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How to Get Over a Heartbreak: The 9 Step Guide to Mend Your Heart

Is there anything more hurtful then learning how to get over a heartbreak? Your instinct is to get through it quickly, but you must give it time to heal.

how to get over a heartbreak

There is quite arguably nothing worse than a broken heart. Whether you suffer from the loss of someone you love through breakup or through death, you might be asking how to get over a heartbreak. Unfortunately, I wish I had the magic wand, but I don’t.

When you have a broken heart, it feels like you can’t breathe or sometimes like you wish you weren’t breathing anymore.

How to get over a heartbreak

Loving someone forever makes an imprint on your heart and soul. When they leave, it feels like a hole left behind that never heals. The good news, at some point, your heart will mend, and it stops hurting so damn much.

#1 Distraction is your new bestie. When suffering from a broken heart, the best way to mask it is to find things to distract you. If you sit and wallow in it, it only makes the heartache that much greater.

Nothing heals a broken heart but time. Sitting around doing nothing makes time pass way more slowly than occupying your mind and your emotions. [Read: 15 best feel good movies for the broken hearted]

#2 Let it out. Sometimes when we don’t just let things out, they sit and fester. Sure, there is a time to move on and stop crying, but if you don’t take the time to let it work its way through and let it all sink in, there will be a time when the emotions surface.

If you don’t deal with it now on a real level, instead you carry it and may not be able to heal from it. [Read: Letting go of someone you love – Minus the bitterness]

#3 Find support. There will be people in your life willing to let you throw your own pity party and others who skate over it and don’t want to be bothered.

If you want to get over a heartbreak, find someone who understands what you go through and won’t play the devil’s advocate, ignore your pain, or try to convince you it doesn’t just f*cking suck. Heartbreak f*cking sucks, and it is okay and much better just to say so.

#4 Don’t only remember the good things. Sometimes when we lose someone, our minds only remember the things we will miss and not the things that were annoying. If you’re trying to figure how to get over a heartbreak, be realistic about what you had and what you didn’t.

If you broke up with someone, there was a reason why. Even if you don’t exactly know what it was. Think about all the things that didn’t make you happy. All the times you didn’t feel supported or secure, and ultimately, about how it is better to be alone than be with someone who wasn’t meant to be. [Read: How to get over someone when your heart doesn’t want to]

#5 Don’t fill it in with someone else. The key to getting over heartbreak is not to attempt filling it in with substitutes. Sure, somewhere in the future there will be other people to take the place left in your heart. But, don’t try to fill the hole you feel with random people.

It only leaves you feeling lonelier and confused. Take the time to let your heart heal before you fill it up with things that stop it from mending.

#6 Do focus on lessons learned. Sometimes the hardest part about heartbreak is not knowing what went wrong. If you don’t figure out what happened, the problem likely persists into your next relationship and beyond.

Try to take lessons with you to prevent you from getting hurt in the future. No relationship is wasted or useless if you find a lesson learned. Think about what you would have done differently. Next time when your heart is mended and ready to love again, you won’t be heading down the same dead-end street. [Read: 10 lessons your own experiences in love can teach you]

#7 Don’t beat yourself up. All too often we stay stuck in heartbreak to punish ourselves. A way of self-flogging, it doesn’t matter if you did something wrong or if the breakup was on you. It is over, and beating yourself up doesn’t do anything but prolong the misery.

There was a reason why you did what you did, whether subconsciously or on purpose. It was because something wasn’t right. You can’t try to put a puzzle together when the pieces don’t fit. It only leads to frustration and confusion. Forgive yourself, or you won’t ever be able to let go.

#8 Don’t try to rush through the grief. No one wants to hurt, but if you try to rush through the grieving process, there might be residual consequences. Often, we try to tell ourselves that we are over something when we really aren’t.

We approach situations and relationships differently going forward because we never really got over or past the previous one that hurt so bad. Even if it hurts, you deal with your feelings and don’t try to rush the process.

It gets better, but just like any wound, it hurts until it has healed, whether you acknowledge it or not.

#9 If you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask. Sometimes the shock of a breakup leaves us with our jaw hanging, wondering what went wrong. If you were too stunned to ask the questions to find closure, and the breakup wasn’t a bad or violent one, it is okay to ask the questions you need to get past how you feel.

Asking for clarity from someone you once had a loving relationship with is totally okay and might just be the secret ingredient to being okay.

Heartbreak is one of the worst human feelings that you experience. As much as love elates, there is indescribable heartbreak in the horrible crash that sometimes follows.

I know you want to stop hurting like NOW. But, the reality is there is a process to losing someone and grieving the loss. No matter how hard you try to run from or escape it, it follows you until you deal with it.

[Read: The 10 quick pick-me-ups for the recently broken hearted]

You know in your heart how to get over a heartbreak. Just be silent when you need to be, keep busy, don’t cloud your memories with what isn’t real. Get the questions you need for closure. And, I promise your heart will be whole again.

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Julie_Keating
Julie Keating
A writer isn’t born, but created out of experiences. No lack of subject matter, my life reads more like fiction than anything that could have been imagined in...
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