After going through her own breakup several years ago, blogger and columnist Amy Chan began a breakup boot camp to help others learn to better cope with the tough emotions associated with a split.
If you’ve ever been through a breakup, you know that the hardest time isn’t necessarily the split itself, but the several months following where you have to get used to being single again. A lot of times you lose not only your partner, but your best friend, and while it’s definitely a time to learn and grow from, it can be hard to know where to start.
That’s where Amy Chan’s Renew breakup boot camp comes in.
Upon arrival of this multi-day retreat in New York’s Hudson Valley, you’ll completely unplug by checking in any digital devices. Over the course of the next few days, you’ll spend time with 10 other people, listening to group talks on topics like attachment theory and the psychology behind why we feel and behave the ways that we do when we grieve.
Chan also includes plenty of physical exercise to boost endorphins, one-on-one life coaching, and journaling assignments each night. Renew prides itself on combining the science of love and breakups with spirituality to teach how to cope and turn negative energy into positive.
It certainly sounds better than ice cream and wine binges.
“What really has helped me through my own breakups has been learning tools to self-soothe, reframe, and forgive, and how to channel negative energy into positive,” Chan told Glamour in an interview.
“Resilience is a muscle. Learning how to cope and process painful emotions is a muscle. And I’ve been through enough ups and downs to know that you have a choice. You can use breakups, which are pivotal points in life, as a catalyst for growth, or you can choose to have it make you jaded and more fear-based.”
There’s no denying that breakups are rough, and Renew sounds like a fantastic place for people to learn how to better cope with their present situation.
If you’re going through a tough time right now, Chan encouraged readers in the Glamour interview, saying, “Be kind and gentle on yourself. In this fast-paced world, we are so hard on ourselves and impatient with healing. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to speed up the process.”
“If you don’t allow yourself to process the emotion in a healthy way, the pain and darkness just gets buried deep inside you, and eventually comes up in your future relationships. Stop blaming yourself, and instead try to look for the lesson and the growth opportunity.”
Hopefully we’re happy in our current relatinoships, and we don’t need the retreat. But TBH, we still kind of want to go anyway.
