Treat the first reaction like a trigger, not a verdict.
Your body can react before your reasoning catches up. You may feel sick, angry, shaky, numb or suddenly desperate to know everything. That intensity is information about a trigger, not proof that you are back at day one.
For the first few hours, reduce input. Leave the situation if you can, stop scrolling and avoid making contact while you are still inside the initial spike.
Do not turn their new relationship into a ranking of you.
A new partner can make the breakup feel like a competition you lost. That framing is brutal and usually inaccurate. Relationships end for complicated reasons, and somebody choosing a new relationship does not calculate your value as a person.
When comparison starts, name the category you are using: appearance, personality, career, social life or how quickly they moved on. Then ask whether that category actually explains the whole relationship. It almost never does.
Limit the information that creates fresh images in your head.
You do not need to know where they met, how serious it is, what their friends think, whether they post each other or whether your ex seems happier. More information rarely produces the relief you expect.
Mute, unfollow or ask mutual friends not to update you if necessary. This is not pretending the new relationship does not exist. It is deciding that you do not need a live feed of it.
Rebuild self-worth around evidence that belongs to you.
Do something that produces your own evidence: train, finish work you are proud of, make a plan, see people, learn something, sort your home or keep a promise to yourself. Comparison gets louder when your entire sense of worth is happening in your head.
A self-worth or pattern-focused book can provide structure, but the real work is creating experiences that are about your life rather than their new relationship.
Expect the image to replay for a while without feeding it.
If you saw them together in person or online, your mind may replay the scene. Trying to forcibly erase it can make it more persistent. Notice the replay, label it as the same memory and redirect into a concrete task rather than beginning another round of analysis.
The scene becomes less powerful when it stops producing new checking, questions and self-criticism every time it appears.
Put your social world back in the foreground.
One reason a new partner hurts so much is that it can make their life look full while yours feels temporarily empty. That is a signal to rebuild your own connections, not to race into dating before you want to.
Lifted Spirits can help with the non-romantic part: finding people, talking, gaming, joining community activities and creating plans that give your week a shape that is not organised around your ex.