How to Get Over Heartbreak and Retrain Your Brain for Love in 8 Weeks (or LESS):

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Introduction
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We are all touched by broken relationships.  Some friendships wither on the vine – one moved away to college, the other stayed back home.  You married, they stayed single. Things change. Even the most loving relationships must end – after all, people die! That’s the nature of life.  

Who Should Read This: 

1. If you’re dating, considering dating, just out of a relationship, considering getting out of a - relationship – you need to read this!  
2. If you’re still pining over the one that got away all these years ago, you need to read this!   
3. If you’ve experienced a breakup that won’t let you go (your heart still hurts when you think about them) – you  need to read this!
4. If you want to date efficiently and you’re not willing to sacrifice the up to 2 years (or more!) it takes to mentally physically and spiritually get over a breakup – you need to read this!

One of the most universal losses in life is that of a broken romantic relationship. Relatively speaking, when it comes to life stressors, divorce, separation, and relationship breakups rank way up there with loss of a loved one to death.  If you haven’t experienced it yet, I bet you know someone who has lost in love.
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​SOMETIMES WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE HEARTBREAK IT'S AS IF A SWITCH GETS TURNED OFF.

​YOU START THINKING YOU'LL NEVER FIND LOVE AGAIN.  YOU START TO WONDER IF YOU'LL EVER BE HAPPY AGAIN.

​HERE'S  THE FIRST HALF OF A POWERFUL BRAIN-BASED 8-WEEK PLAN TO HELP YOU GET OVER A BROKEN HEART. FAST!

Week One 
CRY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL That’s it.

Week Two
CRY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL. Yes.  You heard me right.  Take two weeks to throw a tantrum.  Have a hissy fit.  If it hurts, cry like a baby for the first two weeks.  Get the pain, rage, frustration, disappointment, shock, and disbelief ​out of your system​.  
 
 
Relationship expert extra-ordinaire (in my mind), and author of the classic romance guide, Getting to I Do, famously says, "Feelings are non-negotiable."  That means you can’t command your feelings to magically appear or disappear.  Would that we all could! It hurts to end most relationships (sometimes you can’t wait to escape)! 

But, you can't get over, under, or around a broken heart, without first going through the pain of loss, rejection, and  disappointment. There's no other way. Face the darkness of your emotions.  Rend your heart.  Feel the depths of  your despair.  And in the beginning, I say, "Go hard!" 

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​IT'S DANGEROUS TO IGNORE YOUR FEELINGS
From what I’ve seen in over 22 years of clinical practice, failure to acknowledge sadness born out of lost love, in fact failure to acknowledge your feelings in general can be psychologically harmful and leads to many unforeseen complications. 

f you don't allow your brain, body, and your mind to feel your emotions when they show up in your body, they will  find a way for you to feel it. The thing is, if you ignore your feelings for too long, you probably won't like it when they show up when you're not looking  (e.g. drugs, alcohol, overeating, poor  relationship choices).     

Lying about, dismissing, avoiding, or suppressing painful feelings only delay and interrupt your healing  process. On top of being inefficient, ignoring true feelings has a way of triggering a host of new  problems you didn’t bargain for.   

​Listen to Marisa’s Story to Hear Why You Should NOT ignore Feelings!

Marisa came to me for help with a serious drinking problem; she admitted she was finishing off at least one bottle of wine each night. Her driver’s license was suspended, and she had a court date in the next two weeks because she recently ran into a neighbor’s gate. She was drinking too much. Worst of all, she as desperately as she tried, her efforts to find love again were coming up short. She had been married for 19 years to her high school sweetheart.  They had two lovely children together.  But, the marriage had ended in a brutal divorce 7 years ago. She thought she had dealt with it and moved on.  But, she complained that since the divorce, her dating attempts had sucked royally and she kept attracting the same "type." When she found anyone who seemed like he would be a reasonable mate, she found a way to sabotage it to find an exit route.  

 “I just can’t allow myself to go there again, doc,” said Marisa.  “I want to love again but I’m so mad all the damn time. I feel as if the more I talk about it, the more there is to say – and I’m tired of listening to myself think about it.”

During the divorce proceedings that left her seriously traumatized, she divulged that her husband had become verbally and emotionally abusive and a cheater of all cheats. During a phase post one of the pregnancies, he mockingly called her, "Fat bitch!" That was right before he slammed the door in her face and went back to watching his porn movie via projector using the wall of their guest bedroom as his screen. He was "great with the kids and they adore him." Unfortunately for their family, he could not seem to keep his fly open. 

After 22 years, having had enough, once the kids went off to college - she left. The trouble is, Marisa was one of those "strong" types who kept her feelings bottled up, acted like she was Mother Teresa and could shoulder the burdens of the world, and thought that church would save her from the weight of her emotions.  

​Marisa finally admitted, “I use church as medicine and lots of times, it works.  But, only for a time.  I spend my Sundays in church.  But, at night and during the week, I feel as if I'm breaking.  Wine has become my best friend. I can't sleep if I don't drink. I can't stop thinking if I don't drink. I can't stop hurting if I don't drink. Even though I want to stop drinking, and I try; I don’t know how it happens. I stop at a little bar on my way home from work just to chill my nerves out and grab dinner I tell myself.  But, before I know what’s up, I’m drunk as a skunk, feeling ashamed that they had to call Uber for again.”  

​If you want to recover from grief and loss, the choice to be made is this.  Either you feel the pain of your loss NOW. As it's happening. In the moment. Or press pause and put it on delay.  But, rest assured, you might be able to delay your grief but it will not be denied forever!

If you allow yourself to feel your emotions in the moment, you have a chance to get it over and done with – and appropriately so. 

The more serious reason to fully acknowledge your emotions is that pain delayed tends to energetically freeze in place. The freely moving and completely natural emotional energy of sadness you feel today, could morph into the hard, edginess of sarcasm and bitterness.  Matter coagulates, freezes, stagnates, and festers if it has no other place to go. 

This is not good news for your heart.

A traumatic event that rightly generated intense feelings of pain and confusion that could have been handled decades ago, lands on my couch with twenty additional problems that mushroomed because you were too afraid or too proud to release them at the time of the wound.  It’s a double traumatization, in my view.

The original pain from the wound is there. But now, it also has babies – and they’re ugly!  
 
Here's my recommendation: 
Instead of creating new and unnecessary problems, just admit that Cupid got you this time.
Shrug. Cry. Face the facts - Girl Boss down, honey! Someone, please call 911!

Week Three – Start Rewiring Your Brain ​
​The Magic of Eight Weeks
Our growing understanding of how the brain and body work at a cellular level is providing the ammunition we need to shore ourselves up against many hitherto debilitating emotional and psychological experiences. You can use NATURAL BRAIN PROCESSES to your advantage as you recover from a broken heart.  

​Building New Neural Pathways: 
Think of a neural pathway as a track in the brain that connects one brain region to another to facilitate the transmission of messages – HABIT CREATION.  The more we use these brain tracks the more embedded they become. You can create new patterns that generate the emotional state you desire by using tactics like repetition, engaging in activities that generate intense emotions.  Neuro-scientists believe we can create these new pathways in as little as EIGHT weeks or LESS!

WHAT
​THE RESEARCH IS SAYING ON HOW TO CREATE NEW HABITS AND BEHAVIORS

​European Journal of Social Psychology shared a study conducted by College of London health psychology researcher, Phillippa Lally.

Purpose of Study:
Examine the length of time it actually takes to build a new habit (many of you are familiar with the idea of 21 days).  

Here’s what the researchers did:
Took 12 weeks to examine 96 people and their habits.  After choosing ONE new habit to create each day participants reported their progress on a daily basis as to if they:
1. Did the new behavior and
2. How comfortable and effortless the new action felt.  

Examples of new behaviors people chose to create were:
drinking a bottle of water with lunch
running for 15 minutes before dinner

Guess the Results?

The range was anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit.
On average it took 8 weeks or two months before a new behavior becomes automatic — specifically it took 66 days!

Of course the length of time depended on many things like behavior, the person, and the circumstances.


YOUR TAKEAWAY
Set realistic expectations – everybody is different and there is a wide range in number of days it takes to create new automatic habits.  

You can create new neural pathways (brain tracks, habits, mental patterns) in less than 8 weeks!
If you are willing to do the work, you can hack your brain into cooperating with you to recover from loss faster than you ever thought possible.

THE BEST NEWS! YOU CAN  CREATE NEW AUTOMATIC HABITS IN 8 WEEKS OR LESS!

Dr. Lally and other sources like www.alternativedaily.com state that in order to create new habits, you need to employ 3 strategies:

1. Practice Energetically and with Passion
2. Maintain a Sense of Calm vs Anxious Energy
3. REPEAT. REPEAT. REPEAT. 

HERE ARE SOME EXTRA TECHNIQUES TO HELP YOU TO CREATE NEW NEURAL PATHWAYS

1. CHANGE YOUR INTERNAL DIALOGUE
​Challenge the story looping  in your head that's generating such intense sadness and create a new and  different narrative.  Using different words to describe your experience is one  way to go.  Another way is to READ to take in new and different words in  service of what you are ultimately trying to create – a loving relationship.   
Your brain doesn't care. It works with what you give it. And your emotional  responses follow. 

2. BE BRUTALLY HONEST​ ​
​W​hen the urge to wallow hits you, be brutally honest - you saw it coming. You know you’ve had that knot in the pit of your stomach for a long time. Your instincts told you his thoughts and feelings towards you were different.  Plus, you know the person you’re missing in your head that you just can’t live without – is the same one you wanted to choke many days.  The same one you hated how he cleared his throat like a train every morning.  And Good Lord, all that snoring! Don’t talk about his mother. Good grief! Everybody knows you won’t miss her this Thanksgiving! What I’m saying is we tend to only focus on the fabulous memories when we breakup.  I’m asking you to be honest and remember the pain of the relationship.  Feel different yet? Anything? Anything? All you need is a shift in emotion and that’s all the reinforcement your brain will need to help you along.  
 
3. STAY FOCUSED ​
​Once you get that emotional shift, focus on whatever amount of clarity and light that begins to build. Increase it. Magnify this strong counter emotion - the one that feels good to you. Grab on to any feeling of hope. Even if it's for a second.​ ​AND PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE! 

4. USE MINDFULNESS MEDITATION TO CULTIVATE A CALM APPROACH TO PROBLEM-SOLVING
Mindfulness Meditation is a very effective practice to help you train your brain to manage anxiety. 
Focus on these principles of  Mindfulness
a.Attention to the present moment. 
b.Acceptance. 
c.Compassion for yourself, your ex, others in similar struggles.  
d.Visualization: In your mind’s eye, see the next love experience you want to create, now that you’ve integrated the lesson you learned in the last relationship. 
.Commitment.  Practice daily, preferably first thing in the morning, before you drift off to sleep, or sometime during the day when you’re not driving or doing something else that requires your focused attention.  
 
 5. TAKE POSITIVE ACTION
Sometimes you can CHANGE YOUR MIND by adding POSITIVE ​ACTION
- Change Your Routine
- Exercise
- Meditate
- Learn a new skill
- Begin a new hobby
- Join Meetups with like-minded people
- Spend more time in Church
- Volunteer
- Work a few extra shifts
- Find a part time job
- Visit old friends/family
- Take a vacation 

Once positive actions get big enough they overwhelm the negative as we become engrossed in the new activity. Your brain will become distracted from the pain because a different emotion generated by the new action will swallow your distress.  Before you know it, you won’t even be thinking about the joker. Wink! Wink!

6. PRACTICE UNTIL YOUR NEW SKILL BECOMES AUTOMATIC
A n o t h e r w a y t o c r e a t e a n e w n e u r al p r o g r a m is t o d e cid e w h a t c h a n g e s y o u w a n t t o ​m a k e, s e t o u t a plan o f a c tio n a n d d o it, o v e r a n d o v e r a n d o v e r a g ain till it b e c o m e s  s e c o n d n a t u r e.  www.truevitality.com 

Want to hear one of my confessions?

As a helper and healer, you have to learn as many tools as possible so that you increase your ability to offer practical solutions to people who come to you for help. 

But, I'm a human being before I'm a psychologist.  As I learned these strategies, when I began to realize that we (you, me, people) could really do this, I was SO pissed off!

Why?

Well, it meant I had found the cure to PLOM Disease. What's PLOM Disease?  POOR LI'L OLE ME. 

I didn't have an excuse to stay buried in self-pity anymore.
I learned how to CHANGE MY MIND! Intentionally.
You can too.

Sage, philosopher, and poet laureate, Maya Angelou said, 
​"When we know better we ought to DO better." 

I didn't want to make a liar out of Maya. And I didn't want to disappoint myself. As much as I enjoyed the feeling of being mad and I got an odd, twisted pleasure from curling up into a ball of sadness (for days sometimes) and blaming others for my terribly painful feelings, I knew I also had the choice to use my time in a different way. 

Week Four –Detox from Oxytocin

What is Oxytocin?
Oxytocin is the bonding hormone that your body releases when you connect to people.  Babies, pets, and lovers elicit the release of oxytocin by the brain.  Even horrible partners elicit oxytocin release.  You don't even have to like some people to become oxytocin-bonded.  If your body likes them (meaning, if your body is attracted to them chemically) you could become bonded to them. 

Oxytocin-Detox 
The brain releases oxytocin in response to sensory triggers. When you smell, sometimes hear, see, taste, or touch a person you are chemically attracted to, particularly if you have bonded sexually, you will re-bond.  If you don’t separate yourself, it will be as if you’re putting the grieving process on a continuous repeat.  Again, typically, the oxytocin detox process takes an average of 2 years!   

Two Years? Who's got TWO years? 

Sometimes, particularly when children are involved, or if you work in the same place, or if you can’t move to a different house, you can’t avoid your ex. This can be particularly painful.  I worked with and helped a beautiful couple a few years ago who specifically wanted to divorce but remain friends.  They consciously decided to go through the detox process together. 

Typically, though - If you’re aiming for ​quick​ Breakup Recovery, you need distance.  

Your number one tool during this phase of recovery – if possible, is ​physical separation​ from  the object of your affection.   NO CONTACT!   

Why You Should Avoid Seeing Your Ex (If You Can) 
Physical separation is recommended because you can begin to starve your brain of its oxytocin triggers. 

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Think of it this way. If you want to get over a relationship fast, you must make concerted efforts to separate yourself as often as you can from the source of your addiction.  Your love drug dealer. In substance abuse recovery, addicts are encouraged to avoid people, places, and things that remind them of the sensations associated with their using.  They are also encouraged to develop new and different rituals to eliminate the triggers of old and harmful behaviors. 

If you can, make every effort to GET AWAY from the offender!

1. Take a Vacation.  
2. Stay with a friend or relative
3. Go on a Retreat. 
4. Develop New Friendship Circles Use that time to re-collect yourself.

You are not an unlucky victim of life.  You are just a human being.  Feel the pain of your loss, take the lesson, and keep it moving. 

GET AWAY! CREATE DISTANCE between yourself and your ex.

You caught on to this yet? Once you’ve allowed yourself the time or mental space to do this deep questioning, even if you don’t yet have any resolutions or answers, at the end of this week, practice getting out of head by acting.

Remember, our brains tend to go in a Think Feel, Think Feel, Think Feel loop as we try to make sense of emotionally charged experiences.  In this phase, once you become aware that you are in the Think-Feel, Think-Feel loop, break it by Taking a POSITIVE ACTION (review the list and add yours). 

BEWARE OF TRAUMA BONDING!!! 

Toxic, volatile relationships can be particularly challenging to detox from because as frightening as it sounds, we bond through traumatic and shared events – particularly those that are highly emotional.  Bad times can be as bonding as good times. Another scary discovery made by ​Patrick Carnes​, author, psychiatrist and ​founder of the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP)​ is that some people are adept at using sexual feelings, fear, and excitement to keep you locked into them.  You are especially vulnerable to this ​Trauma Bonding, according to Dr. Carnes, if you have similar early life experiences (emotional, sexual, physical abuse or neglect) because you will likely be more desensitized (numb) to that kind of pain. 

The Hi-Bye Letter  - A Powerful Tool for Emotional Detox
Dr. Pat Allen recommends the ​Hi-Bye Letter​ as a powerful tool to help in the recovery process.  You write a letter to the person who broke your heart, while you’re still bleeding on the inside and your feelings are raw. In the letter, you focus on the agony, ecstasy, and lessons of the relationship. 

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​ Hi-Bye Letter Format (a la Dr. Pat Allen of  www.patallen.com​ and ​www.thewantinstitute.com​).

Paragraph ONE – Write about all you LOVED/LIKED/ENJOYED  about the relationship/your love   
Paragraph TWO – Write the PAIN/HURTS of the  relationship/your love 
Paragraph THREE – Write what you DON’T want ever again  based on events of this relationship 
Paragraph FOUR – Write what you DO WANT in your next  relationship 
Paragraph FIVE – Write the LESSONS/GIFTS of this relationship  (e.g., Thank you so much for bringing me this/these painful  lessons (list them) so that I might learn how to… 

I’m sure you can see the value in writing such a letter. Even if you choose not to send it or if you have no way to get it to your ex, it’s a great way to give yourself closure in a tangible and spiritual way.

​This is especially helpful in situations where you were denied an opportunity to express your sentiments because the person ghosted you, or you have no idea where they live, or they broke up with you in a way you never even saw coming. 
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Jada Pinkett Smith, in a Red Table Talk promo video clip, describes the act of loving as one that at some point will force the lover to experience "devastation." We don't often think of love as destructive. But love is a powerful force.  Love is the source of life and hope that springs forth in a newborn baby.  But, it has also been blamed for many a suicide and murder. I don't believe Jada meant to say that love is a negative force.  What she was saying is that that love is BIG. And, if you intend to reap the fruits from the harvest of love, be prepared to also experience the pain of loss in some form or fashion. Because we are human, we will face the pain of losing people we love.  It is a necessary skill, therefore,  to learn how to recover from a broken heart. After all, life must go on. 
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​If you're in the midst of a breakup, separation, divorce, or if you simply want to heal your heart from the pain of a past relationship that won't let you go... ​

​Learn How to Heal Your Heart Once and For All
&
​Retrain Your Brain to Create the Love You Want in 8 Weeks or Less!

CONTACT DR. TRIPHI