How to relieve anxiety after a breakup as a guy when you can’t go on without your ex. Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster. Here I teach men how to move on from their ex-girlfriend.

Alright guys, so, breakup anxiety — it’s really nothing nice to go through. If you really struggle from breakup anxiety, then it can absolutely ruin your life. I remember, when I was younger, I had some breakups with some girls, you know, the typical short-lived relationships, nothing super serious yet, just your average first small relationships when you’re 25 or younger. And those breakups didn’t really phase me. I mean sure, I really was heartbroken, I missed my exes and couldn’t believe that it was over, but there’s a certain difference between an average breakup that hurts, but you get over it relatively quickly, versus a breakup where it takes control of your entire life, and your entire body starts to malfunction.

If you never had to deal with real anxiety, then suffering from it due to a breakup is absolutely terrible. There’s nothing worse than suffering from the symptoms of anxiety, which tend to manifest physically in your body, through tension, heightened irritation, maybe even inflammation in the body, fever, lack of sleep, even your arm muscles can tighten up if it gets really bad, making you think you’re having a heart attack or something similar…

And the list goes on and on. Depending on how much you miss your ex girlfriend and how much the entire breakup hurts you, the worse the physical symptoms can get. Problems like sleepless nights or not being able to eat properly because of a breakup is barely the tip of the iceberg and even those symptoms are already difficult to deal with.

So, I don’t know everyone’s individual symptoms who’s reading this, but I’ll go off of the assumption, that if you are reading this post, you could be one of those guys who are severely struggling with the breakup. Like, let’s say we’d put your emotional and physical pain on a scale of 1-10, you’re somewhere in the range of 7-10… If you’re in that range, where it can barely get any worse, how the heck are you supposed to deal with that as a guy? 

It’s quite difficult, if not terrifying, to struggle with a sudden onset of such extreme mental health problems. Especially if it’s your first time. I will never forget the first time that I had to deal with extreme anxiety in my own body.

Now, to be clear, I once had a really bad breakup, and my anxiety due to this breakup was fairly extreme, but many years later, I had some far more severe anxiety due to chronic problems in my personal life. So I am no stranger to the problem of feeling helpless to your anxiety, and practically being trapped in your own body, unable to make yourself feel good again.

It’s a horrible feeling when you know that you are supposed to be happy, to feel healthy, to be able to sleep, or get up with a lot of energy and positivity, but no matter what happens, you cannot bring yourself to feel better. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mental block or something deeply sitting within your body that you can’t turn off. Anxiety is terrible, whether it’s general anxiety, or anxiety that is caused by a breakup.

And actually, I brought up the story of my more severe anxiety because it taught me something important that you can apply to any anxiety that you feel due to your breakup. When we feel extreme anxiety, our body practically begins to run on autopilot. I never knew how real anxiety works, until I had it… There’s a saying that trauma stays in the body. And that is certainly true for anxiety. Once you’ve been anxious once, it’s easy to bring back the same emotional or physical state again. 

And what I learned is that the more we focus on the thing that makes us anxious, the worse the anxiety becomes. And so in the case of panic attacks or anxiety, a person would focus on their tight chest, or their dizziness, or their lightheadedness in their temple area, and so on. And with breakups and ex-girlfriends, we do the same thing, but I think it becomes less obvious that the focus on our ex is bad for us.

When you try to actively focus on your chest because it’s tight… You can literally feel it becoming tighter. All your senses in your body start to focus on your chest, and that ironically is often what can make it worse, not better. If you would have a tight chest and general anxiety going on in your life, the best thing you could do is not focus on your physical issues and your mental issues. And the moment you focus on your problems, or on your body that is aching, you immediately fall back into a cycle of unhealthy ruminating that makes it worse and worse.

So, the key to relieving anxiety, is to, obviously, not focus on the thing that gives you anxiety. And in the case of a breakup, that is your ex. But of course, because you miss your ex-girlfriend so much, you are focusing on her all the time. And that is then what’s causing you the anxiety. And even the act of trying to avoid thinking about her can cause anxiety in the same way as trying to consciously calm down your chest muscles can actually make them tighter.

So, the key to properly stop focusing on the thing that makes you feel anxious, is to distract yourself. Telling yourself “I will not think about my ex” is as useless as it is useless to tell yourself “I will breathe deeply and control my chest”… Now, don’t get me wrong. Often conscious breathing is extremely helpful and important, in case you ever get this type of anxiety. 

I’m just making the point here, that we create our anxiety by consciously giving it more attention. But if for example, you are so busy with something for the entire week, that you literally don’t have time to think about your ex-girlfriend or the source of your anxiety, you will often feel very surprised to find that your body is all the way back to normal. It’s like your body doesn’t even remember anymore that it was running on panic mode just a week ago.

Humans are able to adapt quite quickly. It’s fascinating how fast we can heal, change our mood, get healthier with a better diet, and so on. Our body is an incredible machine that always works hard to perform at its best. Your body doesn’t want to be anxious. Your body doesn’t want to live under the constant stress of missing your ex-girlfriend. And so for a lot of you guys who are watching this, you are probably underestimating how quickly you can start to feel better after a breakup, if only you would stop thinking about your ex, and instead get yourself busier than you could possibly imagine. 

With hobbies, with new goals, a business, workout, gym, yoga, learning an instrument, and so on. And I’m only saying to get busy. I’m not suggesting to get stressed. Obviously, if you pressure yourself to achieve new things that are unrealistic, or if you are being hard on yourself with the new things that keep you busy, then that could backfire. It’s more about being in the zone, and basically forgetting the emotional or physical pain for a while, so that your body can adapt back to a normal state almost automatically.

So, if you for example, adapt a new schedule, take on new responsibilities in life, and just get busy to the degree that when you go home after work, or even a little bit after that, you get home in the evening because you still went somewhere, and you practically can’t wait to fall asleep… That’s the good type of busy!

When time was flying and you didn’t even realize how much time had passed. Because that’s the type of business where you notice your body, and you notice that it’s normal. It’s like “What the hell?! I didn’t even know it is possible to feel so relaxed.” 

Normal stress is a good thing. Your body appreciates normal stress, lots of business to take care of, and big but exciting challenges to overcome. What it doesn’t appreciate is chronic overthinking. And so all you have to do to overcome your anxiety is to find a new way of living that makes you think “Wow, look how time has been flying!”…

That seems extremely hard in the beginning, but that is precisely because you are not conscious of how often you think about your ex-girlfriend versus how often you consciously choose to do other things that just stop your brain from focusing on the pain over and over.

Once you consciously encourage and push yourself to live a new life, you will very quickly notice that you are no longer overthinking. These mindset shifts often happen on autopilot and it’s crazy how easily we can shift ourselves into a different state of being. Of course, maintaining that state, especially in the beginning, is harder than it is months down the line, but with a little bit of discipline, coupled with some positive thinking, you can overcome your stress and anxiety, and stop living in your head all the time to replay your relationship and breakup. 

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.