5 Tips to Survive Holiday Breakups

The holidays can be a time of joy, excitement and togetherness, but they can also be a time of stress, pressure and emotional intensity. It’s common to experience a breakup around the holidays for many reasons, including: family expectations, introspection toward the year’s end, financial burdens, and overall higher stress.

Breakups are tough no matter what, but they can be especially brutal around the holidays when it seems like everyone is coupled off, getting engaged, and filled with merriment due to being in a relationship. Whether you were the dumper or the dumpee, whether it was a short-term fling or a years-long relationship, here are

5 Tips to Survive a Holiday Breakup:

1. Schedule emotional support time for yourself

   There’s pressure around the holidays to be joyful and giving, which is the opposite of how you feel post-breakup. Therefore, it’s important to have time and space to feel your feelings and to grieve the loss of your partner. With the busyness of the season, it may be hard to find the time. As you organize your social calendar, create some room for you, whether that’s to cry, journal, or see your therapist. If you give yourself time to be with your emotions in a mindful way, you may find that the rest of the day is easier to get through.

2. Decide on your limits

   Whether it’s around communication with your ex’s family, how to continue seeing your mutual friends, or what you’re willing to disclose about the breakup at your family functions, decide ahead of time what you’d like your limits to be and how you’ll enforce them. It could be telling a nosy aunt, “I’m sad that it didn’t work out, but I don’t feel like talking about it today.” There’s no right answer to whether you should return the gift you got for your ex’s mom, but if you put conscious thought into how you want to handle sticky situations that may arise, you’ll be prepared if they do.

3. Socialize

   It’s common to want to isolate after a breakup. Feeling depressed and lonely creates this odd desire to be alone even more, but socializing helps us to feel less sad and more connected. You might find yourself with extra free time that would have been spent with your ex or attending his or her family/friend/work functions this time of year. Use this time to focus on other fulfilling relationships in your life and allow these people to love and support you. Your social activities don’t have to be holiday related, either – going kickboxing with a friend might feel better than your traditional Christmas movie marathon.

4. Watch your thoughts

   It’s easy to catastrophize, ruminate, or compare yourself to others after a breakup. If it’s hard to disentangle yourself from what’s happening in your head, listen to what you say as you talk to others about the breakup or write down your thoughts when your ex comes to mind. Our thoughts have the power to take us to dark places (“I’m never going to meet anyone again” or “what’s wrong with me that I couldn’t make it work?”) If you see that you are spiraling, bring your attention to another task like taking the dog for a walk or thinking of a gift for your brother. Giving your mind something else to pay attention to stops the spiral and allows you to be more productive with your thoughts and actions.  

5. Focus on others

   Obsessing about what your ex is doing and compulsively refreshing Instagram to see if they’ve updated their story is helping no one. As Booker T. Washington notes, “If you want to lift yourself up, lift someone else up.” Use this as your go-to mantra.

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift someone else up.”

— Booker T. Washington

The holidays are filled with opportunities to help others, whether it’s volunteering at a local food pantry or soup kitchen, participating in a “giving tree” where you buy and wrap a gift for someone in need, or visiting residents of a nursing home or hospital. Focusing on ways you can help others can put your situation in perspective and allow you to connect with other people in a meaningful way.

Try these tips to get through a breakup this holiday season. If you’d like additional support, reach out to me or a member of the AGP team.