If you feel like you’ve lost your identity along with your relationship, this episode is your roadmap for stepping out of the wings and back into the spotlight of your own life. Sarah Curnoles breaks down the "Supporting Character Trap"—where we over-invest in others at our own expense—and shares how to pivot from passive sympathy for an ex to active investment in yourself. Using the "New Choice" improv tool and a three-step identity audit, you’ll learn that you aren’t starting over from square one; you are rewriting your origin story with more power than ever before.
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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. Welcome to another episode of Breakup Pep Talks. This is Sarah Curnoles and I have been thinking about the shift into main character energy a lot lately. A client shared with me that she had been hesitant to call her ex- husband, her ex- husband. And they've been apart for three years and she was really scared to call him that because then it was real. It was final. It was really letting go. And now that we've been working together for some time, she's not only comfortable calling him her ex, but now they actually have a very amicable relationship where they co-parent. But she also sees hope for herself for the first time in a long time. She feels hopeful about what's possible for her in her life, and she is more excited about what is coming for her. She's like at the beginning of this whole new other level for her journey where a lot of doors are opening and new opportunities are coming her way in her professional life.
(02:00)
And it was completely unexpected. And she's so grateful that she has this foundation in the work that she and I had been doing together so that she could really put herself back at the middle of her story again. She got to be the main character, not the supporting character in somebody else's life. And I think that was so relatable because I know a lot of people that do that. I used to do that without even realizing it. I cast myself as the supporting character in my ex's life. I was the one that was doing all the things. I figured it all out. I was the one that found the couple's therapist and researched all the options and organized all the meetings. And I was the one that always made sure that the house was taken care of the way it needed to be, or that the meals were made, or that everything was ... That our social life was organized and that plans were being made, that there was a shared Google calendar.
(03:08)
All of that landed on my shoulders and doing the emotional work that ended up really me walking on eggshells of not wanting to bring up anything difficult or not have challenging conversations because I was afraid of how he was going to react. That was me playing a supporting character in his story. That's not what it looks like when you're the main character of your own life. And I really do believe that two people can be the main character of their own life without sliding into that supporting character role. You aren't the supporting character in your own life, you are the main character. And two people can come together and be that for their own life and support each other in their stories. So if you've been feeling lost or untethered or unsure of who you are now that you are no longer in a relationship, or if you've been scared to move on because you don't know what's ahead of you, this episode is for you.
(04:05)
The hardest part of a breakup, it isn't losing the other person.
(04:13)
It's losing you and who you were in the relationship. So if you have any fear about starting over or I'm back at square one and I don't want to date again, like all of that, right? I don't want you to think about it as I'm starting over because all of your life experience comes with you as the new foundation that you get to stand on. You're not starting over. You are rewriting. Okay? And we are going to rewrite your story together because the way that you tell your story matters. It impacts how you see your life and how you feel. And when you change the way that you're feeling about something, when you change the way that you see something, it opens up new opportunities for you to move forward. All right. So I want to start with where this might have gone a little awry for you.
(05:12)
It could have gone astray. That's the word I was looking for. Where it could have gone astray.
(05:19)
Something that's really common in relationship is that we overinvest in the other person and we start to over compromise. How many times have you heard of the story of the person who they're in a relationship, they want to get married, the other person has been very clear of like, "I don't ever really want to get married. I've been married before. I don't want to do it again." And so the one of them is compromising what they want and just giving up on it and doing what the other person wants. Hoping that that will make them happy, hoping that will make the relationship secure. And in the long run, how often do those relationships end up falling apart because somebody overcompromised on who they are and what they stand for. We lose ourself when we start making all these compromises.
(06:16)
We develop these roles and it's not necessarily wrong. It's what we do in a relationship of, I'm the person who, right? We do that in our relationships. This is so funny. As I'm talking, the puppy I'm watching has hopped into my lap. So you might hear him from time to time. Just think of him as your emotional support animal who's here in my recording session who wants to be here for you. And that's him making his little floppy noises. So think about the ways that you have maybe over compromised in who you really are, the things that you've given up. Did you stop going to certain activities that you enjoyed in order to make time and space for the other person? Did you stop hanging out with certain friends?
(07:11)
The most extreme example I've heard is like, were you vegetarian and you stopped being a vegetarian or the other way around, you were a meat eater and you became a vegetarian for your partner, right? When it wasn't really in your heart to do that, but you did it for the other person. Our relationships can identify so much in who we are and how we're behaving in the world in good and bad ways. Sometimes we pick up something new and we're like, "Wow, I really like this. " My boyfriend took me to a lot of baseball games and tapped into something that I'm really interested in and that I really enjoy doing now. And I understand the game on a strategic level, not just like an observer level. And so I have a deeper appreciation for it because he took me to so many baseball games.
(07:59)
That is a way that I've evolved for the better, but the roles that maybe weren't serving me so much were the ones where I had to do all the emotional labor, where I had to give up my dreams because he was uncomfortable with them. What are the roles, habits, and emotional patterns that maybe you found yourself in, in that relationship where you were over giving, where you overextended yourself, where you took on responsibilities for stuff that's not yours, or you gave up parts of yourself that maybe you're missing a little bit.
(08:34)
And here's what's so sneaky about this. When we lose the relationship, even the roles and the habits and those emotional patterns we had that we don't even like, maybe you're looking at them now and you're like, "Wow, that was really toxic." It's actually still a loss of identity, even if it's a part of you that you were like, "I'm glad that's going. " You're still losing something that you identified with, and that is still a loss and it can feel disorienting because it was defining for you for a while. And now you have the question of what am I defined by? All right, so here's where it's possible to fall into that supporting character trap, where you spend all your time after the breakup centering the other person. If only I could understand why they left, if only we could have one more conversation so that I could get closure and really thinking about why did he do that?
(09:36)
Why did that person make that choice?
(09:40)
If I could just understand it, that's the thing I hear the most. And what that is, is really putting them at the center of your story. If you find yourself making excuses for them, if you find yourself trying to understand them, if you find yourself having sympathy for them, I hear that one a lot too of like, "I'm just so sad for them. They're going to have such a hard time making friends. I was their whole social life." If you have any of that, who does that center? It's centering the other person, not you. You are not responsible for their wellbeing anymore. You are not responsible for their feelings. You don't even have to give them your sympathy anymore. All of that is energy that you're putting towards somebody else being talked about and thought about more often in your own mind and your own story than you.
(10:44)
And this is what I'm here to challenge. I want to challenge what would it be like instead of thinking of that other person to take all of that time and all of that energy that's going towards thinking about them. What if you put that towards yourself? Anytime you find yourself thinking about, I wonder what they're doing or who they're with, that's an opportunity for you to go, "Oh, I caught myself. I see it. I'm putting them at the center of my story. All right, I'm going to choose again. I'm going to make a new choice." I used to do improv and there was a game that we played that was called New Choice where two people would be in the circle and everybody else was on the outside watching and the two people in the middle were playing a scene that they were totally making up as they went along and anybody on the outside of the circle could at any moment call out new choice and the person who last spoke had to change the last thing they said.
(11:50)
So if the last thing I said was, "I'm going to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich," and somebody on the outside said, "New choice." I'd have to change that. I could say, "I'm going to make a tuna fish sandwich." And they could keep going, new choice, new choice, new choice. And the funny thing is, is the more new choices you make, the funnier it would get. And that's how you learned how to figure out the funny things was you practice in these situations. So it might, because the dogs in my lap and it's on my mind of like, "I'm going to make a puppy sandwich." That's just ridiculous. And it's going to take the scene, the partner that you're with is going to have a reaction to a puppy sandwich. It's going to be very different than if I just said I'm making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right?
(12:34)
It's going to take it somewhere sillier and unexpected and more fun and more playful. So when you have that moment for yourself where you are noticing, oh, I just thought about them, new choice, you are literally taking a moment to change up the energy to say, "Oh, I'm taking this opportunity. I catch myself thinking about them. I'm going to take this opportunity. I'm going to center myself and that's my new choice. I'm going to make a new choice and I'm going to think about myself." And you know what? You could new choice yourself, you could new choice yourself a whole lot. You could think about other topics. Maybe you want to ... It's a little hard for you to think about yourself right away. So maybe you think about, "I'm going to think about my mom. I wonder how my mom's doing. I should probably call my mom." Maybe you're going to think about, you're going to volunteer.
(13:25)
You're like, "Oh, that volunteer organization, I'm going to think about that volunteer organization. What do I have to do to get started with that? Or I'm going to think about work or I'm going to think about baseball." Whatever it is that you want to change the topic on, you can new choice as many times as you want. This is how we practice making a shift in our energy and making a shift in our focus and you build the muscle so that you eventually come back to yourself to center yourself. Now, what does it mean? I think that's really important that I talk about what it means to be self-centered or what it means to be the main character of your story. It is not that you are being selfish and it is not that you are being self-centered in a bad way. I mean, it's so interesting that we say self-centered is a bad thing because it's not.
(14:15)
If you're not self-centered, what are you centered on? Where should you be centered? And gravity and physics, if you are centered anywhere other than your own center, your own self, if you're centered anywhere else, you are literally off balance. You can't balance yourself if you're not centered over your own two feet.
(14:38)
So main character energy is about living a life that is led by you, by your desires that has you as the focus of your own story of your own life. And a main character, think about any good story. A main character does go through struggles. A main character does have challenges. That's what makes the story interesting, but they keep going. So this isn't about the main character energy means like my life is going to be easy. I think that's sort of like the Instagram filter that goes up on main character energy. It's going to be all rainbows and puppies and convertibles and pink and rainbows and glitter, right? That's not main character energy. Main character energy means that you get to live the life that is authentically you, where it is in the shape of you, in the way that you want of whatever your life is going to be.
(15:43)
I want you to think about this sort of like you're crafting your own hero's journey story, right? Maybe this is your Marvel's Avengers story. Every Marvel's Avenger has their own origin story of how they got to be an Avenger, right? All of the trials that they went through and the tests and the challenges and the things they had to do that got them to be an Avenger. This is your Marvel Avenger story. I'm not even a Marvel person, but I do know that they all have origin stories. And so do you. This is your origin story.
(16:21)
Oh man, I was about to try to talk about one of them and I hadn't even prepared this part. This wasn't part of my notes. It was almost, it's an improvisation you could say. I can't even do it. I can't even tell you. I can't figure out a Marvel story character from start to finish. Captain America is one I remember. I remember he was sort of like the smallish guy in his class and he was poked fun of and he goes through his own transformation and he becomes Captain America where he becomes this basically like a warrior, right? He had a transformation story. You are going from your own story of you are broken up with, you're heartbroken and this is your transformation point. So you get to decide what do I want to stand for? What do I want my life to look like?
(17:10)
What do I want this narrative to be? These challenges I've gone through are not for nothing.
(17:19)
So I'm going to give you an actual, some thinking points to take with you. I want you to do an audit of who you were. What did you tolerate or minimize in the relationship? It might have been those things that you're like, "I'm doing this because I have to and this is my compromise and I'm putting up with this and I'll make the best of it. " Those tolerations. Yep. Where were you performing instead of authentically being? Where were you self-abandoning? Where did you let go of yourself in order to fit in for someone else?
(18:17)
Okay, that's step one. Step two, I want you to define who you're becoming. What are your desires? What do you want your life to be? What kind of impact do you want to have on the world? Do you want to be a really great parent? Do you want to start a business? Do you want to come up with a new invention? What are your new standards of how you want to go about living your life or about the people who get to come into your life? And step three is going to be about acting as if you are that main character now. We don't wait for a perfect moment where it's all settled and it's all become that thing. We start living as Captain America right now. I hate to tell you, I don't remember how we became Captain America. I don't remember if it was like a radioactive spider like Spider-Man or whatever, but there's no radioactive spider coming to bite you to change you into the main character.
(19:22)
It doesn't just happen through transmission. It happens as you make these new choices into being that person now. It happens one choice at a time. We make this decision to do this thing over that thing and we make a decision to start training for that 5K instead of staying on the couch and watching Will and Grace reruns, right?
(19:54)
You become the main character through the decisions that you make and the action that you're taking. It does not happen through waiting. So I want you to hear me on this. You don't just find yourself. That's not what this is. You decide on who you're becoming and you take action towards yourself. It's uncovering and removing all the blocks that are placed on top of you. It's like cleaning off mud of a windshield so that you can see clearly. That's what I want you to think of this. We are going to be removing all the stuff that you were tolerating that's not you, that's in the way. All of those choices where you chose to be a supporting character. New choice that. New choice. Make a main character choice.
(20:41)
And step into the center of your own story. If this resonates for you, I have a really special invitation for you. I'm running a special challenge starting April 16th. It is totally free to sign up and it is a dare game. It's like truth or dare, except it's all dares because this is all about making choices and taking action. And I want to support you in taking action and making choices towards becoming this main character. And so I put it into a game. What's more fun than that? And especially a game that we all used to love playing as kids, truth or dare. Who didn't love that? So we're going to have a lot of fun with this. These are not the dares that you remember from school. Nobody's prank calling their ex. Nobody is going streaking around the neighborhood, unless that's really your thing and then do that, but I'm not giving that as an assignment.
(21:35)
This is truly about you getting to make those new choices and take action right away. And because I want to support you in this, I'm giving away prizes for the people that participate and submit their dares. So you can sign up by going over to Instagram and commenting on the post where I'm promoting this. And you can comment dare and I'm going to send you all the details because I want you to play. I want you to make it as easy as possible. I'm also going to put the link in the show notes if that's easier for you. So you can just click on that link in the notes. And I can't wait to see you in the game. We're going to have a lot of fun playing this. I can't wait to see you there. And until next time, my friends, I hope that you take excellent care of yourself, make some new choices and get into action.