How to Heal After Heartbreak: Turning Pain Into Growth

Media Links

• Website: delvepsych.com

• Instagram: @delvepsych20

• YouTube: youtube.com/@DelvePsych20

• Substack: delvepsych.substack.com

Participants

• Hosts: Ali McGarel, Adam Fominaya

Overview of Big Ideas

• Heartbreak feels like “neural super-glue” being ripped apart; grief must be faced, not dodged.

• Emotional pain is a teacher—leaning in builds resilience and a stronger sense of self.

• Writing unsent Angry and Longing Letters helps untangle mixed feelings without reopening old wounds.

• Demonizing an ex can protect you short-term, but lasting peace comes from seeing shared humanity.•

FOMO is the fantasy of the road not taken; the grass gets greener where you choose to water it.

Breakdown of Segments

1. Why breakups send people to therapy in the first place.

2. The “attachment physics” behind painful separations.

3. Distance with dignity: post-mortem first, then a clean break.

4. Angry vs. Longing Letters—how to write them and why they work.

5. Using Kübler-Ross grief stages as prompts for deeper reflection.

6. Re-investing in friendships to curb late-night loneliness.

7. Protective demonization: a useful shield, but not a home.

8. Dating while healing—radical honesty as the kindest policy.

9. Dispelling the myth of a universal timeline for moving on.

   
   

References & Further Reading

• Levine, Amir & Heller, Rachel. Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment (2010)

• Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying (1969)

• Pennebaker, James W. Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

• Marcus Aurelius (trans. Hays). Meditations — reflections on amor fati

• Film: Forget Paris (1995) — a rom-com lens on symbolic loss