Be kind to yourself - If a friend found themselves where you are now, what would you be saying? Be your own best friend and develop the habit of loving self-talk.
Finding yourself at the end of a relationship does not make you a bad person, a terrible parent, totally incompetent, selfish, unlovable, ugly, fat, or any of the other negative thoughts that queue at the doorway of your mind from the moment you wake up. Yet, trying to silence the negative committee that meets inside your head on a daily basis can seem like trying to dig a tunnel through a mountain with nothing but a spade!
Re-focus - Take charge and tell the negative committee to sit down and shut up! Become a keen student of your internal chatter and take steps, no matter how small, to catch any unhelpful thoughts and toss them in the shredder. Make a note of the ones that come up for you most often and choose an empowering word/phrase to replace them with. Focus on your empowerment list, repeat them often and, over time, these will become your default position.
Have at least one nutritious meal every day - Food has societal connotations that go well beyond its nutritional value: we go out for dinner, invite friends for lunch, celebrate special occasions with cakes, and meal times are, often, an opportunity to catch up with our nearest and dearest.
When break-up or divorce hits these rituals are disturbed and eating goes from being a pleasure to be being a chore. Low mood and depleted energy levels encourage skipping meals altogether or choosing ‘comfort’ foods that require little or no preparation. If you have young children mopping up their left-overs becomes the new ritual because cooking a meal for one at the end of the day just seems unnecessary on top of everything else that’s
going on and serves as a reminder that you are well and truly on your own!
The benefits of good nutrition on mind and body are well documented but taking time to nourish yourself also serves you in a number of other ways. Planning meals and thinking about what YOU enjoy provides a welcomed distraction from the unpalatable demands thrown up by the break-up. It ignites the realisation that you have autonomy and control over the choices you make. Going out to shop for the ingredients is a gentle reminder that
you matter and that life goes on outside of the all-consuming break-up story. Cooking provides structure to the day and an opportunity implement changes that will help you moving forward.
Make sleep a priority - Sleep is fundamental to health and wellbeing: it plays a part in learning, memory, maintaining a strong immune system, resting and repairing the body and managing emotional and mental wellbeing. Lack of sleep can make us cranky, impair our concentration, sap our motivation, leave us permanently tired and ‘washed out’ and increase our propensity to negative emotional reactions. So it makes sense to make it a priority.
Even those for whom sleep is a friend during normal circumstances can struggle when the tsunami of the break-down of a relationship hits. Sleepless nights rob you of energy making it harder to function at a time when what you need is focus, determination and strength so it is important to recognise that managing your sleep will help with managing your life.
Deciding that you are going to make sleep a priority is the first step and then you can put measures in place to maximise your success. What those measures are somewhat depend on what your relationship with sleep was before you got here: for some it may be enough to establish a bed time routine, for others changing the lay-out of your bedroom, buying new bedding and setting a new scene for yourself helps and in some cases it may be that
you want to seek professional help to improve your sleep. I am not suggesting that this will be easy but making the effort to improve your sleep will help you now and as you move forward into your new life.
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