Here’s an uncontroversial way to start an article: breakups suck.

An even more uncontroversial line would be; bad breakups really suck.

Chances are you’re here because someone just stabbed you in the heart with a poison blade. Or maybe they strapped a claymore to your heart and blew it into a thousand mutilated pieces.

Either way, it hurts.

And it doesn’t matter how many times you search YouTube for inspirational breakup scenes you still can’t seem to those negative feelings go after your breakup.

Managing negative emotions and even replacing them with good ones isn’t like hitting an on-off switch.

It takes work and planning.

How To Let Go After A Breakup

Depending on how bad your breakup was, getting your mental health back might be quite the mental trek, however that journey can be shortened by first figuring out where you are.

Where Are You Emotionally?

Letting go after a breakup starts with assessing where you’re at.

After a traumatic (read; really shit breakup) it can be easy to push our feelings aside and just keep plugging along. This is a defense mechanism we use in order to help us keep functioning. However, by pushing our feelings away we often do more damage than good.

For that reason, it’s time to take your emotional temperature.

Start by asking yourself a few basic questions:

— What feelings can I identify?

— Have my habits changed lately?

— Am I treating people differently?

— Am I more agitated than lately?

— Which feelings are the most prominent and when did I first start feeling them?

After asking these questions it’s time to ask the more difficult question of all.

What’s triggering these emotions?

It can be easy to attribute all those feelings to the breakup, but is that really so?

In this moment of introspection, the best thing you can do for yourself is to ask the difficult questions and be honest.

Did your relationship go sour for a different reason? Do you have your finances in order, has your self-esteem been damaged, did you recently suffer a loss?

The only way to rid yourself of a weed is to grab it by the root and yank it out.

Before you can yank you have to find the root.

Reduce the Frequency of Negative Emotions Through Your Emotional Response

Now that you’ve identified your most prominent emotions it’s time to take these next steps.

1) Does my reaction (and underlying assumptions) make sense given the supporting evidence?

2) What evidence do I have that supports my internal claims?

3) What evidence do I have that refutes it? Based on the evidence, are my assumptions supported?

4) If not, does my emotional reaction even make sense? If not, what do I now believe after examining the evidence?

I used this method in my 100 Dating Experiment. It was inspired by the psychologist and creator of dialectical behavior therapy, Marsha Linehan.

Using her dialectical behavior therapy method involves labeling the threat, considering the likelihood of the threat actually occurring, and then creating many other outcomes that could happen instead.

This strategy reminds me of one I read about in Tim Ferris’ The Four Hour Work Week when he suggests that the reader outline the best and worst-case scenario.

When you put your worst fears about a situation on paper, it gives you control over brainstorming ways of handling it that help reduce the floating anxiety bubble in your mind down to a manageable size.

You then create a plan of action for yourself should the worst of the worst actually happen.

To balance out your nerves you also outline your best-case scenario and think of how much upside you’d be giving up if you allowed the fear of your worst-case scenario (which may be unlikely to happen anyway) to block yourself from actually pursuing what you want.

Processing the stressful situation proactively in this way can help to regulate the emotional reaction and allow you to think clearly.

Once you start writing out the worst-case scenarios that might take place after a breakup you’ll soon realize that the worst-case scenario may have already happened.

Perhaps your relationship was a tree that you had been cultivating for many years that had suddenly been struck down by lightning.

While right after the fact the scene looks devastating you must remember that now that the tree’s been struck it gives the opportunity for something else to grow in its place. The possibility and ability to create something new is most striking just after a serious loss has taken place (even if it takes a moment to realize).

Become An Emotional Badass

More specifically, increase your resilience so you can better cope with difficult emotions.

Now I’m afraid what you just read was, close yourself off emotionally to the world.

That’s not what I’m advising.

Instead, I’m advising you to learn how to roll with the punches.

Learn how to get swept by the wave of life and instead of drowning, simply go along for the ride.

It’s easy to desire but few are willing to put in the work to reach this point.

To do so you’ll need to exercise. Not physically (although that will help) but instead with these mental exercises. 

I won’t detail every emotional exercise you can do to improve your emotional skills so allow me to outline the two most beneficial exercises.

1) Overcome A Fear

Think of a few of your biggest fears.

Perhaps talking to strangers, telling a woman you’re pursuing how you feel about her, or of course, public speaking.

How would it feel to confront these fears and overcome them?

My guess; pretty badass.

When most people try to confront their fear they do so head-on. They think, “just do it” and try to dive in headfirst.

That’s how you get concussed.

The smart way to deal with fear is to gradually confront it. You sidle over to your fear instead of placing your hand directly on its flame.

The exercise you need to embrace to deal with fear is exposure therapy.

If you’re terrified of swimming, don’t do a cannonball but rather put your feet in the water. The next day stand in the shallow end. Take baby steps every day that gently brush alongside your emotional boundaries.

If this is a tactic that interests you I suggest reading Mastering Fear.

2) Practice Self-Compassion

You aren’t the only person that’s ever been in your situation before.

Sure it feels that way, but that’s because you’re listening to your most toxic thoughts on repeat.

To remedy this, don’t be so hard on yourself.

Do these three things the next time you find yourself in a self-abusive situation:

— Take a deep breath

— Identify how you’re feeling

— Remember that millions if not billions of other people feels this way sometimes

— Tell yourself that it’s okay and that you’re okay

Damage Control: Limit Your Amount of Suffering

There are a bunch of ways to do this — a few of which we’ve already detailed.

Now that you’ve done a bit of emotional repair, it’s time to party.

Kind of.

The relationship you just got out of most likely dominated most if not all of your time.

You relied on that person to be your romantic partner, Scrabble partner, jogging buddy, shoulder to lean on, fellow Netflix-binger, chef, friend, etc.

When they’re ripped out of your life it can feel like you’ve just lost everything. And in a sense, you may have.

It’s never a good idea to turn any single person into your entire world.

Now that they’re gone you’ll need to find new people to fill the void left behind.

Chances are you already have a myriad of people in your life that will come to your aid.

Invest in your friends and families once again. Spend meaningful time with them.

Fill up your calendar with engaging social events.

Pair this with the emotional practices above and you will have let go of a bad breakup faster than expected.

MegaDating

Once you’re whole again, you might want to get back out there.

Except this time let’s do things a bit differently.

I invite you to MegaDate.

MegaDating involves dating multiple people at the same time.

I advise clients to do this for a few reasons:

— Builds emotional resilience

— Sharpens dating skills

— Decreases time spent waiting for your next serious romantic partner

— Helps you figure out what you want in a partner

— Makes you more valuable to women

— Boosts self-esteem

The last and most important point is that it’ll give you the emotional security to ride out a romantic loss. It’s difficult to fixate on being ghosted or a bad breakup when you’ve got another date around the corner.