Can We Not Let Our Breakups Break Us

[Applause]

i want you

all to know that you are loved

because today we can be surrounded by so

many people

but feel profoundly alone

68 of gen z feels like nobody knows them

the average american only has one close

friend and one and four feels like they

have

no one loneliness is on par

if not worse than our health than

obesity

it strips years from our life

but we brush off this need for human

connection especially after a breakup

right

we say i just want to be alone i can’t

take this heartache

but we can and we must because these

connections are the keys to our

happiness

and the ultimate disconnection a breakup

that can trigger violence substance use

and depression

so how do we stay connected and not let

breakups break us

i’m a psychotherapist and i’m proud mom

of two there they are so cutie pies

i am an hsp which is called a highly

sensitive person

i’m a category four dyslexic that’s not

a professional term that’s my own term

things get jumbled up with my dyslexia

in my head and coming out of my mouth

so despite my star trek outfit i do not

am my britney spears

thing i do not feel comfortable up here

but i feel calling because we are in the

middle

of a loneliness epidemic with my work

i’ve come to know loneliness

on a first name basis and

hear people what feels like eternity for

them sync

with heartbreak and i take my work

extremely seriously but today as we go

down this journey

i want to have a little fun make this a

little bit more digestible

so how do we currently handle breakups

well you may feel like hiding and

hibernating underneath your sheets

you may feel like a semi truck came

and ran right over you

and reversed and ran right back over you

you may feel body parts you didn’t even

know existed in your body my clients

have found

meaning with a symbolic symbolic meaning

with their physical pain

say their stomach hurts at the core they

can’t digest what’s happening

their eye twitches i don’t want to see

what’s going on

and whether this symbolism resonates

with you or not

know that trauma can be held on a

cellular level

but maybe you’re not thinking that far

ahead maybe you’re just

swiping away on your screen or screens

and feelings of inadequacy hit your own

mental feed

like the universal fear that you’re not

enough

you’re never gonna find love you can’t

commit

and your eggs are gonna rot

and your friends try they tell you all

your ex socks

and whatever gender they were that whole

gender sucks

and they tell you that you could do

better because that one always feels

good

and take you out for an obligatory drink

or four and

because you made that great post you’ll

get a barrage of emotional support

through a bunch of memes

for one day cause nothing

feels like you’re gonna find love again

and vulnerability like this

your friends really do try but the

problem is our culture has

no rituals around mourning love

heartbreak you’re kind of on your own

but your own brain isn’t helping you

either

you’re used to being intoxicated by this

love hormone

called oxytocin that made you feel like

a goddess

and now you’re going through withdrawals

you’re jonesing for it

your logic’s all over the place second

you’re probably having some stress

hormones like cortisol

flooding your brain and it’s making you

feel like you’re having an out-of-body

experience

similar to how i am on the stage right

now

three your brain is really trying to

help you

it’s searching for dopamine hits here

and there

online shopping whole pint of ice cream

wine wine and more wine

i don’t recommend this

our minds are like a chia pet for fear

you drop it one little fear

and it wants to grow up into a beanstalk

of terror

this fear-based thinking served us

really well when we were hunters and

gatherers

and we needed to avoid the buffalo

stampedes or the locust invasions

but we haven’t evolved we are stuck

with a mind that is more receptive to

fear

than how sexy we look in a loincloth

[Laughter]

so what are we supposed to do

first control what you can control which

is often

with your body eat sleep drink deep

breathe the best you can right now

get present by using all five

of your senses now

high intensity cookie eating is not

exercise

sorry try to create healthy rituals for

yourself like a morning walk with music

find your inner diva your inner thrash

metal head or whatever it’s called

get your broken heart pumping

oh come on now when i was younger

i was asked to be part of a tv pilot

for a show that talked about social

issues

in a hot tub now if this sounds bad

it was really bad especially being a hot

tub for so long

and for your pleasure and my

embarrassment here you go

you get sound you can like not put the

pure second

no no tons will heal the fastest you

don’t notice how much you use your

tongue

until you’ve got it so that i’m

different but the tongue’s roll is

far underestimated okay food this side

sat me down and said you’re you can go

into the bathroom and masturbate

i just don’t show you this just to

embarrass myself

but my clients feel guilty for having a

pity party aft in a hot tub after a

breakup

but don’t feel bad for feeling sorry for

yourself

loss is painful so validate that pain

tears literally have have stress

hormones in them so cry

them out let yourself be human

but at some point and on some level you

need to start functioning again

so think of it like a hot tub get in get

out

just don’t do bad tv pilots

now morning love is such a strange

state isn’t it one minute you’re telling

each other your deepest secrets

and then next you’re strangers

and that is brutal you can swing with

feelings of sadness and numb

and anger and strange relief all

vacillating at warp speeds you may

mourn the relationship before it’s over

you may mourn the relationship

that you thought it was or who you

thought they were or the shared history

you may mourn the future that you’d hope

to have with them or how this may affect

other

people and part of letting go can be

seen if there’s anything worth grabbing

onto

but i warn you of nostalgia nostalgia is

two-faced

and it’s shtick is to paint forgeries of

the past

and whitewash your memories like a

propaganda movie

and then you hear it whisper was it so

bad

and then you got your hand over the

panic button going what if i changed and

he changed maybe if we tried a little

bit harder we could make it work

know that you are doing all the messy

feelings

of morning love to get to the place of

acceptance

and it’s not that you approve it or like

it it’s just coming to terms

with what is and i say all this

and morning is individual there’s no

recipe there’s no timeline

and just when you think you’ve gone so

far

you are back to square one again but

please don’t let it stop you from

feeling all these feelings because if

you

stuff this all these feelings down like

a thanksgiving dinner

that dry tasting bird that i swear

nobody likes on any other day

is gonna come manifesting itself up and

destructive actions

or lashing at the people that you love

or maybe you’ll be 65 in some crummy bar

on a tuesday with smoke in your face

so you need to create a counter attack

to nostalgia

write down all the reasons the

relationship’s not working give it to

your friends

review it often play out the whole

unfulfilling movie

not just the highlights

now you’re going to want to build and

have a fortress

you’re going to want to have some firm

boundaries with your ex whether you like

them or they understand

because the next minute you’re creeping

online looking at your ex

i mean you are curious and you happen to

accidentally see a photo of him with a

woman

and maybe analyze it for a few minutes i

mean all day

and

you’re right back in your recovery

cocoon

and it was only his cousin

experiment with rituals that signify

change

if you ask me take a playbook from

burning man gather all the things that

they left at your place

and didn’t pick up and you couldn’t sell

on bernie or craigslist

gather your friends have a bonfire and

burn it

i realize most of us are not into

pyromania but i want you to

not discount the power of a collective

emotional experience

sort of like what we’re having right now

or take my friend’s mantra

new relationship new bed sheets and i

i know it’s not the sheet’s fault it’s

symbolism

but whatever you do do not let fear

light your path

fear is a horrible advisor our brain

acts like a conspiracy theorist to

anything positive

it starts to come in you’re a see some

hope and it wants to poke holes in that

theory

but don’t you let it

run it through your senses visualize it

feel it

smell it i mean just try to give it a

sense

try to give it a chance to stick

now i’ve always loved this lyric and i

believe dolly parton said it first

the best way to get over a lover is to

get under

another

now that feels good but is there any

science behind this

actually yes thank you journal of social

and personal relationships

for showing us that a rebound relation

relationship

can help us improve our overall health

quicker fantastic but be careful of

their heart and your heart as you may

not be ready to be ghosted after a one

night stand or

any relationship for that matter but who

knows when cupid will strike again right

resist going into that hibernation

cocoon duct tape that little voice

inside that says

being social is too much effort

if you feel like you’re a burden to your

friends

ask them don’t assume and rob them of

this gift to be close to you

it could be the silver lining to all of

this

you may want your ex to understand

what’s going on for you right now

but i want you to remember that you may

not be together

because you didn’t understand each other

so find somebody who can because this

could be an opportunity for deeper

healing many psychotherapists believe

that we

enter a relationship to heal for things

in our past

and a breakup alone can trigger

loss abandonment trust issues

so maybe not go to the person who broke

your heart to try to mend it

guilt and regret can eat us alive

but my guess is somebody with the same

history as you put in the same situation

probably would have done the same thing

and we cannot predict

how we will feel with accumulation of

time

so please practice self-compassion

and it’s not just a magic pill you take

once it’s

a lifetime practice

and at the end of the day we’re all just

evolving

apparently even the royal family

so many of us judge the success of a

relationship by its length

if it doesn’t go to the grave another

failed relationship

not necessarily what if we redefined

or reframed failed as completed

we have this idea that all endings are

so negative

but if we peel this back a little bit

more

we are pretty darn thankful for some

expiration dates

puberty pimples

period hell yeah

so what if we thought of heartbreak

as just part of the flow of life just

part of being

alive

that’s an x well let’s talk about him

i had a relationship that probably

should have never

lasted past the first date probably all

of us have

i had just moved to san francisco and i

was lonely

and i’m a total sucker for creative

smart men with silky black manes

okay focus

fast forward five years and i was a

fragment of my old self

i was so insecure i couldn’t make the

simplest decisions

i was once this funky free bohemian

woman and i was a paler version of my

former self

to him i wasn’t thin enough i wasn’t

quite enough and i sure hell was not

normal enough

and his constant judgment of me started

to seep into how i viewed myself

so i threw myself into therapy and there

i started to see

a pattern of being silence silence

excuse me

whether it be my dyslexia or growing up

with a closeted

mother lesbian mother in the more

homophobic era of the 80s and 90s

or being an objectified female or my

face mattered

but not my words but i had to find that

voice in order to leave that

relationship

and eventually i saw my role as a

passive accomplice

and i didn’t want to be anybody’s idea

of normal

if normal existed and hallelujah it

doesn’t right

i thankfully ended that relationship but

afterwards i wanted to sucker punch

myself

for ever wasting any time and especially

my responsibility free

20s with him

so i keep reminding myself and i

reminded myself then that i gained a lot

of gifts

because i was in the relationship and

one of them was he helped me

find that i had some brain cells to work

with i had developed this concept with

my severe undiagnosed dyslexia that i

wasn’t very smart

he was extremely bright and only treated

me as such

so it healed a deep wound inside me

and that had a domino effect in my life

i read a small library worth of books

i got my passport stamped around the

world and i decided

to face academia again and have the

courage to go to graduate school and

fulfill a lifelong dream of mine to be a

counselor

so things weren’t all that bad and he

was a bit more rigid

and i was a wild child wearing wigs and

going to birdie man and watching the sun

rise after hitting the clubs all night

long

sorry mom now the news is out

so we both left oh sorry and i i don’t

know if i loosened him up

that’s one thought i had but i do know i

introduced him to his life’s passion

photography so we both left with

partying gifts

and by far this was the most unhealthy

relationship i’ve

ever had but the one i learned the most

from

in that darkness i continue to evolve

into the person i’m meant to be

so and i’m still developing during this

preparing for this speech

i felt really guilty for taking somebody

else’s spot i thought the committee that

made a huge mistake

i was like did someone bribe them

but i know that this is a place i go to

when i’m insecure

because a blind spot was illuminated

because i was in a relationship

so when you feel broken and you

question if love is worth the pain look

at your growth

try to find the metaphorical gifts

that make your soul rich

appease me for a moment and dream dream

with me

dream with me of a world where none of

us

have any doubt that we are loved

and

sorry let me get my

and that we know that heartbreak is just

part of life

and that we’ll go out and crash and burn

and we’ll get our hearts recharged

and we’ll go back out there again

and maybe someday a place

where we will not break from breakups

but we will be held together by our

friends our rituals

and encouraged to be the ever evolving

souls

we are meant to be thank you so much