Often times- what we miss most in the throws of heartbreak is the comfort and routine we have built with our person. Having that suddenly be stripped away is of course confronting and very difficult to navigate.
Quite a few years ago, a very smart psychologist called Gary Chapman came up with the five love languages. Namely that these are the five ways that we show love and that we like to receive love. There’s a lot of quizzes online that you can take (and if you’re unclear on your love language here is a helpful like for you-) https://5lovelanguages.com
In the context of a relationship it lets us know what our partner’s love language is and what they perceive as love so that we can help deliver that and also what our love languages are so that we can convey that to our partner. For example if our main love language is physical touch and we never get hugs but they always do the dishes that’s kind of not going to speak to us. It’s a very handy tool to have in a relationship but it’s also a really handy tool to have out of a relationship.
Allow me to explain that.
Because we are now pouring all of this love that we gave our ex into ourselves we need to be super clear on how we feel love so that we can give ourselves love. Makes sense?
It important to be clear on what your top love languages are so that you can give that back to yourself and feel warm safe and secure, most importantly, while you’re going through this detox process.
The five love languages, as they stand, are
- physical touch
- words of affirmation
- quality time
- gifts
- and acts of service
They all have very different characteristics and they all speak to how you like to be loved. We’re not talking about them, we’re talking about YOU.
I want to know what your love languages are and particularly what your top two are because that’s where we’re going to want to put the focus when we’re pouring into our self-love cup.
Let’s get started.
If words of affirmation were high on your list when you did the Love Languages test, you need to be focusing on words of affirmation directed at yourself. Yes, you need to speak kindly and lovingly to yourself. If you make a list of your strengths and your successes, this will give you a lot of comfort is not lost. You can journal, you can speak mantras to yourself and in actual fact because Words of Affirmation is one of my top two, I put bracing sayings on paper and put them on the mirrors in my house to give myself that positive affirmation as I was going about my day from room to room.
You need to be speaking to your ideal future and bringing that into existence. Writing down who you are in six months’ time and looking back on that is a fantastic technique. So for example, if it was January, you could do a letter to yourself that you had written in the future, eight months in the future. It’s September and I have achieved XYZ. I am feeling confident. I am kicking personal goals. I have lost this amount of weight. I have got my exercise regime under control and speak to the future you. How you want to show up in the world and what you’re working towards. It really helps. Giving yourself little pep talks throughout the day like you can do it and high-fiving the mirror. If you’re a Mel Robbins fan you’ll be right down with this. She high-fives the mirror every single morning when she gets up to remind herself how awesome she is and I recommend that for you.
This next one you would probably think is going to be the most problematic and that is physical touch. And you wouldn’t be wrong but there are ways to combat missing this love language. And in actual fact, to be completely transparent, physical touch is my top love language and something that I really had to acknowledge I was very much lacking in.
So yoga, gentle exercise, dancing, Tai Chi, all of those things that move your body will nourish that particular love language. A massage or a spa day will really help. Having those hands on you, just breathing in that physical touch in a non-sexual way because physical touch is not about sex, it’s just about physical nourishment. An Epsom salt bath or a warm shower is also excellent for making you feel safe and wrapped up, as it were. Skincare and grooming. I did work a skincare routine into my day as one of my things that I put into my new schedule. I’d been a bit lax with it, and now I’m all about the face washes, the exfoliants, the serums and the moisturizers and I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, Louise, I know you’ve gone through a really hard time but wow, you’re glowing. One thing that really helped me and this is a big hack because I really do miss that feeling of a hug and there is actually a scientific reason for that is that a hug can actually calm the nervous system. If you see people with Asperger’s and they’re really having a freak out, one of the ways to actually calm them down is to put them into a tight hug. I really missed my hugs but I found something that absolutely helped me get over that. And that was a weighted blanket. I used to curl up on the lounge, put the weighted blanket around me and I really felt that compression like a hug. Of course, hugs from your loved ones are always a fantastic option and you definitely shouldn’t skip those. But I found that in my lonelier moments, either at night time or on the lounge when I was sitting thinking by myself, it really helped to calm and regulate my nervous system in the absence of having my partner there to co-regulate and hug me.
Quality Time is one that again might seem problematic as the person you spent your time WITH is now notably absent. For you- scheduling in a whole heap of fun activities and experiences is going to be paramount. Be that with friends family or solo you will need to build up a portfolio of new experiences that will serve to replace your old memories with your boo. Perhaps that’s taking a new dance class, a paint and sip or picking a new spot for your coffee in the morning. Its about being purposeful with your time and energy and picking new ways to spend your time that fill you with joy!
The next one is Acts Of Service. I know that if the housework and stuff like that doesn’t get done, that I feel like a complete mess if my home is falling apart. So I’ve learnt to get good at it, but it’s not one of my top love languages. But if it’s yours, cleaning your home will make you feel really good about yourself. Making your bed, taking the garbage out, preparing your healthy meals, scheduling, planning, organizing and delegating are also fantastic. Here’s one that’s really important. A great act of service that you can give yourself is to go to therapy or coaching during this time. The soil is absolutely rich for learning some great life lessons out of this heartbreak. It really does need to have a positive outcome, right? And though it doesn’t feel like it at the moment, there are lessons and gold to be uncovered. An active service that you can give yourself is to sit and talk to a professional about your breakup and about the lessons that you can learn out of this whole experience. You can also live purposely and consciously and really plan out how your days are going to look. Be disciplined in it and you will get a really big sense of achievement if acts of service is high on the list for you. service need to be 100% to yourself, Queen.
I’m going to take a bit of a punt here and say that receiving gifts may have been Miley Cyrus’s love language. And let me tell you that although she might have really liked receiving those gifts from her husband, she can buy her own flowers. See what I did there? If receiving gifts is something that you like, well, guess what? You get to buy gifts for yourself. What a great trade-off. Nothing like some retail therapy, is there? So, you could spend some money on your hobbies. You can go and get some new art supplies, perhaps. Or you can get a coloring in book. Or you might want to spend it on fitness classes or women’s circles or things that are going to enhance your quality of life. You can go shopping for things that you love within your budget. Absolutely. You can go on a little trip or holiday. A staycation is a great idea. You can get an Airbnb, even if it’s in your city, and go and explore parts of your city that you didn’t know existed. Just getting away from your own four walls sometimes can be incredibly cathartic and hell, why not? Eat a nice meal in a restaurant by yourself or with a friend and you’ll really feel like you’re splashing out and you’re a bit bougie when you’re doing that. Invest in some knowledge or education on something that interests you, which you have already done by purchasing this course, and I applaud you for that. Maybe there’s a couple of other things that you want to learn more about. You can invest in online courses. There are so many now that COVID has hit. We all change the way that we can learn and communicate. So that’s fantastic for us. You don’t necessarily need to carve out weeks at a time to go and learn a course, it’s all accessible on your home computer. And you can use some arts and crafts to make yourself something. Why don’t you get a paint and sip pack and do a paint and sip at home? That would be a really beautiful thing to do. And you’ve got some artwork at the end of it. I’m a terrible artist, but I do find that paint by numbers and having it fully explained it doesn’t look like a toddler did and having it fully explained it doesn’t look like a toddler did it which it would do if I did it freehand.
That’s it folks! All the ways that you can turn your love languages into SELF Love languages and feed yourself the good stuff every day.
Hope it helps!
Love and squishy hugs
Louise x