All of us have been at that place where life throws curved-balls at us and all we can do is stand there shocked and ask “Why me?” A sudden, unexpected, break up is one such event. It can feel very difficult, almost impossible at times, to manage our convoluted thoughts and hurt feelings when we experience a heavy rejection or heart break from someone we thought was our “forever” person.
In today’s post, I will share with you three perspectives that have brought me strength in my own tough times and that have helped my clients go through theirs. I hope they can bring you some peace and clarity if you are currently struggling with a situation where you don’t have all the answers for why something happened to you.
1) You can’t always know “why” when a second person is involved
Why doesn’t he care about me? We were together 4 years. Why doesn’t he miss me? Why did he do this to me? How could this happen? Why is life throwing this at me? Why is he so bad? Why was I the chosen one for this misery?”
A lot of painful whys. The truth is we cannot ever know with certainity the answer to ‘why’ when a second person is involved in the equation.
We can drive ourselves mad to the dozen asking why someone did something to us or why someone is acting a certain way and yet after spending 72 hours desperately calculating all the different probabilities of different possible answers, we cannot be sure of the answer we will arrive at. Moreover, any answer we may come up with, will be colored by our own life experiences and how we see things and perceive them. We, human beings, are such magnificently complex creatures. We exist in multiple layers of emotions, motivations, drivers, triggers, conscious mind, sub-conscious mind, our past, our present, our cultures, our religion, our family beliefs, our life experiences – to just name a few!
Given that complexity, how can we ever figure out the ‘exact’ permutation and combination of what among these zillion influences inspired a man to do what he did to us? It is therefore worthy to consider if finding the answer to that ‘why’ is really worth all that anxiety and those sleepless nights that you are bringing to yourself? What serves us more then is to let go of the urge to figure out why when another person is involved. The only decent option one has here is to ask the man directly instead of doing all the torturous guess-work in one´s head. However, if you know my work on feminine energy, doing any relationship talk with a man generally goes against us. Letting go of the why is our best bet.
This brings me to a second, inter-connected concept of radical acceptance.
2) Radical Acceptance
This is a term from author Tara Brach, and I find it revolutionary. I use this when a client has gone through something that has totally taken away the ground beneath her feet, like a sudden break up. It could include emotionally vulnerable situations like the husband saying, “I am not feeling it for you anymore” or instances of a partner just walking out on the other or even something as extreme as losing a loved one.
I encourage my clients to ‘radically accept’ what has happened. Radically meaning completely, fully, totally, without any hesitation and doubts, no questions asked – just accept that it has happened because it has happened.
Easier said than done, I know but so much of our pain can be resolved when we can accept things for what they truly are rather than live in denial of them and struggle against them. One generally experiences a release of emotion (for instance, through crying) when one can accept what has happened and from there on, one can begin to quit the struggle with denial and start focusing on re-building life again.
3) Self-awareness – A crazy focus on you and learning
I call it a ‘crazy’ focus on you because I strongly believe in the power of self-awareness and I’ve seen it do wonders to my life and the lives of my clients.
While we can never know with surety ‘why’ in the context of another person, we can certainly get to know ourselves with increasing clarity. In fact, asking why when it comes to US is a very evolved thing to do. We can channel all that anxiety-ridden energy into getting curious, really curious about ourselves and our experiences and what message a given situation or experience in life wants to give us.
For instance, we can identify what our trained patterns are that have not been serving us in our relationships or if we are attracted to toxic men or if we have the wrong ideas about how a woman is supposed to be in a relationship. Our limiting beliefs like, “I am not good enough,” ” I am not worthy of love,” “I cannot help liking jerks,” are often our contribution to a failed relationship – if one can be brave and honest about it. In fact, spending time, money, energy on self-awareness and consequently self-growth is one the best possible investments one can do for oneself in order to build a newer, more-aware, more vibrant future. Everything changed for me in my personal life, including in my career, when I got in touch with who I truly was, what truly inspired me and where my own limiting beliefs about love and life were coming in my way.
I hope that looking at your situation through these three perspectives will support you no matter what you´re going through right now and that you can return to them when the going gets tough.
And check out my Diva In Life, Diva In Love affirmations audio – it’s a great help with healing!
I would love to hear from you. Are you struggling through a break up currently? What has been your main challenge? How did you help yourself getting out of a painful break up?
Love,
Sami Wunder
Content modified from the author’s article originally published on Women’s Web.
Sami has been seen on The Daily Mail, The Elephant Journal, The Natural Health Magazine, and The Huffington Post.
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What elegant and very true words.
Break-ups are so hard. Great advice, Sami!
Carla Leigh
Thank you brave and beautiful Carla!
I guess the radical acceptance phase is quite tough, but once I’ll embrace it fully then it could help me get a new start. Its amazingly expressed by you Sami. God Bless you!
Thank you, Christina! 🙂
Wonderful spot on words. My husband of 22 years filed for divorce. It’s been about a month and going through the stages of grief is tough. Radical acceptance and crazy focus on me really does help the healing process. I feel very strongly about learning more about myself to avoid falling for the same kind of man again. Thank you!