La Salle Professor Offers Advice On How To Handle Valentine's Day After A Break Up
By Gary R'Nel
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Gary R'Nel spoke with Dr. Lane Neubauer, Associate Dean of Students in the Counseling and Health Services Department at La Salle University, on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT about Valentine's Day and the current state of relationships in America.
With more than 50 percent of the population now living alone or single, Neubauer said that society is structured differently today than it was during previous generations.
"Research shows people are much more involved in their work. They're much more involved in social media. There's less free time to actually cultivate relationships and perhaps that could be a reason for the increase."
She stated that Valentine's Day can be very tough for people who have just gone through a breakup but they should know it is not the end of the world.
"Everything on television and the radio is all about love and being with the person you're meant to be with and if you have just lost somebody important to you, and it doesn't necessarily have to be from a break up, you could've lost a spouse through death or other circumstances. It can be a very tough day. There's ways that people can take of themselves to help them through that. Number one being to just remind themselves that Valentine's Day is only 24 hours and life will resume after Valentine's Day. But, it is important to make sure if you have good friends, be with good friends, if you have other family members that you can be with, if you can distract yourself, it depends on how you feel about the breakup."
Neubauer commented it is important to stay in the right mindset when working through a breakup or loss to keep from making the situation harder to recover from.
"Pay attention to what you're saying in your head about what is going on. A lot of times what people say to themselves exacerbates what they're feeling. If a person is saying to themselves, 'I must be a really horrible person that this person left me,' they're going to feel really bad about themselves. But if they say, "this person doesn't know what they lost out on and I'm a very valuable person and somebody else is going to appreciate that about me.' All of a sudden, they start feeling somewhat better even though there is no way not to feel loss if you lose somebody and so nothing that anybody do is going to take away those feelings, it's just how you work through them."