The Art of Not Losing It in the Target Parking Lot
- Brainz Magazine
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Kimberlee Herman, MSW, LCPC, is a best-selling author, Christian counselor, and host of Promise Hill, with 22+ years of experience and a heart full of hope. She mixes faith, counseling, and storytelling to remind you: you’re seen, you’re loved, and you don’t have to walk this hill alone.
Healing from a breakup rarely feels tidy. Some days you’re fine, and other days you find yourself crying in the Target parking lot, wondering why it still hurts. If you’ve ever felt stuck between “I should be over this” and “Why does this still sting?”, you’re not alone. Breakups bruise the heart, and bruises take time. In this guide, you’ll learn five practical, faith-integrated steps to steady your emotions, regulate your body, and rebuild your sense of self — even when healing feels messy.
5 steps to reclaim your emotions when a breakup still hurts
I love an easy “how-to” when I am in a situation that I don’t know how to fix. A user's guide of sorts. Like the times we have purchased an item that needs assembly. We need that little piece of paper to walk us through the steps. Each one is equally important. Healing from a breakup is much like the item that needs assembling. There is a mess in front of you, and we need the user's guide on how to put it all back together.
Sound about right? Great. Let’s jump in.
Ellen (our fictional character for this article) realised there were days when she couldn’t tell if she was healing or just learning how to hide the pain better. We all have been there. Her breakup with Matt was two months ago, and she was still feeling the sting.
The world tells her to move on. Faith's friends tell her to pray more. Her body quietly mutters, I’m exhausted. Somewhere between all that noise, she starts to wonder if something inside her has cracked for good.
Her heart is bruised.
And bruises, though tender, are signs of life trying to repair itself. They don’t stay forever. They fade, but they are proof that you’re recovering from something that once hurt deeply. Emotional and spiritual bruises work the same way. They are evidence that your soul still has enough life in it to want to heal.
In my counseling work, and now through my Promise Hill podcast, I have met so many people who think they’re failing at healing because it doesn’t look quick or clean. But real healing isn’t a dramatic rescue. It’s more like rebuilding a house while still living in it, messy, inconvenient, but possible.
Here are five “assembly” tools I’ve seen bring steady repair when healing feels far away. They draw from both psychotherapy and faith, two languages that speak beautifully together when we let them.
Assembly instructions for not losing it
1. Change your lens
Sometimes the hardest thing to heal isn’t your circumstance, it’s your perspective. Psychotherapy calls it reframing. Spiritually, it’s repentance in the truest sense of the word, metanoia, a change of mind and direction.
When Matt broke up with her, Ellen’s brain built a story to make sense of it. This happens to all of us, and often, that story turns cruel. Ellen started thinking:
“I should be over this by now.” “Everyone else handles this better.” “Something must be wrong with me.”
But the truth? She’s not behind. She’s human, just like you and me. Try rewriting the script like Ellen did.
Instead of “I’m stuck,” try “I recognize I feel stuck, but I can choose to do things to get me unstuck.”
Instead of “I failed,” try “That chapter in my life taught me what needs to change so I can grow.”
When you start catching your thoughts before they spiral, you interrupt the cycle that keeps pain on repeat. You can’t change what happened, but you can change the lens you’re seeing it through.
2. Small steps are still steps
In therapy, we call small steps behavioral activation, the art of moving even when motivation hasn’t caught up yet. Because healing isn’t about massive leaps, it’s about micro-moves.
Get out of bed. Drink water. Text a friend. Sit in the sun. Say one kind word to yourself.
Every small step toward care rewires your nervous system to believe that safety and progress are possible again. It’s not about perfection, it’s about consistency. Christians need to step into their mustard seed of faith, knowing that God will help, guide, and comfort them. Sometimes you don’t feel like you’re moving at all, but God sees every inch forward.
And honestly, some days victory looks like brushing your teeth and wearing clean underwear. Let that be enough for today.
3. Learn how to regulate big emotions before they hijack you
Ellen was strolling through Target one day, minding her business, when she saw a couple holding hands. The man looked like her ex, Matt. By seeing him, she realized that she was still struggling with sad and angry feelings. She quickly paid for her items and briskly ran to her car, where she cried and even wailed.
When anger or sadness hits hard, it doesn’t start in your thoughts, it starts in your body. Your heart rate jumps. Your muscles tighten. Your stomach drops. Your breath gets shallow.
Once that happens, your brain shifts into survival mode, and reasoning basically goes offline.
That’s why you can’t “talk yourself down” or “pray yourself calm” in the middle of a surge. You have to regulate your body first, then the emotions settle.
Ellen decided in that moment that she needed some extra support. Later that week, she was able to start working with a counselor. She learned bottom-up regulation from her therapist. It is how you prevent the meltdowns, the blow-ups, and the tears in the Target parking lot.
The optional but not really optional build
Here are 5 of the most effective regulation-building tools.
The 4-4-8 reset
Inhale for 4
Hold for 4
Exhale for 8
(Extending the exhale signals safety to your nervous system.)
Repeat for a minute. You should feel the shift.
By extending the exhale, it quickly tells your body that you are safe.
The grounding triangle
Name:
One thing you can see
One thing you can touch
One thing you can hear
This interrupts the emotional surge by forcing your brain back into the present moment.
The temperature trick
Cold engages the vagus nerve and shuts off emotional intensity fast. Try:
Cool on your wrists (try ice wrapped in a wet paper towel if you are at home), but only let it sit for a few moments. Don’t ice burn yourself.
Drink a chilled drink slowly and only a few sips at a time. We don’t want a brain freeze.
It sounds too simple, but physiologically, it is one of the fastest ways to calm anger and panic.
The “anchor touch”
Place your hand over your chest or belly.
Apply gentle pressure and breathe into that spot. Focus your breath going into your heart or your belly.
This signals your brain that you are not in danger. You are grounding yourself.
Breath prayers
Either place both hands over your heart or place your hands in a prayer posture.
Slowly breathe in and say, “God is with me.”
Slowly breathe out and say, “I surrender my pain to you.”
Change up the prayers with your own words, but this will get you started.
This reminds your soul that you are not alone and that you can release your emotional wounds to Jesus.
The 90-second truth
Neuroscience shows that an emotional spike only lasts 90 seconds unless we keep fueling it with thoughts. If you can keep your body calm for 90 seconds, the wave passes. Once you are regulated, not before, your thoughts become clearer, your choices become wiser, and your faith feels accessible again.
You can ask God for perspective without being swallowed by emotion, because your system is no longer in fight or flight. You are not weak because you get overwhelmed. You are human. And learning to regulate your body is one of the strongest healing skills you can build.
4. Treat your body as part of the story
Your body isn’t the villain of your healing, it’s the storyteller. It keeps score of what your mind tries to forget. Anxiety, fatigue, tightness in the chest, all of it is communication, not condemnation.
From a psychological lens, self-care regulates your nervous system, shifting you out of survival mode. From a spiritual one, it’s an act of reverence. The body God gave you is sacred ground.
So nourish it. Move it. Rest it.
Take a slow walk. Eat food that feels alive (fresh fruit and veggies). Stretch. Turn your phone off at night. These aren’t shallow “self-care hacks.” They are declarations that you are caring for your body and soul by being intentional with your care.
When you care for your body, you are whispering to your soul, You’re safe now.
Related: Healing is not linear
5. Change the scenery when your soul feels stuck
If your life feels like a loop, same thoughts, same pain, same prayers, it might be time to change the backdrop. In therapy, we call this pattern interruption. Your brain loves predictability, even if it’s painful, because it feels familiar. But growth often starts when you break the pattern.
Drive a new route to work or to your favorite coffee spot. Rearrange your space. Visit a museum or library (do you love libraries like I do?). Step into a different kind of community or worship service. Sometimes you have to move your body to move your mindset.
It’s not about escapism, it’s about giving your senses proof that new things are still possible. Every time you change one small thing, you are signaling to your soul that the story’s not over yet.
The soft return of hope
Ellen realized she had a choice. She could choose to be more intentional about her healing process or surrender to emotional dysregulation. No one else could fix her. She had to take the steps to make things better for herself.
Ellen chose to be intentional. She used the tools her therapist gave her (what was shared in this article), and after a week, she noticed she was doing better. Her big emotions were starting to calm down. She drove a different route to work, bought a few plants, and rearranged some furniture in her home. She practiced at least one of the bottom-up regulation tools every day.
Healing doesn’t happen on a schedule. You will have good days and heavy ones. Days when hope hums quietly in your chest, and days when you feel like you are back at square one. Healing is rarely linear, it is a spiral that brings you around to the same places, just at a deeper level each time. The key is not giving up in the middle.
Faith and psychology agree on this, what you repeat, you strengthen. Repeat self-compassion. Repeat truth. Repeat rest.
Don’t skip the final step
If you find that you are still struggling after trying some of these tools and it has been a few months, then the next step is getting more support, just like Ellen did, as there may be deeper wounds that have been reopened and need some TLC. Find a therapist who works with trauma and is trained in healing tools such as EMDR, Brainspotting, MAP, IFS, and maybe even faith-based inner healing.
Finally, let's get to know each other better. Would you join me on the Promise Hill podcast? It’s a place where stories heal and hope is redeemed. It’s full of paper trails with “how-tos” and nuggets of wisdom from the characters.
Read more from Kimberlee Herman
Kimberlee Herman, Clinical Pastoral Counselor
Kimberlee Herman, MSW, LCPC, is a best-selling author and Christian counselor with over 22 years of experience helping people find healing and hope. These days, she’s trading in the therapy chair for a mic, sharing a fictional story and soul-soothing tools on her podcast, Promise Hill. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts, and remember, you’re not alone, and Kimberlee’s cheering you on every step of the way.
