18 Things to Remember When Your Heart Is Breaking

When your heart is breaking, the most important things to remember are that the pain is real, that it is temporary, and that it does not decide your worth. Heartbreak is a form of grief. It eases with time, sleep, support and gentleness toward yourself, and most people come out of it with a clearer sense of what they need from love. The eighteen reminders below, inspired by a much-shared list by writer Marc Chernoff of Marc and Angel Hack Life, are here to help you through the hardest weeks.

A line often attributed to the Chilean singer and poet Violeta Parra puts it well: Don’t cry when the sun is gone, because the tears won’t let you see the stars. A very similar thought appears in Rabindranath Tagore’s 1916 collection Stray Birds.

Why heartbreak hurts so much

Heartbreak is not only a metaphor. Brain-imaging research led by Naomi Eisenberger, published in Science in 2003, found that being socially excluded activates the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a region also involved in the distress of physical pain. Rejection, in other words, is processed by the brain as a real threat.

In rare cases a sudden emotional shock can even affect the heart directly. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, nicknamed “broken heart syndrome”, is a temporary weakening of the heart muscle that can follow severe stress such as a bereavement or divorce. It mostly affects older women and usually recovers within weeks to months, but its symptoms mimic a heart attack, so chest pain always needs urgent medical attention.

For most people the pain shows up as a dull, constant ache: trouble sleeping, no appetite, replaying conversations, checking their phone. It can feel endless, like being lost in a dark forest with no path in sight. Yet almost everyone who has stood in that place eventually walks out of it. The hurt is evidence that you loved, tried and let yourself be open, which is not a weakness.

Reminders about the past

Love caused the pain, and love will help heal it. The warmth you feel for others, and eventually for yourself, is what slowly repairs the damage.
Someone who repeatedly hurt you has little left to offer you. Missing them is natural. Going back for more of the same rarely brings anything but more heartache.
Endless replays change nothing. Going over what you should have said or done is a normal part of grief, but there comes a point where it only keeps the wound open.
Some stories end without a neat final chapter. You may never get the explanation you want. As Marc Chernoff puts it in a related post, some chapters close without closure, and you can still move on.
“It’s over” can be a relief as well as a blow. Two short words can hurt deeply, yet they can also lift the weight of trying to hold together something that was already broken.
Not getting what you wanted is not wasted time. Sometimes it prepares you; sometimes it protects you. M. Scott Peck’s classic The Road Less Traveled is a thoughtful companion on accepting that life is difficult and growing through it.

Reminders about yourself

This season will matter later. One day you may look back on these months as a turning point, a time when you were grieving and changing at once.
Transitions open doors. Letting go of one situation creates room for something that fits you better.
You can only change yourself. Trying to make someone love you, or act differently, is a battle nobody wins. Read more on what you gain when you stop trying to control others.
Your attitude shapes much of what comes next. You cannot choose what happened, but you can choose how you treat yourself from here.
You are not broken. Whatever you believe, whether in God, purpose or simply in the long arc of a life, there is more ahead than crying alone at night.
Being alone is better than being with the wrong person. When you date again, do it because someone genuinely adds to your life, not to escape loneliness.
One rejection is not a verdict on your worth. It hurts so much because, for now, one person’s opinion feels like the whole world’s. It is not. Billions of people have not rejected you; one has.

Reminders about what comes next

Heartbreak can show you what you deserve. Pain sometimes wakes you up to how much you had been settling for. Marc and Angel Chernoff explore this in the “Self-Love” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.
A loss can lighten your load. What feels like something taken away may also be something you no longer have to carry.
You will be stronger for it. Not every hurt makes us better, but most people find heartbreak leaves them wiser about themselves and about love.
Grief is part of the cost of loving. Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote, while mourning his friend Arthur Hallam, ’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.
This pain is preparing you. Think of it as growing pains that help you love more fully when the right relationship comes along.

Small steps for the first few weeks

Lists of reminders help most when they sit alongside small, practical actions:

Protect your sleep and meals. Grief is exhausting. Regular meals, water and a steady bedtime make every other step easier.
Move your body. A daily walk outdoors is one of the simplest ways to lift mood a little.
Create some distance. Muting or unfollowing an ex on social media is not petty; it stops the wound being reopened every time you scroll.
Tell people you trust. Friends often want to help but do not know how. Ask for a coffee, a call or company on a hard evening.
Write it down. Journalling can help untangle the thoughts that otherwise loop at 3 a.m.
Go easy on alcohol. It numbs the pain for a night and usually deepens it the next day.

Above all, give yourself permission to feel what you feel. Fighting the sadness tends to make it louder. Moving through it, a day at a time, is how it passes.

When heartbreak becomes more than sadness

Grief after a breakup usually softens over weeks and months. If instead the sadness deepens, if you cannot function at work or at home, or if you feel hopeless or have thoughts of harming yourself, please talk to someone. In the US you can call or text 988, or chat at chat.988lifeline.org, for free and confidential support. Elsewhere, a doctor or local helpline can help.

You are human, and human hearts sometimes break. Give yourself the chance to feel again, trust again and love again, as many times as it takes. You deserve that.

Sources: Original list by Marc Chernoff, Marc and Angel Hack Life (via The Open Mind); Wikipedia: Social rejection (Eisenberger et al., 2003); Wikipedia: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy; Wikipedia: In Memoriam A.H.H.; 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Header image via Elephant Journal.

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