5 Factors Impacting Heartbreak in a Breakup: Guidance from Seattle Grief Counseling

Image from Pexels by James Collington 2/10/25

In honor of the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, let’s talk about heartbreak. There are many reasons and ways you may find yourself in a breakup. Most people think of romantic relationships, but you could also be experiencing a breakup of a friendship, business or professional relationship or with family. Different kinds of separations or ‘parting of ways’ can impact you differently, but a common theme is they tend to hurt. Whether you were the catalyst of the breakup or the person receiving the message, understanding components of your pain can help you ride the wave of emotions. The following areas apply can apply either side of the breakup.

1. How Your Attachment Style Impacts Grief in a Breakup

You may have heard about attachment styles. They’ve gained a lot more awareness in recent years. Your attachment style will impact how you show up in relationships and often time how you depart them. Your attachment style can contribute to how you ‘story’ the breakup, creating your unique experience.

Secure Attachement:

Generally, you feel safe and secure in relationships. You maintain healthy boundaries and have a healthy balance of inter-dependence and independence. You express your feelings as needed and generally have a positive view of yourself and others. People with a secure attachment style may be more likely to view the breakup as amicable or be able to story it as part of the journey. The breakup still hurts, but the coping can be more straightforward, and you are less likely to get caught up in unhelpful narratives.

Anxious Attachment:

You probably feel stressed out about being single or alone. People with an anxious attachment style tend to crave connection but also fear abandonment or loss. You may ask friends, partners, loved one for a lot of validation in relationships. Many people who have an anxious attachment style may blame themselves unfairly during a breakup and create narratives that fall into ‘all or nothing’ type thinking.  

Avoidant Attachment:

You probably don’t love deeply emotional interactions and avoid them at all costs. Your relationships tend to be surface level, and you avoid getting too close to people. During breakups, you might use it as evidence for narratives related to your general idea that you’re better off alone or that no one is good enough for you.

Image from Pexels by mohamedelaminemsiouri 2/10/25

Disorganized Attachment:

Your relationships are all over the place. You want closeness but it scares you at the same time. You might jump from person to person and generally don’t feel safe or secure with anyone, including yourself. During breakups, you might seek out another person quickly to try to dull the pain.

How has your attachment style impacted break up experiences?

2. Grief Counseling on Self-Perception and Heartbreak

The view you have of yourself is impacted by attachment styles outlined above. It can also be impacted by your family of origin, trauma history, life experiences and self-esteem. How you view yourself in relationship to your context and community will impact your experience of grief and loss. The view you have of yourself may also impact the resources you can access when recovering from a relational loss. Another way of referring to resiliency.

3. The Importance of Connection: How Inter-dependence Affects Grief and Healing

You may have heard of the term co-dependence. I prefer to understand a person’s boundaries and attachment style to understand their relationships with others. The truth is humans are social beings. We die in isolation. Humans need other humans, we need collaboration, love, connection and sharing of resources. The term ‘inter-dependence’ can help in reconceptualizing the fact that other people need you, and you need other people. This can help contextualize feelings of grief and loss during a breakup rather than judging yourself for your feelings. You don’t want to pathologize or judge yourself for feeling a wide range of emotions but rather understand your relational context and learn from it for future relationships.

4. Coping with the Loss of a Future You Envisioned

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Whether you initialized the breakup or you were surprised, part of experiencing relational loss is grieving the loss of a perceived future. Whether that future was next week, a year from now, or a lifetime, loss changes the future. Regardless of how much time and energy you considered for this person in your future, you probably did imagine them in some capacity. Relationships exist within wider frameworks, friends, family, community. The relationship that is ending can send waves through these other contexts and may cause other people to grieve. Think about the ways a divorce impacts an extended family, or a friendship breakup impacts a friend group. Getting too far into the future can make grieving the present more challenging. Consider working on grounding yourself in the present moment, creating a mindfulness or gratitude practice.

5. The Role of Time in Accepting a Breakup

By the time someone is having a conversation about ending a relationship, they’ve most likely been thinking about it for quite some time. It can be helpful to realize that the person initiating the breakup is probably closer to acceptance because they’ve been mulling over the idea much longer than the person hearing it for the first time. Whether you’re the one initiating the breakup or hearing it for the first time, realizing this fact can help you have empathy for yourself and the other person. This can contribute to what feels like a monumental discrepancy between people ending a relationship.

Of course, these aren’t the only factors impacting your unique experience of a breakup, but understanding these different components may help shine light on how you’ve gotten to this point and help guide you on your path to healing.

Grief Counseling in Seattle Washington can help you heal from breakups and heartbreak. Don’t hesitate to reach out and schedule a free consultation today.

About the Author: Seattle Washington Therapist, Chelsea Kramer LMFT PMH-C

Chelsea Kramer is a Seattle Therapist who works with individual and families facing grief, anxiety, reproductive and medical mental health concerns.

Learn more about Chelsea’s specialties: grief, anxiety, infertility, pregnancy loss, chronic illness, menopause, medical trauma

Learn more about Chelsea

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