Cry. Bawl your eyes out. Scream into a pillow. Shout obscenities at the wall. During the initial stages of getting over someone, you will feel miserable. You need to accept these feelings long enough to release them before you can move on past this point.

• Denial accomplishes nothing. Bad feelings do not go away just because you ignore them. If anything, ignoring your feelings only increases the risk of having them explode later on.
• If you are the sort of person who needs physical release, consider heading to a gym and taking your grief out on a punching bag or human dummy.

Resist the temptation to turn to anger.^[1] Part of you might genuinely feel angry. That's fine, but you should avoid twisting or masking your pain with anger. Anger might make you feel less vulnerable, but the only way to work past your grief and accept the current situation is to let yourself grieve.

• Additionally, anger tends to be obsessive. If you badmouth your ex or crush to your friends or fixate on every little thing that person did to “wrong” you, your thoughts are still constantly filled with that person. In other words, anger will bind you in place instead of letting you move on.

Enjoy the occasional indulgence. Buy yourself a box of chocolates and eat the whole thing in one night. Snack on ice cream straight from the tub. Purchase that designer handbag or new gadget you've had your eye on for months. Since you are going through a tough time, you may need to spoil yourself a little to lift your spirits.

• That said, you should set limits for yourself. If you get yourself into debt, end up hording a houseful of junk, or gain 40 pounds, you will only feel more miserable than before. Indulge yourself, but stick to your means and avoid unhealthy behaviors.

Listen to happy music. Music helps people to unwind and express emotions. Listening to break up music seems like a good idea as they seem to share your pain but, in the long, run its only going to make you more sad. Pull out your favorite music(not sad) tunes and play them on repeat for a little while, even if the person you want to get over is only a crush and not an ex.

• If you do not have your own list of happy songs, do a little research online. A simple search for " good mood songs” or “songs about unrequited love.”
• From a physical perspective, music is scientifically known to have therapeutic effects. It can lower your heart rate and relieve stress.^[2]

Let yourself feel numb. Eventually, after you cry yourself out, you might feel a little numb or “dead inside.” Do not be alarmed. This is a perfectly natural response for many people.

• Often times, this feeling of numbness results from pure exhaustion. Crying and other forms of high-energy emotion can be mentally and physically draining. As a result, after you finish with these cycles of emotion, you can feel too tired to feel anything else.

Talk things over with friends. The caring shoulder of a close friend can be a valuable tool to rely on. Sometimes talking about your feelings is a good way to air them out and move on.

• A friend who can give you advice might be a good person to talk to, but any friend willing to listen should be able to help a little. Venting your emotions can be just as important as fixing the matter at hand.
• Be respectful. True, a good friend will let you call at 4 AM when you have an emotional breakdown. Even so, you should probably put a limit on how often you do this. You are entitled to your grief, but you should still show consideration for the people who are still a part of your life.

Keep a journal. If you want to give your friends a break or do not have any you feel comfortable enough to talk to, write your feelings down, instead. This practice can also help you release and vent your bottled-up feelings.

• Write down any memories you have or any difficulties you run across in the process of moving on.
• You can also use your journal to confess to feelings or events you do not feel brave enough to confess to other people.

Limit the amount of time you wallow in grief. While you need to let yourself be sad, you also need to understand that there is a certain point at which it is in your best interest to force yourself to move on.

• Set a date or general time frame beforehand. Give yourself about half the amount of time you spent in a relationship with your ex or pining after your crush. During this time, mope as much as you need. Afterward, push yourself forward, even if you still feel like moping.

Avoid unnecessary contact. This means no calling, no emailing, and no “accidentally” bumping into the person in question while he or she happens to be on a daily morning run you've secretly known about for months. If you want to get over someone, you need to put enough distance in between the two of you to give yourself a chance to think of other things.

• Of course, this can be difficult if you work with or have class with the other person. In this case, the best thing you can do is to limit your interactions to those which are only absolutely essential to your daily life. You do not need to go out of your way to avoid the person you want to get over, but you should not purposefully seek that person out, either.

Quit cyber-stalking. Stop checking his or her Facebook, Twitter, blog, Pinterest, or any other social media account associated with that person. Fixating on how the other person is doing at the moment will only make it harder for you to get over your obsession.

• If you cannot resist the temptation to stalk your obsession's social media accounts while still remaining friends or followers, unfriend or unfollow the person in question.
• If that person once gave you access to his or her passwords, kindly ask that person to change passwords in order to remove the temptation from you.

Never be intimate with the person in question. This refers to both physical and emotional intimacy.

• Do not sleep with an ex “for old times' sake” or fall into the trap of becoming “friends with benefits” with a crush.
• Literally "getting over" someone you want to get over is a bad idea for both sexes, but it can be especially awful for women. Physical intimacy causes women to produce oxytocin, a hormone that triggers feelings of connection and affection.^[3] As a result, you will not be able to “get it out of your system.” If anything,you will only feel more bonded to the other person than before.
• Emotional intimacy can be just as risky, even if the two of you were emotionally intimate before. This sort of connection runs on a deeper level, making it even harder to separate yourself from the person in question.

Toss out any reminders. Even if you cut ties and avoid communicating directly with the person you want to get over, you might still have a hard time moving on if your room is filled with reminders of that person.

• Usually, the best thing to do is to pack up any reminders and put them away until you have had enough chance to move on. You could also return certain belongings to the other person—CDs, movies, etc.—instead of ditching them.
• You should actually avoid throwing things out or dramatically setting fire to these painful reminders in an effort to free yourself, no matter how desperate you are to get over someone.^[4] Once something is gone, it's gone for good. If you regret the decision to throw out that expensive watch or burn up a poster autographed by a favorite singer you saw in concert with your ex, you might regret it later.

Reconcile when ready. Contrary to what you might think, it is possible to be friends with someone you once had feelings for. If friendship proves impossible, then at the very least, you might be able to reestablish enough mutual respect so that the two of you can be in the same room together without shooting daggers from your eyes.

• Do not push yourself to reconcile. If you cannot get over the hurt and reconciling makes things too difficult, you do not need to go through with it.
• Only begin the process after you have already accepted the way things are and no longer have any romantic attachment to the person in question.
• Limit your efforts. Extend the hand of friendship once. If it gets slapped away, accept that reconciliation is out of the question, and move on.

Leave the house. Take a walk. Go on a trip. Venture out into the great unknown, or even venture into the slightly-less-impressive known. The point is that you will need to get out of bed and physically move on with your life, no matter how much you wish you could spend another day lying around and watching sad movies.

• Get active. Physical activity is one of the best things you can become engaged in while making an effort to get over someone. In contrast, lazing around on the couch day after day can make you feel resentful of yourself.

Hang out with other friends.^[5] Friends can be a great help in getting over someone, even if you have a hard time crying on their shoulders. When you need to feel appreciated and distracted, a night on the town with some close friends can be the perfect prescription.

• Your friends might appreciate this, too, especially if you spend a lot of time neglecting them while in your relationship or chasing after your crush.
• Avoid letting your friends push you into new romances before you feel ready, though.

Meet new people. This can seem tremendously difficult, but it can also have a huge impact on how thoroughly you recover. By meeting new people, you allow yourself to see that there are others who may come to appreciate and love you. Similarly, you might also realize that there really are other fish in the sea.

• New friends work just as well as new love interests. If anything, sometimes, new friends can be even better since it relieves the pressure of romantic tension and allows you to avoid the dreaded rebound.

Take your time. Never force yourself back out on the dating scene. Simply put, when you're ready, you're ready.

• Pushing yourself into a rebound relationship or one night stand may only make you feel worse, especially when you realize that you gave away that sort of intimacy to someone you really were not all that fond of.^[6]

Love yourself. Above all else, realize that you are worthy of being loved, no matter what anybody else may think or feel.

• Take time to do things you enjoy, especially if you did fewer of these things while you were with your ex or trying to impress your crush.
• Avoid shouldering all the blame. Understand that things just were not meant to be. It doesn't mean that it was your fault or that you are somehow unworthy of being loved.

Put an end to a crush. Getting over a crush may seem like it should be easier than getting over a break-up, but this is not always the case.

• In order to get over a crush, you will need to accept your feelings, distance yourself from your crush, and focus on moving on.
• If you're a middle schooler new to the world of crushes, you may find it even more difficult to get over your middle school crush. Try familiarizing yourself with other members of the opposite sex and learn to view the one you have a crush on in realistic terms.

Halt inappropriate feelings. There are a number of circumstances that could make a crush inappropriate: he or she could already be married, the person in question might be too young for you, or your crush could be a co-worker or subordinate in an office that forbids inter-office romances.

• The biggest thing you need to practice is self-control.
• Understand why the crush is a bad idea and remind yourself of the consequences that could follow if you pursue it.

Let go of unreturned feelings. Even if you already know that your someone special does not return your affections, you may still have a hard time letting those affections go.

• Cut off unnecessary contact and readjust your perspective so that you can see why a relationship with that person would be a bad idea.
• Look after yourself, and also encourage yourself to start looking at other guys or gals as potential love interests.

Drop the crush you have on your close friend. One of the trickiest situations a person can deal with is unrequited love for a friend, especially a best friend or other close friend. In order to move on, you will need to put your friendship first.

• Get over a crush on a guy friend. Never try to get in between your friend and the girl he likes and avoid worrying about how he thinks about you.

Stop regretting a suitor you turned away. If you suddenly find yourself feeling amorous toward someone who used to have a crush on you, you might be tempted to regret your decision to turn that person down.

• Respect and love yourself. Do not fixate on the past.
• Remember why you rejected the person in the first place and consider whether or not your current feelings are genuine.

Back off a crush on someone already in a relationship. If the guy or girl you like already has a special someone, the last thing you want to do is try to interfere.

• Get over a crush on a gal that's already taken. Make it clear to yourself that you can only ever be friends with the girl, and avoid putting yourself into tempting situations with that girl.
• Get over a crush on a guy that's already taken. Accept the reality of the situation and avoid creating drama between you, him, and his girlfriend or wife.

Move on after a break-up. No matter how much time you invested in the relationship, a break-up is almost always painful.

• Never rethink your decision if you were the one who initiated it.
• Remind yourself of the problems your relationship had instead of focusing on how much you miss the other person.

Move on after you did the breaking up. Even if you were the one who made the decision to break up, the relationship may still be hard to let go.

• Be honest with your feelings.
• Resist the temptation to get back together with your ex, even if you still love him or her.

Salvage your friendship while getting over your romantic feelings. If your lover was also your friend, you may not want to lose him or her after the break-up.

• Accept the initial bitterness and awkwardness that comes with a break-up.
• Maintain contact with the other person but avoid going to places your ex frequents or rubbing a new relationship in your ex's face.

Get over an ex you see frequently. Sometimes, there is simply no way you can avoid seeing the person you broke up with, which can make getting over your feelings even more difficult.

• Do not avoid the other person, but do avoid frequent eye contact or unnecessary communication.

Move on past someone who has already done the same. If your ex has already moved on past your relationship, you may actually find it more difficult to do so yourself.

• Accept your sadness but do not dwell on it. Look to the future instead of the past.

Recover from your first love. When you separate from the first person you loved enough to potentially spend the rest of your life with, the process of getting over him or her can be a lot more painful than usual.

• You need to cut all ties and continually remind yourself why things did not work out.
• Love yourself, and learn to love again.
• Always be honest with yourself and learn to rely on friends to get you through this tough time.