What are the stages of recovering from a broken heart?

Answer 1

STAGE 1: DENIAL Sara does not believe and will not believe that her friend is no good for her. As a human it is normal to fear loss, which is why sometimes many of us stick to the same person or same routine because it is safe and reliable, even if it is hurting you and causing you to stay stuck in a rut. No matter how many people advise Sara to let go of this friendship that is sucking the life out of her, she refuses to. She is in denial to assess the real situation of her friendship. But not for long. STAGE 2: BLAME & LOSS Time is a great friend to many of us. With time, people's flaws start to show and the recipient does not stay so patient as before. A few months later Sara starts to decide for herself that her friend is actually no good for her and this is when the friendship officially breaks up. In the place of the friendship she had for so long, she now feels loss, which hurts like crazy. And so the blaming begins. Sara blames her friend for being a user. Sara blames herself for being so gullible. Sara blames the world if need be, while grieving over the loss of something that she thought would always be true and beautiful. STAGE 3: ACCEPTANCE Sara starts to accept what has happened and the blaming decreases. The feeling of loss is still there, but it does not hurt as much. She believes this happened for a reason and starts to assess the situation logically. STAGE 4: RE-BOUND Meet Sara's new friend, the re-bound subject, Hannah. Though she has accepted what has happened to be fate, Sara wants to replace that feeling of loss immediately. This may cause her to make some rash decisions on choosing future friends and she will definitely wake up with a friendship-hang-over if she is not careful. STAGE 5: GUILT & NO TRUST Over with the re-bound phase, Sara starts to feel guilty. Guilty over having a re-bound phase, feeling guilty because she told her ex-friend so many things she shouldn't have said, guilty because she thinks she could have handled the situation a lot better. With the guilt comes the sense of not being able to trust anyone. Sara has been hurt and feels wary when approaching new relationships, scared that the same whirlpool will come suck her into a breakup. She is still hurting and needs time alone to heal her wounds so that she is fully prepared for a new relationship. STAGE 6: HEALING This may take a few weeks to a few months, lasting a year if the initial damage was quite bad. The healing stage gives Sara plenty of time to forgive those who let her down, to forgive herself. Without interruptions from new relationships, Sara needs to focus on her own personal development, both spiritually, mentally and physically. Sara needs to regain her confidence and love herself again. She needs to be able to trust herself and not fear her own decision making. She also needs to know that she is worth so much more than getting herself into lousy relationships. She values her self-worth and makes a pact to be true to herself always. STAGE 7: MOVING ON The final phase happens when Sara feels she is over the hurt of the past. She can look at it with her mind and not her heart and emotions. She is well and truly over it and understands it was a hard lesson she had to take which has passed. She is now ready to move on into the future whilst bearing in mind the lessons she learnt so as not to repeat any mistakes. Sara has recovered and knows if she ever saw her ex-friends she will treat them with indifference because they cannot hurt her anymore. The past is in the past now. And the future is bright. Until the next whirlpool sweeps her away, but hopefully that won't happen for a long time. What can I say? Relationship breakups are a given; welcome to the human condition.