With the invention of online dating has come a new reality. Frequent casual and almost serious relationships start and stop faster than you can binge watch a full season of a Netflix series. In the beginning, this constant hooking up and meeting new people is a great way to make the most of your dating life. Eventually, however, the novelty wears thin leading to burn out, stress, and an increase in anxiety. Dating in such a state can cause a self-fulfilling prophecy where by everyone starts breaking up with you and leaves you with the feeling that you are broken.
None of this is your fault — you’re just not hearing the message because you were not taught how to pay attention.
Some of us have had childhood relational trauma (exposure to domestic violence and emotional/physical/sexual abuse) and other’s have been through a devastating breakup with a long term partner or even have had a divorce (or two). All of these experiences are considered a trauma — just the relational kind. All of these experiences can create a devastating impact on our future well being if we do not begin to learn from these experiences.
Relational trauma is one of the single biggest health threats that we are not talking about enough.
How to Cope with your Breakup in a Healthy Way
Most people understand that some grieving is going to need to happen. We may sit on the couch eating our ice cream and talking to our friends. Eventually, however, we do need to go beyond concocting revenge scenarios and begin to learn from our experiences so we can go back out into the world and prioritize healthier relationships.
One of the ways we teach this to our coaching clients is through a post-relationship debriefing. Essentially, we ask our clients to journal everything that happened, including their emotions, over a period of time. When the time comes to make sense of what has transpired, we ask our clients to contemplate the following questions:
- Why do I think this happened?
- Is there something that I can learn from this?
- How can I keep growing and become better at dating?
Based on the answers to these questions, we are able to ascertain whether the latest breakup is being processed in a healthy way or if the breakup is moving into the realm of relational trauma. An inability to let a relationship go, ruminating over the details without getting to learning, and increases in anxiety/depression all suggest that a more therapeutic intervention may be needed. It is at these times that reaching out to a professional may be helpful.
Why Do We Want to Heal Relational Trauma
When we do not process and deal with our hurt emotions — especially the ones that stemmed from disappointing relationships, the issues will continue to repeat over and over again until we deal with them. If you have a knack for attracting narcissistic people, it’s time to start and start processing what is really going on. If you seem to always attract anxious/controlling people, we have to stop and heal. Everyone we meet serves a purpose in our lives but we can only access that wisdom and knowledge if we stop running around and blaming our dates for ghosting us. There is probably wisdom in learning how to screen out the emotionally unavailable ghosters by looking at how we screened them in in the first place.
Why Self-Care is Necessary
When a breakup starts to tip over to real trauma, we often work with clients to learn more about the mind-body connection. Very often traumatic relationships wreck our nervous systems. We do not even realize how much damage has been done or how stressed we really are until we stop long enough to learn how to listen to our bodies. I personally will never forget when my acupuncturist asked me, out of the blue, if I got rid of someone in my life. I sat up on the table and stared at her — my boyfriend and I broke up the night before. She stated that she had been monitoring my hear rate for months and it was always high but today it was in the normal range. Indicating that even if I was emotionally distraught my body approved of the breakup. It was in that moment I committed to spending more time learning the cues my body gives when I around certain people. If my body is not happy, then the person who is or was in my life needs to go.
Final Thoughts
There are often a multitude of clues surrounding a situation that can help you move forward. Our emotions, which are helpful and useful, can cloud our intuition and becomes impossible to see the clues. If you start training your mind to realize there is personal growth work to do after a disappointing dating situation, you will eventually be able to calm your emotions enough to see the clues. We all have our own wisdom — we just have to learn to clear our intuition enough to access it.
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Dr. Jennifer B. Rhodes is a licensed psychologist, relationship expert and the forthcoming author of Toxic Insecurity: Our Search for Authentic Love. You can connect with her on Twitter and Instagram @jenniferbrhodes.
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This post was previously published on Beyond Toxic Insecurity and is republished here with permission from the author.
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