A coach who charges over $2K for a breakup bootcamp shares 3 things she'll never do when a relationship ends

• Former relationship advice columnist Amy Chan coaches people through their breakups with her book and four-day retreat.
• She said that she used to make a lot of breakup mistakes until she saw how they hindered her growth and healing.

After making plenty of her own breakup mistakes, Amy Chan has dedicated her work to helping others move on after the end of their relationships.

Chan, a relationship advice columnist for more than a decade and author of "Breakup Bootcamp: The Science of Rewiring Your Heart," also founded Renew Breakup Bootcamp, a four-day retreat that costs between $2,495 and $4,195 to help people move forward after heartbreak.

She said that in her own life, she used to make some major mistakes, especially when a partner would break up with her. Now that she's well-versed on the psychology and neuroscience of the breakup brain, something she studied to write her book and create her bootcamp, Chan told Insider that there are three things she will never do again when it comes to a breakup.

Calling an ex for comfort, or when she felt angry

During a relationship that lasted for two years, Chan said her partner at the time "became her whole world."

Now, she recognizes how putting that relationship on a pedestal caused her to seek comfort from her ex, ultimately slowing down her healing.

Chan said that when she felt lonely, she didn't know who else to turn to because she relied on her now-ex for so much. So she would call or text him to cry, she said.

She said that she also had moments where she felt so angry at her ex, she would call him to yell and blame him for her negative emotions.

"I broke apart so badly after it ended because I wasn't just dealing with the grief of a relationship ending. It was also the grief of me and my future and my security," Chan told Insider.

Now, she recognizes that she acted that way because she was codependent on her ex. She was also seeking a way to quickly end her pain, Chan said.

But she now knows that making someone else feel shame or guilt won't remedy her hurt feelings. Acknowledging those emotions, feeling them on your own, and talking about them with supportive loved ones is what actually helps emotional pain dissipate, Chan said.

Constantly checking an ex's social media

Chan said that she's also made the mistake of surveilling her ex-partners through their social media accounts following breakups.

She said that she would spend hours a day checking an ex's Instagram stories and new followers to get clues that they'd moved on from her for good.

"All it did was amplify my anxiety. It was really, really unhealthy for me," Chan said.

She said that, looking back, she was seeking closure with her "CIA agent" behavior. But now she knows that only she has to grieve a relationship herself in order to truly accept its ending.

To avoid tempting herself to fall back into the same pattern, Chan said that she blocks exes' phone numbers and social media accounts. She tells her breakup bootcamp clients to do the same thing, for at least 30 to 60 days after a breakup.

Removing reminders of your ex by deleting photos together off your phone and profile, and blocking them on any social media accounts, can give your brain a breather so it builds new neural pathways, essentially rewiring itself to help you heal from the breakup, Insider previously reported.

Talking poorly about an ex, and trying to get friends to do the same

Finally, Chan said that she used to rant about how horrible her ex-partner was right after a breakup.

At the time, she thought that focusing on her ex's flaws and "vilifying" him would make her feel better about the fact that she got broken up with. She did this for two years following a breakup, and would try to get her friends to join in with the mean-spirited stories, Chan told Insider.

Now, Chan realizes that ranting about her ex non-stop was her strange way of holding on to their connection.

"All of it just added to me being resentful, holding onto anger, and closing my heart to other people," Chan said. She would go on dates during this time, but couldn't connect with anyone because she was fixating on her anger towards her ex, she said.

But when a close friend cut her off during one of her rants, asking to share a happy memory of her ex, Chan stopped in her tracks. She realized that she needed to take some sort of accountability for the breakup too, and that it was her responsibility to move forward without feeling like a victim, she said.

"I couldn't see the good. I was creating this narrative and it wasn't serving me, so I actually went home after talking to my friend, and I wrote my ex a letter," Chan said.