How To Improve Self-esteem After A Relationship Breakup? 5 Tips
Breakups can be traumatic. Two people who loved each other very much can begin to hate each other very deeply, highlighting each other’s flaws and saying things to each other that they will regret.
Others, on the other hand, may be more peaceful, but the self-esteem of both lovers may still be damaged. It is not easy to pretend to feel good after spending a lot of time with a person and now they are no longer by our side. We feel incomplete.
Next We will see how to improve self-esteem after a breakupseeing some tips and strategies to follow to ensure that we do not sink emotionally or have a very bad view of ourselves after a separation.
How to improve self-esteem after a breakup in love?
Breaking up is a disruptive situation, one of the most stressful you can experience. When we break up, whether it’s a relationship or a marriage, we enter a phase in which we have to readjust., now without the company of a person we loved very much. In these situations it usually happens that the breakup is not peaceful and that before it happened there were several arguments in which both lovers highlighted all the other’s defects, hurting them and making them feel bad. What can be said in these fights causes our self-esteem to be affected.
It may also happen that the breakup has been calmer, in which both lovers have taken an adult and realistic stance, considering that the breakup was inevitable and that it was better to do it in the most peaceful way possible. They both understood that each one had to continue on their own path, without hurting each other and without overwhelming each other. Even so, seeing the person who has been part of our life for a long time leave does not feel good and awakens all kinds of unknowns, fears and fear of never being loved again.
In both types of ruptures It is normal that during the first weeks we describe ourselves in a somewhat negative way, we compare ourselves with others to convince ourselves of how unhappy we are for being alone and despair floods us. We become even more overwhelmed when we see that the life project that we had planned with that person is no longer going to be carried out, with which we lose the direction of our lives a little without knowing exactly what to do.
All these feelings indicate that our self-esteem is on the floor and that the breakup is to blame for this. Fortunately, we can follow a few tips and strategies to recover from the separation, cheer ourselves up, and move forward.
What to do to improve self-esteem
Next we will discover how to improve self-esteem after a breakup by following the following tips and strategies.
1. Stop defining yourself based on our ex
Not even the most independent people are free from defining themselves based on their partners. It is normal that during the time in which we were dating someone we defined ourselves as “boyfriend/girlfriend of…” or “husband/husband of…”. We were people with a partner, people who represented 50% of a loving couple. which influenced the way we acted, spoke, dressed and even thought.
But now the situation has changed. That binomial is broken and the person with whom we defined ourselves is no longer there, ceasing to be part of our lives and we ceasing to be part of theirs. This is why it is best to end any definition related to that person, that is, not define ourselves as the ex of our ex-partner.
From now on we must only be ourselves, people who have their own qualities and a lifestyle of their own. Gone are the days when what we did and didn’t do was decided based on whether our partner liked it or not. Now we are free to plan our lives and we must focus on discovering what we like, making it a priority.
Thinking about ourselves will strengthen our self-esteem, especially as we get used to describing ourselves as independent people. They live in the present and do not anchor themselves to a past that, if it was happy at some point, is already over. It is sad to remember because we know that it will be very difficult for that person to return to our side, but we must be happy because the future is not written, and now we can write it ourselves.
2. Avoid talking about the ex
There is an episode of “Sex and the City” in which the protagonist Carrie Bradshaw is shown talking to her friends Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda in different scenes. In all of them she is talking about Mr. Big, her crush, whom she just broke up with. She talks and talks about him, angry, a little sad and, also, thinking about how well she is doing to surpass him. Obviously, she hasn’t gotten over it and her friends, fed up, decide to give her a wake-up call.
This is an example of what we should not do after breaking up. Talking about our ex, whether for better or worse, means remembering him and remembering the entire relationship, as well as the reasons that caused it to end. Because of this It will be difficult for us to forget many of the defects that were mentioned in the tense discussions, in addition to being very aware that we have just been left alone and that we don’t like that. So what we do is reduce our self-esteem and suffer even more.
So the best thing we can do is turn the page and stop talking about our ex. The ideal is to apply the zero contact strategy, deleting his number, removing him from social networks and avoiding places where we know he usually happens, thus avoiding “casual” contact. However, the zero contact technique will not work very well if we continue talking about him or her, since it is like “resurrecting” the ghosts of a past relationship.
We must not fall into the mistake that by talking about him we will overcome the breakup more quickly.. At first we have our right and it can even help us vent, but repeating the same story over and over again, which is still our vision of the breakup, is not going to help us. Nor should we think that the more people we talk to about the problem, the more opinions and perspectives we will receive and, therefore, we will be able to have a more objective view of the situation. It is a breakup, it is not objective, it is a love relationship that has not worked. Please, do not turn in rounds.
Who hasn’t seen the following scene in a movie or series? A man or woman has just broken up. He is sad, in bed. If it is a woman, we usually see her in pajamas, with her makeup removed or with her eye shadow smudged, disheveled, eating a tub of ice cream, chocolates and wine. In the case of the man it is not very different, only that he is unshaven, unkempt, with a robe with holes and prefers to binge on something salty, usually pizza, although the frozen combo mixed with beer can also be there.
It’s perfectly normal to feel and behave this way after a breakup. We can spend a few days isolating ourselves from the world, not taking care of ourselves and simply trying to cheer ourselves up by resting and eating. However, as the weeks go by, this “funny” and pathetic scene becomes a clear example of a depressed person, who finds it difficult to get out of the rut and needs help. For this reason, and as a prevention, it is essential to take care of our physical and mental health.
Health and self-esteem are closely related. The neglect of the body and soul makes us feel worse, that we cannot see ourselves in the mirror nor do we want to relate to other people, something that is very problematic since the social sphere plays a very important role in our self-esteem, encouraging us and valuing ourselves. positively. It is no secret that how others value us influences our personal satisfaction.
Since breakups are situations that can involve a lot of stress It is more important than ever to take care of our mental health, especially by going to a psychologist. Also, if it happened that when we were breaking up with our partner we didn’t go to some appointments with our doctor, now is the best time to go.
We must exercise and monitor our eating habits, ensuring that we lead a healthy lifestyle. We are what we eat and, therefore, we should not eat unhealthy foods that will harm both our physical and psychological health. It is essential to exercise to protect ourselves from problems associated with a sedentary life, such as obesity and diabetes.
Physical activity will help us feel better about ourselves since, although physical exercise does not cure depression, it does act as a protective factor and gives us a feeling of well-being by releasing hormones such as serotonin, endorphins and dopamine, which are like a neurochemical shot of happiness. , pleasure and satisfaction. Sport will help us have a good physique and, although body image is not everything in this life, it certainly helps to have very good self-esteem.
We must also take care of our appearance. Even if we are not going to go out, it is essential that we dedicate a few minutes a day to take care of our personal image. You have to shave, shower, put on makeup, comb your hair, put on creams and take care of yourself in the many ways there are so that we like the image we see in the mirror and, consequently, our self-esteem is increased. Self-esteem depends on how others see us and also how we see and like ourselves.
Social networks are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they imply certain benefits, such as meeting new people, staying in touch with our loved ones and friends and knowing what is happening in the world. On the other hand, they have the disadvantage that they are very addictive, making us waste a lot of time and, especially, running the risk of seeing our ex’s profile, remembering the time we spent with him in addition to imagining what we would be doing if we appeared in his last publication.
The idea is not to completely renounce social networks but to restrict their use. The ideal is to stop using them for a while and only use instant messaging services or call by phone to meet our friends, family and friends. This way we will avoid seeing our ex’s profile, comparing ourselves with his new partner in case he has one, and reducing our self-esteem because of it. It is also advisable to remove him from your friends list.
Our self-esteem will benefit if we have less virtual life and more real life.. Let’s try to focus on new activities by discovering what we think we might like and what we didn’t do when we were dating for fear that he wouldn’t like it or because we didn’t have time. The time has come to try a new sport, walk, paint, read, hang out with friends… There are endless possibilities and all of them can help us expand our self-concept and improve our self-esteem.
5. Connect with ourselves
Now that we’ve broken up, it’s hard to avoid seeing it as if we’ve lost a part of our lives since, in reality, that’s the case. Someone with whom we surely planned to spend the rest of our lives has left our side. We can change the situation and see it as having taken a great weight off our shoulders and we can connect with ourselves: Let’s pay attention to what we want, listen to our desires and attend to our personal needs.
Now is the time to start personal projects that we couldn’t start because the “couple” project captured all our attention. We can take a notebook and write down goals that we have always wanted to complete, assess how likely it is to carry them out, and encourage a friend or trusted person to help us accomplish them. Whether it is writing a book, getting in shape, learning a language or anything else, both the process and its acquisition will improve our self-esteem, making us see that we are people capable of many things.
Connecting with ourselves not only means discovering what we want, but also knowing who we are. A very useful exercise at this point is to take a piece of paper and write down 5 positive characteristics and 5 negative characteristics about ourselves. The idea of this exercise is to improve our self-esteem by seeing the positive things we have, but without denying that, like any other person, we have negative points which we can work on to become better people.
