After the breakup

When a relationship ends, it can be especially difficult for someone who is young because the relationship symbolizes their entire future. They know there are other people, but it kind of feels like the world is closing down. It has become even more difficult with social media because people can check up on each other and communicate with each other, whereas in the past, when I was growing up, you just took the phone and called people. It's that motivating state that explains why it's so difficult to resist reaching out to someone you genuinely miss and want to see return. Women tend to be more negatively impacted by breakups, reporting high levels of both physical and emotional pain, but while breakups hit women the hardest, they tended to recover more fully, whereas men, on the other hand, rarely fully recovered. I thought that was very interesting, but I wasn't too sure what that meant. Yeah, it's interesting, and it also shows that women tend to be more positively impacted by breakups. things And here I'm painting with a wide brush, right? You know how comfortable one is feeling, whether their feelings are male or female, is going to heavily affect how quickly one passes from mourning. This is the same thing as trauma. The more willing someone is to face the full depth and intensity of the sensations that they identify with that trauma, the more rapidly they're going to go through it again. I'm borrowing from Paul Conti, so these aren't my words, but you know, individuals employ a variety of methods to avoid feeling the unpleasant emotions or the pain of a breakup, such as diversion, state sublimation, and avoidance of various types. You should know that trying to self-soothe with alcohol, soothe with multiple new partners, or use any other method just prolongs the process because this map of space-time and closeness needs to be fractured, and the only way to do that is for the brain to have to face the fact that by breaking up with them, they are no longer available.You know, you can really see this in animal studies that are kind of hard; they're actually extremely hard. It's like the food on the other side of that wall is gone; it's simply not there anymore, or that the food that was accessible now has a wall in between and you will not go through it. You know, you can see this in animal studies that are kind of hard; they're actually very hard to watch. You'll see the animal persevere and literally damage his own body trying to get through a barrier to something that's highly motivated to see people do that post-breakup; they usually do that by talking to everyone about the breakup; they're just not there anymore; or the food that was accessible now has a wall in between and you will not get through it. I believe that from a very young age, there is a skill that, at least I'm sure, transcends to women as well: learning to pack down feelings. So when are we really talking about packing down feelings? I think that the ability to really feel the full intensity of how sad it is and be able to confront that is probably the key to being, let's just say, effective at dealing with breakups. I'm not a psychologist, but what I've learned about top-down control from the forebrain to autonomic control is similar to how I don't want to jump off a high dive or give a speech, but I'm going to kind of push myself to do it. David Goggins Grief is an autonomic state that, as we say, has a negative valence, but it's high levels of autonomic arousal with a negative connotation because you can have high levels of autonomic arousal with both happiness and sadness, right? You can be alert and aroused and happy, or you may be alert and aroused and sad; it's very alert and arousing, and yet we learn how to tame that down. He was a big supporter of scream therapies; he used to go up into the hills behind Stanford; in fact, he still owns a property there; he was really into catharsis, the cathartic release of internal state; he felt that this would allow him to return a happier, nicer person; however, he was also known for screaming at people in the office, so he obviously had a lot pent up inside. Therefore, I think the more we can lean into the emotional aspect of this, the more I can speak from experience when I say that I would utilize the resentment or unhappiness from a bad experience to work 10 times harder and 10 times longer to just earn that much more. Focus involves taking that autonomic arousal, that narrow aperture, and that energy and applying them to something that advances your life. In some cases, this is beneficial because you still need to function and give, but it can give you the impression that you are working through something because you receive all the benefits and recognition for your efforts. However, what you fail to do is remap that space-time closeness map, which you will then discover, I guarantee. closeness map When people say you haven't coped with the loss, they mean you never genuinely allowed yourself to experience the sensations, but once you do, it's like a valve that releases. This is why you may, five or ten years later, wonder why you're so tired or why certain things in your life aren't going well.