Overcoming the pain of break-up
By Adnan Mouhiddin
Breaking up with someone close to you is an awful feeling that is experienced at least once in life time and sometimes this might extend to various times. Depending on the reasons of which the break-up happened, it (the break up) is often associated with the most negative feelings someone might go through.
The break-up process, hence its pain and dilemma, could be (depending on the strength of the relationship) a lengthy process. The process is associated with dozens of feelings that range and fluctuate between love, resentment, confusions, bitterness…etc. You overcome the break up pain when you reach the stage of what I may call as ‘neutral feeling or emotion’ in which you don’t love nor hate. When you cease to love them in that specific way by which you loved them, and when you don’t hate them. Overcoming the break up is a moment of realisation by which you observe that you don’t hate the person with whom you broke up, nor love them as you used to. It is a moment of ‘neutral feeling or emotion’ (not carelessness, for if you don’t care then you probably still hold negative feelings towards them). If you still love them, then fight for them for you still love them and they still mean something to you (provided it is you who broke up). If you hate them, then hate is a feeling that will keep you attached to them – hence hindering you from moving on. For hate is a feeling, and if you hate them then you still have feelings for them.
Such ‘neutral feeling or emotion’ is achieved through various ways. Forgiveness is one of them if the breakup was a result of a hurt or damaged caused to you. By forgiveness I mean genuine forgiveness – not the sort of forgiveness which is imposed on you by your incapability to revenge. Such forgiveness (the genuine one) is often achieved by understanding the background of the action or actions which led to cause you the harm leading to the break up. This requires an objective, fair and honest observation. Remember, such observation is not about your perspective, it is about the conditions and perspective by which that person operated leading him to act in certain way that resulted in hurting you.
Also, remember that the person whom you broke up with (or they broke up with you) has never been your property. It is such common expressional error when people tell each other (I am yours, you are mine). In fact, no one is anyone’s property. The person with whom you lost the connection has never been your property and could never be. Thinking they were yours, therefore seeing them as property, could never lead to an easy break up. It will only lead to the reinforcement of the feeling of ‘loss’. The person with whom you broke up is a human being, with soul, spirit, heart, character that could never be owned. They could only be experienced. Ask yourself whether you had them or were with them. If you experienced them, or if you start to look at them as an experience that has shaped you, changed you, taught you and enriched you, only then you will start to view that person through different glasses, appreciating whatever you have experienced with them and having them in your life as an experience, like any other experience that you encountered. This will tremendously ease the pain of break up. It will convert the person into a memory rather than a subject of loss. We lose what we own. We don’t lose what we experience. Hence experience could not be associated with the pain of loss. Experience could contain pain, but it is constructive pain that enriches, builds and teaches. If you experience people, you can never lose them. You lose them only when you view them or treat them as property.
The pain associated with the break up is often hostile and aggressive. Don’t resist the pain. The more you resist, the more it will wrestle with you, cling to you and torment you. Surrender to it. Absorb it. Converse with it and let it sweep through your body. The quicker the pain is allowed to pass, the quicker the healing process is. The more you resist it (or more dangerously; ignore it), the more destructive and aggressing it becomes. Equally, it is important to fill your time with things you enjoy doing. Do stuff that calms you down and gives you the sense of experience. Also, if you have close friends, or people who genuinely care about you, please allow them to support you. Connect to them, enjoy their presence, their love and support.
The quicker the break-up process is, the sooner life will award you with an amazing friendship, love, or whatever the connection that took place between you and the person you have broken up with. No matter how special they are/were, and no matter how compatible you think you were (if you were that compatible, you wouldn’t have had broken up at the first place), remember that life has placed them on your way when you met, and that same life is capable of placing someone as special as they are on your path again. The coming friendships or relationships will be awesome – for you have learned and experienced a lot in the relationship which has become a memory.
Applying the truth to the relationship subject to the break up, to its history and its details will also help you through the process of break up. Apply the truth to the nature of that relationship. Apply the truth to the person and/or the events with which you broke up. Apply the truth to the potential of that relationship should it have continued. The truth is often what we have seen in the course of that relationship, but wished to ignore. As painful as the break up may feel, remember to view it as a moment of reality – a moment when you face your reality and that of the relationship subject to the break up.
Finally, don’t forget to dry the roots feeding the pain of the break up. Uprooting them all at once might result in unfinished business. Rather, give time for the roots to dry and dissolve alone and the cannel feeding your pain will vanish alone. Overcoming the pain of break up is a process, and drying the roots will lead to spontaneous, effective and permanent healing.
Syriology 