How to Heal Your Nervous System After a Breakup
If you’re hurting, spiralling, and totally crashing out during your breakup, this article is for you.
I’m a conscious breakup coach and certified breathwork teacher (and certified yoga teacher too) and I want nothing more than for you to feel that feeling every woman craves:
Waking up and feeling calm, refreshed, and drinking your coffee or tea with a sense of contentment that all is well in the world.
No thoughts racing.
No immediate scroll on socials.
Just…pure calmness.
I know, that sounds amazing, but a little out of reach right now. After all, you’ve been put through it with your ex.
And all the confusion (and drama) that came after the breakup.
You’re just looking forward to feeling joy again. Or at the very least, stop obsessing and spiralling constantly to the point of not being able to focus on work.
Today, I’m going to share 3 key ways you can regulate your nervous system during a breakup.
1.Getting the right validation and support
Now, this is going to be a bit difficult for me to share, but there’s a chance you’re either sharing with people who aren’t able to give you the right support, or you’re over-sharing, period.
When you’re expressing yourself in front of the wrong people (or just friends/family) who don’t have the capacity or skill to support you, you can quickly find yourself in a dysregulated state with no way to get out of it.
You might start justifying your actions to them (I can’t just stop talking to them overnight!), and end up putting yourself on the defence when really all you needed was support and to be heard and seen.
Believe me, no one overshared more than I did when I was going through my worst heartbreak before meeting my husband.
I’d be so consumed by my relationships that I would talk non-stop at work while clocked in.
I’d text my friends constant play-by-plays when my ex and I did have some kind of interaction.
I’d invite anyone into my inner world who would listen.
But then I had to realize that I was over intellectualizing and not really going deeper with myself.
I didn’t have a clue that instead of oversharing and talking, I could have benefited from going inwards more.
I didn’t know much about somatic (body) practices, but everyone told me to start meditating.
That felt more like they were just trying to get out of listening to me talk about my ex until the cows come home. (Okay, fine, in my case—it was reasonable for them to say that.)
So my first piece of advice is to just pick and choose when and whom you share with.
Who makes you feel like you need to defend yourself?
Which interactions do you leave feeling worse?
Knowing this will help preserve your energy (the little you have right now since the breakups are so depleting) and help you stay emotionally regulated while you work on yourself.
By the way, after seeing hundreds of women struggle to calm their nervous systems post-breakup, I created the Heartbreak Haven to make healing simple, structured, and deeply soul nourishing, Inside, you’ll find a 14-day highly curated healing email series to help you get the right validation and support you need. Check it out here for details.
2.You need to start small when it comes to mindfulness
When you’re obsessing and unable to put your phone down, literally the last thing you want to do is be still.
Now, everyone tells you to meditate, but very few tell you how, or make something that is breakup specific to the point that you WANT to meditate when the constant fears, anxieties and “what am I going to do with my life now we’re over” thoughts start to take over
(By the way I help you with this inside the Heartbreak Haven if you’re curious.)
You’ll need to start with a few breaths and work your way up.
If I told you to sit down alone with your thoughts, I doubt you’d start let alone continue.
If I told you to scroll YouTube for free meditations, you may do that, but get overwhelmed when you realize you’re not even sure how you’re feeling.
What you want to do is start with a single cycle of breath.
Right now, try it with me =)
(Yes, I’m serious. No need to change positions, just do this wherever you are.)
Ready?
Breathe in through your nose for 4, expanding your belly and ribcage.
And breathe out of your mouth for a count of 6, feeling the air release and your body softening.
Let’s do that one more time.
Breathe in for 4 through your nose.
Exhale for 6, through your mouth.
Feel yourself melting wherever you are on the exhale.
Feel the couch, bed, or chair beneath you. Imagining the space between where you’re sitting/lying, and what’s underneath supporting you.
Soften, melt, and relax.
Let yourself be supported.
Don’t you feel immediately calmer?
That’s the power of intentional breathwork. Yay! You just did breathwork.
A mindfulness practice doesn’t have to start with 15-30 minute meditations.
It starts with one or two rounds of intentional breathing.
Feeling the immediate effects, and choosing to do it again.
Once you feel confident, you can move into longer meditations.
If you’re new here, let me introduce you to Breathe Through Your Breakup—a 21-day meditation journey made for women navigating heartbreak. It’s breakup-specific mindfulness that helps you soften the mental loops, let go of the heaviness, and finally feel your body breathe again.
3. Learn how to apply self-compassion in your life
One of the biggest things I see when I’m working with clients is the missing self-compassion piece to healing during a breakup.
I mean, we all know what it means to be compassionate and we all know we need to give ourselves some compassion, but we genuinely don’t know how to make it sink in for us specifically!
To me, self-compassion is the ultimate embodiment of self-love.
It means:
Giving yourself permission to feel everything, without validating if you “should” be feeling that way based on how your ex treated you
Allowing yourself to take as long as you need to heal (even when your friends/family think you “should” be done by now or you’re hurting “too much“)
Resourcing yourself with what you need most. Maybe it’s a pilates or yoga membership, a digital course on heartbreak, buying the books you need to find comfort in this lonely time, or talking to a professional who can truly hear you
Ultimately, it’s letting go of the “shoulds” and allowing what you feel—and for how long—to be perfectly okay.
Releasing the timeline for healing.
Releasing matching the length of the relationship with the grief of the relationship.
Or comparing your relationship to someone else’s.
And to provide yourself with what you need to take care of yourself most.
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If you’re ready to stop spiralling and give yourself the nervous system reset you deserve during your breakup, my Heartbreak Haven Bundle will guide you every day for the next 21 days—so you feel like you can breathe again.
Hi, I’m Nancy!
A conscious breakup coach, certified breathwork teacher, wife, mom and I have helped a lot of people heal after their relationships end. Grab my Heartbreak Haven bundle to start healing your nervous system today.