How Long Does It Take To Heal A Broken Heart? 6 Steps To Recovering After Heartbreak So You Can Love Again
Your heartbreak won't last forever. Follow these steps to heal your heart and love again.
by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels If you're suffering from a broken heart, you may fall into the trap of believing that your feelings of hurt, sadness, or betrayal will never end, or that you'll never find love again.
Understanding how to get over a breakup and get through heartbreak is no easy feat.
If you find yourself wondering exactly how long it takes to heal a broken heart, the good news is there is a healing journey you can take.
This timeframe may not fit everyone, but looking at the journey from heartbreak to lasting-love will allow you to evaluate where you are on the path and speed up your healing.
Don't push yourself.
You can’t heal a broken heart by pushing through it, getting back out there right away, or being in denial of your sorrow. Your feelings exist for a reason. Trying to ignore them will only make matters worse.
Ignoring your feelings disconnects you from yourself. At a time of heartache, it's important to stay present to your emotional experience.
Emotions are information from your subconscious signaling that there is something occurring for you to pay attention to. The purpose of this emotional system allows you to connect with yourself.
When you ignore or try to push down your feelings, you lose rapport with your inner-self. When that happens, you end up like a small cork tossed about on a stormy sea. The longer you avoid the feelings of grief and sorrow, the longer the storm and the untethered feelings will be present.
Feel the full range of your emotions.
As a human being, you're here to feel the full range of human emotion. The sooner you make peace with that, the happier you'll be. There's nothing wrong with these feelings — they're appropriate to the situation you’re in.
In order to heal from a broken heart, you need to feel all of your feelings. This doesn't mean that you should wallow or become self-indulgent in your sorrow. Instead, be intentional about the process.
Don't wallow in negative feelings.
When you wallow, you're stuck in the story of the situation and all the details of the plot points that occurred. You may find yourself mentally repeating questions, hoping when you find the answer, it will all make sense.
Unfortunately, the answer to this question will not make you feel better, no matter how much your mind tells you it will.
There's no logical answer here that will provide you with any peace of mind. Emotions are not logical or linear the way our conscious mind wishes everything would be.
Give yourself time.
Set aside time to feel your feelings, all of them. Schedule it in your calendar and set a timer. For example, give yourself two hours in the evening after work to do nothing but feel your sadness, hurt, anger, or whatever it is you feel at the moment.
See if you can fully feel your feelings for the entire two hours without distracting yourself or getting into a dialog in your mind.
Release your emotions.
Play heartbreak songs over and over again while you cry. Scream into your pillow and hit it over and over again to release your anger. Indulge yourself in fully expressing your emotions over the situation.
Another option is to fill a bath and scream underwater. Then when you’re done, you can relax and enjoy the bath.
These exercises allow you to release your emotions so that they recede and leave space for new feelings to come in. Emotions are energy and need to be expressed, otherwise they get stuck. Over time, stuck emotions can cause disease within the body.
Connecting with yourself through your emotional experience is a great way to stay grounded in your body and to support your own wellbeing through any experience. It also speeds up the mourning process and allows you to heal from heartbreak.
As you evolve and move toward your highest and best self, the good times are the reward and the difficulties allow you to become a better person.
Love is limitless.
When your heart breaks it creates space for even more love. When your heart becomes bigger, it can hold even more love. Love for yourself, as well as love for another.
A broken heart is a vulnerable heart, and a vulnerable heart is an open heart. Keep your heart open while you’re nursing a broken heart and you will find that love will fill the space inside of you.
So, how long does it take to heal a broken heart?
There's no time limit on grief.
When you feel happy or blissful, you never make the mistake of believing these feelings will last; you know they’re temporary.
And yet, when you feel badly, you can’t even imagine that you'll ever feel good again, as if you got sucked into some time warp where you’re doomed to suffer forever.
This is a delusion. The truth about emotions is that they're constantly changing from moment to moment. Acknowledging and expressing them allows them to release to their proper ebb and flow.
You may feel grief again in the future, and that’s not because you’re broken or something is wrong with you. It’s just the nature of emotions. Healing takes time, so embrace the slow pace of healing your heart from a breakup.
All emotions compound, and it is the most obvious to see how this happens with grief. When you experience a loss, you feel all the losses. This is part of your humanness, and it's important to accept it.
You'll probably have scars from your past experiences.
Hearing a certain song, eating at a particular restaurant, or traveling to a specific romantic locale can all trigger feelings of grief about a past relationship.
These triggers are normal. Just because something triggers feelings about an ex doesn’t mean anything other than that was an important person at one time in your life. Allow and honor your feelings of grief when they show up.
Forgive your ex.
When the intensity of heartbreak feelings have waned the next step is to release yourself from the energetic dance you did with your ex. Blaming yourself or your ex will keep you tied to them.
You can think of this connection as energetic ropes or strings that keep you from moving forward.
Moving into forgiveness will allow you to cut the cords and free your heart to love again. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you excuse bad behavior. Forgiveness is acknowledging someone’s humanity and having compassion for their shortcomings.
Take responsibility for your mistakes and forgive yourself.
Acknowledge your ex’s deficiencies and forgive him. Ultimately forgiveness is for you, it allows you to leave the past in the past. It's the gateway to allow better opportunities to come your way.
The final step in the healing journey is to find gratitude for the experience. This person and these events showed up in your life to teach you something.
Discovering the "golden nugget "of learning allows you to grow from your experiences and become better at selecting an ideal partner, as well as being a partner for your beloved.
If you never learn, you're doomed to repeat the experience again.
Breaking patterns and choosing a partner consciously only occurs when you gain the learning from your experiences.
This is the final step in the journey to healing from a broken heart, because it’s the most difficult. The other steps prepare you to dig deep and discover the answer to why you were in a relationship with this particular human being.
Seeing your ex as a teacher of sorts will move you toward your soulmate. They may not grow from the experience of being in partnership with you, but you can.
When you are with your beloved, it won’t matter how many others it didn’t work out with. It won’t matter how long it took you to find each other.
You'll be living the best years of your life with the love of your life, and that is all that will matter when you get there.
Orna and Matthew Walters have been soulmate coaches for over a decade together, they have helped thousands of readers create soul-lasting love. You can download a complimentary copy of their e-book, "Recognizing Mr. Right," along with a guided program on self-acceptance on their website.