How to Stop Caring about Someone Who Hurt You: 15 Steps to Heal

Feeling heartbroken? It feels like the world has ended. There is life beyond. Time to learn how to stop caring about someone who hurt you.

Have you ever felt like you’d prefer to be numb? If you’ve ever been heartbroken, you’ve wished that someone could take all the pain away. Learning how to stop caring about someone who hurt you is easier said than done.

But wouldn’t life be easier if emotions came with an on and off switch? Have you ever watched The Vampire Diaries? In that show, the two vampire brothers can actually turn off their emotions. They simply decide they don’t want to feel the emotions of being human anymore. Click! They turn them off—that’s it. They feel nothing.

The thing is, we’re not TV vampires. There is no mythical on and off switch for the way we feel. We’re supposed to feel, it’s part of being human. Through feeling we process what happened and deal with it. Hopefully avoiding it happening again in the future. [Read: How to rebuild trust after even the worst type of betrayal]

How to stop caring about someone who hurt you in 15 easy to follow steps

While you might not be able to turn it all off, you can learn to deal with it in a healthy way. Ever wondered how to stop caring about someone who hurt you? It’s surprisingly nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with you. In order to stop caring, turn the situation around and begin caring about yourself instead.

#1 Allow yourself to feel the emotions. You’re going to need tissues for this, and probably a large bottle of wine, but you need to really feel the emotions in order to process them. You can’t deal with a situation unless you’ve felt the hurt and allowed it to change something inside of you.

I’m not suggesting you become bitter and unloving, but by feeling these emotions, you’ll recognize that your own happiness is far more important than feeling this way about someone else. [Read: The case for why you should fall in love with yourself first before falling for someone else]

#2 Face up to what has happened and accept it. Far too many people don’t allow themselves to deal with a situation, simply because they don’t want it to be true. They get on with life and hope it goes away, but it never does. If you don’t face up to the situation and really accept it, it will simply come back to bite you on the ass at a later date. Believe me, it will feel ten times worse. Don’t run away from it. This is life.

#3 Take off your rose-tinted spectacles. You’re probably seeing all the good in them, all the positive memories you had together before the hurt happened. Take off those spectacles and see things for what they are; rationalize it by telling yourself that they hurt you, and someone who really cares about you wouldn’t have done it.

Okay, we all make mistakes, but the fact you’re trying to stop caring about this person tells me that this wasn’t a small mistake. [Read: How to allow time for self-discovery after a breakup]

#4 Lean on your friends. Talk it out, lean on your friends, and allow them to help. Don’t defend the person’s actions. If your friend wants to bitch on them, let them do it! Listen, these people really do care about you, and they want what is best for you. This is one of the key steps in learning how to stop caring about someone who hurt you.

#5 Delete them on your social media. Do not Facebook or Instagram stalk them, it’s not cute and it’s not clever. Being up-to-date on what they’re doing isn’t going to help you get over them, and it’s not going to help you stop caring.

#6 Delete their phone number too. You’re going to have moments of weakness, blame those rose tinted glasses once more! Delete that phone number so you can’t get in touch with them on a Friday night when you’ve had too much to drink and you’re feeling nostalgic. You’ll undo all your hard work and regret it the next day. [Read: 12 reasons why the no contact rule always works]

#7 Avoid acting the martyr. It’s easy to fall into the martyr trap, but once you’re in it, it’s hard to get out, and it simply leads you down a road towards life-long negativity. Okay, it’s tough, it’s unfair, but it’s happened and you have to deal with it. Do not be the martyr, it’s not an attractive look and it won’t help you move on. [Read: Martyr complex – How to recognize it and stop self-inflicted martyrdom]

#8 Forgive yourself and avoid the blame game. You’ll probably start blaming yourself for certain things as the healing process moves on, but don’t. This person hurt YOU, not the other way around! You don’t magically control another person’s actions, they made that choice themselves. Forgive yourself for anything you’re thinking about and avoid blaming yourself.

#9 Embrace the anger, for it will come! In the process of understanding how to stop caring about someone who hurt you, there will come anger, and it will probably be spectacular! Embrace it, feel it, allow yourself to be empowered by it, and then let it go. The anger is a sign that you’re moving on.

#10 Avoid bitterness. Not all men are the same, not all women are the same, so don’t allow yourself to become bitter on future partners *yes, there will be one, and probably more than one!*. By blaming humanity for everything this person did to you, the only person you’ll be hurting by doing this is yourself. [Read: Letting go of someone you love–minus the bitterness]

#11 Throw away anything they gave you. You’ll always have memories, but you don’t need physical ones as a reminder. Throw away any gifts or mementos they gave you, or anything you’re hanging onto. You do not need the cinema ticket from your first date. Bin it!

#12 Embrace distraction. When you’re feeling hurt and heartbroken, it’s like a rollercoaster. One minute you think you’re okay, and then it hits you like a brick. Distraction is a good way to prolong the good moments, and then the bad ones won’t have the chance to get a look in. Go on vacation, do something fun. Basically distract your mind in healthy ways.

#13 Do something you always wanted to do. Hot on the heels of distraction, is there something you always wanted to do, but they didn’t want you to? For instance, did you want to dye your hair bright red? Did you want to skydive? Do it! Go or it now and do it for yourself. The feel good factor will be one of the biggest steps you can take in understanding how to stop caring about someone who hurt you. You’ll realize that you’re more important.

#14 Accept that it doesn’t always work out, but there is a future beyond. One of the signs that you’re coming to the end of the how to stop caring about someone who hurt you journey is that you can accept that sometimes love just doesn’t work out how you want it to, and you’re okay with that.

You can also recognize that there will be a future for you with someone else, and that you’ll be open to it when the time comes. [Read: How to start feeling good again after a bad breakup]

#15 Take your time. The final step is to take your time. Don’t jump back into the dating scene to numb the pain; that’s just a Bandaid over a very nasty wound that needed stitches instead. Take your time, allow yourself to grieve the end of the relationship or to grieve the event that hurt you, and then simply be for a while.

Be yourself, do things for you. If and when the time comes to move on, you’ll be fully healed and able.

[Read: How to emotionally detach when you don’t have any other choice]

Learning how to stop caring about someone who hurt you takes time and real effort. It’s so easy to fall back into their clutches and pretend it didn’t happen. Chances are that history is just going to repeat itself. 

The post How to Stop Caring about Someone Who Hurt You: 15 Steps to Heal is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.