Chapter 64: Why Is It So Hard To Let Go?

Published Oct 10, 2024, 10:12 AM

Dr. Thais Gibson joins Rachel for part 2 of their conversation, and breaks down why it is so hard to get over an ex. If you have ever struggled to let go, Dr. Thais helps to reframe the way you look at a breakup, and why it is so hard to move on.

 

This is Rachel Go's Rogue.

Welcome back to another episode of Rachel Goes Rogue with your host, Rachel Savannah Levis. Today we are getting into part two of my conversation with doctor Tye Gibson. I know you are also an expert on like getting over an X.

Correct.

Yes, put a lot of focus on our programs in this Yeah.

Yes. So I have people that come up to me and they're like, how did you get over your ex? Like, I'm struggling and I've given some suggestions, but do you have any suggestions that somebody can get to work with that could help them get over their X.

Yes.

So there's basically four pillars of whenever we are in grief, okay, and honestly, when we go through a breakup, like it's grief, Like it's not that person kind of dies to us in a way. And so I spent a lot of time originally actually working with people on grief itself, so like when they were dealing with loss or death in their family and really helping with that. And what I realized, which is so interesting, and now this is like a really morbid example. It's like an analogy. But I don't have a better analogy as of yet, I have to think of one, but you know I would often, you know, people would grieve and I'm just grieving. I'm just grieving, and we just go through these stages of grief and I just have to ride it out and.

Time will heal it.

And I was like, we have to unpack and like really dissect grief and what it actually is. Now, if you imagine that somebody passes away God forbid, but you know that person, they come back and you have their body right and their body you know, is still there, but they're not there, like they're not alive, it doesn't really lessen your grief. So grief has nothing to do with the physical. Grief has everything to do with the invisible. We're not grieving the person's body. We're not grieving in their physical form. What we are actually grieving when we dissect it is we are grieving the needs they met in our life. So maybe somebody made you laugh, maybe they made you feel seen or heard, or maybe you know they were really present with you. We are grieving what we thought could have been in the future. We are grieving our own identity because we usually go through an identity crisis after we lose somebody we were just so comfortable with. We may have seen like a future with that person in a certain way, and so there's this grieving like ourselves, a part of ourselves we feel like we lost along with that person. And then the last thing that actually really creates grief is we make it mean all these things. We say things like I'll be alone forever now, I'll never find somebody who loves me like that.

You know, nobody's gonna care about.

Me in the future or want to be with me in a relationship because ABC, I'm not good enough, I'm unworthy.

You know.

We tell ourselves all these stories, and those stories will perpetuate grief non stop. What I did is when I was like, Okay, this is the full understanding of grief and what we're actually grieving. Then we went through how do you overcome these things? And so one of the fastest ways to actually move the needle on relationship grief, like breaking up with somebody and being able to move on, is instead of just waiting for time to do this, for you to be active about it. So in that first category that we talked about our needs, I often get people to make a list of all of the needs that they're ex met and write them all down, get really intentional, and then we come up with intentional ways to get these met now in different forms, because like what grief is, it's a void of like we were used to having all these needs met in a specific way by a specific person. That person left our lives. We identify our needs. It's like our sense of self and it feels like that person took a part of ourselves with them, and now we have this whole left. We were used to feeling seen or laughing or whatever it was with that person. So I don't know if you would ever want to share like an ex any x just example of like just so listeners can see the example itself of needs that were met in a past relationship, even if it was in childhood or something.

Oh man, well, I could give a few.

So I was in a long term relationship for five years with somebody, and the needs for me that were being met was this person seemed stable to me, Like he was very charismatic and the life of the party and had a good social life, and so I felt very like safe with being with him, and he would like carry a conversation and I was more quiet, so I just felt like the pressure was off of me to talk in a group setting like that. And there was something about him that I looked up to, with his ability to not care what people thought about him, and so.

In that way put him on pedestal a little bit.

And then when that relationship ended, I ended it because of multiple reasons, but I realized that he wasn't a healthy person for me. I went through this like major stage of grief, especially when he got with somebody very quickly after, and so it just made me think like was it all for enough?

Like what was it for?

Like I saw a future with this person and they're able to move on so quickly and just like that heartbreak even though I knew that he wasn't the right person for me.

Okay, thank you so much for sharing that.

So those are really really great examples. So you can see already, like in that share that when you talk about okay, there was you had a story, right. I've seen so I've seen clients firsthand who are like I rebounded so fast because I couldn't sit with my own grief and I couldn't deal with the way that I felt, and so I just needed to move on. That was the only way I could feel okay. Like people deal with their own grief differently.

Let's do that all the time with like work, just like getting into a new relationship and not addressing the issues. And that's because grief is so it is so hard. It's so like it's hard to accept the fact that this relationship is over. And I don't know, maybe it's like grieving the time also that you spent with this person.

So when you look at those four pillars, right, so you look at the needs, you shared some really good needs. I'm going to come right back to that. But you could remember one of the third pillar was the stories. You could hear your story like, oh he got with somebody so fast after so was it even real? So you have this story, and what happened is when we tell those stories, we assume, okay, so then he never loved me or never cared about me that much because he was able to rebound. That's not the truth, because people rebound sometimes to try to like numb their own pain. But you made it mean maybe something like I wasn't really love or I wasn't really cared for. Otherwise he couldn't have rebound it. So that's an example of like something that I would sit down with somebody and push them on right it helps heal, Like can you absolutely know that he never cared about you? In fact, you actually have evidence that he did care about you. And I won't put you on the spot to answer all these questions, but you know, you can sort of imagine conceptually, like, you know, what are some piece to proof or this person did care. You know what are some piece of evidence where they may it may have been something other.

Than them not caring.

Maybe that was just them trying to numb their own pain or distract themselves. And so when we start being able to identify those stories and release them, it speeds up the grieving process in such a good way because when we say, oh, I'll never find somebody like this or they never really loved me, we just are chained to this like painful identity where we think we were never enough or we weren't loved, and that actually causes more grief, it like exacerbates the already existing grief that's there.

So one of those pillars is to work through those stories.

The pieces of meaning we give to the relationship being over and then when you go.

Back to the needs you could see.

You know, It's so funny because often we'll rely on people who meet our needs, who that we feel disempowered around. And you were like, oh, I was more quiet, and so I felt like it took the pressure off, you said. And so he almost it sounds like he met the need to help you feel more socially connected. He met the need to help you feel protected maybe in social situations. And so all of a sudden, part of what we're grieving is like, oh my gosh, how am I going to go out into social situations without the person protecting me or without And so what we don't realize is that grief is just that void left behind. And so what we do instead as we sit down and we go, well, what are other things I could do to make myself feel better in social situations? Like could I, you know, go to a space where I have one or two other really close friends that I spend time with. Can I practice, you know, being more vulnerable in social situations or in initiating social connection and conversations so that I'm expanding my comfort zone in an intentional, practiced way until I feel better. And so what we do is when we actually meet the needs that that person was meeting, we really speed up the healing process. Does that make sense?

Yeah?

And that sounds so empowering too.

Yeah.

And then we're dealing with the direct problem because what I often see is that if we don't do that underlying work, we usually end up in relationships in the future that mirror that same pattern our theme back to us. And so when we can sit down and be like, Okay, what were the needs that I was relying on this person for and I learned to start meeting them myself, like some really common ones you see with people as people will be like, oh my ex make me feel really seen or it made me feel really validated. But if we're not really present with ourselves and seeing how we feel, or we're never validating ourselves, then we'll keep chasing that outside of us and picking sometimes the wrong people. But when we can start meeting those needs within ourselves first, now we get into a situation where we're like, oh wait, I have standards. There's this old story where it's this in this book called The Mastery of Love. It's like kind of a book about self love and the author and the story talks about if you have a magical kitchen, and he says, okay, you know, imagine you have a magical kitchen and at the snap of a finger, this.

Magical kitchen can make any food you want.

You want a healthy salad and a snack, Okay, snap your fingers, it's there.

You want a pizza, it's there.

And then one day somebody comes and they knock on your door and they're like, hey, I have a whole pizza for you, and I'll give you a whole pizza, but you have to do all these things for me. You know, there's all these stipulations attached. Well, you have this abundance of food you can have at any time, why would you settle for the person and their stipulation. So you're like, no, I have a magical kitchen. I'm okay, thank you very much. But then you're a magical breaks down and for three days you've had no food, and that person comes back to your door and they say, hey, I have a pizza with all these stipulations. Well, because you're starving, you're going to be like, give me your stipulations. I'll ignore all the red flags here. I'm just going to go for the pizza because I'm starving. And the analogy is about our relationship to self love, Like, if we have this absence of self love, if we don't know how to meet our own needs, we don't know how to self validate or encourage or be compassionate or present with ourselves. Then sometimes the moment somebody gives that to us outside of us, we're like, I'll drop everything for it because I'm starving for it. But if we're not starving, if we have an abundance of those things within ourselves, first, we won't settle for people with a whole bunch of red flegs just for a little bit of that validation or encouragement or protection or whatever need it may be. And so sometimes all though breakups are so hard, they really put us on like deep alert to what our missing needs are those holes that are left behind in ourselves, and if we're willing to look for like what are those missing pieces, what are those needs that I'm missing from my ex? And how can I empower those within myself? It doesn't just heal the grief, but it empowers you for all future relationships too.

My gosh, I love that analogy so much and I've never heard of before, and it really makes so much sense, And it made me think of a situation that I found myself in after that heartbreak with that ex, I got involved with somebody else who was giving me such validation and like a safe space for me to confide in when the things around me were very chaotic and there was a very big power and balance and I just felt like I had identity issues from that breakup and from other things, and I just felt like.

I would I did.

I dropped everything for this person, and there were all of these stipulations that I wouldn't agree to in my right mind. And if I did validate myself from within and I got into some trouble with that, there were some major consequences with that, and it played out for many people to observe and to judge. And so I think this is like part of what I've realized about myself and what I've realized about other people in relationships, and why it's so relatable because as humans, we want love, and if we don't have the ability to validate ourselves from within, and we don't have the tools to do that, then we could find ourselves in these situations that are detrimental to the people around us and can cause a lot of hurt and pain, and that's not what we want. But it's almost like this thing that's bound to happen if you don't have that ability to love yourself.

Yeah, happen one hundred percent.

And you know, I don't know all the ins and outs and details of exactly what you're referring to, but you know, I do want you to know that it shows up everywhere for people, that shows up with people, Like there's this term love addiction, like there can be a dynamic where sometimes we are starving for something so much, and if you look at it, like people get addicted to gambling, there's no like physical substance you're ingesting then, or alcohol you're drinking, Like we can actually neurochemically get addicted to gambling in the same way we can get addicted to love and positive reinforcement and validation if we're just so starved of it. And something that can be meaningful to know just out of a place of self compassion is that your conscious mind can't outwell or overpower your subconscious mind. And your subconscious mind is a needs meeting machine. It is designed and actually wired to filter out red flags of different situations when it's not working in favor of our needs being met. So if we are just absolutely starving for attention, connection, validation, reinforcement and we're not finding that in other places and somebody brings that to us, we actually have this mechanism in our brain called the reticular activating system that will filter out things that could be detrimental or not good that our conscious mind may see and like no better because our subconscious like, no, get your needs met. And that's actually a survival strategy for us. And so I just think it's important for you having shared that, or for anybody listening that like, have some compassion. And it doesn't mean we don't go in words and see like what or the root causes of that and heal from those things so we don't find ourselves repeating painful patterns of behavior, Like that's a course part of the journey, like one of the most important parts. But do that from a place of self compassion, because without the compassion, we get so busy in the story of everything we did wrong that we're back in the past again with all of our painful stars and we're actually not healing, and we're not giving ourselves the opportunity to truly move ahead and prevent things from recurring again in the future.

Yeah, it's so true.

I wanted to close out this episode to the listeners because I believe that it's super important to speak positively to yourself, and so I practice positive affirmation. So I'm going to state three and then all have you state three and our listeners can just take that in as we end this episode.

I love that.

Mine are I am worthy of love. I validate myself from within, and I deserve healthy, loving relationships.

I love that. That's so beautiful.

I would say to my fearful avoidance self if I still let a lot of these patterns, I would say, people are lovely and you can truly trust them, because I used to have this big fear around Oh, you can't trust people. I would say that men can show up and truly be there for you, because I had a big wound around that as a kid. And I would say that I'm worthy of loving and lasting connections.

Yay, thank you so so much for joining me today.

I am so thrilled to have you on and just those three positive affirmations that you shared tays have armed my heart and it's giving another perspective to a similar root cause that I know a lot of people can relate to.

Thank you so much.

It was so nice to be here and to chat with you, and you asked such great questions and I really appreciate you having me.

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