Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After

Such is the paradox of grief. It holds the power to either destroy or to save you. Which one is up to you.

So much that was beautiful and so much that was hard to bear. Yet whenever I showed myself ready to bear it, the hard was directly transformed into the beautiful. ETTY HILLESUM

When you use the sheer force of your sorrow to crack open your heart, it promises to drop you down into a deeper capacity for compassion and care for all living beings. You become initiated into your own humanity in a way that connects you to all life.

Effective grieving, however, turns the love you’ve been giving another toward yourself. You

impulses.” Apparently, the unassuming act of putting a label on each of our feelings, called “affect labeling” by psychologists, lowers arousal and puts us back in the driver’s seat of our lives. To the extent that you can name your big and overwhelming feelings, you will begin feeling safe in your own skin again. You will be home again.

Social psychologist Dr. Matthew Lieberman of UCLA spearheaded a study where he and his colleagues scanned the brains of thirty people who were shown pictures of faces expressing strong emotions, such as sorrow and despair. Initially, activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is associated with fear, panic, and other intense emotions, incre

In his book Emotional Intelligence, author Daniel Goleman explains what happens when we’re hijacked by the reactive part of our brain during a life-threatening event, which the brain can perceive a breakup to be. As alarm bells go off, urgent messages initiate the release of fight-or-flight hormones that mobilize movement before rational thought. W

For what happens at the end of love will define life moving forward, either leaving your life dismally contracted and diminished, or beautifully expanded and enhanced.

Perhaps you’ve even built bridges of new interests and connections elsewhere in preparation for your departure, to help make your transition smoother.