How can play be the secret to healing? I explore why self attack is a common way to help control a challenging situation after a breakup and how you can use the opposite approach to actually see results faster.
Plus I have a special invite for you to join me in The Dare Game happening April 16-22! It's a free way to play and heal at the same time! Sign up here: www.sarahcurnoles.com/dare
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Have you gone through a breakup and you're tired of feeling low, lonely or lost? I've got a pep talk through you. I'm Sarah Curnoles, your breakup bestie. I'm a certified life coach with years of coaching experience, helping people just like you turn your breakup into the best thing that ever happened to them. Each week, tune in to get a pep talk to heal your heart, let go of the past, reclaim your power and get back into your main character energy. Your breakup may have shattered your world as you know it, but together let's build a new better world. Let's go.
(00:44)
Hello, my friends. We are going to jump right into it because I am so excited for what I have to share. Today, I don't want to waste a single second. So there are two ways people try to heal from a breakup. One, sitting around, waiting and hoping for it to get better. Two, actively stepping back into life. One of those is going to keep you stuck. One is going to bring you back to life. Look, I have heard it all, but what I have seen consistently is that when you're trying to be good, when you're trying to get everything right, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to work. And what I'm going to talk to you about today is how play and being a little bit of rebellious can actually accelerate your healing. And I have a really special invitation for you for a game you can play that I have coming up that is going to help you to heal.
(01:51)
So when I asked in the title of this episode, "Are you living on a prayer or are you living on a dare?" I want to talk about what those two things might look like. Living on a prayer, to me, what that means is you are just wishing and hoping for it to be over. You're hoping that your life gets back to normal and you're just really kind of thrown it out there like, "I can't wait until this happens. I don't know what it's going to be, but I can't wait. Maybe it'll come together eventually." This is like waiting to feel better before you do anything. Or maybe it's subconsciously thinking you'd kind of like to get your ex back because then you could finally just feel normal again after all this time of anxiety and crying and feeling like I'm never going to heal and I'm never going to get better.
(02:49)
It would just be so much nicer if my ex would come back, even if you feel a little bit ashamed to admit that. Or maybe you are overthinking everything. You're analyzing every text, trying to dissect what was real. Was that person lying? What went wrong? Are those memories even real? What can I trust? Or maybe you're just consuming a lot of YouTube videos and you're watching a lot of breakup talk, but you're never really changing anything. You're not seeing things shift. Maybe you do a little bit of journaling and that helps, but it's not changing anything majorly in what you're experiencing in your life. Or maybe you're being really hard on yourself. And this is your way of trying to feel like you're back in control of your life. If you can be really hard and you commit to, I'm going to work out really hard or I'm going to not drink alcohol or smoke weed through this or I'm not going to get back on the apps right away.
(03:57)
I'm going to really restrict my behavior and I'm going to follow the rules in order to get back in line. And this is how I'm going to feel better. Look, essentially at the heart of a lot of this is self-attack. That feeling that I'm not right, I'm not doing it right. I can't get it right. I don't know what I'm doing. Somebody else has a better solution than I do and I don't feel like I'm in control of my own life. So I'm trying to either wait until a time where I feel better or I'm trying to outsource it and thinking if my ex comes back, I'll feel better. Or trying to ultimately control every little minute of your life so then you feel like you're in control of your life. I get it. This is essentially, this self-attack can feel productive. It can feel like you're moving forward because it's giving you this illusion of control.
(04:59)
It has this feeling of like, once I understand it, then I'm going to feel better and then I'm going to move on. What it's really doing is draining your energy because ultimately what self-attack is also doing is it's often denying what's true because what's true is you are heartbroken. You're in pain. You don't want to be in pain, so you're trying to do anything you can to get out of it, and I get that. But you're trying to get out of it by resisting it, by pushing against it. And if you think about it, think about anything that you push against. Think about ... You could walk up to the wall and push against it. That's going to be a lot of energy that you're draining that isn't accomplishing a whole lot. Anytime you resist something, I want you to think about pushing up against a wall.
(06:03)
You are draining your energy and you're really not accomplishing very much because ... And this is a law of physics.
(06:15)
You are going to be met with an equal push on the opposite side. So if you are pushing something, if you're pushing against something, even if you are pushing against your feelings, you'll be met with an equal and opposite reaction. So it's going to like push harder back. And when you resist in emotion, like if you're trying to push away the pain of heartbreak, that heartbreak doesn't go away. It gets bigger because it is pushing back to the degree that you are pushing it. So not only are you burning a lot of energy, pushing against it, trying to resist it, trying to control it, trying to make it do what you want it to do, or trying to pretend it's not there, you're burning up energy and you're also making it a bigger reaction. So if we're not going to push against it, what do we do instead?
(07:17)
If we don't want to burn up all this energy, if we don't want to keep putting ourself in more and more and more pain over and over and over again, what's the other option here? There's got to be something, right?
(07:31)
Yes, there is. And that's where the idea of play comes in. So if we don't want to keep pushing against something, if we want to change what the energy flow is, you actually have the option to stop pushing. You have the option to step back from that wall and kind of look at it and be like, "Huh, what are my other options here?" And it makes me think of, there was like a childhood song of like, can't go over it, got to go under it, can't go through it, got to go around it. Right? Do you remember this game? And I think it was teaching us, I can't remember what that is in language, but it was directionally. It was over or up or under or down or through, around, right? It was teaching these words through a silly song. You can't see your other options though if all your energy is going of like, "I have to go through it and I have to push against it.
(08:36)
I have to go this way." You can't see what your pivot options are.
(08:44)
In order to see what your other options are, we're going to need some energy. We're going to need some creativity and where are we going to get energy and creativity? If we introduce an element of play. Now, play isn't resistance. It's not avoiding. We're not using play to avoid the problem or to pretend it's not there. We're using it as a method of regulation. So when we approach a problem with a sense of play, you automatically are going to feel safe and your nervous system's going to feel regulated because anything that you can approach with a sense of playfulness can't be a threat to your life, so your body is going to naturally relax. You're also going to develop a sense of curiosity and openness. And so what this might look like is a sense of like, who, what else is there? Like what other options are there?
(09:48)
Okay, let's see. Could I be creative here? Might there be something I didn't see before? And instead of trying to waste energy, pretending it's not a problem or trying to burn up that energy by pushing against it, if we engage in a sense of play, it engages new ways of thinking so that we can find new solutions. Einstein said, "You can't solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it. " So everything up to this point in your life has gotten you right here right now. All of the choices, all the kinds of thinking, all of those patterns. If you want to go somewhere new, and I truly do believe the other side of your breakup is something new. It is unchartered waters. There are so many opportunities there. There's the opportunity for so much rebirth and transformation in your life. If you want that of what's available to you on the other side, you can't keep thinking the same way you've always been thinking.
(10:52)
You have to be thinking in a new way. And how do we create new ways of thinking? Play. Creativity. And this comes down to healing doesn't just come from going deep or really like going through all that pain. Yes, sometimes that is necessary. That is part of the process. It's not the only way. Healing truly happens when you come back to life.
(11:22)
Once you start feeling alive again, you're not going to care how you got there. You're going to be like, "Thank God, I feel awesome again." So there's actually a little bit of science behind why play and fun and laughter is considered medicine. Laughter lowers cortisol, which is the stress hormone, which is great. We don't want to feel stressed. We've had enough of that. We're done with it. Laughter increases dopamine and endorphins, which are the motivation and the pleasure hormones, which is great because we have a huge drop in those hormones after a breakup because a big source of dopamine and endorphins came from a relationship with our now X. And once that has gone, there is a drop in dopamine and endorphins and how great would it feel to have a surge of those things come back? Laughter actually boosts your immune function. If you've gotten sick, if you've gotten a cold while you've been going through your breakup, it's because stress lowers your immunity, but laughter boosts it.
(12:29)
And there's also a really great bonding thing that happens. When you laugh and you play, especially in a social context, it increases feelings of bonding and it reduces feelings of isolation, all things which are necessary after a breakup. When you laugh, your body literally gets the message, "We are safe again." We're going to be okay. Your breakup might have disregulated you, but play is going to help you to regulate faster. So we started with living on a prayer. So what does it mean to live on a dare? I want you to start saying the thing that you've been holding back. I want you to try something new without knowing the outcome, and I want you to be doing it with this sense of play. And when I say do something without knowing the outcome, that's literally what play is. It's engaging in something without concern for the outcome.
(13:28)
There's no attachment to a result. When you play, maybe you're playing kickball and you want to win, but it's not like you're trying to make money from playing kickball. You're not like, "I better get paid for this. " Or, "If I don't win, I'm going to die." We're not on speed here. We're not on the movie speed of like we have to drive at a certain miles per hour in order to live. No, you're playing. You're just playing to have fun. Okay? This is letting you be seen again. This is choosing being present in the moment rather than overthinking and ruminating. So why I'm using a dare as a contrast to living on a prayer is a dare is going to interrupt the patterns of the way that you've been living and it's going to infuse a new sense of play in your life. Okay?
(14:22)
So living on a prayer is waiting and hoping and pausing your life and feeling like you got to control everything because everything feels out of control. Living on a dare is living in the moment. It's engaging. It's fun. It's playful. It's experimenting. All right? We're holding things with openness and curiosity. So I just want to tell you a little story of how I came to this quite accidentally. It was a couple months after my breakup and I'd seen a lot of progress and friends had invited me out to see some live music and go do some karaoke. And it happened to be in my old neighborhood where I was living when I started dating my ex. And I will be honest, I drank a little bit too much because I was a bit worried I was going to run into him. But that happens. That's life.
(15:14)
It's okay. I was out with friends and we decided to end the night with some karaoke. And so of course, I let it rip with the breakup anthem, You ought to know by Alanis Morrisett and I let myself really get emotional and like feel it and let it all out. It's karaoke and I was a little tipsy, like you got to be sometimes when you do karaoke and I just let it out. And we were just hanging out and talking and my friend said something and I can't even tell you what it was now because I don't remember. I just remember laughing so hard I couldn't stop snorting. Like that's the kind of laughter it was. And it felt so good to be laughing again. I'd been taking my life so seriously for the past several months up to that point of trying to be good at healing and trying to do the right thing and holding it all together for my job and really trying to keep projects moving at work while I wasn't focused and I was still struggling and moving on and healing and I was making a very serious business.
(16:26)
And I just remember laughing so hard and thinking, "Why didn't I do this sooner?" And so I start introducing it pretty soon when I'm working with clients. I try to bring as much play as possible into the process so that we don't hold it so seriously and so tightly. I try to make it playful. And what ends up happening is those moments of laughter become key moments that they remember in their healing where they start feeling like there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm rounding the corner and I don't have to be stuck in self-criticism anymore. So this isn't necessarily, I'm not going to tell you to go out and sing karaoke if that's not your thing. If it is your thing, awesome. It's a great dare. But what I am going to do is I am hosting an internet wide truth or dare game because I don't want you to just be listening to my podcast and thinking, "Oh yeah, that sounds fun.
(17:28)
Maybe I'll try karaoke. What a good idea or I'll try to play a little bit more." No, I want you engaged. I want you playing in your life and what better way to do that than if I host the game and I include some prizes that are going to be a lot of fun, okay? This isn't about blowing up your life. These aren't going to be the kinds of dares that you did in slumber parties when you were a kid, like I'm not making you prank call your ex and I'm not going to have you like streak around the neighborhood naked or were those just my friends. I don't know.
(18:02)
We're not doing those kinds of dares unless that's your thing and then all the more power to you. We are going to be doing dares that get you out of your head. I am going to help you bring fun back to your life again, get you laughing, get back in touch, not just with who you were before the breakup or the things that you enjoyed, but who were you before the world told you who you had to be? Who were you before you started twisting yourself into being the most relationship worthy version of you? So this is your invitation. I made this just for you. So you could start playing a little bit. You could be in community. We are going to start this on April 16th. Let me make sure I'm saying the date right. Did I say it right? Yes. April 16th through the 22nd.
(18:53)
So if you're listening to this when this episode drops, you can sign up right now on my website, sarahkernoles.com/dare. And this is going to be a dare a day for seven days, you're going to get a daily dare in your email in the morning with an assignment of what you have to do and then to enter to win the prizes. You can either submit them privately if you don't want to put it out publicly. That's okay. I'm that person sometimes. I don't always want it out on blast for everybody to see. I understand. I'm going to give you a link that you can submit it privately. Or if you really want an extra rush, you're going to put it up on Instagram with a photo of you doing the dare or having completed the dare and you're going to tag me at Sarah Curnoles so that I can track it and get you entered to win some really fabulous prizes.
(19:47)
Everything from a coffee date for you or tickets to a virtual summit that I'm going to be participating in to a really big prize to get you in to something really special. I've coming up that I'm going to be announcing in a couple of days. So I can't wait for you to be there. This is not going to be embarrassing. Stunts. This is going to be about fun, confidence, and healing. All right? So are you in? Do you want to play? I hope you will play. This is structured play for your healing because you can keep living on a prayer or you can start living on a dare. You don't need more time to get over your ex. You need a different kind of energy. All right? Want to play? I hope you'll come join me. So the website's www.sarahcurnoles.com/dare. Sign up by April 16th, and you will be joining me for the game of a lifetime.
(20:51)
All right, my friends, I can't wait to see you there and I will talk to you soon.