In response to a public question about overcoming heartbreak, I responded with the following advice and it always seems to resonate with people.
D.F.: How do you deal with heartbreak? Cause apparently, I don’t.
Justin: I’m gonna make a big assumption that you’re talking about a failed relationship. And if not, this may help those it applies to.
Justin: Here’s some advice that has helped me and others: It is important to realize that the person you loved and the person who broke your heart, are not the same person. Learning to realize that you still love the person you met, but they’re not the same person when they leave is key. You can still absolutely love and adore the first person because they are still as real as they ever were; The idea that you fell in love with.
Justin: Secondly, I think heartbreak comes from not loving yourself enough. People who suffer heartbreak often have so much love to give and they are desperate to give it to someone. It can be confusing when someone doesn’t want it, because you’re going “all-in” and they leave you hanging. The reality is you should step back and tally up all the unintentional compromises you made for relationship stability and wonder if you should have made those in the first place. You may learn that you’ve been treating yourself not very well and, in fact, you need to sit up straight, change course, and redirect your love back into your own life. Focus on things that you love to do and loved doing before the relationship began.
Justin: Thirdly, look around and pay attention to who has been giving you love and you may have been ignoring. It might be family members or your parents or your friends. Those people who have been loyal to you are the ones actually deserving of your intense dedication.
L.B.: […] Since you seem to have talent for writing, how about the other scenarios, where it’s not about the assumed failed relationship?
Justin: Thanks for the compliment. Actually I’m not entirely sure that treating heartbreak is any different when not due to a failed relationship. It’s just easier to approach and describe from that angle. I had pages and pages of thoughts on this but they all boil down to shifting one’s perspective by acknowledging one’s feelings (focusing on them and realize their significance or their message or why they are there), replacing them with gratitude (transmuting them into goodness or using them as fuel to add goodness in the world or take action.) This is the only description that encompasses all advice from all sources including meditation etc. But it ends up sounding really nonspecific and therefore hard to understand. … Unless you had something specific in mind.
D.F.: Thank you, Justin. I agree and I do see this pattern in my life; fixing it is the difficulty.
S.R.: This was amazing! Can I copy and share this with some friends?
Justin: Sure. Also I will copy it to my blog.
(Names anonymized to protect privacy.)