1. Try to remove your ex from your social media feed. If you don’t want to block them just yet, hide their posts/stories. This includes Spotify if you both have it. Limiting their visibility on your feed will reduce the unnecessary trigger points.

2. Don’t listen to sad songs or the songs you both like, it will scratch your heart every time.

3. Try to stay busy. It doesn’t feel like it’s helping but every second of every day that you aren’t spending mental energy on this person is a step closer to reaching your goal. It takes a lot, and I mean A LOT of time NOT thinking about them to reach your goal. So take every opportunity to distract yourself.

4. Use all tools available. Exercise, good nutrition, even squeeze stress balls. Meditation. Surround yourself with family and true friends. Do NOT contact the person! No email, no texts, no FB checks. No, just saying hi. You can’t be friends. Nothing!

5. Time helps. Time to process your feelings and to talk about how you are feeling with yourself or a therapist. You also need time to work on yourself with the goal to be that you alone are what is important. You will hear people say something like this a lot, but it seems so incredibly unobtainable. It really only becomes obtainable once the emotional door opens. It’s closed when you are still really infatuated with them. So give it time and hopefully you will be able to push that door open.

6. Write down every time you wanna reach out to your ex. Write exactly how you feel and why you wanna reach out.

7. Take down social media posts that you had with your ex.

8. Don’t rush into something new because you’re afraid of being alone for a while. Filling the void with someone new without working on yourself is a big mistake.

9. Don’t romanticize your relationship. Sure, there were good times but there were also bad times. Take the bad character traits your ex had and remind yourself why it’s good for you in the long run it did not work out. It’s so easy to look at a failed relationship through rose-colored glasses and want to get back with them. Resist that urge.

10. Suppress the urge to backslide. We all have it. Don’t do it; it takes you right back to square one.

11. Realize that others won’t always understand your pain.

12. Go no contact on day one. Don’t chase bread crumbs.

13. Find someone better, you’ll be amazed how fast you don’t care anymore.

14. Leigh Graner said that the foolproof way of getting over someone was going to the gym… thirty times. If you start going to the gym after a breakup just go there thirty times, doesn’t matter if you go five or two times a week but every time you go, you’ll be closer to feeling better and by the time you’ve gone thirty times you will be guaranteed to feel better.

15. Don’t focus on them, focus on yourself. It’s ok to grieve a lost future with someone you cared about, but remember to move forward and live in the present.

16. Try to start dating again as soon as you’re ready. Don’t enter into a relationship with the first person you go on a date with… Rebound relationships basically just delay the sadness you’re feeling from the breakup. It takes time before you can become emotionally available enough to have a real connection to someone again. However, you need to retrain yourself to talk with the opposite sex in a non-platonic way. Going on dates with a lot of different people will help with this. That way you’ll be ready and can take action when you do meet someone special.

17. Pick up some new hobbies. Keeping yourself busy and investing in yourself are great ways to come out of a breakup much better than you were before.

18. Repeat this mantra: “You miss the feeling of being loved, not the person.”

19. Feel your feelings. Listen to sad songs and cry. But balance it out with ones that uplift you.

20. Read. Just keep reading about relationships or start enjoying poetry.

21. Change your environment. I’m not saying move (you can if you want) but rearrange your living space.

22. Don’t believe the lie that you’ll never find love again or that you’re unloveable. It’s. A. Big. Fat. Lie.

23. Realize that the break up is a good thing. If the other person couldn’t realize what a rock star you are, now you are free to find someone who will.

24. It’s a cliche but “just do you.”

Figure out who and what you are. What you want and what you lack and what you can give. Why do you need a partner? Why do you want a partner? What happened with this one? What were your wrongs and what were their wrongs?

It doesn’t matter if you’re 13, 23, 33, 43, or 53.

If you never figure yourself out and be content–or at least understand–who you are… there’s a good chance you’ll never meet the right person or be the right person for others. There’ll always be that void of loneliness and itch that’s never been scratched.

Because you don’t even know what you need or what you can give.

If you’re a young person, take this time to be someone of genuine value to yourself. That’ll naturally make you a person who can provide for others as well.

Learn skills, pile on knowledge, and develop your physical traits.

Start working on all that and time will fly. You’ll meet someone before you realize it’s been months, years, since the breakup. And you’ll see how far you’ve come.

25. Accept the things you cannot change. That includes people.

26. Sit with your feelings. Acknowledge it. There will be days where you just want to cry and do nothing in bed. Let yourself grieve and cry. As many times as it takes.