How To BREAK UP With Someone The RIGHT WAY | Katherine Woodward Thomas

0:00Katherine Woodward Thomas:It's smart to always have a few financial goals and a really smart one you can set, earning cash back on what you buy every day. And with Discover, you can. Get this. Discover automatically matches all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year. Seriously, all of it. And we trust you to make smart decisions. After all, you listen to this show. See terms at discover.com slash credit card. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:40I love being in relationship with all types of human beings, men and women. I just love being in relationship. And the challenge with intimate relationships is that one of two things are going to happen. You're either going to get married or you're going to break up. And they're both scary for people. Getting married or breaking up, it's like they're both a challenge. There's something you're letting go of and taking on when you do either once. When we get to the point where we eventually, you know, if we're going to go through a breakup, how do we do it in a way where there's love and beauty and grace?

1:16How do you start the process of doing a breakup without it being painful? And is that possible? It's not possible. It's not possible. That's not possible. That's not a realistic goal. Pain is inevitable. Well, we're hardwired to bond. The latest studies in neurobiology show that when the people that we're hanging with the most, we actually sync up physiologically. Really? Yeah. So we start to, we're actually, our brains will start to hook up. Brains are social creatures. so if you're going to part ways it's there's no way for that to not be incredibly painful so conscious uncoupling is more about okay how are we going to suffer in an effective way the pain is inevitable but how do we do the suffering in a loving way we don't want to have ineffective suffering yes okay so ineffective suffering is when you take the bait of your biology and you you go to form strong and very strong super strong right and so you go into fight or flight and you want it you want to lash out that you know soulmate to soul hate phenomenon so so you want to lash out but what it will do is create a negative bond and keep you just as invested but only this time through a toxic negative constantly reinforcing negativity yeah right that's not healthy because you love the person you don't want to hate them or be mad at them constantly.

2:39Yeah. I think where we want to go is, or I know where we want to go is to be able to find a way to deescalate the intensity of the emotions that we're feeling. How do we do that when we are, you know, hardwired to be jealous or angry or just like reactive? How do we say, okay, I'm going to be in an home state right now and calm and meditate and not let any of this affect me? Well, one of the reasons it's so hard is because our relationships actually regulate our emotions. So when there's a rupture of attachment, you know, that phenomenon, the one person who's hurting you the most, that's the person you want to see the most to comfort you.

3:17So because they are, you're hardwired to get regulated by that person. They're the one person who can comfort you and soothe you. Otherwise you're the puppy in the corner, just like depressed. Yeah. Or enraged, right. Or freaking out. But, but I think you're saying like, how do you deal with the anger and the rage and the jealousy all of that stuff so so one of the things that i offer people is a simple technique called affect labeling in in the psychological world which is basically the ability to put a name on each of your feelings an example is first of all there was a scientific study done where subjects were looking at a computer screen and they were seeing you know Faces of horror, faces of rage, faces of hatred.

4:01And they were being monitored in all of their vitals. And they're kind of going off the charts. Their blood pressure is rising and their heart rate is going. And then they did another technique with this. They have the same pictures to a new group, but put a name. Hatred, rage, despair. And the vitals did not go up in the same way. So what that shows is that when we have a name for the experience that we're having, we don't get as overwhelmed. So language serves kind of as a container. So how would we use that in a breakup? So I have a practice where I just very simply advise people to ask yourself, you know, Catherine, honey, what are you feeling right now?

4:49I'm feeling terrified. I can see that you're feeling terrified. Honey, what else are you feeling? I'm feeling so humiliated. Oh, I can see that. You're so humiliated. What else are you feeling? I'm feeling really pissed. Okay. Okay, I can see that you're feeling that. What else are you feeling? I feel exhilarated. Because we have all these feelings going on at once. They don't have to get on with each other, you know. And then sometimes if the feelings are overwhelming, I also give people an opportunity to do this process of tanglan, which is a Buddhist process. I'm not Buddhist myself, but it's a beautiful practice that Pima Chodron actually made very popular.

5:33If you breathe a certain feeling into your heart, so I feel despair. I'm going to breathe despair in. I'm not going to turn away from it. And on the out breath, I'm going to breathe out a blessing to everyone in the world who in this very moment is suffering with this very feeling, including myself. and it starts to be like you can start to hold the feeling more because you've made a bigger playing field and you see it as an impersonal experience and then you become you know force of good ideally what happens is we want to harvest the seeds of growth that are inside of each of our feelings so for instance the feeling of rage there's something underneath it like a violation has occurred and there's a part of us that's saying, I should be treated better.

6:17I deserve respect. I deserve that my feelings should matter to the people that love me and that I've opened my life up to and I deserve to have better. So that can actually become a stand then that you take. Yeah. You know, because we're going to move into self-responsibility. How is it giving my power away? How is it okay? How is I, you know, treating people to disrespect me? All of that kind of thing. Sure. Right? So you want to harvest the seeds of growth. So every action we take, every choice that we make in that moment when we're in a breakup is planting a seed for the future. And a lot of people who end up in that negative spiral where you're years later fighting and back in court and stuff is because at the very beginning people planted bad seeds of hatred and rage.

7:02And that's what that grows in your backyard. And you're eating those bitter fruits for years to come. So it becomes actually self-destructive. It's meant to hurt somebody else in the way that you feel hurt, but it becomes self-destructive. And so, you know, it's one of the principles in step one of conscious uncoupling is, you know, do no harm and plant good seeds.

7:33I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. and if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

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