- Hey, everybody, happy Thursday.
And today, oh this shirt.
Every time I wear it, I want to say
I'm in love with the coco, because that's
what it says, and it's so cool.
Don't worry, I'm not going to attempt to rap.
But, I do love the shirt.
Today is (drumming on table) coffee and a chat, bing.
Today's question is something that I really thought
was more of a coffee and a chat type conversation
slash video, and so without further adieu,
oh, the smell of coffee, sweet relief.
The question is, "Hey, Kati, how do you
"deal with a broken heart?
"What if it just won't heal?"
Sounds like, does that sound like
song lyrics to anybody else?
But, I know in all seriousness, all jokes aside,
all of us have dealt with a broken heart,
or will deal with a broken heart at some point.
And I just want to throw it out there, before we even
get into it, there's nothing to be scared about.
It does get better, we do get over it.
I think part of it, you can learn a lot from breakups,
and you learn a lot about yourself.
Not from the person, necessarily,
but about yourself in relationships.
What you tolerate, what you don't tolerate,
things that you maybe should work on because
you think that maybe that was the root of a problem.
There's all sorts of things we can
learn and glean from a breakup.
But, let's just get into it.
How do we get over a breakup, what if it just won't heal?
And I kind of want to ignore the question of, like,
what if it just won't heal because what I'm going
to tell you and things that I've learned in my life
and my broken hearted experience, as well as
like, some therapeutic techniques,
I believe that they will heal.
I know that all broken hearts heal, okay?
Just trust me on that, okay?
So, something that I would encourage all of you
to do is to talk to somebody about it.
It doesn't have to be a therapist, necessarily,
it would be nice, but it could
just be your group of friends.
And talking to them about the breakup
and just getting it out there.
Talking about how sad you are, or what's upsetting you,
or what happened, almost like we would process
through a trauma, not to compare it to a trauma.
But, I find when we have really stressful,
intense situations, it helps for us to
talk things out in detail with people who
care about us and who can offer
their support in order to move past it.
So, talk about it.
Don't just sleep all day, hide, and maybe
drown yourself in work, or alcohol, or drugs,
or working out, or anything kind of
other unhealthy behaviors.
Try to talk about it, okay?
The second thing that I would encourage you to do
is to give yourself time to grieve.
I don't think dating back to back
to back is a healthy practice.
I think that there should be time
in between where you're single.
And I know people are like, I don't want to be alone.
But maybe that's what you should work on in therapy
because being alone is actually really healthy
and you can do a lot of the hard work
on yourself when you're alone.
Some of my best time in therapy was when I was alone.
It was actually, almost right before I met Sean,
I felt like I had made a ton of breakthroughs
and I was just really figuring out who I was
and what old habits I didn't want to bring into
new relationships, or have in my life.
It just gives you the opportunity to be you,
to figure out what that even means, also to change
behavioral patterns and relationship patterns.
Because we've all got them, whether we want
to admit it or not, and it's important to
recognize them so we can change them.
So, the second thing, give yourself time to grieve.
It's okay to feel sad.
Depending on how long your relationship was,
I mean, let's say you had a year-long relationship.
I'm just going to put that out as like a bup, one year.
So it was serious, you loved them, they loved you,
things, you know, you may have had sex,
you may not have, you, who know, right?
But it felt serious, it felt real,
they were in your life for an entire year,
that's a long time, and then you break up.
I would give yourself a few months,
like, let's say three, four months, to just grieve it.
It's okay to take that time.
No one says you have to snap back.
If it was really tumultuous, it was really hard,
or the breakup was really difficult, or maybe
you did something to cause the breakup,
like cheated, or maybe they did.
You want time to kind of process through that
and work on yourself before you're A-OK, ready to
be just the way you used to be.
Maybe go out and find another boyfriend,
girlfriend, whatever.
Sorry, my nose is, like, real itchy.
Yeah, so give yourself time to grieve.
So, first talk about it, process with people.
Give yourself time to grieve, don't let that friend
that's like you can't, I don't want to hear about this
any more, you should be fine by now.
Stop talking to that friend, because that's
not really helpful if you're still
feeling like you need to grieve.
But, number three, keep in mind that
you should have more going on in
your life than just this breakup.
Often, I find, that we struggle the hardest
and leads to, like, what if it just won't heal
kind of thoughts, and conversations with ourself,
is when we allow ourselves to get caught in thought cycles.
You know I always talk about, like, negative thinking
cycles, and like, these are kind of almost akin
to intrusive thoughts, like I talked about in, like,
Pure O video, and also I have a whole video
just called Intrusive Thoughts.
When like, you know, these thoughts about
the breakup, the boyfriend, the girlfriend,
the whatever went wrong, keep popping in your head.
But the thing is that we have to remind ourselves
is that we have the choice to engage that thought.
That could be us having thoughts about the thought.
That can even be it's own ball of wax,
where it's like the negative thinking.
Like, why are you thinking about this again,
I told you, he's stupid, God, get over it Kati.
Oh my God, blah blah blah.
We have thoughts about the feeling, or the thought,
feelings about the thought, sorry, getting that confused.
Or we engage that.
So, we have that thought about the breakup.
Like, oh my God, but I'm so alone
and I'm never going to find anybody or whatever,
and we start thinking, go down that
thought cycle and then we act out of it.
Oh, I don't want to go out tonight.
I'm just gonna sit in bed and watch
reruns of Sex in the City.
What? No.
That's when we have to start, like, changing things.
Don't engage those thoughts, and I know
that's easier said than done, but simple
thought stopping techniques, when you have that thought
be like, nope, and force yourself
into a whole nother thought process.
You could even write some options down.
Things that are happy thoughts for you.
Maybe you really love Harry Potter, this lady.
Maybe you have a really good friend
who's always up for something and you can just
call her and be like hey, I need to get
out of the house, let's go do something.
Maybe there's a movie that's out
and you haven't watched it yet, go out and watch that movie.
Whatever it is, I don't even care.
Just change your, either your situation,
like getting out of the house, change your thought,
think about a happy memory or time,
or experience that you had.
And you can have these prepped, like, have these
written down so you can be like no,
I'm not going to think about that.
Remember that time when my dad got us that puppy,
that was so sweet, and oh my God, then my brother,
like, blah blah, and you can go.
The best way to stop the thought is to actually
change to topic and hold that topic for at least 30 seconds.
And I know 30 seconds doesn't sound like
a long time, but it is a really long time.
And maybe it did sound like a long time, so, sorry.
But, if we keep our brain on that pathway
and get it out of that old routine of, like,
oh my God, I'm going to be alone forever,
I'm a terrible person, I can't believe
I cheated on them, or whatever, I'm lonely and so sad.
If we don't engage that thought, they'll come less
and less frequently, and slowly, we'll come out of it.
I know this is all over the place,
that's why is kind of a coffee and a chat.
And I haven't even had that much coffee.
But I think keeping in mind that breakups will happen.
We can learn a lot about ourselves in the process.
It's okay to be sad, let yourself grieve
the loss of that relationship.
Because often, when we have a relationship,
we've like, created this dream of the relationship.
Like, and then we're gonna move in together,
and we're going to have a baby, or we're going
to get married, or we're going to get a fur baby
like a dog or something, this lady.
Whatever you dreamed a dream, you have to
allow yourself the time to grieve the loss of that dream.
And so, it's okay to feel sad.
It's okay to cry about it and whine about it.
But, all within limitation.
Still take care of yourself, go about your daily life,
interact with your friends, and talk about it.
Like I said, the other portion is, like, talking about it.
Preferably a therapist, because they give
you a definite outside perspective.
But also your friends and family, and anybody,
you know, who's supportive of you.
Talk to them about it.
So you can get some insight and get a little support.
And, you know, stop those thoughts.
Do not engage in those intrusive thoughts,
and I think we'll all feel a lot better.
And there's all this hokey-pajokey stuff online
about how to heal a broken heart and da da da da.
But, at the end of the day, sometimes you just
got to go straight through it.
Keep taking care of yourself, talk to people about it,
give yourself time to grieve, stop those
thoughts, I think you'll be good.
Let me know what's helped you.
Because we all have different experiences, right?
Like, for me it was keeping busy with my friends
and then talking to my therapist about it.
That was the best.
And then also, like my closest, closest friends
I would share about the breakup and it would
help me move on, help me improve myself,
figure out what I did wrong, so I don't
make the same kind of relationship cycles.
You know, you get caught in things.
Anyway, it helped me improve myself so that I'm
better off for the next relationship that I get in
because there will be a next relationship, okay?
And you're better off without them.
If it didn't work out, there's no reason to go back.
Often times, when things are broken,
they're broken for a reason.
Take time to figure out what that reason is
and move on because you all deserve the best, okay?
I love you all.
And I'll see you on Monday.