How to Get Over the Worst Heartbreak & Get Your Power Back

welcome back to Jillian on love today I'm going to talk about heartbreak and how to recover from even just the worst kind of heartbreak the kind where you feel stuck in pain where or you feel stuck in anger and you just have such a hard time moving on the first thing that I will say is that we do not talk enough about how hard it is to grieve someone who is still alive we don't talk enough about grief in general but when we do we specifically talk about losing a loved one when someone has passed away but a relationship ending is a death and it's more than anything else it's a death of a dream and it's a death of a life that you thought that you were going to lead it's a death of a blueprint that you had uh of the of the life that you wanted and so to then have to adapt to a new reality without this person even if you know logically that it's the wrong relationship even if you were the one who left and particularly if you were the one who was left having to face life in this new reality is incredibly jarring and going no contact is painful we do not talk enough about how hard it is to go from sharing your life with someone to not even speaking to them anymore and we have to stop telling people to just move on moving on is not that simple we are wired for connection we are wired for attachment so if you are having a really difficult time moving on you are not weak you are having a profoundly human experience and you are experiencing withdrawal because it is a type of withdrawal and we don't want to get ourselves in a scenario where a year goes by and or more and we are just stuck on this person or stuck on this relationship and not actually embracing the privilege of moving on and living our lives the fullest again so if you are in the acute stage of a breakup like meaning it just it's very recent and it's very fresh your mind is in many ways your greatest enemy right now because it is convincing you that the the emotional state that you're in right now is permanent and it's not going to let up and you're never going to feel normal again and you're never going to feel happy again you're experiencing a sort of learned helplessness and i promise you that this is not going to last that you are going to be okay without this person you are going to wake up one day and realize why things had to go down the way that they went down you are going to recognize why your future and your destiny is no longer tied to this person but i want to help you get to that place a little faster if possible and with um a little bit more ease so let me just reassure you you are going to be okay and that if you were rejected i really truly believe that when we are rejected we are actually redirected towards what is meant for our growth if you want to move on and not and move on in such a way that it this doesn't have such a hold on you and you're not traumatized by this or if you are you know it's more than a year out and you can't seem to let go again i want to reassure you that this is not so easy but let me give you some steps so the first step is the story that you tell yourself listen many years ago and a lot of you know this story and a lot of you don't i went through a breakup it was my divorce and it was the lowest part of my life the story was i woke up to a miscarriage and my then husband decided to text me that he wasn't coming home at the same time my mom was dying of cancer for a long time i repeated that story over and over again like a mantra and in the beginning you kind of have to tell the story because it's part of how we it's how you process you know you can't you can't suppress the story the facts of the story are true but there came a time where i realized that the more that i was telling that story the more i was re-traumatizing myself and i had to start to tell the story differently but the only way that i was able to get to a place where i could start to tell the story differently is that i made a conscious choice to be proactive in my healing now proactive in your healing can look like leaning on friends going to a therapist um pursuing things in life that give your that give your your day-to-day and your life a sense of meaning a sense of purpose a sense of joy but a really big needle mover for me and for the people who i've worked with is this and it's to stop romanticizing the person who broke your heart and it's a process of seeing them clearly eventually wishing them well and then little by little letting them go and this seeing them clearly involves seeing the relationship clearly and what's hard about that is that if you're going to look at the relationship clearly meaning you are going to courageously confront details of the relationship that are hard to confront you know difficult times difficult conversations difficult feelings you're also going to have to confront the ways in which you contributed to whatever was not working and that's very difficult because when we're going through heartbreak we vacillate between feeling victimized by the other person and feeling like we are the villain that we victimized the other so we're we sometimes are feeling very sorry for ourselves and sometimes we're just uh blaming the other person and it takes courage and it takes time and it takes commitment to process what went down so that you can eventually see what happened clearly see them clearly see yourself clearly and eventually get to a place where you wish them well and then little by little you let them go because you don't just wake up one day and let go it is a process and part of that process is to no longer romanticize them and the relationship and that's very hard because we cling to the good memories and we cling to the pain of losing those good memories and we think and we we mistakenly fear that we don't have a life without this person or sometimes we don't even know who we are without this person and there are going to be evenings where the sadness and the pain feels like and the suffering just feels unbearable and there's going to be mornings where your anxiety feels permanent but this altered state that we refer to as heartbreak is not permanent but your mind like i said is going to keep telling you that it is you will be okay if you're someone who loves a romance that's not just about chemistry but also about emotional tension and the ways people slowly let each other in i think you'll really enjoy just between us by lena hendrix it's a contemporary romance set in a small town on the coast of lake michigan and it follows two people who seem completely wrong for each other on paper a tattooed playboy with a reputation and a woman who's determined to keep her guard up while cleaning up his family's mess what i loved is that underneath all the attraction and banter it's really a story about vulnerability trust and what happens when someone starts breaking down walls you thought would never come down the anonymous late night messages between them make the whole relationship unfold in a really compelling way so if you're a fan of authors like elsie silver lucy score or carly fortune i think this will absolutely be your kind of book it's emotional funny romantic and yes definitely has some spice but it never loses sight of the relationship which is at the center of the story and if you're someone who loves collecting beautiful books the deluxe paperback edition is gorgeous has holographic foil stenciled edges full-color character art and exclusive bonus content you can find just between us by lena hendrix wherever books are sold in both print and ebook you know that feeling when you're looking for a story that's completely immersive one with emotional tension high stakes and a setting that lets you escape for a while if that's your kind of read i want to tell you about taming the heart by elliot rose it's a small town cowboy romance set on a remote montana ranch and follows sage a fiercely independent woman who takes a summer job working for beau a brooding much older former professional bull rider the chemistry between them is undeniable but there's one major complication he's our boss and he's wearing a wedding band it's filled with forbidden romance workplace tension forced proximity and all the emotional push and pull that romance readers love there's also a gorgeous deluxe limited edition paperback with stenciled edges and custom character art that's perfect if you're someone who loves collecting beautiful books if you're a fan of spicy cowboy romances by authors like lila sage or elsie silver taming the heart by elliot rose is available now wherever books are sold in print and ebook this episode is brought to you by state farm listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling smart move another smart move getting help from one of state farm's 19 000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state you will be okay look at the relationship and the breakup and everything that went down from various perspectives because nothing means anything other than the meaning that you give it so in order for me to start to stop telling myself the same story that was re-traumatizing myself i had to look at it from various perspectives one perspective was wow maybe this was meant to wake something up inside of me there was a lot of evidence to suggest that um i was more afraid of losing the other person than i was of losing myself there was evidence to suggest that my fear of not being good enough in that relationship was so strong that i was willing to betray myself often i had to learn how to meet someone else's needs and to put someone's needs um as important as my own i didn't have certain skills i had a i had actually some some skill for sure but i didn't have all the skills that i needed and so i had to face those hard truths and i had to eventually tell myself wow that was really hard that was really hard i don't want that maybe i was spared maybe i was spared some pain when i started to realize that my experience of going through all that made it so that i really wanted to help others and it made me obsessed with what makes a relationship works and it made me obsessed with self-worth and self-esteem then i started to realize oh wow for a few years i had been craving to do something different with my life i had been craving a certain level of inspiration to really roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty with some new craft and here it was given to me when someone has hurt you when someone has betrayed you when you're feeling deeply deeply hurt by the person you love again whether they left you or you left them if you're feeling deeply not enough you have to realize and i've said this before that you have to realize that people do what they can with the emotional tools that they have you did what you could with the emotional tools and capacity that you had you do not have to force yourself to forgive anyone you don't even have to force yourself to forgive yourself you just have to see that you are you have to have the compassion to see that you did what you can and that what they did feel so personal but they literally did what they could and it is a it's sad when we have to recognize that you know we couldn't make something work because of our lack of tools but also maybe just maybe you're not meant to be with this person maybe this person came into your life to wake you up maybe they came into your life to show you an adventure maybe they came into your life to reveal patterns that you really needed to address maybe they revealed where you do not love yourself we can look at any situation and give it multiple meanings and it is always our choice and that doesn't mean that it's going to immediately take all the pain away but it is going to make you feel a lot more in control and where you're not questioning if you're being punished by god or the universe or whatever it is or you have bad karma nothing means anything other than the meaning that you give it so when you are in the throes of this kind of heartbreak you have to ask yourself what else could this mean what is the story that i keep telling myself and others and can i actually rewrite the story and you can literally take out a pen and paper and just write out different ways write the story from the perspective of um a wise elder write the story from the perspective if you know if from your grandmother or your grandparent if you really respect them write the story from the perspective of your best friend write the story from the perspective of your highest self if you believe in souls write the perspective write the story from the perspective of like your deepest knowing your soul from your intuition this is incredibly incredibly incredibly helpful i have done this and i with all different kinds of scenarios and i have done this with thousands of different clients you take out a piece of paper anything that is bothering you whether again whether it's heartbreak or something else you write down the the story your story your story that you keep telling yourself the narrative again i'm not saying that it's not necessarily it's not that it's not true but the the story that's on repeat like a mantra how else might someone else who is not experience it experiencing it see it and then five different meanings what else could this mean because the tragedy is that so many of us after a relationship the conclusion that we arrive to is that we are unlovable not enough inadequate a failure and that is a tragedy this episode is brought to you by state farm listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling smart move another smart move getting help from one of state farms 19 000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state hey friends olivia from ollie between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting you need science-backed solutions that work with your life that's where ollie comes in start your mornings off right with multis made to support nutrition and immune health choose from our lineup of gut supporting probiotics and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand stock up on ollie.com today these statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration this product is not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent any disease when you're 7-eleven's hottest fire chicken sandwich people think you're intense well yeah i'm hot oh yeah intense i want to see if you can handle the heat then try me with pickles or spicy mayo and jalapenos oh and it's all just 4.99 that's a deal almost almost as hot as I am. Almost? Sweet? No. Spicy? See for yourself. $4.99 and only at 7-Eleven. Valid through 825-26. Participating stores only while supplies last visit. Store for full terms. That doesn't mean that we don't hold ourselves accountable for the ways in which we need to hold ourselves accountable. But to hold ourselves accountable, to then know that we need to grow or to work on something, that is vastly different than coming to the conclusion that we are just inherently unworthy. When it came to my own story, freedom was we do the best that we can with the tools that we had. I was meant to be on a different path. Here, I know all the lessons that I learned. And we don't like to hear that there's a powerful lesson in this. And certainly if you are helping a friend or a loved one, when they are in that acute pain, that is not the time to talk to them about lessons. That is the time to listen and to be a grounded presence for them. A safe grounded presence. And you have to also know for yourself when it's time to be challenged by someone rather than just to have safe grounded presence. And that's not an easy thing to say or to hear. At some point, we have to challenge ourselves to ask really difficult questions about what else this could all mean. So number one, changing the story, asking yourself what else it could mean, writing down the story from five different perspectives, giving it a different meaning, and then the lessons. What did you learn from this experience? And every time you're tempted to say anything that points to your inadequacy or unworthiness, you really need to interrupt that and say, no, I am going to really look at this from an as objective point of view as I possibly can. What did I learn? If someone who you were seeing and then you broke up with them or they broke up with you, and then they move on to the next relationship really quickly, everyone processes pain differently. There are some people who move on so quickly. They never, they are completely avoidant with themselves. They don't want to process. They don't want to take accountability. And their story is, or their belief, I should say is, everything will be fine once I get into a new relationship with a different person, because their understanding is it was just not the right person. And then there are people who, and it's mostly women, if I'm honest, who take way too long to get into a new relationship. They are licking their wounds way too long and in the pain of the loss of the connection. And their belief is, I'll never be loved again. How can I trust love again? I don't want to be vulnerable again. And they're stuck in the processing and in the pain. We want to be somewhere in the middle. Certainly we, you know, who we choose to partner with matters. And if we, sometimes we make an epic mistake, you know, we, we, we commit to someone who's totally wrong for us in every way. And then therefore, if we're with someone else, it's a lot better. But if we do not reflect on that relationship and we do not reflect on how we contributed to anything, to any part of it, not working, we bring ourselves wherever we go, we bring our patterns wherever we go. And we will just repeat it with someone else, even if they're more suited for us. And so you have to be really honest with yourself. Are you the person that jumps into the next relationship really quickly without processing? Or are you the person who isolates yourself and doesn't let yourself experience joy again and doesn't let yourself live again? This episode is particularly for those of you who find yourself getting really stuck. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, instead of doom scrolling, smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Hey friends, Olivia from OLLI. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where OLLI comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics. And we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on OLLI.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. When you're 7-Eleven's hottest fire chicken sandwich, people think you're intense. Well, yeah, I'm hot! Oh, yeah, intense. Want to see if you can handle the heat? Then try me. With pickles or spicy mayo and jalapenos. Oh, and it's all just $4.99. That's a deal almost as hot as I am. Almost? Sweet? No. Spicy? See for yourself. So let me go through all these steps again because this is incredibly important. If you're in the acute stage of a breakup, if it's really fresh, your mind cannot be trusted and you need support. You need to lean on loved ones. You need to lean on a therapist if that's what feels right for you. And you need to do the best that you can to just take care of yourself every single day, to make sure you nourish yourself, to make sure you hydrate. And I am here to validate your experience. We do not talk enough about the enormity of this type of grief, and we need to. Number two, romanticizing the person and romanticizing the relationship. Relationships don't end when they're amazing. Very rarely will there be a circumstance where everything is great, but you end the relationship because you want totally different things in life. And that is its own level of heartbreak. But most of the time, relationships end because people's needs were not met. And people were unhappy and didn't know how to be happy in the relationship. They didn't know how to fix it. And so when you're romanticizing it, you have to really take the time to see your ex and see yourself and see the relationship clearly. And that is a process. But you do have to wake up from this hypnosis that tells you that this was the best thing that could have ever happened to you. The second thing, which really I should have said before, is you have to make a decision that you are going to be proactive in moving forward. In the beginning, we have to give ourself the grace and the time to tell the story over and over, to feel really, really sad, to have a hard time. And then there comes a time, and I can't tell you exactly when, but there has, there does come a time where we have to be proactive in getting better. And part of that is to challenge yourself to stop telling yourself that very specific story that you have on repeat and to write down the story from various perspectives, various sage perspectives and different meanings. You get to decide what this breakup means. You get to decide if it was a breakup that was meant to break you up. You get to decide if it was meant to wake you up. You get to decide if the breakup and the end of this relationship needed to happen because in the relationship, there was no way that you were going to grow. That there was no way that you were going to live the life that you really want to lead. You get to decide if this relationship means a whole new life for yourself, a new job, a new career, helping others. You get to decide what this means to you. There are so many different meanings. You get 10 people in a room looking at your life, looking at your relationship, looking at your breakup, and every single one is going, every single person in that room is going to give you a different perspective and a different meaning. Reality is what we decide it is. And I'm not saying there are, of course, there are facts to the story, but you decide how you are going to tell that story moving forward. And that might morph quite a bit. Number three, you remember that you did the best that you could with the emotional tools that you had. So did your ex. And maybe those tools were not good enough. And none of us get away with anything. We all have to face ourselves at some point. And if we just go through life, never facing ourselves, trust me, that is coming out in back pain, jaw pain, insomnia, and toxic relationships. No one gets away with anything. So you want to face it. You want to be able to see the ways in which you contributed. And you want to see the ways in which you didn't love yourself enough. And you want to see the ways in which you can learn better communication skills. And, and you want to see the ways in which you were amazing, and that you were a great partner and the things you have to honor the parts of you that actually knew what you were doing. And at the end of the day, when we are evaluating relationships, know that you are just trying to get your needs met. And so if you were in something that was incredibly unhealthy, and then your grief is complicated by the fact that you were in something that was incredibly unhealthy, and that scares the shit out of you because you don't want to be in something unhealthy again, and you're scared of men or you're scared of women, you have to realize that you were just trying to get your needs met. And part of healing is learning how to meet your needs better. This neat meeting your needs better is everything is in my book. It begins with you. So if you want to learn how to meet your needs better, then refer to my book, it begins with you. This is not an overnight process. It's not like you're going to decide and then all of a sudden, you're just not going to be in pain. But this is how you begin to let go. This is how you begin to find your freedom again. It's like, when we go through that kind of suffering, that heartbreak, it's it's we just want to escape our thoughts. And we just don't want to be in that prison anymore. And I totally get it. But you can't force yourself to stop thinking about someone. And the more that you try to force yourself, the more they're going to occupy your thoughts. What you have to do is again, challenge the story. Challenge that story, write it down in so many different ways. What else could this mean? Give yourself some grace. Understand that the very nature of human behavior is that very few things are personal. We are our behavior, good and bad. Our actions, good and bad, are always a reflection of our internal state. We all have these adaptive strategies inside of a relationship to protect ourselves from emotional pain, to protect ourselves from the looming catastrophe of love being withheld from us. And so figure out what you do when you are, when you are terrified that you are going to be abandoned or you're terrified that you are not going to be able to have your autonomy in a relationship, whatever it is, figure out what you do in reaction to your fears. And that is how you figure out your patterns. And then remember your partner or your ex-partner was doing the exact same thing. What if no one is to blame? What if it is only a very important lesson? What if it's not rejection? What if it is a redirection onto a path that you are actually supposed to be on? What if they were completely the wrong person for you? What if they were right for a period of time, but then they weren't right? What if they were someone who was meant to wake you up, not someone who you were meant to spend your entire life with. Learn the lessons. There is no failure. Integrate those lessons into your DNA so that you learn what it is to love yourself and what it really truly means to love another and what you really, really want moving forward in your life and in a relationship. Anyway, I hope this helps. A little heartbreak, um, pep talk. And I do hope that you take the time to do that writing exercise because I can't even tell you how many people it's helped. And so I really hope that it helps you do not hesitate to reach out to me and my team at hello at Jillian on love.com. Let us know how this landed for you. And then as importantly, please do not hesitate to share this episode because you just never know whose life you could be changing until next time. Thanks for listening. Jillian on love is a Q code production executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson, produced and edited by Travis Howe. Music by Will Tendi. Hank joined BJ's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, coach. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com/mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer new members only. BJ's home of the save. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney plus. It's the film critics are calling the best avatar yet. A true epic and completely jaw dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney plus. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar winning phenomenon at home. This is sick. Avatar Fire and Ash. 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