Seven steps to healing the lovesick heart.
We’ve all had them. Those icky, sticky, yucky feelings of love gone wrong. The sense of loss. Of abandonment. Of feeling devalued and discarded. Of being ”˜less than’ the light of love in our lover’s eyes. We’ve all had them and sometimes, those feelings linger for longer than is healthy for us to reclaim our sense of self-worth, of beauty, of joy in our essence of being alive.
EMBRACE yourself. You’ve got all you need to hold onto
is a seven step process that guides you through letting go of the love that was (and will never be again) into loving what is and will always be within you. You. Whole and complete. Living the 3Ms of self-eMPOWERED YOU! Magnificent! Miraculous! Marvelous!
EMBRACE:
Engage your heart. Still your mind.
Mindfully watch your words and actions.
Be honest with yourself.
Reacquaint yourself with you.
Allow yourself forgiveness.
Celebrate yourself.
Explore your world.
1. Engage your heart by stilling your mind. Meditate. Walk. Do something to get out of your thinking telling you your heart is broken. It isn’t. It’s just hurting because your breathing and thinking is tied up in thoughts of what he did to hurt you. It wasn’t about you. It was always about him.
In your meditation whisper:
Like me, he is seeking to be loved and this is the only way he knows how.
Like me, he has experienced pain, sorrow, and sadness and is looking for a way to avoid feeling them again.
Like me, he only knows this way he is choosing to behave.
And if you can say nothing else, repeat a hundred x ten times a day: I forgive him. I release him.
2. Mindfully watch everything you do and say. Become conscious of your choices knowing that they are always a reflection of your thinking and your thinking will always create how you are feeling and your experience in this moment.
Ask yourself — what do I want to feel in this moment? What is my intention for the day? Tell yourself you are capable of having what you want by reminding yourself what you’re capable of”¦
I wish to feel peace.
I want to feel peace.
I can feel peace.
I choose to be at peace in this moment now. In my choosing peace in this moment, I create the path for peace to appear in the next moment and the next and the next. I am the source of my thinking, my feelings, my actions and I choose to be responsible for my choices.
3. Be honest with yourself. Your healing will only progress to the degree that you are willing to be completely honest with yourself.
His actions were never about you. His actions, words, what he did were always about him.
You do not matter to him. He was not ”˜out to get you’. He was out to get what he wanted to make his life have meaning.
It wasn’t personal. He didn’t set out to hurt you. He set out to protect himself. He set out with the belief that ”˜you’ were a way for him to feel good about himself. You couldn’t be his way to feeling good about himself. You are not that powerful. Making him feel good about himself is not your job. Feeling good about yourself is your job. It is your responsibility. You get to choose how you feel about yourself. Be honest — are your choices making you feel better about yourself or worse? Is your thinking giving you what you want or is it taking from you what you need to Love yourself exactly the way you are?
4. Reacquaint yourself with you — remind yourself about who you were before he came into your life. Remember the things you did that said — I am a magnificent human being.
Did you used to volunteer at a hospital? At a homeless shelter? Did you used to do things that created value in your life, that created value in the world around you? Remind yourself of your power to do things that make a difference. If you could do those things then, you can do those things now. Let go of ”˜used to’ and get doing. Remind yourself of those things. You need to get moving. Get doing. Get being who you believe yourself to be. Who you say you are. Do them now. Do them again and again. Get involved and get into action.
5. Allow yourself the gift of forgiveness. Forgive yourself. Forgive him. Forgive anyone and anything who ever hurt you.
Holding onto pockets of unforgiveness limits your experience of your life free of his abuse. Forgive him. Remember, it wasn’t personal. He didn’t set out to destroy you. He was just doing what he does and you happened to be in his path. He has since, ”˜gotten over you’. He is off doing what he does in someone else’s life. What’s in it for you to hold onto his bad behavior after he’s gone? Forgive him. Forgive yourself. You didn’t know this would happen. You didn’t know you would be so hurt. So broken. So sad. And it’s okay. Forgive yourself and breathe into forgiveness all the loving kindness you possess.
6. Celebrate everything about you. Celebrate your magnificence. Your brilliance. Your light — even when the voices inside would tell you you’re not — celebrate yourself for all you’re worth! You are worth living it up for. Take yourself out on a date. Do something fun and whacky. Go to the zoo. Go bungee jumping. Take dance lessons. Learn a new skill. Celebrate everything about you in everything you do.
7. Explore life. Life isn’t about searching for the right answers, or the perfect you. Life is in the experience of living it. It’s about exploring your beliefs, what beliefs you want to hold onto and those you need to let go of because they’re not working for you any more. If believing he hurt you causes you pain, let go of the belief. If thinking of him makes you sad, explore new thoughts.
Life is in discovering where you’re at is exactly where you are meant to be. Explore this place you’re at right now. Explore your perimeters., Explore your life beyond this place where you find yourself caught up in living small, living less than your dreams.
Get up. Get moving. Quit talking about him. Quit explaining to yourself and anyone who will listen why what he did was so wrong. Wrong or right, it is what he did and all the explanations in the world will never make sense of his nonsense — so give it up. Let it go. Engage yourself in your life. Engage yourself in shining so bright upon your path the whole world lights up around you.
EMBRACE what is. And, if the thought it should be some other way interferes, embrace it and love it to death, or at least until it doesn’t hurt you any more to believe it should be some other way. It isn’t. It can’t be. Embrace what is, love yourself as you are and let yourself go to that place where you are free to explore and experience life on your terms. Free to love fearlessly. To live with abandon. To dance in the rain and run naked through wildflower strewn meadows. It is, and always has been, your choice to embrace what is and live it up for all you’re worth!
Are you willing to do it? It is your life. No one else can live it for you.
Dear ErinB,
Granny used to raise the FRESH green peas but I couldn’t find any and didn’t raise any so bought the BEST I could, and with the NEW taters and white sauce (gravy) did okay or better than ok. Cooked the tender (two big pieces more than 5 pounds) in crock pot with onion, and cream of mushroom soup. NO nasties or fat on MY tenders–I even knew the name of the critter it came from! LOL And what it died from (lead poisoning!) LOL
Goin’ out tonight to eat fish (pond raised catfish) and shrimp (probably the last we’ll ever see with BP killing our coast!) Have left over tender the rest of the weekend! gotta go change clothes…catch you guys tomorrow!
Oxy…..have a great fish feed!
Kids and I are heading into town for some Sushi of our own….mmmmmm.
that’s how I bribe them to come to town with me… 🙂
I paid 85.00 for a whole tenderloin last week…..so there is NO way I’d justify cooking it in a crock pot…ya know!
I envy your ability to name em, raise em, feed em, fatten em up and then feed em a bit of lead right before the crock pot.
I bet your beef doesn’t need any tenderizing!
Have a great night…..eat good darlen!
Dear ErinB,
Nope, no tenderizing, just slow cook the lo-fat meat, SLOW cook even on a grill, not directly over the fire. I used to get $22 bucks a pound for the tenderloins, then decided to quit selling them and eat it myself. BE GOOD TO ME!!!!
LOW-stress beef, too, they never hear the gun go off, the stress is what makes tough and off flavor—also no grain so lots of omega 3s and 6s, low fat, good moisture and tender.
Ate ourselves sick at the fish/shirmp buffet! Only $9.85 for me and $10.85 for son (I got the senior discount) stopped by the auction, but all they had was carp and a lot of it had been rained on. Hadn’t been up that way in a while and got to see all the tornado damage up the road, lots of houses with new roofs and lots of trees over turned in wet soil and high winds.
Gonna go veg out for the evening with a good book. I think “the kid” already crashed and it’s not even dark yet! Just going for the drive up the road and back was nice, everything is so green with all the rain, a few folks had baled hay. Our calves are growing and look good so meat on the hoof! Yum!!! Come here little calfy calfy and seeee what Oxy has for you! hee hee Not yet, but winter is coming!
Thanks…I really was needing this today. It’s been a year since breakup and have been doing better…really I have. Seems I backslide sometimes though…get those sad thoughts going…missing the good things…trying desperately not to forget the bad bad things.
Think if I hold on to this thought: It wasn’t personal. He didn’t set out to hurt you. He set out to protect himself. He set out with the belief that ’you’ were a way for him to feel good about himself. You couldn’t be his way to feeling good about himself. You are not that powerful. Making him feel good about himself is not your job. Feeling good about yourself is your job. It is your responsibility.
I want to move forward…I want to be happy…I want to have love…real love…still so scared of it happening again…need to let go of that worry…guess it will always be a shot in the dark…no guarantees…sigh
if it has not been your way before – then learning to love yourself is not easy. AS we who have come here have found again and again, we trust ourselves so far less than we trust others.
And it is the opposite way it really works.
Only that way nourishes the soul.
And that is what there is to be done in this life. The incidents along the way prompt us to learn.
I think that over and over we are come to the same lesson if we fail to learn.
Do not fail. Do not strive for this loss. It is as it should be.
Let go of he who now is nameless, faceless and lost to wander because in the long time line of your life, in theinfinite time of your soul, he was as a twig on the ground. When you stepped on it, it snapped. And the noise got your attention, but only briefly and then, you went on.
this might be one of the best articles i’ve read on this site!
putting into practice, however, is harder than id like to admit.
Dear greenbean,
I haven’t yet welcomed you to Love fraud, but glad you are here and have been welcomed by others. This is a great site and I’m glad that you are reading the older articles in the archives, there are some great ones here! Knowledge is power so keep gaining knowledge and thus power! God bless.
greenbean,
I just read this article. I think there is much validity to it, however, I also believe that it’s more geared towards those who have gone A LONG WAY already in their healing journey.
I think it’s dangerous to assume that those who are just starting on this journey such as myself (and only speaking for myself here and only my perspective), SHOULD feel or be this way.
Part of what I was raised with was the “idealism” about “JUST CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE AND IT WILL ALL BE BETTER!”
Nuh uh. I bought that line of bull for years and I bought it out of spath too when HE said I needed to “Get help and get healthy and well”. Bastard.
Really? Well, guess what? It’s MY HEALING JOURNEY, NOT anyone else’s. And THIS TIME, I’m going to RESPECT AND HONOR MYSELF enough to tell the TRUTH about where I am, learn to try to ACCEPT IT (even if I don’t feel okay with it) and move in BABY STEPS according to what I can HANDLE a minute, hour or DAY at a time. To jump from one extreme to another, as this MIGHT suggest to those starting out, is a VERY SERIOUS implication in missing the meaning behind the healing process.
ANd missing ANY of it, including the MONUMENTAL PTSD and depression that I’m experiencing right now, and try to “talk myself into” healing of this magnitude, creates more GUILT and SHAME in this process.
Having said that, this article is WONDERFUL. IT IS TRUE…but it is also for those who have already been WELL ALONG the path of healing, NOT for those just starting the journey.
Some heal faster than others, granted. Some don’t, but I think the idea is to RESPECT and HONOR ourselves NO MATTER WHERE WE’RE AT RIGHT NOW, and for me, well, it’s the pitts of hell.
Having said that, I also DO believe I will get out too. And that’s about as positive right now, as I can be and it’s as honest as I can be.
LL