Dealing with Heartbreaks and Trauma

Sometimes, the hardest battle to fight is between what you know and how you feel. I'm praying that the next few paragraphs will increase your strength and help you win despite all.

After a heartbreak, especially the type you get when a relationship ends, you feel several deep, sometimes conflicting emotions. You may even see someone's rejection as a call for you to intensify the chase and that too leads nowhere. Your heart hurts, literally. You feel pain in your chest. You cry bitterly. Your mind as well plays a lot of trick on you. Often, you blame yourself. You imagine what would be different if you had made disparate choices. You wonder if you made the right call or even if you were in the right place. The uncertainty that comes with the entire experience adds an extra layer of pain and regret. It is a difficult place to be.

It is however interesting how life works out. Many times, a crisis is an opportunity to grow and learn. The heart is a bundle of muscles. Bodybuilders know this. Intensive weight training causes micro-tears to the muscles being trained. This is generally known as microtrauma. These micro-tears in the muscle contribute to the soreness felt after intense exercise. It is the repair of these micro-traumas that results in muscle growth.

So when life hurt you, when your relationships fail and you're dealing with trauma, you may start thinking true love doesn't exist and that all lovers are just pretenders. That is not true.

Closure is whatever you make it to be. You must be OK with the fact that they may never acknowledge what they did or be sorry for how they hurt you. Your willingness and ability to remove yourself from the equation of pain is all the closure you need and the pain they put you through is the information you need to navigate the situation.

Like a bodybuilder who is building biceps and triceps, if you hold on and keep moving, it is incredible what happens. The crisis is exactly what you need to get to a better place. It is a stepping stone to finding more fulfilling things in life. One exit becomes an entrance to somewhere else and with time, things become better and easier. In fact, they get much better than you ever imagined. Pain is not an enemy. Pain teaches, instructs and helps us grow. Take this from someone who have seen a few heartbreaks including the death of a marriage. You will not die even though because of the heaviness you feel it looks like you will .

Take up new hobbies. Be anything but idle. Do new things. Move your body and the mind will follow. Make new friends. Allow the situation become the opportunity you need to audit your life. Yes, audit your life and how you contributed to the mess you're now in. You may realise in the process that there is more to your life and that you are more important than what someone thinks of you or how they treated you.

Sometimes, the blessing don't begin to flow until you disconnect from some people. A broken relationship isn't always a curse. People are fellow pilgrims we meet on our journey and we can move on to find better and finer love. This I know first hand. You will realise that they gave you direction although they didn't know that was what they were doing. You will eventually recognise what seemed to be falling apart to actually be falling in place. I promise you, everything will make sense on the long run. At the end of it all, you would have learned valuable lessons. You will be stronger, wiser and definitely better in spite of the trauma that once took your peace away.

Misery likes company for comparison so don't give in to the temptation of sharing with every ear that wants to listen. Allow your anger age gracefully into indifference and let forgiveness and empathy envelop your thoughts about them and the situation that hurt you. Use your pain. Let it make you softer and more understanding both of yourself and others.

What if I said you are unstoppable, that your best life is ahead of you, that you can do anything you put your mind to and that you cannot fail? Well, the entire universe just said that to you today. Go get your dreams accomplished. You're enough! If you're hurting today because of a heartbreak or loss, hang in there. What you feel now won't last forever and it all works together for your good. There's no one more deserving of love than you.