A psychological perspective on understanding the pain of a breakup, navigating the healing process, and finding a path forward through creativity.

About 15 years ago, in the depths of despair and with a heavy, hollow ache in my chest, I grabbed an old, beat-up bicycle with the subtle intuition that riding it might somehow dissolve my sorrows. Determined to go as far as possible, I hopped on, packed a water bottle and a couple of bananas into a small bag, and bravely—or foolishly—believing I could make it, set off toward San Félix. For those not from Medellín: the city sits in a valley surrounded by mountains, and getting to San Félix means climbing an entire mountain. It was my first time attempting anything like that, and my grand adventure didn’t last long. On the very first long incline, while still within city limits, my body simply gave out. Thirsty and aching, I had to stop after just 15 minutes of pedaling uphill. But what mattered was this: during those few minutes when I was trying to climb like Colombia’s best cyclists, I completely forgot the reason that had driven me to such a feat—that she had fallen in love with someone else.

And that is how I learned to ride a bike. From that moment on, for about ten years, I wandered here and there on two wheels, searching for a way to feel better. It wasn’t a silver bullet, but it helped immensely.

What follows is a gathering of insights I’ve collected over a lifetime and through my practice as a therapist on a central question: what do we do when we go through heartbreak? Some of this may work for you completely, a little, or not at all—we must remember that while our heartbreaks look similar, every single one of us is fundamentally unique.

Focusing on the Practical

Guilt, longing, our imagination, and above all, that deep, hollow ache in the chest make it hard to think clearly about what needs to be done. Yet the best thing we can do is focus on practical matters: our work, basic household chores, and the simple reality that life goes on. «Work is the enemy of Cupid,» Ovid wrote in The Art of Love. You don’t get over heartbreak by thinking your way through it; you move past it by allowing yourself to feel whatever needs to be felt while pressing forward with life—even when doing so takes double or triple the effort. Practicality almost always invites us to move, act, and change our scenery—and everything that follows builds on that idea.

Moving Your Body—a Lot

Movement is perhaps the most direct way to shift our emotional state. Moving the body—whether commuting or exercising—demands a great deal of mental energy. I call this «attentional force»: attention naturally flows toward whichever process requires the most energy to execute. That is how physical movement wins the tug-of-war for our focus over raw emotion. Once physical effort ceases to be automatic, your full attention is required just to keep moving (much like in meditation, where all your focus is captured by the sheer effort required to remain perfectly still). This is precisely why nights spent cooped up in quiet isolation feel so agonizing, while a simple walk can be deeply soothing.

The act of focusing on the body frees up attention from our emotional processes. It calms them down, letting them exist without the intellectual judgment that our thoughts habitually cast upon them. And here, a crucial point must be made: we do not suffer from our emotions themselves; we suffer because we pass negative judgments on them. When we resist feeling what we naturally must feel, we prevent emotions from moving through our body as they need to. We obstruct their passage, making the process slower and far more painful.

In short, moving feels good not because it erases our pain, but because it keeps our attention occupied, leaving our emotions free from the judgments we usually place on them.

In my experience, walking, exercising, and staying active are remarkably effective. Moving from one place to another also has a positive impact, particularly on that hollow feeling in the chest. While changing scenery might not soothe loneliness as deeply as intense physical effort does, it still quiets the mind. Watching the road unfold—whether from a bus, a car, or a bicycle—distracts our attention enough so it doesn’t rest continuously on our loss. These moments of relief are temporary; the second you stop, the weight and anguish return. Even so, any brief interval of calm helps.

So if moving is a good idea, moving toward others is an even better one. And this brings us to a vital part of navigating heartbreak: companionship.

Finding Company in Pain

There is a world of difference between carrying pain alone and carrying it with someone else. When we grieve in solitude, crying and sadness aren’t as effective at processing the loss, so their passage through the body becomes slow and drawn out. But when we share our pain with another person, even though it may temporarily feel sharper, it also settles and soothes more readily. Emotional pain is processed by feeling it, and being with others helps immensely. Good company can make the difference between a long, agonizing grief and one that, while still painful, flows with a quiet grace.

What kind of company is right? Not everyone is suited to accompany us when we need to feel. Some people aren’t good listeners, while others simply dislike listening. Some listen but offer nothing comforting, or end up making us feel even more uncomfortable. The people who can genuinely help us navigate heartbreak usually share specific traits:

• People for whom we feel deep affection: This includes old loves, close friends, and family. During moments of heartbreak, seeing the people we love most—those who evoke deep affection—is immensely uplifting. Even in the middle of a downpour, these people can ignite a tiny spark within us, making a genuine smile possible through our sadness. They carry immense healing potential because that reignited spark brings comfort, relief, and a bit of warmth into the cold place where heartbreak leaves us. Even if they aren’t the best listeners, they offer something invaluable: what matters here isn’t what they give us, but what they awaken inside us.
• People who listen without judgment: In these moments, we need to talk and be heard far more than we need advice. Unburdening ourselves—speaking openly about our anxieties, insecurities, disillusionments, and general discomfort—helps infinitely more than a platitude like «everything is going to be okay.» It is crucial to surround ourselves with people who allow us to just be as we are, who understand what we are going through without imposing their own ideas on our grief. The steady listeners, the calm souls who anchor us purely through their presence. These are the ones who simply sit with us, let us cry, and hold space in the most elemental way: by ensuring we aren’t alone.
• The optimists: There is a paradox here: while we must fully feel our pain, a moment arrives when wallowing in it no longer serves us. It is the moment when, despite feeling sad and sore, we need to keep going. This is where close, optimistic friends step in—the ones who invite us back out, encourage us to re-engage with life, push us to return to old activities, and sometimes give us a gentle nudge. Eventually, we may need a boundary set around our misery to spur movement, and optimists are exceptionally good at this. While they may be willing to sit with our pain for a bit, they also place a limit on it. They are the ones who ultimately say, «Alright, enough staying cooped up inside—let’s go for a walk.»
• Strangers or casual acquaintances: Sometimes, even an entire underwater rugby team will do. During one of my heartbreaks, a dear friend invited me to a birthday party for one of her underwater rugby teammates. I can’t quite recall how I agreed to go—as someone who is quite shy and introverted, the thought of a rugby team feels overwhelming even today. Yet there I was, sitting on a couch in the middle of the night, pouring out my heartache to a group of players who warmly sympathized with my suffering. In the middle of a party, that conversation probably didn’t last long, but I’ve remembered it my whole life. Nearly 15 years later, it remains one of the most vivid, memorable moments of my life.

Solitude

While companionship is essential—offering comfort, relief, and encouragement to keep going—grief also demands a dose of solitude. Sometimes the pain asks for it: we need to feel as bad as we possibly can, and that level of vulnerability isn’t always possible in front of others. So this old companion, solitude, has its own rightful place in all of this. A necessary alliance is woven between solitude and companionship. Being alone is important because some pain is so intimate and deep that sharing it with another feels almost impossible. At times, the only person we feel capable of sharing that level of intimacy with is the very person who broke our heart—the one we are pulling away from. That is why they can feel like the only person with whom we could ever share such closeness.

Intimate Partnership: Why Does It Hurt So Much?

This level of intimacy—the feeling that we can be deeply, fully who we are with another person, from our rawest animal instincts to our most delicate vulnerabilities—is remarkably selective. It is granted to very few in a lifetime. Without this deep camaraderie, life feels harder and can even lose its meaning. This companionship is so intense that when people are without a partner, they commonly say, «I’m all alone.» In therapy sessions, I often bring gentle precision to this distinction: «Are you truly alone, or are you without a partner?» I frequently ask.

It is crucial to name The Great Intimacy, because that is precisely what we are moving through in heartbreak: we have to learn how to be «alone» again, without that profound partnership. Truthfully, most people never fully master being alone in this sense; rather, they learn to live alongside the absence, holding onto the hope of finding it again someday. This process is so difficult because the hope of rediscovering that deep partnership almost never leaves us. Many say they’ve given up hope, but when we speak deeply about it, it becomes obvious that the longing—no matter how denied—is still there. I often tell my clients that it is far easier to face that longing, acknowledge it, and live with it than to spend a lifetime denying it.

How Long Will I Feel Like This?

I often tell my clients that the worst stage of heartbreak usually lasts about two months. That is an optimistic view, of course, and everyone moves at their own pace. Regardless of the exact timeline, the chronology unfolds more or less like this: after those initial «two months,» the desire to connect with others begins to feel more inviting. It becomes easier to step outside, re-integrate into life, handle daily tasks, and socialize. The pain loses its sharp edge, and that constant hollow ache in your chest recedes to moments when you remember the person who is no longer there. Still, sadness lingers, and for a good stretch of time, nostalgia arrives alongside it. Gradually, the sadness settles, and the pain grows distant and sporadic, visiting only now and then. By month six or so, life begins to feel normal again… leaving mostly nostalgia. This is where the learning happens. We begin to understand the important lessons we’ve gained and may even look back on the good times with a touch of joy or gratitude.

Feeling Lost: What Now?

Imagine life as the branch of a tree. Perhaps you were dedicated to a passion, like dancing, or going out with friends, but when love entered, those took a back seat, and a new branch began to sprout—your life as a couple. If the relationship thrives over many years, smaller offshoots grow from it, and perhaps your personal passions and friendships bloom anew along that shared branch. But if that partnership branch dies, the overwhelming feeling is one of being completely lost. That’s because a primary branch—one that anchored so much of your life created around it—has suddenly vanished. Couples’ activities, shared friends, familiar haunts—none of it feels the same, and often there’s no reason to return to them.

My suggestion here is to return to the precise moment just before the relationship began—before your main life branch bifurcated toward partnership. Return to what you used to do before that chapter started: reach out to old friends you drifted away from, revisit the places and activities that were part of your daily life back then. Life usually begins to grow again from that node. The old partnership branch withered so that new growth on your continuing branch could thrive.

The Creative Act

And that is how someone ends up riding a bicycle again. In my case, it wasn’t truly something new; I had loved riding as a kid in the late eighties, along with twenty other kids on the block. By adulthood, it was forgotten, relegated to the die-hard enthusiasts or hippies of the time. When I dusted off a bike during my heartbreak, it was a creative act—an impulse that pushed me to keep going. It was a return to my past to grow a fresh branch on my tree of life.

Despite these ideas on how to navigate heartbreak, the most important thing is to realize that each of us knows ourselves better than anyone else. Ultimately, whatever allows you to keep going is what will be most useful. Moving forward will almost certainly involve a creative act—because after surviving a great heartbreak, we are reborn. And almost always, better than before.

Healing a broken heart takes time, patience, and sometimes, a safe space with a professional listener. If you would like us to walk through this process of grief and rebuilding together, I invite you to reach out and schedule a session.