How to Love Yourself After a Breakup: Repair Your Self Esteem | Happiness | LHS Classic

Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

YAP Media Network | Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

Relationships, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 890 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2026

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How to love yourself after a breakup can feel impossible when your self-esteem is shattered and your ex still lives rent-free in your nervous system. When a relationship ends, especially a painful or toxic one, it doesn’t just break your heart — it can break your trust in yourself. You may find yourself obsessing over your ex, checking their social media even though it hurts, replaying conversations, or wondering what was wrong with you. Low self-esteem after a breakup often isn’t just about rejection. It’s about the shame of feeling like you abandoned your own boundaries trying to keep someone who couldn’t love you back. In this episode, we’re talking about what it really takes to repair your self-esteem and rebuild your sense of personal power. I’ll walk you through why heartbreak recovery can feel like withdrawal from an addiction, how attachment loss hijacks your brain, and why the most painful thought is often not “They left,” but “Why did I let this happen?” If you’ve been trying to figure out how to love yourself after a breakup while still feeling pulled toward someone who wasn’t good for you, this episode will help you understand what’s happening and how to shift it. We’ll explore five concrete steps to repair your self-esteem: recognizing self-betrayal patterns, understanding the addictive pull of contact and validation, seeking support instead of isolating, recommitting to loving yourself through behavior, and creating a plan for the moments when you’re tempted to go backward. Real self-esteem is earned through action: every boundary you set, every time you resist checking their profile, every moment you choose dignity over desperation. That’s how you repair your self-esteem. That’s how you rebuild confidence. That’s how you love yourself after a breakup in a way that lasts. As you listen, you might realize you’ve been trying to heal through them. What actually helps is rebuilding your relationship with yourself. Episode Breakdown: 00:00 Why Self-Esteem Collapses After a Breakup 07:04 Low Self-Esteem After Breakup: Rejection and Shame 21:10 Breakup Recovery and the Addiction to Your Ex 34:49 Five Steps to Repair Your Self-Esteem 51:20 How to Stop Obsessing Over Your Ex and Rebuild Confidence If this episode is stirring something up for you, I want to offer you something personal. You can schedule a free consultation with me or someone on my team. Think of it as a steady first step toward rebuilding yourself. You’ll answer three quick questions so we can help you find the right expert for your unique situation. It’s private, secure, and only takes a couple of minutes. Thousands of people have transformed themselves and their relationships through Growing Self. Let’s find the right support for you — and help you repair your self-esteem in a way that feels grounded, strong, and sustainable. xoxo, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby Growing Self Special thanks to this month’s sponsors of Love, Happiness, and Success: Shopify: The all-in-one platform to build and grow your online business. Explore exclusive listener discounts at shopify.com/lhs Working Genius founder Patrick Lencioni is on a mission to create self understanding and connection by helping people understand their genius and that of others. Listen to our conversation, then discover your strengths and get 20% off with code LHS at workinggenius.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you're listening listened to this podcast before, part of what I do when I create these for you is to try to find a very special piece of music that helps
0:40.3	illustrate a point or evoke a mood. And we were just listening to the introduction of PJ Harvey's
0:49.6	to bring you my love together. And in putting together the topic for today's show and trying to think
0:56.4	about how to make it most meaningful and helpful to you, I've actually reorganized us a little bit.
1:03.7	And you and I are going to be listening to a portion of this song together so that we can really fully experience the
1:15.7	emotional tone of the very important topic that we are going to be talking about
1:22.3	together today. And that is how to repair your self-esteem after a really bad breakup.
1:31.3	I know from my experience as a counselor, as a coach, and as a accidental expert in the field of breakup recovery, that one of the most difficult, most profound, most enduring injuries of going
1:51.1	through a horrible breakup or divorce is feeling like you have just been steamrolled by the
1:58.3	whole experience.
2:00.0	And the hardest part about it for many, many people,
2:04.0	even beyond losing the relationship with their ex is what it does to the way they feel about
2:11.3	themselves in terms of their self-esteem when you go through a terrible breakup. And there are so many hard parts of a breakup. And I
2:20.7	don't mean to suggest that this is more challenging than the other stuff you're dealing with.
2:26.2	I mean, you know, when you lose a beloved partner, you know, especially if you've been together
2:32.0	for a long time, you've lost the life that you have created together. You know, especially if you've been together for a long time. You've lost the life that you have created together.
2:37.4	You know, there can be friends and things that were familiar.
2:41.2	Even where you live, you might not be able to stay there anymore.
2:46.8	And also the loss of love and companionship, that feeling of connection.
2:52.6	And those are so terrible.
2:55.6	But I think the other things that can be hardest for people in the beginning stages are that kind of obsessive quality,
3:05.6	like when people can't stop thinking about their ex or
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from YAP Media Network | Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of YAP Media Network | Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.