A roller coaster of emotions...

Recently my boyfriend broke up with me. As horrible as the past 6 weeks have been, being the person I am I like to see each difficult situation as an opportunity to grow and learn something. This experience has definitely been a learning curve!

I want to share my experience with you because although its a very specific situation I think my coping techniques could be applied to many situations.

For the first 2 weeks I was....GREAT... ok bit of an exaggeration but I was ok. I knew I was likely to be upset, feel alone and beat myself up for it because I'd feel it was my fault and I must be a bad person. So first of all I acknowledged that. Then I decided to find a way of coping with that. I was nice to myself! I booked myself in for a deep tissue massage and treated myself. I let myself relax and be kind to myself instead of punishing myself with self hate.
My next technique was to surround myself by supportive people. I thought this would be hard but it was surprisingly easy... people wanted to be there for me! They wanted to spend time with me and take me out and make me feel better. This resulted in a very busy two weeks... it was great because it completely distracted me and made me feel cared about. I was surprised at how good I felt considering the situation. It also helped because a lot of these social situations involved food which made it a lot easier to eat. I didn't find that I suddenly wanted to lose weight and stop eating but naturally my appetite disappeared a lot. Situations where I kind of had to eat helped this.

After the first couple of weeks I think the whole thing hit me. I felt numb. I didn't know what to think or feel about the situation. I could feel myself secluding myself slightly more. This was a hard phase to deal with. I didn't know how I felt so I didn't know how to cope with it.

Luckily I quickly went from this phase to being very upset. I seemed fine and everyone thought I was doing such a great job of coping but I felt miserable. I just wanted to cry but I didn't want other people to know how I felt. I just wanted him to come home and started to wish time away. I started to lose enthusiasm for everything I enjoy. To deal with this I started reading a lot more. When I read I can completely escape to another world. My mind was taken away from the situation and the feelings went with it.

Next.. I got angry. I could understand why Matt had broken up with me but I had tried to contact him because he said he still wanted to be friends and he wasn't replying... this hurt the most... and still does as I still haven't had a reply! I didn't like being angry because I knew he had good intentions but then I realised I had every right to be angry and that was ok. I was able to put myself first and admit I'm worth more than this! I sent him a message telling him this and I've felt a lot better since then. Ive been going on a lot of dates which I think has been good for me (especially as it's always nice to have someone spoil you!)

Since we broke up I've constantly assessed how I feel and thought about how I could deal with those feelings instead of using food. It hasn't been easy but I'm still healthy and eating so it's worked!
Throughout the whole thing I've used my usual coping technique... writing. Such a good release!

I've kept myself surrounded by positive and supportive people and I finally feel like I'm getting to a good place. A place where at least for now I just want to be 21 and have a lot of fun... which is exactly what I'm doing!

So that's how I coped... hope it's useful in one way or another...

Love Jasmin