After a hefty argument, total boredom or for some other reason, you've broken off your relationship. You are moving on with your own life again, but how? Because you are now alone again, it can overwhelm you how much time you actually spent with your partner and what fun things you actually did together. Your life can seem very empty and lonely.
Do you regret breaking up with your relationship? Then read this blog about what you can do with these feelings.
Consider why you broke up with them
Breaking off a relationship is not something you do lightly. Generally, breaking off a relationship is carefully considered. This is a decision that usually does not happen overnight.
Generally, a breach of trust, for whatever reason, is the cause of wanting to break up the relationship.
Therefore, always consider why you broke up the relationship, for example:
- Your partner keeps failing to keep appointments.
- Your partner lies.
- Your partner cheated.
- Your partner is violent.
The annoying thing about a breach of trust is that you can love someone just as much, but then always remain wary in that relationship. Restoring trust within a relationship is very difficult.
Besides, a relationship is not fun at all (anymore) if you check your partner's smartphone every time or are afraid he/she is lying about something or will become violent again for whatever reason.
In addition, there is also a chance that your ex-partner does not mind at all (anymore) that it is over and has already moved on with his/her life. This may be even more painful for you and trigger the regrets.
It's normal to long for the good moments
In itself, it is quite normal to long for the good moments you had earlier in your relationship. Humans are social creatures and longing for deep social contact is quite normal, especially if you know what that feels like.
Everyone needs security and it is part of us to want an intimate relationship. The feeling of regret can also indicate that now that you are without a partner for a while, you have some kind of feeling of insecurity and regret that you have lost this "safe" feeling.
So remember that you also have security in the relationships you have with other people, such as the family you come from or the friends who support you.
From 2005 Dutch and German research ("When Looking Back on My Past Life I Regret...: Retrospective Regret in the Second Half of Life) shows that people between the ages of 40 and 80 generally regret the following things in their lives:
- Mistakes, behavior and bad decisions in general
- Bad times
- Social Relationships
- Missed opportunities in education
Regret from social relationships can also have to do with regret from the breakup, as can bad decisions.
The strange thing is that there is a correlation between age and the percentage of people who cannot immediately name something they regret. As people age, the percentage of people who cannot directly name something they regret increases.
So chances are that time will also begin to reduce these feelings of regret.
The beginning of a blinkered relationship
Regret and the subsequent attempt to make amends can also be the beginning of the well-known blinkered relationship. Breaking up a relationship isn't something you do lightly, but then when you fix it, the wounds that led to the breakup can still throw a spanner in the works.
As a result, you may suffer from the so-called blinkered relationship.
By processing regrets better, you can avoid suffering from a blinkered relationship.
Processing regrets
Processing regret is very important in order to move on with your life. There are several ways to deal with regret.
Disconnecting the emotion from the event
Scientists recommend disconnecting regret from the situation and looking at the situation with more emotional distance, to see what you can learn from what happened so you make different decisions in similar situations in the future(2).
Regret is seen by scientists as a means of improving self-control in the future, so you don't make bad impulsive decisions too often.
Hypnosis and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) can both be used to disconnect the emotion from the event.
In hypnosis, for example, regression is often used to retrieve a memory responsible for a particular belief. In this case, it may also be able to shed light on why you actually feel regret and whether this is a logical or illogical feeling.
In NLP, the very moment you regret is linked to something completely different so that the feeling of regret no longer bothers you when you think back to the breakup of your relationship. This technique is also widely used with people suffering from trauma to disconnect the feeling of anxiety from the memory.
Improve your adaptability
Regret is also an emotion that shows you longing for the familiar. Instead, to look to the future and create some kind of roadmap of how to make the best of the current situation.
Improving your adaptability can be done in several ways. First, it is important to take responsibility for your life. Everything that has happened is something you have to solve yourself, your ex cannot solve it and neither can your parents and friends, they can help you, but YOU have to do it.
To help yourself adjust, hypnotherapy can help. Certain beliefs may cause you to find it difficult to look to the future. For example, this may have to do with self-confidence that you can be alone or that you will find another nice partner.
The hypnotherapist can help you figure out those beliefs with, for example, a Socratic Conversation. In this, the why question is repeated several times, allowing you to find out why you find it difficult to be alone and to look to the future.
Check your circle of influence
Another way to improve your adaptability and reduce regret is to control your circle of influence. Ultimately, you have no influence over the behavior of people around you; they all make their own decisions. Advice can be listened to, of course, but ultimately everyone decides for themselves.
Your ex-partner also self-selected the behavior that ultimately led you to conclude that the relationship no longer made sense.
To have fewer regrets, you can also look at the things in your life that you do have influence over, such as the people you hang out with, the clothes you wear, the education you take and other things(3).
By making a list of things you can influence, you can already do a lot to improve your sense of control over your life, reducing regrets(4).
Self-Compassion
Regret is also often something very negative about yourself. Perhaps you suffer from thoughts such as: "how could you be so stupid?". However, the fact is that something often happens and you have to react to it. Then when you think about it later and more facts come up about it you may regret ending your relationship.
However, those harsh thoughts toward yourself won't help you get over those regrets. Having self-compassion is important in this strict world. Everyone is already hard on each other, if you are not kind to yourself, who will be?
Improving self-compassion can be done with mindfulness and even better with hypnosis. Beliefs that cause you to be too hard on yourself can be changed with hypnosis and self-hypnosis, allowing you to live with the decisions you have made.
Ultimately, you have your best interests at heart, and at the time you made the decision, it was the best decision you could make for yourself.
So regretting breaking up your relationship can be processed in several ways. First, you can disconnect the emotion from the decision, allowing you to look at it more rationally and determine if regret is a logical emotion in this case. In addition, you can improve your ability to adapt so that you can look more joyfully at your future without your partner. Here, for example, it is important to look at the things in your life that you do have influence over and finally, it is important to be kind to yourself.
Hypnosis can help you in all steps for processing breakup regret.
Want to know how? Then come to the free online master class, check out the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses or read the book Break Free.
Also pin this handy infographic:
Sources:
1. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07481180591004660
2. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057740807700049
3. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/emotional-fitness/201603/adapting-change
4. https://tinybuddha.com/blog/dealing-with-regret-8-ways-to-benefit-and-move-forward/
