If You’re Going Through a Breakup, Listen To This

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If you or your friend is going through a breakup right now, this episode is for you. I want you to

hear this carefully. Nothing is wrong with you. You're not weak for missing them. You're not

dramatic for feeling this deeply and you're not failing at love because it hurts. What you're

experiencing is grief and most people don't realize this but breakups don't just hurt emotionally.

They activate the same neural pathways as physical pain and addiction withdrawal. Brain imaging

studies from neuroscientist Helen Fisher show that romantic rejection activates the brain's

reward system in the same way substance withdrawal does. That's why your thoughts feel obsessive.

That's why your body feels restless or exhausted. That's why logic doesn't seem to help.

I'm sure so many of you right now if you've been through a breakup are wondering why does my

brain feel foggy? Why can't I just go back to work? Why can't I deal with the same conversations

like I was before? And here's the truth. You're not just heartbroken. Your nervous system is

grieving the loss of an attachment. So today I want to walk you through the stages of grief

after a breakup, not as a straight line, not as something to rush but as a map. One of the biggest

challenges when you go through a problem, a challenge, a difficulty like this is you don't know

what the next step looks like. You don't know what the next month looks like. Maybe your friends are

talking to you about dating again, maybe some other friends are talking to you about never dating

again, maybe your ex keeps showing up in your life somehow and it all just feels like a mess.

I want you to know that there are certain phases, certain experience, certain emotions that you

are going to go through and because you know they're around the corner, because you know they're

going to happen, you can feel comfortable in the uncertainty. You can take this discomfort and

you can walk through with a bit more grace, bit more ease and a bit more support. Mainly so that

you can stop judging yourself and start healing without abandoning yourself. One of the biggest mistakes

we make during a breakup is we talk down to ourselves, we're critical of ourselves, we get into

blaming, shaming and gilding ourselves. It's natural, but I want to help you move through it

a little more gracefully. Here's the core reframe, what grief actually is. The stages of grief

were first identified by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross while studying patients facing terminal

illness. But decades of research since then, including work in attachment psychology,

have shown that these stages also apply to any deep emotional loss, including breakups.

Because a breakup isn't just the loss of a person, it's the loss of a future you imagined.

Let me say that again, it's the loss of a future you imagined. When you're dreaming up a future

with someone, when you're thinking about your wedding day, when you're thinking about moving in

together, when you're thinking about what that future looks like, you now create an attachment

to a vision in your mind. I know that sounds kind of interesting, but it's true. You built up an

identity of what you will look like, what they will look like, and what your life will look like.

The future you that you imagined together, the future you imagined for yourself is what's being

taken away. You're also grieving daily emotional regulation. Maybe they messes you

every day when you woke up. Maybe you called them every night before you went to bed.

Maybe you saw them for a day every Friday or Saturday or whatever it was. Maybe when you

were stressed, they were the person you went to. There's a daily emotional regulation that now needs

to be replaced, and in the beginning, it just feels like it's been snatched away. It feels like

it's been taken away. It feels like the rug has been pulled from underneath your feet and you're

just falling. That daily emotional regulation is something you're grieving because it's a loss

you haven't yet discovered a substitute for. See, at different stages in our life, different

things emotionally regulate us. When we grow up, it's hopefully our caregivers could be our siblings,

our friends. But when you're in a romantic relationship, there's almost an

overreliance in the emotional regulation you experienced from that person. You're also grieving

routines you're nervous system depended on. Those routines could be anything from,

well, this was our favorite show we watched together. That was our favorite restaurant we went to.

This was the place that we first connected. Whatever it means, we have these routines,

and what happens is our body and our biology and our mind get used to these routines. We get used

to taking the same route to work every day. You get used to talking to the same person every day,

the sound of their voice, their scent, their touch, being with them. You are grieving that you're

going through the transition of that. What I want to tell you is that there will come a day

when you won't feel that way. There will come a day when that person may even feel like a

stranger. One day, your ex, the person you were most intimate with, who left you, will actually

feel like a stranger. I know right now they feel like someone who knows you better than anyone,

someone that you gave everything to, but you only gave them this version of you,

and a new version of you will arise. What you're grieving is a version of yourself that existed

with them. We think we've lost all of ourselves. We think we're completely confused. We think

we've given ourselves away, but the reality is it was only this version. You have been so many

versions of yourself up until this point in life. You've had friends at college that you no longer

connected to. You had friends in elementary school that you no longer see. There was a version

of you that lived through all of that and you transformed. You evolved. You changed. So here's the

reframe. You're not getting over someone. I really don't like that language. When are you going

to get over them? Why am I not over them yet? You're withdrawing from an emotional bond and with

withdrawal is not a mindset problem. It's a biological process. I really want you to understand

that sometimes we think, what's wrong with my head? What's wrong in my mind? Why can't I just move on

from this? And it's biology. It's chemical. So let's walk through the stages honestly and carefully.

If you're missing the most at night, it's not because they were perfect. It's because your nervous

system got used to them being there. You're not lonely because they're gone. You feel lonely

because they provided regulation. And that can be rebuilt slowly without them. Remember this.

You're not missing them. You're missing the future. You thought you were building together. You're

not missing them. You're missing the routine. Your nervous system got used to. You're not missing them.

You're missing the way they made the future feel safe. Remember, you're not missing them.

Let's talk about the stages of grief. The first is shock and denial. I'm pretty sure you all

know what this feels like. You're probably experiencing it right now. There's a part of you that

shocked. How could you leave me? How could you break up with me? I gave so much to this relationship.

Wait a minute. I should have been the one to give it up. I worked so hard. I put so much energy

into this and you walked away. Wait, I'm shocked. I always thought that you loved me. I told you

told me that we had something special. I'm shocked. I thought that we were going to spend the rest

of our lives together. Wait, I'm shocked because I thought if anyone was going to leave, it was going

to be me. Wait, I'm shocked because you treat me badly, but you're the one leaving me. I'm sure you've

said some of these things, heard some of these things, felt some of these things. The first stage

is shock, often paired with denial. This can show up as numbness, calmness that feels strange,

saying I'm okay and meaning it temporarily. What's interesting is that people think denial means

pretending it didn't happen. But psychologically, denial is your nervous system saying

this is too much all at once. Sometimes, your nervous system won't allow you to feel the extent of

the pain, to feel the extremities of the difficulty because it would just be all too much. So you're

somewhat allowing it to just be there. You're allowing it to just exist and you're thinking I'm

okay actually. But really, it's your emotions just not allowing them to come to the surface because

your body and brain and everything are trying to help you survive. Research shows emotional shock

temporarily dampens pain to prevent overwhelm. So if you feel disconnected or unreal, that's not

avoidance. That's protection. A lot of us feel, wait, I should be feeling more pain. I should be

crying. I can't cry. I should be experiencing so much pain, but I'm not. It's nothing wrong with

you. That's how your mind and body protects itself. It doesn't want you to be overexposed to all

those emotions and feelings right now. They'll come at time when you can actually deal with them

properly. It's almost like saying that if you saw fire, you would just run from that area.

You wouldn't stay in that area and try and figure out why it happened, where it started,

what's going wrong. You'd run away. And then when the fire cooled down, you'd come back to check

on what happened. It's protection. So what helps in this stage? If you're in this stage right now,

here are a few things I encourage you to do. No matter how hard they are, the first is basic routines.

After a bit of withdrawal, it's good to get back to work. It's good to be able to go and

attend the gym. It's good to be able to see friends regularly. The idea of creating routine is

healthy because what it does is it allows you to forget and remove and distance yourself from

the routine you had before. The next is eating regularly. It's just good biologically, just eating

regularly. Sleeping when you can. This one's so important. So many people, when they're in

shock and denial, avoid sleep. They can't sleep, allowing yourself to rest, giving yourself grace

for what you've gone through is extremely important. Now, what hurts you is forcing emotional

breakthroughs. You're like, I can't cry. I want to cry. I should be feeling pain. I should be

mad. I should be angry. You shouldn't have to be anything. You can experience shock and denial.

And what you'll find is when you allow yourself to experience it, your body and mind will tell you

when. Have you noticed how when you ever wound the first day you have to attend to it, you might

put some, you know, ointment on it, you might put some essential oils, whatever you use. And

your body learns to heal itself over time. You don't have to keep looking at it every day. You might

put a plaster on it or a bandage on the first day or the bandaid. But after that, you're not

looking at it. You don't have to think about it all the time. You don't have to force healing.

You don't have to force an emotional breakthrough. Your body and mind help you along the way.

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The other thing that hurts is making life-altering decisions. When someone breaks up with us

with thinking, wait a minute, maybe I need to move city. Maybe I need to move home. Maybe I need to

quit my job and pursue my passion. Maybe I need to change my whole life. Like we start thinking

about these life-altering decisions. Because in some way, it's again protection. It makes us feel

better. We're dealing with something so much bigger. But the chances are in that raised emotional

dichotomy, it's very hard to make good decisions. Your best decisions are not made when you're angry.

Your best decisions are not made when you're sad and upset. Your best decisions are not made

when you're not thinking clearly. They're made when you feel a little peace,

when you feel a little centered and you feel a little distance from what caused you pain.

Don't force yourself to make big decisions after a big challenge. Stage two is bargaining and

obsession. This is the stage people confuse with overthinking or rumination or procrastination.

But clinically, this is bargaining. Your mind replays conversations, rereads messages,

imagines alternate endings. Why? Because the brain is trying to restore attachment.

Bargaining is like, if I did this, we could have had this. Maybe if I didn't say this,

I would have saved the relationship. Maybe if I acted this way, we'd still be together.

Maybe if I wasn't so annoying and so needy, we'd still be with each other. That's what bargaining

looks like. You're bargaining, negotiating with yourself, thinking about all the things you could have

done. Studies show that after a romantic loss, the brain increases rumination as an unconscious

attempt to regain control and proximity. This is where your thoughts sound like, if I had said

that differently, they'd still be here. Maybe we could still fix this. I just need closure.

Right? So we start bargaining and the challenge with this phase is that it feels really,

it really feels like if you did that one thing, there'd still be here. When you know,

that's not the case, but you can't access that. Your subconscious can't access that. Your

subconscious is convincing you that you're absolutely right. If you did that one thing or didn't do

that one thing, you'd still be with them. This is probably one of the toughest stages to get through.

And I'm really glad that we're talking about it after the first stage because it's the stage

that can feel the longest. It's the stage that can feel the hardest. You tell all your friends,

look, I really feel I could have made it work. And they're looking at you like, you're crazy.

What's wrong with you? Right? You keep playing it over and over in your head for days. You're

looking at pictures, you're looking at social media and you're thinking, wait a minute, why

they're with that person? Like, I thought they liked me for those reasons. And maybe I was just too

annoying. Maybe I asked for too much. Maybe I needed too much. Here's the truth. Closure doesn't come

from answers. It comes from accepting the loss of the bond. Here's what helps here.

Writing thoughts down instead of replaying them. When you replay thoughts in your head,

they all feel real. When you write down thoughts, you can actually question them.

It's really hard to question a thought in your head. If you're replaying on your head,

if I did that, they'd still be here and then this would happen, it all makes sense. When you

write it down and you read it out to yourself, you might even look at it and go,

that's bizarre. That's absolutely crazy. I can't believe I thought that. I want you to really

ask yourself to write down what you're thinking. Write down your most repeated thoughts,

read them out to yourself and recognize the flaws that they hold. Another thing that can help

is reducing contact and checking behaviors. A lot of the time we're reading old messages,

delete them. A lot of the time we're looking at their social media profile, block it. It helps to have

distance at a time when you're thinking about all the things you could have should have

would have done. It's good to have distance and it's also healthy to recognize that this is a

phase you're going to have to go through. You will negotiate but know that your negotiation doesn't

mean that it's valid. It's important to name what's happening. This is withdrawal because here's

what's really going on. You're not stark. You're detoxing. If you keep remembering only the good

moments, remember this. Your brain edits memories during loss. It highlights comfort and hides pain.

Healing begins when you remember the whole truth, not the highlight reel. Again, to protect us,

the brain just keeps thinking of all the good times, all the amazing moments. And so now when

you're negotiating, when you're ruminating, when you're overthinking, when you're bargaining,

you're only bargaining based on the highlights. You're forgetting everything they did wrong.

You're thinking, actually, yeah, they did show me flashes of greatness, beauty, attraction, romance.

And you're forgetting the time they ignored you. You're forgetting the time that they weren't

emotionally available. When someone breaks up with you, it's so easy to just remember the good times.

But you forget the time that they ignored you. You forget the time that they weren't emotionally

available. You forget the time that they put you down in front of your friends. Just because

your mind only remembers the good things doesn't mean that relationship was meant to last. Don't

get lost in the highlight reel and remember the truth. Stage three is anger and protest.

Something shifts. Anger appears. Aggression is back. Sometimes explosive.

Sometimes quiet. Sometimes delayed. Right? I think we think anger is just like this.

brute force. Sometimes anger can be boiling inside. You're quieter. You're scarier.

Anger is not regression. I think a lot of us feel if I'm angry again, I've gone backwards.

Not realizing that if you go back to stage one, that's where these stages are important.

When you go back to stage one, you never felt angry because you were protecting yourself.

So that's when we feel anger later, we go, oh, no, no, I'm going worse. I'm going in the wrong

direction. And that's the biggest mistake. We think we're not improving. We think we're not

evolving. We think we're going backwards because we feel angry. But the reality is your body was

waiting for you to have space to feel this. Your body and mind were waiting to give you permission

to feel anger in a safe way. Anger is not moving backwards. In grief research, anger is

understood as self-respect returning. Let me say that again. In grief research, anger is understood

as self-respect returning. It sounds like that wasn't okay. You're finally saying to yourself,

actually, yeah, the way I was treated wasn't okay. You're not bargaining anymore. You're actually

realizing I deserve so much better. I don't want to settle. I can't believe I was going to settle

for that. I can't believe I was accepting less than I deserve. You start to acknowledge

I ignored things I shouldn't have. And sometimes you get mad at yourself for thinking, wait,

why was I bargaining, right? Why was I actually not mad earlier? I should have been mad before.

And now the mistake is I should have been mad before. I'm actually going backwards and I want to

give them a piece of my mind. This is the point at which most of you want to text that person

or pick up the phone to them or get your friend to phone them and have a go at them, right? This is

that moment. And you want to recognize your fear to feel your anger. Your valid to feel your anger.

But it's all happening in the right order. It's all happening at the right pace. It's happening

for you. Anger scares people because they think it makes them bitter. But research shows healthy

anger speeds recovery when it's expressed safely. Express safely means you'll share it with

the therapist. You'll share it with the coach. You'll share it with a friend. You're not sharing

any text to that person. I think the biggest challenge we have here is we're judging

ourselves for being angry. We're either thinking I should have been angry earlier. I should have been

angry at them or I'm being angry now and it's too late. It's not too late. Everything is moving

in the direction that it needs to. That's why I want you to really stay until the end of this

episode so that you can hear all the phases so that you're not harsh on yourself when you're

going through it. It's almost like if you're doing a triathlon, you know you're going to have to run,

you know you're going to have to cycle and you know you're going to have to swim and you'll know

the order. But if when you're swimming, you're wondering, wait, why am I swimming right now? I don't

want to be swimming. I should be cycling. It doesn't work that way. What helps here is movement,

channeling that anger physically. The other is boundaries, setting boundaries as to how you want to

communicate with that person and how you're going to avoid communicate with them to be honest.

Honesty really helps. Honesty with yourself, honesty with others because up until now you've

been bargaining with your own honesty. But here's what hurts. Shaming yourself for anger.

That's what holds you back. Using anger to reattach through conflict or now I need to connect with

them to tell them how I feel. Let anger inform you, not define you. This is why I really want you to

listen to the next phase because this might be where you're at. Stage four is sadness and depression.

This is the stage most people recognize. The heaviness, the emptiness, the tears that arrive without

warning. I think a lot of us try and speed up to this point. We kind of skip the other stuff.

We're trying to ignore it and that actually makes the stage harder. It's easier when you get to

stage four having allowed yourself to go through the stages. Neuroscience explains why. After breakups,

levels of dopamine and oxytocin, the chemicals linked to pleasure and bonding drop significantly.

So this sadness isn't just emotional. It's chemical. And this is why motivation disappears.

Right? You start to feel like what's the meaning of my life? What's the point? Am I ever going to

find love? Joy feels distant. You're thinking, I can't remember the last time I was happy.

Can't remember the last time I laughed. I can't remember the last time I smiled.

Everything feels slower. You think, God, I can't believe it's only been a month.

And here's what matters. Sadness means you're processing reality, not avoiding it.

And this stage requires rest. It requires you to be the kindest, most grateful,

most compassionate towards yourself. This is the phase that requires friendship.

And we've got to avoid pushing our friends away in some of these stages because sometimes we

can take it out on them. You can be angry at them for how they're dealing with it.

As opposed to just figuring out how you deal with them. We all do that. It's natural,

but friendship is so important at this stage. When you're going through a breakup, productivity

isn't important. A timeline isn't important. Pressure isn't important. You don't move on.

You move through. And if you're scared, you'll never love like this again. I want to say something

to you. You're right. You'll love differently. You don't want to fall in love like this again

because then you'll fall out of love like this again. You want to fall in love differently

with more wisdom, more boundaries, more self-respect and that kind of love that lasts. So many of us

don't allow ourselves to move forward because we think what we had is the best, the epitome,

the greatest version of it. Not realizing that everyone who has come before us has found love

that was better, different and an upgrade. Stage 5 is acceptance and meaning. Acceptance doesn't

mean you approve of what happened. It means you stop fighting reality. This stage is called

meaning making in modern grief psychology. This is where you begin asking, what did this teach me?

So it's so interesting, isn't it? When you go through a breakup, you might even have a friend who

says to you, what did you learn from this? This is stage 5. Not stage 1. When you're going through

pain, you don't have to learn from it. In that moment, you learn from it when you're reflecting.

Radalia once said to me, pain plus reflection equals progress. But when you do that reflection

is so important, you'll get to it at some point. You can be grateful for what was left after what

happened to you. When you have some distance, you can start asking questions like, what did this teach me?

What do I want to do differently moving forward? Who am I becoming now? Sometimes people say,

just get busy in your hobbies and your passions and interests. You can't really think about that

till stage 5. Research shows people who integrate meaning after loss, experience post-traumatic growth,

not just recovery. Notice the difference. You don't just want to recover. You want to grow.

This is where your identity stabilizes. This is where self-trust returns. This is where the past

stops defining the present. Here's the reframe. Healing doesn't mean it didn't hurt. Healing

means it didn't destroy you. Healing doesn't mean it didn't affect yourself confidence.

Healing means it helped you build self-respect. Healing doesn't mean you didn't have boundaries.

Healing means you'll have better ones next time. Here's what actually helps. Across all stages,

research consistently shows these things help. No contact or low contact,

speeds emotional recovery. Routine calms the nervous system. Talking without rehearsing the

story, that's processing versus just replaying and resisting idealization. Memory is always

biased toward the good times. This is crucial. You don't heal by erasing the love. You heal

by releasing the attachment. You don't heal by blocking the other person. You heal by setting the

right boundaries. You don't heal by pushing yourself through. You heal by processing each stage

as it comes. If you're going through a breakup, it's proof you loved deeply. One day,

this won't be the center of your life. It will be a chapter, a teacher, a turning point,

and the way you treat yourself now will shape the love you experience next. Stay with yourself.

This ending is not the end of you. Remember, I'm forever in your corner. I'm always rooting for you.

I hope you'll pass this on to someone else who's gone through a breakup for a difficult time,

no matter what stays therein or phase therein. I hope this helps them through. Thank you for

listening and watching. Make sure you subscribe to Never Miss an Episode. I'll see you on the next one.

If you love this episode, you're going to love my conversation with Matthew Hussie on how to get

over your ex and find true love in your relationships. Make a list of the things that are truly important

for you to find in a partner and then be that list.

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