Closure

*DISCLAIMER: This post is kind of lengthy due to the hefty topic. Sorry!

Contrary to popular belief, closure comes from within—NOT from an outside source. Closure has nothing to do with the other person/situation, and everything to do with you.

The Process:


First, you have to decide in your mind that you want to let go and move on. This is the foundation of closure. You cannot move on from something or someone if you have not dedicated your thoughts to doing that very thing. If you do not make the clear and conscious decision that you want to move on with life, any and every trigger that comes from the thing or person you want to let go of will sway you back in. You have the power to make this decision and to stick to it.

Confrontation and Teachable Moments
:

Do NOT focus on the negative attributes of the situation as a way of getting over it. You do not need to linger on the memory of it to know that you do not want to feel those bad feelings any longer. Harboring ill feelings and emotions is just a trap; it does not help you. In order to keep your mind set on not going back—to a person, an emotion, a memory—you have to zone in on how it made you feel ALONG WITH a lesson learned from it.

Say you got hurt—emotionally, psychologically, etc.—acknowledge how that pain felt, and then turn that pain into a teachable moment. By that I mean, what can that pain teach you? After you discover a lesson, actually LEARN from it and do not revisit those emotions that you already acknowledged and developed a lesson from—that pain is no longer of any use to you.

Protect Your Space
:

Embrace the things that make you feel good; fill your life up with those things. Make it so that there is no space for reverting back to what has already been.

Make the process extremely personal. Go with your own intuition—you will know if you want to truly let go or not. But you have to decide, and you have to stick with that decision.

When you make something personal, you make it all about you. Be SELFISH. IT'S YOU, NOT ANYONE ELSE.

Through this process, repeat positive affirmations out loud to yourself. This will not only help you stay on track, but it will be a constant reminder of your worth, and of the power that you have over your own being.

Put an emphasis on finding out who you are through these steps. In other words, without your body, who are you? What does your soul look like? Finding out what we possess from the inside out does wonders in letting things go that no longer serve us any good.

(For Relationships in particular) Closure does not come from having a conversation with someone from your past. You do not need an apology or an admittance to move forward. Those things do not validate you and therefore do not control your ability to get over something. If you feel an apology or hearing them tell you everything that they did to hurt you will help, you are depending on an outside source for something that you can do completely on your own. That outside source now validates you, and your purpose for closure is defeated. LOOK FOR YOUR OWN VALIDATION. If you are depending on anything other than yourself for this growth, it will not last long. You will only begin to look for other temporary sources as a crutch to achieve closure and you will never find it unless you look at yourself first. (This is also a good place to figure out if you are holding on to something from that situation. Holding on to pain, anger, or anything else only activates outside validation and hinders your closure).

Let me elaborate a bit. Someone did something shady, the relationship ended, and you now want to hear everything that they have done behind your back, from their mouth. If and when you receive this pointless information, what are you going to do with it? It is either going to a) eat at your self esteem because you think the things that were done were because of something that is wrong with you (which is a whole other discussion for a different day), b) cause anger to give rise to all the hurt that is still in your heart (you wouldn't be seeking out the conversation if hurt wasn't there), or c) just drive you completely insane. If you think hearing this information from them will help you to move past them, you're stuck in an illusion. (If that was a bit harsh I apologize, although I meant every word.)

Moving on to another partner won't do you any good either. Whatever is still subconsciously in your heart and mind that you have not properly moved on from will now be projected onto this new situation. This causes a mess.

And trust me, I dated someone for 3+ years or whatever and never had a conversation involving everything that went wrong. I neither received nor offered an apology. Yet, I moved forward.

You deserve good things.

You deserve great people.

You are all of the good things that you thought were taken away from you.

You have power over yourself. It is already in you. Claim it.