you will survive! Don't let a break-up poison your future

by Janet Wright

you will survive! | help and info

Who says breaking up is hard to do? Some people find it so easy they can walk out with no warning and never look back. For them, it's off with the old and on with the new.

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But the person who's been dumped has a harder time adjusting – all the more if the break-up is unexpected or their partner disappears with no further contact. Unable to ask what went wrong, they're left with a burden of anger, bewilderment and grief that has no clear outlet.

They may even feel ashamed, either for failing at the relationship or for being foolish enough to love such a selfish rat.

'People say 'How can I have been so stupid?',' says therapist Piers Bishop. 'But it's very hard for someone in love to think logically or behave rationally. Everyone becomes 'stupid' when they're emotional about anything.'

The flood of emotion triggered by a break-up, though far less enjoyable than falling in love, can have an equally disabling effect on rational thought processes, he adds. Depression often sets in and self-esteem goes out of the window.

'People can suffer a lot if they blame themselves and see it as a reflection of their own inadequacies,' says cognitive-behavioural therapist Beverley Karia of Ipswich.

One way to break the vicious circle of loneliness, depression, low self-esteem and isolation is to make practical changes. You know you ought to be finding new friends, seeing old friends, taking up different interests. But if you've sunk into depression, you may not have the energy or confidence to go out.

change not blame

This is where counselling can help. Don't worry if you hate the idea of spending months digging up all your worst memories. Latest research favours short-term forms of counselling, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), that focus on solving your present-day problems. The aim is to find out what's keeping you down, then help you swap to new behaviour patterns that let you enjoy life more.

You may yell, 'Why should I change my behaviour? It wasn't my fault!' That may be true, but it's not making your life any better. Even if your 'fault' in a relationship is just being too generous or trusting, seeing where you've gone wrong in the past can help you avoid making the same painful mistakes again.

If you think, 'No risk of that – I'll never trust anyone again', you're still being dominated by your past mishaps, say therapists. 'When people suffer traumatic events – and this kind of break-up is a trauma – their view of the world often changes,' Bev Karia explains. 'The world seems a terribly uncertain place. But this isn't a realistic view.'

So whether you're blaming yourself or feeling like a victim, mourning the loss of a perfect love or believing your ex-partner came from hell, your outlook is distorted by pain. And you can't make good decisions on the basis of such flawed judgement. 'We can talk it through and help people regain a more realistic view,' says Karia. 'CBT is very much about changing and developing more helpful new perspectives.'

emerging from turmoil

What if you find you're in too much emotional turmoil to look at things rationally? That's no surprise to therapist Piers Bishop.

'Anger, fear, jealousy or love, it doesn't make any difference,' he says. 'The more emotionally aroused you are, the less your higher brain is able to operate. When someone's been seriously damaged by life, for example if they've been jilted, we help them to calm down and stand back.'

He uses the 'Human Givens' approach, based on the idea that we all have certain basic emotional needs – love, security, self-esteem, attention, connection with other people and control over our own lives – but that our efforts to meet these needs sometimes do more harm than good.

Practitioners work on helping people use their own inner resources to get their needs met more successfully. If you can recognise and enjoy genuine affection, for example, you won't swing from one extreme to another – proclaiming that all men are bastards, then falling for the next manipulative charmer. As Bishop says, 'If a man seems too good to be true, he probably is!'

Human Givens therapists often use deep relaxation to bypass any mental barriers to learning new behaviour, and guided visualisation to help you reconnect with your undamaged 'core personality'.

'In the very middle of yourself,' says Bishop, 'no matter how much life batters you, there's always that little spark that's the same as when you were four years old and running around happily. Anyone can close their eyes and take themselves away from what's happening and back to that happy child. Once they've reconnected with that core person it's easier to see how they can reclaim that core personality again.'

Grieving is, of course, a natural process, and it may take a year or more to get over that first stage. But therapists warn against getting so used to grief, or victimhood, that it becomes part of the way you see yourself.

'People can get stuck there, and invest so much in this emotionally driven behaviour that they're no longer being themselves,' says Bishop. 'When someone hasn't got over it after three years, if they're going to have the rest of their life – which they deserve – they have to be guided away from the past and from this self-obsession.

'If you're constantly thinking about how badly you've been treated, you're turning inwards, you don't notice interesting things in the outside world, you don't notice opportunities to do things that would make you happy.'

open to all

Meanwhile, some enterprising divorcees have set up a charity to help people recover from the emotional trauma. Non-political and non-religious, 'Divorce Recovery Workshops' are open to anyone who's been through the break-up of a significant relationship, gay or straight.

'Going to a divorce recovery workshop saved my life,' says Linda Poulson, whose husband walked out after 13 years. She felt so desperate that she drove from her home in Solihull to the workshop in north Devon.

'When I heard someone say 'Divorce is something you can either go through or grow through' – that was a light bulb moment for me, it was a defining moment in my recovery. I knew the only way I could make sense of all this awfulness was to believe something good would come of it.'

The six weekly meetings, on subjects such as letting go of the past or coping with your ex-partner, include plenty of time for discussion in small groups.

'It can be difficult to have the confidence to speak, but the more you take part in group discussions the better it'll be,' says Poulson. 'Most of the healing is done in these discussions. We see magic every time. People who almost have to be prised out of their cars the first night, by week six they're transformed.'

Poulson has gone on to run Divorce Recovery Workshops herself, and says, 'The only people the workshop can't help is people who don't want to be helped. If they're looking for a pity party they won't get anything from it.

'The only person who's damaged by hanging on to bitterness or anger is yourself: it has no effect on the other person at all. You have to deal with anger and bitterness and negative emotions, not for the other person but for yourself.'

(February 2005)

Read on for details of relevant organisations, websites and reading.

you will survive! Don't let a break-up poison your future

change not blame

emerging from turmoil

open to all

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