 Welcome to the show, Amy. We're so excited to chat with you about breakups, overcoming them and moving away from maybe our attachment theory as we'll share some of Johnny's theories there. Well, Johnny and I started our journey 15 years ago helping men romantically. And we'd love to hear a little bit about your journey, not only starting the breakup bootcamp, but how you became a relationship expert. Yeah, so my entire life, what I struggled with the most was love. I was able to be an overachiever in, you know, my career in school, but I was constantly heartbroken. And that's what made me start the journey of becoming a relationship columnist. And I felt that if I could figure out all the science, all the psychology, then maybe I wouldn't feel so heartbroken. But, you know, life had a different plot twist for me. And at age 29, I found myself in a relationship with someone that I thought, you know, was gonna be my happy forever after. And I put so much of my identity in him and us that when the relationship fell apart, I fell apart. And not only was I grieving him and the relationship, I was now grieving this future plan that I had completely set out that I would never now actualize. And I would recognize in hindsight that, you know, the breakup, it was so traumatic. And at the time I pointed the finger of blame at him, but really it was a band-aid that ripped off. And I had to now deal with all of the heartaches from the past starting with the heartache with my father. And so it was a long, dark journey to, you know, get back on my feet, but I did. And when I got to the other side, after going to therapy, Reiki, psychics, yoga retreats, you name it, I tried it. I realized that I was in such a dark space and only a few decisions away from doing something completely destructive. And I thought about the readers of mine that would write in who were in that same position feeling helpless and hopeless and what a scary place that is. And what happens when someone doesn't have a support system that I had? And that's when I realized that I had to create this for people and the first world's breakup boot camp was born. I love that story around peeling yourself first and recognizing that it starts with you becoming a better person. And you mentioned, you know, originally placing the blame on your ex. And I think so many of us who go through a breakup, that's our first stop is looking at all the wrongs that our ex brought upon us and all the things that we would change in our ex. How can we get to a place where we start to heal and focus on ourselves to grow when we're holding on to our ex and everything that they did wrong? Yeah, AJ, you make a great point. I think, especially after a breakup when we are in the throes of pain, our way of reacting to that pain when we don't know the tools is to play hot potato with our emotions and we throw it onto someone else, right? And the closest person is the ex. Like, let's just hit this person with all the rage, everything, it's their fault. And so I think number one is we need to stop vilifying our exes and take accountability that it always takes to people to get into the relationship and to get out of it. And this doesn't excuse bad behavior or anything like that, but the whole point is how are you going to move forward in a way that's healthy? How are you going to believe stories that are going to serve you? And if you are constantly blaming your ex, vilifying your ex, hoping for your ex to change, the reality is you're still in a relationship with your ex and sometimes we hold on to the pain as our last attempt, our last resort to hold on whatever is left of the relationship. That emotional charge just keeps us hooked. So I think that's the very first thing and it's the first rule of Breakup Bootcamp is there's no hatefest rally fest, you know? I think sometimes we meet with our friends and we pathologize them and now it's really trendy to just call everyone a narcissist and it doesn't help you because it's not, you know, by just labeling someone else, it's all their fault, you're not going to understand, okay, what patterns do I have? What can I start shifting within myself? So I don't repeat the scenario with another person. And one of the big patterns that you talk about in your book is this idea around attachment theory and how we're raised from childhood to view love in ways that may be invisible to many of us in our audience. And I know Johnny wasn't as familiar and he learned a little bit about his own attachment theory. So let's talk about that and let's unpack attachment and how it comes into our romantic relationships from our childhood. Yeah, so for those who are new to attachment theory, basically by the age of around two years old, we develop an attachment system which will pretty much determine how we relate romantically as adults. And there's three main types. The first is secure. This makes up about 50% of the population. These people are not afraid of intimacy. They're also not codependent. They're able to communicate their boundaries and their needs and they don't place their sense of self-worth on their partner. The next is avoidantly attached people. These are people that potentially they had very smothering parents, very controlling parents. Maybe one of their parents lived vicariously through their child's achievements. And sometimes there might have been an alcoholic in the family or a divorce and the child no longer takes a role as a child and becomes the therapist or suddenly has to become the head of the household. And so what happens is these people actually subconsciously suppress their attachment system, meaning when someone gets a little bit too close, they will go and do what's called deactivating strategies and they will actually, whether it's going into a cave and not contacting the person that they're with or maybe after a romantic weekend, they completely disappear or you date someone for three months and it's great. But then at that three month mark, you start noticing all those imperfections and you're like, no, no, no, you're not the one. They might look at an ex and be like, no, no, that person's on a pedestal, never meet someone better or they've chased someone with an impossible future, this unicorn that doesn't exist. All these are ways of actually keeping a distance emotionally. Now, it doesn't mean that someone who has an avoidant attachment style can't be in a relationship. It just means that there's only so much closeness that someone can get. They also have a harder time identifying their feelings and have a tendency to close off. And so what's interesting is they've done this experiment called the strange situation test and they've done this experiment over and over again throughout the decades and they actually took a toddler with their mother and they brought them into a room and they saw how would the toddler react when the mother left. Those have an avoidant attachment style. They actually don't even notice that the mother's in the room with them. The mother leaves, kid doesn't notice, mother comes back, kid seems aloof, doesn't notice. But when they actually measured the heart rate and the stress response, they realized that the avoidantly attached toddler was having an internal stress response even though on the outside it looked like they were totally cool. And so it's interesting because those who date people who have an avoidant attachment style could vilify them and be like, these people have no feelings but it's just that sometimes they're actually disassociated from what they're feeling. Now this brings me to the third category which is an anxious attachment style. This is what I used to have. These are people that usually had inconsistent caregiving as children. So their parents either sometimes read their cues but sometimes didn't. These people are fundamentally afraid of abandonment and rejection. Their nervous system is on alert that at any time they could be abandoned. And when they get triggered, say they send a text message and they don't hear back right away, they will engage in what's called protest behavior. These are attempts to get attention or to punish the person that they're with. So for example, if they don't hear back they might call it crazy or show up at where they work or they might punish them and be like, oh, it took you four hours, screw you, I'll take four days to see how you like it. They might even hedge. They will reject people before they have a chance to get rejected because they feel so much angst being in the gray area. Now the interesting thing is when they did the strange situation test on anxiously attached kids, they noticed that even before the mother leaves the room, the child starts to show a stress response. They are anticipating that the mother's going to leave. When the mother leaves, the kid freaks out, when the mother comes back, it takes the longest to sue this child. And while they're clinging to their mother, they're also kicking and throwing things and screaming because they're so angry. And so the thing is anxiously attached, people are drawn avoidance and vice versa because they both confirm each other's worldview. That's fascinating. Yeah, and hearing and reading about the avoidant attachment style, I was like, okay, well, that explains everything. And it was, what's interesting there is there was some of the things that you were, that I was reading and that you were mentioning here that I, that weren't part of my life. And, but of course there was the one thing that was dead on. And for myself, when my parents got divorced, I was in my early teens when the fighting started. And I had learned that it was just better if I left the house and stayed gone. And I wouldn't have to deal with the fighting that they were going through. And my sister was involved in, because she was a little bit younger than me and always seemed to be getting involved with that as well and sneaking out of the house and getting in trouble. And so for myself, it was just better for myself. And as a young kid with all that going on, I took the skateboarding. So it was an escape and I was able to just leave and I could go skate into town and be there all day. And my, my mom or dad would give me like a buck 50 in the morning. And that would take care of some moon pies and some iced teas. So I was, I was gone. And that was a great strategy because I didn't have to deal with any of the chaos that was going on at the house. And not only that, I was enjoying myself. And that became a pattern because not only was, it started with my parents fighting and my sister getting involved. Then it was the separation, my dad dating, a new relationship, a new child in the house. So there was, and that was all through my teenage years. And I was laughing because of course, reading the book. And I was like, oh, I'm an avoidant. Wow, okay. But I related to it easily. And it's always, even at 47, I love learning about myself. And this certainly pulled back the curtains on some issues I certainly had. And of course, in hearing you explain it now, it goes to the usual cycles that I go through in dating. Now, I'm one of the same as Johnny. So you have two avoidant attachment theories on the show here. Now, what can we do with this information? Is this something that we should work on in ourselves or something that we should recognize? How does this help us in maintaining healthy relationships? Yeah, I think that whether you're single, couple, divorced or dating, understanding your attachment style and also the attachment style of the people that you're involved with can be really helpful. And the goal is to become more secure in your own attachment. And it's important to note that attachment style, it's on a spectrum. And so it also depends on what's going on in life, right? Before the pandemic, if you are living your best life, you're seeing your friends all the time, things are great. You might have an anxious attachment style, but it doesn't really come up. But then pandemic hits, you lose your job, you don't see your friends, suddenly the person that you're into moves across the country. And then you're like stage five clinger vibes, right? And so these understanding the labels can give you some insight on, okay, am I really going crazy? No, there's actually some reasoning why. And so I think for those who have more of an avoid an attachment style, yes, you can become more secure. And I think one of the things is, if you're an avoidant, you might be drawn to someone who has more anxious tendencies. And so usually the push-pull is you want a bit more space and autonomy, they want a little more connection and more time. And it's not that anyone's at fault. And so part of your role is learning how to communicate those boundaries and limits instead of avoiding them. They're like, you know what, I'm just gonna talk about it until you explode. Because that's a tendency, if you don't learn at a young age of when you feel that uncomfortable emotion, when you feel that smothering from a parent, whatever that is, instead of having the voice to be able to say that and we weren't equipped with those tools back then, you now have to actually repair it yourself and how can you communicate like a functional adult? So I think that's the very first thing. I'm dating someone who is secure but has avoided tendencies, I'm secure with anxious tendencies. And it's harder for him to communicate to me his needs for independence and autonomy. And so I'll usually bring it up and I'll create suggestions like, okay, why don't we have one day where it's completely independent, where we eat separately, you listen to your podcast, you do your thing, let's start from there. How does that feel? And it's really worked well because I don't take it personally now when he needs space and I don't react with anger and daggers when he expresses that he needs space because it's not a personal dig. But if I didn't do that work to kind of heal my attachment wound, I probably would freak out anytime he communicated his needs to me. Absolutely, and I think having that openness of communication sometimes has to be compelled from your partner or you compelling your partner allows both of you to feel more confident and comfortable in the relationship as it stands because many of us wait to communicate those things when there's problems, when there's difficulties and then it tends to be an argument, it tends to be more emotionally charged versus openly creating that space proactively actually builds a healthier relationship. Now you bring up an interesting point and I wanted to touch on this earlier. So there's no doubt that dating has become more challenging with COVID and many of us are feeling a little cramped in with shutdowns, lockdowns and everything else. But one thing that we've heard from our clients as well is that family and friends are still pressuring us and expecting us to find the one to have successful romantic relationships. And even with the best intentions in mind, they're offering us unsolicited advice. They're telling us what they think should be a healthy relationship for us. So how can we draw a healthy boundary with our loved ones and our friends when we're doing the work on ourselves, when we're healing after a breakup and we're trying to get through the trauma that's going on in our own lives? Yeah, you know, our friends and family as much as they love us and they have good intentions they're generally not equipped to give advice and there's a lot of projection, right? So the idea that I know a lot of parents might have is the idea that a successful relationship is happily forever after. I do not think that that is a benchmark for a successful relationship. I have parents who don't believe in divorce. They've been together for over 40 years. It's a completely toxic, codependent relationship and that's considered successful, absolutely not. And so I think that it's up to us to start communicating and practicing building that muscle of stating our boundaries. And I would start small, right? You're not gonna go from not being able to communicate your boundaries and being afraid that you might get rejected or people won't like you as much to suddenly like this totally confident, like everything you want, you're gonna go get sort of a thing. So start small. And so that first request could be like, hey, right now I'm grieving, do you mind? I don't wanna hear any negative things about my ex. It just really hurts me. You can start with small asks, right? Or maybe it's like, hey, you know, I don't need five phone calls a day, maybe just one check-in, start small. But I think ultimately you wanna work up to a conversation where you set the tones of what holding space for you means. Support to me is, you know, I don't need advice right now. Sometimes I'm just going to need to vent. Are you okay to being that person I call and can you just listen without judgment so I could feel safe and seen? That's all I need. And ask permission because maybe they're not equipped to you and they're like, I don't wanna do that. I think that's also respecting the boundaries of other people is also part of this game if you want people to respect your own boundaries. And I think, again, having that conversation, it's, I think sometimes people trauma bond and they bond on pain. So it's like, what an asshole, what a like, whatever. Tell them, don't do that. Adds to the emotional charge and it doesn't make you feel better. Amy, I'm kind of curious. You said something there that sparked my curiosity. So you were mentioning about your parents, their relationship and being somebody who helps people get over their breakups and understands this science and you're looking at their relationship through this lens and you use some terms that you would explain it. However, I wanna push back a bit. I wanna get your thoughts on this idea of a couple that does not believe in divorce in a very traditional relationship that have managed to keep it on for as long as they have. There has to be some understanding, some compromise and some tactics and building that relationship that allows them, which may not look successful in your view but successful in their view because of there is no divorce. There is no other option. The option is we make this work and we will do that whatever means it takes but we will figure it out. So your thoughts there? Yeah, Johnny, I think you make a really great point. I don't think that I am the ultimate judge of what is a successful relationship and what's not. And I think that we all have our different definitions. For my parents who grew up with different values than I did, they were immigrants. They really struggled to survive to put a roof on top of our heads. They grew up in a generation where self-care was not a part of their vocabulary. I live in a totally different generation because of what they had to do to put a roof over our heads to get us education. I actually have the privilege and the luxury to double down on my self-care and make sure I meditate and all of these amazing things. So yeah, I think that should you stay or should you go? That is a big question. And I think it's a very personal one, right? For my parents, my advice probably doesn't apply to them because they value being together and honoring commitment before anything else. And so if that's your value, okay, if you're not hurting each other, if you're not hurting yourself, sure, stay. And for other people who don't have that as much of a value, then you have to ask yourself the questions of, is this a life that I want? Yeah, and I think if it works for you and your values and what you want out of a relationship, that's all that ultimately matters. And I think so many of us get tied up in other people's relationships and what our views of them, we don't spend enough time thinking about the most important relationship which is the one with ourselves. And I wanna talk about this because I know this is a pattern in my own life where go through a breakup, whether I break up with someone or was broken up with and I would find myself jumping into another relationship. And I would find myself in this pattern where I'm not recognizing flaws in my new partner, I'm just so supercharged by that honeymoon phase. And of course, my friends would say, hey, these are red flags, why are you not paying attention to them? So how can we recognize red flags with new potential partners and take some learnings from our past relationship, especially if we have a tendency to just rush into the next opportunity? Yeah, so I think there's two parts to this. First is the rushing into something as a reaction to the pain, right? That is a learned coping mechanism of how to deal with those uncomfortable emotions. I, in my work, I see this a lot more in men than I do within women. And I think that this has a lot to do with how we're socialized. And so what I see is this tendency in men to more avoid dealing with whatever that pain is and distract by going to the dating app and getting into something else, right? This feels horrible here. I'm gonna get some fresh dopamine to make me feel good again. Unfortunately, what I've also seen is the pain, it doesn't just go away magically, it stays there. And that's where we carry that baggage with us. And there's some sort of an explosion, whether it's in that relationship or it catches up to you later, and then there's regrets about the last relationship. So there's that part. And I think first is recognizing how are you dealing with your emotions? Are you shoving them down? Or are you giving it space and respect to process them? And then because the only way you can become more emotionally intelligent is if you actually start to deal with those emotions. And then the second part of what you're asking is how do we recognize those red flags? And one thing that you can do is I would actually just get out your journal and look at the last three people that you dated and write down what were the main emotional experiences that came up? What were the main emotions? Was it anxiety? Was it fun? Was it pleasure? Whatever it is. And then look at that and circle anything that is common, right? And it doesn't mean it's all negative, but look at the emotions that aren't serving you and the ones that might not be healthy. And so that is going to show you okay, it's not just the people. There's an emotional experience that you subconsciously might be recreating because there's something called Attractions of Deprivation. And this is our tendency to actually choose people as adults that can wound us in a very similar way to how we're wounded as children. Our psyche actually tries to recreate the scenario of the crime in an attempt to change its ending. And so, for example, I'll use myself. I didn't get much attention from my father growing up. I was always fifth on the priority list. And then I grew up to date partners who were very unavailable. And I was 10th on the priority list. And so, without awareness, I was like, oh no, there's no pattern here. This person looks totally different. One's a DJ, one's a CEO, like totally different. But the emotional experience was exactly the same. And so it wasn't until I started to recognize that I had a starting point to start shifting that pattern. I think many of us don't take the time to think about their emotional responses in past partners and in relationships. We think about the experiences. We think about moments in time and shared memories, but we're not often paying attention to the emotional response, especially when we're meeting someone new and starting a relationship. And I know for myself that pattern of it happening over and over again, you mentioned this word baggage. And I think at times it's a loaded term and many of us throw it around at others, but we don't realize the baggage that we're bringing into the relationship. So when you talk about baggage from our perspective of what we are bringing into the relationship, let's unpack that for the audience. So we understand, so we could better assess how to be a better partner and improve on our past relationships. Yeah, so if you, if you also paint a picture of visualization, let's look at you as a child and you have this kind of sack like Santa Claus has, right? And then that first time, maybe your mom was late picking you up from school. And then in grade one, you wanna hang out with the cool kids and they wouldn't let you, right? Then you're kind of lodging in these beliefs into that bag of like, oh, I'm not enough. Oh, I'm gonna get rejected. Oh, I can't depend on anyone, right? And what happens is from zero to seven years old, your brain is like a sponge. You actually don't have the cognitive ability to discern what's happening and make these understand like, oh, it's not because my mom doesn't love me that she was late, it's because so-and-so happened, right? But you internalize everything like it's something about you. And then you grow up and you actually forget about the actual scenes of what caused these memories and beliefs to lodge in. And then you go into high school and you start dating and then say your first love cheats on you, right? Then you make a generalization. I can't trust so-and-so, right? That gets put into the bag, right? You keep going through relationships and through life and you don't clear out the baggage. You don't take the time to process what's gone on, to look at the pain, the experiences, the patterns and you just keep carrying this with you and you carry this bag of shit with you from relationship to relationship to relationship. And I think one of the ways to understand are you carrying your baggage is look at how you're triggered, right? Because when you are triggered, when you're having a big reaction to something, maybe your partner didn't text you back right away or maybe your partner is asking for more romantic gestures and you have a very big reaction that's disproportionate to the actual trigger. That is a tell-tale sign that there's a wound there that hasn't been healed and this person's just brushing up against it. And our partners, our mirrors for us, we subconsciously choose people that can actually help us heal these wounds. And so these are opportunities for us to interrupt that cycle of reaction to start clearing that baggage. I love that metaphor that our partner mirrors for us to see this in ourselves. Because again, in those situations, many of us let the emotions override and we don't allow ourselves to logically unpack what that underlying belief is and where it came from. And you mentioned journaling earlier, Johnny and I are huge fans of journaling to process thoughts and emotions, to diffuse from them so they don't rule our lives. Do you have particular journaling prompts that you give your clients to heal when it comes to breakups and some of this baggage that they might be carrying with them? Yeah, one really great thing, and I'm sure you could do this already, is just free flow writing. And so this is really great, especially when you're in a rumination cycle or when you're caught in shards, like I should have done that, that relationship should have been this. You gotta clear out that gunk that's just floating around in your subconscious. And so set a timer, 15 to 20 minutes is great. This is a great thing to do actually in the morning and you put your pen to paper and you don't stop. You don't try to edit it, you don't try to make it pretty, you just keep writing. And you'll actually find that it unloads some of that stuff that you might've thought was really big, but actually it isn't once you get it out on paper. And I think it can actually help you reflect on what's actually going on. Another prompt that we have, and this is really to help people deal with shame, is the truth I've been hiding is, and you just write. One of the exercises that we do at the breakup bootcamp, this is done on a Sunday with the dominatrix, we deal with shame a lot and how many of us grow up with these ideas of how we're supposed to be. There's the person that our parents expected us, society, our friends. And we kind of act, we start acting and we don't even know that we're acting. And we have these stories, maybe it was that breakup, maybe it was that time you got rejected. And we're so afraid of these stories. They're so shameful that we hide them. And so what we do is we have these people journal that and then we have them share it with one person and usually like, what? Oh my God, I didn't know it was gonna do that. But they do it and for the first time, some of these people share something that they've been just trying to hide and they are in a safe container where the other person receives them in a loving non-judgmental way. And it just kind of eases that shame a bit. It takes away some of its power because that's how we actually can help make that shame smaller and smaller is by shining light on it. It's by sharing it with people that we trust that we know will not reject us. Amy, so I wanna get into a bit of the process and the ideas behind the boot camp. And there are so many things I wanna explore there. But before we get into that, I wanna, there was a science bit that you had put in the book. And I think this deserves to be talked about before we get into the boot camp, which is that being in a relationship, there's so many emotions going on and it's almost as if we're getting accustomed to a drug. And then with the dopamine and everything else that you get from that relationship and the chemicals, there is a shift now that you've broken up where you're not getting some of the emotions, some of the feelings that you were in that relationship. And you have to do this cold turkey. There's no weaning off, there's no process in which you de-relationship yourself or perhaps that's in your book or in your boot camp that we'll get to, but you're not getting that person anymore and you're now left standing there with a whole bunch of questions. So perhaps you could set us up with the addiction and the cold turkey. Yeah, so something to understand is that when you're in a relationship with someone, you have neural pathways that have been wired together. After a breakup, even on a cognitive level, you know that the relationship is over. Your body and your brain is in a state of shock. It's used to getting dopamine, like you said, Johnny and oxytocin and all these feel good chemicals from this person. And so what happens is if you don't cut it off to cold turkey and I recommend a minimum of 60 days and then you check in with yourself. And I mean, no contacting them, no looking at their IG feed with your Finsta, none of that. If you don't do that and you contact them and maybe you contact them and you know it's gonna get into a fight, you're still getting a charge. You're still getting hit of endorphins. So you really have to think of your ex like they're your drug dealer. And you are only gonna keep strengthening those old neural pathways if you don't cut it off. Now, if you do cut it off, you allow new neural pathways to start to develop and those start to become stronger, the old ones start to weaken. And so, you know, I asked people after when they're, when they go in a breakup, I tell them to draw a circle and in that circle to divide it into slices of pie. And how big of the slice of pie was devoted to the relationship, the we. And sometimes it's, you know, 60, 70, 80% depending if they were more in a co-dependent relationship. Now, after a breakup, if you don't get strategic and proactive and set up systems to fill up that 60, 70, 80% with activities and things that are gonna light you up and give you those feel good chemicals, the dopamine, endorphins, et cetera, what are you going to do? You're gonna fill it up with thoughts of your ex and that's gonna make the craving even stronger. And something to know is like when we go through that craving, we think that it's gonna last forever. And when we think that we're like, oh my God, I'm just gonna reach out. But research shows and from what I've seen, it's around 20 to 30 minutes where the intensity of that craving and that sense of withdrawal kind of hits its peak and it starts to subside. So if you can find something and create a list of things you can do, the moment you start feeling that, you know, oh my gosh, you know, you're feeling distract yourself with an activity, going for a run, doing a state change is super helpful. Then you'll actually make it easier and easier for you to resist the temptation. Well, one of the thoughts that I see a lot of guys go through after a breakup is, well, listen, we decided it wasn't working out, but she kind of wants to see each other maybe once a week as friends and maybe we can hang out. And hey, maybe it'll turn into a cool friends with benefits relationship, which I'd see all of us shaking our heads at this like, no, don't do it because it never works out in that manner. And if you think it is, you're lying to yourself and it only gets worse. Could you speak to why we're always trying to make this idea work? Yeah, and I get it, right? After a breakup, whether you're the one doing the breaking up or the one that's been broken up with, we crave comfort and especially right now in a pandemic, we don't have other means of getting that comfort. So we wanna reach out to the ex to kind of fill that void. And the thing is, you need that period of time and that space for your relationship to transition from intimate to whatever it's going to be. It doesn't mean that your ex was a terrible person and you have to be super aggressive and terrible to them to cut off contact, but there needs to be a period of time where you allow yourself to heal, where you allow those old neural pathways to print away. And then when there isn't that emotional charge, when that person, your ex can walk into a room with a new person and you wouldn't feel animosity, you wouldn't feel any charge towards them, at that point, you are ready to decide how you want that new relationship chapter to be. Well, I know many of us who are doing that visualization of drawing the circle and are maybe at the 60, 70, 80, 90% where we moved in together, we cohabitated, our lives and our friendships are so intertwined, we can literally feel completely lost and not even know who we are or what sparks joy or what could give us that charge. The only thing we know is our ex and the life that we had. If you're in that situation, are there journal prompts or self-expiration that you can do to tap back into those things that maybe before that relationship gave you that spark? How do we find that if we're totally lost in a breakup? Yeah, so I think that number one is you wanna start a ritual. And so I would do a morning and an evening ritual. The reason why this is important is after a breakup you feel like your entire world is in a disarray. And a ritual is something that you can count on every single day that you have a sense of control over because you might feel like you have no control because your emotions are taking you for a ride when you're in the throes of the pain. So having that consistency in the schedule is going to be helpful for you to create some normalcy and balance. And in that you can do whether it's morning journaling or evening journaling, one thing is very important is to start a gratitude exercise. And this isn't just for positive motivational quote, we've actually done studies that show gratitude journaling for 20 days in a row can actually start to change your brain. So it actually changes your ability to see things for the positive and see things that you're grateful for versus this negative spiral of depression. And what you wanna do is write three things you're grateful for and why and when you write it down, try to associate with it. So maybe it's that barista that was just really friendly and just try to think about that moment where you're like, wow, I felt this stranger cared about me and that was really nice and feel those emotions. The more you associate into those feel good feelings of gratitude, the more powerful it's going to be. And we have people do this after the breakup bootcamp where they have an accountability partner and they actually have to take a photo of their gratitude journaling and send it to make sure that they're doing it. And every single time that people are like, wow, like day 10, they start feeling better. Like, I don't know what it is, I'm starting to feel better. And I think that there's other things that you have to look at, like what are you doing for self-care? Meditation is huge. Now we have the science to prove it's not so woo-woo thing. It actually helps you build gray matter. It helps you pause before you are so reactive. Exercising is a must, right? Because when you exercise, you get endorphins. Those are the feel good chemicals. And so I think, look at what your needs that you used to get met in your relationship, right? I know we're in a pandemic right now, so it's harder, but physical touch. Getting a Swedish massage, they've actually done studies that show that that actually helps you feel oxytocin. You can actually give yourself a hug and it actually tricks your body into creating those chemicals as if someone's hugging you. And so I think mapping it out of the different needs that you have and then adding some things in there. This is a great time to create what's called an empowering fantasy, a new thing you can get obsessed with. Maybe you write that book you've been writing to write. Become the best dancer you can be on from looking at YouTube videos. That's what I'm doing right now. Channel that energy and focus into something that lights you up because otherwise you're gonna keep obsessing about your ex. And we've seen, even in our clients, sometimes that obsession leads to them not able to move on and see the great options in front of them. And I know as Ease even talks about this in modern romance that we now have more options than ever and we've talked about this on the show, our grandparents and our parents were pretty limited to location and who you went to school with to find that partner. But now we can turn on a app, we can go down the street, well, after the pandemic to a bar and see countless strangers and countless opportunities which then leads to the paradox of choice. And it makes it very difficult for us to really commit to any one person while we're still pining over all those great dopamine feelings from our ex. So how can we, if we are someone who now has many options actually start choosing the right person for us? Yeah, that's a great question. I think one thing is to get clear on your values. For a relationship to have the foundation for it to sustain and develop and grow, I believe that there's three key ingredients. One is chemistry, one is compatibility which is your values and one is vision. I'm sorry, vision is with compatibility. The third is timing. And so you can't have just chemistry and not the others. You can't just have compatibility and no chemistry. And so it's a delicate kind of alchemy. And often I think we prioritize chemistry way too high that it causes us to make some really bad decisions. And I get it when you're in your teens and early 20s like that's what it's for, right? You just follow the testosterone and the chemicals and you make these mistakes. But you have to shift your dating strategy per stage you're at, right? If you're in your 30s or 40s and you maybe wanna start a family, are you still using the same dating strategy as you're using in your 20s? Like does that make sense, right? But a lot of us don't stop to actually assess. Like what is it that I want, right? Because it's probably changed. It's not just about adventure and quick sex. Now it's like, okay, I want to build partnership. What are the ingredients that are important? And values is extremely important. And I'm not saying date someone that you have zero chemistry with, but chemistry is a tricky thing because your brain might not cognitively recognize something as romantic chemistry right away. And yes, I find this more so true for women than it is for men. But it happens for men too. I've had multiple friends, especially during the pandemic who've realized that they're in love with their best friend. And suddenly the less sparked now, right? So I think that getting clear on what your values are, I do an exercise that's in the book and at the breakup boot camp is actually writing down your top 10 values and then rating yourself on that to give yourself also a realistic idea, right? If you're like one of your values is, I don't know, fitness and you do not take care of your body, you eat like shit, you don't exercise. Like, okay, you score zero on that. So just be aware that you're scoring zero and you want a 10, right? After you do this assessment of values for yourself, look at the last three people you dated and you rate them. And that's gonna give you an idea. Like are the people that you've dated close to where your number is in values? Is it going down? Is it going up? And that can just give you an idea the next time you meet someone and you're like 10 out of 10 attraction. Is it really, you know, because it's a good partner or is it your subconsciously, your radar is like, oh, this person can boo me just like I was wounded in the past and it's familiar, which is why I'm drawn to this person. Yeah, I think we've seen it in our clients as well. Many of us rush into the app not thinking about what we want in another person or a partner or in a relationship and certainly not clear on our own ratings on these things. We often want and have higher expectations of our partners without that self-awareness of where we are in this equation and what we're bringing to the table. So I really love that exercise. I think we'd love to just walk through the boot camp experience for our audience. I know Johnny and I are fascinated by what goes on in the breakup boot camp. Yeah, so I have now virtual breakup boot camps with the physical retreats, basically it's four days. And Friday is really about dealing with the emotional charge, the anxiety, how to deal with those emotions and the stuff from the past. So we bring in Trish Burlis who is an anxiety expert who teaches like these are the tools when you're feeling panic, when you're feeling anxiety. So, and those are tools that you're gonna use for the rest of your life. It's not just about relationships. We then bring in a love addiction coach who shows us and she takes us through a quiz where she reads out these things and if you identify you kind of like you mark yes and the room goes silent because they're like, oh my God, that's me, that's me, that's me, that's me. And what we recognize is a lot of us are actually experiencing love addiction. We think that these ideas of love, intensity, drama, chaos, push and pull, fighting to get that person to love you, fixing the person. We have these ideas that that's love and it's absolutely not. So she kind of, she teaches us to differentiate what is actual love, what's love addiction and what's lust. Amy, I have a question there. Is that linked to this new phenomenon of limerence? Yes, totally, yeah. Limerence and love addiction is often used interchangeably. Yeah. Yes, we discussed that on the show and for those of you who have missed our relationship show a few weeks ago, that was the falling in love with the idea of falling in love and then chasing the new found love continuously with the help of these apps. Some even call it swipe life is the term. We're hearing it called. Yeah, the highs. And really one of the big questions that this coach, Nicole Boyer asks is what is your relationship to relationship? And I think that a lot of the storylines we are fed from fairy tales to what's popular now, right? There was Sex in the City. There was the Mr. Big idea where you could fix a man. Then right now it's a Bridgerton. I don't know if you've seen it, but 64 million people have binge watched it and it's about a guy who is completely avoidant, doesn't want kids and this woman kind of tricks him into marrying him and then suddenly he becomes a family man. It's absolutely insane. But these are the storylines that Romeo and Juliet, right? That we have these ideas of what love is. So anyway, we break all of that down on the Friday. And then on Saturday, we bring in the psychologist and behavioral scientist. And this is where we get deep into what are those core beliefs that are subconscious? And she takes everyone through an exercise where everyone gets into a really kind of deep meditative state. She reads out different statements and different beliefs from I'm not enough. I'm not worthy of love. I'm not worthy of what a whole list of them, and usually there's one that people right away will identify with. And then we teach them how to start shifting those beliefs by using a latter concept, meaning you don't go from I'm not worthy of love to suddenly the complete opposite, like everyone loves me, your brain will reject what it inherently doesn't think is true. And you need to actually shift that belief degree by degree by creating a new belief that's a little bit more helpful and a little bit more true. And once you kind of get comfortable in that new belief, then you can go up another rung and then another rung. We also pair up, when we get into the brain a lot, we also then pair it up with body exercises. That's when we'll bring in a doctor who actually goes through breath work exercises and helps people move emotion and trauma through the body. A lot of people have major breakthroughs at this. There's crazy amount of tears, a lot of realizations, a lot of things that have been stuck for years, if not decades, and they're able to release it. And then I'll talk that night on attachment style, why we get addicted to certain people, intermittent reinforcement, why the push and pull is so addictive. It's very much like slot machines, by the way, but that's a whole nother story. And then the day three is really like the fun, juicy stuff. If we bring in a sex educator and a tontra expert, we teach people how to actually create their own sensual practice, how to be their own turn on, how to explore the different parts of themselves sexually that they might have felt to, you know, that's shameful or I can't be like that or these ideas of who we think we need to be. And then we bring in a dominatrix who teaches on the psychology of power dynamics and the interplay of dominance and submission that are in all of our interactions and how we can actually create empowerment from within instead of actually having, you know, this kind of false sense of power. You also see this too, when people get hurt, they swing into an extreme and suddenly, I don't fucking need anyone. I'm strong, like, you know, screw up and there's a wall built around the heart. They kind of overcompensate trying to show that that's strong when that's got strength at all. It's a coping mechanism. And you know, Sunday it's really different. People look very different. And, you know, they come in fronty, like heads hanging low. And on Sunday they're like, what's my ex's name? Huh? You're right. This is not just about the ex. Like this is about me and all this stuff about me that I just brought in from relationship to relationship. So those are some of the things that we go through throughout the weekend. So I'm really curious about the power dynamics and bringing in the dominatrix on this day. What had led you to think that this would be a good place to explore that would be beneficial to somebody feeling whole again or working through any of the trauma or pain from a relationship? This sounds incredibly interesting. Yeah, it's like a dominatrix. What the hell? Well, what I noticed is the people who come to break up poo camp are generally very high achieving and very powerful in their lives. Sometimes they're, you know, CEOs. They start their own companies. They have great friends. But the one area that they feel completely powerless in is in their relationships. Powerless in their breakups. Powerless in the relationship. They lose themselves. And so I was like, what is going on here? You touched on this a little bit earlier. And, you know, Johnny and I have been working mainly with men. We started working with women recently and you were talking about some of the differences that men and women experience breakups with. Are there any other myths or misconceptions we have around how the two sexes process breakups and build healthy relationships? It might appear that men don't have it bad after a breakup because on the outside it looks like they moved on. And so from the woman's point of view, this is devastating because you're like, oh my gosh, like I'm like, I can't even get out of bed and this guy is drinking wine with this new, you know, hot girl. Right. And so, but again, like the pain just because it can be pushed down or distracted from doesn't mean that you're not feeling the pain. Right. Just the same as when I talked about the avoidantly attached person. It's not that the avoidantly attached person doesn't feel, you know, the pain or sorrow from disconnection. It's that they might not even know that they're feeling it, even though their body is having a full on stress response. So I think understanding that can help us have a bit more compassion that no, men aren't just like jerks that can just move forward like nothing has happened. I think that understanding that from a very young age, we have been socialized in different ways. And, you know, there's this thing called the skin knee effect where a boy falls and scrapes his knee and he's told to get up and be strong. Whereas when a girl falls and scrapes her knee, she's like, are you okay? Like it's, she has complete permission to grieve, to feel whatever she's feeling, which is why immediately after a breakup, women feel more permission to go and talk to people and have these conversations about how they're feeling and get the help whereas I think a lot of men just haven't been socialized that way. And there's still stigma that there's something wrong if they feel the emotions, if they talk about it, if they seek help about it. But I think that's starting to change and that makes me super happy to see. Amy, in the book you mentioned that when they're, the ladies are coming in for boot camp, you make it known and you're very pronounced that this is not going to be a bitch fest. This is going to be a learning opportunity for you. Do you find yourself throughout the weekend going, hey, I told you we're not going to be discussing those things and you ladies need to chill out or is there a certain opportunity where maybe some of that will be explored so that you can focus on the task at hand and the ladies learning about themselves throughout for the rest of the weekend? You know, there are pretty much go by the rules because they're also on their agenda. There's rules that's printed out on the very top. So one is no vilifying your ex. Number two is no offering unsolicited advice. So what we tell them is like, you know, there's tons of people that's gonna give unsolicited advice. They're coming to a boot camp and they're paying for the best experts. Let us give the advice. You can share your own experiences but don't tell someone else how to do something and leave it up to us. Yeah, I think that's important. Everyone wants to fix others instead of working on themselves, especially in an experience like that. We love asking all of our guests what their ex factor is. What's the mindset or skill set that's made them successful? And I know you talk a lot about limiting beliefs and how important they are. What is your ex factor, the key to your success? I think it's resilience. Whatever, you know, cards have been handed to me. Whenever I've been rejected or told no, I have been able to take that. And you know, it doesn't mean that I don't get hurt but I'm eventually able to take that and use that as a catalyst to help me create stuff. I channel my anger. I channel the rejection. I channel the feelings of feeling sad. And after I process it, I'm like, okay, let me create something. And you know, how can I use this to help someone else? And that's really been my saving grace. And being of service to these men and women who are healing their broken hearts, it's tremendous. Thank you so much for joining us Amy. Where can our listeners find out more about you and these boot camps? Yeah, so renewbreakupbootcamp.com. I'm on Instagram at Ms. Amy Chan in my book, Break Up Boot Camp, The Science of Rewind Your Heart is at all bookstores. Awesome, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.