Many feel guilty about their relationship coming to an end. As a result they give their ex and themselves a tough time. Too many consider breaking up a failure. This leads to feelings of guilt, which in turn can destroy a good relationship between the exes. The topic of this blog post is guilt and forgiveness after a break up. Why is guilt about separation so common and why is it important to get rid of that guilt? How to forgive your ex and yourself?
Why is it harmful to feel guilt about breaking up?
We all want to think we are good people and we try to do the right thing. If one then considers breaking up fundamentally a bad thing regardless of the situation and sees no positives in it, it is difficult not to see it as a failure. We want to succeed in our lives. Therefore, we may find breaking up a complete disgrace in our own case, even if we allow it for others.
We rarely shame or criticise our friends for breaking up. However, when it comes to one’s own break up, people are known to carry the guilt inside them for far too long. In addition to being a heavy burden to bear, guilt does not serve anyone in your post-break-up life: Guilt does not guide you to behave well towards your ex. It does not encourage you to look at yourself with loving and gentle acceptance.
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Carrying the guilt for breaking up can have far-reaching negative consequences. It can affect both your own life and, indirectly, the lives of people around you: your children, your new partner and their children. Not to mention your ex and their new partner and their new family.
Guilt about breaking up undermines everyone’s wellbeing.
Guilt can make you afraid of facing your ex, which can stop you from moving on. It keeps you stuck in the past. Stuck in a troubled relationship. Stuck in cheating. In a painful break up. Unpleasant behaviour after the break up.
Your sense of guilt can drive you to behave disrespectfully towards your ex. A strong feeling of guilt can be self-destructive, and lead to self-harm in its many forms, such as substance abuse and other addictions. Breaking free from the burden of guilt and forgiving both the ex and, above all, yourself, are important for the wellbeing of everyone concerned, including your children.
Who is to blame for your break up?
If you, for some reason, feel guilty about, for example, your decision to leave your partner, the best first aid is to analyse the deeper causes of the break up. However, don’t assume all the blame and don’t look for scapegoats. There are ways to ease your guilt so that you can behave more respectfully towards your ex. Admitting the “guilt” of both parties to what happened can also help defuse the situation.
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Sometimes you may perceive your ex as the only “culprit”. Perhaps your partner initiated the break up out of the blue. In that situation, it is easy to blame your ex for every ensuing hardship following that moment.
But even if it was your partner who suggested you break up, does it mean that they were the first to give up on the relationship. Who pushed away whom? Or could it be that the one whose needs and wishes were ignored over and over again along the way finally saw no other way to remedy the situation?
Guilt about breaking up benefits nobody.
So does it matter which one of you was technically the dumped or the dumpee? Chances are that those roles were reversed during your relationship.
Even if your partner deserves all the blame for the break up, is it worth handing on the whys and wherefores of the past? Only to notice eventually that you spent the best years of your new single life reliving your past and reminiscing about your ex?
And even if you are the one to blame for the break up, how useful are your thoughts of guilt to you, your ex, your children or anyone else affected?
Forgive yourself.
Did you wake up this morning still feeling the weight of the guilt of a past break up? When do you think you could wake up noticing for the first time that the guilt is beginning to ease off?
When should you break up? Find out if you should stay together.
When is it pointless to stay together? When would you be better off breaking up? How do you know if you should break up or stay together?
If you picture that guilt leaving your body you little by little with every breath, when do you think you can finally breathe freely? When is the day when you can enjoy life to full again?
Could that day be today?
Now?
If not, how many more deep breaths do you think you need to free yourself from your past?
Forgiving your ex and yourself.
You can forgive someone even if you don’t approve of what they did. Forgiveness is something you need to practice, first of all, towards yourself. This is because it is essential you understand your role if what happened in the past.
We all know how to play the blame game. However, no game is more useless than that. It undermines out future happiness and wellbeing. What we cherish, we allow to grow.
If we focus on anger, it will eat us up from within.
If we focus on cooperation and peace, we will gradually experience more of it ourselves.
You only hurt yourself with your guilt and anger towards your ex.
Keeping the anger, guilt and shame that you feel towards your ex alive takes a lot of energy. You may think that by hating your ex, they get what they deserve, but in reality the anger that you hold on to only poisons yourself. Anger and hate don’t help anyone move on with their lives in the long run.
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In order to purge yourself of guilt and anger, it is important to let the other person, the one who caused you the pain, out of your mind. Once you stop harbouring the actions of another person and the hurt they caused in you, you will start to feel better. Sometimes letting another person go from your thoughts is easier when you literally put some distance between you and that person.
You can ask your ex not to call or send messages or to limit your topics to what is absolutely necessary for successful co-parenting. The feeling of anger can subside once you realise that the ex their new partner is in your face daily or weekly. It is easier to stay calm when you only communicated about neutral and important topics that concern you both. With a number of neutral non-confrontational encounters under your belt, you may gradually be able to socialise on other levels as well, provided that both parties would like to do so.
Using the power of the subconscious to forgive.
In addition to ordinary anger management tools, there are also other ways to try and get rid of the gnawing feelings of anger and guilt. Strong emotions and interpretations are stored our subconscious and unconscious mind, even when we are not consciously registering this. The power of our subconscious guides us more than our rational, conscious mind ever can.
So if you don’t understand why you react so extremely to your ex, know that this is completely natural. Our conscious mind can’t contain all the big data accumulated in our history, which we nonetheless act on. However, by using the right mental coaching methods, you can retrieve the data stored in the depths of the subconscious and unconscious mind for the conscious mind to process.
THE FEAR OF BREAKING UP: “I’m too ashamed to leave.”
Some people stay in an unhappy relationship because of the shame and fear of breaking up. Break-up fear and and shame is common. Why?
By working the alpha and theta bran waves of the hypnotic state, which comes to us all naturally, we can unlock our old fixations. This lets us find better and more sustainable solutions for the benefit of the wellbeing of ourselves and those around us. I am a certified clinical hypnotherapist and NLP Trainer. Through my practice I have seen the amazing benefits and versatility of hypnotherapy in the lives of my clients as well as myself.
I always teach all my clients self-hypnosis techniques that give them a toolkit for life. In hypnotherapy, clients don’t need to attend hypnotherapy for years. This is because, unlike other therapies, hypnotherapy is not based on the conscious mind but rather reaching practical results with the power of the subconscious. If you have not yet tried hypnotherapy, I highly recommend that you contact me or any other accredited and qualified practitioner.
It is easier to forgive your ex than yourself.
Hypnotherapy is useful for many problems: our subconscious directs us in our everyday life. Each one of our problems is born out of the environment we live in and our own actions and interpretations. That’s why every problem can also be broken down and resolved. For example, when using hypnotherapy in anger, the aim is to alleviate the person’s fears and guilt about what has happened to them. The purpose is to help them forgive others and, most importantly, themselves.
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Forgiving yourself is often more difficult than forgiving your ex. Staying neutral towards your ex is a skill that you can practice. That some of your reactions come naturally to you does not mean they are the only reactions available to you. Hypnotherapy is often combined with other therapeutic techniques, such as CBT and NLP. This approach helps you to change your responses with the full arsenal of your conscious and subconscious mind. New behaviours working and holistic wellbeing are within your reach, too!
How to face your ex after breaking up?
When you learn to receive even the saddest of feelings, you are also giving yourself the opportunity to react in a more controlled way. You’ll find you don’t have to lose your cool every time something annoys you. You should not offload your feelings on your ex. It is down to each of us to handle our own emotions.
The mixed feelings raised by a break up are excellent learning material for your future – better – relationship. This will hopefully be one between adult, equal partners who respect each other’s space. Who, from the position of their own confidence, are also able to support their loved ones in their hour of need. The fact is, you will probably get to practice your emotional skills with your ex, whether you like it or not:
I don’t have to like what my ex does, but I can learn to live with the exasperation that it arouses in me. I don’t have to act on my feelings, and I can choose to conduct myself like the smart person that I am regardless of how idiotic my ex is.
Lose your guilt about breaking up and get back control
Don’t let your guilt or the upset caused by your ex’s behaviour control you after breaking up. Your body and mind will thank you as will the people around you. And who knows, you may even build a new, more relaxed relationship with that annoying ex – or at least less annoying. 🙂
If you have been seeing breaking up as a failure and feeling guilty about it up until now, what’s going to happen next? How would you like to see things from now on?
Remember, you should always think about how to think. You can always exchange negative thoughts for more positive ones.
If the guilt of the divorce or other matters related to the relationship and breaking up keep bugging you, please contact me. I’d love to help! Here I am only on the other side of the cell phone screen right now for you 🙂 You can post via the (R)evolution for Love Instagram or Facebook accounts.
Motivating You to mindshifting in many ways,
Your Coach Kati Niemi
Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP Trainer, M.Sc.
[email protected]
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