A sample of Your Heart Will Heal—A Gentle Guided Journal For Getting Over Anyone
your heart will heal
a gentle guided journal for getting over anyone
chrissy stockton
Thought Catalog Books — thoughtcatalog.com — New York • Los Angeles
Copyright © 2019 Chrissy Stockton. All rights reserved.
Published by Thought Catalog Books, an imprint of the digital magazine Thought Catalog, which is owned and operated by The Thought & Expression Company LLC, an independent media organization based in Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles, California.
This book was produced by Chris Lavergne and Noelle Beams. Art direction and design by KJ Parish. Special thanks to Chrissy Stockton for creative editorial direction and Isidoros Karamitopoulos for circulation management.
Visit us on the web at thoughtcatalog.com and shopcatalog.com.
Made in the USA.
ISBN 9781949759150
the breakup
There are few things we encounter in our lives so startling and disorienting as a breakup. One day you’re walking down the street and everything makes sense. An hour later, your world is upended and it seems like everyone else is speaking a foreign language. Even listening to it hits a strange note in your ear.
You loved someone, and now they are gone.
You find yourself left with the unenviable task of learning how to stop loving someone you don’t want to stop loving. You have to let someone go before you are ready. Since we are rational animals, doing something before you’ve convinced yourself it needs to be done is a difficult task! That’s why this journal is here for you. It can push you forward each day so that you get a little bit closer to being able to move on.
The exercises in this journal are geared toward experiencing the whole spectrum of fun emotions you feel during a breakup: shock, denial, grief, sadness, insecurity, and anger. They are meant to make you feel supported through your pain, like a trusted friend who knows how much it sucks but also knows that it will get better. You can skip around, or you can commit to doing one journal entry each day in order. If one chapter really speaks to you, you can even use that as a weekly entry and keep updating your journal on the same topic. If the pages of this book seem too small or confining in any way, grab a notebook to keep journaling as you read. If you aren’t inspired to write, find some colored markers and doodle until you’re ready. Writing your way through these exercises will help get your feelings out of your head. It’s one way to make sure you are processing your emotions and taking concrete steps to move on.
If it feels like you’re drowning in an excess of negative feelings, this journal should help you to know you have something concrete to do each day. You have a way to move forward.
This guided journal will help you address all the aspects of your breakup. It will cover subjects more than once to help you see what’s going on from different perspectives. If a chapter isn’t working for you, move on to the next one. If you feel bored by the topic, choose another one. When you feel you’ve moved on and no longer need the support to work through a subject, don’t feel like you need to complete it just to have something written down. There are other pages that might be calling out to you if you leave your mind open and page through this book. Let your intuition guide you; there is no right or wrong way to use this journal.
My hope is that when you use this journal, you feel at peace. I hope that every day you can see a little more clearly how you are going to survive your breakup. There’s a whole life ahead of you that should be made more and more appealing each time you use this journal to get perspective.
it’s okay to feel bad :(
A teaching in Buddhism is about the second arrow. The idea is that sometimes in life we are injured (being hit by an arrow), and that is unavoidable. We make matters worse by allowing ourselves to be hit with a second arrow. The first arrow is the bad thing that happens to us; the second arrow is our response to it.
Often, what we do to avoid feeling pain becomes the thing which actually causes us the most pain.
If you sit with your pain and feel it, you will discover it isn’t that bad; it is something you can manage. What causes you more pain is the second arrow: worrying about if you will feel pain again tomorrow, or worrying that you are somehow broken for experiencing the pain in the first place, or wondering if it’s normal to feel so much and if everyone else is experiencing the world in a different (and better) way. We don’t have enough control in life to avoid ever being hurt (the first arrow), but we do control the way we respond to being hurt. We control the second arrow.
Your only job today is to let yourself feel your pain. The longer you avoid feeling your pain, the longer you will be in pain. Climb into bed and set an alarm for 5 minutes. Let your mind wander to different parts of your body; what do you notice? What does your loss feel like?
Some people feel a tightness in their chest. They realize they are tensing their shoulders up toward their ears. Some people will realize their breathing is shallow. Pay attention to what you are feeling and allow yourself to truly feel it. This is how you will let it go.
Journal: List the ways you are hurting. Document as many painful thoughts as you can, even if they seem small or silly—get them out on paper. Notice what surprising thoughts come to mind. You can feel confident that every one of these thoughts is going to fade with time. In just 24 hours when you come back to your journal, you will already feel some space from these thoughts.
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