Hi Beautiful,
I had a long and profound conversation with a client this week about her heartbreak. It was sacred, deep, earth-shattering. A dark night of sorts. As I had the honor of walking it with her and helping her through it to the other side, I decided to write this to you and share with you 6 powerful steps to go through when your heart is broken.
Hope they touch your heart and help you, as much as they have helped loved ones, clients and myself.
There can be many reasons our hearts break.
A man pulls away leaving you to face a future without him, a dream of yours all of sudden is pulled out from under you, a friend betrays you after years of feeling certain in the arms of that friendship, your dream company hires you and then lets you go...
And yet, if we don't know how to be with ourselves in that process, we can end up deepening that heartbreak until it colors all our life, taking up residence in our sense of self, diminishing our faith in life long-term and cutting us from fullness in life.
So, let's begin, shall we? :)
Step one---
1. Feel:
First off, it begins here. Go someplace quiet, take a deep breath, place your hand over heart and give your heart your full presence. Go into the pain.
You have to let yourself FEEL, fully.
Breathe deeply and feel into yourself. Feel everything that comes up for you, all the loss, the feelings of failure, or being unwanted, the sadness, the despair, the unanswered why's, the fears, the feelings of rejection and low worth.
Your heart needs your presence, desperately. It needs a friend that will listen, sit with it, hold space while it grieves, not shut it down, let it be. It needs you to feel its pain, to hear it out, to be with it so it can release the pain. Don't ignore it, numb it, reject it, run from it (you can't outrun pain without creating more pain) or judge your heart for feeling exactly the way it feels. Don't negotiate with it or resist it.... just.feel.
And let the tears come.
This is what companionship with our self is....and at this time you will need companionship more than anything.
This is why presence and companionship are so powerfully healing.
2. Listen to the Layers and Learn empowering lessons:
As these feelings come up for you-you need to name them, each one....putting words to them.
Why?
Because when you do that, you become the observer and companion of your broken heart. You witness what needs to be witnessed and hear what needs to be heard. You need to sift through it.
What this means is that it gives you the power to observe and to be objective, which means you can also allow other truths about your life to coexist with your pain.
What are you feeling?
Sadness, despair?
Name it, write it down, express it.
Then go deeper....by asking the questions that lie behind the pain:
What does this mean?
Why are you despairing?
What is despair telling you about what it believes to be true about your life and future?
Why are you disappointed?
What had you been hoping for? What had you been so desiring of? Like a child that now feels ridiculed and shamed for hoping?
You need to listen in to the beliefs that are forming around your pain as your mind reels to try to make sense of this.
What are the fears and the what if's?
You questioning the truth of those beliefs will determine the degree of your suffering and how quickly you are able to reconnect to your deepest desires and longings and move forward, even in spite of the pain.
Is life really over? Or does it just feel that way?
Once you are aware of your beliefs about your pain, you again become the observer and gain the power to know and act on the truth about your future and the truth about who you really are. Learn the lessons there for you to learn- what worked? What didn't? What patterns need breaking? Which ones are worth keeping? Which ones caused this? Which ones didn't?
Learn and empower yourself, using empathy and self-compassion as your primary tool.
3. Check in with your body:
Your beautiful body needs you too. It will feel the impact of the broken heart and will need support and love.
What is the physical manifestation of these feelings in your body?
Do you feel so heavy you can't move?
Where do you feel that heaviness? In your arms? In your chest? In your breathing? Where?
Stay with it, stay present, and feel.
Take it deeper...
Do you feel a hole in your stomach?
Do you feel contracted or uptight in your shoulders?
Do your neck and back ache?
As the emotions continue to come, listen to them with your heart and feel them in your body. You are now beginning the powerful process of releasing them both with the power of your body and your heart.
4. Coexisting and the power of TIME:
You must now for a period of time know you are coexisting and sharing internal space with a new reality that will take time to adjust to, and a loss which will take time to grieve.
You can coexist and move forward- like parenting 2 children inside of you- one that is in bed needing love and caretaking, another that is gaining strength, growing strongly and beginning to see what the world has to offer.
5. Accept and receive what the world has to offer:
Get in a Nourishing Environment. Now that you have heard your heart and sat with your pain, you might still feel like your legs are heavy and your heart weighs 5 tons, but it's time to change your environment and put yourself into a nourishing one, where you can receive support and new life, and new possibilities. Scarcity and isolation will only hurt you further.
When we hurt terribly, it is ok to isolate for a time...but after a while, you need to draw on your willpower and move into a different circumstance, one that will feed you.
Watch a movie, go to yoga, take deep breaths, get a massage, walk in nature, listen to something deeply inspirational.
Receive. Receive. Receive. You need it.
This will remind you that you are not in isolation or scarcity, but you live in an abundant world full of blessings and opportunities, ready to give to you experiences you love. It will remind you ever so gently that just because this one moment represents loss, that so many more blessings are on their way to you.
6. Reconnect to your Desires: You may have lost this, but you will absolutely get what you desire.
Now that you have emptied your emotions and nourished yourself- it is time to remember your deepest wants and desires in life.
What makes you so happy to be alive?
What do you absolutely love?
What do you most want to feel? In a relationship? In your body? In business? In Life?
What do you still want to live and experience?
Even if you are just barely able to do it, this will begin to raise your vibration back into hope and begin to give you fuel to move forward, and then slowly, but surely, your feelings will begin to catch up.
If your heartbreak is really deep, just know you will go through a process to reclaim your heart's wholeness and you may have to repeat this cycle several times.
I am a firm believer that you cannot bypass any of these steps and reclaim the wholeness of your heart at its fullest potential, but rather you will end up carrying heartbreak for much, much longer, even years.
This is why just meditating, sleeping, or going out with friends isn't enough, you have to incorporate all the steps.
Know that when you give your heart all the presence it needs to communicate its pain...
When you see the thoughts your mind is creating and intentionally form them into ones that will support you...
When you tune in to your body with compassion and see the effects it has undergone...
When you are intentional about your environment being nourishing...
And when you reconnect to the desires of your life.....
.....heartbreak will heal much faster and your life will get back on course in the direction of receiving what your long for most.
I have walked thousands of women and hundreds of men through heartbreak into healing, wholeness, getting their exes back, attracting dream love, reigniting marriages. Heartbreak is NEVER THE END, it is AN end with a brand new beginning. It marks a before and an after in your life, a baptism, a transmutation- a new you.
You are always loved!
Gio