Benefits of Grief Counseling After a Breakup
When you’re no longer part of a couple, your entire world may seem to break apart. Other people may not understand the level of your grief and may encourage you to “move on.” Grief counseling helps you set your own timeline for healing.
Grief is the anguish you feel after a significant loss. Sometimes, that loss involves the death of a loved one, such as a parent, child, friend, or even a pet. Sometimes, it’s a more symbolic loss, such as losing a job or another important element of your life.
Breaking up an intimate relationship, or even a friendship, can also bring on grief. Even if you were the one who initiated the breakup, even if the relationship was relatively short-term, the loss of your dreams and future plans, as well as the intimacy you once experienced or hoped for, can trigger grief.
When you grieve a relationship, you may wonder how best to move on. Should you plunge yourself into a new romance or wait it out? Advice from friends or internet searches may leave you further confused.
Maggie Vaughan, MFT, PhD, and our team at Happy Apple in New York City offer grief counseling at our Columbus Circle office and online through a HIPAA-secure private portal. Following are a few of the benefits of considering grief counseling after a breakup, rather than just trying to “get over it” on your own.
You can express your full range of emotions
Talking to your friends and family after a breakup can be helpful. But they have their own lives and challenges and may have strong opinions about their former partner or about the breakup itself.
With a counselor, you don’t have to edit your emotions. You don’t have to fear being judged, no matter what you express, such as:
Anger
Fear
Sadness
Betrayal
Regret
Guilt
Anxiety
Through grief counseling, you allow yourself to feel your emotions as they arise. Trying to push them away too soon by diving into another relationship puts you at risk for using it as a kind of medication to wipe out pain instead of as an opportunity for further growth.
You learn from your experience
When you go through a breakup, you may think that your intense grief will pass in time. Although your emotional attachment to the breakup may lessen, time by itself doesn’t necessarily heal.
To fully heal from a breakup, you must also understand why it happened, including your own role. As you learn to look objectively at the choices you made, you may identify patterns that you’d like to change.
You develop coping mechanisms
Grief can be debilitating. Sometimes, the loss of a relationship seems like the loss of your identity, particularly if it was a long-term relationship and you have children or share a business.
Through grief counseling, you learn coping mechanisms that help you handle your emotions in the moment so you can continue with your life, even as you allow yourself to feel pain. We may recommend meditation, deep breathing, and other calming techniques.
You also learn to reframe your experience so you don’t blame yourself or your partner for the death of the relationship. Replacing negative self-talk or blame with more positive phrases helps you move past the hurt and into a brighter future.
You focus on your needs
When you’re in an intense state of grief, it’s sometimes difficult to engage in self-care. Even normal daily activities, such as eating healthy meals or getting out of bed to go to work or school may seem impossible.
You can also experience physical symptoms from grief. It can literally make you feel that your heart has broken. Untreated grief can cause chest pain, body pain, and even interfere with immune function.
Your counselor works with you to create a healthy lifestyle that supports as you heal and grow. You’re less likely to suffer prolonged depression over a breakup when you can process it as part of life rather than as a sign that there’s something wrong with you.
By focusing on your feelings and needs, you also identify the values that are important to you in a relationship. You may find that the breakup leads to a better understanding of who you are, what you want from life, and what qualities you desire in your next partner. You also learn to heal and progress at your own pace, not anyone else’s.
Have you suffered a breakup that’s wrapped you in a cycle of blame and grief? Find out how grief counseling can help you heal and move forward. Contact Happy Apple today.
