The love of your life has left you. You feel like the rug has been pulled out from under your feet. Even breathing is an effort. The flood of raw pain seems intent on an emotional tsunami.

It’s at times like these that our own behaviour and emotional roller coaster can leave us reeling in bewilderment. Despite the inner feeling of bleak devastation, we can still be triggered into moments of hilarious laughter followed by bouts of inconsolable sobbing. The peaks and valleys are extreme.

This is not a time to question or resist but rather to go with the flow of feelings as they rise and fall. Accept that you don’t know what is going on and allow yourself to feel the emotions as they surge through you. It is only with the passage of time that the rawness of the pain subsides and accordingly the peaks and valleys lessen in their extremeness and frequency. How long this will take is up to each individual but what is important is that you allow yourself to feel and not suppress it.

Adopting a façade of coping strength suppresses the painful truth, and much like putting a bandage on an unclean wound, it will continue to fester.

Accepting the situation as it is and allowing the feelings, does not mean debating the ‘what if’s,’ ‘could or should haves’, or ‘if only’s. These only serve to hold you in the past or project you into an unknown future of story-telling – either way distracts your focus away from the present reality, and stresses you further.

Other outlets that may encourage your process of release are music or actually writing down your feelings in a journal.

Just remember that the qualities that radiated out of you when you were in the relationship, were always within you, and as the pain leaves you their re-expression is to be welcomed. Unlocking your spectacular self is not dependent on the company of others – you hold the key.