Giving Grace while Processing Heartbreak

Giving Grace While Processing Heartbreak

Let’s talk about your feelings. There is no one way to deal with heartbreak. It is a unique journey, just as unique as the relationship you were part of. No matter the circumstance of the breakup, if it hurts, and it is hard, you deserve grace. The critical factor discussed here is your feelings. There is a crucial difference between feelings and actions. This post is exclusively about feelings. If you are having a hard time reeling in your actions [maybe based on some of these feelings], I highly recommend you check back in on May 8th for my post about love and habits!

Just to say it straight, you need to feel the feels. There are no shortcuts in healing from and processing heartbreak. If one hour you’re crying and the next you’re empowered, that is okay. If one day you see your ex as a terrible person, and the next day, you feel empathy and love toward them, that is also okay. That is your mind and body seeking a sort of homeostasis and trying to understand how you really feel, given who you are genuinely and authentically. You don’t want to stifle that balancing process by rushing to a quick fix solution too fast. The highs and lows of your feelings are a fluid dance that is trying to assess all sides of reality to find the truth of your lived experience. Rushing that process leaves you with bits and pieces of anger, joy, and inauthentic resolve.

Ironically, we are socially conditioned to find every shortcut possible to get around the feelings of heartbreak. Shortcuts lead to unresolved wounds, resentment, anticipatory anxiety, and fear. In a sermon on April 19th, 2020, my pastor Dr. Dharius Daniels was talking about an attack on the heart– the evocation of unproductive fear, and he cautioned listeners about allowing “a temporary crisis to cause permanent emotional damage” Daniels (2020). If you do not give yourself the time grace to process the heartbreak, it can lay dormant inside of you, festering resentment toward someone who you haven’t given a chance to yet, and decreasing your capacity to experience love wholly and with beautiful vulnerability.

Building support for the case that we should process emotions fully, we can turn to scholarship on rejection, which is a collective experience when dealing with heartbreak, especially if the separation was fully or in-part initiated by the other individual. When rejection compounds and there isn’t a release to process it, we run the risk of developing a sensitivity to rejection. What that means is that you come to expect rejection! It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (Downey et al., 1998). You begin to manifest the outcome you have come to internalize, anticipating that sh& is going to be f%ked up. This can be consciously or subconsciously, which is a scary business when you want to experience and give unconditional love. Having rejection sensitivity isn’t a bad thing; however it may be a barrier to the type of connection you want with another person. The good news is that through processing your feelings and through satisfying and supportive relationships, you can reduce rejection sensitivity (Kang, 2006).

Dr. Sandra Wilson, in her book, Hurt People Hurt People: Hope and Healing for Yourself and Your Relationships, talks about the cyclical process of unresolved wounds*. The way I see this is unintentionally rolling that pain into the next encounter creating a snowball of anticipation of hurt. No rebounding, no partying the pain away, no f*&k him or her or thems…. Those solutions are quick-pressure releases, and with all quick fixes, it leaves much to be experienced, desired, and learned. Just to be clear, there’s no shame if you want to cope in these ways [especially if you feel your heart can handle it. Do you boo, that’s your business**]. I am the first one to play Meg Thee Stallion to remind myself that “I’m the hood Mona Lisa, break a man into pieces, had to X some cheesy men out my circle like a pizza***.” Okay lol! I am just saying that can’t be where it ends. There has to be the hard work of healing.

At some point in this process, someone has probably supported you. Someone may have listened to you cry, reassured you that there are lots of other people in the world. Perhaps they have given you really good, or really bad advice. Some folks may have even told you to forget about the love lost and said to you that you deserve so much better. Maybe someone told you that you will learn from this breakup and be better and more prepared for the next opportunity. All of this feedback and support is helpful, even if it is just nice to have a listening ear and a person to be present. If your heartbreaks were as disruptive as mine were, you probably still experience[d] isolation, loneliness, and waking up daily with that person being the first thought on your mind. That is a frustrating feeling.

For me brushing off the breakup was not helpful. I needed to deal with it. I needed to get a grip around it and confront it. Often we push things to the side and decide that we aren’t going to deal with it. Or that we can just isolate our emotions. However, this is unhealthy. Journal, sing, dance, run, talk to yourself, talk to someone you trust, seek counseling services, set new habits and boundaries, meditate, pray, do all of the above, do something…just please don’t brush it off, push it down and do nothing. Ignoring the issue is the easier option, and the most consequential. You deserve so much love! You are filled with an enormous capacity to give to others. Your reservoir shouldn’t be blockaded by the pain of past relationships—you deserve more.

There is no “time-frame” for which you should get over someone you care about. As always, I recommend engaging with counseling and therapy if the emotional labor of processing heartbreak and the stress of the breakout up is interfering with your day-to-day life. I would never recommend anything I haven’t done myself. In fact, I pull up to therapy after every heartbreak. I’m not playing any games with my heart and my mind. If I have a cough and fever, I am consulting a doctor. If I have sadness and complicated emotional processing, I am consulting a mental health professional.

For folks supporting those who are going through heartbreak, it is a natural desire to tell them to move on, to forget about the unworthy person who broke their heart, to remind them that there is better luck next time. That comes from a place of love, and an analysis of their value—you absolutely should remind them of their worth. If you have the capacity to also make sure you are providing them the space to fluctuate in their emotions. Telling them to get over it just enables the repression of toxic feelings. We all need the space to resolve those feelings and to turn what was intended for evil into good!

Main takeaways:

• Unresolved pain doesn’t dissipate or evaporate, it festers.
• Failure to process your breakup can lead to anticipatory anxiety, leaving you unprepared and emotionally unavailable for future romantic connections.
• Quick coping mechanisms are band-aids, not healing. Do not ignore the emotional wound, it will get infected. Period.
• Give yourself grace and be willing to be vulnerable.
• If you have the capacity to, support others by allowing their range of emotions and truths to be heard and experienced. Elevator pep-talks are well intended but can enable the toxicity of repressed feelings to satisfy you with a desirable response. “You right, I don’t need him!” –now we done made it about him.
• There is no “time-frame” for which you should get over someone you care about. As always, I recommend engaging with counseling and therapy If the emotional labor of processing heartbreak and the stress of the breakout up is interfering with your day-to-day life. I would never recommend anything I haven’t done myself. In fact, I pull up to therapy after every heartbreak. I’m not playing any games with my heart and my mind. If I have a cough and fever, I am consulting a doctor. If I have sadness and complicated emotional processing, I am consulting a mental health professional.

*I haven’t completed reading the book yet; therefore, I am not endorsing it just yet. I plan to keep you updated. Check it out in my reading reflections when I finish it.

**a little tribute to Tabitha Brown @iamtabithabrown– she’s hilarious, check her out.

***my edited version.

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