Can We Not Let Our Breakups Break Us | Tasha Jackson | TEDxCSULB

I want everyone to know that they are loved because today we can be surrounded by so many people but feel deeply alone. 68 Gen Zers feel like no one knows them. The average American only has one close friend and one and four feel like they don't have one. A loneliness is on par, if not worse, than our health than obesity, it takes years off our lives, but we ignore this need for human connection, especially after a

break

up, right, we say: I just want to be alone, I can't stand this pain, but we can and we must because these connections are the keys to our happiness and definitive disconnection.

A

break

up that can trigger violence, substance use and depression. So how can we stay connected and not let

breakups

break us? I am a psychotherapist and I am proud of mom. of two there they are so cute I am an hsp that is called a highly sensitive person I am a category four dyslexic that is not a professional term that is my own term things are mixed with my dyslexia in my head and coming out of my mouth, like this that despite my Star Trek suit, I'm not Britney Spears. I don't feel comfortable up here, but I feel a calling because we are in the middle of a loneliness epidemic with my work.

I have come to know loneliness by a name. base and listening to people, which to them seems like an eternity, getting in sync with the angst and I take my job very seriously, but today, as we move forward on this journey, I want to have a little fun, make this a little more digestible So how do we handle

breakups

well these days? You may feel like hiding and hibernating under the covers. You may feel like a truck is coming and running over you, backing up and running over you. You may feel body parts that you didn't even know existed in your body.

My clients have found. meaning with a symbolic meaning symbolic meaning with their physical pain they say their stomach hurts all the way down they can't digest what's happening their eyes are shaking I don't want to see what's happening and if this symbolism resonates with you or you don't know that trauma can can stay at a cellular level, but maybe you're not thinking that far, maybe you're just swiping across your screen or screens and the feelings of inadequacy hit your own mental feed like the universal fear that you're not enough. You'll never find love, you can't commit and your balls will rot and your friends try, they tell you all your exes socks and whatever gender they were, that gender sucks and they tell you you could do better because that one always feels good. and I'll treat you to an obligatory drink or four and because you made that great post, you'll get an avalanche of emotional support through a bunch of memes for a day, because nothing looks like you're going to find love again and a vulnerability how are you doing. friends really try, but the problem is that our culture does not have rituals around grief, love, heartbreak, you are alone, but your own brain does not help you either, you are used to being intoxicated by this love hormone called oxytocin what did you feel like a goddess and now you're going through withdrawals, you're anxious about it, your logic is all over the place, second, you probably have some stress hormones, like cortisol, flooding your brain and making you feel like you're having an out-of-body experience similar to how I'm on stage right now three your brain is really trying to help you it's looking for dopamine hits here and there online shopping half a liter of ice cream wine wine and more wine I don't recommend it This our minds are like a pet of chia out of fear, you release it a little out of fear and it wants to grow until it becomes a bean stalk of terror.

This fear-based thinking served us well when we were hunters and gatherers and needed to avoid buffalo stampedes. or locust invasions, but we haven't evolved, we're stuck in a mind that's more receptive to fear than how sexy we look in a loincloth, so what are we supposed to do first? Control what you can control, which is often eating with your body. sleep, drink, breathe deeply, as best you can right now, be present using all five senses now, eating high intensity cookies is not exercise, sorry, try to create healthy rituals for yourself, like a morning walk with music, find to your inner diva, your inner thrash metal head. or whatever it's called, make your broken heart beat, oh come on, when I was younger I was asked to be part of a television 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 to your pleasure and my shame, here you go, you get a sound, you might like it, don't put the second cigar in, no no, tons will heal the quickest, you don't realize how much you use your tongue until you have It's so I'm different, but tongue movement is greatly underestimated. Well, the food on this side sat me down and said, "You can go to 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 in a hot tub after a breakup but don't feel bad for feeling sorry for yourself, loss is painful so validate that tears of pain literally have stress hormones so cry, let yourself be human, but at least 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 make bad TV pilots.

Morning love is such a strange state, isn't it in a minute? each other their deepest secrets and then they're strangers and that's brutal they can sway with feelings of sadness and numbness and anger and strange relief all wavering at breakneck speeds they can regret the relationship before it's over they can regret the relationship you thought it was or who you thought they were or the shared history, you may regret the future you would hope to have with them or how this may affect other people and part of letting go is seeing if there is something worth holding on to, but I would warn you about Nostalgia Nostalgia has two faces and its trick is to paint falsifications of the past and whitewash your memories like a propaganda film and then you hear it whisper if it was that bad and then you put your hand on the panic button and say: what if?

I changed and he changed maybe if we tried a little 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 or like it, it's just getting there. accept what it is and I say all this and the morning is individual there is no recipe there is no timeline and just when you think you have come this far you are back to square one again but please don't let that stop you from feeling all these feelings because if you suppress all these feelings like a thanksgiving dinner, that dry tasting bird that I swear no one likes on any other day will manifest itself in destructive actions or lash out at the people you love or maybe you will. being 65 in a dive bar on a Tuesday with smoke in your face, so you need to create a counterattack to the nostalgia, write down all the reasons why the relationship is not working give it to your friends, review it, it often represents the entire subpar 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 whether he understands you, because the next minute you're online watching to your ex, I mean.

You're curious and you accidentally see a photo of him with a woman and maybe you analyze it for a few minutes aka all day and you're back in your recovery cocoon and it was just his cousin who experimented with rituals that signify change. If you ask me, grab a Burning Man playbook, gather up all the stuff that was left in your house and didn't pick up and you couldn't sell on Bernie or Craigslist, gather your friends, start a bonfire and burn it, I realize that most of us You don't like pyromania, but I want you not to dismiss the power of a collective emotional experience like the one we're having now or take my friend's mantra, new relationship, new sheets and I know it's not the fault of the sheet, it's symbolism, but whatever.

Don't let fear light your path. Fear is a horrible advisor. Our brain acts like a conspiracy theorist. With anything positive, it begins to appear. You see some hope and want to poke holes in that theory, but don't you? let it pass through your senses visualize it feel it smell it I mean just try to make sense of it try to give it a chance to stay now I've always loved this lyric and I think Dolly Parton said it first the best way to get over a lover is to get over it to another now that he feels good, but is there any science behind this?

Actually, yes, thanks to the social and personal relationship journal for showing us that a rebound relationship can help us improve our overall health faster. Fantastic, but be careful. of his heart and yours, as you may not be ready to be ghosted after a one night stand or any relationship, but who knows when Cupid will strike again, right? Resist going into that duct-taped hibernation cocoon, that little voice inside that says being social is too much effort if you feel like you're a burden on your friends, ask them, don't assume or steal this gift from them to be around you, it could be the positive side to all of this, maybe you want your ex to understand what you're going through right now, but I want you to remember that you may not be together because you didn't understand each other, so find someone who can because this could be a opportunity for deeper healing.

Many psychotherapists believe that we enter into a relationship. to heal things from our past and a breakup alone can trigger loss, abandonment, trust issues, so maybe don't go to the person who broke your heart to try to mend it. Guilt and regret can eat us alive but I'm guessing it's someone with the same story as If you were put in the same situation you probably would have done the same thing and we can't predict how we will feel over time so please practice self-compassion and it's not just a magic pill you take once, it's a lifelong practice and by the end of the day we're all evolving, apparently even the royal family, many of us judge the success of a relationship by its duration, if not going to the grave, another failed relationship, not necessarily, what if we redefined or reframed failure as complete?

I get the idea that all endings are so negative, but if we take this back a little further, we're so grateful for some due dates, puberty, pimples, period, hell yeah, what if we thought about angst as just one part of the flow of life? to be alive, that's an x, well, let's talk about him. He was in a relationship that probably should have never lasted beyond the first date. We've probably all had it. I had just moved to San Francisco and I was lonely and I'm a total creativity freak. smart men with silky black locks, okay, focus, fast forward five years and I was a fragment of my former self.

He was so insecure that he couldn't make the simplest decisions. I was once this funky, free bohemian woman and I was a paler version of my ex. To him, I wasn't thin enough, I wasn't skinny enough and I'm sure hell I wasn't normal enough and his constant judgment of me started to seep into how I saw myself, so I threw myself into therapy and there I began to see a pattern of being silence silence sorry, whether it was my dyslexia or growing up with a closeted lesbian mother in the most homophobic era of the 80s and 90s or being an objectified woman or my face mattered, but not my words, but I had to find that. voice to leave that relationship and eventually I saw my role as a passive accomplice and I didn't want to be anyone's idea of ​​normality if normality existed and hallelujah, it's not okay, luckily I ended that relationship but then I wanted to play dumb.

I beat myself up for wasting time and especially for my 20 responsibility free years with him so I keep reminding myself and then I reminded myself that I got a lot of gifts because I was in the relationship and one of them was that he helped me figure out that I had some brain cells to work with I had developed this concept with my severe undiagnosed dyslexia I wasn't very intelligent he was extremely bright and he just treated me as such so he healed a deep wound inside me and that had a ripple effect on me life I read a small library of books, got my passport stamped around the world and decided to face academia again and have the courage to go to graduate school and fulfill my lifelong dream of being a counselor, so things They were not like that. bad and he was a little stiffer and I was a wild child who wore wigs and did birdie man and watched the sun come up after hitting the clubs all night sorry mom, now the news is out so we both left, oh I'm sorry, and I don't I don't knowI did blurt it out, that was a thought I had, but I do know that I introduced him to his life's passion, photography, so we both left with party gifts and by far this was the unhealthiest relationship I've ever had, but the one I learned.

The most of that darkness I continue to evolve into the person I am meant to be and I am still developing during this preparation for this speech. I felt really guilty for taking someone else's place. I thought the committee had made a big mistake. I thought, Did someone bribe them, but I know this is a place I go when I feel insecure because a blind spot was illuminated because I was in a relationship, so when you feel broken and wonder if love is worth it, look ? in your growth try to find the metaphorical gifts that enrich your soul appease me for a moment and dream dream of me dream of me of a world where none of us have doubts that we are loved and I'm sorry let me get my and let us know that heartbreak is It's just part of life and that we will go out, we will crash and burn and we will recharge our hearts and we will go out again and maybe one day to a place where we will not be separated from each other.

We will break up, but our friends, our rituals will keep us together and encourage us to be the constantly evolving souls we must be, thank you very much.