I'm Feeling So Sad And Depressed After A Breakup - How Do I Stop? (2023)

Being depressed or sad after a breakup is really common.

What isn’t common is finding advice on how to stop feeling depressed or sad after a breakup.

In this post I’m going to show you exactly what you need to do to stop feeling so depressed after your breakup based on my own findings from working with people for over a decade.

I’m also going to briefly touch on how long you can expect to keep feeling this way before you snap back to reality and begin moving past the breakup.

Let’s begin!

How To Stop Feeling Sad/Depressed About A Breakup

I’m a big believer in keeping things simple.

The more complex the idea, the simpler the explanation needs to be in my opinion. Otherwise, you begin to lose the person you are trying to teach.

Trying to understand depression is a complicated topic and if I were to talk about the intricacies of the neurochemicals firing after a breakup I’m afraid I’d lose you.

So, instead of describing a complex process in detail for you I have decided to simplify everything for you instead so that you can see results faster without worrying about technicalities.

My process for getting over sadness after a breakup can be boiled down into 5 simple steps.

1. Realize that you won’t stop feeling like this overnight
2. Utilize the holy trinity
3. Draw comparisons to postpartum depression
4. Surround yourself with likeminded individuals who understand what you are going through
5. Understand that you can’t rely on just one small strategy to solve all of your problems. Often, it’s going to be a combination of strategies.

Lets begin talking about each of these tactics.

1. How Long Does Depression After A Breakup Last?

So, there is a short answer to this and a long answer.

I’m going to give you both.

The Short Answer = It depends

Pretty cliche, right?

Well, that’s why the long answer exists.

I am going to tell you something that is going to blow your mind. When I first heard about this concept it blew mine.

Scientists have done studies where they have looked at the brain to learn what it does when someone is experiencing heartbreak.

What they found was shocking.

Turns out that the part of the brain that lights up when someone is going through heartbreak is identical to the part of the brain that lights up when a drug addict is going through withdrawal.

So, essentially when you go through a breakup your body treats it as if you are going through a drug withdrawal.

Crazy, right?

Humor me for a moment and lets just take this line of thinking a step deeper.

In my research a number I continually came across for addiction recovery was 90 days. According to many credible sources (check my second source in the sources and citations section below this article) you can expect 90 day as being the “gold standard” for treatment.

Now, it’s important to bear in mind that this data is based on substance abuse and not love.

But that’s where I come into play.

I’ve been doing this for almost a decade now and have probably coached thousands of men and women.

I can tell you that 90 days would indeed be the “gold standard” but hardly anyone I’ve worked with ever achieves it. Realistically you are looking at 180 days before you start to feel like you are not breaking down every time you think about your ex.

That’s where the rest of my list comes into play.

If you can stay disciplined and put the rest of my list into action I feel like you will be well on your way to achieving the “gold standard” of not being depressed over a breakup after 90 days.

Lets move on to the rest of that list now.

2. Utilize The Holy Trinity To Stop Being Depressed Over A Breakup

If you haven’t heard of my theory on “the holy trinity” my recommendation would be to pick up my book, Ex Boyfriend Recovery PRO because I dedicate practically an entire chapter to it and I will go into way more detail on it in the book as opposed to this article.

Nevertheless, if you’d like a quick crash course on it check out this video,

If you don’t know what the holy trinity is it’s basically the most important aspect of your lives divided into three categories.

1. Health
2. Wealth
3. Relationship

I talk often about how there is a synergy between these elements of your life.

For example, lets say that before you went through your breakup your holy trinity/life was in perfect balance.

Of course, inevitably that pesky breakup occurs so the relationships aspect of your life takes a hit.

Now, to the average person this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but the problem is that there is a synergy between the holy trinity elements. As a result of your breakup you grow depressed and cut corners at work.

Your boss notices that you are cutting corners and fires you. Now, all of a sudden, the wealth aspect of your life takes a hit,

This throws you into an even deeper depression and you kind of let yourself go physically (I’ve certainly been there myself by the way.)

This negative snowball effect can be traced back to that one moment of the “relationships aspect” of the holy trinity taking a hit.

But here is the cool part.

If there can be a negative synergy there can also be a positive synergy.

By improving the aspects of your holy trinity not related to “relationships” you can actually positively impact that “relationships” aspect.

Pretty awesome, right?

3. Look At Postpartum Depression To Stop Being So Sad Over Your Breakup

Every time I write an article I like to add a new element that I’ve never talked about before. The thing I can’t stand is writing the same articles over and over again.

It gets boring…

So, the best way to remedy that is to teach myself something new or think outside the box so I am always talking about something interesting.

Anyways, when I first came up with the idea for this article I started thinking about all of the people I’ve encountered who bought my book and some of the common “symptoms” they exhibit.

As I started writing them down,

• Anger
• Anxiety
• Guilt
• Hopelessness
• Loss of interest
• Crying
• Irritability
• Restlessness
• Depression
• Fear
• Lack of concentration
• Insomnia

I began to realize that the symptoms that most of the people encounter after a breakup are almost identical to women who are going through postpartum depression.

So, it might be prudent of me to look at what treatment options are recommended for women going through that.

I learned some interesting things that I feel can be incredibly for people going through a breakup.

Now, a lot of this may sound like common sense but believe me when I say that when you are going through a breakup simple tasks like this may seem impossible.

Or you may not even want to do these things.

However, it’s important that you do.

• Make sure that you get enough sleep
• Find time to exercise
• Eat regularly

Again, you may look at that small list and think to yourself,

“This isn’t going to help me… Give me something actionable.”

And I want you to know that I get it.

I understand the need to take action and the need for instant gratification. Logically you probably understand that this isn’t the type of thing that gets fixed overnight. However, there is a small part of you fighting that logic.

Don’t give into it.

Taking care of yourself should always be priority number one. This is especially true for those of you who are trying to get your exes back.

Most people fail to get an ex back simply because they don’t do very simple tasks like eating properly and getting enough sleep.

It’s with these small steps that the difference can be made (more on that in a second.)

4. Surround Yourself With Likeminded Individuals Who Know What You Are Going Through

A few weeks ago I was working with a client in our private support group who commented to me that there isn’t really a lot of support out there for people going through breakups.

Initially I thought to myself that, that wasn’t true but the more I looked around I realized that it is actually true.

My theory is that there is negative stigma behind breakups.

We’ve all heard our friends and family say,

“It’s time to move on…”

“There’s more fish in the sea…”

“Just get over it…”

I find it almost comical when they do this because if the shoe was on the other foot and they were the ones in pain that might very well be the last thing that they’d want to hear.

There was another client in our private support group who was paying me for coaching to help get her ex back who was literally caught between what me, a professional, was recommending to her and what her sister thought was best.

Ultimately she took her sisters advice which completely set her situation back substantially.

While friends and family can be an incredible support system I find it can be flawed if your friends and family bring their own preconceived notions into the fray.

What people really need is to surround themselves with a support system of people who are going through the exact same thing they are going through.

Luckily, last year my wife and I opened up a private support group on Facebook to help people going through breakups.

To date, it’s one of our proudest achievements because we’ve been able to help thousands and give people the support they truly deserve.

My team is all housed there and I jump on every week for an hour long Q & A session.

I can’t recommend this group enough for you.

5. Understand That You Can’t Rely On Just One Strategy To Solve All Your Problems

There is one last bit of wisdom I’d like to leave you with.

Here is what most of the people who read my articles do,

They scan the headings

Maybe they read the bullet points

Find a few strategies that they like

And then implement

This is a flawed way of doing things because if you just pick and choose the strategies that you are just interested in you are most likely going to fail to accomplish your goal.

What makes the real difference isn’t one strategy alone but a combination of all the strategies.

Think about that for a moment.

Sources And Citations

1. https://www.thecut.com/
2. https://www.duffysrehab.com/
3. https://www.webmd.com/