Coaching practices for How to Deal with Emotional Pain After a Breakup

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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I’ve been keeping it together by staying busy and not letting myself fall apart, but the grief I keep shoving down isn’t shrinking
  • I keep circling the same painful thing for hours and every loop makes it worse
  • There was one moment when I needed them most
  • After we fight we just let it sit for days with neither of us reaching out, and the hurt quietly piles up until I start reading even neutral things they do as another little jab
  • I feel the jealousy or the hurt and then immediately pile on a second layer of "I shouldn’t feel this, a mature person wouldn’t"

Practices that may help

  1. Task 2: Work through the pain of grief
    Allow and process the emotional and physical pain of loss rather than bypassing it.
    Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical
  2. ACCEPTS — structured distraction from crisis
    Use Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Pushing away, Thoughts, and Sensations to redirect attention during a crisis.
    Distress Tolerance Skills, Made Practical
  3. Repair an attachment injury
    Specific relationship betrayals -- moments when you were not there -- need a specific repair, not just time.
    Emotionally Focused Therapy: Sue Johnson's Framework for Lasting Bond Repair
  4. Repair quickly and thoroughly
    Don’t let injuries accumulate — repair within hours or days, not weeks.
    Secure-Functioning Relationships
  5. Give yourself permission to feel
    Drop the judgment about whether you should or shouldn’t feel a certain way — the emotion is already there.
    Radical Honesty About Emotions, Made Practical
  6. Common humanity: remember you are not alone
    Say to yourself: "Suffering is a part of life — I am not alone in this."
    The Self-Compassion Break
  7. R — Recall the hurt
    Face what happened deliberately and calmly, without minimizing it or replaying it as a victim.
    Forgiveness: The REACH Model
  8. Acknowledge: name what is hard
    Place a hand on your heart and say, "This is a moment of suffering."
    The Self-Compassion Break
  9. Mindful awareness of suffering
    Hold painful feelings in balanced awareness — neither suppressing them nor being swept away by them.
    Self-Compassion, Made Practical
  10. Revisit a hurtful moment -- and repair it
    Going back to a painful past moment together, with new understanding, is how attachment injuries heal.
    Hold Me Tight: Sue Johnson's Seven Conversations for Lasting Love

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