They say that time heals a broken heart, but it’s difficult to heal when you can’t even get a good night’s sleep. According to psychologists, we should resist becoming too introspective after a breakup because this impedes our ability to relax and heal.
A relationship breakup will prompt self-analysis, and self-care is important for recovery. However, don’t spend too much time soul searching because this will stop you from moving forward.
We’ll explore what you can do to improve your sleep after a breakup. Then, we’ll describe how to exploit introspection and shift your focus to the present moment to help you relax and sleep more soundly.
Why Can’t I Sleep After a Breakup?
These factors can make getting sleep difficult after a breakup:
Thoughts
Perhaps you can’t stop recalling happy memories, or you’re spending hours trying to understand how your partner could have betrayed you.
Ruminating thoughts often worsen in the evening, making it hard to fall asleep.
Emotions
After a breakup, it’s common to be racked with guilt or shaken by anger. These overwhelming emotional responses are hard to process and aren’t conducive to restful sleep.
Stress
Stress puts the mind and body on high alert, making relaxation impossible. Unfortunately, stress also forces us to put compassion and self-care to the back of our minds, so our health suffers.
Moreover, stress leads to disruptive nightmares, making it harder to sleep through the night.
Behaviors
Breaking up with a partner is like quitting an addictive substance cold turkey. Perhaps this is why we often turn to addictive substances to fill the void, and these substances disturb our sleep further.
Below, we’ll explore each factor in greater detail:
Feeling Lost After a Breakup
When a relationship breaks down, it’s common to feel an overwhelming sense of loss.
You’ve lost a partner, part of your identity, and the opportunity to actualize the goals you’d planned for the future. This feeling of loss can be draining, so eating, sleeping, and self-care are neglected.
More than ever, it’s important to focus on self-care. In their book, ‘The Breakup Bible,’ the authors advocate taking care of oneself after a breakup.
This involves establishing healthy eating and sleeping routines and leaning on friends for support. The authors argue that your focus should be on practicing self-care, not introspective self-criticism.
Developing new routines is vital for improving sleep because they help ground us when we feel lost.
Can’t Stop Thinking About A Breakup
You order coffee, and you’re reminded of your ex’s favorite drink. You go to dinner with your friends, and they ask you how your ex is doing. You head home to relax, and the song playing on the radio is the song you’d sung together many times.
These kinds of reminders cement that sense of loss, which is what is so disruptive to sleep.
According to psychologists, there are two types of responses most of us will experience following a traumatic experience. You need to challenge and reframe these thoughts.
See if you can recognize either of these in yourself:
Ruminating Thoughts
- Why did It happen?
- What could I have done better?
- How did we suddenly fall out of love?
When we ruminate, we attempt to understand what has happened to us. To a degree, it’s useful to try to make sense of why a breakup occurred.
However, ruminating thoughts aren’t solutions-focused, so they prevent us from seeing the future in a positive light. If ruminating thoughts are left to fester, they’ll disturb our sleep.
Intrusive Thoughts
- I’m never going to find love again
- I’m going to die alone
- I’m never going to be happy
Intrusive thoughts are prevalent after a breakup. They’re associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but everyone experiences intrusive thoughts.
Unlike ruminating thoughts, intrusive thoughts focus on the future. The predictions are often unrealistic and irrational, so they can be distressing, and their potency is what stops us from falling asleep.
Stress and Post-Breakup Insomnia
Stress is the leading cause of insomnia, and breakups are stressful experiences. When we’re stressed, the body produces more of the stress hormone cortisol.
According to the Natural Medical Journal, heightened cortisol levels may be responsible for sleep disturbances, particularly in people who’ve experienced traumatic events. Stress isn’t just keeping your mind awake at night but putting your whole body on high alert.
One of the significant causes of stress after a breakup is the threat to your locus of control. This is our perceived ability to cope with whatever life throws at us emotionally, financially, or practically.
If you’ve been with a partner for a long time, they probably had a unique set of responsibilities in your relationship, and you’ve come to rely on them for certain things.
Now that your partner is no longer around, you may doubt whether you can cope.
Waking Up in The Middle of the Night After A Breakup
When we go through periods of high stress, it’s common to experience nightmares.
People with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are likely to wake up frequently throughout the night due to bad dreams. If your breakup was sudden or traumatic, you’d probably experience nightmares for weeks or months after the event.
As we’ll explore, stress and anxiety management can help keep bad dreams under control. Moreover, if you have recurring bad dreams about an ex-partner, this suggests you’re pushing away feelings about your breakup rather than processing them.
Break Up Withdrawal Symptoms
According to Scientific Research, our romantic relationships regulate our daily routines.
The eye contact, physical touch, and conversations we share with our partners provide a predictable order to our sleep/wake cycles. We suddenly feel imbalanced and dysregulated physically and psychologically when we go through a breakup.
Let’s assume that your partner has wished you goodnight every evening for the last year, but now they’re no longer there. This will make you feel disoriented at bedtime until you find new cues in your environment to regulate your bedtime routine.
These feelings of deregulation are similar to withdrawing from an addictive drug. The psychological and physiological symptoms make it possible to feel sick after a breakup.
How To Sleep After Heartbreak
In their book ‘The Breakup Bible,’ the authors stated that it’s important to consider our physical, psychological, and spiritual needs after a breakup.
A holistic approach to healing is more likely to improve your sleep because sleep is a complex process.
As mentioned, it’s important to resist too much introspection. Introspection is useful, but practical self-care, living in the moment, and adopting an outward-looking approach is vital for sleep.
Here are the things that will aid sleep after a breakup:
1/ Write A Letter To Yourself
Writing your thoughts down on paper enables you to work through your feelings, providing a much-needed form of stress relief.
Studies have shown that writing our thoughts down (as opposed to speaking about them) can be more useful for breaking the cycle of ruminating thoughts. So, if you’re constantly asking yourself, ‘why has this happened?’ try unpacking your thoughts in a letter.
There is a technique called ‘free writing’ that many have found useful for dealing with breakup trauma. To practice free writing, write down anything that comes into your head. Don’t pay attention to grammar, syntax, spelling, or readability.
Free writing is therapeutic because it allows us to express our feelings unguardedly. In theory, free writing a letter to yourself should reduce the potency of nightmares because you’re letting the unconscious mind know that you are tackling your feelings.
2/ Give Yourself Worry Time
We can become overwhelmed by intrusive and ruminating thoughts when we’re anxious. This can cause more stress because it stops us from concentrating on other aspects of our daily life.
Although we can’t have total control over our concerns, we can define how much time we spend worrying. Allocating part of the day as ‘worry time’ can be useful after a breakup.
Cognitive-behavioral therapists value this strategy because:
- It gives you increased control over your thoughts, which reduces anxiety.
- It stops you from becoming too introspective and encourages you to spend most of the day focusing on other things.
Both of these outcomes are important for well-being because they promote quality sleep. So, pick an hour during the day when you’re likely to worry about your breakup.
If you worry at other points of the day, remind yourself that you’ll tackle it during your worry time. The aim is to reduce the time spent worrying so that you’ll be allotting just 5 minutes of worry time per day.
3/ Cut Out Destructive Self Medication
When forced to go cold turkey on a relationship, it’s human nature to look around for something else to fill the void. Unfortunately, the things we choose to medicate ourselves with are rarely positive.
The obvious forms of self-medication include junk food, sugar, caffeine, cigarettes, and alcohol. None of these substances will be conducive to a good night’s sleep.
Some people throw themselves head-first into challenging exercise regimes or 60-hour working weeks to counteract their feelings of emptiness. However, when people discover that this new obsessive behavior is not filling the void, this leads to even more frustration.
Since your breakup, have you engaged in any new behaviors? Is it possible that you’ve become addicted to something disturbing your sleep?
Investing time in all areas of your life is essential to create a sense of balance. This is one of the principles of good self-care, preventing you from becoming too introspective.
4/ Improve Your Diet
Specific foods and herbs control your mood, and you’re less likely to experience ruminating and intrusive thoughts if your mood is positive. You should limit all forms of processed sugar because the sugar will feed the highs and lows you’re experiencing.
Studies have shown that going to bed hungry or full can lead to nightmares, bad dreams, and sleep disturbances. Balance your meals throughout the day so you’re satisfied by bedtime.
Looking after your diet is one of the things you can control, so use it to practice positive self-care.
5/ Exercise Therapy
This review published by Sage suggests that exercise is positive for sleep because it regulates our circadian rhythms, improves depressive symptoms, and promotes stress relief.
Exercise therapy is the perfect opportunity to try out a new skill. Sign up for a regular exercise class that runs for at least six weeks. Not only will you increase your self-esteem by mastering a new skill, but you’ll expand your social circle and invest in your future.
As discussed, socializing regulates our sleep/wake cycles. Different social activities help you dissociate from your old relationship habits and build new, meaningful routines.
6/ Essential Oils for Sleep
Studies have shown that essential oils encourage sleep, improve your mood, and dampen the effects of anxiety. Lavender and Cedarwood are valued for their soothing properties, so using these in a diffuser should enable you to sleep more soundly.
After a breakup, experiment with citrus oils. These don’t encourage sleep per se, but they reduce symptoms of anxiety and restlessness. They also help you to be more sociable and less withdrawn.
Scientists are unsure why this is the case, but it probably has something to do with limonene, which modulates cortisol in the body.
So, inhale orange, bergamot, or lemon essential oil first thing in the morning to improve your mood.
7/ Mindfulness and Acceptance
Mindfulness helps you live in the moment so that you’re less likely to dwell on your past. A study in Springer found that mindfulness helped individuals feel less lonely and more connected after a breakup. To practice mindfulness:
- Focus all your attention on the present moment.
- Don’t make any judgments as thoughts and worries enter and exit your mind.
- Every time you experience your mind wandering, bring your attention back to the present moment.
This is a basic introduction to mindfulness, so visit a reliable online resource for guidance.
Although mindfulness is practiced in the mind, it’s not a wholly introspective process. Being mindful stops you from ruminating and reflecting on the things that no longer matter.
8/ New Routine
Good sleep hygiene is vital for sleep because it helps regulate the body’s natural rhythms. After a breakup, daily schedules are often turned upside down, so re-establishing consistent habits becomes even more critical.
If you spent time speaking to your spouse before bed, replace this with a new activity you could commit to. For example, find a good book to read, write in a journal, or take a relaxing bath.
One of the perks of a breakup is that you can be selfish and design a new bedtime routine that works for you. Establishing new bedtime cues will stop you from feeling disoriented when it’s time to sleep.
Set your new routine around the principles of good sleep hygiene. Melatonin production happens in the dark, so ensure your bedroom is dark enough when trying to sleep.
Alternatively, wear a sleep mask that blocks out the light. When you wake up in the morning, open the curtains and immediately allow the natural light to flood your bedroom.
This will help to regulate your circadian rhythms. Although many people find it hard to get to sleep after a breakup, others find themselves sleeping too much. Using light and dark will help modulate sleep.
9/ Give Your Time to Others
A breakup forces us to become self-critical, so we turn our attention inwards and forget the needs of those around us.
Call a friend you’ve not seen in a while and ask them how they’re doing or spend some time volunteering for a cause close to your heart. This will put a spring in your step and regulate your energy levels.
Giving time to others can help you sleep better because it’ll make you feel more balanced.
Firstly, you’ll feel less isolated and have less time to think about your breakup. Secondly, you’ll realize that other people are suffering too, putting your problems into perspective. Finally, you’ll realize that you’re a valuable person even when you’re single, and this realization is vital for emotional well-being.
Coping with Anxiety After a Breakup
Whether it reaches a clinical threshold, anxiety is disruptive to daily life.
It feels like a state of paralysis for many, with the person finding it challenging to move forward or get anything done. Ruminating thoughts often fuel anxiety, so modify any destructive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. To cope with breakup anxiety, follow these tips:
- Reframe the breakup as an opportunity: List the positive things about being single. Alternatively, consider your breakup a lesson you’ll remember when selecting a future partner.
- Expose yourself to situations that make you anxious: Perhaps you heavily relied on your partner to deal with finances, DIY, or housework. If so, carry out these tasks yourself.
- Information disproving intrusive thoughts: Perhaps you’ve doubted if anyone will ever love you again. Disprove this theory by making new friends and acquaintances.
Many people forget that sleep disorders have a mostly psychosomatic basis. By tackling our worries and concerns, it’s possible to improve sleep.
When dealing with breakup trauma, move forwards rather than inwards. Practicing self-care, being mindful, and feeling positive about your future will enable you to sleep better after a breakup.
