How to Get Over The End of a Relationship | Antonio Pascual-Leone | TEDxUniversityofWindsor

my name is Antonio Pasquale Leone I'm a clinical psychologist and I do research on psychotherapy and especially on how emotion changes I'm gonna talk today about how to get over the end of a relationship if you've had an important relationship and you felt a bit stuck on how to move on maybe you have some lingering bad feelings all right some emotional baggage let's call it unfinished business right if that's going on this talk is for you okay so sometimes you know it could be grieving the death of a person close to you sometimes it's moving

on when there's been a betrayal or abuse it could be with a friend a co-worker a parent and of course romantic breakups basically cover the whole range right from pretty straightforward but painful to very complicated most people think that moving on is just a matter of time people come to therapy and they they ask me so how long is this gonna take how much time needs to passed I was speaking with a guy who was getting divorced for the second time and and he says to me so I say how are you doing and he

says well you know I I wish it was two years from now why because that's how long it took me last time to get over it and that idea is fairly common people think that the bad feeling will just sort of run its course but if you feel devastated and there's or there's being a betrayal then yeah not so much right it's not gonna be as simple as sleeping off a bad hangover right for some people this process is really frozen in time there's actually a lot of research on this now but it's an odd

thing to study because it's hard to know what to call this in an early treatment study led by les Greenberg at York University they actually just put up signs saying do you have emotional baggage related to a relationship right do you need help with your unfinished business and then they just sort of sat patiently by the phone wondering if anyone would call because because it's not even a diagnosis right it's just a metaphor well it turns out the phone started ringing off the hook so it's a very intuitive and common problem when we do research

like this we usually offer free therapy for people who agree to being studied and then you spend a lot of time looking at what people do that seems to predict getting better some people are skeptical at the research right often I get isn't it totally different for everyone and the answer is well no not not as different as you might think it turns out people who resolve these issues often go through three distinct steps and they actually unfold in an order although it's sort of a messy nonlinear two steps forward one step backward process I'm

saying there seems to be a universal pattern there is a map when people have unfinished business there are three things that must happen a sequence of steps and the thing is you can get stuck anywhere in that pipeline the good news the good news is we also know a bit about how to get people unstuck from each of those spots so the first step is something like this for example a businesswoman takes on a junior partner and she really invests a lot in mentoring her they work well together it's productive and then for some reason

the junior partner cuts out ditches the projects she wants to work more independently so it's a business scenario right but the point is that it was a close relationship and collaborative relationship that ended abruptly and if you've invested a lot personally it can feel a bit like getting dumped the business woman tells me about industry conventions things like that and she and she says I just cringe like what if she's there it'll be so awkward I don't know and when she says I don't know that's pretty important so the issue is we don't go there

we just avoid the issue it's like the person thinks they can wait it out as if there was a storm passing overhead but while you're avoiding the issue not too much can change so get in there keep breathing tolerate some exposure to the feelings until you start to feel okay with this new normal of course I mean the reason why we avoid the person or reminders is because it's upsetting there's usually a sense of very global distress right it's like I'm so upset and I don't know why it's so awful but but what's it what's

the worst part of it and the person usually doesn't know typically people have a lot of sadness and anger except it's all fused together like a big ugly ball of children's plasticine right except where all the colors are just mashed together huh anger anger makes you push your chest out right like this while sadness you kind of withdraw you pull back so when you're trying to do both at the same time that's what stuck looks like usually it comes out in a sort of whining complaint like right that sort of thing you need to take

some time to tease these apart find the right words and describe what's so awful or awkward or hard about it some people get much more stuck on blaming right they get angry and it's all about rejecting the other person it's like I'm disgusted I hate him for what he did to me she's so terrible and that's all about what you don't want it's not about what you do want it's it's just not that that's it's get away which actually could be a good start particularly when there's been abuse or when your boundaries have been violated

but you can't stay there forever you still have to move on to the next step and in since you haven't even arrived at the deeper issue yet so what to do slow down where where does it hurt maybe at the end of a romantic relationship it's the way she looked down her nose at me okay so what did that make you feel right someone who described the last time she ever saw her father tells me he threw a pack of cigarettes across the table at me and said there that's the last thing you'll ever get

from me Wow okay so what's the message being implied here yeah it hurts but what hurts is still implicit if you want to get past feeling upset empty lonely in these very general ways then you have to take the time to focus on your feelings the feelings that you have and figure out what hurts the most that takes us to the second step and it might you know this might not apply to everyone but for some people the end of a relationship leaves them a bit bent out of shape hmm and this second step you

get stuck because whatever happened jabbed you right in your soft spot right your Achilles heel the end of the relationship rocked you in some sort of way it stirred up some deeper older uglier feelings I remember I remember the first time I really had my heart broken I was young and I couldn't figure out why the relationship was ending and then she says like a mercy killing right you just you just aren't good at getting stuff done because I also already had my own insecurities about that in it stirred up those those self doubts I

felt like it was a bit true and so that left a mark for most people who get stuck they end up blaming themselves whatever happened was my fault maybe I deserved to be mistreated or neglected or as I was saying you start doubting yourself it's true I am incompetent unlovable uninteresting you pick your personal poison here a woman who discovered she was being cheated on tells me how she felt like a naive idiot she says she felt humiliated people get stuck in this particular way they're not avoiding they're not bewildered like in the first step

right you see it's that they get caught beating themselves up about something related to the relationship so how do you know if you're stuck in this place well you feel vulnerable and broken but it's also familiar in a way it's the same old story you've been here before the truth is some people will actually slide right through this they just they just aren't as vulnerable whereas for others especially when it's tied to history of abuse or neglect it feels like this is the story of their life this is where people get depressed anxious they lose

sleep what to do what to do so to work through this second step you really have to go through the eye of the storm right the way out is to get a sense of what you really need I mean an existential need they need to feel valuable to feel loveable obviously it's hard not to feel like a piece of garbage when somebody takes you out with a trash right but as you start to articulate whatever you most deeply need as a living being it actually creates it creates a contradiction in you it's sort of like

I need to feel cared for valuable I and yeah I can feel it in my bones right and yet here I am in a pile of trash on the curb it's a contradiction right right and that's where change starts to happen what do you most deeply need even if you don't feel entitled to it spell it out here's an important point it's not what you need from that specific person right it's it's not it's what you do need to flourish as a human so this is for you it's not about them it's not I need

him to apologize I need who to hurt her to admit what happened no no it's it's I need to feel like I matter I need that somebody has my back that I'm a priority useful worthy of course here's the problem life didn't turn out that way did it you got hurt you got mistreated maybe betrayed or or you just lost someone so the third step is where you actually go back to how the relationship ended maybe you were maybe you're pissed off and you hate him and you want to guess you want to burn all

his stuff okay but what are you fighting for I'm fighting for my dignity my value my sense of myself is someone who's fun funny lovable it goes back to the need so you often have to assert yourself in some way and that usually comes in a healthy anger a woman who survived a really predatory relationship an abusive relationship she says to me she says I got a lot of love to give and when I love I love hard so that's worth something even if he didn't notice it assertion but when it comes to feeling hurt

in relationships anger and sadness are often two sides of the same coin one sees this in romantic breakups all the time right you've been let down you're disappointed and you're angry but now that you've created some distance you kind of kind of miss the person - right and and then you flip-flop back and forth between assertive anger and grieving the loss both are true two sides of the same coin still it's important to experience each of these in their own right grieving a loss is a healthy process it's hard to move on and enjoy a

new horizon and life if if you haven't let go what's behind you and even if you're the one who ended the relationship right there's still a loss because when you started it you were hopeful nobody planned on the relationship ending when we work through grief we usually focus on the good things the things we enjoyed right we'll never get together again for a first swim for a barbecue no more Wednesday family dinners yeah you have to say goodbye to these things and actually put up little tombstones for them but one of the reasons people have

trouble finishing the grief process is because they're actually so many undeclared losses these are these are the hopes the dreams right that you had together when couples split up for example sometimes sometimes they imagine what it would be like to have children together right children that now will never be born and for the the business partnership that fell apart these are all the unfinished projects that will never materialize when I was doing therapy with a man an inmate in prison he knew his partner had already left him while he was serving time so he was

like well we'll never go on that holiday together the one we were saving up for the trip we kept all those brochures for so goodbye to that similarly when someone dies there usually are a lot of things left undone that that will never be finished what to do in the third step you just need to follow and express the healthy need this shoe to explore is what do you resent and then what do you miss remember if you don't know what you're fighting for the specifics then it's probably not adaptive and grief it's not just

about feeling sad it's about identifying specific losses so this third step is about using emotion to help organize you in a healthy way going back to how we started this is where maybe maybe it is a matter of time right healthy emotion has a vitality curve it it emerges and you feel it and you express it and then you're done right you say goodbye and life looks different now you have to finish the feeling going through that is the last step sometimes we're doing these things even without knowing it which is great that's the upside

right the downside is that we get stuck and we don't even know why we don't know where we're getting stuck but this is actually part of healthcare research and it's being studied there is a unique solution to each sticking point finally how does it all end right if you are depressed then treatment should make you not depressed but if your problem is unfinished business what does a good ending look like what counts as a good outcome there are three viable outcomes to this whole thing okay number one well either you forgive someone and you reconcile

basically you get back together number two you forgive them but you don't reconcile right you forgive them meaning you give up the grudge you had that's what forgiveness is but you decide not to reconcile it's like forgive but don't forget you let go and you move on and number three you don't forgive you don't reconcile but it's still a good outcome it's like holding the other person accountable right which often comes with the shift in power and seeing the other person in a very different light last thing last thing just like when you get a

bruise or a cut on your skin right even when you aren't stuck there is a minimum amount of time it takes to heal so time is part of it after all thank you and good luck with your unfinished business [Applause]