Thoughts on Healing From Heartbreak

Hey everyone!
As some of you know I just came out of a devaluation period with an FA, as a lot of us have.
I've decided to show all of the things I've been doing to help soothe my activated attachment since I broke up with this person.


The first thing I did was initiate the No Contact Rule to pluck my fragile self from the FA's sphere of awareness, and them from mine (as best that I can by not having a physical reminder of them around). I blocked his messages on social media, and made sure my profile had nothing public for him to view. Since, at this time, I figured that if he didn't want me in his life, then he can have none of me in his life. One of the reasons why I think these steps are really important is because as APs we can often overestimate our level of control and influence over our love interests, and in limiting their exposure to our behaviours, we're not only creating mystery again (if we want them to have a chance to maybe grow to miss us) but we're more importantly creating a safe place where we won't feel that we need to "perform" and perfect our internet activity incase our FA/DA happens to be keeping tabs on us still. If we are to really heal, we have to try to limit our people-pleasing and limit our perceived "opportunities for influence" because this expectation on ourselves is just too so restrictive and imprisoning, and will only serve to hold us back even further from our personal integrity and trawling around the disappointment circus, performing on our social media to the sound of white noise of the ex's absence. This blocking of the other person allowed for me to not build up with resentment over my acute awareness of his presence yet total disengagement, and I left with my dignity a bit scuffed but in near new condition.
I read somewhere, I think it was from Baggage Reclaim, that dismissive partners give us something incredibly important for us to maintain the fantasy of our relationship - their absence. This is so vital because it is in this very space that we are left to imagine up the rest of reality! This hit me like a freight train. We often manage to conjure up our dream partner out of the other person because the distance they give us allows us to fill in the gap with what we hope, imagine and wish they are thinking about us / intending for us. I feel that during N/C, we will potentially still have this fantasy about the other, but let's shift our focus back to the here and now - our lived experience in relationship to the other. You have blocked almost all access to your life from your ex partner - are they hammering your door in? Accept that contact made is the intentional effort to create closeness with you, and all distance maintained is a weak drive towards creating closeness with you. Imagination can get real funky with distance, but try to stay grounded in the now. What is happening in the relationship now? I think N/C helps us really realise what is happening in the exchange of the relationship if they are out of sight. If they want to talk to you enough, we have to assume they will, since they have your number.

Comfort & creativity

One of the ways I've dealt with my heartbreak is by doing things I did when I was young to self-soothe. The day we broke things off and he told me he didn't love me, the very first thing I did after blocking him, was to warm up some milk (it was something I would drink if I couldn't sleep as a child), and heated up a microwavable teddy I have, and I sat, cuddled it and let myself cry really hard, and gave myself permission to really feel my pain. It might sound comical - and this is something I have never done before, but I guess I subconsciously knew in that moment what part of me was hurting - the abandoned child. And so, out of nowhere, I just got up and began to take care of this person as if it were my own child, doing things for myself that my older siblings would have done for me as a child. I also drew a picture of the feeling inside my body - my attachment when activated feels like a gaping hole in my abdomen. It feels haunting, as if the wind is just whistling through the hole. I drew this. I closed my eyes and drew the hole as exact as I could feel it - one side felt like it had jagged edges and the other didn't. I then looked down at the paper and felt some resonance, that I had captured the feeling, and in some way, "made friends" with it by acquainting myself with it. I then annotated the drawing, with all of the things I use to "fill" the hole (my therapist calls it my Mum shaped hole). My ex boyfriend, the internet, social media, food. Something shifted in me deep down. I began to stop telling myself so often that it was him that I was missing - I kept telling myself that I am hurting because my favourite filling for my "Mum shaped hole" is no longer plugging it, and I can feel the wind in it right now. It really helped me to visualise that he wasn't integral to my life as he felt, and that this pain that I feel when love goes wrong has lived longer than I have loved any boy or man. I have been in my personal therapy for a year, and have been training as a therapist for a year and a half, and so I luckily have a few tricks I have learned.. but the most important thing I have learned is making friends with pain. Making friends with yourself, and even the parts of yourself that hurt. Try to identify with your pain: what colour do you intuitively imagine your pain to be if it were a colour? What shape? Is it a hole? Is it a growth? Does it feel like a part of you? Does it not? What does it need? I don't judge my pain as much as I used to - I try to understand it and identify it, in even these ways that don't seem to make sense, but when understood, you feel able to hold your pain and watch it rather than become consumed by it.


After this, I got a piece of paper, and wrote down all of the nastiest things in my head about this person, and made them so ridiculous that I could only laugh. I drew a mean picture about them, I wrote down their secrets. I let myself be brutal. This allowed me to offload my pain in a contained way where nobody else would get hurt. I allowed myself to be all sides of myself in this time, and express my truth in the moment, which wasn't all that cute. I had in mind this quote:
"If someone is cruel to you because of your soft disposition and generosity, respond to their poison with equal parts sweet honey equal parts dangerous ferocity."
I may not have showed this person my ferocity, but I showed them my fierce firm boundary: the door. I may not have responded with sweet honey, but I told this person that I loved them, and that they didn't deserve me anymore, and then followed through with my boundary in spite of potential "reconciliation". I knew the limits of my dignity, and my self worth had been treated like someone's 'Welcome' mat. I still did respond with both honey and ferocity to their fullest, but denied this person the access to this - they were my deepest hurts and loves, and I didn't want my disregulation to inflate another person's ego who had already proved to me they did not have my best interests at heart. Withholding and privately honouring my pain and love has allowed me to maintain my dignity, and my integrity. I am working through my pain at my own pace. My feelings are my own - they don't need a witness, especially when I am too vulnerable to not care what the witness can validate. And if I am choosing a witness, it will be those in my life who have never made it out of the door, rather than those who walked out merrily only to then realise it's cold outside.
I have kept a diary since then - to record all of the things I want to tell this person, and all of the thoughts in my head about them. 
What does my pain feel like today? (i.e. yesterday it felt like sandpaper to my face, but today it feels like someone has gouged out my heart and replaced it with empty crisp packets)
What colour / shape / texture would I best imagine matches my feeling today?
What image matches this pain today?
What small act of kindness can I do to give away some of my love today?





I posted a poem by Rupi Kaur yesterday about love. It said: "How cruel I was to myself, giving you credit for my warmth simply because you had felt it." This line had me stopped in my tracks - I had been looking for some perfect words to snap me back into place. It goes on, "Thinking it was you who gave me strength, wit, beauty... simply because you recognised it. As if I were not already these things before I met you. As if I did not remain all these things once you left."
This was a huge thing to me - it made me realise. My love isn't gone... my love is here! It's inside of me. That's why I'm in so much pain... my love has nowhere to go right now. I am not all of my virtues because of this other person, but rather, they became a mirror for my virtues, and a channel for my capacity for love. I did all my own loving and that was created inside of me by me, and they were simply a muse for my own capacity to feel and generate love. I don't need this person to feel this way, they simply inspired the feeling in the time I knew them, much in the way that many other people and things will in their place. So, what other muses do we have? Where else can you channel your love "with nowhere to go"?





I will potentially write some more of these, but for now, this is what I have time to share
And remember:

Lukewarm is the greatest insult.