How to get over a breakup depression as a man? Severe depression, or even just feeling depressed is tough, and dealing with it due to a breakup doesn’t make it any easier. So let’s talk about that struggle. Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster, and here I teach men how to move on from their ex-girlfriend.

Alright guys, how are you all doing? Hanging in there? I hope you’re not feeling too lonely. Having a breakup as a guy can be extremely isolating because unlike women, men tend to have different coping mechanisms to deal with breakups. We generally are not as social as women, we’re also more likely to withdraw socially as a result of a breakup, some men even go as far as resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drinking a lot of alcohol. 

As a result, if you are not careful, it’s possible that you will become more and more isolated after a breakup, and before you know it, you may be extremely depressed, or suffer from actual depression. And you didn’t even see it coming. You may only realize how bad things have become when it’s already too late.

Does anything of this sound or feel familiar to you? I still remember, especially with my first breakups, and the most difficult one that I ever had, I had this strong tendency to try to be strong on my own. As a man, it’s quite natural to not want to be seen as weak, isn’t it? Back in those times, I wanted to fight through my struggles all by myself. I thought that I had to get better all by myself and that if I would seek help from people, or just tried to get closer to my friends while still feeling like shit, I’d be giving in to my heartbreak and all my pain. That feeling after a breakup when things no longer make sense, and you think it’s your fault and responsibility to put things back in order can be quite challenging.

First of all, I really hope that you don’t beat yourself up like that. One of my closest friendships in my late teenage years got screwed up because back then, I tried to go through my first breakup all by myself, and I didn’t really handle it well. My close friend was also a girl, so I felt like I couldn’t really share what I was going through. My depression and isolation was a bad choice back then. Of course, I’m over that now, but it’s still sad knowing that I could have handled myself better. Who knows, I might still be friends with her, if only I hadn’t gotten deeper into self-isolation and trying to fight through my breakup pain all on my own.

If any of this sounds familiar, then please know that you’re not alone in those experiences. After a breakup, if you’re not blessed with a very close relationship to your parents or a deep friendship with a best friend with whom you share everything, it’s quite common to withdraw more and more from people.

But of course, when you are going through intense heartbreak and feel lost, alone, even left alone, or to put it more drastically, feeling abandoned, the worst thing you could do to feel better is to withdraw from people and reinforce those feelings of loneliness. When you are dealing with feelings of depression after a breakup, the cure for your problems is human connection. And that’s the harsh and cruel paradox of breakups…. 

Especially as a man, who typically doesn’t socialize as much, breakups make us feel extremely lonely, and instead of seeking human connection, friendships, group events, and so on, we tend to try to fight through the pain all by ourselves, which only makes it worse.

And hey, I’m technically even guilty of this myself. One of the best advice I can give to all of you after a breakup is to hit the gym. And that can work out great for most guys, but even when you go out to the gym every third day, some guys will still only dig themselves into a hole, where all they see is their exercise and they don’t really focus on socializing, making friends, and so on. It’s ironic… We can be among dozens or even 100s of people, yet feel completely alone. And part of that has to do with our mindset, for sure.

So, while I think going to the gym is the best advice possible, I should also be honest and warn you, that anything you do, even as a positive action, can backfire if you don’t pay attention to the fact that you’re only using it as a tunnel view type of distraction from your heartbreak, loneliness, or distraction. 

And in my opinion, this behavior sums up depression as a whole quite well. Whether you have a big heartbreak and you feel depressed, or whether you have severe depression and the physical effects on your body due to it are quite severe, this kind of emotion can happen to anybody, anywhere, no matter where you live, and what you do. 

You can live on the most beautiful beach, among lots of people, and feel alone because you don’t try to blend in with your community. You can live in a big city, with 10 inspiring events happening each day, and yet you can be alone because you never go anywhere and just go home after work. Or you can be out and about, at the coffee shop every single day, and feel lonely as fuck. The only way to get out of a depressed state is to actively seek out human connection.

Depression is awful, but here’s the good news. If your depression has started or is starting due to a breakup, then I would assume that you have only been in this state for a relatively short amount of time. For some of you, you felt alone and unable to get back your enthusiasm for a month, for some it’s been a few months to a year, and maybe a few rare ones of you have been at this for a few years.

The longer you stay in that state, the harder it is to get out of it. So for most of you, even just a little bit of conscious action to push yourself to be more outgoing, and to most importantly do things you enjoy, and connect with other people who enjoy what you like, will make you feel better.

The longer you wait, the harder it will be to get back to a state of normalcy. That said, even if it’s been a long time, I have to give a caveat here. I don’t think the longer you have been depressed, the harder it is to feel good again. It’s more that you FEEL that way. But that feeling is wrong. So it’s a subjective experience, where our defeated mindset determines our actions, and our actions then determine our bad outcomes.

You’d be surprised how quickly you can turn around your life with even just one small change in your life. Your body can regulate itself to become happy again very quickly. You run on hormones. It’s just like a vitamin deficiency. Give the body the vitamins it needs, and you will recover faster than you could imagine. Human connection to fight depression and loneliness works just the same.

The actual thing that makes overcoming a long-lasting depression hard is not the time it takes to recover. It may take you slightly longer to recover depending on how long you’ve been depressed or isolated, but I don’t think by much.

The real challenge is that the longer you stay in a depressive state, the more you will find reasons not to take action to feel better. And so the secret to overcoming breakup depression is finding the discipline, and perhaps even a schedule to actively force yourself to do things that may make you feel better.

And the pressure doesn’t have to be massive. For example, you could have a calendar reminder or something like a simple note that you review once per month, which suggests that you should be going to the local runner’s club. Simple reminders such as this can help you encourage yourself to become more social again. 

I run large parts of my life on these types of reminder cards nowadays, because life is really hard. Even without a breakup, it is easy to fall into deep depression at times. Loneliness is a universal human experience, and this is why it’s so crucial to remind yourself that all it takes to overcome that loneliness is your conscious choice and a little action to feel better and happier.

I don’t put these reminders up as ways of punishment, or to make myself feel bad. So if you set some goals, don’t feel bad if you miss some of them occasionally. It see healthy reminders for myself to improve my mental health as habits, that I may not follow at all times, but instead, they are underlying core principles that I live by, that simplified speaking all contribute to one principle: “I want to be happy”

If you’re serious about being happy, you’ll take action steps to reach that goal. Even if it isn’t always easy. Even if you don’t always feel good about it. Even if you sometimes forget it or slip up. You can still be proud of yourself for trying. And in time, you’ll hopefully reach a more positive state of mind about life.

I know a lot of you don’t feel happy right now. Whether it’s because of a recent breakup, or whether it’s because of how that breakup made you feel and now you’ve felt lost for such a long time already. Even if the breakup happened a long time ago and it’s no longer about your ex girlfriend, but rather about how you feel unhappy with yourself, you deserve to feel happy. And you can feel happy again.

So perhaps, with this post, I was able to give you a little bit of encouragement to come up with some ideas of what you can do for yourself to feel happy again, and perhaps you are able to think of some non-pressuring ways of how you can meet more people, make some friends, find workout buddies, create new business connections, and perhaps even a new girlfriend in the future. Or perhaps, you don’t even have to look that far ahead. Maybe you can just go on a date or two just to have a great time and not overcomplicate the process too much.

Whatever you need, I hope you’ll find it. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.