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" When proudly self-reliant V\u00E9ronique Hyland went through a bad breakup, she tried to recover on her own. But her sadness refused to lift, which is how she found herself with her very own heartbreak coach. I am staring at a photo on my phone of a thin, tanned hand. A scar runs along it, and studded across the knuckles is a series of pins. &amp;quot;Franken-hand,&amp;quot; the hand&amp;#039;s owner has written below it. At the time I received this post-surgery selfie, I remember thinking it seemed like a strange thing to send to another person, equal parts attention-getting gross-out and weird display of vulnerability\u2014though fully in keeping with the behavior of the hand&amp;#039;s owner. Now I can&amp;#039;t stop staring at it. In the weeks since being dumped\u2014not even properly dumped, just passively dropped\u2014by the guy I was dating\u2014not even properly dating, just &amp;quot;hanging out with&amp;quot; on and off for about a year\u2014I haven&amp;#039;t had the most exciting hobbies. When I&amp;#039;m not manically plotting out an add-a-bead string of social engagements meant to keep me out of the house, I&amp;#039;m brooding, talking about him incessantly to friends, and sending some of history&amp;#039;s most pathetic text messages, all of which go unreturned. (Ever begged someone to make an appearance at your birthday party? It&amp;#039;s not a great feeling.) My appetite has disappeared and I&amp;#039;ve easily lost 10 pounds (at one point, a pair of formerly tight leggings just fell off me), but I can&amp;#039;t even enjoy my newfound svelteness. (Or my newfound allure: Glumness must translate as attractive unattainability, because I suddenly start receiving free coffee, free smoothies, and free UPS shipping boxes from various smitten male service-industry professionals.) By and large, my friends counsel me to forget about him. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t let it bother you,&amp;quot; is a phrase I hear from all corners. I understand where they&amp;#039;re coming from: Why would you want to encourage someone who&amp;#039;s spending her time staring down into the chasm of an open wound? We live in an anti-wallowing culture; thus, all the advice I&amp;#039;ve been given is future-oriented: Work on yourself, work out, take some kind of class (everyone is vague on what kind of class\u2014ceramics, maybe?). It must be worse in the celebrity realm, where the acquisition of a &amp;quot;revenge body&amp;quot; with which to taunt your tormentor is as much of a tabloid trope as the post-baby snapback. But what if there&amp;#039;s something to be gained from wallowing? Radiating melancholia, I start attracting the attention of a seriously odd subset of people. One night, I attend a dinner where a woman buttonholes me and says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m very intuitive, and I&amp;#039;m sensing that you&amp;#039;ve not had a lot of relationships.&amp;quot; I nod. &amp;quot;You were meant to give love, and you will attract and receive love,&amp;quot; to which I can only respond, &amp;quot;Oh, wow.&amp;quot; She advises me to buy a piece of rose quartz and bury it in soil, then take it out after three days and carry it around as a talisman, telling it my wishes. I do not do this. However, in my fugue state, this starts to seem just as reasonable as any other approach. In fact, the ground rules I&amp;#039;ve made for myself seem to be falling away, revealed as suddenly arbitrary. A bedrock one: I don&amp;#039;t discuss my problems with people. I&amp;#039;ve never consulted a therapist or, for that matter, a life coach, faith healer, acupuncturist, or crystal healing practitioner. Every disappointment\u2014from deaths to breakups to professional woes\u2014has been carefully swept under the rug, out of fear that if I allow myself to sink, I&amp;#039;ll drown. When I read that Katy Perry hired a heartbreak coach to help her get over her divorce from Russell Brand, even the words my heartbreak coach sound insanely cosseted, like someone who constantly references her &amp;quot;glam squad.&amp;quot; But the phrase must have lodged somewhere, because weeks later I decide to call heartbreak coach Aurora Winter, founder of the Grief Coach Academy. I select her based only on her fairy-godmotherish name and the fact that she is one of the first heartbreak coaches whose contact information comes up on Google. (She is not Katy Perry&amp;#039;s coach, it turns out, though she has mistakenly received fan mail from at least one lovelorn Canadian Katy Perry fan as a result of the headlines.) Heartbreak coaching, a subset of life coaching (which itself has been around since the 1970s), has gotten its first real ink from Perry&amp;#039;s implied endorsement, but Winter tells me she trains a whole stable of coaches at her academy. She immediately FedExes me her books, Grief Relief in 30 Minutes and From Heartbreak to Happiness. She typically does nine coaching sessions of 45 minutes each; we agree on three, though I later extend it to five due to severe abandonment issues. We do them over the phone, since Winter is based in Santa Barbara; in the case of her high-profile clients, all of whom she declines to name, they&amp;#039;ll often fly in to spend a &amp;quot;breakthrough&amp;quot; day with her, a process that can run as high as $10,000. &amp;quot;I look forward to being of service,&amp;quot; she says gravely as we conclude our call. Before my first official session, a thought occurs to me: Is hiring a heartbreak coach so pathetic that it crosses some divide and becomes ironically cool? The answer, I fear, is no. I feel even more pitiable when the exposition portion begins and I have to explain my plight to Winter. I tell her that Nick reminded me of all the surfer dudes I lusted after while growing up, for whom I was always way too young or just beneath notice. He was the lead singer of a semi-successful indie band, an extreme-sports enthusiast (thus the hand injury), and much more attractive than me by any metric. When I attended his shows, people seemed puzzled that I could possibly be there with him, a confusion I shared. But against all reason, he seemed interested in my far more staid life. Despite his foggy, James-Franco-hosting-the-Oscars demeanor, he remembered everything: the smallest details about my trips and what I was working on, and references I had made months ago. Imagine if Ryan Gosling (substitute your Hollywood beau of choice) showed genuine interest in hearing about your dental cleaning. It&amp;#039;s like an IV drip of constant validation has been ripped out. So he really liked me, and now he&amp;#039;s indifferent to me. Winter, who I&amp;#039;ll learn as our time together progresses is fond of metaphors, tells me, &amp;quot;You suddenly find yourself fallen down a well, like Alice in Wonderland. The sides are sticky. Now I&amp;#039;m going to come along with my flashlight and my rope ladder. I will be your rope.&amp;quot; Part of me finds this metaphor to be embarrassingly hackneyed, and another, very unfamiliar part thinks, Yes, be my rope! We begin each session with the same meditation, devised by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. I have to exhale while smiling, which makes me feel like the Joker (and makes me regret the choice of a glass-walled conference room for my first call). Then Winter randomly selects a quote, I Ching\u2013style, from a book of new-agey aphorisms: &amp;quot;This one comes from Eckhart Tolle&amp;#039;s The Power of Now&amp;quot; (massive Liz Lemon eye roll). &amp;quot;\u2009&amp;#039;Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it\u2026Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.&amp;#039; How does that resonate with you today?&amp;quot; It doesn&amp;#039;t, particularly, and after I fumble about without answering, Winter tabulates my life stressors. In addition to being a heartbroken wreck, I&amp;#039;ve been caring for my mother (who is injured), I recently moved, I work in a high-anxiety industry, and I sleep less than eight hours a night. Stresswise, she concludes, I&amp;#039;m in the &amp;quot;red zone,&amp;quot; or possibly &amp;quot;high orange.&amp;quot; Something about this nonmedical diagnosis makes me feel incredibly important. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m in the red zone, or possibly high orange,&amp;quot; I remind myself whenever things start to become unbearable. &amp;quot;This is totally normal red/high-orange kind of stuff.&amp;quot; I tell Winter I&amp;#039;ve been receiving calls from a blocked number at unusual times of day and ask if she thinks he may be calling. She smartly sidesteps that question. (It later emerges that the calls have been coming from Time Warner Cable.) At the end of our session, I&amp;#039;m assigned homework: keeping a daily list of &amp;quot;what went well and why,&amp;quot; and doing something enjoyable that&amp;#039;s just for me. (I pick swimming.) A lifelong good student, I tell myself I&amp;#039;ll be the best coaching subject she&amp;#039;s ever had! Nine sessions? Puh-lease, I can get over this in three. Instead, I prove exceedingly duncelike, responding to questions like, &amp;quot;What fills you up [spiritually]?&amp;quot; by asking, &amp;quot;You mean, like\u2026food?&amp;quot; I frequently forget to write in my grateful journal. But it does buoy me to know that once a week, I have to answer to the cheery voice on the other end of the phone. Winter also keeps up a personal-trainer-esque level of outreach. One Friday night, I&amp;#039;m out at a party when I receive an e-mail reminding me to &amp;quot;become better not bitter.&amp;quot; Mostly, though, we talk\u2014or, rather, I talk and she listens. Instead of turning things over in my mind, chasing my own tail, I&amp;#039;m voicing my frustrations and fears. She has me write Nick letters and then read them aloud; her insistence that he&amp;#039;ll get the message now that it&amp;#039;s been released into the universe seems specious, but the overall exercise is soothing. We talk about what I want out of life, not just relationshipwise but in general. Winter, as she reminds me several times, is not a therapist. Amid all the affirmations and homework projects, there&amp;#039;s no psychologically probing discussion of underlying problems. But, like admitting you&amp;#039;re an alcoholic, accepting that you are heartbroken to the degree that you must consult a heartbreak coach weekly is oddly curative. Plus, there&amp;#039;s something to be said for simply having someone to talk to\u2014an impartial professional of sorts, not a friend who&amp;#039;d just tell me to go out and get drunk with her. By the time our one-month coaching relationship has come to an end, I&amp;#039;m feeling still-not-great, but better than expected. Some of it is time, certainly, and the distractions that have piled up since that traumatic moment. But mostly, it&amp;#039;s just that I&amp;#039;m sick of talking about it\u2014I, who once cornered strangers at parties with my problems, have, with Winter&amp;#039;s help, managed to out-wallow myself. My counterintuitive approach has actually worked: I&amp;#039;m bored by my own pain. One night, toward the end of my coaching experience, I&amp;#039;m out with my friend Alix at a diner on the Upper West Side. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ll ever date anyone again,&amp;quot; I announce sorrowfully. (Oddly, this is a sign of progress, since until now I haven&amp;#039;t even been bold enough to contemplate the future, however bleak.) &amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot; she says, and we both burst out laughing. &amp;quot;No, really? You&amp;#039;re still in your twenties. You think you&amp;#039;ll never even so much as go on a date again?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yes!&amp;quot; I insist, realizing how ridiculous I&amp;#039;m being. We&amp;#039;re being so loud that we&amp;#039;re starting to disturb the elderly regulars, but I&amp;#039;m laughing too hard to care. Via Elle.com Photo: Universal Pictures "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a4995/heartbreak-coach/>