Are you feeling heartbroken after losing someone you deeply loved? Maybe you feel stuck in sadness and have plunged into the depths of despair and grief? If this sounds familiar, today I want to share a seven-step guide to help you heal a broken heart and find happiness and love again. This process helped me overcome my own heartbreaks, and I have no doubt it will help you too. Whether you’re going through a recent breakup or still dealing with old pain, this 7-step model will help you transition from pain to freedom.
To love someone is to risk having your heart broken. And having your heart broken, as Kahlil Gibran wrote, is to discover the secrets of your heart:
“For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth, so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth… All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.”
Kahlil Gibran
A Wounded Heart and a Broken Dream
After spending years helping people heal from heartbreak, I have developed a deeper understanding of the human experience. Through my work, I’ve come to believe that the pain of heartbreak is not simply the result of a failed relationship, but often stems from a broken dream that was held on to too tightly.
When your dreams are shattered, it can feel like your heart is broken, but in reality, it is simply wounded and in need of time to heal. And while the process of healing can be painful, it is also an opportunity for personal growth and self-discovery. By embracing our vulnerability and allowing ourselves to feel deeply, we open ourselves up to the possibility of even greater love and connection in the future.
It Hurts Like Hell And Then One Day, It Doesn’t
Each time I have experienced a broken heart, I have felt pain that I would never wish upon another soul. It sucked and hurt like hell. I wanted to scream, run, and die. But then, over time, the pain subsided, and my heart began to heal.
Just like our physical bodies are programmed for self-healing, our hearts are designed to heal. With every heartbreak, our hearts grow stronger, and we become emotionally more mature. The problem is that most of us unnecessarily prolong the pain by remaining attached to the person who hurt us and the story we keep telling ourselves about our relationship with them.
The more we hold on to the other person, the more painful it becomes. The more we hold on to the dream we created about this person, the more the pain grows.
How to Heal a Broken Heart
In my experience, there are seven steps we all must go through to heal a broken heart so that you can be ready to let more love in. Follow these steps, and you’ll be well on the road to recovery from heartbreak!
Step 1: Let Your Heart Break Open
You cannot heal what you cannot feel. You must give yourself permission to fully welcome the pain, anger, helplessness, or any other negative emotions. Welcome your need to fix it, make it go away, ignore or blame someone else for it. Welcome the guilt and shame, as well as any thought that it’s all about you and what someone else did to you. Welcome it all!
It is through the cracks in your heart that the light will get in. So let your heart crack fully open by leaning into the pain you feel. Resist the urge to engage in any behaviors such as fantasizing, sex, pornography, social media, drugs, alcohol, food, working long hours, etc., that distract you from feeling the pain.
Step 2: Let Go of the Story
Be willing to let go and surrender the story you told yourself about this relationship, what happened, what it meant, and how it was supposed to be. Find that place within yourself where you can courageously admit to yourself the relationship came to an end, and it’s now time to surrender all your dreams, projections, expectations, desires, and attachments you forged along the way. Have a good cry and let your ego – the part of you that wants to be right and control the situation – take the hit and break! Your ego is wounded as well!
Step 3: Take Full Responsibility
At some level, you are responsible for this experience. You either collaborated, participated, tolerated, or allowed the set of behaviors or actions that ultimately led to a wounded heart.
Acknowledge what happened as part of what you needed to go through to learn more about yourself. Realize that you and the other person did the best you could. Most people don’t leave their homes thinking, “I’m going to break this person’s heart.” They are simply doing the best they can to avoid pain, be happy, and get what they want.
Step 4: Forgive and Let Go
To forgive means to ‘give forth.’ When we forgive, we are doing the most loving thing that we could ever do for ourselves: releasing toxic thoughts and emotions that live within us. Even if the other person doesn’t deserve it or hasn’t asked for it, forgive them anyway. When you forgive others, you set yourself and them free!
In my experience, forgiveness often involves a two-part process. First, it consists of forgiving the person who hurt you, and second, it consists of forgiving yourself. Usually, we put ourselves in great pain and suffering situations because we did not listen to our intuition, had unrealistic expectations, made unhealthy choices that went against our values, or any of the hundred possible things we could have done that we now blame ourselves for. That’s why we forgive others, and we forgive ourselves.
Step 5: Appreciate and Learn
Take some time to reflect on what you learned from this experience. What did this person come to teach you? What new things did you learn about yourself, about life, about being in a relationship with others?
Find something – and I know this might be hard – to appreciate about the person who broke your heart. Thank them for the lesson as well as the positive experiences you shared. Appreciation is the key to opening your heart so that you can find conscious completion and move on!
Step 6: Strive for Moments of Joy
After you’ve done all the above, it’s now time to create moments of love and joy that will allow your heart to heal and get ready to love some more.
Moments like…
- Spending time with your favorite, most loving friends. You know who they are!
- Going out on walks in nature, going to the mountain or beach. Mother Nature is the greatest healer of all!
- Pampering yourself with bubble baths, massages, a good book, or anything else that brings you joy.
- Doing something creative, fun, or inspiring.
- Focusing back on yourself, your dreams and aspirations, your career, or purpose in life.
Moments like these are the building blocks that, over time, will allow your heart to open up even more and welcome the kind of love you know your heart has longed for.
Step 7: Focus on You and What You’d Like to Create Next
After you’ve moved through the first six steps and you’re starting to feel hopeful about the future, it’s now time to focus on what kind of relationship you’d like to create next. Your previous relationship provided you with the contrast you needed to clarify what you want and don’t want.
Ask yourself,
- What kind of relationship would I love to create next?
- What kind of person would I love to be in a relationship with?
- Who would I love to be in my next relationship?
Then, create a new vision for the kind of relationship you intend to create. If you need help with this, be sure to check out my free article on How to Attract Your Soulmate and my e-book and guided meditation set on The Path to Soulmate Love. They’ll provide you with a step-by-step system to help you attract the love you want.
How Long Will it Take to Heal a Broken Heart?
The time it will take you to recover from heartbreak will depend on your current level of emotional and spiritual maturity. Here are some general guidelines:
- It usually takes about half the length of the relationship to fully heal. So, if you were in a 2-year relationship, it may take up to a year to recover.
- The first 2–6 months are the hardest. You’ll need time to process the breakup and grieve the loss of your relationship.
- Between 3–6 months, you’ll start feeling less sad and think about your ex less often.
- By 6–12 months, you’ll start feeling better and be ready to move on with your life. You’ll be less attached to your ex.
- Some people may take up to 12–18 months to fully recover, especially after long-term relationships.
- Different factors, such as the level of commitment, support system, and coping strategies, can affect how long it takes to heal.
In short, most people start feeling better within six months if they take care of themselves and use this time to learn to love themselves. So, be kind to yourself and give yourself time to heal.
Final Thoughts
If you’re sitting here reading this post thinking, “I’ve given up, I can’t do this anymore, I’m tired of heartbreak, I’m tired of feeling the pain, I don’t want to love anymore,” please give these seven steps a try. Don’t deny yourself the opportunity to heal, grow, and learn more about yourself because one part of you feels that there isn’t hope or that it won’t go right.
Your heart will heal, but it will take time. Don’t try to bypass this process to get it over with. Stay on each step as long as you have to and need to. You’ll know in your heart when you’re ready to move to the next step.
Let your heart heal by loving yourself so much that this love you give yourself is what heals you. Let your heart heal by allowing the Divine forces of God’s Cosmic Love to resurrect it. For, ultimately, it is not time but love that heals you. That’s the greatest secret of all ages.
From my heart to yours,
