8 Ways To Deal With The Fear of Being Alone After Breakup

The fear of being alone after breakup is a common one.

After all, it’s human nature to want to feel loved and secure.

But what happens when you’re no longer coupled up?

What if you’ve just had your heart broken?

You may feel lost and scared like there’s no one left in the world who understands you or loves you.

As a relationship coach, I’ve witnessed many people struggle with the fear of being alone after breakup.

A breakup can be an intense experience that can trigger fear and anxiety about being alone in life.

This fear can be accompanied by the following:

Sleeping problems
Being restless physically
Having intruding thoughts
Having racing thoughts
Finding it difficult to concentrate
Feeling pessimistic about the future

While these feelings will not last forever, there are things you can do to hasten their exit from your life.

Outlined below are some steps to deal with the fear of being alone after breakup:

8 Ways To Deal With The Fear of Being Alone After Breakup

Understand your fear is normal

First, you must realize that it’s normal for people going through a breakup to feel afraid of being alone afterward.

This means that your feelings are perfectly fine, and there’s nothing wrong with them.

It doesn’t mean that you’re weak or defective in any way — it just means that you’re human.

2. Don’t overthink things

Ruminating about why a relationship didn’t work out can keep you stuck in painful memories, but it won’t make things any better.

When we ruminate, our thoughts become obsessive and negative, making us feel worse.

Instead of dwelling on what went wrong, focus on what went right.

Focus on the good times you had together and remember why the relationship was worth fighting for until the end (even if things didn’t work out for whatever reason).

It will help put things into perspective so that when you think about your ex now, it doesn’t cause as much pain as it used to when you first broke up with them.

3. Spend time alone

It’s natural to feel lost after a breakup because having romantic partners goes a long way to help shape your sense of self and identity.

So, it’s normal for losing a partner to create a vacuum in a place you once felt connection and love.

Of course, this will make you stressed, feel pain, and have anxious thoughts.

Spending time alone will be the last thing on your mind when you feel hurt.

You long for the comfort only a partner can offer and seek solace in a family member, friend, or even a rebound partner.

While there’s nothing wrong with seeking support outside, spending time alone to rediscover and keep in touch with yourself can help you reduce the feelings of anxiety.

It’ll also make it easier for you to be on your journey toward healing from the breakup.

Engage in these activities to reconnect with yourself:

Reflect

Think about how the experiences from both the relationship and breakup made your needs clear to you and exposed you more to you.

Now, ask yourself how you can build more satisfactory, healthier, and stronger relationships in the future using the discovery.

Pause

You should think of holding off getting into a new relationship till you’ve completely healed and gotten over your ex.

Jumping into a new relationship before you’re healed can prevent you from healing completely and affect your chances of exploring yourself.

Whatever fears you didn’t address may rear their ugly head in your relationship with your new partner.

Take record

You need to take a look at the new beliefs and habits you took up in the course of the relationship.

Do they stand for your values, interests, and desires?

Or did you take these traits up just to strengthen the bond between your ex and yourself in your previous relationship?

4. Spend time with your family and friends

Sometimes, a breakup can cause a feeling of guilt or embarrassment, especially if your family and friends liked your ex.

You may not know how to explain what caused the breakup to them, depending on the circumstances surrounding your breakup.

You might find it hard to re-live the pain of your ex’s actions by discussing it in detail, especially if they broke your trust or abused you.

It’s equally hard to open up to anyone if you feel that no one else can understand what you’re going through.

You don’t have to share anything that brings you more pain or makes you uncomfortable.

Keeping in touch with your family and friends can help make you feel better, but loneliness and isolation can worsen anxiety.

Your loved ones can comfort you and distract you whenever you feel like you can’t bear it anymore.

Knowing that you have shoulders to lean on, even if you don’t want to discuss the breakup, makes all the difference.

5. Engage in your favorite activities

It takes investing energy and time in yourself and your partner to maintain a relationship.

So, after a breakup, it’s normal to have a lot of free time on your hands.

When you’re doing well for yourself, it’s great to have extra time.

However, when going through a breakup, having any free time entails using what feels like forever to re-live what happened and go through stages of grief, uncertainty, and frustration.

Inserting some of your favorite rewarding and productive activities into your daily schedule can fill up your extra time and distract you in a good way throughout the day.

Engaging in relaxing hobbies will help you cope with anxiety.

You can read a good book, watch your favorite movie or go on long walks.

Whatever you choose, the aim is for you to engage in something that doesn’t stress you and gives you joy.

6. Practice mindfulness

Although mindfulness will not magically eliminate the fear of being alone, putting in the effort to live each day mindfully and intentionally will help greatly with the distress and daily anxiety.

If you go through emotional restlessness, such as anxiety, your intuition might make you ignore the pain, water it down, and completely ignore it until it disappears.

However, avoiding something you don’t want in your life isn’t a coping mechanism that will last for long.

When you block and avoid emotions, they can intensify and become too much for you to handle alone.

At first, facing these emotions will appear harder than just pushing them away.

But with time, you’ll likely find it easier to pick out these feelings and let go of them before they even take root in your mind.

Practicing mindfulness will help you to increase awareness of your emotions and thoughts.

Living mindfully generally means being grateful for your loved ones and daily pleasant experiences and thoroughly enjoying the little pleasures that life brings your way.

7. Take a break from social media

If you’re on social media frequently, take a break from it for a while (at least until you’re feeling better).

Social media can make you feel like everyone else is moving on with their lives and having fun without you, adding more pressure to start dating too soon.