal with our emotions in a healthy way. So we develop our own way of dealing with things, we call them our coping mechanisms.
It’s safe to say that sometimes we develop unhealthy coping mechanisms. For example some people use substances to numb their emotions, some jump into new relationships just to not feel alone and some repress their emotions by completely denying their existence. All these habits create a baggage because let’s face it you’ve never actually dealt with those emotions you just ignored it to the point you thought they would just go away.
Yes your friend might lend you an ear and give you some good advice or yes listening to a good song might temporarily make you feel good but listening to “kun faya kun” on repeat would not heal you magically because there is no substitute to therapy.
So it’s okay to seek professional help, after all we should take care of our minds like we take care of the rest of our bodies.
Your mental well-being is as important as your physical well-being.
Take up a hobby
With all this free time on your hands with no one to constantly text (ok I am not trying to make fun of you), you can invest all that time into doing something you actually like.
Something that you used to love as a child or a hobby you pursued a long time ago but just left in the middle because adulthood got to you. It will help you reconnect with yourself.
Remember your worth is not defined by the people you’ve been with or the choices you have made, your worth is only defined by how you see yourself. Written By - Nishtha Munjal
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