 What's up lovers and friends? This video is sponsored by BetterHelp, a service that makes professional counseling accessible, affordable, and convenient. And I'm dedicating this video to my daughter, Ryu, who I pray with everything inside of myself that she has the privilege of growing up, falling in love. And yes, one day having her heart broken. My boyfriend left me or decided that, you know, we didn't, it wasn't a good idea to be in a committed relationship because I was a stressful person to be around. But I also really strongly believe that if I give her the knowledge that I have, her experiences with losing love won't be as devastating or as ridiculously drawn out as mine were. And that's what today's video is really all about. I want to help future Ryu and the current you truly understand everything I know about why heartbreaks hurt in hopes that this information will help you and also the people that you love make smarter, not convenient choices to get past the pain. In addition to normalizing conversations like this where you're introspective with yourself, I also want to normalize talking through things like this with a licensed therapist. Now, Jared and I are on the same page when it comes to this. We believe that Ryu should have a therapist when she comes of age, just like we believe she should have a doctor or a dentist for infrequent checkups or if the need truly arises. And if you're on that train too, or you know the time is right for you right now to speak with a licensed professional counselor, then I suggest better help for these five reasons. Number one, there is a broad range of expertise in better helps counselors network, which depending on where you live may not be locally available in your area. That way you can find the best counselor for your needs rather than settling for any counselor who's local to you. Number two, better help is made with accessibility in mind, which means everything happens right from your phone. Find a counselor, set an appointment for a weekly phone call or video call and even text updates to your counselor all on the BetterHelp app. Number three, better help is committed to making exceptional therapeutic matches and if you don't feel that the match is right for you, you can change at no cost. Number four, financial aid is available and better help is more affordable than traditional offline counseling. And lastly, possibly most importantly, I got to hook up for you. If you know the time is right for you right now, go over to betterhelp.com slash Boudram. That's better H-E-L-P.com slash B-O-O-D-R-A-M because that's how you're going to get 10% off your first month of counseling with BetterHelp. What's up, lovers and friends? We're going to be talking about heartbreak today and I have invited a special expert here whose advice that I personally trust. What's up, Shampoo Jam? Oh, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure. By the way, orange is definitely your color. Look at you, you flirt. Y'all better watch out for this one. She knows what she's doing. I'm going to stop complimenting myself. It's getting enough. I know. All right, let's get into this content right here. There is something that you want everyone to know about love. What is it? All right, I'm going to do my best not to get overly heady about this. As many of you know, I can very easily do, but I want everyone to understand some level of the neuroscience associated with love and heartbreak because if you don't, then you're going to mistake basic biological responses as destiny. What I mean by that is imagine if you didn't know that cigarette smoking was addictive and you were a heavy smoker. Once you quit, you would experience the withdrawal, the longing, the headaches, the pain in your body. Again, if you didn't understand this is a natural part of weaning yourself off of this harmful chemical, you might actually assume that the responses that you're having mean that your body needs nicotine, that your body works in his healthiest operating with nicotine. And furthermore, you might think that you and cigarettes are destined for each other, but as we know, that couldn't be anything further from the truth. And that's why you don't have to like someone to be in love with someone. Yes. So if you hear nothing else, hear these two things and then go look them up on your own. If you can't really grasp it in the sentence because I'm going to do my best, but I might butcher this, but the brain is a social organ number one. And number two, humans are pair bonding mammals. So as a pair bonding mammal, essentially that means that we work best in tribes, communities and groups and our brain knows that now the brain is a social organ essentially speaks to the fact that knowing that we had the best chance of survival when we are bonded together, your brain really prioritizes making connections. And furthermore, it hates losing primary connections. It would rather starve for a few days than break a primary pair bond. And again, that's so important to note when it comes to heartbreak. That's some heavy stuff. All right. Similarly, you've got a message about breakups. What's that message? Okay. So here's the information about breakups that I wish that I had when I was going through some of my more tumultuous experiences. And that is your brain doesn't care if you're happy or not. Your brain again is wired for survival. And in what I was just saying before, relationships in many ways are a fear regulation mechanism for your brain. And that means that we feel more relaxed when we know that we have a person who is in theory there to protect us. And you know that phrase, the devil you know is better than the one that you don't. Well, your brain lives by that saying. And in essence, even though the person that you're with might be harmful to you, your brain is still like, yeah, but we know this harm. We don't have this person. We don't know what's out there. We don't know what's lurking. That's scarier to us. So we would rather stay in this connection and put ourselves in a position to possibly be vulnerable to unknown threats. And this fear that our brain goes into puts us in a state of fight or flight, which means you get adrenaline dumped into your system. The stress hormone cortisol is also dumped into your system. And that can lead to symptoms like nausea, lack of appetite, lack of being able to sleep. It can even lead to heart issues. An fMRI scans show that somebody who's just gone through a breakup, the area of your brain that activates when you are physically hurt, like beat up and punched, that is the same area of your brain that activates when you lose a lover. So that to be said, you're just going to go through it, but just understand what you're going through. All right. So you are going to share the six phases of a healthy breakup, freedom versus failure, withdrawal and protest, the negative bond, untangling the tungsten chain, awakening, and then bond reformation. Now, what's important to note is that you might identify with some of these phases and you might identify with these phases in a different order. And so we're not suggesting that every person is going to follow this exact chain of events. What we're saying is that this is a suggestion to come out of the breakup as healthily and as optimally as possible. All right. So let's start with the first one, freedom versus failure. What does that mean? When I read this particular bit of information, it released a really big aha for me because in a lot of my biggest breakups, I experienced a surge in confidence immediately after because of this fact. So when you break up with somebody, you're, again, because we're social, social animals, your brain is going to start to try to assess your other social bonds and how it's going to be impacted by this loss. So if you are with somebody that you're going to get praised for leaving, you're going to feel a high after the breakup. You'll be telling people and feeling really proud of yourself. Your friends will be congratulating you. You might end up getting other opportunities because this partner could have been holding you back or obstructing certain kinds of connections. And so you're going to go through this wave of euphoria in the immediate wake of the breakup. On the flip side, if you know that this breakup is going to make people judge you or to be critical of you, or it might actually jeopardize some of your other friendships, your family connections, then you're going to experience a wave of failure. Now, it's important to note that because these reactions don't necessarily mean much. If you feel really happy after a breakup, that does not mean that breakup is going to be any easier for you going forward. If you feel especially miserable and down on yourself for losing this connection, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have a harder time again recovering from the loss of that connection. It's just whatever your initial reaction is, like on a roller coaster, whether you scream or you smile, it's the same ride for everybody. That to be said, I think it's important for people to look at their relationships, if possible, as both. And both is the healthiest way because it is a failure. You did attempt to make a connection, a long-term connection with somebody and that didn't pan out. But that's also freedom because now you have an opportunity to go out there and meet new people and explore other parts of yourself and reconnect with people who might have been damaged from the connection that you had that failed. So, I think looking at it like both is the sweet spot. But again, like I said, don't read too much into the way that you feel the day or even the week after. So, phase two, you have protest and withdrawal, or sorry, withdrawal and protest. Now, I think I know what that means because I'm pretty sure I've been through it. But breakdown, what do you mean by that? Yes, I hope people can really relate to this one and it's a really awful thing to go through, but I think that our connected experience in this, there's something kind of beautiful about that. So, I don't want to repeat myself because off the top I really explain why it is you're going to go through this phase of withdrawal. Again, going back to my cigarettes analogy. But here's another way of looking at it too. Now, everybody who's watching right now, I want you to, if you're in a mental space where this feels comfortable for you, imagine getting into a car accident. Imagine losing your job. Imagine having the worst, most frustrating day at work ever. Now, think about what you would do to cope with that stress. More than likely, a person pops into your mind, someone that you're going to call on to debrief with or to get comforted by. Now, if that someone is the person that you just broke up with, this is a very big problem for your brain. And imagine the mind fuck that happens when the person that your brain considers as your go-to to de-stress and decompress is now the person causing that stress for you. And this cycle of I hate you because you're causing me pain, but I need you to end this pain for me is really difficult to get out of. And it's damn near impossible to skip over. I will say that even with all the knowledge and information that you have, your brain, and we'll go through this in the next step, but the untangling phase, the retraining your brain to rely on other kinds of relationships, is going to happen whether or not you're aware of this or not. And again, the cigarette analogy, knowing that you're going through withdrawals doesn't change the fact that you still have withdrawals. And I'm going to use this analogy this entire time, but if you were quitting cigarettes, you could try to go cold turkey or what you might try to do is use nicotine replacement therapy that is completely made up. I don't know what's called, but essentially when you use the gum or use the patch, which is like a lesser dose and easier to wean your body off of it, I think that when you feel that pain because you're stressed out and you know that person and being around them is going to comfort you. Again, even if they're the ones who are causing that stress, what I did during one of my really bad breakups is I reread old emails and I made sure to reread the emails in their voice and I closed my eyes and tried to picture their face and that gave my brain like an imposter hit. Dislike nicotine is an imposter hit. And so when I got that imposter hit, it calmed me down from like needing to reach out or needing to go to their social media because I felt that I had that connection. And then when I calmed down, I would read the emails again but read them from the lens of why our communication just wasn't what I needed it to be or why we were ultimately incompatible. So I utilized those old forms of communication to soothe me but then also to empower me to double down on my efforts to get past this person because the proof was in the pudding that we just weren't it. I just want to underscore how clutch that advice is. I think a lot of people think they're taking that advice when they social media stalk their ex or people surrounding their ex. They think they're getting that imposter hit but what they're actually getting is the high fructose corn syrup version because social media is a highlight reel. And so you're not actually reflecting on that person or looking at your ex. You're looking at an idealized version of them which can actually be really unhealthy and unhelpful towards your healing process. When you reread old emails on the other hand, you're not looking at the person for who they appear to be. You're looking at them for who the two of you actually were together. And again, like you suggested, reminding yourself why that togetherness is not meant to last for the long term. So I think that's clutch advice. Just want to really just shout that out. All right so after we go through withdrawal and protest, we have the negative bond. Yes, so after the initial reaction, then withdrawal and protest, we go into the soul hate phase and this is also known as a negative bond. In the book Conscious Uncoupling, it really beautifully describes this phase that you go from loving somebody wanting to be back with that person to making them out to be the worst possible person in your brain. And again, if you look at it through the lens of your brain is optimized for survival, this might be a necessary step for you because in order to cope with the loss of the primary bond, your brain has to convince itself that it's better off without that person. And the easiest way to do that is to make that person again the worst possible being it can conjure up. I think that this is healthy if it's a phase but note that a lot of people can stay in this negative bond for a lifetime. The book talks about people who are trying to get one over on their ex for years and years to come and they never get over that pain and that's really unhealthy because as long as you hate somebody you are engaged and you are interested and furthermore you are intertwined with that person. We all know that saying that the difference the opposite of love isn't hate it's indifference. The same components exist for the hate triangle. I don't have that information like off the dome to pull up but I'll add a little voice note and edit to explain further. All right so I found it. The triangle theory of hate also has three components. Component one, negation of intimacy and this is done through distancing both physically and socially. Then you have passion in hate and then followed by decision slash commitment in hate. That to be said as long as you have extreme disdain or hate for somebody you are interested invested and engaged in that person and you are bonded to that person. The goal of a breakup is to release that bond. Now this could be part of the process but again you don't want to sit here for too long because you could spend a lot of time in this phase. A lot of wasted damaging dark time in this phase. Okay I'm not going to pretend that I know what this one means. Untangling the tungsten chain. So tungsten is a metal that has a very high boiling point or a very high melting point which essentially means you can't throw it in the fire and expect that it's just going to disintegrate and I say the tangled tungsten chain because if you ever had a necklace before that gets really tangled up it takes time that you can't rush through a knot. Like it's like you had to really focus and be precise and use tiny little tools and go backwards and it's a maze right and you can't speed your way through it which is the important thing to note because it's like the Goldilocks effect because it can't be too fast or too slow. So there's a difference between unprocessed grief and prolonged grief and both of those things can be damaging if you don't do the necessary work to get to that sweet middle spot. So unprocessed grief is when you pretend it didn't happen and you just try to go on with your life and you look for other ways to get dopamine hits to bring your brain to sociostasis. So you might have a bunch of flings or constantly go out or distract yourself with friends or just distract yourself period to the point that you never really figure out what went wrong, how you feel about that wrong and where you want to go right in the future. On the flip side there is actually a condition that's called prolonged grief and that's in essence where people allow themselves to feel the pain of loss for so long that becomes your new normal. That state of grief becomes a place where you feel the most comfortable and again that's not a very powerful position to be in if you do want to do what you're meant to do after a breakup which is heal and go back out there and reconnect and be better as a result of the loss. Phase five awakening. I already like the sound of that. Personally I feel like we should have goals when it comes to breakups just like we have goals when it comes to love and romantic connections. I think the goal of breaking up is to get to phase five the awakening phase and once we have untangled the tungsten chain we can put that piece of jewelry back on and go back out there in the world and be better and shinier and happier and more hopeful as a result of what we learned. We can be enriched by our past not dragged down by our past even if we went through the worst things we can have the belief in our self that we can go through the fire and come out on the other side a blaze with passion purpose and a desire for a better connection. So again it depends on you know how tangled your chain was this could take a very long time and this again is where therapy can be really helpful especially if it just feels like you just can't do it by yourself which we've all been there before but I think the process is meaningful and it is beautiful and on the other side of that is this phase which being there myself was it's like a version of me that I reminisce on like heartbreak is something that I went through we all went through that you kind of had this like sadist relationship with like oh I remember when this song on the radio came on like you ever heard of us have a song that plays that was like your heartbreak song and you put yourself back in the moment that you were playing the song on repeat in inconceivable pain and then you hear it years later and there's something something kind of like dark about being like I remember when I played the song on repeat so like there's that that happens in breakups but on the flip side when I think about when I finally untangled the tungsten chain and I felt like I was more me than I had ever been and I felt more clear on who me would be best suited for like those moments and the first dates that I had with Jared like and sure enough after September the second last year I gave myself a month off and then after that month I'm like I want to listen to Beyonce wear sports bras and just hang out with dudes like that's what I want to do right now I don't want any kind of thing attached to it I don't want any pressure I just want to be around people who I think is attractive or interesting in an environment that I feel safe and celebrated in and that's what my spirit needs right now I don't need ice cream I just need a hot dude and Beyonce and so he was one of the hot dudes that I I called upon that I was like hey do you want to just come over and vibe with me and he did and sure enough what I didn't expect to turn into anything substantial over time without pressure without intention has just naturally evolved into a really awesome reciprocal soul-changing positive relationship um he's just friendly and kind phase six here we are at the end bond reformation when I actually first wrote out these points I wrote bond reformation as phase five and awakening as phase six and then I realized that's not true at all um you don't even necessarily you don't have to reform the bond in order to have a successful awakening I think the mistake that a lot of people make is that you need bond reformation as phase one like the first thing you have to do in a breakup is get closure like we have to be good we should be peaceful we should be friends again it's just like nah like I can't successfully be your friend when I don't even know how to be myself in this moment I have lost my concept of security through the loss of our love so no I can't be a friend to you right now I gotta be whatever I gotta be for me and so bond reformation actually to me is the best last step but also the most optional step closure is nice to get and it is nice when you can get to a place where you and somebody who meant something deeply profound to you can be on good terms I really enjoy the fact that there are some X's that I still can message happy birthday that I can buy their book when it comes out and you know feel good that like I know this person and I knew this person and we shared something really intimate and we don't anymore and that's okay but also you don't need that if you don't have the capacity or it's not safe for you to be friends with that person that's okay you can still have a healthy breakup if that person never gave you the closure you can still untangle the tungsten chain by yourself and it probably is helpful to do so even if you engage the person in the process of untangling that should be the focus the focus should be me healing and understanding myself not us trying to get to a good place again so in my book The Game of Desire I asked people to go back to an X to do an X interview it wasn't a closure exercise because what's more important is that you gain the lessons that you need to learn to be better for your next relationship and it's less important for that relationship to be on good terms because again you might be healthier without it all together ladies and gentlemen sham budram you gave what needed to be given in this video that's exactly what I was hoping for but if any of this was confusing for you or if it unlocked something inside of you that you want to discuss further with somebody else again it's why I highly suggest the usage of a licensed professional counselor who can work through these feelings with you because it's one thing to understand and know it's a whole other thing to change a habit and changing the brain's habits even though the brain does change and the brain does have plasticity is very difficult and it's a process that often needs to be mediated and you need assistance and that's why services like BetterHelp are there for you you already know that I got a promo code if you want 10% off your first month of professional licensed counseling go to betterhelp.com slash budram that's betterhelp.com slash budram to get 10% off your first month of counseling with BetterHelp go to the info box to learn more about BetterHelp if you want to read on or click the link to the website if you want to just explore more and while you're exploring more and going down head to the comment section and let me know if there are tips that we miss when it comes to the healthiest breakup possible or if you're currently going through a breakup what phase are you on right now if I'm honest I'm just I'm in phase five of my last breakup even though I'm married in a new relationship I think I'm still in process of healing for my last breakup but phase five is a beautiful place to be as you mentioned