Befriending Heartbreak: The Counterintuitive Approach To Healing

hey guys I'm Heidi PRI welcome back to my Channel or welcome if you're new here this month on this channel we're talking about heartbreak and today specifically what I want to talk about is how to heal heartbreak more efficiently and when I say heal it this is a really important word to pay attention to because I think that a lot of us mix up the process of moving on from heartbreak with the process of healing it so we kind of consider ourselves done with our heartbreak as soon as we no longer feel the pain of

it but a lot of the time what that means is that we rush really quickly into whatever is going to distract us rather than what is going to help us actually integrate it and move on as whole people when we do not integrate our heartbreaks what we do instead is compartmentalize so we shove into some little room inside of us every that reminds us of the person or the thing that we have lost and we find a way to go on as fragmented versions of ourselves and then down the line we might find ourselves repeating

the exact same patterns the exact same relationship mistakes that led to pain in the past so we might actually be perpetuating the pain that we're feeling on a much longer time scale then we would if we were to stay present with it when it comes up in our lives and actually get to know it so today we're going to talk about what that looks like what does it look like to really integrate and move on from a heartbreak with our whole selves rather than simply getting some distance from it but not ever actually healing the

wound I think that I could actually say in complete honesty that for the first three decades of my life I never got over anything that happened to me I just found increasingly creative ways to either distract myself from or devalue the experiences I'd gone through and the people and things I'd loved that I'd lost and then I would just go back into those same patterns over and over and over again and what's interesting is that at this point in my life I can still say that I have never gotten over anything or anyone that I

have deeply loved but that phrase has a new meaning now now what that means is I've found a way to really integrate and keep with me the incredibly valuable parts of everything and everyone that I have loved and Been Loved by so all of those people and those things still exist inside of me but I don't have to avoid thinking about them or feeling the impact in order to feel whole and okay as a person in fact those experiences of loss now enrich my ability to stay present with myself and other people as I go

through through my life but it definitely takes some work to get there so the idea of befriending different emotional states is a Buddhist concept the first time I kind of came across this terminology was at an event I went to where one of the speakers who's now a good friend of mine and a monk were talking about shame and at the end of this conversation that they had about shame where there was about 10 to 15 of us listening in one of the people in the audience addressed both of the speakers and said I want

to thank you both for befriending your shame which brought you to this place where you could share all of these lessons about it to the rest of us and I remember thinking that it's such a funny saying right befriending shame at a first glance that's something that nobody would want to do but he was right these two individuals befriending their shame had brought them to a place where they could share a lot of lessons with the rest of us about how to navigate through it and when we know how to navigate through any particularly painful

destabilizing emotion it helps us live the rest of our lives in a more balanced and Discerning way and the same is true of befriending something like heartbreak when we really get to know the inside outs of what breaks our heart it reveals an incredible amount to us about what matters to us in life and how we can intentionally design our lives so that we are having a more more meaningful experience of it so we're going to talk about what that literally means when we talk about befriending an emotional state I want to challenge us to

think of this as befriending a literal person so if you made a new friend and you wanted to get to know them better what might you do the first thing you would probably do is get curious about them and spend time getting to know them observing their patterns observing what it is that they like to pay attention to and this is the exact same process that we can take with something like a heartbreak we don't have to fix it right away we don't have to run away from it we can simply stay with it and

start noticing its patterns when is heartbreak most active what does it want to draw our attention to what are the little nuances of this emotional experience that we're going through can we be curious about it and get to know it as much as possible can we carve out time intentionally to be with it and to listen to what it is telling us the next thing that we would do if we were making friends with a real person is we would start to set boundaries with that person we would start to notice when do they really

want to hang out that's kind of inconvenient for me and how can I let them know hey I will pay attention to you and I will spend time with you but I can't do it during these hours how about about we make a date for this night instead we make sure that the friend knows we want to spend time with them but we can't just spend time with them whenever so just like we would negotiate our boundaries with another person we can also negotiate our boundaries with our own emotional state this means not dismissing it

but being an adult about when we can and cannot attend to it and the third thing that we would do if we were developing a really close and emotionally intimate friendship with someone is we would make the choice to let them affect us and this is something that depending on what type of patterning you have in the attachment realm you might actually not do all that much with friends or Partners or emotional states maybe your coping strategy in the face of loss is finding a way to make it not matter and when we make things

not matter when we dismiss them from our awareness when we tell ourselves this is not something it's worth paying attention to what happens is that we miss out on the lessons that thing is there to teach us negative feelings do not exist within us for no reason they exist within us because they're trying to draw our attention to an area where we need to practice extra discernment so this idea of being intentional about letting people or things matter to us might be something new that you need to practice or you might be on the opposite

end of the spectrum maybe you give your emotions so much attention and so much importance that it's never occurred to you that you could set a boundary with them or that you could be a little bit more in control of the relationship so just notice whichever one of these feels like the one you're more resistant to might be where you want to naturally Focus your attention really letting something or someone matter to us means practicing humility in the face of it so accepting that this person or this emotion or this state of heartbreak of loss

of grief has something meaningful that I can learn from okay now let's talk about the why behind this so when we actually stay on the same page with heartbreak what is the point of this friendship that we're developing what is it that we're trying to get out of this and I think the most important thing to focus on is that integration piece so when we move past loss or grief or relationships without paying attention to what it was that was so valuable to us about that relationship we end up in this Perpetual space of unconsciously

trying to get the exact same thing back but if we were to slow down and take this opportunity to make the unconscious aspects of whatever we have lost conscious to us then we we get to pick and choose what we want to integrate and bring forward with us and what we want to turn into a lesson that helps us increase our discernment so if we find ourselves in this state of grief where we are just clinging to something that is now left us what we want to do is sit down and get really clear on

what it is that we have lost what is it about ourselves that we were so used to experiencing through this other person that we now are deathly afraid we're going to lose connection with inside of ourselves so when I was with this person if it's a romantic relationship that you've lost what was online for me what was I feeling what was I experiencing what was it about this connection that was unique who was I before meeting this person before falling in love with this person and then who was I inside of the relationship how did

I allow them to affect me and to change the way that I showed up so this is the practice of going directly towards the main pain points and figuring out this is the thing I'm going to miss the most because I feel like I can't access that thing without this person and we're going to pick out as many of those things as we possibly can and just become incredibly aware of the value that that person or that experience brought to our lives if we allow it to this can teach us something very profound about what

we are unconsciously valuing in life often the things that we consciously value in life so I want this and I know that I want it we just go out and try to get directly the things that we unconsciously value in life are the things that we go out and get indirectly so it's the type of people that we're drawn to over and over again despite feeling like ah something about this just isn't right for me right I keep dating people who are like this or I keep ending up in dynamics that are like this very

often that's because we have unconscious values or unconscious parts of ourselves that want expression that we find unbearable to accept that we want and to go for directly so instead we find ourselves continuously in relationship with people who Express those values enough for the both of us so that we do not have to bear having them made conscious in ourselves and as Carl Young says until we make the unconscious conscious it will direct our lives and we will call it fate if we allow it to heartbreak can be an incredible opportunity to make the unconscious

conscious for ourselves and in this way the friendship that we make with heartbreak can be incredibly beneficial but we have to be willing to look directly at and in some cases go out searching for the pain that heartbreak is bringing into our lives to understand what it is that we are missing so profoundly so I remember one of the most challenging weeks of my life was the week that I finished my dissertation for my Master's Degree because a couple of months prior to that a long-term romantic relationship that I'd been in had come to an

end and I remember just trying to put everything as out of my awareness as humanly possible in order to really focus on my work and get my degree finished but in the last seven days before I had to hand in my dissertation I was just in this total crunch period I was sleeping at weird times I was eating Doritos for breakfast nothing about my life was regular or in any way regulating so I was finding myself feeling quite overwhelmed emotionally and one night I fell asleep at my desk around 2 or 3 a.m. and I

had this incredibly Viv dream that my ex partner was sitting beside me offering incredibly kind words of encouragement letting me know that I would finish this I would do a good job at it and it was okay to give myself some patience and some softness in the process and I remember waking up and feeling in my body State all of the warmth and all of the care and affection that I used to feel around that person and I realized really viscerally how absent those feelings of warmth and support had been inside of me since I

had been with that person because I had a story at that point that to do a good job at anything you had to cut yourself off from any sort of feeling State and you had to just go Full Speed Ahead ignore your emotions until it was done and then once you had accomplished whatever it was that you were trying to get done maybe you could reward yourself with a little bit of rest and relaxation but I took that moment to really become aware of the fact that my unconscious mind needed that feeling of care and

support so badly that it had pretty much hallucinated it it was one of the most vivid dreams I'd ever had in my life but I was so unable to give those feelings to myself that my brain had to conjure up in image of the last person who had consistently G it to me in order to give me that experience and in that moment I realized this is something I really need to start baking into my life giving myself this type of compassion and support even when a goal needs to get accomplished or something really hard

needs to get done is actually pretty necessary because right now I feel a lot more resourced than I did an hour ago because of this feeling that I've brought into my body and if if I can learn to integrate the love and the patience and the care that that person used to bring to my life and allow myself to be present with that energy in myself and not need the memory of them to access it now I can go forward as a more whole version of myself and in that way I will forever be carrying

forward the energy of the first person who I really allowed in with that energy right that partner will live on inside of me forever because this room inside of me that they unlocked I didn't lock back up after they left I kept it open and I allowed myself to keep going into it whenever I needed to and now it's just a place where I'm able to meet other people as well so maybe for you you let yourself feel valued and cared for by a partner in a way that you struggle to value and care for

yourself maybe you felt confident and adventurous with someone else in a way that you don't feel on your own so what this is is the process of taking all the things that we got from our relationships that were positive and growing and finding ways to keep that energy going without them to internalize that this is a way we like to be in the world but we were only allowing ourselves to be that way through permission from this other person but we don't need that permission anymore we can be intentional about keeping keeping all of that

alive and allowing ourselves to keep growing in the directions that we were growing with that person without needing them specifically in our lives to do it so what we're doing here is refusing to pull that old dismissive line of this relationship didn't matter being loved by anyone for any period of time matters immensely if we are actually letting it in it B definition is changing us and the way that we are showing up in the world and even just acknowledging that acknowledging that it has changed us and there are ways in which we would like

to stay changed is a huge step towards that integration process that keeps us feeling whole now the next thing we want to pay attention to is how the Heartbreak itself is changing us so just like there is an us before the relationship and in US during the relationship and those two people were very different and showed up in very different ways there's also going to be an us before the Heartbreak and an US during the Heartbreak and this is an idea that came from a really wonderful book that I read on befriending Heartbreak by a

woman named Susan pyer that book is called the wisdom of a broken heart I will link it in the description of this video and in this book she talks at length about the value of heartbreak itself and the idea that if we stay present with it and on the same page as it the process of moving through grief and heartbreak is going to fundamentally change us it might change what our values are it might change the way we think of the world it might change the way that we show up for ourselves and other people

so this idea that there is huge value not just in the relationship that we now need to internalize but in the process of heartbreak itself is something that I find very interesting it's also kind of the opposite of how heartbreak gets framed in the media for example so when we think of heartbreak most of us think of this just terrible wretched state that we need to find a way to get out of as quickly as possible very few of us think of it as a kind of gift or an opportunity to get deeply in touch

with ourselves but there's a quote from this book that I'm going to read that I just think beautifully encapsulates the opport opportunity that can be present inside of heartbreak so in a chapter that is eloquently titled yes you have lost your mind but it's okay Susan pyer writes volatility is an active state of change for instance when heated water becomes volatile and turns to Vapor in its volatile state it more easily combines with other substances it's able to change like it or not you have been entered into a state of sacred volatility whatever you thought

you possessed love security a picture of the future a sense of being lovable is shaken loose from its appearance rendered momentarily formless through the fire of heartbreak now depending on your approach you can attempt to squelch this process and retain possession of whatever old beliefs you have left or through the grace of your attention and acceptance you can open the door wide let some air in and watch the Flames grow let them burn until they burn out by doing this you will make room for something new to arise out of the ashes what I love

so much about this passage is the idea of heartbreak as a state of sacred volatility so how I kind of interpret that is if we think of heartbreak as the process of losing something that we have become attached to when we are attached to Something in kind of the Buddhist sense of the term we are imagining this illusion of continuity and this is a very important and vital part of being alive despite the fact that all of us know that everything in the world is in constant motion and nothing is ever guaranteed to stay in

our lives forever most of us spend our lives unconsciously entertaining the illusion that many things are going to last forever so even if we kind of know in the back of our minds someday everything and everyone I love will be lost we don't go around thinking about that because it would just be very distressing for the ego but when we do lose something that's important to us what we're being returned to temporarily is an awareness of the authentic and true state of things which is that nothing in our life is permanent and that nothing is

going to last forever in the face of that reality we can either Panic or we can see it as a spiritual opportunity to really stop and look at our lives and examine how are we unconsciously designing our lives and how might we want to consciously design them better now that we are in this state involuntarily where we are recognizing that everything is constantly in transit we can have momentary Clarity Clarity that the normal rhythms of life will eventually come along and naturally sweep us away from about what it is that matters to us and what

we want to make matter going forward because when we make that unconscious stuff conscious then what we get to do is find creative ways to consciously fulfill those needs the way that we would choose to fulfill them so through examining what parts of ourselves had come to life through this relationship or this situation that we've now lost what does that tell us about the way we want to live our lives going forward what does it tell us about how we want to love other people or give back to the world or what is it telling

us about our dark side and our own shadow what things have we repressed that we are now unconsciously going around trying continuously to get fulfilled through other people and how can we come face to face with those things and be intentional about how we want to bake them into our experience of life in the future in a way that is deliberate and that aligns with the meaning we want our lives to have when we approach heartbreak from a state of deep humility so again from the perspective of this matters and has something to teach me

we end up learning not just from the relationship but also from the experience of staying online for the integration process and then instead of becoming less whole through the process of losing a person or a thing that we have loved we become more whole we end up learning about our values we end up facing our shadows and I will link in the description of this video a series that I've done on Shadow work I believe that heartbreak is one of the most fruitful opportunities for us to take on that work we learn things about what

we are unconsciously valuing that can now be brought to the surface and integrated in a more conscious way and we become Kinder and deeper people when we are willing to meet ourselves in these spaces we become people who are now comfortable sitting with the pain and the grief and the loss of others without needing to rush to fix it or to make it better right away and that ability to stay present with people is what ends up helping us Foster really deep intimate Connections in the future when we don't need to either savior other people

or be savored from our own pain heartbreak is kind of like the universe coming up to you and handing you a very heavy barbell and going you can learn to spiritually lift this weight right now if you want to and if you take that opportunity to train yourself into the type of person who can lift that weight and who can stay present with these experiences of loss and grief you become an incredibly strong person in your day-to-day life going forward because you no longer have to run from Tiny moments of pain and grief and loss

and uncertainty that are absolutely inherent to being alive so grief can be a spiritual weight training session that you walk away from having gained an incredible amount of spiritual grit spiritual grit is not the denial of pain it is the ability to be with it and where this inevitably leads us is out the other side of this grief period where there is a new way in which we are whole so we no longer need this other person or this situation that we lost to feel whole we've allowed that person or that experience to change us

in a deep way that we carry forward with us we've spent time into grading and consciously allowing ourselves to be changed both by the person and the experience of losing them and now the person we get to take time getting to know is the new version of ourselves we get to ask ourselves what does wholeness look like for me now in what ways am I now better at loving both myself and other people what are the new strengths that I have what are the new opportunities that I'm excited to go pursue what do I now

know about my own needs and my own values that I didn't know before and how can I now show up for myself in a better way because I'm aware of those things where can I now meet other people in a really deep and intimate way that I previously could not meet them and how does that impact my ability to get close with and stay close with other people without getting overwhelmed by either their pain and suffering or my own so my kind of conceptualization of what it means to heal from a heartbreak is not when

you don't think about it anymore or not when your life looks so radically different that nothing reminds you of it it's when you no longer need to avoid any part of your conscious experience related to that person or that heartbreak in order to feel whole you can look back on the relationship and make sense of it and understand what it's possible for you to take from it and how even the breakup or the loss itself contributed to your wholeness as a person so you're not out in the world living as this fragmented version of yourself

that is running away from certain internal experiences you are able to stay on the page with all of it that's what it means to heal something rather than just move on from it all right I think that's all I have to say for today on this topic as always let me know in the comments what you guys are thinking or feeling or any questions that you have I love you guys I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other and I will see you back here again really [Music] soon