If you've ever wondered why you still can't stop thinking about your ex, even when you know the relationship is over, this episode is for you. Sarah breaks down the neuroscience of heartbreak, explaining how your brain and nervous system become wired for familiarity—and why that can keep you stuck long after love has ended. You'll learn practical tools to interrupt old thought patterns, regulate your emotions, and begin creating a future that's no longer defined by your past. This episode will help you understand that you're not broken—your brain is simply doing what it was designed to do, and you can teach it a new way forward.
Get Forget Your Ex in 10 Days for only $27 here https://sarahcurnoles.com/forgetyourex
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)
I want you to picture this. It's 10:30 at night. You're doing fine. You made it through work. You laughed with a friend. You even went the whole afternoon without thinking about your ex. And then you crawl into bed. Suddenly your brain starts replaying memories. You wonder what they're doing. You wonder if they're thinking about you and you start questioning everything. Did I make a mistake? Maybe they were my person and maybe I should text them. And you get frustrated with yourself because you though you were doing better. The question I hear more than anything else is what's wrong with me? Why can't I move on? Most people assume that they're still in love or that they need their ex to feel better or they assume that they aren't healed enough or that there's something wrong with them because they think they should be further along and maybe they just need more time to pass.
(01:49)
But today I want to show you why none of these explanations are actually true because what's keeping you stuck isn't love. It's your brain. I want you to imagine your brain like a hiking trail. Every thought you've repeated about your ex has worn a path through the woods. And if you've been with that person a long time, that's a really worn path, right? That's a really packed down path. And the more that you walk it and continue to walk it, it just gets easier to walk that again and again and again rather than stepping off the path, walking through the tall grass and creating a new path. But that's exactly what we're going to start doing today. We're going to stop walking the old trail and we're going to start walking a new one. So the first thing I want to talk about today is that your brain does not prioritize your happiness or even your wellbeing.
(02:56)
Your brain craves familiarity because familiarity means you're safe. So remember that your brain is always seeking your safety. It's prioritizing that over everything else. And its primary job is to keep you alive. So if its primary job is to keep you alive, it knows that what you have already done, what you've done in the past works. That has kept you alive so far because here you are. So it wants to just keep repeating the same thing over and over again because it's kept you alive so far. So your brain's assuming if I keep doing that, then I'm going to stay alive.
(03:53)
And this creates familiarity and predictability. But here's the problem. Your breakup has changed a lot of things. It's creating a lot of uncertainty in your life so it's creating a lot of discomfort. And your breakup can feel really destabilizing because your ex wasn't just a person. They became a part of your nervous system and they became part of your habits and your patterns, your routine.Think about all those good morning texts or those guaranteed weekend plans, not to mention the future dreams that you have of what you thought the two of you were building together. This was also your person to turn to if you needed to vent and they understood you and their opinion mattered to you. Your brain has built thousands of tiny litle connections and predictions around this person.
(04:59)
And suddenly because the relationship has ended, all of those predictions are suddenly wrong. What you thought was going to be perhaps a forever thing or you were just assuming it was going to keep going like this forever, that's no longer there and this is creating a lot of uncertainty. And that uncertainty feels really dangerous to your brain. Your brain would rather experience a familiar pain than to create an unfamiliar piece. That's why we keep going back to relationships that don't actually make you happy because the known feels safer than the unknown. And when we keep thinking about our ex and we keep looking at maybe you're looking around your room and you're having all these memories of that person there, it feels extremely challenging and confronting to try to make new associations with this space because you're going through so much uncertainty. It feels like not one more thing.
(06:18)
I can't handle one more thing. And so you're just reverting back in some of these areas where it feels safe to keep thinking about your ex over and over and over again.
(06:27)
Okay. So I want to tell a story about one of my clients who really had these strong urges to keep texting her ex. She wasn't actually longing for him. She knew he wasn't right for her. She logically knew that, right? She knew this isn't my person. He hurt me. I should not be wanting him. But she kept wanting to reach out. She kept thinking about him, kept bringing up the good memories over and over and over again in her brain. Because what was really going on was she was longing for certainty and for comfort. That's what's happening underneath the surface of the actions she was having and the thoughts she was thinking because every time she wanted to reach out to her ex, what she's really thinking deep, deep down is I just want this discomfort to go away. Can somebody please just make it stop?
(07:33)
I need this uncertainty to stop.
(07:37)
So I wonder if that story resonates with you. What uncertainty are you trying to escape? Where are you looking for comfort and certainty from a person who has given you discomfort by breaking up with you and created a lot of uncertainty through this breakup? It's not, be careful here. The question is not what do you miss about your ex? No. We're looking at where is your brain trying to escape uncertainty? And you'll notice that this isn't about your ex at all. It's merely about the predictability that they were offering you because it was a relationship where there were all these shortcuts in your brain. Okay. So what I want to talk to you next is I want you to think about the thoughts running through your brain in a different way. You may know me, you may know a little bit of my backstory. I used to work in professional theater.
(08:55)
So professional theater, you rehearse for weeks and weeks and weeks and then you perform it for people. And when you first start rehearsing, you're given a script and it's brand new to you and you have to learn it and there's a period of time where you just have to say it over and over and over again until it becomes a memory. And then it gets to a point where you don't even have to think about it so much. You've internalized those words so deeply that you can be present with the people on stage and what's happening and the actions and you're so thoroughly in your character that the words come naturally without you having to think.
(09:36)
And this is exactly what is going on for you right now. There are so many thoughts that you've had in regards to the connection and keeping the connection alive between you and your ex, that they just happen automatically. You've internalized them just like an actor is going to internalize a script. This is where so many people get stuck because they think their thoughts are observations. They think their thoughts are always right, but they're not. They are absolutely not. They are just rehearsals. So I want you to think about it this way. Every day your brain is rehearsing and repeating the same thoughts or stories like they were my soulmate. I ruined everything or I'll never be loved again or I wasted years on that person. I regret not leaving earlier. Or my all time favorite that I did forever and ever and ever was I'll never find someone like them.
(10:51)
These feel true only because you've practiced them. That does not mean that they are inherently true. They're not facts. A thought is just a sentence in your brain. That's it. Doesn't mean that it's true. Your brain will wire itself around repetition, not truth. So the more often that you think something, the easier your brain finds it again when it needs it. And the more you repeat a thought, the more you tend to believe it. And a belief is just a thought that you've thought a lot. And I've had a coach go so far as to tell me a belief is just a lie. It's embedded in the word L-I-E is in the word belief. So beliefs are not necessarily truths. Beliefs are lies, which really rattled my brain when I first started thinking about that like, whoa, my beliefs are just lies. Yes.
(12:10)
And it's something that's easier for your brain to grab onto because you've been thinking it a lot. I want you to try and exercise with me really quickly. So if you're driving or doing this while you're out on a walk, maybe come back to this, but I want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen and I want you to draw three columns. At the top of the first column, you're going to write thought. Top of the second column, you're going to write feeling. In the top of the third column, you're going to write behavior. In the thought column, we're going to all practice one together. I want you to write, I'll never find someone better. What feeling does that bring up for you? For me, it brings up the feeling of hopelessness. So let's just go with it. Let's do this one.
(12:59)
So I want you to put in the feeling column, hopelessness. All right. When I'm feeling hopeless, what do I do? What are my behaviors? So they might be sit and ruminate. That's a behavior for the behavior column. It might be check Instagram. It might be get on a dating app and try to find somebody new right away so I have a distraction. It might be missing them more or thinking about them more or repeating the same conversation in my head over and over and over again, trying to figure out how I could have done better.
(13:39)
Can you see how this one thought, this one sentence in our brain, I'll never find someone better, creates this feeling of hopelessness and from hopelessness, this becomes a loop that reinforces the original thought. So no wonder you're feeling stuck, right? Because you are stuck in a loop of your own creating by believing a sentence in your brain that is completely optional. That thought, you do not have to latch onto it. Now I want you to look at the original thought or any though that might be coming up in your brain and I want you to ask a really important question. If I continue to rehearse this thought, does this help move me towards my future?
(14:47)
Because I want you to think that every thought you give your focus and your attention to is like casting a vote for your future. Because as you can see, the thought creates your feeling and the feeling creates your actions. And those actions are what gets you the results of what your life looks like. And if we want to change what your life looks like, we have to start changing the quality of your thoughts. All right. I'm going to take this even deeper because that's your thought, but there's one more piece that's keeping you stuck on your ex that I think can really, this is the game changer and this is where I think most breakup advice that you find on the internet is incomplete. Your nervous system is perceiving your ex like they are medicine, like they are the heal all answer. So what it feels like is I just need them in order to feel okay again.
(15:57)
And this is pretty much mistaking feelings of withdrawal and discomfort. Mistaking those feelings for love. Emotional withdrawal. And a lot of people say this and there's actually some scientific evidence around it of when a love relationship ends, it feels like you are going through the same symptoms as withdrawal. Anxiety, depression, not experiencing joy in things that once brought you joy, intense cravings, lack of focus, either manic energy or no energy. This is true for emotional withdrawal as well because you've been so accustomed to regulating yourself with this other person. They've also become a source of dopamine and other good feeling chemicals like oxytocin. And also there were feelings probably of connection, belonging as well as the power of routine and predictability. But when your relationship ends, not only do you lose the dopamine, the oxytocin, right that goes down. Your stress, your cortisol goes up and your support system is gone of where you were co-regulating so that you could start feeling better and decrease your stres.
(17:39)
That gone. So your nervous system basically panics. Your body is saying, I need the thing that used to calm me.
(17:50)
And what your mind translates that as is I miss my ex. This is not the same thing. Your ex not the only source of being able to regulate your nervous system, to calm your stress, to feel better again. And I also, I want to acknowledge and I want to validate that it is a very stressful time after a breakup. So an increase in stress hormones of an increase in cortisol, an increase of not feeling good is normal. And what's happening in your brain when your anxiety is spiking, your brain is searching for an explanation. It wants to understand why so that it can stop it, so that it can stop the bad feelings. And the easiest explanation is I just need my ex back, but this is not complete.
(19:06)
Your ex is actually, in many cases, if your ex is the one that ended the relationship and even if they weren't because they're not there anymore, it's actually the cause of the anxiety, not the cure. And even if you do call your ex right now to soothe yourself and to feel better, it is going to be short-lived because the reasons why the relationship ended are still there. You're just getting a temporary fix of dopamine and oxytocin. You're getting a temporary fix of soothing without addressing the underlying problems. So I want you... Well, let me share. Actually, I'm going to share a story real quick actually so that I can paint this even clearer. So a client of mine was having like a great weekend, like Friday night with her girlfriends. Saturday went for a hike with her dog and spent some time doing some activities she enjoyed.
(20:25)
She was picking up painting again. And then something hit her like Sunday afternoon and it was just becoming completely unbearable. And she thinks she's missing him because Sunday afternoons would be when they spent time together. It's when they did meal prep. It's when they talked about their plans for the coming week. And all of these habits and routines that they would have on Sunday afternoon, it wasn't there. But here's the thing is that the trigger, to say that she was triggered, right? She was having this emotional reaction. The trigger isn't I'm missing him. It's I'm missing the routine.
(21:08)
She'd had all this novelty and this time where she normally has certainty of like Sundays were our time. Sundays we had this order of doing things and we had these things that we did. That wasn't there. And so her brain was freaking out. So what is she to do now? What we worked on was a new way to relate to the anxiety. The answer isn't to think about him. It isn't to reach out. It isn't to remember all the good memories. It isn't to beat yourself up that you're feeling that way. When actually what she was really needing was self soothing.
(22:05)
So that might look different for every person and it might look different for each situation. So it's great to have a few tools in your toolbox here, but here are a few. You can pause and take some deep breaths. You can journal and just vent it out in your journal. You can go for a walk. You can call a friend. Yo can do some jumping jacks. We want to create a change in your emotional state that lets you know I am okay. I'm going to be here for me. It's okay that I'm feeling this way. I have my own back.
(22:56)
And we want to let your nervous system settle and soothe and regulate before assigning any meaning to what's going on. Sometimes the thing that feels scary isn't actually a threat. It's just your nervous system learning how to regulate in a new and unfamiliar way. And that's okay. Learning something new, especially something like learning how to self-soothe when you've been soothing alongside the same person for as long as you had been. It's okay that this is unfamiliar. It doesn't mean that anything's gone wrong. All is well. And I think one of the biggest things that will keep somebody stuck on an ex, one of the biggest loops of psychology that really becomes confronting for people. It's not necessarily even the though of losing the other person. What's really going on is there's a loss of your identity. There's a loss of who am I without this person?
(24:18)
You have spent so long being a we that you don't know who I am as a me.
(24:28)
So it might sound like I was that person's spouse or I knew what my future was going to be or we were planning a wedding or I was going to move or I thought I knew what my life looked like or I thought I knew who I was because of how they felt about me. And it feels like all of that has disappeared. And so of course you're feeling loss. You're not only grieving the loss of the relationship, but you're also grieving the version of you who was in that relationship and grieving the future that you had imagined. And that's why moving on can feel like reinventing yourself and it can feel really big because it is. These questions that come up of who am I now? Who am I becoming? What matters to me? They're big. And so they can feel really threatening or scary.
(25:34)
And when something feels threatening or scary, what do we do? We retreat to the familiar. So we avoid thinking about these big questions because it feels big and scary. And instead we keep thinking old repeated thoughts over and over and over again. You keep thinking about your ex. You keep thinking about your old memories because the future feels scary.
(26:03)
But what if your future didn't have to be scary? Because the future is where your possibility lies. The future is where there are opportunities. The future hasn't happened yet. So anything can be possible. What you want for yourself for your life lives in the future. The dreams that you had with that person don't die. You get to keep the dreams, the desires that you had, whether it's you want to be married or you want to have children or you want to travel the world, whatever those dreams were, you get to keep the dreams. The person has removed themself from your dream, but that doesn't mean the dream is also removed.
(26:55)
So what are the dreams you want to keep? What are the new dreams you want to dream? Or what are maybe old dreams that you had abandoned that you want to bring back? It isn't about necessarily always becoming the person you were before the relationship because you've lived more life now. I was speaking to somebody earlier today and he met his wife when they were 16 and they were together a long time, 25 years, right? So it's not about becoming that 16 year old version of himself again. However, sometimes going back and looking at who was I before this relationship might offer you some clues and insights on what you want to bring back for yourself.
(27:51)
Because you get to incorporate everything you've learned while being in that relationship, all the ways that you've grown and that you are now more of a full version of yourself and you get to keep evolving so that you're living a life that's the most authentic to you. All right. So as I'm coming to a close here, and I promise I know this is a longer episode, but this was so deep and I had so many notes and so many ideas I wanted to share with you. Everybody who comes to me says that they want a breakthrough and they think the breakthrough is like the big aha moment, the big reveal, but it's actually the breakthroughs are in each tiny little moment. And we really undersell those to ourselves because if what has been happening is we keep going back to the old thoughts. We keep rehearsing the same memories.
(28:49)
We keep telling the same stories to ourself over and over and over again. Well, that's what we're going to keep getting more of and we're always going to feel stuck. But the breakthroughs actually happen when you make a small new choice. So every day you're practicing something. You can practice imagining that conversation and replaying it over and over again and imagining them texting and reconciling. You can keep practicing that. Or you can practice asking yourself, "What do I need today? What do I want? " You can practice planning for your future of what you want or trying a new hobby or building self-trust and new routines.
(29:44)
Your brain will learn from what you repeat, but you are the one that has to drive the ship here, not the brain. Letting your brain go on autopilot is going to keep creating the same thing that you have... Have right now over and over and over and over again. So you have to learn how to take the wheel and steer the ship and say, "Brain, you are coming along with me, you get on board." So I want you to start thinking of those small, tiny, almost insignificant decisions that you're making of focusing on yourself rather than your ex, focusing on what do I want rather than I wonder what they're doing. That changes things. That creates momentum. It builds a new identity and that's what changes your life. One tiny, almost insignificant decision at a time. And so you can start thinking of future me, what does future me do?