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