We've all been there. We think we're doing great and we're over the ex. And then suddenly it hits us and we can't stop crying, ruminating, and hyper-focusing on the ex. It's like Day 1 of the breakup all over again. I'm here to tell you that your progress wasn't a fluke, all is not lost, and there is hope.
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Have you gone through a breakup and you're tired of feeling low lonely or lost? I've got a pep talk for 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, friends. Sarah Curnoles here, your breakup bestie. And I'm here with another pep talk just for you to help you get through this period of time after your breakup. So in one of my communities where I'm helping people get through their breakup, one of the community members shared that he felt that all his progress that he's made to get over his ex, he felt like it was a fluke because he'd been backsliding and he had been feeling really bad for the past couple of days, really bad. And it reminded him of those early days right after the breakup and he was being really hard on himself because he thought he'd made so much progress and he can't believe that he was back where he started of feeling like he couldn't even get out of bed. And it reminded me of what I thought was a backslide after my big breakup. So my ex and I had broken up in October and I was feeling really great in the spring. Life was back to normal, kind of great. And I remember I was driving to meet up with a friend for dinner and I drove past the baseball stadium. Go Orioles, go Os.
(02:11)
And baseball had been something that really was a thing that my ex and I did together. It was something we really loved and I felt like I really loved baseball because of his passion for it. And I found this new thing for myself Anyway, it was the first time I had driven past the stadium in baseball season since the breakup and I lost it. I couldn't stop crying and I felt pretty low for a couple of days after that. The hopeless kind of low, it felt like everything was back up at the surface and I didn't know how to get myself out of that hopelessness. And was this breakup all just a big mistake and was I never going to find happiness ever again? All of those feelings.
(03:09)
And what I realized was I was making myself wrong for having those emotions come up and resurface and then I had another option available to me. I didn't have to be hard on myself because I was having emotions. I could look for other ways that I could see what was happening. I could see that this trigger was new. I don't even like the word trigger. This activation was really new. That's the first time I've driven past the baseball stadium and baseball was a big part of our closeness. And of course I'm going to have feelings come up and it's just dealing with something fresh and it's not going to be like this forever.
(03:59)
I also could look at it with another lens of compassion and see that even though I had a few days where I was feeling really hopeless, it was only a few days. It didn't last nearly as long as it did at the beginning of the breakup where it was weeks of feeling hopeless and having no energy and not wanting to do anything. And so even the fact that it was days and not weeks of the hopelessness, that's progress. And I could also look at it with the compassion and remember that relationship meant a lot to me. And of course, feelings still come up and it's okay to have feelings. There's actually nothing wrong with the feelings. There's nothing wrong with these cycles that happen. It's all a part of grief. And grief is not linear and sometimes it comes up in weird waves that you don't expect and that's okay.
(05:09)
What really matters is how you treat yourself. And so that was the frame that I began to use with myself. And I was able, like I said, to get out of this hopeless feeling. I was able to get out of it relatively quickly and not get out of it, but get through it because it's not like, as I've discussed before, it's not like we want to push away those feelings. We want to allow them and we want to even welcome them to see what they have to share for us. What wisdom do they hold and what do we want to learn from them?
(05:45)
So how can, if you are in a backslide and how can you handle it? Well, I think a lot of times it's pretty obvious for people they're in a backslide. They feel like they are back where they started. It feels like they haven't made any progress. So maybe you're like me and you're crying all the time and you can't stop crying. And maybe you are having the same feelings of hopelessness that you did at the beginning of, will I ever find love again? Will anybody ever love me? Is it a big mistake for this breakup? Should I try to make it work? If any of those feelings come up, that's what I'm calling a backslide, where it feels like you've gone back to the beginning of the breakup process and some of the common traps that I see people in that I saw this person from my community do and that I have also done in the past.
(06:49)
When we have that backslide, we think, well, I'll speak for myself. I used to think that was a sign that I should be back with my ex. And I think a lot of people do this because I've also gotten those texts and phone calls from exes just randomly out of the blue where they're trying to meet up for a coffee, a k, a get back together. And when we have this backslide, we think, oh, if I'm having these feelings still, that means I should be back with my ex. That's a sign. That's a sign. I should be with them still. So notice if that's one of the thoughts that you're thinking and we're going to label that a thought error. It is not correct. Some other traps that might happen is that you might discount all the progress that you've made and focus only on the backslide and use the backslide as proof against yourself of like, look, you haven't made any progress.
(07:48)
You're still upset. So notice for that, pay attention if that's happening. Another thought error that some people may do with a backslide is they may choose to stay there or stay stuck in it of, well, I guess it's all hopeless. I guess all of this means nothing and I'm just going to be sad forever. And they kind of stay in that place and they continue to think thoughts and they feel feelings that keep them in the loop of whatever their backslide is of like, well, I guess I'm never going to move on. I guess I'm never going to be ready to let go. And they choose to focus more on that. Those are all traps. Those are all, and I call them traps because I think they're really tempting to stay there and to not move forward. But what happens is that you will be in that place of sadness, of grief, of hopelessness, and you will keep rehashing it over and over and over again, being hard on yourself, focusing on your ex. And what you're doing is you're robbing your future. You're robbing yourself of the dreams of what's to come. And I think sometimes what people say is, well, what's the point? Why even get my hopes up if I'm just going to get disappointed? Or why even try to move on from my ex if I'm just going to backslide and I'm going to feel bad anyway? If you're one of those people that is saying, well, what's the point? Why even get my hopes up?
(09:33)
I want to tell you this. If you are afraid to get your hopes up, you are robbing yourself of so much joy. If you say, I don't want to get my hopes up, that means you are settling for far less than what is possible for you because you're only ever going to stay in the safe zone of this little amount of happiness. Doesn't feel threatening. It doesn't feel like I'm risking anything. It doesn't feel like I'm going too far out on a limb. I don't have to wait for the other shoe to drop if I just allow myself to have a little bit of happiness, but mostly I'm in suffering, right? That's not getting your hopes up when you're mostly in suffering and you're staying there and you're only allowing yourself a little bit of happiness. We are not meant to live that way. We are meant to live with big, expansive joy.
(10:29)
And of course the balance of things. There will also be an equal amount of sadness. I think it is equal. It's 50 50, 50% joy and 50% sadness in our human experience of life. But if you only let yourself have a little bit of joy because you don't want to ever experience any more than a little bit of sadness and you never want any more than a little bit of disappointment, you are cutting yourself off from the full range of the human experience. And for me, I am most interested in a life that is fully lived. And if that means I am going to be playing in both ends of that pool, both ends of the deep end or the deep, deep, deep emotions, but I also get to experience the highs of the joy of thinking of a pool so hot here today, that super high diving board, and you get that thrill or the super tall water slide, you get that thrill of like we, and then you also have the deep depths of the deep end of the pool that might feel heavy. It might feel like it's pulling you under. Those are the sadness.
(11:42)
So don't limit yourself from the high highs because you are too scared to feel something. You are capable of feeling any emotion, emotions are just energy in motion in your body. You are capable of feeling emotion. It will move through you if you allow it to move through. Okay? Don't cut yourself off from your joy. So what's actually happening when you're backsliding is I think sometimes our healing is more like a spiral staircase. It's not a straight line. You're not walking a path. It's not the yellow brick road. It is kind of like a spiral staircase where as you are going up and around your journey, you're going up, up, up and around. You are going to come across, you're going to round the bend of that staircase and you're going to come across the same thing a few times, except every time that you go up the staircase, you are progressing and you are going to handle that differently. You are going to have different perspective. You're a little higher up. And so just like my story of driving past the stadium, I still felt sad. I still missed my ex, but I had new perspective and it only took me a couple of days.
(13:13)
And so your backslide isn't you going back to the beginning. You are just seeing something that is familiar and you are having some familiar experiences, but it doesn't negate all the progress you've had in the wisdom you've gained so far. You have the choice to interact with this from this place with all that new experience that you've had in your progress, and you can choose to experience it like you did at the beginning. Although even that, I think it's really hard to choose to experience it because once you've learned something, you can't unsee it. So even after your breakup, if you have a backslide and you're feeling sad again, you are still so much farther past your original breakup that you can't fully go back to the way that you were at the beginning. You are different. And I think that brings something to my next point is that although it's like a spiral staircase, you also want to make sure if you are backsliding, notice how far you've come.
(14:24)
What is your new perspective? So if you think back to yourself four weeks ago or immediately after your breakup, however long ago that was, and you think about that version of you compared to the version of you are now, what would that four week ago version of you think about you now? What are the differences? Maybe you're not crying yourself to sleep every night. Maybe you only feel lonely once in a while instead of all the time. Maybe you've mastered being able to cook for yourself instead of when you were just automatically doubling every recipe and you had leftovers for days. Maybe now you've mastered like I'm just cooking for myself and it feels great. Or you love how you get to do everything for yourself and everything that you put in your home, in your fridge is exactly where you left it. Nothing goes out of place.
(15:26)
What would the previous version of you think of you today? What are the differences? What tools have you learned for self-soothing? And if we're looking at this like a spiral staircase, can you get curious about the patterns? Can you see what exactly was it that activated this? So like me, I can see, oh, I hadn't driven past the stadium during baseball season. Didn't know that that was going to be something that really activated my emotions. Oh, interesting. That's interesting to know. So what are the other patterns that maybe you see that it's kind of like that spiral staircase, right? When you get to a certain perspective? Oh, there I am again. I am looking at, I am listening to that band that we went and we saw on a date. And every time a song from that band comes on, I'm right back there. I'm right back in the backslide. Alright, well that's interesting to note that it's the band every single time. So get curious about what those things are for you. And so here's what I'm going to ask you to when you find yourself backsliding, not an if, it's a when for all of us because it's normal. Like I said, progress isn't linear. A lot of times people say, oh, it's like two steps forward, one step back. But guess what? You're still netting one step forward, two steps forward, one step back is still a step forward.
(17:14)
There is still progress being made. So when you are doubting your progress and you're like, Ugh, was it all just a fluke? I want you to think back of how far you've come. What have you learned? What have you done for yourself? What has this process been for you? And I want you to know that backsliding is just a part of it. This is normal. Who goes through change has a period where they backslide because our brains are also wired to store the old habits because our brain stores habits because it's just easier to go on autopilot than to be consciously changing. So really all that's happened is your brain has found another old habit and it's brought it up to the surface and it's been activated. And so you get to rewire this and create change. Change does take repetition and reinforcement and it works best when it's positive reinforcement, not negative. And by that I mean don't beat yourself up when you have a backslide.
(18:37)
It actually isn't going to help you to keep progressing. If you beat yourself up, you will keep progressing faster. If you give yourself self-compassion of, that's okay, of course this is happening. Of course, I'm backsliding a little bit. This is part of the process. I trust the process. I'm just on the spiral staircase. That relationship meant a lot to me. And of course some stuff is still coming up and still being processed. I'm going to keep going. Look how far I've already gone. So as I wrap this up today, I want you to know a backslide does not mean that you're broken. You are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You are just building. Maybe this is an opportunity for a little bit of rest or a little bit more self-care, or perhaps this is more integrating. Maybe you are integrating all this new stuff that you're giving yourself during this process of reestablishing yourself in your single hood.
(19:57)
Let this be a part of your comeback story. This is just one moment in time. It is not the entire story, it's just a piece of it. Every good movie, every good movie has a moment where the hero slips back, where they doubt themself, where they think it's too much, but then they answer the call and they keep going forward. That is what this moment is. It's the moment of like, Ugh, I can go back to the old way and you're going to answer it and you're going to go, no, I'm moving forward. This is all a part of the journey and this is my comeback story. And ooh, baby, it's a good one. All right, my friends, well, I want to hear from you. Do you have a great comeback story where you had a backslide? How did you get out of it? I want you to reach out, find me on Instagram.
It's just my name, Sarah Curnoles, or reach out to me on Facebook. Let's connect about it. I want to hear your story. And for those of you looking for more accountability, more support, and more individual attention with an expert guide, look no further. I'm working with some new clients right now. I have a couple openings if you would like one-on-one personalized coaching by me. I am now taking new clients and I'd love to hear from you. All you have to do is go to the link that's going to be in the show notes and that's my calendar. And book yourself an appointment to get on my calendar where we can connect and you can learn all about coaching and I can create a plan for you for your progress. That's going to include, I already think ahead for those moments. A backslide. It's going to include how to support you through those backslides, and that is completely free. That appointment is totally free. I want you to go ahead and grab time on my calendar and you can decide if coaching's right for you. Alright, my friends. Well, until next time, keep taking care of yourself. Keep reminding yourself how far you've come and keep going. Take good care and I'll talk to you soon.