356. How to survive a breakup in your 20s

Going through a breakup is always going to be devastating. Heartbreak is one of the most gut-wrenching human experiences: it affects our brain, our body, our routines, our identity, and our sense of the future. Why does it hurt so much, and how do we actually get through it? In this episode, we break down the psychology of surviving a breakup: the science, the emotions, and the practical tools that help you heal, find clarity, and eventually believe in love again. We explore: The story of my TWO big breakups Why heartbreak activates the same neural pathways as physical pain The three psychological “waves” of a breakup and what to expect in each Why “what ifs,” longing and mind-pops keep us stuck How to support your healing with five research-backed strategies The psychology of rebounds, moving on, and knowing when you’re ready to date again If you’re feeling lost, devastated, or convinced you’ll never love again, this episode will help you understand your pain, soften it, and slowly rebuild your sense of self. ORDER MY BOOK https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/copy-of-book Watch on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@thepsychologyofyour20s Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:32Jemma Sbeg?

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• 1:16Jemma Sbeg?

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• 1:42Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:31Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello everybody, I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology.

• 2:49Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course, break down the psychology of your twenties. Today, I want to talk about heartbreak. I want to talk about why it is so hard, but also give you kind of a guide based on psychology and my experience on how to get over it. Maybe that's not even the best way to say it. How to get through it, how to process the loss, how to still feel strong enough to believe in love, how to find love again.

• 3:33Jemma Sbeg?

  I want to begin by telling you all the story of my worst breakup. And when I say breakup, I should actually say breakups as in plural. In 2021, I went through two breakups in one year. One with a person that I was in a long-term relationship with, a serious relationship with, and another with someone, you know, and the relationship was a lot less serious, but someone who I deeply cared for and I can admit to myself now, like definitely loved very, very much. Let me describe kind of like the circumstances of the two in one year breakup situation, of the very tragic year that happened to me.

• 4:16Jemma Sbeg?

  I had been dating my first very serious boyfriend for about two years when I think I just realised, you know, I think we both realised we just weren't right for each other. I actually remember him, I distinctly remember him trying to break up with me a few months before we actually did because he was like, I'm writing my thesis and I'm just gonna be too busy for you and like, I need to focus all my attention on, on my writing and I won't have time to be with you. And I don't know why, but I like stayed with him, even though that was like the beginning of the end. And eventually I was the person to break up with him. Two days before Valentine's Day, I should say, because of course, that was my luck. But it wasn't gonna work. And, and I think it was for the best. And after

• 4:59Jemma Sbeg?

  we broke up, we did this like on and off again thing for a few months before I realized he actually had a new girlfriend he wasn't telling me about. And it was very embarrassing. And I was in this small college town and everybody knew. And I kept telling people like, we're gonna try and make it work. Meanwhile, he was completely, like he was seeing somebody else. It was terribly painful. And it kind of took four months for me to like officially begin to grieve our relationship because of all that happened. And because there was this delayed emotional reaction. It took me a while to realize like, oh, this is it. We actually aren't getting back together. And that's when the grief really began. I'm

• 5:40Jemma Sbeg?

  also very grateful for that breakup because OG listeners of the podcast will know that is how the psychology of your twenties started. And I think that it was like the thing that I needed to expand my life and to take a risk and to be creative and to know what I cared about. So I kind of owe him a bit of a thank you. I owe him my dream job. So thank you very much. But that is a different story for another time. I think after that breakup, I'd love to say that I like healed and I moved on and I started dating an appropriate amount of time later, but that is not the case. I was really, really lonely and I went back on the dating apps well before I should have and ended up in a six month situationship

• 6:25Jemma Sbeg?

  with someone, you know, I shouldn't have been in a relationship with, but we ended up going on holidays together and we met, I met his parents and I really thought we like had this future, which we never did. And from the beginning, he was very clear, he didn't want a relationship. He was never gonna commit to me. And, you know, I think that I just didn't want to hear that and I didn't want to see it. And so I put a lot of hope and Energy and love into this person. And then, you know, six months later, that was the end. And I realized again, like, this person doesn't really respect me very much. This person really doesn't want to be with me. I can't force him to, and I have my heart broken again.

• 7:08Jemma Sbeg?

  These moments now are so formative for the person that I am, to the point where I'm, I genuinely think they're some of the things that I'm most grateful for in my life. Like, those heartbreaks shaped me. And they also pushed me to an emotional limit that I think gave me some good wisdom to share on how to survive these situations. In the time since, like, I've dated a few people. I went through one other breakup where I got to apply so many of the learnings from those two big breakups. And now I'm in a three year relationship with somebody that I love so much. I adore him. He is incredible. And, you know, almost five years on, I want to look back today and just kind of

• 7:53Jemma Sbeg?

  give you a psychological guide to how I got through it and how hopefully you can as well. I know this moment is so painful and know that actually nobody experiences this in the same way. And that I'm sure you think you're never going to find love again. You're never going to be able to survive without them. You can't imagine a future where like their name isn't in your phone and they don't know everything about you. But I promise you will get there. The feeling of emptiness you have won't be forever. And I want to give you a little bit of a guide through. So without further ado, let's get into the psychology behind how to survive your breakup, how to survive heartbreak. Stay with us.

• 8:39Jemma Sbeg?

  Let's start very, very simply. Why do breakups hurt so much? And it might seem simple. Anybody who has lived through it knows it's deeply complex. There are basically a few reasons why you're in so much pain right now. And there's a reason why they call it heartbreak, because that Deep feeling in your chest, in your lungs, in your limbs is real, literal, physical pain. We're going to get to how I know that to be true in a second, but the most simple rudimentary psychological explanation for why a breakup hurts so much is

• 9:16Jemma Sbeg?

  this: love, like few other things, makes us feel amazing to a degree that really has no rivals. It makes us feel incredible to be seen, to feel important, to connect with somebody else. Obviously, it brings a lot of pleasure, to be loved, to be like in this deep bonding moment with somebody. And what's really behind those feelings, what really drives those feelings, is dopamine and oxytocin. Oxytocin especially is literally known as the love hormone. And if you ever, if anybody ever managed to purify it and give it to somebody in a vial, it would be

• 9:57Jemma Sbeg?

  one of the most potent and strong drugs out there. It would also be one of the most addictive. That is how intense of a drug and of a feeling it is. Now, oxytocin isn't just about love, it's also what allows us to bond and trust other people. And it is essential for building neural pathways that basically weave the memories and our emotions about somebody into our brain. They leave an imprint. The memory of them will leave an imprint on your neural structures. And the flexibility of the brain means that in response to all this really deep emotional,

• 10:40Jemma Sbeg?

  intense stuff, it adapts to expect it. It adapts to deepen that imprint, to become reliant on the dopamine and the oxytocin provided by this person, to rely on them more and more. And so when it ends, and all those positive sensations go away, and that imprint is no longer filled.

• 11:02Jemma Sbeg?

  Suddenly, there is a deep emotional, psychological, biological emptiness that our brain just can't comprehend. It can't comprehend that this person was here, they were with us, we loved them, and then it was over. The hole was no longer filled. Scientists and psychologists, you will hear them make comparisons between a breakup and literal drug withdrawal. It is like your brain is detoxing from a substance, and that substance is this other person. You don't have access to them anymore, and your brain still very much wants to, your brain still very much expects to.

• 11:47Jemma Sbeg?

  And so you are undeniably left very hurt and left very lacking or longing or yearning because of this situation. That pain you're feeling is not in your head, it is very much real. Studies, including a very famous one from 2012, have shown that relationship breakdown activates the same brain regions that process physical pain. You've probably heard that before, but the kind of pain they're describing is obviously not the same as stubbing your toe or breaking a limb. It's really known as social pain, the pain of losing a social connection, the pain of rejection, the pain of feeling deep longing and missing for somebody.

• 12:32Jemma Sbeg?

  That really connects to a pain in how we saw ourselves that we no longer have. You know, we saw ourselves as this person who was attached to this other individual. We saw ourselves in a partnership, we saw ourselves in a pair, and we no longer do. And so there is also a real identity shakeup that is going on behind the scenes. Back to that pain thing as well, it's not like there is a hierarchy where physical pain hurts more than this social pain, hurts more than this social loss. They hurt equally, which might seem bizarre to say, but they hurt equally because pain is not actually experienced by the body, it is experienced by the mind and by the brain,

• 13:17Jemma Sbeg?

  specifically pain-related neural regions in your, in your brain. I could cut off your leg, I could, you know, kick you in the shin. You would not feel any of that as actual pain if the pain-related neural regions in your brain were not working, because you would have no way of reading the sensation. What that means is that the pain of a heartbreak is processed in the same way and at the same capacity and level as physical pain would be. They use identical systems. So I don't want you to discount what you're feeling and think, ah, this is not real, this can't

• 13:57Jemma Sbeg?

  be as painful as I think it is, this is all in my head. Absolutely not. There is real science behind why you feel the way that you do. Breakups also leave us with an emotional void, where there's a lot of love that has nowhere to go. And they also leave us with a near-future void. What I mean by a near-future void is that it makes us have to rapidly adapt to a new way of life whilst also accepting the grief of a future that is never going to happen. You're not going to see each other every weekend. The future trip that you so wanted to take isn't going to happen. They're not going to be at your birthday next year.

• 14:41Jemma Sbeg?

  It's like they've been erased out of all those future memories that you want to have. All the things that you've built, the routine, the inside jokes, the connection, the relationships with their family, the memories, it feels like you have to erase them, not just from the past and the present, but from the future. And you have to say goodbye, and that those memories were maybe for nothing. This has a name, it's called ambiguous loss. Grieving something that hasn't happened yet, but that you still miss in a way. Grieving the future that you really wanted to build with this person, building a life that you were deeply invested in. I personally think some of the hardest breakups are the ones when it could

• 15:25Jemma Sbeg?

  have almost worked. You think it's working, you tried really hard, or you were just blindsided and the plans, the potential, they were just like suddenly killed off in the moment. You know, it's a random Monday night and your whole life is suddenly different. Half the pain is just having to adapt to this new reality that you probably didn't want to find yourself in in the first place. I think it's the same for relationships that maybe didn't have a serious label. Just because you weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, just because you weren't formally together, even if it was a situationship. There is a part of you that always deeply hopes that it could work out.

• 16:10Jemma Sbeg?

  And there is a part of you that really holds on to the what ifs. And a lot of psychologists will tell you that it's the what ifs that make the pain last as long as it does and why it's so hard to find closure. Because the opposite of closure is possibility. And that's what the what ifs are thriving in. What if they'd just given me a chance? What if things had been different? What if we hadn't had that fight? What if I hadn't broken up with them over that thing? What if I just loved them a little bit more? What if they just loved me a little bit more? There was this Psychology Today article that I read about this that said,

• 16:50Jemma Sbeg?

  "The reason these what ifs haunt us is because they actually offer us a false sense of control. If we can pinpoint what went wrong, we can maybe fix it and get back together with them, or we can prevent it from happening again. We search for things that will fill in the gaps of why this didn't work. The hard truth is, even if you could identify the exact moment or reason that things fell apart, it's probably not going to change the outcome. The relationship ended for a reason and clinging to what if really only prolongs your suffering. I remember this is what happened with that situationship I was in,

• 17:29Jemma Sbeg?

  where I just was like trying to convince him constantly that if he committed, we would be really good together. That what if of like, what if you just believed me for a second? What if you just saw what I saw? You know, then we could have this amazing life together. That that whole situation was fantasy. And I was trying to force somebody to believe in something that they didn't want proof of and that they didn't necessarily want. And what it was really about was control. Me trying to control a situation that made me feel really vulnerable so that the outcome didn't make me feel worse about myself. Okay, so now that we understand the pain, hopefully a little bit better, I wanna go through

• 18:14Jemma Sbeg?

  the life cycle of a breakup and what to expect. What are the signs that you're healing? What are the signs that you're getting better? What kind of awaits you in the next chapter of this heartbreak? Heartbreak is obviously different for everyone, but the way the heart mends itself, like, actually seems to follow a very similar pattern and set of timelines. Now, I can't give you an absolute number, I can't give you an exact date or the number of months that it's gonna take before you feel better, but we can talk about the stages. There have been a couple of attempts to kind of do this, to kind of categorize the life cycle of a breakup.

• 18:56Jemma Sbeg?

  The most famous one is obviously the stage of grief theory by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. This theory, you've probably heard of it, it basically was developed to describe how people move through the grief that occurs when somebody dies. People then realize it also applies to the grief of when a relationship dies, but the stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The theory is you have to go through each stage in your own time to get to a point when you're really ready to move on. I find that that theory is quite accurate, but I also have my own model

• 19:34Jemma Sbeg?

  that I think describes it a little bit better, and I describe it as the three waves of the breakup. So before you even get into the breakup, I think before you even actually start to be able to move on, you are gonna go through that stage of shock and of denial. Every single one of us is gonna have this. It could last a minute, a day, a month, three months. Essentially, It's gonna maybe take a while for you to really realise the emotional situation you're in. And that's why it can take some time for your emotions to catch up to your reality. Like I said, it took me four months to really grieve

• 20:18Jemma Sbeg?

  that first breakup, four months before I even cried, because I was still in this shock feeling. You know, you may wake up for a few days, you know, afterwards, just kind of forgetting that it even happened. You may really genuinely feel that you're fine, you're already over it. I'm sorry to say that feeling is a trick, that feeling is a lie. At some stage, the gates are actually gonna open, and that's when the healing and the heartbreak really begins. And that's when the first wave actually occurs. The first wave of a breakup, of any breakup, is what I call the emotional mess stage. After that shock falls away, this is when you first encounter like

• 20:59Jemma Sbeg?

  the true reality, the raw truth of the emotional wreckage of what's happened. In this first wave, you will do, and you have permission to do stupid things. It's a given, you're gonna get bangs. You're going to try desperately to be friends with your ex. You're gonna keep going back looking for closure, you're gonna get too drunk, you're gonna cry in embarrassing places. It is a requirement. If you have not gone through this, you are probably still in the shock phase. What's really happening is that all the love that you have has nowhere to go. So you respond impulsively, you respond with great intensity. I tend to think of it as like the first stage of having an open wound, like blood is just gushing everywhere.

• 21:44Jemma Sbeg?

  And that's totally normal. This is what I really recommend, and I'm gonna, I know it's gonna sound basic. But I really do recommend you go no contact for thirty days. Whatever terms you ended the relationship on, good or bad, neurologically, it's gonna be easier for you to move on from this situation if you are not constantly triggered and reminded of their existence. Or if their role and presence in your life is not continually, like continuing to be reinforced.

• 22:16Jemma Sbeg?

  You need to stop those neurons and stop those synaptic connections that associate you with them from firing. The way I really like to describe it is when you go no contact, you're able to hear your own voice and feel your own emotions more clearly. It's like being able to just have a conversation with yourself without hearing somebody else's voice like talking over you. You're each gonna handle this breakup very differently. And at some stage, like each of you is gonna try and convince the other person to see it the way that you see it. You don't need that other voice talking over how you feel and interrupting your emotional

• 23:00Jemma Sbeg?

  processing. Going no contact just gives you the time to concentrate on what you think about the situation and to also just kind of work through the pain. I always say that like going cold turkey on a relationship might feel a lot more painful, but it speeds the process up a lot compared to slowly trying to move away or slowly trying to withdraw from somebody, which is just gonna make the pain and make the wound heal so much slower. During the first wave, typically an event will trigger you to move into the second wave. And typically, this is something that's a little bit unfortunate. You find out that they're seeing somebody new, you have a big confrontational chat

• 23:45Jemma Sbeg?

  after the no contact, you see their true colors, you realize finally the big reason you can't be together. This pushes you into the second wave where the real deep healing begins. Second wave, deep healing stage. The temporary fixes no longer work. Going out doesn't keep the pain away. You can't outrun the serious grief that this relationship isn't gonna work, it's not gonna come back. And this is when you feel very hopeless, you cry a lot, it feels very dark. It's also when you really have to look the pain in the eye. Surviving this wave is mainly about time.

• 24:22Jemma Sbeg?

  Uh. But there are some things that will definitely help as well. So not dating is a big one. Being around your friends, um, really sinking deeper into your hobbies, dating yourself in a really active way, taking yourself out for dinner, filling up your social calendar with things that you're excited to do are all really going to help. When you start to kind of get into the flow of this, you're going to be thinking about them a lot less. You're going to be thinking like, hey, I think I'm, I think I'm going to survive this. That's when you experience the third wave, which is acceptance. But before you can get there, you are going to experience one more wave of grief. And I'm going to

• 25:06Jemma Sbeg?

  talk about why that is, what it feels like, and how to get through that infamous third wave after this short break.

• 25:19Speaker 00

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• 25:49Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on, and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 26:26Jemma Sbeg?

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• 27:10Jemma Sbeg?

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• 27:52Jemma Sbeg?

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• 29:22Jemma Sbeg?

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• 29:53Jemma Sbeg?

  I truly think the second hardest part of a breakup after, of course, like the initial devastation is actually always going to be right before things get easier very quickly. And I know this from experience, not just my own, but from other people's. You know, the moment you think, I just don't think I can survive this any longer, doing everything I can, I can't stop thinking about them, that is truly when you come to a state of acceptance, when you come to realize like, the only way I can survive this. Is by understanding myself better and is by actually going further into the belly of the beast. You begin to really find a lot more clarity.

• 30:33Jemma Sbeg?

  And this is where in this third wave, like I really recommend you start journaling about what you've learned. You begin to see patterns more clearly. You begin to be able to like really soak in the lessons. It may also be in this third wave, when you contact them one last time, you do that final farewell. And it's when you really start to trust your intuition again about maybe seeing other people, making big life decisions. What's the next chapter for you gonna hold? You feel more optimistic for the first time in months than you feel pessimistic. I wanna make something clear. It is totally normal to be in wave three or beyond, to be in like the total acceptance

• 31:15Jemma Sbeg?

  stage and still get flashbacks of them, to still find yourself thinking about them, even missing them. This is not a sign to get back together. These involuntary memory flare ups, they are no more than what we call mind pops. And I talked about this in my book, actually where I did my whole chapter on heartbreak. These mind pops are something that psychologists and scientists have labeled recently. It's basically where our brain just suddenly brings about memories and information to the surface so that we can determine whether it's still relevant or not.

• 31:56Jemma Sbeg?

  It is this involuntary memory recall that is triggered by the environment, triggered by something happening, by a smell, a song lyric, a place, a food. We don't even know it and suddenly you're right back in that place and time, reminiscing on them all those years later. If a memory is particularly emotionally loaded, like it's gonna come up a few times. Maybe just because you're bored, maybe just because your inhibitions are down. Don't try and be afraid, don't try and suppress these thoughts. They are super normal. They are nothing more than your brain just deciding to fire in strange ways.

• 32:36Jemma Sbeg?

  Do not let it make you think that you need to go back to this person. I want you to approach these mind pops cautiously and with neutrality.

• 32:50Jemma Sbeg?

  It is totally normal that you're gonna miss them. You felt connected. They were a part of your life. Maybe things ended in an unsatisfactory way. That doesn't mean that you still have to be emotionally invested in them. It's also essential to question how you may be romanticizing parts of your relationship that never actually happened. There's a reason why we only remember the good times. It's known as the Pollyanna principle. A positive cognitive bias is what is occurring whereby we remember the good times more clearly than the bad. And therefore, we fixate on them more and they give us an unrealistic view of the relationship.

• 33:32Jemma Sbeg?

  Often, we romanticize the past to protect ourselves from negative memories. And in the process, we engage in something called selective recall. When we think about our ex or some unrequited love, all we remember is what made them special. And all the other things, the unanswered messages, the lack of effort, the unhappiness, that is left out. And it's no wonder you can't move on when you are remembering your entire relationship incorrectly, despite your best intentions. I'm gonna say something you may not wanna hear right now. But that's gonna happen. There is no fast forwarding through a breakup.

• 34:13Jemma Sbeg?

  I think grief, whether it lasts a week to five years, is the price you pay for love, and I think it's a pretty fair price. The second thing I'm gonna say that you may not like is that you do have to find the beauty in this a little bit, or at least the romance. And when I mean romance, what I really mean is meaning. Why did this happen? How is this part of your story? What are you going to create from this? Because by gosh, you are going to build and make something beautiful of yourself and your life because of this pain, not in spite of it. Like, I genuinely, I said this at the beginning, breakups are just like such fertile soil

• 34:57Jemma Sbeg?

  to the, to plant the seeds of your new life. There is so much you can do out of like, out of the rubble of a breakup, like. Cannot express to you how my whole life is different because somebody broke up with me and my whole life is different in a way that is, and I can tell, is profoundly better than what it would have been if I'd stayed or if we'd broken up, you know, five months, six months later, or if we'd actually never been together. It all makes sense. It's all part of the story. So I think it's time to give you some of my tips, the best tips that I use that I think are important for getting through this that are based in psychology.

• 35:38Jemma Sbeg?

  The first big tip that I have for you is to survive this breakup, you need to restructure your environment. This involves getting rid of any reminders of this person. And then on top of that, introducing new objects, new colors, new things, new images that reflect the new life and new mindset that you are stepping into. After my first terrible breakup, I did a, I did a clean sweep. Everything that reminded me of him, they went in a box and that went into storage. And I couldn't tell you where that box is now. I just needed it to be gone. I also ordered a bunch of posters of my favorite art to hang up on

• 36:19Jemma Sbeg?

  my walls. I also painted a bunch of stuff in my room. I moved all of my furniture around. I bought new bed sheets. I just wanted stuff that was going to represent me and represent, you know, this life that I wanted to have as a single person. Research in environmental psychology shows that our surroundings profoundly affect our emotions and behaviors, especially in times like this. There is this very famous equation that was described by this individual called Kurt Lewin. And his equation is basically that behavior, your behavior is a function both of the person you are and of your environment. So when your living space is filled with

• 37:00Jemma Sbeg?

  reminders of a past relationship, how do you expect yourself to behave any differently when you are continuously triggering memories and the emotional pain of this person and the fact they're not in your life anymore? You need to be so deliberate about changing your environment, rearranging furniture, redecorating, replacing, so that the new physical cues in your environment symbolize the things that you care about, symbolize the things that are independently important to you and symbolize your new life. Okay, tip number two. Get a project and make it a project or a hobby or something that you have never showed interest in before and that they would know nothing about.

• 37:44Jemma Sbeg?

  For me, that was this podcast. I cannot tell you like how important this podcast was for me to get through those emotions. But what was so important about it was it was like I was learning all these new skills. I was creating this whole new life for myself that he didn't know anything about. That had no, no connection to this individual. I also think that we are rarely as motivated to prove something to ourselves as we are when we are in deep emotional pain. You know, you really have like one of the purest forms of motivation for yourself right now. Heartbreak is like heroin for getting stuff done and for reinventing yourself.

• 38:29Jemma Sbeg?

  You know, whether that is throwing yourself into the gym, you know, writing a book, writing poetry, starting a garden, solo traveling, like there is a reason half of the music out there is breakup songs. Every feeling that you have is it's going to be right on the surface. It's so easy to access and it's so easy to take those feelings and to convert them into something that you are really, really proud of. Number three, my third tip is to get a breakup buddy. I was talking to my friend Grace about this the other day. But having a friend or a person that is going through it with you makes this whole process like totally more bearable.

• 39:12Jemma Sbeg?

  And I think it allows you to be more honest and reflective compared to with your friends who are maybe still in relationships or people who haven't been through a breakup in a while. When you talk through your breakup with your breakup buddy. You engage in a process that psychologists call co-regulation. And this is where two people actually help regulate each other's emotions because they're going through something similar and they are sharing very vulnerably their story, their reflections and their truth. And it actually allows us to feed off other people's calm, to feed off the other person's emotions, to feed off their learnings.

• 39:52Jemma Sbeg?

  There was a 2011 study on emotional disclosure that found expressing painful emotions to someone who was in similar circumstances to you actually reduces depressive symptoms and it improves recovery time for all number of illnesses, including heartbreak. It also just makes you a lot less lonely. I think the loneliness is the hardest part of this, right? Maybe since this relationship occurred, a lot of your friends have found themselves in relationships. And maybe you're the last single person, people are busy. Maybe you live in a new city. That loneliness can have you running back to a less than good relationship faster than you can say boo because it is the only thing that's going to make you feel good.

• 40:37Jemma Sbeg?

  So find your person. Trust me, when you start looking, they're everywhere. They're in book clubs, run clubs, raves, gallery opening, friends' birthday parties. You're going to find somebody who is also going through their biggest heartbreak, just like you. And it's going to be your biggest comfort. And I think it's going to be something you guys can always look back on. Like you went through the trenches together, you went through this really hard time together. This kind of links to a bigger tip in general. You really need to get out of your head and into the world and commit to meeting new people. You may have lost your main connection. You know, you may have lost this person that you love.

• 41:19Jemma Sbeg?

  But researchers estimate that that relationship is worth about five smaller friendships or connections. So what that means is that, you know, that's not a loss. Now you have all this space. It's like finding a whole new closet that you get to fill. Like you have all this space in your life for new connections, new relationships. Fill the closet, fill the closet with these new people. That sounds really creepy. Just fill your time and your space with connections that platonically might outlast your next relationship or the one after that. My fourth tip is to use the power of visualization. To allow yourself to see the relationship more clearly and also see your future more clearly.

• 41:59Jemma Sbeg?

  I want you to visualize the next five years of your life in two ways. The first way is what would your life look like five years from now if you'd stayed? You can write about this, you can journal this if you need, but what would it have looked like honestly if you had stayed? And secondly, what do you actually want it to look like in five years? And what do you now have the opportunity to do because you are not in this relationship? This exercise just asks you to be really, really honest with yourself. There was a reason this relationship didn't work out. Even if the reason was simply because the other person wasn't in love anymore.

• 42:44Jemma Sbeg?

  There are things that can't be forced and there are things that would have eventually eroded the relationship, would have meant that you would have broken up further down the line. What was this relationship asking you to be? And what was it asking you to become that maybe wasn't going to be your best? And now that you're not in it, you now have this opportunity to shape the next five years, the next 10 years, 20 years of your life in a whole different environment, a whole different space, maybe in all these different relationships and places. How are you going to go about it? I think what this question is really asking you to do is to just get clear on the vision for yourself. You know, it's just you. What do you want? What do you want to strive for? What do you want to turn this loss into?

• 43:29Jemma Sbeg?

  Because there are like so many big wins that come out of just investigating and really questioning, what do I actually want from my life? And now you don't have somebody else in it that you have to think about. There's just so much more room for freedom. This really lends to my final tip after this short break.

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• 44:23Jemma Sbeg?

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• 45:00Jemma Sbeg?

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• 45:41Jemma Sbeg?

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• 45:59Jemma Sbeg?

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• 46:44Jemma Sbeg?

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• 47:25Jemma Sbeg?

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• 48:07Jemma Sbeg?

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• 48:27Jemma Sbeg?

  I think we often look for closure in the other person. And we look for closure in that final conversation. That final thing they're going to say to us, it's going to make us realise why it ended, why it was the way it was. My final tip. I need you to write the story of your relationship and write the finish or the closing chapter of your relationship for yourself. As if you are telling the story of your relationship as a folk story or as a lesson to a younger a younger version of you or to your future children or almost like a fairy tale. Write the beginning, write the middle of the relationship and write the end.

• 49:12Jemma Sbeg?

  But also write why you think it had to happen. And maybe even if you want to project into the future, write about why this relationship was actually a stepping stone. And what it may be guiding you to that is bigger than you. This really leverages the power of something we call narrative psychology. Narrative psychology is basically the study of how we make sense of our lives through stories. And it plays a really powerful role in healing after a breakup. According to the narrative psychologist Dan P. McAdams, we construct our identity through personal narratives that link our past, present and imagined future into a coherent whole.

• 49:55Jemma Sbeg?

  And when something disrupts that story and doesn't make sense with what we thought was going to happen, like a breakup, that's when we experience a lot of pain. The story is disrupted, like the plotline that we once shared is suddenly incomplete. So writing the story of your relationship as a lesson or from your perspective allows you to engage in that reconstruction process. And it allows you to really make meaning from this grief and from this loss in a manner that is very, very powerful. I want to give you a bonus tip, speaking of of closure and healing. And I know I've talked about this in another episode on heartbreak, but I'm going to say it again. I need you to make a breakup playlist.

• 50:40Jemma Sbeg?

  Maybe you already have one, but music and heartbreak are like the perfect pairing. A 2014 study actually found that breakup songs help you heal because they promote emotional expression and therefore give you an outlet compared to emotional suppression. There's also this additional funny part to this tip as well, which is that I think having a very specific breakup playlist actually allows you to track how your response or how your healing is going based on how you respond to the music. So what I mean by that is that it's often very hard to see

• 51:21Jemma Sbeg?

  how far you've come, how much your grief is actually moving or healing, because we don't always have that linear, like linear state of mind when we're going through something really, really difficult. Recently, I listened back to my breakup playlist from that year of breakups. And I remember listening to these songs and sobbing. And I remember having such an emotional reaction. And I listened to those songs the other day and I felt nothing. I just felt, I just felt neutral. I didn't feel sad, I didn't feel nostalgic, I didn't feel excited. I just felt nothing.

• 52:05Jemma Sbeg?

  And it was this really profound way of seeing how I have changed and how I've obviously, I've very obviously healed, but how like something that I once thought was going to define my life and that I was never going to recover from, I did. Something I thought I was never going to get over, I got over. And my life is now so, so much better. And I think that's really where I want to kind of finish this episode. Like, it's very easy to feel pessimistic about love.

• 52:47Jemma Sbeg?

  And it's very easy to feel like because this relationship didn't work out.

• 52:54Jemma Sbeg?

  I'm never gonna find anyone better. Because I'm feeling so intense and deeply pained by the ending of this relationship. That's a sign that this person was the one.

• 53:07Jemma Sbeg?

  That's just not the case. I never thought I would feel pain,

• 53:13Jemma Sbeg?

  any deeper pain than the way I did with my first boyfriend. And then I did, I felt even more pain for somebody who was a lot less deserving of my love. And even then, like that actually said nothing more than that I was just attached. And it was always gonna be hard to get over. And now I'm in this amazing relationship and I wish that I could just sit down with my younger self and just say, you've just gotta, you've just gotta get through this. This is an important emotional experience and you're gonna find love. If not in your twenties, if not in your thirties, eventually you will. I always love hearing stories of people who find love a little bit later on.

• 53:56Jemma Sbeg?

  I think about, you know, my aunt who dated terrible men for years and then at fifty seven met like the love of her life, who she's never been more in love with and who she just adores. Or my grandma, who, you know, divorced my grandfather at, in her forties and then met, who I really do consider to be my grandfather. And he like, you know, moved her to Australia and took her to Africa and made her an important part of, of his business and just thinks she's incredible at ninety years old. True love really does exist and sometimes I do think it's waiting behind heartbreak. It's begging you to let go, to leave this person, to learn as much as you can from this situation, because it knows what else is coming.

• 54:41Jemma Sbeg?

  And I know you're in so much pain right now. I know you think you're never going to get over them, but whenever you feel pessimistic about the future, without them in it, look for the big love stories because you will find them. And remember, like your biggest love story, like you are the love of your own life. The relationship you have with yourself matters more than anything. And it's from that that all other relationships form. So focus on you for a while. Focus on being so magnetic and amazing and in love with yourself that whoever comes to the door next, whoever you meet next, whether it's in two months, two years or 10 years, is just going to undeniably know that you know yourself,

• 55:22Jemma Sbeg?

  know that you deserve respect and know their feelings for you are true and that you're the one and that they love you. And I'm sure absolutely positively, like you can take me to the bank, that you will find somebody like that, even if you are in the pits of sadness and despair right now. So, thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that this guide has been helpful. There was so much more I wanted to say. I like had to deliberately like just not talk about so much other stuff. I really wanted to talk about like when, you know, when you know it's time to date again, what to do if somebody moves on first. But I feel like we might just have to do a part two of this episode because I spoke for way too long.

• 56:04Jemma Sbeg?

  But yeah, I'm sending you a lot of love with your little heart broken at the moment. Um, I'm sure you're taking very good care of it, but I hope that you're healing and I hope that you're mending. And I hope that this episode, you can take something from it and put it into practice. If you have made it this far, leave a few emojis down below that explain slash capture where you are at in the breakup right now. And whether you're in wave one, wave two or wave three, I want to know. I'm sending love to my wave one, my wave one people. I'm sure it's very, very brutal, but yeah, leave a little comment down below. The emojis that describe your current state of mind with your breakup, but also what wave you're in.

• 56:46Jemma Sbeg?

  Make sure to maybe share this with somebody else who you think might really need to hear it, your breakup buddy. And follow us as well on Instagram at that psychology podcast. If you want to share how you're going, share how this episode helped you, any suggestions, or if you want a part two to this episode as well. I always love to hear from you guys and make sure that you are following wherever you are listening, whether that is on Apple, on the iHeart Radio app, on Spotify, so that you know when we post new episodes. But with all that in mind, thank you again for listening. And until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself and we will talk very, very soon.

• 57:33Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favourite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 58:10Jemma Sbeg?

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• 58:55Jemma Sbeg?

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