Quote:
Tell yourself: These are just feelings. I can control them, and breathe in breathe out.
You'll see there are a lot, a lot worse things than a breakup in life.
Worst advice ever. While you CAN control the response to feelings, you cannot control HAVING feelings.
Essentially you're encouraging him to feel bad about feeling bad...
The healthiest thing to do is GRIEVE, it's ok to let those feelings in and experience them to their fullest. Denying them will only increase their influence over you and prolong the grieving process. You can ask yourself the question "what's going on inside me in this moment?" - always a good idea to have one foot within (yourself) and one foot with-out. You can do the Focusing technique which is super easy to do and most people find it a great tool to ground themselves
http://www.focusing.org/sixsteps.html.
That said, you may want to journal, but make sure you're doing the basics to take care of yourself. Give yourself the compassion you deserve, and most of all whenever you focus on her, refocus on yourself - in other words, do things that feed you such as hanging out with a 'safe' friend (one who won't judge you), working out, a walk, learning a new hobby, treating yourself to something...now is the time to reconnect with YOUR SELF.
You have a wound, and like any wound it takes some care and time to heal. Don't listen to people telling you to jump into a new relationship or bed women to overcome things, the pain will only become masked for you to deal with later. Now is a great time to be present with yourself, and to treat yourself with kindness and patience throughout this process.
CHAT
