You should consider hiring a breakup coach when you feel stuck after a relationship ends, you’re struggling to move forward on your own or you want someone to help you work out what comes next.
There’s a strange expectation that we should instinctively know how to handle a breakup.
Your relationship ends, you cry, your friends rally around you and, at some point, you’re supposed to wake up feeling ready to move on. Except it doesn’t always happen like that.
Sometimes weeks turn into months and you’re still thinking about your ex every day. Sometimes you know the relationship wasn’t right, but you can’t stop questioning whether you made a mistake. Other times, the relationship hasn’t even ended yet and you’re stuck in that horrible place between knowing something needs to change and being terrified of what will happen if it does.
That’s often when people come to me.
I’m not here to tell you whether you should leave somebody, give you a deadline for getting over your ex or promise that I can make heartbreak disappear. As a breakup coach, my role is to give you somewhere safe and completely non-judgemental to talk about what’s happening, understand what’s keeping you stuck and start working towards a future that feels like yours again.
If you’re wondering whether you need that kind of support, you can always book a free consultation with me. You don’t need to have everything figured out before we speak.
Should you hire a breakup coach if you can’t move on?
A breakup coach can help when you feel as though you’ve been trying to move on for a long time but keep finding yourself back in exactly the same place. There is no right amount of time to get over somebody.
I think that’s important to say because one of the first things people worry about is whether their breakup is taking “too long” to get over.
You might have been together for six months or sixteen years. Maybe the relationship ended gradually and you saw it coming, or maybe you went to bed thinking everything was fine and woke up the next day to find your future had completely changed. Those experiences aren’t going to affect everybody in the same way.
What matters more is whether you feel that you’re gradually processing what happened or whether your life has started revolving around it.
If you’re still spending hours replaying conversations, wondering what your ex is doing or desperately searching for the one explanation that will finally make everything feel better, it may be worth asking why you’re finding it so difficult to let go.
I’ve written more about why you might be struggling to get over your breakup, because sometimes understanding what is keeping you attached is the first step towards changing it.
Can a breakup coach help if you keep contacting your ex?
Yes, a breakup coach can help you understand why you keep contacting your ex and work with you on boundaries that make it easier to break the cycle. Maybe you’ve decided five times that this message will definitely be the last one.
Then something happens. You feel lonely one evening, they post something online, you have a glass of wine or you remember something you desperately want to tell them.
Suddenly you’re staring at your phone again. It’s very easy for somebody outside the situation to say, “Just block them.”
But when you’re emotionally attached to someone, things rarely feel that easy.
Rather than judging you for contacting them again, I’d be much more interested in what was happening in the moments before you did it. What were you feeling? What did you hope would happen? And how did you feel afterwards?
Once we understand the pattern, we can start working on what you can do differently when that feeling comes up again.
Should you hire a breakup coach immediately after a breakup?
You can work with a breakup coach immediately after a relationship ends, especially if you feel overwhelmed and don’t know what to do next.
Those first few days and weeks can be incredibly disorientating. Sometimes, what you need at that stage isn’t a big plan for your wonderful new life. You just need somewhere to put everything you’re feeling.
That’s something I think is really important in coaching. We don’t have to rush straight into goals because you think that’s what “moving forward” is supposed to look like.
If you’d like to understand what that process might involve, I explain more about what a breakup coach does.
Can a breakup coach help you decide whether to end your relationship?
A breakup coach can give you a space to explore whether you want to stay in your relationship or leave, without making that decision for you.
Not everybody who works with me has already broken up. Sometimes the hardest part comes beforehand.
You might have been asking yourself the same question for months: Am I unhappy enough to leave?
Perhaps there are still wonderful parts of the relationship and you love your partner, but something doesn’t feel right. You might be frightened of regretting your decision, worried about hurting them or wondering whether you’re expecting too much.
Friends and family can be difficult to talk to at this point because they naturally bring their own experiences and opinions into the conversation. One friend might have been telling you to leave for years. Your mum might desperately want you to stay together. Someone else might tell you exactly what they would do.
But they aren’t you. Coaching gives you somewhere to say the things you might be frightened to say elsewhere and start listening to what you actually want.
I won’t decide for you. What I can do is ask the questions that help you understand your feelings, your needs and what you want your future to look like.
Stuck between staying and leaving?
You don’t need to make one of the biggest decisions of your life whilst your thoughts are going round in circles.
If you need somewhere impartial to talk about what’s happening, book a free consultation with me and we can start there.
Do you need a breakup coach if you already have supportive friends?
You may still benefit from a breakup coach even if you have brilliant friends and family because professional coaching offers a different kind of support.
Please talk to your friends. See them. Cry with them. Let them bring you dinner when you don’t feel like cooking and drag you out of the house when you’ve spent three days in your pyjamas.
That support matters. But friends also love you, which means they aren’t always impartial.
They might be furious with your ex because they’ve watched you get hurt, or they may be so desperate to see you happy again that they start encouraging you to date before you’re ready.
You may also reach a point where you start holding back because you’re worried everyone is getting tired of hearing about the breakup. You never need to worry about that in a coaching session.
This is time that exists specifically for you, and we can talk about the same thing more than once if that’s what you need to do before you can make sense of it.
When should you see a therapist instead of a breakup coach?
Therapy may be more appropriate than breakup coaching if you’re experiencing serious mental health difficulties, significant trauma or abuse that requires specialist clinical support.
There’s no competition between therapy and coaching, and you don’t necessarily have to choose one forever. They do different jobs.
Breakup coaching tends to be focused on where you are now and where you want to go next. Therapy can be more appropriate when you need to work through deeper trauma, mental health difficulties or experiences that require clinical treatment.
If you are experiencing severe depression, thoughts of self-harm or suicide, or you are dealing with abuse or trauma that needs specialist support, please seek help from an appropriately qualified mental health or safeguarding professional rather than relying on coaching alone.
A good coach should be comfortable saying, “I’m not the right person to help you with this.”
The most important thing is that you get the support you actually need.
How do you know if a breakup coach is right for you?
A breakup coach may be right for you if you want a supportive, non-judgemental person to help you understand what’s keeping you stuck and take practical steps towards moving forward.
For me, the relationship between a coach and client matters enormously.
You’re going to be talking about things that are personal, painful and sometimes difficult to admit even to yourself, so you need to feel comfortable with the person sitting opposite you.
My own approach to breakup coaching comes from both professional experience and personal understanding of relationship breakdown. I know that moving forward isn’t as straightforward as deciding you’re “done” with somebody and never thinking about them again.
That’s why I don’t believe in forcing people through a formula or telling them where they should be by a particular point.
We’ll talk about what is actually happening in your life, what you’re finding difficult and what you want to change. From there, we can begin working out what moving forward looks like for you.
Sometimes the starting point really can be as simple as: I don’t know what to do next.
If that sounds familiar, book a free consultation with me. We can talk about where you are, what you’re finding difficult and whether breakup coaching feels like the right support for you.