Break up can be hard to accept, especially if it’s your first time. Many people lose focus and control over their lives since they don’t know how to deal with such devastating moments. However, any person can overcome the situation with the right strategy and support in a few weeks or months.
You can also help the person brighten up after a breakup. You could help them forget about the incident and focus more on self-love and healthy relationships. To help you accomplish this, here is a guide on comforting your friend after their relationship ends.
1. Acknowledge their pain and offer support
The first level of dealing with pain is always acknowledging what has happened. This means accepting that the break-up happened and the reasons behind it. From there, you can help your friend set a mindset to move on to better opportunities without thinking much about what happened.
Of course, they will have flashbacks occasionally, which might make them highly emotional. However, if you encourage and help them build a stoic frame, they can adjust by looking forward and past the problem and recognizing that experience does not define them. Also, encourage them to take their time with decisions they might regret.
2. Listen and empathize with their feelings
You must learn to listen to their problems and thoughts about the breakup. Listen in on how the situation started to identify how they are apart. Once that is done, you can offer encouragement and a solution if you have any.
Moreover, you can try to show empathy for their feelings and situation and encourage them that they’ll feel better with time. Don’t overtalk them when they explain their grievances; they’ll portray you as inconsiderate. This way, you will win their respect even further because they will remember how you understood during their difficult moment.
3. Help them focus on self-care and healing
Sometimes all you need to do to help your friend through a break-up is help them focus on healing and self-care. Healing takes time and requires first accepting what happened and finding ways to move on. On the other hand, you can encourage them to focus on self-care and love.
This means they can do things that make them happy, like hiking, taking an adventure, modeling, or watching a movie to calm their nerves. They can also meditate, which helps clear their mind about new possibilities. However, self-care should start with you so that they can emulate what you’re doing and make it easier for them.
4. Encourage positivity and hope for the future
As your friend goes through a breakup, you must be a force of hope and positivity. You need to help them focus on encouraging activities so that they feel the possibility of tomorrow being better. This can also be done by sharing a few words of encouragement, so they know they are not alone in this struggle.
You can also highlight all their positive moments or achievements to remind them how great they are. This will be a great way to ensure they forget about the hard time they have encountered before and after the break-up and how they can move forward.
5. Provide distraction and fun activities
Nothing makes people forget their challenging times more than distractions through fun activities. There are so many things like going for walks, shopping, watching a film, planning a trip, or visiting the museum that you and your friend can do to help them take their mind off the breakup.
By going out of your way to provide distractions, you’ll assist them in making happy memories and demonstrate that life can still be fun despite the split by giving them chances for laughing and novel experiences. Moreover, you can organize a spa experience to help them relax and take their time off the bad experiences.
6. Avoiding judgment and criticism
If there’s one thing you should never do or portray to someone facing heartbreak is being judgemental or critical. This will immediately break the bond, and it will be a clear indication of disregarding their feeling. It will also show that you cannot pay attention to your surrounding and what’s happening; hence they’ll never be open to sharing anything vital with you.
You need to understand that for them to feel helpless after a breakup, they probably;y have already judged and criticized themselves, and they don’t require you to do the same. This means you need to find a way to be different and show them there is still hope and love.
7. Check in regularly and continue to offer support
Once in a while, check in on your friend and see how they cope with the situation. Healing takes time, so you must be patient and always support them whenever they need you. If you live far from them, you can always place a call or send a text asking how they are doing.
You also need to learn to be an excellent listener to understand how they are feeling and how you can effectively respond to their shortcomings. While this is a skill you can ideally use anywhere, it will go a long way in boosting your friend’s state of mind as they battle the breakup.
8. Respect their boundaries
While friendship is a beautiful thing, some boundaries need to be respected. When your friend is going through a breakup, there are things you should never do. Generally, people react differently to break up with different attitudes, feelings, and actions.
Ensure you give them personal space, especially when they ask you to. Also, don’t suggest activities and force them into it when they are still trying to be in a healthy state of mind. Don’t be too pushy as they try to heal. Be there for them when they need you and help them escape the problem.
9. Give them break-up gifts
While words of encouragement can mean the world to a friend going through a breakup, gifts will also play a crucial role in ensuring they smile again. Finding the right gift is relatively easy and is an ideal way to help them take their mind off the horrible experience and think positively. A gift will also show that you care about their experiences and always be there for them.
However, when choosing a gift, you must go with something timeless and thoughtful. Give them gifts like a custom name birth month flower bookmark with incredible features and a slick design they will appreciate. You can also go with the engraved baseball cross necklace if they are sports enthusiasts.
Wrapping Up: Being a compassionate and supportive friend during a breakup
At some point in life, we all go through breakups, and it will be great to treat your friends well and help them overcome it as you’d like to be assisted. One of the most crucial steps in helping your friend get over a break-up is to be a good listener, sympathize with them, and not judge or be negative.
They only need you to help them take the anger and disappointment out and not judge all their actions. If you don’t have the right words to express your feelings about your situation, you can use a timeless gift to make them smile again.
