HOW TO START OVER WITH A HEART FULL OF PAIN

The holidays are painful when you’ve experienced a loss, including ending an abusive relationship. You may wonder how to start over, to create a life free of abuse. Though January is a time when many want a fresh beginning, it isn’t just a matter of setting goals or resolutions when you’ve left an abusive relationship. If you’re living with abuse now, you may find How to Cope When You Feel Sad During the Holidays helpful.  

Here are five guides for how to start over when you’re ready to rebuild your life.

Allow Time to Grieve

Learning how to start over begins with allowing space for grieving, if you haven’t already. Sometimes life has been too chaotic for you to focus on it. If you just want to forget about your sadness now, here’s something to contemplate:

Grieving clears out the old and opens the path to healing and moving forward with your life.

Don’t skip grief, but do not let it take up all your energy either. Consider setting aside specific times to focus on it. This includes coming to terms with the past, expressing what you feel, and healing fears and limiting beliefs about yourself. A few suggestions for processing grief:

• Write about your grief.  
• Talk to a friend, family member, or therapist.
• Do a release ritual, such as writing what you want to release on paper and burning it safely.

Do not judge yourself for grieving or listen to anyone who does. Grief is a natural response and allowing space for it will shorten its hold on you.

View This Painful Time as an Opportunity

Change, even if you initiate it, often feels scary, especially if you began after seeing no other way to end abuse.  

Fear is normal during any time of change. You may be afraid you will make mistakes. To take the zing out of fear, remember that mistakes are an important way we learn. It’s not the end of the world like your partner probably taught you.

A tip for changing your mindset:

See everything as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Note that feeling disoriented and unsure is temporary. Seek support from encouraging people.

Identify and Prioritize What You Want

Your abusive relationship interfered with your choices and the right to be yourself. Now you can regain your ability to name what you want. Do we always get everything we want? No, but you get more of it when you identify your desires, prioritize them, and take steps toward manifesting them.

There are many types of wants.

• Emotional, such as healing from trauma or rebuilding self-esteem.  
• Concrete or practical, such as job-seeking, building more friendships, changing your home environment.
• Family-related, such as supporting your children through their grief or working on behaviors they learned from their other parent.
• Ex-partner related, like learning how to handle any continuing efforts to control you.
• Personal, such as obtaining or doing those things that give you joy. Don’t leave those out.  

A tip for beginning:

Let your imagination go wild and make a list of everything you want.  

Allowing yourself to want sets the stage. Now prioritize your list. Do not overwhelm yourself by expecting to work on everything at the same time. Pace yourself by choosing what is reasonable to work toward now. With each thing, make a roadmap of small steps, each leading to accomplishing what you want.  

Give Yourself Credit for Each Step

Do not downplay how important this is for beginning again. If you are someone who has trouble giving yourself credit, take this opportunity to practice. Giving yourself mental gold stars or pats on the back provides motivation to keep going. Turning over a new leaf is a myth; that isn’t how we change. Take this tip to heart:

See each small step as a success.

If you do not recognize each step, you may have trouble starting over, or you may still cheat yourself from feeling successful when you achieve your wants. You deserve praise, and the most important person to receive it from is you.  

See Change as a Lifelong Journey

Ending an abusive relationship is a traumatic form of change. However, cultivating skills for how to start over by adapting to and shaping change will serve you throughout your life.

My final tip is this quote:

“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” John Maxwell[i]

Look upon the need for change as a growth opportunity, whether it is change you seek, or change necessitated by an abusive relationship. Use negative events to spark openings to your good. When you do, your grief is lightened by what you gain.

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[i] Quote from Thinking for a Change: 11 Ways Highly Successful People Approach Life and Work, John Maxwell (New York: Warner Books, 2003)