Write Him Off: Journal Prompts to Heal Your Broken Heart in 30 Days

by Elizabeth N. Doyd

If you're going through a painful breakup or divorce, journaling is a great way to release the pain on paper. When it's down on the page, you can examine your emotions with more rationality. A journal is a safe place to express your innermost thoughts and feelings without the risk of judgment from others. As you follow these writing prompts, you'll find that dormant part of your soul rising to guide you and give you the answers you didn't think you had. You'll begin to understand why your relationship didn't work out, uncover some of the insecurities and blockages to your happiness, as well as learn how to find the hidden gifts and lessons in your current state of pain and recovery.

Coping with a breakup or divorce is a challenging time and everyone heals at their own pace. This book gives you 30 journal prompts to get to the heart of the matter and help you speed up the recovery process. You can do the writing prompts consecutively, or you can pace them by taking breaks between the days if you find the work to be emotionally heavy.

A relationship consists of two people, which is why this book is divided into two sections: 15 prompts about your ex, and 15 that focuses on you.

By doing this work, you'll be taking the steps to:
Let go of your ex
-Uncover what made you incompatible
-Why you were attracted to him
-Analyze your beliefs about love
-How to be more positive in love and in life
-Find out what makes you happy in relationships
-How to take care of yourself and fulfill your own happiness
-How to create a healthy relationship the next time around

Sample prompt:
Day 1: Write it Raw

"There is always some madness
in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Are you holding imagery conversations with your
ex in you head? Ones where you get to say what you didn't get to say when your
relationship ended?

Obsessing over what should have been is unhealthy
and sucks the positive energy out of you. It's exhausting to be fighting with
him, even mentally, but the urge to communicate with him is so strong that you
want to pick up the phone (again) and speak your mind.

Do not contact him. He hurt you. Don't give him
the chance to hurt you again.

Write down your feelings in your journal
instead. What do you blame him for? What do you want to say to him? Are you
angry with him? Do you miss him?

Use as many pages as you want. Pretend you're
writing a letter directly to him. But do not send it. Do not contact him and
read it out loud to him. Doing so will greatly risk you being trapped in the
same cycle of negativity.

This should be a safe experience to explore your
pain in order to put it behind you, not to stir up more arguments with someone
who caused the pain in the first place. If you're energized by this outpouring
of emotion and feel a strong urge to share it, call a trusted friend instead.

Genres: Writing

54 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 16, 2013

About the author

Elizabeth N. Doyd is the author of the bestselling books "Write Him Off: 30 Journal Prompts to Heal Your Broken Heart" and "Gratitude Journal: 52 Writing Prompts to Celebrate Your Wonderful Life". She also works as a relationship expert and spiritual counsellor, having studied Kabbalah, Buddhism hypnotherapy, astrology and numerology. Originally from Montana, Elizabeth has traveled around the world and currently lives in The Hague, Netherlands, with her husband, son and two Scottish terriers. Her highly practical self-help books are for those those looking for guidance and healing in love, wealth and self-worth, and how to live each day with love, joy and purpose.

Reviews

[Anna Erishkigal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mistakenly grabbed this, thinking it was a book full of writing exercises. It turns out they ARE writing exercises, just not the kind I was looking for. However, I found the exercises to be interesting and ended up using them for character development, anyways. I suppose, had I been nursing a broken heart, I would have been in tears, but since I was using them to flesh out what an evil ex-boyfriend the heroine had, I found myself laughing as it made me think of outrageous things.

So ... this review is rather useless, I guess? Because I did not use the book in the intended way? But I got what I wanted out of it, even if it wasn't, well, what I WANTED. So four stars for serendipitous Amazon purchases. And if you ARE nursing a broken heart, I think the writing exercises in this book -will- help you see what a jerk the guy is and move on.

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean nice effort and all but the writing in here is terrible and I just kinda wonder what a licensed therapist might think of some of these prompts. Also, they're not very well organized and she says they're divided in two sections, one focussing on him and one on you (by the way, this book is clearly written JUST for heterosexual women apparently), but the section about him has one prompt on like how to make your home nicer for yourself. So it feels like she just kinda made things up on the way.
I have been journaling most of my life and I have also gotten terribly good at breakups so honestly, I think I should write this book instead.

[Kitty Stryker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really found this workbook useful when processing a breakup. My only complaints were that there's an assumption of heterosexuality, and that there was a prompt about "getting fit" that felt a little fatphobic/ableist. Otherwise, though, these questions guided me through a rough time and reassured me that I made the right choice for me.

[YYCGirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay.