Breakup or divorce: survive, recover, heal, grow

I'd like to let you know about a new site I created for helping get over a breakup or divorce: breakuprecoveryguide.com It consists of 20 articles covering topics such as: - the science behind why the pain of breakup or divorce hurts as much as breaking a bone - why no-contact is vital and how to start it - if and how to get closure - what to do if your ex- contacts you - how to deal with your ex's birthday - real advice on rebound relationships - your health - activities ... and more It's 100% free and open. No ads, no commercials, no marketing, no linking, no self-promotion. It's not about me. Just honest, real advice for people recovering from a breakup, without the usual platitudes and cliches. I wrote it as a way to pay forward all the great advice and knowledge I got from hundreds of hours I spent last year studying breakup and rejection. The pain I went through when my relationship ended last year is indescribable. With no idea how to handle it, I suffered more than I could have ever imagined as I let myself be hurt by the breakup, then be pulled back and forth by my ex- only to be rejected over and over again. It was a living hell, a haze shrouded in the screams of pain while I let myself be pulled back and forth by my ex-. I let the whole ordeal essentially destroy me and waste my life for a year and a half. Nothing in life teaches you what really is happening to you, why it's happening to you and what you're supposed to do when you've been dumped. A lot of the clichés contain some truth (e.g., "time heals all wounds"), but they don't help much while you're actually going through it. The endlessly cheerful tone of friends and self-help guides struck me as unrealistic and borderline absurd, making me discount their message even more while I was suffering. And some of the traditional academic explanations of what I was going through didn't seem to apply to my situation at all (e.g., Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief.) I ended up spending hundreds of hours studying the physical and psychological effects of rejection, reading thousands (tens of thousands??) of stories on forums of people who've been dumped, looking at relationship blogs, sites by "professionals" who offer paid-for services to help you… With the understanding I gained and the passage of time, I began to apply what I learned to my own situation, and little by little I healed. The pain of a breakup is not "just in your mind". It's a traumatic event as strong as any physical pain. It activates many of the same areas of the brain as a physical injury such as breaking a bone or being burned. Unfortunately, it's a topic which is often glossed over with platitudes or false-cheerfulness. So I decided to create a guide which treats it with both the seriousness that the pain merits and the empathy which those who are suffering deserve. It's the guide I wish I'd had when I was dumped. I initially wrote the guide as one long document. The response I got was overwhelming. A few thousand people ended up reading it, and I received so much positive feedback. At the same time, many suggested a different format, easier to absorb rather than an enormously long text. So I put it on a web site, divided into sections for easier browsing. The site is completely free, completely open to copy and paste and use however you want. My only goal is to help anyone who can benefit from these words. Please take a look if you're interested. If you have any feedback, suggestions, or comments, there's a contact form on the site which you can use to get in touch with me. If you're suffering now from a breakup, I know that it might seem impossible to believe, but please trust me that your pain will eventually fade, all of this will just be a memory, and you will come out stronger and your life will be better because of the experience. I wish you the best of luck.

Put the internet to work for you. via Personal Recipe 2629984