Heartbroken but Not Hopeless: How to Take the First Step After a Breakup

Healing After Heartbreak — Taking Ownership & Feeling My Emotions

In this solo episode of Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, I open up about one of the most painful experiences of my life—dealing with a breakup that completely knocked me off my feet. I share what it felt like to lose everything I thought was secure, and how that moment became the catalyst for a deeper commitment to myself and my healing.

I talk honestly about the depression, anxiety, and emotional numbness I faced in the months that followed, and how I made a decision early on: I would never allow myself to stay in that place again. That choice led me into a long journey of self-care, personal growth, and healing.

In this episode, I break down what’s helped me: learning how to deal with a breakup, feeling my emotions instead of suppressing them, finding healthy outlets for anger and grief, and exploring inner child healing—something I once thought was “woo” but now see as essential.

Most importantly, I share the power of taking 100% ownership for my life. When I stopped blaming and started owning my part in past relationships, I finally started moving on from the breakup and rebuilding my sense of self.

If you’re in the middle of heartbreak, or looking for tips for moving on, this episode is for you.
You’re not alone—and you can move forward.

Transcript

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in this powerful episode, I talk about the first steps you can take after a breakup. I talk about emotional suppression versus emotional expression, the importance of inner child healing and how taking a hundred percent ownership for your life, self and healing is key. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in. Breakups probably one of the most painful experiences most people will feel because a breakup can have the impact of turning your life upside down. You have this idea that, yes, I'm in this relationship and everything's going well, and then suddenly it's all taken from underneath your feet and you are left there thinking to yourself that six months ago I was feeling safe, secure, happy, loved, and then suddenly that's all gone. The reason I wanted to do this episode was because this was one of the biggest and most painful experiences that I've been through, and if there's some way that I can impact or inspire or help somebody who's going through something like this right now, then I want to be able to do that. Now, my first major breakup was back in 2016, I think it was, yeah, 2016. And I'd only been with her with this woman for nine months, but it was one of them really fast-paced, high intensity relationships and. When I got with her initially for the first six or so months, I was thinking, you know, you, you are. I was logged up. I was logged up literally to the brim and I thought, yeah, this is the one. It's perfect. Everything's going well. And we were in the processes, in the process of actually buying a house together. Luckily it ended and we didn't get a house together.'cause that would've made things so much more complicated. But when it ended, I remember going to this house where she was staying and she told me all this and it didn't really sink in initially. And I went home and I literally passed my parents because I was living with my parents at the time, and I just went upstairs and started subbing. And for the next six months, I had severe anxiety, depression. I felt very much like a zombie. In fact, I walked around like a zombie. I felt as though how can life get any worse? I felt stuck. I felt overwhelmed. I felt, I felt like. This is it. This is at the end. What am I gonna do? But trust me, it is just one step at a time. At that point, you think to yourself, what am I gonna do? It's the end. Nobody's gonna love me now, but you move, it's a phase. You move through this phase, and I remember. One thing that I did first three or four days into the breakup was to make a commitment to myself that I was never, ever going to be in that place again. And. Yeah, so this is where this, this is, this is where I feel it's a good place to start because the only person who can help to change your life is you. You can get inspiration from others and assistance. Maybe you might need a therapist or you might need to go and chat to somebody. That's fine. But you are the one that has to do the work. And that's something people have to realize. Sometimes people go to coaches, and I was, I say very beginning thinking that the coach can fix my problems, but the coaches are there to listen, to give you assistance, to give you inspiration. Then you have to go and do the work Now. My initial thoughts for the first year since after the breakup was that I was going to go away and improve my, uh, anxious to help me to improve my anxiousness, to help, to improve my confidence because my aim was to show, show my past partner that I had changed and I'm ready for a relationship again. But little, little did I realize as I started to improve myself, as I started to make them adjustments, I started to realize that, do I really want her back? Because sometimes you can be in relationships and you can be the loneliest person. So let's go back to commitment. So the relationships ended, or whatever's going on. It doesn't have to be a relationship. It could be an end of a job, it could be, um, a loss of a friend. It could be, it could be anything. But you have to make a commitment really, that you gotta change your life. And actually, it was at this commitment that I ended up. Uh, spending the next 10, 15 years on this personal and spiritual growth journey, which completely has completely transformed who I am. So you're gonna make a commitment. My suggestion here is that you write a commitment declaration, declaration on either the computer or a piece of paper. And then you sign it and put it on your wall. Now, this decoration could include ways that you're going to improve yourself. It could include new things that you're going to do first thing in the morning. It could be, it could be anything. Just as though, just so that you have this decoration that you're gonna change your life that nicks on the wall so that you can see it. Every day even better thing to do would be to read it. The next thing that you could possibly add to your day or routine or whatever it is, is to allow yourself to start to feel your emotions. I've spent many, many years bearing my emotions, whether that's anger, sadness, grief. Hatred, whatever, whatever emotion it is, and take it from me that the more that you ignore or try to run away from your emotions, the more your emotions will come out and get the better review. So during, for, for me. Anger has always been an emotion that I found very hard to express, very hard to deal with, and so I used to bury that down and I remember on one occasion I was actually with this woman, and when I'm sober, I can. I can suppress, I can bury anger very easily. I can bury emotions generally. And on on occasion I was drinking. Now when I drink, I can't, and remember during this event, said something to me and I just flipped and I shouted and stormed out. Now, that's not me at all. But when you bury, especially anger, when you bury anger or suppress anger, it can always come out at times which are most inconvenient. At least when you are able to deal, when you are able to feel and acknowledge and to accept your current emotions, you can work through them in a healthy way. So for example, now when I'm wanting to express some anger, I can either shout into a pillar, I can go and do some CrossFit, and I allow my warrior to utilize that anger in a healthy way. I can. Just find ways to feel my anger. Sometimes feeling anger might involve just sitting with it and allow myself to feel that, sensation in my body. It all depends how you as a person function and how you best feel into emotion. So this might be an idea of how, of exploring. How you can personally deal, how you can personally acknowledge and feel your emotions. Another way I used to do it, I do do it, is through dance. I do use dance to feel my emotions as well, but it's so, it's so important to allow yourself to feel these emotions, especially after this, after a breakup. After a breakup, you're gonna feel a lot of sadness, a lot of grief. And they're not easy emotions to work for. It's so important that you start, and it hasn't got to be long. It could be just, it could, you could start off by doing 60 seconds of feeling that emotion and you might burst into tears and that's okay. It's okay to cry, especially for the men out there. So it could be, it could be 60 seconds, it could be two minutes, it could be 10 minutes. You could put aside a day to allow yourself to feel these emotions. Just remember, it's a process. It's not something that's gonna be done in a couple of days. If you've got the time, you could go away for a, a, a whole week or a whole couple of months or to feel these emotions to process all this stuff. But for the majority of people, it's almost impossible to spend whole days feeling your emotions because of work commitments, family commitments, whatever it is. Now I find for me personally, when it comes to feeling emotions, I do it in several ways. I now, these are just these ways that I utilize might not be what you need. But these are just ways that I've done it and these might just be what you need. So the first thing I do, I like to go and walk in nature. Nature is one of my greatest healers, and so I'll go and walk in nature and I'll talk these emotions out loud to myself. Now I can. I'm, I suppose I've done it for quite, I've done it for many, many years, and so I'm able to have conversations with these emotions in quite an easy way. Now, I'm, when I speak out loud, the good thing about doing that is that you are able to hear it if you think it in your head. You don't hear it. Whereas when you hear it, it almost feels like an external conversation. And I might ask my anger, or my grief, or my sadness, what are you trying to tell me? Why? Why are you here? What do I need to do? How can I feel these emotions more deeply? And it is about getting curious about these emotions so that you can start to accept and acknowledge and to feel these emotions. And you'll also find that these emotions, uh, only here because there's something wrong in your life. And it's at this point that these emotions can actually tell you what they actually need. So for me, a lot of my emotions were there because I lacked the love for myself. this is, working with your emotions is about exploring this a little bit deeper. It's about finding the ways in which you personally process these emotions.'cause as I said, people process these emotions in different ways. We are not all the same and we never will be. So it's about finding a way that you can best. Feel these emotions. Another big part of my healing journey after the breakup was the inner child healing. Now we are recording. I think I've recorded almost 60 episodes and I've lost count the number of people who've talked about inner child healing. And so it just kind of reinforces the importance of healing our own inner child. And for those people who think, oh, that's Cubs Wabo, or, I don't believe in that stuff, trust me, it's pretty damn true, especially in my eyes. Because as a, as a child, as a baby, as a young, um, child, we don't know really what's right and what's wrong. So we're super reliant on our parents to show us. And if our parents at that time weren't emotionally available or were always away, then. We are gonna Ms. Key parts. We might not feel loved, we might not feel worthy or good enough, or we might have to do things in order to feel that we're a good child. So suddenly, Saybrook example, you have to be quiet at a dinner table. That's a big one. I will be seen and not heard, and this can have an Im a huge impact. You know the fact that if you start talking and you get told that, oh, you are a bad child, these beliefs might still be within us, that I'm bad, I'll always be bad. I'm a bad person. And it's the same with, say for example, you had a parent who wasn't there very often and wasn't able to give you the love that as a child you wanted. So you might be feeling that sense of feeling unloved. And so I'm gonna have to reinforce the, the need for us to, to do that in a child healing, to parent our own inner child. Now you're probably asking how can you do that? I. Well, the first thing is I would suggest that you type in in a child healing into Google, and it will give you lots and lots and lots of resources. I think. Yeah, you'll be absolutely inundated. Resources then. You're gonna pick one that's right for you.'cause there's a number of ways that you can do inner child healing. You can do inner child healing through meditation. You can do inner child healing through visualization, through just allowing yourself to connect to your inner child, like I mentioned earlier about emotions. You can set the intention to connect with your inner child. And like we're talking about earlier with say for example, anger or grief being part, um, a sense in your body, you can allow yourself to feel, to, to move to where you feel that inner child is within your body. And then you can ask it for what it needs in that moment. With my own inner child, my. Owning a child always wants love. So then how do we give that inner child love? The first thing is you can just allow yourself just to feel love and to visualize yourself loving that inner child and it's such an important thing. We, we think that. We are not good enough or we are not worthy. But in fact, a lot of these things, which cause these beliefs that we have, are actually from our childhood. And so by doing that inner child healing, we can start to heal those parts and to start to rewrite our script of what happened. I had, um, an interview. The other week, I think it'll be coming out the episode after this one. And that was with Mark Ashia, I think it's, his name is, and he talks about psychotherapy and shamanism. And we had a conversation about inner child healing and how important it was. And he talked about. The script that we currently live in this moment was actually written when we were a child. Even though things have changed massively, and so being, by being able to go into our, into our, into our script to realize our, our actual script from that inner child, we can start to rewrite it. NI falls. Maybe looking a little bit, little bit deeper at our own childhood, what, what went well, what didn't work? Were our parents there when we needed them? Did we feel loved? Did we feel good or did we always feel bad? What kind of things can, what kind of things did we do that really allowed our parents to shout at us? Did we get enough support? Did we allow them to talk to us like we were a, a little boy or a little girl? Girl? How did and how did that make you feel? So my suggestion for Inner Child Healing will be to look at resources on the internet, Google, and to see what feels right for you and perhaps follow that avenue. Whatever it is, course or meditation or visualization and try it out. And if it doesn't work, that's okay. Try again, try another. But what I am thinking I might do, I might do, actually, I'm thinking I might even put together an episode, especially on, in a child heath, and I might do it in a child healing meditation. That feels right, me. So maybe I'll do that on my next episode where I do, where I talk solo. Because it's such a big, big, important thing to really understand. And the final point I wanna talk about today is about taking a hundred percent ownership for what has happened. Now, the reason I say take a hundred percent ownership is because if you only take 50%, you are gonna blame people. Blame. The other person for the other 50%, and at least if you take a hundred percent ownership for what happened, you bring all the power back to you. Now, I'm not saying you are ready to take full ownership because there might be some blame or there might be something which happened, which you can't quite, uh, can't quite let go of, and that's okay. But one of the things I realized for myself is that when you take a hundred percent ownership, you own everything that has happened and you are then able to change that yourself.'cause you can't change that other person. Full stop. You might think you can, but you can't. But who you can change is you. And through this change you can really, really step in and change the parts of you that perhaps didn't work. And maybe you wanna change parts that did work, but you can make them better. In my, one of my first relationships, and I think probably all of them, there was always part of me that was very anxious. I was the very needy partner. The one who wanted to always feel love of that other person, and that's the way I felt love. And so I realized that I was what they call now and Mr. A nice guy, I was always really, really nice. I had no boundaries. I hated arguments. In fact, I would do anything. I'd even carry into a ball to avoid an argument. I had no confidence, no self-esteem. And so by taking a hundred percent ownership for my, for my life personally, I was able to change that. I was able to build confidence. I was able to build my self-esteem. I was able to deal with my, sorry, not deal, manage my anxiousness. I was able to step in and take the confidence to step into disputes, arguments in a healthy way. I was able to be a much, much better partner, and this is because I took a hundred percent ownership for what happened. In fact, I had a, a conversation the other day with a guy who is gonna come onto the podcast and he's a relationship coach. Yeah, and we had this conversation about taking a hundred ownership, and what came from that was that when you were able to take full ownership of what happened, you step into your best version, you were able to change, you were able to grow, you were able to become that next level you and that next level you is a much, much better person. He's more, he's more evolved. He's more wise, he's more, he steps into his full power. And obviously it's a process. It's not gonna change us like that, but also take full, full ownership or allow you to forgive not just that other person if it was their fault, but able to forgive yourself. For things that happened in the past and for allowing things to happen. So how do you take full ownership? My suggestion and what I have done in the past is to look where the relationship perhaps didn't work. Look at avenues where you felt wronged. Or where, where you may have been wrong in that situation and ask yourself, could I have done something different? What part did I play in that? Is there parts of me who feels small? How can I make them? How can I bring these parts outta me? And then it's understanding as well. This is a key concept, that we have everything inside us so we can be happy and merry. We can be sad and grieving. We can be evil. But we can also be great. We can be patient or we can be impatient, and it's the choices that you make, which dictate which ones you follow. But if you kind of figure out that, oh, I'm not evil, you tried to push it away. It comes back twice as hard, whereas you accept that part into you. You get to then choose how you react in a situation. Now, I use, I use the word evil because probably there's gonna be a lot of people out there who said, I'm not evil, but it's understanding that we have every part within us. And when we start to accept that and we accept these parts in, we can then dictate which parts that we want to, which who we, who we show up to be. And there's, there's a quick brief idea of some ways that you can quickly, not quickly, because it's a process, go for a breakup and. I'm one of them people who after a breakup, I will spend a year or year and a half, two years doing the work so that I don't take any of that, any of that stuff that I had in the other relationship into the next one. And so we talked about dealing with anxiety and depression and looking at making a commitment to change our own life. We looked at. Feeling your emotions, which is the path to healing and being able to practice processing emotions in healthy ways. And then we stepped into looking at inner child healing and then about us taking full ownership of our life. So I hope those points help because I know they helped me and I said, I hope they help you. And yeah, let me know what you think. Do these work, do you want to have specific episodes on one of these topics, which I can go into a bit little bit deeper in how I personally did it for fully. Yeah, I would love to know. I would love to know what you think because it's all very well me doing these podcast episodes, but if I don't hear feedback back, it's a bit more difficult for me to know what people want. So yeah, I would love to know your, I. What you enjoy, what needs to improve? Ways in which I can be better. I'm always looking to improve, so that's perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in to Man a Quest. Find meaning if today's conversation sparked something in you, take a moment to reflect, then take a step. Remember, real growth comes from action, not just insight. If you found value in this episode, share it with a friend. Leave her a review, or reach out and let me know what resonated. Your feedback helps shape the journey we are on together. For more conversations like this, make sure to subscribe and stay connected. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn for updates, tools, and upcoming guests. Remember. It's not about having the answers. It's about daring to look.