If You’re Going Through a Breakup, Listen To This

0:00Jay Shetty:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great way to keep your mind clear. That's why a State Farm agent is there to help you choose a coverage option that's right for you. As you go through life getting that new house, car, boat, motorcycle, or even RV, helping protect it is always a good idea. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or on the award-winning app, State Farm is there to help protect what's important to you. And with so many coverage options, it's nice having help to find what fits for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

0:44Jay Shetty:Indeed Sponsored Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results When you need the right person to cut through the chaos This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit To help get your job the premium status it deserves At indeed.com forward slash podcast Terms and conditions apply Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs Whether you're calling the wise women in your life Video calling your friends across the country or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters.

1:27Jay Shetty:Those small conversations, shared laughs and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT &T guarantees a network you can rely on so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT &T guarantee. AT &T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com forward slash guarantee for details. If you or your friend is going through a breakup right now, this episode is for you. I want you to hear this carefully. Nothing is wrong with you. You're not weak for missing them.

2:11Jay Shetty:You're not dramatic for feeling this deeply. And you're not failing at love because it hurts. What you're experiencing is grief. And most people don't realize this, but breakups don't just hurt emotionally. They activate the same neural pathways as physical pain and addiction withdrawal. Brain imaging studies from neuroscientist Helen Fisher show that romantic rejection activates the brain's reward system in the same way substance withdrawal does. That's why your thoughts feel obsessive. That's why your body feels restless or exhausted That's why logic doesn't seem to help I'm sure so many of you right now If you've been through a breakup Are wondering why does my brain feel foggy?

2:59Jay Shetty:Why can't I just go back to work? Why can't I deal with the same conversations like I was before? And here's the truth You're not just heartbroken Your nervous system is grieving the loss of an attachment So today, I want to walk you through the stages of grief after a breakup Not as a straight line, not as something to rush, but as a map One of the biggest challenges when you go through a problem, a challenge, a difficulty like this Is you don't know what the next step looks like You don't know what the next month looks like Maybe your friends are talking to you about dating again Maybe some other friends are talking to you about never dating again maybe your ex keeps showing up in your life somehow and it all just feels like a mess.

3:45Jay Shetty:I want you to know that there are certain phases, certain experience, certain emotions that you are going to go through. And because you know they're around the corner, because you know they're going to happen, you can feel comfortable in the uncertainty. You can take this discomfort and you can walk through with a bit more grace, bit more ease and a bit more support. Mainly so that you can stop judging yourself and start healing without abandoning yourself. One of the biggest mistakes we make during a breakup is we talk down to ourself, we're critical of ourselves, we get into blaming, shaming and guilting ourselves.

4:28It's natural, but I wanna help you move through it

4:31Jay Shetty:a little more gracefully. Here's the core reframe, what grief actually is. The stages of grief were first identified by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross while studying patients facing terminal illness. But decades of research since then, including work in attachment psychology, have shown that these stages also apply to any deep emotional loss, including breakups. Because a breakup isn't just the loss of a person, it's the loss of a future you imagined. Let me say that again. It's the loss of a future you imagined. When you're dreaming up a future with someone, when you're thinking about your wedding day, when you're thinking about moving in together, when you're thinking about what that future looks like, you now create an attachment to a vision in your mind.

5:24Jay Shetty:I know that sounds kind of interesting, but it's true. You built up an identity of what you will look like, what they will look like, and what your life will look like. The future you that you imagine together The future you imagined for yourself Is what's being taken away You're also grieving daily emotional regulation Maybe they messaged you every day when you woke up Maybe you called them every night before you went to bed Maybe you saw them for a day every Friday or Saturday or whatever it was Maybe when you were stressed they were the person you went to There's a daily emotional regulation that now needs to be replaced And in the beginning, it just feels like it's been snatched away.

6:06Jay Shetty:It feels like it's been taken away. It feels like the rug has been pulled from underneath your feet and you're just falling. That daily emotional regulation is something you're grieving because it's a loss you haven't yet discovered a substitute for. See, at different stages in our life, different things emotionally regulate us. When we grow up, it's hopefully our caregivers. could be our siblings, our friends. But when you're in a romantic relationship, there's almost an over-reliance in the emotional regulation you experience from that person. You're also grieving routines your nervous system depended on, right?

6:45Jay Shetty:Those routines could be anything from, well, this was our favorite show we watched together. That was our favorite restaurant we went to. This was the place that we first connected, right? Whatever it means, we have these routines and what happens is our body and our biology and our mind get used to these routines, right? We get used to taking the same route to work every day. You get used to talking to the same person every day, the sound of their voice, their scent, their touch, being with them. You are grieving that. You're going through the transition of that. What I want to tell you is that there will come a day when you won't feel that way.

7:24Jay Shetty:There will come a day when that person may even feel like a stranger. One day your ex, the person you were most intimate with who left you, will actually feel like a stranger. I know right now they feel like someone who knows you better than anyone. Someone that you gave everything to. But you only gave them this version of you and a new version of you will arise. What you're grieving is a version of yourself that existed with them. We think we've lost all of ourselves. We think we're completely confused. We think we've given ourselves away, but the reality is it was only this version. You have been so many versions of yourself up until this point in life.

8:09Jay Shetty:You've had friends at college that you're no longer connected to. You had friends in elementary school that you no longer see. There was a version of you that lived through all of that and you transformed, you evolved, you changed. So here's the reframe. you're not getting over someone. I really don't like that language. When are you going to get over them? Why am I not over them yet? You're withdrawing from an emotional bond. And withdrawal is not a mindset problem. It's a biological process, right? I really want you to understand that sometimes we think, what's wrong with my head? What's wrong in my mind?

8:45Jay Shetty:Why can't I just move on from this? And it's biology, it's chemical. So let's walk through the stages honestly and carefully. If you're missing them most at night, it's not because they were perfect. It's because your nervous system got used to them being there. You're not lonely because they're gone. You feel lonely because they provided regulation and that can be rebuilt slowly without them. Remember this, you're not missing them, you're missing the future you thought you were building together. You're not missing them, you're missing the routine your nervous system got used to. You're not missing them, you're missing the way they made the future feel safe.

9:32Jay Shetty:Remember, you're not missing them. Let's talk about the stages of grief. The first is shock and denial. I'm pretty sure you all know what this feels like. You're probably experiencing it right now. There's a part of you that's shocked. How could you leave me? How could you break up with me? I gave so much to this relationship. Wait a minute, I should have been the one to give it up. I worked so hard. I put so much energy into this and you walked away? Wait, I'm shocked. I always thought that you loved me. I thought you told me that we had something special. I'm shocked. I thought that we were gonna spend the rest of our lives together.

10:12Jay Shetty:Wait, I'm shocked because I thought if anyone was gonna leave, it was going to be me. Why I'm shocked because you treated me badly, but you're the one leaving me. I'm sure you've said some of these things, heard some of these things, felt some of these things. The first stage is shock, often paired with denial. This can show up as numbness, calmness that feels strange, saying I'm okay and meaning it temporarily. What's interesting is that people think denial means pretending it didn't happen. But psychologically, denial is your nervous system saying, this is too much all at once. Sometimes your nervous system won't allow you to feel the extent of the pain, to feel the extremities of the difficulty because it would just be all too much.

11:04Jay Shetty:So you're somewhat allowing it to just be there. You're allowing it to just exist. And you're thinking, I'm okay actually. but really it's your emotions just not allowing them to come to the surface because your body and brain and everything are trying to help you survive. Research shows emotional shock temporarily dampens pain to prevent overwhelm. So if you feel disconnected or unreal, that's not avoidance, that's protection, right? A lot of us feel, wait, I should be feeling more pain. I should be crying, I can't cry. I should be experiencing so much pain but I'm not. there's nothing wrong with you.

11:43Jay Shetty:That's how your mind and body protects itself. It doesn't want you to be overexposed to all those emotions and feelings right now. There'll come a time when you can actually deal with them properly, right? It's almost like saying that if you saw a fire, you would just run from that area. You wouldn't stay in that area and try and figure out why it happened, where it started, what's going wrong. You'd run away. And then when the fire cooled down, you'd come back to check on what happened. It's protection. So what helps in this stage? If you're in this stage right now, here are a few things I encourage you to do, no matter how hard they are.

12:17Jay Shetty:The first is basic routines. After a bit of withdrawal, it's good to get back to work. It's good to be able to go and attend the gym. It's good to be able to see friends regularly. The idea of creating routine is healthy because what it does is it allows you to forget and remove and distance yourself from the routine you had before. The next is eating regularly. It's just good biologically, just eating regularly. Sleeping when you can. This one's so important. So many people, when they're in shock and denial, avoid sleep. They can't sleep. Allowing yourself to rest, giving yourself grace for what you've gone through is extremely important.

12:58Now, what hurts you is forcing emotional breakthroughs.

13:03Jay Shetty:You're like, I can't cry, I wanna cry. I should be feeling pain. I should be mad. I should be angry. You shouldn't have to be anything. You can experience shock and denial. And what you'll find is when you allow yourself to experience it, your body and mind will tell you when. Have you noticed that when you have a wound, the first day you have to attend to it, you might put some, you know, ointment on it. You might put some essential oils, whatever you use, and your body learns to heal itself over time. You don't have to keep looking at it every day. You might put a plaster on it or a bandage on the first day or the band-aid.

13:39Jay Shetty:But after that, you're not looking at it. You don't have to think about it all the time. You don't have to force healing. You don't have to force an emotional breakthrough. Your body and mind help you along the way.

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17:14Jay Shetty:The other thing that hurts is making life-altering decisions. When someone breaks up with us, we're thinking, wait a minute, maybe I need to move city. Maybe I need to move home. Maybe I need to quit my job and pursue my passion. Maybe I need to change my whole life. We start thinking about these life-altering decisions because in some way, it's again protection. It makes us feel better. We're dealing with something so much bigger. But the chances are in that raised emotional dichotomy, it's very hard to make good decisions. Your best decisions are not made when you're angry. Your best decisions are not made when you're sad and upset Your best decisions are not made when you're not thinking clearly They're made when you feel a little peace When you feel a little centered And you feel a little distance from what caused you pain Don't force yourself to make big decisions after a big challenge Stage two is bargaining and obsession This is the stage people confuse with overthinking or rumination or procrastination.

18:24Jay Shetty:But clinically, this is bargaining. Your mind replays conversations, rereads messages, imagines alternate endings. Why? Because the brain is trying to restore attachment. Bargaining is like, if I did this, we could have had this. maybe if I didn't say this I would have saved the relationship maybe if I acted this way we'd still be together maybe if I wasn't so annoying and so needy we'd still be with each other that's what bargaining looks like you're bargaining negotiating with yourself thinking about all the things you could have done studies show that after romantic loss the brain increases rumination as an unconscious attempt to regain control and proximity.

19:15Jay Shetty:This is where your thoughts sound like, if I had said that differently, they'd still be here. Maybe we could still fix this. I just need closure, right? So we start bargaining. And the challenge with this phase is that it feels real. It really feels like if you did that one thing, they'd still be here. When you know that's not the case, but you can't access that. Your subconscious can't access that. Your subconscious is convincing you that you're absolutely right. If you did that one thing or didn't do that one thing, you'd still be with them. This is probably one of the toughest stages to get through.

19:49Jay Shetty:And I'm really glad that we're talking about it after the first stage, because it's the stage that can feel the longest. It's the stage that can feel the hardest. You tell all your friends, look, I really feel I could have made it work. And they're looking at you like, you're crazy. What's wrong with you? Right? You keep playing it over and over in your head for days. You're looking at pictures, you're looking at social media, and you're thinking, wait a minute, why are they with that person like I thought they liked me for those reasons and maybe I was just too annoying maybe I asked for too much maybe I needed too much here's the truth closure doesn't come from answers it comes from accepting the loss of the bond here's what helps here writing thoughts down instead of replaying them when you replay thoughts in your head they all feel real when you write down thoughts, you can actually question them.

20:41Jay Shetty:It's really hard to question a thought in your head. If you're replaying in your head, if I did that, they'd still be here and then this would happen, it all makes sense. When you write it down and you read it out to yourself, you might even look at it and go, that's bizarre. That's absolutely crazy. I can't believe I thought that. I want you to really ask yourself to write down what you're thinking. Write down your most repeated thoughts, read them out to yourself and recognize the flaws that they hold. Another thing that can help is reducing contact and checking behaviors. A lot of the time, we're reading old messages.

21:14Jay Shetty:Delete them. A lot of the time, we're looking at their social media profile. Block it. It helps to have distance at a time when you're thinking about all the things you could have, should have, would have done. It's good to have distance. And it's also healthy to recognize that this is a phase you're gonna have to go through. You will negotiate, but know that your negotiation doesn't mean that it's valid. It's important to name what's happening. This is withdrawal because here's what's really going on. You're not stuck, you're detoxing. If you keep remembering only the good moments, remember this.

21:55Jay Shetty:Your brain edits memories during loss. It highlights comfort and hides pain. Healing begins when you remember the whole truth, not the highlight reel. Again, to protect us, the brain just keeps thinking of all the good times, all the amazing moments. And so now when you're negotiating, when you're ruminating, when you're overthinking, when you're bargaining, you're only bargaining based on the highlights. You're forgetting everything they did wrong. You're thinking, actually, yeah, they did show me flashes of greatness, beauty, attraction, romance. And you're forgetting the time they ignored you.

22:32Jay Shetty:You're forgetting the time that they weren't emotionally available. When someone breaks up with you, it's so easy to just remember the good times. But you forget the time that they ignored you. You forget the time that they weren't emotionally available. You forget the time that they put you down in front of your friends. Just because your mind only remembers the good things doesn't mean that relationship was meant to last. Don't get lost in the highlight reel and remember the truth. Stage three is anger and protest. Something shifts. Anger appears. Aggression is back. Sometimes explosive, sometimes quiet, sometimes delayed, right?

23:16Jay Shetty:I think we think anger is just like this brute force. Sometimes anger can be boiling inside. You're quieter. You're scarier. Anger is not regression. I think a lot of us feel if I'm angry again, I've gone backwards, not realizing that if you go back to stage one, that's why these stages are important. When you go back to stage one, you never felt angry because you were protecting yourself. So that's why when we feel anger later, we go, oh no, no, I'm going worse. I'm going in the wrong direction. And that's the biggest mistake. We think we're not improving. We think we're not evolving. We think we're going backwards because we feel angry.

23:52Jay Shetty:But the reality is your body was waiting for you to have space to feel this. Your body and mind were waiting to give you permission to feel anger in a safe way. Anger is not moving backwards. In grief research, anger is understood as self-respect returning. Let me say that again. In grief research, anger is understood as self-respect returning. It sounds like that wasn't okay. You're finally saying to yourself, actually, yeah, the way I was treated wasn't okay. You're not bargaining anymore. you're actually realizing I deserve so much better. I don't want to settle. I can't believe I was going to settle for that.

24:36Jay Shetty:I can't believe I was accepting less than I deserve. You start to acknowledge, I ignored things I shouldn't have. And sometimes you get mad at yourself for thinking, wait, why was I bargaining, right? Why was I actually not mad earlier? I should have been mad before. And now the mistake is I should have been mad before. I'm actually going backwards and I want to give them a piece of my mind. This is the point at which most of you want to text that person or pick up the phone to them or get your friend to phone them and have a go at them, right? This is that moment. And you want to recognize you're fair to feel your anger.

25:09Jay Shetty:You're valid to feel your anger. But it's all happening in the right order. It's all happening at the right pace. It's happening for you. Anger scares people because they think it makes them bitter. but research shows healthy anger speeds recovery when it's expressed safely. Expressed safely means you'll share it with a therapist, you'll share it with a coach, you'll share it with a friend, you're not sharing it in a text to that person. I think the biggest challenge we have here is we're judging ourself for being angry. We're either thinking I should have been angry earlier, I should have been angry at them or I'm being angry now and it's too late.

25:48Jay Shetty:It's not too late. Everything is moving in the direction that it needs to. That's why I want you to really stay till the end of this episode so that you can hear all the phases so that you're not harsh on yourself when you're going through it. It's almost like if you're doing a triathlon, you know you're gonna have to run, you know you're gonna have to cycle and you know you're gonna have to swim and you'll know the order. But if when you're swimming, you're wondering, wait, why am I swimming right now? I don't wanna be swimming, I should be cycling. It doesn't work that way. What helps here is movement, channeling that anger physically.

26:21Jay Shetty:The other is boundaries, setting boundaries as to how you want to communicate with that person and how you're going to avoid communicate with them to be honest. Honesty really helps. Honesty with yourself, honesty with others. Because up until now, you've been bargaining with your own honesty. But here's what hurts. Shaming yourself for anger. That's what holds you back. Using anger to reattach through conflict. or now I need to connect with them to tell them how I feel. Let anger inform you, not define you. This is why I really want you to listen to the next phase because this might be where you're at.