The Secret of Charisma

28:34You see that the religious leader Joseph Smith exemplifies this paradox. How so, Molly? Joseph Smith was a child of kind of poor New England homesteader, farmer, family members who couldn't really make a comfortable life in the context of, you know, the turn of the 19th century America. They were constantly scrapping and struggling to make a living materially. And also, you know, his parents were seekers who were frustrated with existing church options, really interested in the supernatural side of life, prone to having dreams and visions, but unable to really find an institutional home. And that's awfully confusing and disorienting.

29:28Joseph Smith had this genius. I mean, Mormons would say he received revelation that helped him to diagnose the gaps, the ways in which the existing religious story, way of understanding the Bible and the relationship between humans and God, was just leaving, I guess, a critical mass of early Americans feeling frustrated and lost. And so he offers, as he's reporting his revelations and interpreting these golden plates that he says he's been led to find in a hill in upstate New York by the angel Moroni, and then he spends the next few years kind of spinning out what this new religious community built around this new scripture will look like.

30:22In many ways, he offers a deeply American form of Christianity that is very much in line, I think, with the desires and anxieties of Americans at this time. They want to have their free will celebrated and recognized. And the Mormon faith is kind of the ultimate free will faith. I mean, it's very clear in offering a roadmap for earning your exaltation and your access essentially to different stages of heaven. So it's this story of both tremendous empowerment, but also an invitation to subsume your individual struggles and your efforts to scratch out an existence on your little homestead in upstate New York or Ohio into this broader story that God has ordained in some meaningful way.

31:25And so that, I think, is a great example of that paradox of offering both empowering agency and security. As you're talking, though, Molly, it feels so clear to me that when charismatic people have these followings, it's clear they have these followings because they're unlocking something in the people who they are leading. The people are hearing something about themselves in this message. So it's, you know, even if the charismatic leader is not charming and is not good looking and is not likable, the point is the message makes me think differently about myself. That's right. And Joseph Smith is a great example of this.

32:03I mean, some people who met him in person found him really physically compelling. He was tall for the era. He had these electric blue eyes. One follower said just by shaking his hand, she felt the Holy Spirit electrify her whole body. But then you can also find skeptics who encounter him and say, this guy is a clown. He has this dishonest face. His hands are kind of fat. I wouldn't follow him to the grocery store, you know, let alone to found a new Zion on the banks of the Mississippi, as his followers did in Nauvoo, Illinois. And Joseph Smith's story also was an early case that helped me understand in my research that the power of charisma resides much more in the story and the message than in the individual.

33:06One of the elements of charisma that you explore is that charismatic people often promise to pull back the veil on a secret truth. I mean, that was true of Jemima Wilkinson. That was true of Marcus Garvey. Even true of Tim Galway. Talk about this idea that in some ways charismatic people offer to show us a vision of reality that is in some ways behind the reality that we are seeing every day. I think charismatic leaders in many different contexts are positioning themselves alongside the message that people are getting from established sources. from tradition, from institutions. And the charismatic leader says, you think you've been told how the world works.

33:55You think you have a full picture of reality, but you don't. You've been denied some crucial facts about your existence and your relationship to the powers, both material and supernatural. And that can take the form of a very legitimate revelation of true access to the full picture of what it is to be human. So I think this is one way we could understand Martin Luther King Jr.'s message, that he is someone who destabilized complacency and a willingness to just suffer Jim Crow by reorienting the way that Americans, black and white, saw what was possible, saw the reality of who each person is as an individual.

34:48and the vast chasm between the lived experience of Black Americans in the mid-20th century and what justice really consists of. So there is a case of a pulling back the veil that was absolutely rooted in a true revelation, if you will. But I think this can take darker forms also. And this is where I think the word charisma can trigger perhaps in our mind a kind of negative connotation because it can sometimes go along with a false story about reality, an effort to undermine the news people receive from the mainstream media or what they're told by experts. And sometimes that can cross over into the realm of kind of pseudo facts.

35:44So really crucial, I think, in how we use this information in our everyday lives, how we evaluate leaders, is to be constantly holding up the story that leaders tell us against other sources of information. and doing our best, although it's never possible to be perfect at this, to discern, you know, is this leader really showing me something that is true and that changes everything and that I have to take seriously? Or perhaps do I have reason to be skeptical?

36:26Charisma is a powerful force. It has the ability to inspire, unite, and give people a profound sense of meaning and purpose. When a charismatic person speaks, their followers aren't just hearing a speech. They are seeing a new way to understand their own lives. When we come back, the different forms that charisma has taken over the years, and how and when, we should question it. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

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39:12This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Do you have personal stories about being drawn in by a charismatic leader? A question about charisma and how we can be swept up in the spell of a mesmerizing person? If you'd be willing to share your question or story with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone. Then email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line charisma. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org.

39:51Charismatic people draw followers in, shape movements, and alter the course of nations. At the University of North Carolina, historian Molly Worthen is the author of Spellbound, how charisma shaped American history from the Puritans to Donald Trump. Molly, I'm wondering whether you can talk about the idea that charismatic people sometimes fuse their personal story with their message. So long before Donald Trump became president, for example, he was crafting a narrative that fused personal mythology with his worldview that America was being taken advantage of by the rest of the world. Can you talk about this idea that charismatic people are very good at placing themselves in the flow of the stories and the narratives that they're crafting?

40:37I think that's exactly right and a crucial step for a charismatic leader who's offering a story that is supposed to draw followers into a special relationship with him or her as an individual. Looking back over Donald Trump's career long before he formally entered politics, I think he showed a real instinct for doing this. And if you go back and read his conversations with tabloid reporters in the 1980s, or you can find old footage of him on the Oprah Winfrey show in the late 1980s, and you find him talking about his experience with all kinds of evil actors who have tried to take advantage of him and rip him off.

41:24That's a phrase he uses a lot from early in his career. I think people are tired of seeing the United States ripped off. And I can't promise you everything. But I can tell you one thing, this country would make one hell of a lot of money from those people that for 25 years have taken advantage. It wouldn't be the way it's been, believe me. His account is one of himself as a self-made man, you know, really glossing over the degree to which he inherited his business empire from his father. And instead, he describes it as this brilliant exercise in entrepreneurial creativity, one that has required him to evade at every turn people who would try to take him down.

42:08And it's required him to develop a facility in working the system because the system is fundamentally corrupt. And why do laws that have no legitimacy deserve consistent, you know, good faith respect. That's a line he's always walked very carefully, I think, never suggesting in his own narrative of his career that he broke any laws, but at the same time suggesting that someone who doesn't take advantage of, you know, loopholes in the tax code, if you don't do all of those things, then you're kind of a fool. So, you know, he has crafted the story of himself as this master of this kind of working the system and taking revenge on people who are bad actors.

43:03And so it was really not a far leap at all to cast himself, as he trained his eye on national politics, as the hero of the forgotten man, of the hero who would really rectify injustices and go after all of the people and the powers and the institutions that are rigged against the average American that have screwed people over. to use another phrase that he's used frequently. And so he set himself up, I think, quite brilliantly to fuse his personal story of triumph in the business world with the revenge and justice and ultimate triumph that he promised to offer his supporters if they elected him president.

44:01Do you think his story in some ways mirrors the stories of other people that you have looked at, other charismatic people, and that there are followers of his who almost quite literally are willing to die for him and believe so deeply in what he stands for? And simultaneously, there are other people who look at him and don't know whether to roll their eyes or just to throw their hands up in disgust. You know, he seems to evoke extremely strong passions in completely different directions. Absolutely. And it was observing those very polarized reactions back in 2015 that helped send me down the path of trying to understand the phenomenon of charisma across the centuries.

44:43And I absolutely did find that that polarizing effect on people is echoed all the way back into colonial times up into the present.

44:58I'm wondering, Molly, when you think about someone like Donald Trump, you know, his views have actually been fairly consistent about some of these issues for a long period of time. And well before he became president, his sense, of course, that he's being ripped off, that the country is being ripped off, that you have to, you know, take on these institutions and these elite forces that are, you know, arrayed against the common man. These are all views that he's held for a long time. Do you think that charismatic people carefully select their views to figure out what will be effective in driving their followers?

45:31Or are they really accidents of history, which is that they happen to have a set of views and beliefs and perhaps even personal stories. And these happen to fit almost like a key into a lock into the needs of the people who are around them at the time. That's a great question. And I think the charismatic leaders have to have a kind of genius and an instinct for reading their time and identifying the driving anxieties and desires of their cultural moment, especially among people who are not being served by the narratives currently on offer in the culture. But I have never run across a charismatic leader who struck me as 100 % pragmatic and just adopting, you know, some mix of views and making up some story willy -nilly purely because it seems like it will play well.

46:32Instead, I think you're right that there has to be this kind of magic, this synergy between the leader's natural self-understanding and aspects of his or her own story and the way he connects specific parts of that story to this grander picture.

47:00As a reminder, if you have questions or comments for Molly Worthen that you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, charisma. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Molly says that we live today in the age of the guru. I asked her what defines this type of charismatic leader. I think it's interesting to play with the term guru in a broad sense. And to remember, too, that charismatic leadership very rarely exists in a pure form.

47:47It's often combined with other kinds of authority. So the frame of the guru as a radically anti-institutional figure who is positioning himself as the gateway to truth and knowledge, that's a useful frame, I think, for understanding Donald Trump. while, of course, also recognizing that he has conventional institutional authority as the president of the United States.

48:22But I think it's a broader cultural phenomenon that we can see manifest across the political spectrum. I became fascinated by the story of Oprah Winfrey and the kind of personal do-it-yourself spirituality that she developed alongside her media career. And I think much of her effectiveness and popularity, you know, really rocketing to fame in the mid-1980s when she was in her 30s, lay in her ability to convince many Americans that what you were seeing on her show was her authentic self. It was just, you know, straight shooting, asking the difficult questions, pulling back the veil on reality that, you know, more polite talk show hosts would ignore.

49:18I say this on my show all the time. Can you really forgive if you haven't gotten angry, if you haven't dealt with how you really feel? I don't know if you can go from having been abused to forgiveness. But it becomes folded into this broader story of how you should be in the world that draws on various New Age religious influences. You know, Deepak Chopra and really a kind of she's a sort of omnivorous consumer of all kinds of religious and spiritual tools. You know, everything from her own Christian heritage, you know, what she grew up with, to more kind of Eastern religious techniques, to just a way of talking about shopping and acquisition as self-empowerment and a way of actualizing your potential.

50:14These are all a way of recasting religion, not as joining a traditional community, you know, deciding to obey an institution, but rather think of it as a toolbox or a smorgasbord, if you will, of options that are just all about suiting yourself. Because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward.

50:49And so it's a whole picture of reality that I think she offered her most devoted fans. And it's part of why you encounter in Oprah's fans a sense that this woman is laying out a path, a way of being. You know, she's not just a talk show host. So I think that frame of the guru helps us make sense of this whole cultural picture and people as disparate as Donald Trump and Oprah.

51:26I think what I'm struggling with, Molly, is, you know, I'm trying to imagine what if I was, you know, somebody living in Nazi Germany in 1936, and this messianic leader comes along and basically tells me a story about, you know, lost glory and the glory that is achievable if Germany were to achieve its full potential, and I'm inspired by this story, and I want to follow this person. What should I be doing when I feel like I'm gripped by somebody who has the story that feels like it's unlocking something within me, and I feel like I need to follow this person? What are the questions I should ask myself that I don't have the luxury of hindsight of waiting 30 years to see how something has turned out, but in the moment, what kind of questions should I ask myself to determine if I'm on the right path?

52:18Boy, that is in some ways the question, right? And I think part of what your question has to compel in all of us is a recognition that even in these cases that in hindsight seem kind of black and white morally, if you're in it, it can be very hard to tell, you know, up from down and get your moral bearings. I guess I have two main thoughts. One is that there's a real power to being embedded enough in a long-standing ancient philosophical or religious tradition that you can avail yourself of all of its resources and perspectives on a range of different challenges in human experience. So when I think about the small number of German Christians who resisted the Nazis and remained deeply critical of Hitler, even, you know, in the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer attempting to assassinate him, I see that clarity of moral vision as a reflection of staying grounded in the whole of the tradition.

53:29not whatever kind of attenuated, useful version of this old tradition the leader happens to be endorsing. The second needful thing is to ask, who is this charismatic leader casting as my enemy? Who is he telling me is the villain? And what do I actually know about those people? What are my sources of information? in most cases, right? I mean, that set of questions was not at top of mind for Germans who were looking the other way or directly complicit in the Holocaust. But for the minority that helped save Jews and worked in the resistance, that personal knowledge of these victims as individuals, as multidimensional humans, was absolutely crucial in inoculating them against Hitler's anti-Semitic propaganda.

54:34So, you know, in our current moment, and, you know, I certainly don't want to accidentally draw analogies. I think we always have to be very careful in drawing historical analogies. But certainly we live in a time when very few Americans know in a personal way people who are on the other side of this political divide. And those relationships are hard to come by for all kinds of reasons. But at the very least, even if we don't have access to those relationships, we can remind ourselves of that dearth of information. The fact that human beings are complicated and any kind of monolithic story of the other side has to obscure far more than it clarifies.

55:35In the best of times, charismatic people can make a chaotic world feel more orderly. They can imbue our daily lives with purpose and meaning. They make us feel good, and we want to be close to them. I was in New Orleans some months ago, and word got out that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey were eating at a private room in a restaurant. Word leaked out, and soon the crowd started gathering. The intersection was soon swamped with hundreds of people. All they wanted, a glimpse of their heroes. It made me think about the connection between charisma and romantic love. When we fall deeply in love, the person we adore seems to walk on water.

56:19Every gesture they make is beautiful. Every word is a pearl. When you think about it, we relate to our lovers as if they were imbued with charisma. Their quirks, their habits, their sense of humor. We find every aspect of them to be fascinating and charming. So what happens when one of these relationships comes to an end? Breakups are devastating because they demand that we wrench ourselves from the orbit of someone we found irresistible. It becomes something like, oh, you're not entirely the person I thought you were. I thought that you would honor the relationship the way I hope to honor the relationship.

57:05When we come back, we dig deep into the psychology of breakups as we respond to listener questions about the end of relationships. Stay with us. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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59:36This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. There are certain painful experiences almost all of us will have to go through. We'll have uncomfortable first days at a new school or a new job. We'll fight with dear friends. We'll grapple with the grief of losing a parent. And unless we're very lucky, we'll break up with someone or have our heart broken by someone we love.

1:00:03In movies and on TV, breakup scenes often make us laugh. It seems so obvious to us, the audience, that this relationship is doomed. But in real life, there often isn't much to laugh about when you're in the middle of a breakup. When you're the one sitting across the table from the person you love, hearing them say, I'm leaving you, can be an agonizing experience. The period that follows the initial shock of a breakup can often bring its own distinct heartache. You start to question everything. Did they really love you? What did you do wrong? Could you win them back? Was there someone else? How long will it take you for you to stop thinking about them?

1:00:49At the University of Windsor in Canada, Antonio Pasqualeone studies how we process breakups and how we can make this particular type of loss less painful. Antonio joined us as part of our recent Love 2.0 series. If you missed that episode, it's the one in this podcast feed titled How to Move On. Today, we welcome Antonio back to respond to listeners' thoughts and questions in our popular segment, Your Questions Answered. Antonio Pascualeone, welcome back to Hidden Brain. Thank you, Shankar. Antonio, after we released our episode with you, we heard from listeners who shared how they had struggled or were continuing to struggle with really deep sorrow in the aftermath of a breakup.

1:01:33I'd like to start with this message we received from a listener named Molly. She went through a breakup about 13 years ago, and it took her a long time to get over the loss of the relationship. why is it that if I were dating this person and he died I would be allowed and in fact even expected to continue loving him for the rest of my life but because he is not dead I am expected to get over it to stop loving him to move on what I don't understand is sort of what is the difference? I mean, isn't a breakup essentially a death? That relationship is dead. The person that we knew is dead to us now.

1:02:21Why are we supposed to approach breakups differently than an even more permanent kind of loss? So Antonio, I think Molly is looking for permission to continue to grieve well beyond the point that others think she should stop grieving. Is she right? I mean, I think it's an interesting question. I can hear the pain in Molly's voice and how she sort of has been sitting with this for 13 years, over a decade, right? And part of the problem, you know, let me just answer her question, which I think is the first part is, are breakups the same or similar to somebody just dying? And I mean, they're both going to be very hard, but you break up because someone doesn't want to be in the relationship someone is unhappy and and someone wants it to end so there's a difference in vision uh and that has to be dealt with it has to be accepted uh by the person who's being broken up with right in death it's possible that both people are really happy.

1:03:32And then somebody dies. And so it just has to be accepted. You know, you might feel like the universe is unfair, but it's not a struggle between two people's visions of what we could do together. Right. So when someone dies, we may grieve them, but we don't necessarily feel rejected by them. But in a breakup, the person who splits up with you They were still walking around, still doing their thing, perhaps now with someone else. You know, I can see in some ways how that can be more painful. Yeah, I mean, you have a disagreement, a difference in how you see things, right? The relationship has expired or turned sour or run its course.

1:04:16You know, the other piece that Molly kind of points at or that comes to my mind is it's been a long time, right? And of course, one's resources, emotional, cognitive, and otherwise are trapped, kind of stuck on this. And there might be more life to live, right? It's important to end something so that one feels freed up to explore new possibilities.

1:04:51Antonio, a listener wrote in with a hypothesis about why things often get worse before they get better after a breakup. Carlos Alberto saw something online that said that after a relationship ends, people may experience a withdrawal of sorts from their ex-partner. Essentially, the post suggested that the struggle we feel after a breakup might be similar to the cravings of someone experiencing an addiction. Here's Carlos Alberto. And I feel that this view is very reductive of the relationship and it doesn't really encompass all the complex things that are going around. But on the other hand, I do feel that it makes sense in a certain way.

1:05:34So my question is specifically if there is value in this understanding of breakups as recovering from addiction, or if this is a rabbit hole that is not really worth exploring. What do you think, Antonio? Is the comparison between breakup grief and addiction withdrawal on the money? You know, when you first introduced it, I thought, well, I don't know. And then the first thing Carlos said, I realized Carlos and I were on the same page. It is a bit reductionistic, right? You know, there are some things that are just very sort of functional in terms of getting over an addiction that might be similar behaviorally in terms of getting over a relationship.

1:06:16You're going to have to change your lifestyle. You're going to have to change who you hang out with. So there's some similarity there. But I think the issue of relationships and grief become also more complicated. It is reductionist. Just think of it as just that, because as Carlos was kind of hinting, there are other issues of personal meaning, of attachment, of identity. And, you know, there's no correlate there with respect to drug addiction. Antonio, a listener named Cliff reached out with a question about how to know when we might be stalled out versus taking time to recover from a breakup.

1:06:59Cliff and his wife got together when they were teenagers and they were married for 25 years. But eight years ago, Cliff's wife asked for a divorce. It threw him for a loop and he says he's still struggling to move on. Here he is. I'm healthy, active, and have a good career, yet I feel unable to move forward emotionally. The idea of dating again in my 50s, even after 8 years, still feels impossible. Being alone feels safer than risking being hurt or blindsided again. At the same time, I recognize that this belief may be irrational. My question for Antonio is, how can I tell the difference between thoughts that are irrational and those that may simply reflect caution or self-protection?

1:07:43Is choosing to remain alone indefinitely an irrational response to my experience? Or could it be a reasonable choice for where I am now? And how might someone in my position, even if I try dating, begin to trust the emotional roller coaster that can come from it? So Cliff raises a really interesting point, Antonio. It isn't always easy to tell where the line is between healthy self-protection and irrational fear. Do you have any advice for him? my heart goes out to him when one sort of speculates that it may be irrational that suggests that it's something that's crossed his mind you know but there's also no obligation to date other people you don't have to there's nothing wrong with deciding well i'm fine on my own that's okay too so really the question sort of becomes what hurts more what's missing in your life is something missing in your life.

1:08:43I mean, life is risky business. So, you know, we date somebody and they might not be interested in you or you might be not so interested in them. And then there's that whole, I mean, it's a lot of work finding the right person. But, you know, we don't look for people because it's convenient. We look for people because we want to connect. And so I think, Cliff, it might be useful to sort of consider to what extent am I depriving myself of possibilities, right? I knew somebody who once said, I broke up with so-and-so so that I would have the possibility of falling in love again, you know? So what do you need, I guess, and what hurts the most?

1:09:35Because it costs you something. to be so safe as well.

1:09:45Many of the most common questions we ask after a breakup are why questions. We want to understand why this rupture happened. We find ourselves poring over our relationship, looking for clues. When we come back, we dig deeper into this process and we'll talk with Antonio about how to know when it's time to start letting go. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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1:11:57This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Throughout our lives, we all will experience various kinds of rejections. Maybe we'll be turned down for a part in the school play. Our dream university will say no to us. We'll toil over a job application only to receive a generic response saying, thanks, but no thanks. But one of the worst forms of rejection is the end of a relationship. To have someone say, I know you, I loved you, but I no longer want to be with you. Antonio Pascual Leone is a psychologist who studies the impact of relationships on our well-being and how we can navigate the emotions that engulf us after a breakup.

1:12:44Antonio, when you tell people about your research, they're sometimes skeptical about whether the emotions we experience after a breakup are generalizable. They assume that each person's response is unique. Is it? Well, each person is unique. You know, in the details, in the way you experience it, and what it means to you, obviously, that's like a thumbprint. That's your unique experience. And at the same time, you know, is it unique isn't actually going to be an opinion question. This is an empirical question. There are some common patterns that predict wellness outcomes um and you know that's probably because we're humans and humans have a similar parameters for their functioning you know you attend to certain there's a lot of overlapping human needs um it's a funny puzzle though because if i were an astrophysicist i would say well it's like this and people would sort of nod and go okay i guess so i can't i can't see that far so i'll take your word for it.

1:13:54But relationships and emotion, everybody, everybody has direct experience and which is kind of wonderful, but it also means that people hold up what we find against their personal belief system, the personal kind of experiences.

1:14:22Now, after a breakup, many people find themselves turning things over and over in their minds, a process that is known as rumination. Talk a moment about why we do this and why it can sometimes be a problem.

1:14:37Well, rumination is almost always a problem, right? I mean, it's tricky to know. Am I ruminating or am I getting stuff done? Um, rumination is busy work, right? It's emotional. There are emotions there, right? You can think of three kinds of rumination. The anxious rumination is always worrying about the future and creating scenarios. What if this and what if that? When we talk about things like unfinished business or losses, relationship losses, you'll get more depressive rumination. Depressive rumination tends to be about the past. It's not about problem solving, but it's about if only I should, if only I had, you know, it's regrets, kind of replaying events of the past, and if they had been a little bit different.

1:15:34Of course, there's an overlap between depressive and anxious rumination. The third kind I'll just mention to be complete here, I'm sure we could make up others, but when we're talking about relationship is angry rumination. So, you know, and these also are scenarios. They tend to be vengeful at the end, right? In certain kind of ways. If only I had said that clever thing and I hope so-and-so gets their comeuppance. But notice these are all scenario-based. They tend to be a replaying of a scenario. It's the plot and characters being reworked. And it tends to be a very cognitive verbal loop, keeps you really busy.

1:16:17So especially when it's anxious, you feel productive in some sort of way. And yet that verbal cognitive loop insulates you from sinking a bit deeper into what's really going on, which is the present, right? Issues of loss, issues of shame that can be very painful. you don't get caught up in those much more maladaptive emotions because you stay on these secondary hopeless, helpless, rageful sort of things. We received a lot of listener questions about rumination. I'd like to share a couple of them with you. The first is from a listener named Sophie. Sophie told us that she and her boyfriend broke up earlier this year because of something that she did.

1:17:07Here she is. I'm trying to piece together this version of me that loved him so much and then this version of me that did what I did and hurt him and the two just aren't connecting and it really scares me and freaks me out and makes me question whether or not I am a good person, a person who should be in romantic relationships. Is it possible to truly move on and heal from a breakup that was essentially your fault. So Sophie is stuck on the idea that perhaps she isn't the kind of partner or maybe even the kind of person that she thought she was. What can people do when they find themselves in this sort of ruminative cycle, Antonia?

1:17:52One thing Sophie is doing is, or at least in this excerpt, right, is thinking of herself in a relatively static way right it's like i hurt somebody i ended the relationship so in life and in relationships you get to you get to reinvent yourself you have choices now you you you get to decide to do things differently if you have regrets about the way you treated somebody you can commit to not treating other people in that way um and i don't think you should sit around and wait until you're perfect before you're in a relationship because that's not really how it works nobody's nobody's got it all sorted out perfectly and the truth is you grow the most on on the contact points on the boundary line between you and someone else you grow the fastest it's hard to compromise it's hard to negotiate it's hard to to have a sense of we but that changes you.

1:18:59And so you'll become a different person by being in a different relationship. I would imagine that the rumination process is particularly common when a breakup is sudden and you don't know why the other person cut things off. A listener named Frida wrote in about her recent breakup. Her boyfriend ended things with her out of the blue. She writes, I really don't know exactly why he broke it off. I've asked to talk with him several times and he always makes excuses not to talk. Previous relationships have ended gradually or with a clear reason. I'm having a hard time moving on and still want to talk with him about what happened.

1:19:37Any advice on how to move on? I'm wondering, Antonio, how can we find closure when a relationship ends and the person who has ended it won't give us any answers? Yeah, I think a lot of people get stuck there sometimes there's even ghosting or other sorts of very abrupt endings and the person's out there somewhere but they're unresponsive in the episode we did something that we talked about was the idea that although the relationship was a shared project me letting go and moving on after the relationship is not a shared project. We will not be doing that together, just like we don't break up together, meaning in synchrony, right?

1:20:26And henceforth, it's like, this is my own project. Obviously, reaching out, there's nothing wrong with that, trying to have a conversation, trying to get closure. Maybe there are things that you want to tell the person maybe the things you want to ask um but you know that you will make use of that in the way that's useful to you and if they're unavailable or unwilling and then that is actually information it it becomes something like oh you're not entirely the person i thought you were I thought that you would honor the relationship the way I hope to honor the relationship. So that's another loss in some ways, but the relationship is yours to move on from, is what I'm trying to say.

1:21:25A listener named Jennifer wrote in about a situation where a relationship ends amicably, but the two people actually want to stay in contact with one another and try to remain friends. Here's Jennifer. I'm really struggling with how to do that because I'm just still working through my emotional baggage and the hurt that I feel. And at some point, I want to do it. Can it be done is my question. What do we need to do to make that happen, each of us individually? Or is it a giant mistake? I'm wondering, Antonio, have you seen any success stories of exes finding their way to becoming friends? Yeah.

1:22:15um that's gonna be a long road though it's not gonna happen overnight um and i think it's wonderful when people do you know it depends how long ago the breakup has been and if that has been put to rest right but you know sometimes that's just a way of letting the other person down more more easily you know one of the puzzles here and one of the reasons why there there's gonna have to be some time off, let's say. You know, are we wanting to be friends just because it follows on the heels of a very intimate and tight romantic relationship? Or are we wanting to be friends because if I didn't know you and I bumped into you at the library, we might become friends?

1:23:00One of the puzzles, I just want to be really clear about it, is the goal of the relationship. that would be the new relationship because you've kind of maxed out in terms of intimacy in the relationship with the person as you know them you have been together shared life had dreams made love that's probably more intimate than most friendships so now you're looking for friendship so it's kind of to roll back the relationship it's not going to be the same relationship it. If you're able to become friends, it'll be getting to know the person in a whole different context. My parents is a funny example.

1:23:44My parents split up when I was 10. My father remarried. And in some ways, I guess they kept in touch. Well, for many, I don't want to speak for them, right? But it's like, well, they had kids. That becomes a shared project, right? So when I say redefine the relationship, it's the relationship becomes then about co-parenting. And that's important, right? We have different goals and there's a different end. Now my parents are quite elderly. And I remember, you know, we get together for holidays or birthdays, my father, my mother, my stepmother, my brothers, everybody's at the same table. And it's great, right?

1:24:25And you can tell these are now, these are friends, right? And there's a sense of community so there's going to be a reinvention of the relationship for Jennifer if that's what she wants and it's not going to happen overnight you're really going to have to give some time you still have to end the relationship

1:24:50When we go through a breakup it can feel like we're saying more than just goodbye to our partner we're also saying goodbye to the future we imagine together The trips we would take, the life we would build. It's hard to imagine how to move forward, how to fill in all the gaps left behind. Up next, Antonio will answer your questions about how to find peace after a breakup and offer guidance on how to avoid a split in the first place. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedant.

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1:27:36This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Antonio Pascual Leone is a psychologist at the University of Windsor in Canada. He's the author of Principles of Emotion Change, What Works and When in Psychotherapy and Everyday life. He joins us today for the latest installment in our series, Your Questions Answered. Antonio, breakups are not always a surprise. Sometimes we know that a relationship isn't meant to be, and we pursue it anyway. This happened to one of our listeners named Celine. Her partner recently broke things off, and Celine is coming to realize that her own emotional issues might be playing a role in undermining her relationships.

1:28:20Here she is. Basically, long story short, in my scenario, I know why it didn't work out. There was a lot of communication issues and emotional disconnection and lack of effort because of it. What didn't help and a punch in the gut was the fact that I was dumped through a voice note. So what I'm currently struggling with is a lot of self-blame that I couldn't get myself to end it. And I guess my other issue is that I fall into loneliness and crave companionships before I get any work done on myself and basically start seeing other people before I know I'm ready. And I know myself enough that this is another struggle that is for sure to be expected.

1:29:09So it sounds like Celine is aware of what she needs to work on Antonio but finds it really difficult to follow through before loneliness compels her to start a new relationship. What do you make of her dilemma? I think what Selene is saying is, I hope she feels like it's okay. It's like she's saying, I'm a work in progress, right? But we all are. I'd say to Selene, I am too. you know or you know so so there's work to be done and um you know that doesn't mean one has to change relationships to improve oneself one is often reinventing relationships as one changes who one is but when she says about her own emotional issues whatever they might be she made reference to sort of a lack of effort and that that piqued me a little bit because i You know, sometimes people say things like, well, you know, we'll see where it goes.

1:30:12When I hear somebody say, talk about lack of effort or we'll see where it goes, I cringe a little bit. I kind of go, well, I can make a good guess where it's going to go. Because the reality is that the rate of success of relationships is relatively poor, right? If we go by divorce rates, they're close to 50%, depending on where you are. I'm just talking statistics. 50%, those are bad odds. If you aren't sure that you want it to work, well, now you've given up your only leverage. Relationships work because you lean into them. And for that reason, one needs to sort of think about in what kinds of ways am I not leaning in?

1:31:03What gets in the way of me loving someone or allowing them to love me? So I think that's really key. Celine's question really highlighted how difficult it is to find a sense of ease when we've gone through a breakup. You've explored strategies that can help in these moments. One idea is to focus on identifying what you call unmet needs. Say more about this, Antonio. That's right. Yeah. All emotion is about needs and negative emotions are about unmet needs. And, you know, when you get to deeper feelings, I'll call them primary emotions, they're about not just highlighting something's wrong to you, but organizing and orienting you to what you need, right?

1:31:56So emotion becomes procedural. I need to have a sense of camaraderie. I need to feel like understood by someone. I need a sense of playfulness. I need fun. I need fun with somebody where we toss it back and forth. Those are existential and attachment-oriented needs, right? Often moving on is about figuring out what's missing now. And once you're identifying it, you can kind of put it to rest, the relationship I mean, and you organize to start looking for that specific thing that you're missing.

1:32:48We received a number of messages from listeners who wanted to share their strategies for getting over a breakup. This one comes from a listener named Deb. At the age of 41, Deb went through a divorce. She struggled and felt like she'd never move on until about a year later, she decided to try something new. Here she is. I took out a yellow lined writing pad and pen and on every single line I wrote thank you and then I would fill in the blank for some way shape or form that my former husband had made my life better. Five pages later, I had let out from my head and heart all those aspects of my former life with him that made a difference for my stories of the past, my impacts on the present, and possibilities for my future.

1:33:40That's what that letter meant to me. Outside of my new bedroom window, I made a sundial on the ground. and after crumbling up those heartfelt statements of gratitude, I burned them and imagined the resulting smoke moving through the air and to its intended recipient, my former husband. From that moment on, I could tell my story without pain or tears or anguish. It was fabulous. So there's abundant research that finds that gratitude is a powerful tool for many realms of our lives, Antonio. is it possible that it can also help us with breakups? Absolutely. I think it's wonderful. It's very creative and it's very agentic and she runs with it, right?

1:34:29So part of it is very action or to do something. Nobody ruminates with a piece of paper the way Deb was talking about. I mean, at least not usually. So notice that one of the things here is she's committing to paper or to conversation with someone or to write. It's not just in your head going around, turning it around in circles. There's a sense of undertaking a task. And the other piece that Deb mentions is ceremony, right? I mean, there's a ritual, the idea of, right? And I think I'm often saying to people, after you've done all the work, not before, you can't do it at the beginning, but after you've done the work, you still have to decide that it's over.

1:35:19There's a decision point where you say, and I'm going to put this to rest. And that serves several functions. One, it creates a sense of closure. Notice the other person doesn't have to be here for the ceremony. It can be private. you do your own thing it has to be done after you do the emotional work of course but it also becomes a reminder a memento there was that time in that moment in time and space where i let it go and walked into the rest of my life um which is what she describes right um then there's the piece about gratitude. In the original episode, we talked about a goodbye exercise where you might write down what are the good things you're saying goodbye to?

1:36:06What are the bad things you're saying goodbye to? Goodbye, good rhythms. And what are the hopes and dreams? Because the reality is we had something together and it was of value. This next question is from a listener who is on the outside of a breakup looking in, her name is Christine. I'm wondering how to help a friend who's been through a difficult breakup and seems to be stuck in a never-ending loop of rumination after a year or more, and they just can't seem to move on. How can I be of help? What do you think, Antonio? Yeah, that was a good question, right? If you care about people and you see them suffering, you want to help them.

1:36:53It depends how long they've been stuck this sort of way. It depends how long the relationship is, right? I think in some sense, if somebody were with a life partner and then the marriage ends or the relationship ends, a year after the breakup, they're still stuck with it and working through it. I wouldn't say that's outside of healthy, right? I mean, it takes time. And the longer the relationship, the more it's going to take time, right? You know, so it kind of depends on the context of what we're considering. But let's imagine it is kind of getting a little, it's taken a bit of a while. Maybe the relationship wasn't as significant in this person's life story, but obviously important enough for them to feel broken over it.

1:37:43Maybe the relationship was a year long and they're grieving for a year. this is starting to be a bit, well, yeah, that's a long time then, right? And if you're a friend or family member of somebody who's still grieving or seems stuck, I would say give them company to fill the void. I would say help them figure out what's important to them. You know what I mean? Often at the end of a relationship, people don't really know what they're looking for. so maybe give them some space to actually do that the third thing would be if people are really stuck in a hole that's almost always from a first person perspective right yeah I feel sad when I think of myself and first person in this situation but you can move the person to a third person perspective kind of like somebody else looking in right and that would be you of course

1:38:41so then one starts talking about a life story a life narrative and and you might have a story that's a sad story but dot dot dot where to from here and the story's not yet finished there's still life to live so what do you want to do with that right and i think that is also important to help shake people up and lift their chin a bit to stare at the horizon.

1:39:19We focused most of this conversation on how to cope with feelings that come after a relationship ruptures. But I'd like to end with a listener question about how to support relationships that are not yet at the point of no return. A listener named Lou sent us a question along those lines. Lou says, I'd love to ask advice on how to break through the distance and silence that occurs when our romantic relationship feels like it's drifting apart. When both parties are feeling vulnerable and unsure of where they stand, what are some key questions we can ask our significant other to bring us back to honest communication.

1:39:56What do you think, Antonio? I think this is a lovely question from Lou. I have already said, if you're just waiting to see what happens, that's a coin toss, heads or tails, right? And is that what you want? Because if that's what you want, then you'll get that, right? And yet, you move through the procedures of life, the comings and goings, and we're busy with work and we're busy with stuff. Maybe you're busy with kids. You have projects. Relationship maintenance takes time. You've got to put time into it, where there's a sense of we. That's a very strong predictor of good outcomes. So how do you do that?

1:40:44You look at your partner and you say, how are things? You make time for the relationship you check in how they're doing um and and sometimes the years roll by and you actually have to reinvent the relationship if you think of projects you've done uh i don't know i wrote a book but people do other sorts of things right they you renovate a house or you start a career or or have children and you know these things a big project in life takes six to eight years, you know, to from beginning to end. And I mean, if you're having kids, it keeps going. But of course, the first six to eight years are really special and very hard.

1:41:27So, you know, if that's true for everything else, it's probably true for relationships too. And if you don't reinvent the relationship every six to eight years, well, then it will probably expire, right? Which is okay too. But if you wanted that relationship. You got to lean in, as I've been saying, and take the time to find a date night again. You don't have time for that. You have a date breakfast.

1:42:02Often one is kind of rediscovering. I find myself with my wife. We have kids. Our kids are like nine and 10 now. And it's sort of like, oh, oh, that's who you are. That's interesting. That's exciting. Be curious. That would be my advice. Be curious. Don't take it for granted.

1:42:29You know, I remember hearing someone say, if you don't make time for health, you are going to make time for illness. And I love that line because it suggests that being healthy is a proactive exercise. And as you're talking now, Antonio, I'm realizing the parallels here. If you don't make time for your relationship, you will make time for your breakup. It's very true. And it's very time-intensive if you have a breakup.

1:43:04Antonio Pascual Leone is a psychologist at the University of Windsor in Canada. He is the author of Principles of Emotion Change, What Works and When in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life. We also heard today from Molly Worthen. She's a historian at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of Spellbound, How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer.

1:43:48I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Our unsung hero today is Kelly Rudin. Kelly has worked for me for many years as my lecture agent. She's fielded incoming calls and emails and set up many speaking engagements. She's retiring, and I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for her many years of friendship and service. Kelly is a master gardener, and I expect she's going to get to spend many more hours in her beloved garden. Thank you again, Kelly. If you love Hidden Brain, please be an ambassador for us. Tell one or two friends about the show. Your word-of-mouth recommendations are one of the most powerful ways to connect more people with the ideas and research we explore on Hidden Brain.

1:44:34I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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