If you’ve ever heard of the crappy childhood fairy then you are in for a treat. I had the pleasure of interviewing Anna Runkle who is the founder of the very popular YouTube channel,

We talked about all kinds of amazing things,

• Intro to the crappy childhood fairy. 0:03
• Complex post-traumatic stress disorder. 3:28
• What Is abandonment? Melange? 7:54
• How to deal with emotional flashbacks? 11:13
• Rec repetition compulsion and repetition compulsion. 15:59
• Dealing with the fantasy element. 23:01
• What does limerence feed off of? 25:53
• Twin flame and codependency. 31:04
• The importance of telling your story. 33:32
• How she changed her approach to dating. 38:45
• Dating a man who met her. 41:45
• The difference between value and value in relationships. 46:47

Important Links Mentioned In The Episode

• The Crappy Childhood Fairy YouTube Channel
• Crappy Childhood Fairy Website
• Buy Her Course On CPTSD
• Take Advantage Of Her Free Tool On Daily Practice

Interview Transcript

Chris Seiter 00:03
Today we’re gonna be interviewing Anna Runkle, who has perhaps one of the most clever names or monikers she’s known as the crappy childhood fairy. So if you’re not familiar, she literally runs this YouTube channel called the crappy childhood fairy that has over half a million subscribers. So I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this, there’s so much I want to ask you. But perhaps we can start a little bit by giving me the origin story about how this all came to be.

Anna 00:36
Where I’m, my channel has so much to do with relationships. That’s why I’m really excited to be talking to you. And I think we talk about a lot of the same things. And I talk about it from the angle of people, mostly women, who went through abuse and neglect as kids, which really affects the way we have relationships. And I learned about this through the school of hard knocks, I grew up in a commune with a drug addict, alcoholic mom. And a lot of the stuff that just goes with that with having a alcoholic family, the like cars in the yard and poverty and you know, nobody really looking out for you and nobody supervising. And so I had really common symptoms for kids who grew up that way. But when I was growing up, and even as even 10 years ago, people didn’t really know a lot about this. They knew that kids who had a rough childhood were prone to depression and anxiety. But gradually, the research has been coming out that there’s so much more to it, that there’s a neurological injury that can happen when kids aren’t taking care of properly, when especially the emotional neglect, like we know that physical abuse and sexual abuse are horribly harmful. But there’s this specific thing that happens in all of this. And especially with the emotional neglect, where there’s a the there’s a glitch in the neurological development, and actually connecting with people, you know, and this is where it really does affect romantic relationships to connecting with people feeling a sense of calm in your body, instead of like too agitated, or just completely bla, all of that stuff gets thrown off, it also throws off your immune system, your hormones, your, your heart, your lungs. And so gradually, it’s coming out that chronic chronic disease, the risk of it goes way up, if you were traumatized as a kid. So there’s a lot of research going on on this. And it’s sort of all over the place. And a lot of people say, Oh, I’m trauma informed. But I always say, you know, this is a really emerging science. And so what what I really recommend for people who have been through trauma and feel like it’s affected them, is to really be in charge to be their own researcher and to be sovereign over their own healing. And if they’re trying something that doesn’t seem to work for them, or they don’t feel like the big problem in their life is getting recognized. That’s how I used to feel, it might be time to find a different approach a different therapist or a different approach. So I’m not a therapist, I’m somebody who didn’t benefit from talk therapy. As it turns out, I thought there was something wrong with me. And it turns out, that’s a really normal thing for many people who are traumatized as kids that talking about it kind of makes it worse. And so there’s ways that you can process your feelings and your memories, and then get on with changing your life. And that’s the most important thing is changing your life.

Chris Seiter 03:28
So what was interesting is when I was going through your website, specifically, there were two things that stuck out to me. I’m just going to kind of follow my my intuition here. So the first thing I did when I’m with your website is I’m looking at you know, like the little sidebar or whatever, and it has this term called CPTSD, which I believe is complex, post traumatic stress disorder. But I started reading a little bit it seems like you kind of created your own childhood Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, do you want to talk

Anna 04:05
about PTSD, it’s sort of a colloquial, colloquial term. Everybody understands what I mean when I say childhood, PTSD, PTSD, we know what that is. So from childhood, that makes sense. And technically what it’s called is complex PTSD, and which is not only from childhood, but it’s the kind of PTSD that you get, which has it has a slightly different set of symptoms from say, straight up PTSD, which might be a combat veteran who went through this very bad couple of days, you know, or somebody who had a card car accident. Complex PTSD comes from chronic ongoing exposure to stress when it goes on all the time, like trauma is going to influence your body, your brain, your memories, all that stuff. When it goes on all the time, it starts to kind of get in there and affect how you develop. And so it has a slightly different set of symptoms. And a lot of people are walking around with it right now.

Chris Seiter 05:00
Yeah, so I actually think this is completely relevant to our audience. Because one of the things that I research a lot is breakups, right? And breakups can be quite traumatic. And what’s interesting neurologically or neuro chemically is that cortisol shoots way up. You know, cortisol is a stress hormone. But, you know, on average, if you get stressed throughout the day, it should take around three to four hours for your cortisol to kind of come down to normal, but to your point like this, this constant complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, if you’re engaging in activities, or you’re obsessing about your ex, you’re looking on social media, and today’s day and age does not make it any easier. Cortisol has a tendency to stay elevated. And if it stays elevated for a long period of time, it can take as long as six months for it to level out. So I think even the science is backing up what what you’re saying here? How do you think, oh, sorry, you go ahead,

Anna 06:00
I was just gonna say there’s a real disadvantage for somebody who was going through all that cortisol and a lack of like mirroring and touch and everything when they were little kids. And so already, there’s a, you know, that’s what that’s where the neurological dysregulation stems from, is, you know, you know, mirror neurons, I’m not a neurologist, but mirror neurons, they develop in response to, you know, meaningful connection with your mom with your caregiver. And if you were neglected, there’s part of your brain that can’t develop. And it might, you know, some of the symptoms of C PTSD, in some ways look like autism, it’s not autism, it’s a very different cause. And, but there’s some symptoms in common. And it might, it would be like difficulty connecting. And so that anxious attachment that you teach people about so much, so often goes along with neglect from childhood. And it’s not just psychological, it’s neurological.

Chris Seiter 06:57
So a lot of times when we’re looking at the attachment styles, specifically, the anxious attachment styles, I try to give people like the Cliff Notes version, like I try not to overwhelm them with too much. But one of the things I always harp on is this idea of core wounds. And specifically, the core wound of an anxious attachment style is someone who is terrified of being abandoned. But I guess what you’re arguing is that even you know, it’s all stemmed from childhood and the mirroring neurons and the lack of it,

Anna 07:27
well, not all of it, but it’s, you know, it sets you up your brain is developing your body and brain and, you know, intrinsic, we can’t develop in a vacuum, we develop in the arms of the people who love us, and through their talking with us and working with us and guiding us. And so like the way I grew up, for example, my mom, when I was a month old, she just took off with some new boyfriend, and my dad was stuck by himself. And he was working and he had to hire somebody to come in. And I don’t remember any of this. But this happened again and again. And it starts to explain a lot of stuff that I struggled with later, which is extremely anxious attachment, horrible abandonment wounds. What Pete Walker calls abandonment Melange, which is kind of like a special intense emotional cocktail, that not everybody gets. When you know, when abandonment occurs, when the end of a relationship occurs, even thinking about ending a relationship with somebody I couldn’t stand would like, set me off, and then I wouldn’t do it. So the the attachment with the insecure attachment kind of drives people who would that childhood trauma, it can drive, it’s this is nothing is across the board. But it’s a very common trait, to go rushing into relationships, sleep together real fast, how that whole bonding thing happened, you know, and then like two days into the whole thing, you’re just like, Oh, my God, what am I done? I don’t even like this person. But the abandonment wound is there to go, but don’t you leave because if you leave, you’re gonna get thrown into the worst depression that you’ve ever known. And so people are like, held hostage by these emotions that are at the beginning driven by this neurological dysregulation. So the approach I teach is first to recognize which part of all this trouble is the neurology and the neurological injury. And I only you know, this science is pretty new. It came out about 10 years ago, and there was a word for it dysregulation and the name Complex PTSD, it’s pretty recent that this stuff has had names. And I read the books that came out pretty early. And it was the hugest thing, and I had just gotten married for the second time. And I was going through a lot of upheaval and roller coaster with him, you know, in the first year of marriage, and then this information came out and I found out the name for what’s wrong with me and for me, because I’ve worked hard on myself for decades. I’ve been in Al Anon for 25 years. That’s the 12 step program for families of alcoholics which I certainly qualify. My you know, most of my family was alcoholic AND, and OR drug addicted. And I was going there and I, I mean, I really worked on my Self and I had written self help books, but I just really struggled around relationships in ways that made no sense. Like, I was a nice girl like me having problems at this level. And my husband, he’s, he’s a really good guy, I did not want to screw it up. But I realized, like, if I couldn’t figure out what was really wrong with me, I was gonna blow it in this relationship. And I and I looked at these books, and when I read them, I mean, I just about my, my jaw hit the floor, when I found out it’s called dysregulation. And I knew like, that is exactly what I have. No one had ever described it before. And it’s part of complex PTSD. And I, I remember, I just was like, Honey, honey, I gotta tell you this. And at the time, he was like, this, just you know, I don’t trust this, this doesn’t set. You know, this just sounds like one of your excuses. But luckily, he gave me time to figure it out. And I was able to radically improve, I had healed a lot from my childhood, but I had these crucial wounds around relationships, where I would kind of, like if something made me feel upset, I would just, I would be too mean, I would sort of pop off on him. And I would say things I didn’t mean, and it’s called emotional dysregulation. See, PTSD isn’t the only thing that has it. But it’s really common. There’s, it’s it’s a neurological thing when you take a kid who was intensely stressed a person, an adult who was intensely stressed as a kid, and you get them thinking about something stressful, like an argument with the spouse. Left brain, which is reasoning just starts to go dim and right brain, which is emotions just starts lighting up all over the place, which is exactly what it feels like. So in my mind and argument, it’s sort of like a switch flips, and it just seems much worse than it is. And then I’m saying things like, well, obviously, you don’t love me, and obviously, I shouldn’t be here anymore. And I go pack my suitcase. It was like some sort of coping mechanism. And once I had a name for it, I was able to completely stop all that. I just, I was like, Oh, it’s a thing. And I read a really good book by this guy, Pete Walker, see PTSD from surviving to thriving. And he said, This is an emotional flashback. And when it’s happening, the first thing you do is say, Oh, I’m having an emotional flashback. And he gives some steps of what to do. And I’ve sort of added some of my own over the years. But the first thing I do is stop trying to make pronouncements about what what’s wrong right now, or whose fault it is or what we’re going to do about it just stop and get reregulated. And then you can work out so much. And it was just utterly life changing. And so I started to make videos about it. And that’s the origin story is I began I found something that just was so revolutionary, and it built on and I’ll tell you about this in a minute. But it started 30 years ago, I learned some techniques that are very reregulating, I just didn’t know, I didn’t have a framework for like, why does this helped me so much? And therefore, why should I make sure I keep doing it every day, I would sort of do it when I felt like I needed it. And so now I do it twice a day, and I can stay it helps me just stay it’s like WD 40 For all your problems, you know, just loosens them up so you can start changing that what needs to be changed, release what needs to be released. And I teach that free. I’ll give you a link to that to share with your listeners.

Chris Seiter 13:15
Is that the daily practice that? Yeah, do you? Do you mind talking a little bit about like, what’s part of that daily practice?

Anna 13:24
Yeah, um, so I had sort of like hit rock bottom. I somebody. There was this time where everything went bad at the same time. I call it a trauma storm. But I got attacked on the street. This is 30 years ago now. But I got attacked on the street. I was beaten unconscious, just like randomly by strangers.

Chris Seiter 13:43
That has to freak you out. Yeah, it freaked me out. I

Anna 13:46
had a head injury and my broken jaw broken teeth. And it gave me PTSD.

Chris Seiter 13:54
Let’s slow down here this Yeah, yes. So you’re just walking randomly down the street and someone just attacks you.

Anna 14:00
So I was on a first date with my friend had set me up with somebody. I liked him. I thought maybe, you know, I was trying to get over like a major heartbreak. I was it was like really hard year where the person I love the most had decided not to be with me. And and so I was on my first first date. And we were walking home from having coffee. And it was it was dark out. But it didn’t seem like I mean, it was the sort of thing that we did in that neighborhood all the time is walk home after dark from a cafe. And just out of the blue. These four guys jumped out of a car and beat us unconscious.

Chris Seiter 14:34
And I know where they tried to steal.

Anna 14:37
Like, it’s funny, that kind of hurt more because it wasn’t about money. It was it was

Chris Seiter 14:41
just like yeah, wow. Do they? Do you ever get any information if they caught these individuals or they just kind of

Anna 14:50
you ask I they know they never got busted for what they did to us. But we learned that this was happening all over I live in the San Francisco Bay Area you So we have our ups and downs here crime wise, and it was one of those bad years. And I guess for two years, people were getting beaten on the street randomly like this. And it was never reported in the news. And, yeah, and so but the the police told me that I was just like, am I the only person this has ever happened to? They’re like, No, sadly, it happens all the time. And they tried so hard to get the guys in later, I asked the Berkeley police, I said, did you ever get the guys who did that to me? They said, We didn’t get the guys who did it to you. But we, the whole thing stopped happening. Like it happened enough. And we caught enough people that it no longer was happening. So in the end, the net caught them. Yeah, but funnily enough, like my, like, the thing that I internalized about all that, like, I don’t really think about the people who didn’t much, you know, like, objectively and now I’m a mom, I just think all those poor screwed up, guys, they’re probably like, I don’t know, late teens, early 20s. And, you know, they, they’re, I’m sure they’re in prison now or dead. It’s just like, you can’t start life that way. It was probably a gang initiation, there was like graffiti on the sidewalk afterwards.

Chris Seiter 16:05
See, that makes sense? Like, I have a hard time believing it’s just a random thing. So like, if it’s a gang initiation, beating up some civilian or something, then yeah, some logic there just seems like, like to beat someone random. But anyways,

Anna 16:21
I know I digress. But in the, in the in what I thought about it, I can sort of, you know, I was such a brief encounter, and I was unconscious for most of it. But in a weird way, I was very in touch with myself and I had to wake myself up and scream and you know, something in me kind of kicked in. And this was a time when I was very depressed, my mom was dying, like in that two weeks later, she died. And I had my heart broken. And then this happened, and my medical care and my I was going to a therapist and state of California, like gives you all the money, you need to go to all the therapy you want when something like this happens. So but it wasn’t helping the thing that was wrong with me, it was beyond all of this. But I will say that a little bit getting in a weird way. I wouldn’t be doing what I do today, if this hadn’t happened. And I don’t wish it on anybody, including myself. But it was a pivotal moment, in my experience, because I had this very tenuous belief that I should be alive at the time I was really depressed. And so I think when you’re that depressed, sometimes when your life is threatened, it feels a little bit like, I don’t know, maybe it’d be better if they just take me. And I had to make that decision while I was out. And I it’s a weird kind of memory and hard to explain, but something and then we just was like, No, I do want to live, I definitely want to live. And I woke up and I screamed really loud, and they went away. And you know, it was very survivable. In this case, but the part that was hard. And so I wasn’t, I didn’t end up with like lingering fear about going out or anything, I had PTSD. And I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. What happened was, I had a really rough childhood, and I was somebody who did a very good job of like packaging it up, compartmentalizing it, putting it over here being very high functioning. But where it was really showing up was in my romantic relationships. So there were so many things I did, right. But there was this one thing that was like my Achilles heel, and I’d get into these relationships. And when they went bad, they went so very bad. And I was getting involved with worse and worse people, drug addicts, you know, chasing a married man, you know,

Chris Seiter 18:33
was it like a with the drug addicts? Was it something cute with your mom, like trying to recapture or

Anna 18:39
connect with that. So it’s, you know, it’s a bit of a mystery to me, because I would never consciously want somebody like my mom, she, you know, she was a pain. She was really incompetent and a mess and unreliable. So I wouldn’t want somebody like that I had a different idea of what I wanted. So there’s this thing that therapists call repetition compulsion, under the belief that we unconsciously pursue and repeat the trauma from the past maybe so we can work it out again. And in my typical fashion, I sometimes question these orthodoxies about why we do that, in my experience, in who, you know, I can’t really speak for my unconscious because I’m conscious, but it’s more like in the process of like meeting somebody and feeling attracted to them. And I talk about this a lot on YouTube, and so many people resonate so I know it’s not just me. It’s like this weird level of electric excitement comes that’s accompanied by this cloud of unknowing, and it makes you like a zombie. And here’s the thing, like, what’s so attractive about unavailable people? Is that you so little is required of you, it’s not going to work out. And you you can pop up into the realm of fantasy, which is a lot like fantasy. He is like, so exciting. And so if you can never really have the person, you can live in fantasy about it and pining away for them. Yeah. And, you know, I did you know, my dad, my parents were like, here and there and not always there and my dad died when I was a teenager. So sure, pining was part of it. But it’s not a recreation, it’s a weird, just like, I can’t cope with real intimacy. That’s kind of what my wound was, I can’t really cope with a real person. And it would stress me out quite a lot. Like a healthy person who liked me would just it would be it would feel like such a demand or kind of icky and just just weird and so I couldn’t really cope with it. And so there was this weird also, when you grow up in such a rough childhood, there’s a affinity that you have with other people who had it that bad. And a lot of people make a lot of people who grew up in a childhood as rough as mine, are drug addicts. So there was that affinity of like, yeah, I’ve never really been loved either. And I need to smoke cigarettes, for sure. And

Chris Seiter 21:02
well, I guess it’s like, it’s like someone who understands you. But yeah,

Anna 21:07
on this very primal level, you feel it. But it’s not really what you want. You don’t really want to be with an unavailable person alone on your birthday, as you want. And you don’t Yeah, and, and you don’t really want to be with somebody who’s, you know, nothing but trouble and somebody to be ashamed of, and you can’t introduce to your co workers or anything, what you want is just sort of those are the sorts of unintended consequences of seeking that comfort level. And trying not to get dysregulated. So that’s what I’ve noticed is this neurological dysregulation, when it kicks in, and it kicks in it can, when I say the word trigger, I don’t mean like the common Oh, I feel upset. I mean, a stimulus inside you are outside of you happens that triggers this neurological dysregulation. And there’s stuff it does to you that you can’t feel like hormone secretion. But there’s stuff that you can feel like, I feel clumsy, when I’m dysregulated I can’t find my words, I feel discombobulated, I might drive off from the gas station with the pump still in my car, and just flustered, my handwriting changes. So it’s dysregulation and just regular that’s the neurologic, your neurology governs not just your emotions, physic, there’s emotional dysregulation, and that’s other people can see that. Because you’re, you know, you’re throwing a tantrum, you’re very angry, whatever. But but these other aspects of it, like how it’s affecting your hormones, how it’s darkening part of your brain, how it’s how it’s changing your ability to feel your hands or to feel the consequences. That’s one of the things that research, that’s just one of the many things, a history of childhood trauma makes it very hard when you’re dysregulated. To assess, what are the consequences of what I’m saying and doing right now. You get very bad judgment, you normally have good judgment, but then you get very bad judgment. That’s where the bad boyfriends get in. You know, I feel attracted. I don’t see any I don’t see the problem. Right. The

Chris Seiter 23:01
chemistry is narrow, you see the problem, but

Anna 23:03
you can’t leave now.

Chris Seiter 23:06
Yeah, it’s interesting. I also really resonate with what you said about the fantasy element. So like, probably the one area of study that I feel like my team and I has done has been actually on the actual exes that a lot of our clients are trying to get back. And so we found that around 67% have dismissive avoidant tendencies. And one of the things that I always find really fascinating about dismissive avoidance is the fact that what usually works on them is giving them a lot of space so that they can fantasize about you. So you need to actually move on. And then as you move on, they’re like, Oh, now I feel comfortable enough to miss you. And it’s all that nostalgic reverie and that fantasy that you were talking about. Yeah, I was actually kind of curious to get your thoughts if you had any like wow that on that.

Anna 24:00
I’ve never heard that and it’s so intriguing to me that the dismissive avoidant that 67% are dismissive avoidant, I mean, I know the type so I like like the back of my hand. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 24:13
So that’s just our little our little shell of the world but I mean, yeah,

Anna 24:18
and the little drama plays out well what I’ve heard about this combination of insecure and dismissive avoidant is that it’s a very stable coupling really because no one will

Chris Seiter 24:27
it is so the only other coupling that stays together longer secure secure Yeah, but if you have anxious and avoidant together that’s the second longest but inevitably the flaw is there because like what what ends up happening when you have this coupling is the anxious person wants so badly not to screw things up that they inevitably just overcrowd the avoidant and the avoidant starts to avoid, I guess, and ultimately is the one that breaks up after a long period of time together and then And they actually go through the second honeymoon period on the breakup because they’re like, Oh, I got my independence back. This is great. And this is so hard for our clients to hear because it’s like, like, one of the questions I get all the time is like, is he thinking about me? Is he missing me? And I have to sit there and say, no, really happy to be away. But don’t worry, it will hit after that separation elation kind of wears off. But often, then you’ve moved on to someone else. And that’s why you see all these exes coming back. Like when you’re when you’re moved on and happy. It’s because they’re, like, romanticizing, and making you the Phantom X, you can finally

Anna 25:38
feel their love. Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, that makes a lot of sense. I’m very Yeah. Cool. Good one. Yes. Um, so I’ll tell you my take on that is a lot of content that I make is about limerence. Have you ever heard of this? Yeah, I

Chris Seiter 25:55
did an article. Like, months ago, I did an article limerence. And I did all like so much research on it. And then I hardly can remember what I wrote about it and older

Anna 26:09
feeling. I know the feeling why I do it a lot. And it’s a, you know, you take the feeling of falling in love that anybody would have, but then it just goes on and on and on. And it’s not matched to what’s going on. And it it turns into, like an obsession or infatuation that it is more like an addiction. And what limerence feeds off of is not having the person reciprocate the feelings. So if they reciprocate the feelings, you get together, you have a relationship, you deal with all the like, you know, toilet seats and toothpaste and all that stuff of relationships, right? And you’re not like, oh, magical, you know, yeah. It’s just a guy. And you You love him. But yeah, and so you don’t have a chance to ever develop that earthly love. And it’s all up in this fantasy realm. And I believe, I think, you know, a lot of research has been done about this sort of like neuro chemistry of that. There’s a genetic component, there’s chemistry, but I believe that comes from an attachment wound and I get it, you know, people write me letters, I answer letters on YouTube, and I just have hundreds and hundreds of letters that come in, and so many of them are from, it’s mostly women who write to me mostly women who I think men get I know men get it too. I’ve had men do it to me before but but it’s a they grew up in a family often with an alcoholic, almost always with just utter emotional neglect. And I think it’s a it’s an it’s an adaptation. It’s a survival technique of a child to go. That’s okay. Mom and Dad. I know you love me. I know that this you love me like normal parents do. And you develop this magical thinking, you know that? And, and it feels it’s like what you grew up feeding on? Is this magical love, like, yes, but it’s special and and in fact, when they’re in fact not there and they’re not giving you what a parent should and so you’re simultaneously handling the shame of being the kid who’s not picked up after daycare, you know, and and just rationalizing it all in your mind and it Prime’s you to tolerate neglect abuse, you know, dismissive avoidant partners it Prime’s you to take it and keep dancing around trying to fix it or trying to come up with ways that you could look at this that justify staying because leaving is impossible. You have this attachment wound, you can’t leave, you know. And so, a lot of what people do is they get into straw ology, the idea of twin flames. Tarot cards. I mean, people make a fortune. Oh,

Chris Seiter 28:45
yeah. Psychics Yeah, he used to run this Facebook group of all of our, of all of our people who had like, purchased our programs. And the one thing we learned really, really quickly was psychics would. So our clients, you know, they’re anxious individuals struggling with breakups. They pay a psychic, right? And then the psychic will tell them to go into the group and start promoting the psychic thing so we had we like create this rule like no law of attraction, no psychics, you know, I don’t think we’ve ever like clamped down on astrology too much. But you know, I’ve never really made any kind of articles or any, any research on it, because it’s, it’s,

Anna 29:31
well, like, Can I use the same way to just tell people what they want to hear? Yeah. And charge money for it? Yeah, psychics people get hooked into that. And there’s a lot of when I you know, like YouTube shows me like, where are most of my new subscribers coming from?

Chris Seiter 29:47
Oh, do you also get the spam comments from doctor so like, I get like the spam comments for like spellcasters spellcasters.

Anna 29:55
Yes, yeah. Psilocybin. Yeah, yeah. Bitcoin Yeah, the whole thing. Yeah, we get that, but But I get a lot of sincere followers. They’re following me because I talk about limerence and attachment stuff, but they’re trying to like hold on to two worlds. Yeah, they’re like, Yeah, but the twin flame thing is real. And for anybody who doesn’t know, dear listeners know what that is. It’s a it’s a new age that a soul splits into and this person who you wish would come back to you is actually the other half of your soul. And they just don’t really. Yeah. And it’s, it’s like a form of psychological torture to just sort of hold on and be like, but I know they’re coming even if I have to wait till the next life. And, you know, people have often reminded me it’s like, well, any spiritual thing and for that matter, ideological thing can trap people in a magical belief system that are cults, right. religious cults, you know, it’s like, yeah, where you’re being abused. But actually, this is for your greatest spiritual good, so people can really get messed with especially traumatized people. Trauma really predisposes people to get mind controlled. Yeah. Yeah. I

Chris Seiter 31:05
mean, like, waited and look at there was like that HBO documentary on? Was it like, Nexium are something that are near guy? Yeah. But what was interesting about it was you got to see how really intelligent individuals could be essentially controlled. And yeah, yeah, but the twin flame thing, the thing I always think that’s unhealthy about it is it’s essentially making you believe in codependency. So, like, you need this other person to complete you. And it kind of like, makes you believe that instead of coming into as having an interdependent relationship, you’re coming at it with like, I need this other person. And that’s not necessarily the most healthy approach to any kind of

Anna 31:53
relationship. It gets so much worse. I mean, I had to get police involvement a guy thought I was the other half of his soul. Oh, and I it kept escalating like nothing I could say would make him go away. Yeah, I had to get the cops.

Chris Seiter 32:10
That’s frightening. Yeah, was that was come up here. But that was in the past. I’m assuming past in the past, not some crazy watcher of your YouTube channel, like showing up a little bit of that. Occasionally

Anna 32:21
people get limerence on me. Yeah. And somehow, there’s a form of limerence where people do it on friends, or they are a mother figure. And I think to some people, I’m a mother figure. Or, you know, it’s weird. I handle this very carefully. Because sometimes people are like, I just think if I could talk to you, I could heal. Yeah. And that’s a like, that’s a really like, careful line that I walk, because it’s like, well, I can’t talk to everybody, but I’ve made all these videos and courses for you. Right? My sincere hope is that you, you can use them. But there is, you know, there’s actually, there’s, it’s interesting, because I started doing live shows a couple of months ago, I just did one in London last weekend. And, and you know, there’s a lot of like, we hug and we talk and people are crying, there’s just coming together with other people with the same thing. And, you know, when you’re a YouTuber, it’s a, it’s almost like, television person or something. Like you really represent something to people. And so it becomes this intensely healing environment. And, you know, in a way, I think seeing each other in person corrects a lot of that, but I suppose it could go the other way. It corrects magical thinking, yeah, it’s gonna that it would be this or that. And one of the things I’m teaching people anyway is telling your story is not really the it’s not the end all be all of your healing. It’s, it’s really like what you do to change your dating patterns, either dating course dating and relationships for people, for people with childhood PTSD. And that’s where I teach some very tough love, you got to, you know, like, nobody’s coming to save you. It’s not men’s fault. It’s not society’s fault. It’s, you know, the people who abused you, when you’re a kid, it is their fault that you got wounded. But nobody’s going to come and fix this now, right rail against this or that all you want. But it’s not going to change the wound that you’re carrying, and you got to heal that wound, you got to be working on yourself. So I teach people to get very clear, who is the person you really want to be with. And a lot of people who have been through the wringer around relationships they can’t remember. And they’re afraid to define that and be strong about it. And you’ve probably found this to in your own work, you know, like, they won’t say marriage, and I’m like, well, so you don’t want marriage or you do and they will they’ll say life partner or yeah, I’ll be like, Well, can you be more specific? Like, what do you want? So I can talk to you about what you want? And they’ll be like, well, but it just seems to them. It seems like marriage is too much to ask. So when they say life partner, I say, Well, do you mean like an open relationship? Like your money is separate, or do you mean that it’s not permanent? And they’ll be like, No, I want it to last forever and everything else Gather I’d be like, like Americans, right? Click a marriage. And it feels like too much to ask. So a lot of this healing begins with like being really clear. This is, you know, this was what I want, it may not be what you grew up with, it may not be what you ever got before, but you can, you can define it as such. And for me, that’s when things really changed is when I had mentoring to just really write that down, I wrote down 200 qualities that were like, they were in like three categories, I must have this, I this is pretty important. But I could live without it. And this would be nice, you know? Yeah. And, and write that stuff down. Like one thing I could I must have is this, my person can never have have have now or have had a drug or alcohol problem. And I think people who are sober, clean and sober can be great partners, but not for me. Because I had such a blind spot going into it. Yeah. So I just said none of that. And that was one of them. And they had to love my kids. You know, I was a divorced mom of little kids, and they had to love my kids and be a really good person for them. So those were like, must haves, and you know, and on down the line, and then I had to really, really work on you know, like, I can’t, I’ll never be able to tell you what’s the draw of unavailable inappropriate people. I just knew what happened. And then I had to use guardrails to make sure that’s not what was happening. And that I was getting, you know, that I was basically like sitting back and doing no, definitely no more than half and in the early part, less than half of the initiating of like,

Chris Seiter 36:29
just literally like what we teach. Yeah,

Anna 36:33
yeah. And just let information come to me. And so with my now husband, he’s the first person I, you know, I went, I spent two years working on this big transformation and myself and I was in my early 40s, divorced mom. And so it’s not, you know, it wasn’t too late at all, I thought it probably was. But I really got to the point where I was willing to have no relationship rather than get into the the just like, horrible situation I was in I couldn’t do that to me or my kids. And, you know, it’s really it was affecting my finances. It was affecting my job like it was it was a real problem. And the what had happened, the relationship that was the ultimate one that caused me to go into this deep period of reconsideration was it was a drug addict. I didn’t know he was a drug addict when I got together with him. And when I gradually found out what was going on, and I was making my lame attempt to get out of the relationship, which was messy and incomplete and dragged on for a long time, he flipped out and he took his own life. And I’ll never be sure did he take his own life? Or did he accidentally overdose but either way he made it. So I found him. And it was a terrible, like, I was re traumatized all over again. And so when you grew up with trauma, these you end up kind of drawn to and attaching to see people say, Oh, I attract narcissists. And that’s one of my little catchphrases. It’s like, No, you’re attracted to narcissists, and you sleep with them, and then get bonded with them, and don’t leave them. That’s the problem. It doesn’t matter who’s attracted, you know, because you’re probably very pretty. People are going to be attracted, but it’s who you go for. And so I had to stay very transparent, you know, with the people who were helping me. And I was in a 12 step program, and I had a sponsor, and I had, I had a series of mentors in different aspects of my life. And I was very honest about the nature of my problem, like, I can’t see these problems coming. I never want to do it again, I want to do it differently. And so I learned, so I finally started dating again. And the only person I ever sincerely dated was the man who I’m now married to, because he popped up with those characteristics that I had already defined as important to me. And then I teach people to do this in my dating course. But I felt very strongly about him. He was so cool that he had it together on every level, he still does. And we’ve been together 15 years and married for 10 now, and and I still, like really, really believe in him as a good man. And like such a good thing that happened in my life that I was able to change my approach to dating and be with a good man. And so I was trying to answer a specific thing for you. And I sort of was getting into the details there. But here’s what I changed. This was what we were talking about not rushing in. So the first two months we were dating, right, he was being super careful to we’ve been on nine dates, and he hadn’t kissed me. And one day, I was like, Listen, I am starting to have a concern. Yeah, you know, what, are we are we just friends? Yeah, you’re straight. Right? And and he said, No, no, I’m interested. And, but I just know that I want to go really slowly. Which he told me on the first date, but by nine dates, I was like, okay, good, right.

Chris Seiter 39:50
Yeah. Nine days is pretty slow. It’s like it’s like a caterpillar crawl.

Anna 39:55
Yeah, worked for us. But so he said he just got slow. And I said, I said to him, then I go, Well, that’s okay. Because I already know how this is going to end. And I sort of I had a very strong feeling about him. And I had a mentor who I said, I think I’m just doing that thing again, like having magical thinking about an unavailable guy. But my mentor said, You know what, I think this is different. My mentor met him, you know, under different aspects. You know, my, my now husband didn’t know that this was

Chris Seiter 40:22
out. You did the whole audit thing. I was very careful. I didn’t

Anna 40:26
have a dad to do this for me, you know, like, like I was supposed to learn. Yeah, so. So we, so we’ve added him and we gave them a lot of time. And eventually he came around, but early on, I came on too strong. I was grasping, I was trying to push it forward. And that’s my anxious attachment. Also, I was a single mom, and was like, yes, very anxious to get this kind of like lockdown and solve a lot of problems. But, but he got put off, and he broke up with me. And we were in this course together all that time. So I would see him every week. But we were broken up and I was dying. And my mentor helped me with this just said, Well, this is good. This is a chance for you to just like, hang out. And I was told don’t go talk to him. Don’t go ask him how he’s doing. Just mind your own business. Just sit there and do your thing. You know,

Chris Seiter 41:15
sounds like a limited No Contact Rule, which is what we tell our Yeah,

Anna 41:19
yeah, I did keep going. And I looked just as cute as I could every time I told you that too. I didn’t do it. And then, and then he started taking an interest sort of, and then he called me called me once on Saturday at 5pm. And he’s like, do you want to hang out tonight? And I was like, No, sorry. I’m busy. Maybe another night. And of course, between you and me, what I was busy doing was not saying yesterday. It’s like somebody who’s not valued. And it’s weird. Like, I only had to do that once. And I remember he was really like, taken aback like, Oh, wow. And then he always asked me in advance. And I’d love to tell the story. Like it was just all smooth sailing from there. But when you have a task more interesting.

Chris Seiter 42:02
Yeah, yeah. So what specifically about him was attractive was just those non negotiable things that he was hitting on your list, or

Anna 42:15
he had he, you know, I was able, he was very serious about relationships, he wasn’t looking, you know, just for a good time, he was looking to get married like I was, and he was willing to go slow to pick the right person, he didn’t want to go with somebody who didn’t meet the criteria. So it’s such a godsend that the first person that I really felt feelings for felt the same way about these, these things that I intellectually wanted. But when it came right down to it, my insecure attachment would kind of made me try to push through and lock it down, you know. And, but some that one of the, before I realized I was attracted to him, I met him I, you know, we tell everybody that we met in a Al Anon meeting, and Al Anon is usually women mostly. And that’s not normally where you would think, to go meet men, but he just happened to be in my meeting. And you he, he was so happy. He he worked really hard at his program, he would go out of his way, when he was sharing in that meeting to say things that were helpful to others. He didn’t just like, you know, cry about his own life or anything, he was very directed towards serving the group and what they needed by telling them, there’s a way to do this. And, and I could tell by how he described his own 12 STEP program that he was, you know, he was a formidable person who had really done self reflection, when I went on a first date with him get a lot of books on his shelves, and I was fascinated by what he was interested in some of it, I totally agreed. And some of it, I was like, How can you say that. And he was really, like, intellectually challenging for me, which is important. And he’s gorgeous. I always, you know, he’s just, he looks like Cary Grant to me. And so that didn’t hurt any dress nicely. And as I got to know him, I found out that he used to have social anxiety. And he was sort of dressed down, and he didn’t have confidence with women. And he had, you know, he had done his own work. And he just, he dressed very nicely. He took good care of himself. He had he had a good career. And on our first date, he showed up, he smelled good. He just like I remember he, like turned around and he was like, shining, he just, he really put a lot of effort into being available. And then when we were in our early dating phase, he said, I’m going to tell you something I’m doing. You don’t have to do it, too. I just want you to know I’m doing this. But while we’re dating, the reason I’m dating you is to see if we’re compatible for marriage. And this wasn’t like a dictation. It was a you know the result of a conversation. And sometimes when I would talk to friends, they’d be like, he sounds like some sort of like old school Dominator or something, but he’s not and it’s very hard to dominate a person like me, but he just knows he’s he’s a very moral person. He knew his own values, and he stuck to them, you know more than I he ever did. And more than anybody I know ever did. He was just very clear about himself. And he never forced me into anything. But he just said, because I, I just want us to have really good conditions for me to get to know you. I don’t want you to have to feel jealous. So I just want you to know, I’m not hanging out with ex girlfriends. You know, I’m not dating other people. I’m not, you know, and you don’t have to, you don’t have to do this for me. You know, you can you can tell me what you’re doing or not or do do whatever you’re doing. But I just I want to see what you’re like when you feel secure. And I was blown away.

Chris Seiter 45:32
Yeah, you know, what’s interesting about that, it’s actually your friend’s reaction. Because to me, it just sounds like someone who’s being upfront about the conditions like, Hey, I’m not trying to lead you on like, I’m not dating anyone else. I do want marriage. And what’s interesting is your friend’s reaction is there’s something wrong with him. And I think that says something about our society, which is that’s so unique. But that’s actually the way I think it should be when you’re dating.

Anna 45:59
Yeah, I mean, for me to be freed of the burden of jealousy. And that he taught me also was that, because in my culture growing up in Northern California, when you break up with somebody, this is what you’re supposed to do. Okay, instantly, now, we’re friends, and that will hang out with your new girlfriend, and I’ll be really cool about it. And then go home and just be like, Oh,

Chris Seiter 46:19
that sounds it sounds familiar, passive,

Anna 46:21
aggressive, or vicious, or have a have a cow right in front of everyone. And I just, he’s just like, no jealousy is like, that’s what it feels like when you’re, you know, in love with somebody, they don’t want to be appearance jealous, or, and so you when you’re dating somebody, you don’t make somebody jealous. And so he had this really clear thing about, like, to this day, he doesn’t hang out with ex girlfriends, you know, it’s great. And he just, he doesn’t cause jealousy. And he taught me about that. And so the way I grew up, and, and this value were two really different things. And my culture here thinks that that’s like crazy religious, you know, ultra extremism. But I was like, You know what, I’ve been waiting for this all my life, to just like, if I’m going to be in a relationship, I’m going to be in a relationship. And so one of the things I teach my people and you teach this to it’s like, when it’s over, it’s over. Yeah. And,

Chris Seiter 47:13
you know, the challenge is getting people to buy into that.

Anna 47:16
I know, I know. It’s tempting to be friends. And it’s hard to let go. But, you know, do you know the concept cab light, I learned it from Sex in the City, but it’s a good concept.

Chris Seiter 47:28
So I have watch Sex in the City, but I have not watched that episode, where they’re talking about that.

Anna 47:33
I didn’t even watch it. Somebody told me I ripped it off the city. But let’s just make it ours cabling. It’s like the light that’s like, magically, sometimes you want to be dating, but nobody takes an interest. And then one day, everybody takes an interest. And how you keep your cab light, shiny and attractive, like that is you don’t, you don’t stay emotionally leaking out all over these exes. Or people who are interested in you. And you’re not interested in them. I call them lab rats. You know? Like, I, you know that I don’t want a relationship with you. Right? And they go, Yeah, and I’m like, okay, so we can hang out, you know, and go to the movies and have fun and watch TV and, and all that. And I’m just using them to fill my Saturday night. And that is emotional clutter. And it’s not attractive to healthy people. Yeah, all these like, people hanging around. And, and so it’s not how I grew up. But changing that immediately changed my own emotional availability. And it made me have to like really face reality. And reality is where you want to be like here, and now is where real love can reach you. And nowhere else.

Chris Seiter 48:42
So we were talking before we started recording, about you have like a free course called the daily practice, right daily practice.

Anna 48:50
So this is a it’s a set of techniques. The first one is a writing technique very specific. So I teach it, it’s, you know, you can learn and try it in about an hour in my free course. And it’s a way to get free of the fearful, resentful thoughts that are always I mean, everybody has them. If you’re if you have anxious attachment, they’re going like a bag of cats, you know. And they’re going all the time. And a lot of us were trained, like if you’re feeling like I’m feel really anxious, like, talk to me, and you start talking to your partner about it. I feel really, I feel like you feel like maybe you think that I think and all that stuff that nobody can do anything about that because it’s fear and it’s resentment. And so, it’s a way to take those feelings and start processing them all by yourself. So you can clear away a lot of the stuff that’s unnecessary, it works remarkably well. And then then there’s a little left that maybe you do need to talk about. And it’s also like a it’s like an a it’s like a emergency oxygen mask. When you’re you think you’re about to get into a big scuffle a big you know knock down drag out process for five hours you know, argument You, you can stop and say I’m sorry, I feel like I’m getting really dysregulated and my emotions are getting so much I don’t want to lash out at you can I take 20 minutes and just go do my writing right now and then come back and finish this conversation. So it’s this way that you can release a lot of this emotional intensity that’s going on and, and psychological, you know, bag of cats. We follow it, we do it twice a day. So you do the writing, and it’s got this thing at the end, I learned it as a prayer. But I also have an adaptation for people who would prefer a secular way of doing it where you release. I’m too too. I’m like a bulldog with that stuff, I don’t release very well. So I luckily became a spiritual person. And that helps me. But once you’ve done it, then you sit down and you go into a really, really simple meditation, the purpose of which is just to rest, rest your body, rest your mind, and let your mind recompose itself. And so I learned this 30 years ago, it just, it was so dramatic the difference it made for me to have these really easy things to do. I turned around very quickly, I had a lot long way to go to learn the life lessons about how to do relationships. But I could stop freaking out inside, I could stop being depressed inside. And right there, now you’re on a level playing field. But I had to catch up because like, relationship wise, I just, you know, I was way behind. So I had a lot of learning to do. As you carry on with it, it’s really like a way that you can begin to just become your real self, just less of the, you know, what does everybody think and less of this? You know, poor me I you know, or, you know, the world today is going to hell in a handbasket. What’s the point and even trying, you know, just these ideas, they just keep getting out of the way and you can start to be who you are fruitfully and happily, fewer problems, less drama, you know, gradually you have fewer dramatic characters coming into your life, there’s less to be upset about it just builds and gets better.

Chris Seiter 51:54
Yeah, I really think our audience can, especially when they’re going through the breakup. This seems like a really great way of sort of regulating and and sort of calming down. But I wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this. I know I’ve already taken up. This is supposed to be 30 minutes long. turned into an hour, but it was great.

Anna 52:16
We had so much to talk about. It’s been great

The post Talking About CPTSD And Breakups With Anna Runkle first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Julia Kristina, a registered clinical counselor based out of Vancouver.

We talked about all kinds of interesting things related to breakups and codependency.

• What is codependency? 0:03
• Avoidant vs. codependent attachment styles. 5:43
• The yearning for connection and codependent relationships. 11:10
• Setting boundaries in a codependent relationship. 16:25
• How long does it take your brain to reset? 23:43
• Setting clear boundaries about not contacting your ex. 28:19
• How to set boundaries. 33:34
• Setting clear boundaries. 38:33
• Codependency and codependency in relationships. 41:45
• Masterclasses and resources. 47:10

Important Links Mentioned In The Episode

• Work With Julia Kristina
• Join The “Shift” Society
• Contact Julia

Interview Transcript

Chris Seiter 00:03
All right, today we’re gonna be talking to Julia Kristina who holds a master’s degree in counseling in psychology. She’s also helped hundreds of men and women break through their biggest struggles with anxiety, worry, low self esteem, self doubt, I got this, this list just keeps going on through. But today, we’re gonna basically be talking to her about codependency how to improve your communication skills, or basically the boundary setting abilities that maybe you feel like you’re lacking in relationships, but I just wanted to say, thank you so much for coming on and doing this. It’s such a pleasure.

Julia 00:35
It is my pleasure, Chris to be here and having this conversation. Thanks for having me.

Chris Seiter 00:41
Okay, so the first thing I typically do when I have interview kind of coming up, I always like to do a little bit of homework, you know, a couple of hours before I come on, so I’m going through your YouTube channel and you have like 300,000 subscribers so it’s, it’s not like one of those small YouTube channels, you’ve got a pretty large audience, but the one video that stuck out to me was basically your so like, Do you ever do that thing on YouTube where you go to someone’s YouTube channel and you always just like, sort it by the most popular videos. Were totally sponsored other videos is about codependency and I immediately clicked with this one because I think it’s a perfect topic to talk about. So why don’t we talk a little bit about how to identify if you are in a or if you are basically in a codependent relationship or you are codependent yourself?

Julia 01:32
Oh, gosh, I mean, it can look a lot of different ways. So to talk about what codependency is, I think first we need to talk about that more what codependency isn’t and what it looks like to not be in a codependent relationship. So the opposite of codependence isn’t independence. The opposite of codependence is interdependence. So when we are in an interdependent relationship, it means that both people are there for each other. And both people have a secure sense of self within the relationship. So both people do need each other has to be a certain element of needing the person in your life or else what’s the point? You’re just living parallel lives, as opposed to interdependent lives? And so yeah, just really think about that. What does it mean to be interdependent? It means that I need this person in certain aspects. So I just got to throw a frog in my throat.

Chris Seiter 02:37
You know, it’s a good, it’s a good, it’s alive, we are alive.

Julia 02:42
We are not we are not this is not AI.

Chris Seiter 02:45
Unfortunately, or fortunately, rather, it’s not it’s not AI. Yeah.

Julia 02:52
And so really just looking at how do I be dependent on this person, but also be dependent on myself kind of in that same mix. And so what codependence is, is it’s really becoming overly dependent on someone else, for our sense of self. For our identity, we think that somebody else is going to sorry, Jerry Maguire, but you were wrong, complete us. And so we go, and someone’s gonna solve the right thing, right, and we think someone’s going to someone is going to solve our problems and make everything better. Interestingly enough, research shows that people who are in a relationship are only Contrary to popular belief, slightly happier, overall, in general, than people who are single. So that’s just a stat which basically tells us that just sort of, in general, people who are in relationships in like a committed relationship are, in general, are happier, but not as much happier as we thought because no matter where we go, that’s where we are. We bring ourselves into any circumstance or situation. And so you’re gonna bring yourself into a relationship, there’s certain things about being in a relationship, they’re going to make your life better, you’ve got a built in friend to do things where if you’ve got someone to plan with, you’ve got someone to, you know, go through life with the person to talk about the mundane mundane things about your everyday life with. But then you also have someone to navigate and negotiate and problem solving someone else’s schedule and someone else’s preferences and someone else’s ways of doing things and like all of the other stuff that comes with it. So you kind of get you know, you get the pros and the cons. Same with being single, you get the pros and the cons. So they can really just look at that. When people think about being codependent. They’re convinced that they need this person in their life in order to be okay. And that’s just not true. And I think

Chris Seiter 04:59
That is where most of our audience is, you know, I I like to run polls with the audience. So one of the big things that we’re we look at is the attachment styles of individuals. So we asked our audiences like, hey, what what is your attachment style and overwhelmingly the attachment style they had was anxious, preoccupied, but I also asked them hey, what do you think your exes attachment style is? Because most of the people here are going through breakups. And they said overwhelmingly, like 70% said, their ex is a dismissive avoidant. So you have that anxious pairing and that dismissive, avoidant pairing, which I would assume is kind of a breeding ground for these type of codependent relationships. Do you think you could talk a little bit about that?

Julia 05:43
Yeah, so it’s like it’s almost like this thrill of the chase, the more unavailable something is, the more you want it, and the other side of codependent so there’s a one side of codependence where you kind of rely on someone in need them. But then the other side of the codependence is if you’re someone who needs to be needed. Right. So So one person is the needy one, right. So that would be the anxious and then one person is the needs to be needed, which would tend to more be the avoidant where they want to be needed, but then end up feeling suffocated and then push that person away, which causes them to feel rejected, which cause brings out more neediness. And so the dance kind of goes on where there’s a lot of push pull, where you might want to be you know, you need to be needed, you need to feel important, you need to feel essential in someone’s life, like you are the strings that are holding that person together. But as soon as it gets to be too much, you push them away, and the more you push them away, the more their neediness flares up, and it becomes this sort of this sort of dance of a push and pull. And so that’s that’s often how that can show up with anxious and avoidant attachment styles. And also understanding that avoidant attachment is also an anxious attachment. Right? It’s a different iteration of anxious attachment attachment. It’s more the anxiety of letting someone get too close. Because, you know, there’s a whole bunch of experiences and ideas and stories about what that means if we let someone get too close to us. So all of us desire closeness, but then there can be fear that shows up and prevents that from happening in a healthy way.

Chris Seiter 07:23
Well, you know, what’s really interesting about that is your like the third psychologist that I have a I have interviewed that has said that the avoidant sort of attachment style stems from anxiety, and it doesn’t make so much sense because you know, that whatever avoidant mechanism that comes into play usually is coming during some sort of trigger point where their independence is feeling threatened and they grow anxious, and their avoidance is just basically a symptom of that anxiousness.

Julia 07:54
Right. It sounds good.

Chris Seiter 07:55
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I find so interesting about it is to me, so I’ve interviewed a lot of people. And that’s like a common theme that keeps popping up. But it seems like the literature that is online when you read like a Psychology Today article never really mentions the fact that there’s this really intricate connection between dismissive avoidance and the anxiety. They just talk about dismissive avoidance and black and white terms.

Julia 08:27
Yeah, I mean, dismissive, avoidant, all just really understanding that when it comes to human behavior, all of it is purposeful. Right? All behavior is purposeful, there’s always a reason why someone is doing, what they’re doing acting, how they’re acting, interacting, how they’re interacting. And so what the research shows that people who have more the avoidant personality or sorry, avoidant attachment style, is that they were, there was a lot of emotional neglect, or even physical neglect as a child. And so as children we are, we need attachment, like we need to attach to our attachment figures. That’s why they’re called attachment figures. And this is where so much of this stems from, we need that secure attachment. But in the absence of that secure attachment, little brains are so incredible, the way that they will adapt, the human brain is built for survival. And so if you are not able to depend on someone, if someone is not there for you, when you need them, if they are not able to meet your emotional needs, then that part of your brain will kind of like shut off and get pushed aside. Because it would be it would it wouldn’t make sense to keep clamoring for something that isn’t available. And it requires too much energy to keep clamoring for something that doesn’t available. So that adaptive these incredible little brains of these little beings of children will just kind of stop seeking that and it will kind of shut down and they will learn to kind of keep themselves held back because it’s not safe to to attach it’s there’s nothing there to attach to. It’s not safe to tell Ain’t no there’s nothing to lean into. So they will become more sort of independent within themselves, more kind of self sustaining within themselves. Although the craving for love and connection never goes away, it just doesn’t ever really feel safe to get close. Now the mistake a lot of people make, they’re like, oh, there’s this guy, I know, we had this, you know, traumatic childhood, and I can see that he really just wants love. So I’m going to be one, the one that brings it out to him, I’m going to be the one that changes him, I’m going to be the one that like he finally the bad boy, or the, you know, the kind of fix, right, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be the one that makes him because there’s just he’s got so much potential, right? We’ve heard that so many times, I’m going to be the one that he finally gets to live out his full potentials and feel safe and be this, you know, wonderful, attentive, present consistent partner that I know he can be. And so that is the codependent thing to is just been like, I’m going to be the one that fixes this, because I see it in there. And it’s not they’re not wrong, it is in there. But you know, the mistake we made is like, you didn’t cause it. You can’t fix it. Yeah,

Chris Seiter 11:10
I mean, so what’s really fascinating about about what you said, just going back, actually, to the yearning for connection and how adaptable young brains are, I mean, you even see that I think in like Russian orphanages, or Ukrainian orphanages, like you’ll go in, and the babies are just quiet, you know, because they know, no one’s going to come get them. So the brain sort of is adapted. So if you, if anyone’s sort of skeptical about the attachment aspect from childhood, I mean, there’s a prime example or an extreme unfortunate, unfortunately, extreme level. But most of the people listening to this, I feel like will push back on believing they are in a co dependent relationship, even when a lot of the signs are there. So what do you say to people who kind of, I think in their heart understand or maybe logically understands, like, Okay, I have a lot of these signs of being sort of codependent. You know, like, the, basically the, the connection you just described, if like, I’m gonna be the one to fix them, you know, I’ll be the one to get them to turn the corner. And then, but in their heart, they just won’t accept it. How do you get people to have this paradigm shift to where they’re like, Okay, I need to work on recovering from this.

Julia 12:26
Yep. So if your partner not responding to calls or responding to texts, you know, you don’t know where they are all the time. But they’ve never given you any reason to mistrust them, but not kind of being able to have a handle on where they are, what’s going on and whether or not respond to you. And you immediately go into anxiety, or fear or panic, or desperation. That’s a sign of codependence or an anxious attachment style. Your listeners, right, unless they’ve given you reason to mistrust them, right. Or they’ve shown themselves to be

Chris Seiter 13:10
people here that have not, I’m just letting you know. Yeah, that’s unfortunate. But yeah, yeah, yeah, I love.

Julia 13:17
Yeah, really clear sign. Another really clear sign is if your partner is just like needing some quiet time, they’re not being rude to you, but they’re kind of quiet, or they’re just like, after a long day, they just need kind of time to like, tune out or shut off, and you take it personally, and you’re automatically oh my gosh, what did I do? Why are they mad at me? Or why are they punishing me? Why are they doing this like this, like, they can’t do this, this is so bad, this is so selfish of them, right? It automatically goes into like you taking it personally and and either thinking you’ve done something wrong or thinking that they are being wrong or unfair for needing to just have some quiet time to just need to like unwind and not have a big you know, debrief immediately at the end of the day. If your partner you know likes to have friends or hobbies that are outside of the relationship now, not to say that they’re you know, if you’re in like a long term committed relationship, they’re going out like five or six, six night nights a week and never actually like investing in the relationship doesn’t ever want to seem to be around or never really planning things for you to do not that but if your partner’s like maybe some like sometimes I want to go out with the guys or the girl is sometimes she’s like I want to go out with the girls or wants to like have a hobby that separate from you. This is this other part of interdependence. I’ll speak on that a little bit more after I finish this. This part is if you start to be like oh well why did they want to do things without me must mean that they don’t really love me. They don’t really care about me like we have to do everything together or else that means that you know, they don’t they’re abandoning me or they don’t really care about me if that’s happening. If you Find that them having other friends, just friends completely platonic friends of the same gender, if you’re in a heterosexual relationship of the other gender, if you are in a, in a homosexual relationship, like whatever that is, and you start to feel very threatened by that, right, my partner has other people that they want to spend time with, even if it’s, you know, completely platonic, you start to feel threatened by that start to feel insecure around that. And that is a really clear sign of some codependence, and some anxious attachment. Now, what I was gonna say as well, sort of, I touched on it, but go back to this whole aspect of being interdependent in the relationship and understanding that a relationship is not two partial people coming in to make a whole, it is two whole people coming in to navigate and negotiate and work through a life alongside each other. And so as soon as you start to think that somebody else has to complete me, then you become completely dependent on their choices on their actions on who they are on their mood. If you notice that if your partner’s ever gets in a bad mood that you kind of take that on and start to feel really anxious, right, you kind of carry the weight of their emotions is another really clear sign. So we want to be looking for to complete people coming into a relationship to navigate and negotiate equally and together.

Chris Seiter 16:25
I love that. I love that so much. Because I think a lot of people who have these codependent tendencies don’t actually view it with that paradigm. They view it as I’ll get into this relationship, and this person will complete me that’s the missing part of me. And what you’re basically saying is no, you should already come into the relationship being a complete person, and this other person. This is maybe the poor analogy, but I, when I was when I write articles, sometimes I’m talking about codependency, I always try to describe codependency as people who are in codependent relationships, you are just simply revolving around your exes or your partner’s Son, your like a solar system revolving around their sun. And what you need to try to do is kind of break away out of that solar system and create your own, and then you can kind of like totally in tandem. It’s a ridiculous analogy, but I do think it I do think it works. But I actually want to switch gears here, because this is the thing that I think is much more valuable. And that’s setting boundaries. Okay, so let me just set the stage here to give you like, because setting boundaries, I think in a relationship is going to be different, potentially than setting boundaries during a breakup. Most of the people here are going through a breakup. Most of them want to get their ex back. And my job when they enter into my orbit is to teach them, the best way that you can make that happen is to outgrow your ex try to get over them. This creates the environment that makes them more attractive to you. And I think it kind of harkens back to that point you just made with codependency it’s about understanding, you need to become your own person before you re enter into relationship with them. The problem is, people will say they buy into this concept, but they don’t have the boundary setting skills that are necessary. So what are some tips you can give to someone in this environment to make that happen?

Julia 18:27
Yeah, I think often we want to get back together with someone, because the transition into something different is very overwhelming for our brains. So I’m gonna just let me speak on this a little bit. For those of you who are like no, I actually really love the person I want to be with them. So if you have been in a long term relationship with someone your brain is used to that, it you know, you know, that person is there you have you talk to them regularly, you see them regularly, you shared a life with them, you’ve considered them in your plans, like your brain is just very used to this person being in your life, and all of a sudden, usually breakups are fairly, fairly momentarily. It’s like one minute together, we’re together. The next one, we have a conversation and we end everything is cut off. And that cutting off in such a dramatic extreme way is very jarring for our human brains. Our human brains do not like change, we are one of the most adaptable creatures or species on the on the on the planet. But we also hate change because it’s it’s we don’t really know how to start that we don’t know how to exist in the newness. We don’t know what to expect. We don’t know how to be and those neural pathways in our brains have to recalibrate and that takes time. It doesn’t happen immediately. Once the act is done once the severing of the relationship is started. You don’t all of a sudden have all the new kind of ways of being in your brain just as far as just not even the person aside the actual emotional attachment. It’s just the habitual attachment. It’s it’s the expectations. Right that are that We’re no longer being met, we don’t know what to expect, we don’t know what to do. And so a lot of the times, we can think we want to get back together with the person simply because it’s so uncomfortable being in this brand new reality that we haven’t adapted to yet. And sometimes, yeah, we can think we’re still in love with the person where we’re really just in love with the predictability and the routine and the idea of just having someone there. So usually, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. But what tends to be a way to override this and really figure out if you want to be with together with the person is to give a few months of no contact, you just complete no contact.

Chris Seiter 20:46
I mean, that’s literally like, Paramount. And I always tell people, like, the point of no contact isn’t to make your ex miss you. And I’ve even ran polls and showed people, it will not make your ex make you more. So like there’s this sorry, I’m nerding out over here.

Julia 21:03
I a lot more nerding out about it, Chris. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 21:08
So a lot of people who buy into the No Contact Rule will actually sit there and claim Well, this is actually a lot more likely to make your ex reach out to you. And they’ll like, talk about the psychological reactance of everything. But when I actually ran internal polls from people, my audience who have actually done the No Contact Rule 70% of exes did not reach out to them. And I mean, I always talk about okay, well, maybe that is because they have dismissive, avoidant tendencies, and you’re giving them exactly what they want, you know, but the point of no contact isn’t supposed to be about making your ex miss you. It’s supposed to be about finding yourself by outgrowing her. Okay, so, yeah, well,

Julia 21:44
and even just at a more nerdy level, it’s just about giving your brain an opportunity to create comfort in a reality without that person, just daily routine, giving your brain a chance to establish you to establish yourself as a human being without that person for your brain to just kind of get used to not having that person. So if you’re calling if you’re seeing each other, if you’re continuing, your brain doesn’t have a chance to adapt to the new reality. So after you have spent that time to really just establish yourself and and giving yourself the the experience, right, giving yourself the experience of not having this person in your life, and letting your brain get used to that, then you can think with a more clearer mind and decide, is this a relationship that I would like to re entertain? Right? Is it actually the person that I want Was there enough there in the relationship that I really do truly believe that we could work through that would be worth fighting for outside of that emotional, or that initial emotional reaction, or you know, that severing of the attachment in the moment, and then your brain kind of freaking out because that attachment has been removed within a moment? So really just deciding, and you can look and see more rationally like, Yeah, is this was this relationship actually good? And sometimes, it might be? Yeah, it was. And I realized that I had a lot of stuff that I needed to work through and sort out for myself. And I feel like I could go back into this from a healthier state. And I think we could have a better relationship. And we could have some better conversations, to see if this is something we both want to do. And sometimes you might be like, you know, what, actually, now that I’ve sort of reestablished myself and my life with myself, I’m good. Like, I’m good. And I realize it wasn’t, you know, if it was the right person, then we would have been able to figure it out. But, you know, it wasn’t, and so we couldn’t.

Chris Seiter 23:43
So here’s my question for you. And we’ll get back to the boundary things because I have like specific boundary based questions I want to ask about about the No Contact Rule. But timing of the No Contact Rule, how long is this period? I’m curious to get a psychologist opinion because I certainly have my own but I do not want to pollute the waters here. I’m what, what is a significant amount of or the acceptable amount of time that it takes your brain to kind of reset and recalibrate for you?

Julia 24:12
Okay, so I’m basing this off of science in other areas. And so I’m taking a kind of this, it sounds like a good theory, but I’m gonna say 90 days, okay, right. When you think about 90 days is the probationary period at a new job, that’s how long it takes, you know, to kind of get your handle on what’s going on in new job to start feeling settled, understand what’s happening, when it’s, you know, that hold that level of newness 90 days is what they say a lot of the time, you know, 90 days to establish a new habit in your brain, although that theory has been somewhat debunked, but you know, 90 days to break a habit 90 days to really establish a habit.

Chris Seiter 24:48
I’ve heard different things I’ve heard 90 days I’ve heard 66 days.

Julia 24:53
So you say what’s your timeframe for no contact?

Chris Seiter 24:56
Okay. So also to kind of stipulated here Um, people are hiring me to help them get their exes back. Like that’s like most of my audience. So I’m always having to juggle with that. So I always tried to tell people, it’s gonna actually depend on your ex’s attachment style. So you have to kind of manage your own recalibration with your ex’s attachment style. So we’ve actually found that if your ex is like, has an anxious attachment style themself or a fearful avoidant, if you’re not there to nurture that they can actually just self destruct specifically a fearful avoidant, if you’re not there to nurture the anxious side, when their anxious side is getting triggered, they’ll actually trigger back to a more avoidant side and it can take them longer before they sort of trigger back to the anxious. So I always tell people usually want about 21 to 30 days to recalibrate. Most of our clients, though, we’re recommending 45 days, so roughly around half the time. But I will say that people are like, they want results really quick. So a lot of times what’s happening for our clients is they are actually waiting 90 days, they just don’t really realize it, because they’ll make it 30 days, and then they’ll break no contact rule. And we have a hard fast rule, which is if you break the No Contact Rule, you gotta get started from the beginning. So usually, by the time they’re getting back in contact with their ex, or making that choice, it’s been around 70 to 90 days. And what’s really interesting is when we look at our success stories, people who’ve gone through our program gotten their exes back, usually it’s around five to seven months total from when they start working with us, which is really fascinating. But anyways, your tag, you’re it?

Julia 26:40
Yeah, no, and that is really interesting. And it does take work, right? Like if the relationship is workable, it takes work to come back together and to really sort things out, because there’s a reason why you broke up in the first place. And so you know, getting back together and working things out if both people are willing to put in the work, right, put in the work to, you know, to invest in a relationship. And that’s what it is. That’s what so much of it is it’s just really working on becoming aware of what someone else needs. And being respectful of that. And just really understanding that people are different. And is the person willing to do that? And are both people willing to do that. Right? Are both people willing to do that.

Chris Seiter 27:24
So the other interesting element here is like people who get back with their exes, we found that about half of them break up within a month or two, again. So they’re not necessarily putting the work in or they are recognizing, I’m not willing to put up with this anymore. But what’s really interesting, I did this study where i i started contacting my clients who had gotten their exes back like, a couple of years after the fact. And I started looking how long it took them to get their exes back. And we found that the couples that were still together, had the longest time apart. So they’re broken up for more than like a year or so. So I think that goes and kind of proves what you’re saying, which is both parties are kind of sitting back and thinking through things or maybe evolving or improving. So anyways, yeah, it’s interesting. But to get us back on course, here with the with the boundaries element, what are some tips that you can, that you can, I don’t know, have to set these clear boundaries about not contacting your ex, because this is the biggest issue for for our client base. So what are some clear things that you can do to prevent that from happening?

Julia 28:40
I’m really asking yourself, what’s the point? Right, if I we’ve been broken up for a week, because of issues that have been recurring, and that we haven’t been able to work through. And now all of a sudden, I’m going to call them. What’s the point? What am I hoping to get from this? What sort of could it be? Right? I might be like scratching an itch. Let’s let’s play get Am I gonna be opening a wound?

Chris Seiter 29:07
I’ll pretend I’m the client. So the point is, I want to convince them to try to win to come

Julia 29:11
back. What would you say to that? Have the issues in the relationship that caused you guys to break up in the first place? Have those been resolved and worked out?

Chris Seiter 29:22
That’s pretty good. I think at this point, they would say well, the breakup was just a misunderstanding.

Julia 29:31
Okay, it was a misunderstanding big enough to cause a breakup to happen. Do you think that in this one conversation that you have with them that the misunderstanding could be cleared up and then you could just peacefully move forward?

Chris Seiter 29:45
You’re like a clone of me. I don’t know what it is. Literally said this exact piece. I said this exact thing to someone in our community earlier today. It’s always it’s always interesting to because One of the things that we try to recommend to our clients during periods of no contact is to go see a therapist or counselor, or psychologist like yourself. And it’s always really interesting to me to see that therapist or psychologist reaction to the No Contact Rule. So we had this like one client, in particular, whose ex, this individual was living with his ex. And what, what my wife and I were noticing was that the ex would just basically use this person for emotional support. And then, you know, go on a date with someone else. And it’s just like, became this negative feedback loop. And so our argument was, hey, I think you need to move out of that place and kind of do a no contact rule from there. And so he started pulling away, and he started getting his own place. And he started having some success with this approach. And his question to us was like, Well, should I break the No Contact Rule now? And we were kind of like a stern? No, it’s working, like, let’s focus on you. But he was also seeing a therapist at the time and the therapists take was, Well, why would you want to do that? You’re starting to see some positive results, you should engage. I’m curious to get your take on the situation, what would you say? Where do you kind of stand in the in the spectrum?

Julia 31:19
So what is that mean, by positive results, his ex was starting to reach out to him and wanting to spend time with her each

Chris Seiter 31:25
show wasn’t explicitly stating that they wanted to get back together. But it was more like, I miss you, type type of thing. But I, so I’m also very jaded for the fact that I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’ve seen this exact scenario play out so many times to know what happens if you actually engage?

Julia 31:46
Well, I think it’s a cookie, right? It’s like a cookie. They’re like reaching out a little bit cuz they want to get that cookie of attention. Of course, they want the attention from the person. It’s manipulation, whether or not they’re aware of it, the X might actually miss them. But they’re not offering anything other than, you know, an emotional conversation to be like, I missed you. Right? They’re not offering anything. That’s it. Yeah. So that’s, that’s what that means. Just ask for clarity. What does that mean, I miss you, I miss you. I want to spend time with you, I miss you. I want to work things out. I miss you. I want to rebuild our relationship. What does that mean? And just asking for that clarity. And that is part of boundary work as well, is to ask for clarity. Right? saying, you know, and being able to say, if you are not offering one of the above, then please do not contact me. Do not text me? Because that’s selfish. That selfish, you’re getting an emotional rush from getting my attention. And it’s not fair. Okay,

Chris Seiter 32:47
so you’re saying ask for clarity? What it like? Do you have any specific ways that you would phrase the asking for the clarity? I mean, you just gave an example. But do you have any more examples of what the person’s like I miss

Julia 33:01
you say? Thank you, no. thing. Great to hear from you. Why are you telling me this?

Chris Seiter 33:08
Okay. I like that. Oh, cut to the chase. Recording this because I’m going to point to this interview and be like, see, it’s not just me saying this stuff. This is an actual psychologist saying that?

Julia 33:21
No, I mean, at the same time, like if someone’s very adamant, they’re like, I want to contact them. I want to and I’m like, I would just say, You know what? You I am not holding you back from that. Try it, see how it goes. Right. And sometimes we need to kind of like, get beat up a few times before we’re like, oh, yeah, this is a pattern. So we this is the cause and effect. And then we learn and it’s okay. We don’t have to be like, if someone’s like, I have to contact my ex, I’d be like, You know what? Absolutely like your life, you have to make your own choices. Just understanding that there’s cause and effect and you have to decide whether or not you are willing to live with that effect. You can do whatever you want. You just have to have a conscious conversation. Am I willing, and some people like you know, I’m willing to put myself through that pain, the potential pain, potential heartache of getting back in contact with them and having my heart broken again. I’m willing to do that. Okay. Okay.

Chris Seiter 34:16
So I’m going to ask you a question now directly from one of our community members about setting boundaries. All right. So this person says, Can you provide some examples of how to set boundaries with friends and family when they push you toward marriage or having children when that’s not your priority?

Julia 34:35
Yeah. And so that is just having a conversation to saying, Hey, we haven’t made any decisions around this. I’ll let you know when we do. In the meantime, could you please stop asking?

Chris Seiter 34:47
So do when someone is when you have like a family member that’s prying in this way. Your approach is to acknowledge it and then set the clear boundary so acknowledge and set the boundary. So you’re going ology by basically saying, like, hey, we haven’t made any decisions about this, but stop asking me, basically, is that kind of the formula to approach?

Julia 35:09
I’ll let you know we do in the meantime, you know? Or if you’re like, you know, we’re not sharing that, you know, we’re not, we’re not, that isn’t a decision that we’ve made. Sometimes I would. And this is kind of a little bit more of a passive approach, but it can work. But bear with me on it. If someone asks you a question, or makes a comment that you’re not comfortable answering or that you don’t want to engage with. This is kind of a funny way to handle it. You can kind of just laugh and then like, redirect your attention somewhere else. Okay. TAKE THE BAIT, if someone’s like, okay, so when are you having a baby? When do you guys gonna have a baby just being like, Huh? So what are your plans for this summer?

Chris Seiter 35:53
Would you say? Would you go? Would you laugh? And then say like, Hey, you’re funny. And then redirect?

Julia 35:59
No, I just kind of I’ve done before, where you can tell someone’s just trying to, like, get it in there? And yeah, I’m no, no. Yeah. Almost a little bit ignoring it sometimes. Um, usually people won’t ask again. Sometimes they will. Usually they’ll take the hint, if you’ve kind of, like, ignored the question or just, you know, even kind of laughed off. It’s a more of a passive approach. But it works. Because it sends a subliminal message that I’m not answering this question. Some people won’t take the hint. And they’ll continue asking. And then you know, it can be hard, it can be hard to like, call something out, it can make everyone feel a little bit uncomfortable. And so And often, it’s not that the person’s trying to be nosy, they just are interested and want to know the information. And you’re, they’re allowed to ask, and you’re allowed to not share that. That’s one of the things that I think is so important, especially for those of us who have been socialized as women to believe that it’s our job to make sure everybody is comfortable, to make sure that everybody is taken care of. And so we think it’s our job to give people what they want, when they ask us for it. Stereotypically, I’m sure there are men that feel that way as well. But stereotypically, that throughout history, fact, case in point, women have been socialized to believe that it’s our job to take care of everybody else, and to make sure that everybody else is comfortable. And so we think that if someone asks us a question, our only option is to answer it, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Because we don’t want to make them uncomfortable by saying no. And so it’s our job to do our own work on being like, you know, what, I’m not going to make myself uncomfortable by trying to avoid making someone else uncomfortable, when I could just simply let them know that I’m not comfortable answering that, that I’m not going to answer that. And it’s okay. If somebody feels uncomfortable with our boundary. That’s okay. Right, that’s okay to say, you know, what, me not giving access to this part of myself. If someone doesn’t like that, I’m going to leave that with them. And that’s okay. Because the other option is, for me, to neglect myself in this process of giving someone what they want, just because they want it. They don’t need it. It’s not going to change their life in any significant way. But it is going to be not good for me if I betray myself in that way. Yeah, I think that

Chris Seiter 38:33
also sort of harkens back to stoic philosophy. I’ve been reading a lot of Marcus Aurelius meditations. I don’t Yes, please. Yeah. Right. But yeah, I mean, he’s like really big about kind of just not taking on other people’s problems, or not really spending your time wasting energy on things that is deemed non essential.

Julia 38:55
And I think you can do it in a kind way, because so many of us, like for me to be rude. Yeah, I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, but I also don’t want to betray myself. So it’s finding that dance between how do I, you know, set this boundary and state this thing or not engage in this way if it’s going to make me uncomfortable, while also considering the other person’s experience of my boundary, I’m still going to set the boundary, but I’m going to consider the other person’s experience of my boundary when setting it which is probably going to make me set a boundary in a kinder way and that’s why I say I teach people how to set clear yet kind boundaries.

Chris Seiter 39:32
Okay. That’s the distinction the kind aspect, because sometimes I guess people are a little too stern with their boundaries and it’s off putting in creates, but all right, I got I got one for you here. Are you ready for this one? All right. Ready? You provide examples of boundaries to set when an ex you have built rapport with asks for sexual intimacy without commitment. Do you want to do that? Yes are our clients a This is nothing against our there’s nothing as anyone listening. But it’s been my experience that if our clients put themselves in a situation where their ex invites them into the house, they usually end up sleeping together. So I’m gonna go out and limb and say that most people will want that because they want their exes back. And they’re thinking, Okay, well, if I sleep with him or her, this will be create the commitment. But usually what ends up happening is it just creates like a friends with benefits type scenario that you’re stuck in limbo on for a while.

Julia 40:33
Yeah. Ask yourself, just play it out. If I go in here, and if this happens, if I’m honest with myself, is this going to change anything? And make my decision accordingly, there’s no such thing as a right or wrong decision. There’s just the decision with the reasons we like best. That’s a great quote.

Chris Seiter 40:57
I love that.

Julia 40:59
And so it’s not wrong to go in and sleep with your ex. It’s just what is the consequence of that? What’s good? What’s the outcome of that? And do you like those? Are you okay with that? Can you accept that? Right? And be honest with yourself, if you’re like, the only reason why I’m having friends with benefits, is because I hope eventually they’ll come around. And the other person has clearly stated, I just want friends with benefits, I will not come around, but you keep hanging on, you know, believe what people say, just believe what people say. And you don’t have to say stay in a situation that you’re really not okay with, and lie to yourself, saying that you are. And it’s a codependent belief. This is going to this is not going to sit well with some people. But it’s only codependency that’s telling you that I have to because I can’t lose this person. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You cannot keep yourself in a relationship, no matter how attached or how much potential or how great the PERT you think the person is getting can’t keep herself in a relationship where you feel like shit a lot of the time.

Chris Seiter 42:14
Yeah, I mean, that’s what you can’t do all the time. Yeah. I think half the battle is just kind of making people realize that because it’s not something that we can sit here. I mean, we can. I’ve tried, I’ve tried to sit here and talk directly to people and say, like, Hey, this is most likely what’s going to happen. But it’s a whole different thing when they experience it and believe it themselves. And I think that’s kind of like the, what you’re essentially trying to say,

Julia 42:39
Yep. And sometimes we do like, sometimes we do have to go back for more and more and more and more and keep, you know, and until we finally realize, Oh, this isn’t going to change, this is not this is not a work in progress. This is a pattern. This is just what they are offering. And not to say that they are necessarily bad or wrong. But what they’re offering is out of alignment with what I truly want and need in the relationship. That means it’s not the right fit, and just having that honest conversations with our with ourselves. But if you’re truly like, you know what, I think that there’s some fundamental things in this relationship. And if we are both committed to working them out, and showing up and having the hard conversations and figuring things out, not where one person has to kind of lose themselves in order for the relationship to work, that’s not going to work very well. But if it’s honestly like, you know what we’ve had some you we do, really both are committed to each other, we love each other. And there’s enough there, we want to work it out. And yeah, great. Try, really try. But you know, and that’s how I think Chris too, is like sometimes I’ve been in that place where I just keep coming. I’m not gonna sit here on like a pedestal and be like, one and done, right? I am like, 50 and done. Please, like, let this be different this time, please let this you know, come on. I’ll change what I want so that I can be with you. I’ll be something else that I can be with you. I won’t get upset about these things, or let them bother me just so I can be with you. And I’m like, no, no. And then finally it’s like, okay, no, no, it’s a no. But you know, if you need to keep going back until you kind of realize, but just be honest with yourself when it isn’t No, be honest. What is this person offering? And is it in alignment with what I want and need? It’s not necessarily that someone is a bad or horrible person. They just might not be offering what you want and need and to be honest with yourself about that.

Chris Seiter 44:43
So what I really liked about what you’re saying is kind of inherent to setting really good boundaries is self reflection. You need to have a strong sense of self of what I’m worth and what you know where the line is essential. Lee. So I was obviously looking at your YouTube channel before we started, and I was watching, I think the codependent video that you did, and you kept talking about shifters and I’m like, okay, am I missing something here? What is the shifter? And then I, you know, halfway through the video, I’m like, oh, it’s like it’s like a movement type thing. So I want you to tell us a little bit about the shifter movement that you’ve sort of created. Yeah.

Julia 45:27
So my VA membership creates a monthly membership community called the shift society, where we have a membership portal with the foundational course, which is a my five step mind and emotional management tool. We really teach people how to build that emotional intelligence, how to understand what’s going on with them, how to become just more conscious, because so much we’re going through our life, unconsciously acting and reacting to life, we’re not consciously taking a step back, and getting curious and content contemplating and then engaging with life in an intentional way. And it sounds kind of dull and boring, you’re like, oh, Julia, that does not sound exciting at all, there can be both, there are times to just fly by the seat of your pants and just see what happens. And there’s times to really just take a step back and be intentional with the choices you’re making with the people you’re engaging with, with how you’re engaging with other people, with how you’re showing up in your day in your life, what what you’re creating for yourself in your life, and really being intentional about that. So that you can be living the life that you want for this one, you know, time this short time that we are here you can make this a wild and precious life. And so much of that starts with the inside with learning how to manage our minds and emotions. Not in like a stoic, like, you know, that typical kind of like non reactive kind of way, but just really learn how to work with yourself. Instead of letting your your feelings and your in your like kind of your urges just kind of take over and more often than not create a mess just about really working to have less mess in our lives. And yeah, to be able to feel like we are a lot more in charge of our minds and our emotions and our choices and then thereby our outcomes as a result. So I teach that and then there’s also oh gosh, there’s so much in the membership, I have masterclasses on specific topics when you first join, you’re gonna masterclass on deep lasting confidence, like truly learning how to build like a deep sense of self, one on self compassion, which I firmly believe is the missing tool and so much of the work that we do and so much of the cognitive work we do, we need to have self compassion that’s been really broken down by Dr. Kristin Neff, who is the pioneer of bringing the concept of self compassion to the masses and looking at the three elements of self compassion and how powerful it is for really transforming ourselves from the inside out. I have massive classes on how to stop overthinking we’ve had incredible guest speakers and they’re on polyvagal theory on just like hacking basic hat habits for wellness. It’s kind of like a one stop shop. We have a masterclass series on boundaries. We have one from healing from shame dealing with triggers, we just did one on Attachment styles, really learning about different attachment styles, and understanding what kind you are. Gosh, yeah, we have one on creating you know how to create your future, how to heal from your past, I think I said, we did a really fun one on the hero’s journey and how to be the hero of your own story. So

Chris Seiter 48:39
Joseph Campbell, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Storytelling is like my ultimate jam. Like when I’m not. Yeah, so anyways, yeah.

Julia 48:49
But anyway, so that’s just mindfulness exercises, we have an EFT, tapping practitioner that comes in, they went to bed, I don’t see it’s not like, it’s not like an eight course. You know, fine dining meal. It’s like a buffet, where it’s like, wherever you’re at, whenever you want to do some work on internet or

Chris Seiter 49:05
the Netflix model, you know, you just have a lot of stuff in there, you can kind of choose your own adventure, so to speak. And I feel like painting

Julia 49:11
though, is the core lessons everyone has to do before anything else unlocks in the membership. You have to do the

Chris Seiter 49:17
eight core lessons. And then you can kind of have the Netflix buffet where you can do the attachment style, the story stuff. I actually really liked the confidence thing. And I’m assuming the shift society is all about like shifting your perspective, paradigm type thing.

Julia 49:33
It’s really about understanding that major transformation does not happen in a moment. It happens one key shift at a time.

Chris Seiter 49:41
Ah like that. This sounds amazing. Yeah, it’s good.

Julia 49:46
It’s great. Chris, it is great. We have an incredible community. I mean, the people in there so it’s supported by a Facebook group. So we have people like you have your membership portal, and they do live sessions every week. We have a q&a Twice a month where anyone can I submit questions and I usually get to most of them, believe it or not. We have a hot seat session. So like a live laser group coaching session where I coach people live, we and then we have some kind of special session every month. It’s either in an in depth on one of the tools I teach, we have a guest speaker or I teach a masterclass on a specific

Chris Seiter 50:17
topic. Sounds amazing. Yeah, it sounds very similar to what we offer as well. So I feel like anyone who’s like digs, what we’re doing here in the community, or, you know, throughout ex boyfriend recovery is probably gonna love what Julia is talking about here. You also we were talking a little bit you said you wrote your book, which is drive your own darn bus, right?

Julia 50:40
Yes, yes, drive your own darn bus, where I do give a pretty solid understanding of a lot, a lot of the concepts that I teach, it’s a very good foundational place to start and kind of open up your brain to understanding how the human brain works, how thoughts impact our emotions, which drive our behaviors which create our outcomes to a greater or lesser extent, and just really learning how to start to kind of it’s kind of like emotional intelligence. 101.

Chris Seiter 51:06
I love that. And so people can find you basically, you have a counseling website, which I’ll link to in the show notes and everything. But also I really want to recommend her YouTube channel. It is out of this world. Good.

Julia 51:21
Thank you. It is a joy to just sit Yeah, build out that platform. I’m on Instagram as well. I show up there and show up on stories and do little quick snippets of teaching inspiration connection. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 51:37
Hey, thank you so much for coming on and doing this.

Julia 51:39
It has been my pleasure. I could talk about this stuff all day with you, Chris. It’s nice to geek out with another you know, psycho nerd

The post Talking About Codependency And Breakups With Julia Kristina first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

This is Tati Garcia,

She is a licensed professional counselor specializing in helping individuals with high functioning anxiety.

What’s high functioning anxiety?

Well, I had the pleasure of asking her myself:

One of the primary distinctions is that someone experiencing high-functioning anxiety may appear to be doing well externally. This could be someone who is successful, able to maintain a job, and can handle their day-to-day tasks efficiently. However, internally, they are grappling with anxiety. The symptoms can be consistent across different types of anxiety, such as overthinking, excessive worrying, and feeling constantly on edge or tense.

Honestly, Tati is a perfect guest to have onto our podcast because not only is our average client anxious,

But she gave some incredible advice on how to cope with the anxiety you may be feeling after a breakup.

Important Things Tati Talked About On This Episode

• What Is high functioning anxiety? 0:03
• How high-functioning anxiety is related to attachment styles. 5:34
• How to label your emotions? 11:42
• Redirection technique to help with anxiety. 15:31
• How does one manage to control anxiety? 25:04
• Has anxiety gotten worse with the advent of technology? 30:07
• How to deal with stress and anxiety. 36:58

Important Resources Tati Talked About

• Tati’s Website
• High functioning anxiety quiz
• Tati’s Course
• Coach With Tati
• Her Podcast

Interview Transcript

Chris Seiter 00:03
Today we’re gonna be talking to Tati Garcia, who is a licensed professional counselor and coach specializing in high functioning anxiety. She has 13 years of experience in mental health. And she runs the very popular YouTube channel slash podcasts calmly coping. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this because we have a lot of anxious listeners, and I’m sure you can give them all kinds of tips.

Tati 00:27
Yeah, thank you so much for having me here. I’m excited to get into it.

Chris Seiter 00:31
All right. So high functioning anxiety, how is that different than just normal anxiety? What are like what, what’s the distinction between those two? Yeah, so

Tati 00:41
one of the main distinctions is somebody who is experiencing high functioning anxiety, if they appear to be doing well on the outside, so maybe somebody who is successful, who’s able to hold a job who is able to go about their day to day and often do it very well. However, on the inside, they’re really struggling with anxiety which you know, the symptoms can be similar regardless of what kind of anxiety is but it’s, you know, BB overthinking things worrying a lot, feeling on edge, and tense. Assuming the worst case scenario and situations, there can be a lot of physical symptoms that go along with that, like digestive issues, tension in your body headaches, shaking, and you know, it can, you know, the main difference is that with anxiety, just in general, it often tends to hold people back in avoidance. And so, you know, people, if there’s something in particular that you’re feeling anxious about, you might tend to avoid the thing and not want to do whatever it is that that thing is. So if it’s, you know, public speaking, you’re gonna want to avoid public speaking. But with high functioning anxiety, the fear and anxiety actually propels somebody forward into taking action, and into oftentimes overachieving or busyness and difficulty with relaxing. And so you know, somebody who has high functioning anxiety could potentially meet the criteria for a mental health disorder, but many times they because they are like, on the outside appear to be doing well. And other people may not recognize what they’re going through, it can be more difficult for them to seek out help, and they may not feel as understood.

Chris Seiter 02:40
So what’s really interesting as you were talking, so last night, I was doing, you know, the whole scrolling through Netflix looking for something. And I stopped on this documentary about this professional cyclist named Mark Cavendish. And he’s, like, known as maybe the greatest sprinter and like the Tour de France, like he would just went all the stages.

03:01
But he was doing really incredibly.

Chris Seiter 03:07
But then something, something happened, he got some sort of like endurance disease, I forgot the technical term for it. But he just continued, like, spiraled and pretty much exactly what you were talking about what the high functioning anxiety was, like him to a tee, to the point where he was avoiding getting any kind of help, he would just sort of double down and try to, over achieve to to accomplish those goals. So I’m kind of curious, like, this high functioning anxiety that you’re talking about. It’s not like someone just like wakes up and you know, maybe you’re like an anxious person to begin with. But is there like a slow progression toward the high functioning anxiety? Or is it just like, like a switch, like a light bulb? Going off?

Tati 03:52
Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, that’s something that’s hard to say I what I’ve noticed in the clients and students that I’ve worked with is that there tends to be similar characteristics and personality traits that those with high functioning anxiety have, like, you know, being somebody who is hard working and somebody who is reliable and persistent. And so the kind of those traits that will result in like continuing to take action and keep going. However, you know, they’re like, any other personality trait or like any other mental health disorder, like it falls on a spectrum. And so, you know, there can be differing degrees to which people experiencing it, experience it and there can also be different contributing factors. So it could be you know, the way that somebody was raised, and you know, they were maybe in school did really well and we’re a perfectionist and focused on getting the best grades and then you know, kind of continued with that approach into adulthood. You know, it could be something that is gradual. I don’t know if there’s necessarily like, kind of a flip switching overnight. And oftentimes, it is the thing where many people don’t really recognize that they’re struggling with it, because they just feel like, well, this is just the way that I am. Because this is how they’ve lived their life for, you know, whatever period of time.

Chris Seiter 05:34
So, in our coaching practice, we study a lot of attachment styles, you know, we look at the kind of behaviors that people’s exes are exhibiting and the kinds of behaviors that our clients are exhibiting. And what’s really interesting is something that you said about the high functioning anxiety is they tend to avoid confrontation or things that I think will trigger their anxiety. But I’m curious, does that have anything to do with you know, like, typically, with the insecure attachment styles you have, like the dismissive avoidant, and the priyad, anxious, preoccupied, you know, the fearful avoidant and everything? Do you? Do you like tend to find that people with high functioning anxiety or avoidance or preoccupied, like, have you done any research on that? Or is that just there’s not enough?

Tati 06:24
That I’m not aware of? And I and I think that as far as I know, now, I’m no expert on like attachment styles or anything. But the way that people behave in relationships is oftentimes, like there can be parallels, of course, but you know, I think that it’s it’s not necessarily correlated with the types of personal or individual mental health stroke struggles somebody have has, of course, I think there can be contributing factors and reasons as to why somebody behaves a certain way in a relationship, but I think it’s it’s really rooted in like, you know, attachment theory says, In those early relationships, yeah, that somebody has with a parent or caregiver or, you know, other adults in their life. That’s going to result in, you know, the way that they are experiencing other relationships into adulthood.

Chris Seiter 07:39
Yeah, I mean, that that seems to track were one of the things we notice is that a lot of the exes that we study tend to have very avoidant approaches to the breakup. Whereas a lot of our clients tend to be on the other end of the spectrum where they are just trying to problem solve. A lot of times you have to get them out of the mindset of, hey, I want my ex back and start like saying, like, hey, stop being so codependent, let’s work on you being sort of independent. So I’m curious, someone who has high functioning anxiety? What are some of the tips or coping mechanisms that you often work with? Like if someone were if I were to sign up? If I have high functioning anxiety? Let’s say I do I have high functioning anxiety Totti? Fix me what what are the top tips that you would give me?

Tati 08:31
Yeah, so first, it’s addressing like the underlying root causes, and and looking at what is getting you in this place and keeping you stuck here. And a lot of times, that’s going to be emotional awareness, and just like a general understanding and recognition of how you’re feeling. You know, many people, unfortunately, it’s not something that we’re like, taught in school or educated on how to recognize and process different emotions, and especially if somebody’s going through a breakup, there can be a lot of emotions present. And it can be very challenging and destabilizing and unsettling. And, you know, studies demonstrate that just the act of labeling your emotions actually helps to deactivate the, how strong you’re experiencing them. So there’s a part of the brain that’s called the amygdala that’s responsible for you know, the anxiety reaction, but also for strong emotional reactions. And so when people just are able to name an emotion that they’re feeling, it actually how strongly the amygdala is activated in the brain decreases. So that is kind of like one small thing that seems like might not make a big of a deal but in the long run that can really help Just in general, being verbal about how it is you’re feeling or getting it out in some way. So maybe it’s writing things down in a journal, you know, when you can get what’s in your head out, that can really help you to understand more what’s going on inside and help to give you more of a sense of control as to what you’re going through. And then it can be something that you can look at, what are the thoughts, what are the beliefs that you’re having a lot of times with high functioning anxiety, also, with somebody that’s going through a breakup, there can be a lot of negative thoughts and limiting beliefs that people have. Maybe it is, you know, with a breakup, somebody might be personalizing things and saying, like, This ended, because you know, it’s all my fault. You know, I could have done something differently. And so, you know, with somebody with high functioning anxiety, there could be this belief that I’m not good enough. Or there’s, you know, something wrong with me, or, you know, they maybe they have something coming up, and they think, the worst case scenario about the situation. So, one helpful step can be to look at your thoughts, and actually question them in NSS, do they actually match the evidence in the situation? Like, if you were to take a third person’s perspective, is this actually an objective way of looking at things and oftentimes, when we’re in a state of strong, heightened emotions, our thoughts are, tend to be very exaggerated and often focused on the negative, especially when you’re in a place of anxiety.

Chris Seiter 11:42
Yeah, there’s a lot of negative self talk, unfortunately, that we see in our community. What are your thoughts on? So like, you mentioned labeling your emotions, and I’m assuming, like you mentioned, labeling your emotions, and then you mentioned sort of just getting your emotions down. But I kinda want to go back to the labeling emotions aspect. Is that a specific act that you’re just doing internally, like a lot of self slash shadow work, where you’re trying to figure out like, Okay, I’m feeling I’m having this irrational thought right now? Or is that something when you’re labeling your emotions, you need to actually write it down in the journal to actually make it? I don’t manifest it, or in some way, what is there, I’m assuming writing it down would probably be the correct approach.

Tati 12:30
Yeah, and you know, there’s no right or wrong way. I think for a lot of people writing it down helps. But everybody’s different. Not everybody likes to write things down. And I like to recommend a tool called the emotions wheel, you can just Google it. But basically, it’s kind of like a visual representation of different emotions. That can help you to identify how you’re feeling. And really, what that does is, it’s just validating when you can see that and label that and recognize that, and it’s a way of helping you process it, and work through it. Because oftentimes, people will tend to have like their go twos for how they’re feeling. And it’s really just like building the vocabulary, of an awareness of how you’re feeling, because then that will help you to better understand yourself. So then you can better understand what tools to use. Because if you’re feeling frustrated, the way you’re going to cope with it might be different than if you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed. So

Chris Seiter 13:40
let’s say you are feeling really, like one of the behaviors that I noticed a lot of our clients is they’re obsessing about what their ex is doing. And what I tend to tell them is, when you go through a breakup your cortisol, like spikes, like insanely, and cortisol is associated with stress. So the stress often makes you more anxious. And the more you engage on social media, or spy or do things like that you’re actually keeping your cortisol in this elevated state. So my challenge when I’m coaching people is trying to get them out of this negative feedback loop where they’re constantly going. Maybe they see their ex on a date. Oh, horrible. And it’s just like, they’re, they just kind of keep coming back from it. How do I get them out of that cycle and maybe redirect them onto something a little bit more positive?

Tati 14:29
Yeah, I think when when somebody gets in that obsessive cycle, it’s because our brains are information seeking and we don’t do well with uncertainty. And so you know, when somebody is experiencing a breakup, that’s a huge level of uncertainty, a huge level of destabilization. And like you mentioned, like stress levels, cortisol levels go up and so what we have to do in that type of situation is start to just even recognize when somebody engages in this behavior. How is it making them feel? Because oftentimes there can be the urge that okay, I just need to see how my ex is doing or check in or, you know, because now there’s been like, breaking communication, so you have no level of understanding of what’s happening with them. But kind of assessing, okay, is this actually helping? You know, if we look at this is kind of the obsessive behavior. It’s, it’s not OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, but it’s kind of like, it’s a trait of OCD. And so it’s what happens with OCD. And again, I’m not saying that these people who are going through breakups have OCD, but like, the way that the behavior works is that you know, you have an obsession, you have these thoughts, that, okay, I need to check or do something in order to decrease my anxiety in order to help me to feel better or more certain about the situation, and then you engage in the checking behavior. And that helps to relieve the anxiety for a little bit, but actually, it it prolongs it in the long run. And it just maintains the anxiety. And so what’s really important is to look at what is again, like getting to the root, like, what is driving that urge and that obsession and that desire to check? And assessing? What are the fears, worries, thoughts that the person is having? So maybe it’s, you know, I’m worried that they’re moving on without me, you know, I just want to make sure that they’re okay. And so sometimes just looking at, what are those thoughts and worries that are going on? And asking yourself, is checking actually helping? Or is it just making things harder, because many times, it’s just, it’s just confronting you with that situation. And it’s going to, again, like prolong those difficult emotions that the person is experiencing?

Chris Seiter 17:12
Is there something that they should be doing, like, recognizing, like, once they recognize, okay, this is not maybe the most healthy use of my time, is there some sort of redirection technique that you tend to recommend to people?

Tati 17:29
I think it can depend on the person. You know, one thing that can be helpful is when you find that it’s hard to recognize your thoughts and change the way you’re thinking when you’re in this anxious state of really worrying. And it’s hard to think about anything else, that’s when it can really help to go into your body. And what I mean by that is doing things that are going to bring your focus into your body, in the present moment help to calm your body physically, because what those things are doing, it’s helping to reverse that stress response, like you mentioned, the cortisol release. And when we’re in a state of anxiety or body goes into fight or flight. And so your body is in a state where your heart is beating quickly, you’re breathing more shallow, you know, you’re looking out for danger. And so something as simple, even though it’s probably been said a million times before, like just take a deep breath. But it can be very helpful in those situations, the important thing is to take a deep breath all the way into your belly and slow the exhale. Because when you slow the exhale, like and what I mean by that is like, slowly exhaling out and making the exhale longer than your inhale, you’re activating your body’s relaxation response. It’s the parasympathetic nervous system, but it’s basically the opposite of fight or flight. And so doing that is then going to calm your body, which in result will help to calm your mind. And so sometimes, you know, taking a few deep breaths isn’t going to automatically gets you out of a state of anxiety, it could be maybe setting a timer for five minutes, or doing things like guided meditations or yoga or, you know, going for a walk or anything that’s basically going to get you out of your head and into your body. And, you know, maybe leaving the phone behind and kind of not scrolling through social media.

Chris Seiter 19:37
That’s a hard thing to do for a lot of people. What do you have someone who is like not buying into that concept, because I completely buy into it because like, if you’re looking at it from a chemical level, you’re just combating the cortisol heightened state with more chemicals to kind of bring it down so you’re doing things that are going to kind of, you know, chill your body out, but what if you have someone and I’m thinking you’ll one person in particular I coached a couple of years ago, they would just not buy into it. What do you say to someone like that?

Tati 20:09
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of people. It’s funny, I was just talking about this earlier. That, you know, there’s some people who as many times as I tell them to, like meditate, like, I promise, it’s, it’s helpful. And you know, they just don’t want to do it. And that’s fine, because everybody’s different. So if that’s the case, then maybe for some people, it’s doing something more active. You know, maybe it’s like I mentioned, going for a walk or exercising. Because actually, you know, when your body goes into that state of anxiety, your body is getting you ready to move to be physical. You know, sometimes there is that freeze response, where we kind of get stuck in action. And yes, yeah, exactly. But a lot of times, it’s, you know, there’s blood pumping to your extremities, you’re either ready to fight or run away. And when you don’t use that energy, it can build up in your body. And so, exercise actually, and studies have shown that especially cardiovascular exercise, like going for a run is just has been found to be just as effective as antidepressants. And I know when you say when I say antidepressants, a lot of people think depression, and they are used for depression, but they’re also one of the number one medications used for anxiety. And so anything that’s going to get you moving is another way of like, getting into your body and like releasing that energy that might be building up.

Chris Seiter 21:40
Yeah, to be honest with you. My own personal experience with this is anytime I’ve grown incredibly anxious, the only thing that’s ever worked for me is going on a bike ride for like, 50 miles so that I am so dead by the end of it. I don’t, I literally just stopped caring about what I was worried about before. You’re just like dragging home, you know? So I’m curious, is there like? Do you need to go that insane? Because like, it works for me, I’m not sure that’s the maybe the most healthy thing to do. But what works for me is like going out there. And just pushing myself to such a level that where you just don’t care about what you are worried about anymore. Is there like a CERT is that I guess what I’m asking, Is that healthy? Or is that unhealthy? What?

Tati 22:24
Well, I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s, it’s unhealthy. It depends on your fitness level, you know, yeah, that’s gonna go out and ride 50 miles. For some people. That’s nothing, you know, and for some people, it would be like, you know, kill them. So, you know, so I think it depends on that. And also, you know, is it sustainable, because then, like connecting this back to high functioning anxiety, there’s the tendency, when you’re somebody who wants to go all in on something and like, give 150% to get in a place of burnout. Because of that, because you’re continuing to try and do and stay busy and do more. And so if you’re like overdoing it with things, then that’s not necessarily going to be good, because everybody needs the rest to recover. Yeah, that

Chris Seiter 23:10
makes total sense. You know? And that kind of brings up an interesting point, which is someone who’s a high functioning, has this high functioning anxiety, I’m assuming this whatever coping mechanism you need to have needs to be some sort of repeatable working thing, just based on their nature. Do I have that? Right?

Tati 23:30
Yeah. And I think that it’s not just that there’s like one way of coping, it’s gonna depend for different people. And I think if I can say, kind of to add on to that, and I think this applies also, with somebody going through a breakup, kind of an overarching message that I like to share is being able to practice self compassion. And that is the act of being kind to yourself. You know, somebody with high functioning anxiety tends to have high expectations be really hard on themselves be really critical. Somebody who’s coming out of a breakup maybe is being hard on themselves and wondering, where did I go wrong and beating themselves up? And so when we practice self compassion, a lot of people think that, Oh, you’re being too kind to yourself, like you’re letting go and not trying anymore. But really, studies find the opposite, that when we’re able to be compassionate to ourselves, we’re actually better able to cope with failure, and better able to overcome adversity and difficult experiences. And so, something as simple as asking yourself, okay, how would I speak to myself if I were talking to a friend, because many times it’s easier to be kind to yourself, or it’s sorry to be kind to a friend than it is to be kind to yourself. And so kind of using that practice as a way of trying to be more understanding and compassionate with yourself because oftentimes when we’re hard on ourselves, that goes back to like the negative self talk. It’s not helping, and it’s just making you feel worse.

Chris Seiter 25:09
Okay, so let’s switch gears and take some of the questions that I got from the community. I think there’s five here that I have. Okay, the first one you might have already answered, but just to make sure that someone doesn’t yell at me for not asking it, I’m gonna ask it to you. Besides training and doing more sports, how does one manage to control or even overcome anxiety? Are there any tricks or book recommendations you have?

Tati 25:37
Yeah, so actually, one book that I just read pretty recently, is called good anxiety, I believe, by Dr. Wendy Suzuki, but she goes into like the neuroscience of anxiety. And what she explains in the book, and what’s also supported by neuroscience research is that there’s two ways to address anxiety. So one is through the amygdala, which I was describing before, that’s that part of the brain. That’s, it’s the primitive, just automatic reaction that’s going to go into anxiety before you’re even maybe even consciously aware. So like, if you’ve ever woken up in the middle of the night and seeing like, a shadowy figure and your heart starts to be, then you realize it’s like a jacket hanging on your door or something. I’ve definitely had that happen.

Chris Seiter 26:26
Unless you’re watching like some sort of ghost story on a small iPad and keep looking or like some sort of serial killer documentary, you keep looking over your shoulder.

Tati 26:35
Yeah, exactly. And, and the way to address that is through the physical route, like I mentioned, so you know, this person mentioned exercising, but also could be, you know, especially if it’s before bed at night, a lot of people have trouble sleeping because of anxiety, because they’re overthinking things. It can be calming techniques, like, you know, listening to relaxing music, or podcast or listening to a guided meditation or something like that. And then the second approach is through the cortex. So that’s the part of our brain that’s responsible for, you know, all of our cognition, like our thinking or decision making, our impulse control. And so that’s looking at the way you’re thinking about things. And so things like just starting to bring more awareness, to your thoughts to the way you speak to yourself to, if your thoughts tend to be focused on the negative, just starting with recognizing that can help you to combat anxiety, because, you know, once you start to recognize why I’m really hard on myself, where I really focus on the negative, then you can start to change and challenge those thoughts. And something simple, I recommend to people is just like writing, making a paper with two columns. In one column, you write down, what are the negative and anxious thoughts or the negative self talk? And then in the other column? How would you replace these thoughts? We can go back to thinking of what would you say to a friend who was saying this? Or how would you look at this more objectively? And realistically,

Chris Seiter 28:17
I love that. I love that. All right, ready for the next one? This one’s a little bit of a long one. All right. I have always been an anxious person. I think a lot. I overthink, I bite my nails trying hard to stop. I usually don’t sleep well, because the second something is not going how I like in my life. There’s this hamster running nonstop in my head. But I want to live free of that in a near future. So what can I do?

Tati 28:46
Yeah, I think a lot of people can probably relate to this. And one thing so you know, a lot of what I already suggested, and I think one thing is connecting back to that uncertainty that I was talking about before. With anxiety, it’s this fear of uncertainty, or the unknown, or what could go wrong in the future. And so easier said than done, but something that can be kind of like an underlying practice. And, you know, sometimes I like to make post it notes as like reminders for myself if there’s something I want to focus on. And one thing that I think is helpful a lot of times with anxiety is focusing on what you can control and then letting go of the rest. And so maybe like writing this down, as opposed to No, I choose to only focus on what I can control because like I said, it’s something that you need to constantly remind yourself of, because it’s easier said than done. But you know, many times anxiety comes from Oh, what is he thinking? Or, you know, what if I did the wrong thing and the situation is something you can’t change anymore or what What if, you know, I look stupid when I run into my address on the street or whatever?

Chris Seiter 30:07
Like a fear of the unknown in the future? Sometimes I see a lot.

Tati 30:12
Exactly. Yeah. So bringing that focus back to, okay, I can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future. I can’t control what my ex is thinking about me or what he’s doing. I can only focus on, you know, the way that I’m thinking about things and the things that I’m doing.

Chris Seiter 30:28
I’m curious, have you ever read meditations by Marcus Aurelius? I have not, but I’ve heard of it. Okay, so a lot of what you’re talking about, like the coping mechanism of only focusing on the thoughts in your head, and like focusing on what you can control. That’s, like, straight from him. But what’s really fascinating about Marcus Aurelius is he wrote meditations. Okay, so the Italians or the Romans had their own language, but they were, they were like, in love with the Greeks. And so Marcus Aurelius wrote, meditations by himself in Greek. So no one would read it. And it was just like a private journal to them. So like, you know, like, some of the journals that you’re talking for our clients to, to do as a anxiety coping mechanism. This was literally his journals. And you can actually see these meditations. He’s talking a lot about, I had a really stressful day today, but I didn’t let it get to me, I only focused on so it’s really fascinating that even someone from ancient Roman times was using this and it’s actually he was considered one of the greatest men of his time. So if you don’t, if you don’t buy into what, to what talks he’s talking about here, I mean, literally, it’s, it’s there. And also, I think it’s interesting, because a lot of the anxieties that you I mean, that we are all struggling with in this day and age, people back then had it’s a very human nature thing. So I’d actually kind of get curious, do you think anxiety has gotten worse with the advent of social media? Because I definitely do think it has.

Tati 32:13
Yeah, definitely not one. Okay. One thing is that separate from social media, what you’re saying the reason anxiety has survived is because it has been helpful for survival. You know, anxiety, just as essence is helping us to avoid threatened danger. And so those traits are going to be passed down, because the people who are more cautious are typically going to survive more than the people who aren’t. Obviously, that’s a generalization, but like,

Chris Seiter 32:39
no, no, right? Yeah. Like it’s a law of the wild, you know, out there, like you’re, you see a lion or something, you’re gonna run that exactly the that’s that that’s the function I think it’s supposed to play but social media. What you have to say, sorry,

Tati 32:56
yeah, no, no, that’s okay. I think, definitely, because, you know, one thing with social media is now we have access to see, you know, how many hundreds of 1000s of billions of people’s lives. And so that can result in things like, you know, comparison itis and, because especially because of social media, people are constantly sharing like that highlight reel, they’re not sharing the struggles, they’re not sharing the failures. And so you’re comparing your day in and day out to everybody else’s kind of, like pristine life that they’re choosing to share. So, you know, there’s definitely the tendency to then compare yourself to others to feel like you’re behind to feel as though you need to do more to keep up. And then there’s the separate fact, of just the constantly having access to all this information in, you know, on a smartphone, that it’s not inherently a bad thing. But you know, sometimes people can become addicted to it, and then start to go to social media or go to checking their phone as a way of avoiding uncomfortable emotions or thoughts. And so they don’t learn how to actually sit with them and be with them, which is an important part of being human. You know, sometimes we need to just be with how we’re feeling. Sometimes we just need to take some space and time away from like constant inputs and information in order to process and work through what’s going in our mind. And when we don’t have that when there’s a constant kind of bombardment of information. It’s going to result in you know, my opinion, more anxiety, more depression, just more mental health struggles in general.

Chris Seiter 34:48
Yeah, I think, at least the line of work. I’m in dealing with a lot of breakups. I actually think social media. It’s like a double edged sword. People can use it really he effectively after a breakup, but in most cases for the clients, I find it just exacerbates their anxiety because they’re constantly checking. And to kind of, to kind of segue into our next question, this person asked, what are some methods to help regulate anxiety during these pullback periods with my ex. So what she means by that is like, things are going well, she’s trying to reconnect with the ex after a breakup and then boom, out of the out of the blue, he just pulls back, or she just pulls back and doesn’t want anything to do with them. How does she regulate that anxiety that she has? If that happens?

Tati 35:35
Yeah, yeah, I think what can help in that kind of situation is kind of what I was just touching on, but just being aware of how you’re feeling like this. seems simple, but it can be really challenging sometimes just like, sitting with and experiencing your emotion. Where do you feel it in your body? A lot of times anxiety can show up? Because our emotions are physical, they’re experienced by our physical body, not just in the brain. Okay? Do you feel anxiety in your chest? Do you notice there’s a tension? Do you notice it’s harder to breathe, you know, like just bringing awareness of what you’re feeling? Because then the saying is you need to feel it in order to heal it. And so if you can feel and tune into that and recognize what am I feeling physically? Also, what are the thoughts that are coming up? Maybe there’s fears like, he’s never going to want to talk to me again. And so maybe you’re focused on the worst case scenario, bringing it back to Okay. Is the worst case scenario, likely? And if it did happen, could you cope with it? And you know, a lot of times we fear that with with, like, what these worries are, we won’t be able to handle them because they’ll be too bad, or too devastating. But the reality is that you’ve handled this before, and you can handle it again.

Chris Seiter 36:58
So typically, to kind of piggyback off that, feel it to heal it, concept. I try to tell my clients that it’s okay to feel stress, and anxiety and everything like that, but it’s not okay to dwell too long into it. So one of the I’m actually just want you to check my strategies. So I’ll be happy to alter it if it’s wrong. But I tell people to get like a timer and set a 15 minute timer and then just allow themselves to feel everything during that 15 minutes. But then when the 15 minutes up. All right, let’s focus on this other thing. Let’s kind of move on with their day. Is that an effective approach? Or can you improve upon? Or is that like, cool, that got the Totti stamp of approval?

Tati 37:40
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s definitely effective. I’ve suggested that to my clients, like the way I’ll frame it is, you know, set this time of day aside to just worry about things. And then you know, that can actually be effective, because then you’re, rather than having these emotions, worries and thoughts going traveling with you throughout your day. If they do come up, you could say, alright, now I’ve set aside this time to work through these things, and I’m going to address it then. Because you’re right, like, if you dwell on it too long, then it’s kind of turning into this can turn into this downward spiral of, then you’re just feeding into the anxiety.

Chris Seiter 38:20
Yeah, I guess it takes a lot of discipline to be able to combat the high functioning anxiety, because a lot of this is like self methods, you know, there’s nothing like, there’s no computer program or AI program that can kind of keep you in check. It’s all happening in here. So I think it takes a lot of discipline and courage to be able to do this. Okay. Last question. What are some good ways to maintain composure in stressful situations?

Tati 38:48
Yeah, so I think that it’s a good question. It’s gonna depend on the situation, but you know, one thing can be having, like, what are your and let me backtrack, like, first, it could be to understand in a non stressful situation, what is it that you enjoy doing to relax or de stress? Because when we’re in a stressful situation, it’s going to automatically be harder to access the tools that we use, because you’re in a state of stress. And so you’re not thinking about, okay, what can I do to cope with the stress, you’re thinking about? How can I survive this situation? So I like to recommend that people practice the tools that they’re going to use in stressful situations when they’re not stressed. So that, you know, it’s the same way it’s like building a muscle the same way you would go to the gym, in order to like build your muscles and become stronger. You’re building your muscle of accessing these states of relaxation and de stressing. And so, if it’s in a stressful situation, and of course it’s going to help to be Eat something that you can do like around other people. So maybe it’s just like taking those deep breaths. Or maybe it’s before you go into the stressful situation, just, you know, setting a timer for five minutes and doing some deep breathing or doing a guided meditation, or I’ve recommended to clients with social anxiety in particular that like, Okay, before you go into this situation, let’s write down some, like positive statements that will help to prime you and put you in a positive mindset. So maybe it’s, you know, depends what it is. But if you’re going to an interview, maybe it is preparing as much as you can for the interview, and then also writing down you know, I’m going to focus on doing the best I can. That’s not a great one, but just like kind of anything that

Chris Seiter 40:53
that’s why Yeah, I mean, a lot of these a lot of these questions are just, we’ve already kind of answered them, you know, like like so anyways, Tati, you have a podcast slash YouTube channel. But you also coach and you have a few courses, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your coaching practice in your courses?

Tati 41:19
Yeah, so first of my podcast YouTube channel, you can find it on both is called calmly coping, and I speak there more about high functioning anxiety. So if that resonates with you, then you will find I have this point more than 150 episodes over there. And then I coach, high achieving professionals with you know, performance executive coaching to help them to achieve their potential and stop fear, anxiety and burnout from holding them back so they can live a more calm, balanced and confident life. And, you know, I also teach my curriculum in my online course calm, balanced and confident. And I have a an online community for high achievers experiencing high functioning anxiety, the calm and ambitious community.

Chris Seiter 42:07
So if you’re listening or watching this and you’re interested in checking out her podcast, or any of the coaching practices or the courses, I’m gonna have a link to those in the show notes. Or I guess the YouTube description or if you’re in the community and the little community thing, but there will be a link in there. But I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on and doing this.

Tati 42:30
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s great conversation.

The post This Is How To Handle Anxiety After A Breakup first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

I had the pleasure of interview Lee a few days ago and I was blown away at her approach to her breakup.

Not only did she really buy in to putting the focus on herself (as opposed to her ex) but she absolutely KILLLED IT during the texting phase.

Check out some of the things we talked about in our interview,

• The beginning of the breakup. 0:02
• Getting back into the game after a breakup. 3:35
• No contact for 45 days. 7:41
• How she got into the coaching world. 11:57
• Coffee grinders and coffee. 17:12
• The importance of the internal part of the process. 23:40
• Not cool things that were not cool. 28:54
• There’s no such thing as an innocent cup of coffee. 33:40
• The most important epiphany she had. 39:23

Interview Transcript

Chris Seiter 00:02
All right, today we have a another success story. We have Lee here who is going to tell us all about her situation. And specifically, she wanted me to highlight the importance of the work she did during the texting phase. So I’m eager to get into that. But thank you so much for coming on and doing this.

Lee 00:17
Oh, thanks for having me. Actually, thank you very much for creating this program. I purchased. Probably all of the programs I could think of five, perhaps in addition to yours, so

Chris Seiter 00:31
yeah, you were saying that, you know, the big ones.

Lee 00:33
The big hit heavy hitters,

Chris Seiter 00:36
right? You always you always I find it’s like sometimes people, you know, they just jive with different things better than than others. But I’m, I’m blessed to have you here. So, again, thank you for doing this. Why don’t you take us back to the beginning of men? I don’t know, if you want to take take it from like the beginning of the relationship or the beginning of the breakup. One. I’ll just leave that to you.

Lee 01:02
So I had met my significant other online. We had a long texting fees. About three months before we met in person. The first time around, we call that the first relationship. And then we met, it was like a fireworks type, relationship and person. Things were really heavy. I had had a surgery, he was there for me. He met my son, he was in my family. He started living with me, but he still had his own apartment, which is a very avoidant thing to do.

Chris Seiter 01:46
So did you guys move in together? Like, way too quickly? Like how long did that take to unfold? Exactly?

Lee 01:53
Well, so we’re in our mid 40s, he’s a year and a half younger than me. So I mean, I would say about 45 minutes, 45

Chris Seiter 02:01
minutes, 45 minutes. That’s the

Lee 02:05
relationship. He was there No, five months. And it was, um, you know, he was here all the time. But he wasn’t like, contributing as much. And we had problems, but I was afraid to broach the topics. Um, he had sort of done this. He had had kind of some money relationships with his, his ex wife and I have a son. So it’s like, I have a co parent relationship that I also needed to kind of work out the kinks with. And that sort of, I think kind of gave him some

Chris Seiter 02:41
pause difficulty. Yeah, I mean, especially so you mentioned that he might have been dismissive avoidant. How did he handle that? Okay, sure. Okay. Well, so he, so how long did it take him to actually start running away? And what was his reasoning during the breakup?

Lee 03:01
So the first time I think he technically ran away, he helped his ex wife move across the country, and I had a very anxious reaction to it and, and pushed him away. So out of like a protest behavior.

Chris Seiter 03:16
I mean, you could easily argue that’s not anxious behavior. That’s normal behavior, but okay.

Lee 03:22
Yeah, no. Well, yeah, I mean, I had some. Yeah, I mean, that is normal behavior. I was like, What is this? Yeah, there were things that were chipping away at my security throughout the relationship. And that had kind of driven me toward, like, these points of feeling very anxious. In the so when then November, I think, so we had met in June, was when he first broke up with me. And I, like begged and learned him back. Second time, was in December, and I had purchased this program and another one, and I had read that other one, and then I had gotten him back. And then in April 29 of the next year, I so we had been together for 11 months, we’d had a couple blowouts and one of which I had like a kind of like a meltdown in public and I had lost a lot of emotional control. So two weeks after that I came home from work and all his stuff was gone.

Chris Seiter 04:39
No explanation at all just like the actual ghosting there in person for you to see. Right. Okay. So I just work texted, I

Lee 04:54
netted or you know, I was like, are you why are you doing this to us like what the hell Oh, and what am I gonna say to my son? And like, you’ve left a family basically, like you became a part of a family, and then you left it. So like, what’s up with that? When, and I saw him and brought all of his stuff. And he said that he never wanted to see me again. And he never wants to talk to me again. He was like, smoothing out his clothes. Like, he’s obviously still attracted to me. You know? Yeah.

Chris Seiter 05:26
I’m very nervous in this moment.

Lee 05:29
Yeah. And I did not bring any peace. Probably what I should have done in retrospect, is just not say anything. I can give myself some time to calm down. But I did not. And I kind of like went after that situation to the very anxious thing, which is like, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? But knowing that, you know, he had already made up his mind. And so

Chris Seiter 05:59
he’s left you, you approach him at his work very anxiously. You do everything basically, you’re not supposed to do. I’m assuming this does not work out well, for you at first.

Lee 06:10
No, it doesn’t. He just pushes me away. And then yeah, I’m like, Well, can we talk about this in seven days, you know, this is like, an from another program that I read, it’s like, okay, now you’re doing damage control, you know, you’re trying to like, reestablish trust. And ultimately, what I didn’t realize is that, like, both of our nervous systems were on like, super high alert. And like, I really should have just backed off. And let it kind of smooth over because I had heard through his roommate that he was really hurting in May. And if I had done the, the break, and like, let myself calm down and not not and just let him do it, probably things would have gone a different course. However, what I feel this program did was forced me to look at myself with like, the ungettable girl content, doing the Trinity. Just sort of like applying these things. Because it’s very easy to just like, sort of like, focus everything out on them and say, Oh, well, this is them. And that’s their fault. And that’s what they did wrong. But at some point, I had an epiphany of like, oh, this is what I’ve been doing wrong. So

Chris Seiter 07:36
at this point, when you’re focusing on this stuff, have you already implemented like the No Contact Rule.

Lee 07:41
So I went into the No Contact Rule. And then, about 12 days after I sent like a goodbye, text, and vacated with music. I just start the No Contact Rule all over again.

Chris Seiter 07:57
Alright, so you made it 12 days, you sent the way you said, like, you communicate with like, some sort of music video or something like that. So I sent like a Yo, La Tengo song that was very sad. And like, you know, where are your emotions on your sleeve? Like?

Lee 08:13
Yeah, you know, thank you so much. And I hope you find all the happiness you’ve ever wanted, okay. And I found like, myself on the anniversary of our, like, the, the day that he told me, he loved me, which was the third of July, I found myself calling or no, the second of July I like, called him and totally just was like, I’m doing great, and

Chris Seiter 08:43
overcorrecting is the correct term there. You know, overcorrecting, trying to be like, Okay, and how does that go? How does that how does that approach work?

Lee 08:54
Horribly, he’s just like, I can’t be with you. And, you know, he told me that he couldn’t see me and that, you know, I was being silly by thinking he didn’t love me. But he just, you know, and he doesn’t have any social media. There’s no way I can really keep in contact with him. There’s no way he can really keep tabs on me. He’s kind of atypical in that way. So yeah, that was a big thing for me. So I’m like, Alright, no contact for 45 days.

Chris Seiter 09:29
So you’ve had maybe a couple of false starts during no contact? Yeah. Is this the one that kind of like sticks?

Lee 09:37
Yes. Okay. So then, you know, I do the things and I look at me and I go to therapy and I look at myself and my anxious behavior. I try and pick apart him trying to figure out a is this is am I in a narcissistic situation like, is this you know, and I kind of like distill that it wasn’t which was good. I kind of ruled out that he didn’t have any mood disorders or anything like that. He is a slightly neurodivergent or both have like tinges of ADHD I have a diagnosis of ADHD. So yeah, me too. So it’s like, I have some workarounds. But you know, the things changes, you know, as you know, and with a kid, it’s like, oh, but yeah, I spent a lot of time being pretty sorry for myself and feeling like the victim, and then, you know, having to re empower myself and feel better about myself and surround myself with people that understood. So the community was super helpful, because I wasn’t killing the resources that were around me as far as friendships with constant, like conversation about him. Yeah. So the battle battle buddy aspect of this program was super helpful. And, you know, I met some friends. And I was able to utilize that resource. And that was super helpful. And then, I guess what, like, you know, working this program in the sense of, like, keeping with the battle buddies keeping, it was like an exercise in self control. Like, I have to wait until I have the ability to talk about things clearly and or articulate, like, what it is that I need from this community, because a I might not get a response, or be, you know, like, Is this necessary, and like, I have to wait until x time to think about it. So it’s like, I can’t like ruminate as much. So it was like, sort of that was like, very integral to like, creating sort of a self control. modality. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 11:58
I mean, you’re, you’re, I’m assuming you’re doing the Trinity work. And you mentioned earlier that you that was something you had started before, maybe the false start happened.

Lee 12:10
Yeah, I got a personal trainer, got new therapists started therapy right. Now, some career goals, they switched. You know, I started interviewing for different careers

Chris Seiter 12:20
like so. I mean, like, theoretically, you’re doing everything you’re supposed to be doing during this no contact period. You mentioned you were doing like a 45. Day one. Did you actually make it all the way through the 45? days? Yes. Okay. Now we get to the fun part. Yeah. Phase,

Lee 12:39
I had gone through professional coaching through your group, gotcha. I had created. I was kind of on the fence. I’m like, do I want to do this? I don’t know. Um, so I talked to the coach. And I’m like, Okay, I got a call from a place that we had gone to like to get IVs. And apparently, he had forgotten that it was on AutoPay. And I had like, a couple months of membership, or three months or whatever membership left. And they call to remind me and saying that, you know, he had let’s just, you know, calm David. So it’s like David had left you. Three months of IV membership, he doesn’t want you to pay it back, if you you know, but he has cancelled it, and so on and so forth. And so I kind of utilize that is like, Thank you for the IVs I was hoping that at one point, we could talk because I had really broken and that was one of the things I talked about in coaching is I had really broken and, like his trust in me by going to his place of work by nagging by, like those things kind of would make anybody feel unsafe. You know? Yeah.

Chris Seiter 14:01
I mean, it also builds, this is how she’ll react from now on, like, that’s the perception he’s gonna have. So that’s, like, the headwind you’re going to be facing when you try to, and as you’re correctly, assuming, he’s a little wary at first.

Lee 14:19
So then he said, Well, why would we need to have contact? And I said, Okay, well, we and this was, you know, something I came back to the group with, and I had gotten a response from the coach, saying, well say that you had had a relationship where you relied on each other for a while, but you know, you respect his point of view. And you’ll give him some time to think about it. So I use that we and I left it alone for two weeks. And then I went in with the exact like, texting phase model. Yeah, you know, like Question The homes or distress sort of thing, right? And the first one was about so he sent in, like, he’s a weightlifting enthusiast and are a power lifter. So it was like, hey, I need help about pre workout. And it was like a slew of information.

Chris Seiter 15:20
Okay, so you hit his interest, right on the mark. Too much, maybe.

Lee 15:27
I was like, wait a minute, like it’s positive response. And like, I get like, 300 let you know. That’s a positive response. Like, are you doing tide theory? I’m like, Well, I just got a tidal wave. So I did create it. That’s hilarious. So, um, you know, then I had, you know, I tried to cut them off with like, something like, Oh, I’m doing this you know what I was I was inquiring about getting sailing lessons. And then the next time I had asked him about a weightlifting shoes. Well, that was that was just like intense. I mean, I got all the different fabrics and the different heel lifts and why you need this shoe for this thing and that and I was just like,

Chris Seiter 16:22
a really loves his weightlifting, right and a lot. Yeah, well, and

Lee 16:26
also, he just feels like, he’s done so much research like it. He’s like, the nice guy who’s like, Oh, I’ll help any disseminates information. But sometimes it can be a little overbearing, because that’s a wonder if

Chris Seiter 16:38
it’s also maybe like, he put so much work into the research. And like, I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but no one really cares. So it’s his way of like, saying, like, well, look how much research I put into it. I’m willing to put it out there.

Lee 16:53
Right now. It’s true. It’s like the weirdest thing, like, and I’m like, Okay, thank you, you know. And then

Chris Seiter 17:04
what’s amazing is that he initially gives you the cold shoulder on that first thing like what, like, we shouldn’t be talking and then you bam, you hit his interest. And it’s like, boom, like, just so message after message. And what

Lee 17:17
I didn’t know is that at this time, he had met somebody, and was kind of dating them. So I was like, like, just sort of

Chris Seiter 17:29
wonder if that lowered the barrier. Maybe like, well, I’ve already moved on to this new person. I don’t have to worry about a potential get back together with Lee.

Lee 17:41
That’s interesting. Yeah. So then, I just kept on that. And then it was he’s really into coffee. So it’s like coffee grinders. And it seems so benign, right. And like, was

Chris Seiter 18:01
there a question mark there, just like coffee grinders?

Lee 18:05
I was going to need, or I was like, Can I get your professional opinion or something like that? Yeah. And he was, and I’m like, well, it’s about coffee, David. So like, come on, in because he’s like, Well, I don’t know about professional. Yeah, you’re professional coffee drinker, I think and. And it was just like, here’s this do you want to do you want to like manual grinder? Do you want this grinder and it was just like, wow, like, again, and I was taking interest in the things that he had always been interested in. So it’s like, okay, it took me a little bit to kind of bridge into, like, normal conversation.

Chris Seiter 18:49
And do you think, ah,

Lee 18:52
probably, so that was we started on August 31 was the first text two weeks after then we started doing that, like every 10 days. I was kind of getting

Chris Seiter 19:03
you’re really slow. I mean, it was doing this. Got it.

Lee 19:07
And it would take him sometimes 24 hours to respond. He would like drop off

Chris Seiter 19:12
it’s good to know to have like

Lee 19:15
information

Chris Seiter 19:16
you’re pretty confident he was a dismissive avoidant.

Lee 19:19
So we had done many tests after. Okay, when we got back together. Yeah. And so that’s the thing like he had so when and what’s interesting is like, after we got back together, his and I, like there were things about me because my confidence had changed. And I had moved into secure attachment in the beginning, and we had gone to couples therapy when in the beginning, but like, it came out like he was actually kind of anxious when we got back together. I thought that the getting back together process brought out some of his anxious attachment style, and fears sort of like because The Keys disorganized like he was true, it seemed like he, because I kind of feel like we change over the continuum of our lives.

Chris Seiter 20:07
Yep. That’s 100% Correct. So like,

Lee 20:11
I think that, you know, given some of the things that had happened in his childhood, and the way that he was raised in relationships, and then also, because his marriage, I mean, was like, 20 years long, they’ve got, yeah,

Chris Seiter 20:23
that’s definitely gonna have an impact on your attachment style, especially towards the end.

Lee 20:28
And they were like, together for a really long time. So that created that was a secure part of his life. And then, you know, as II moved into single life, that’s when he sort of got back into that avoidance, you know, sort of style, because when we first met, he really put me at ease. It wasn’t like, he wasn’t there would disappear for days, you know. So yeah, but

Chris Seiter 20:54
before we were recording, so sorry, anyone listening to this? You didn’t, you didn’t hear this, we were talking about your attachment style. And you said you got professional checked out. And you’re fearful attachment style. And you were talking about how he kind of maybe fell in love with the avoidance side of that. So I’m actually just wondering if, if that sort of was the allure when you first met? You know, and

Lee 21:22
I think it could have been, I think it was that. And the fact that we had, we had a lot of things in common that a lot of people find, like, we have a very esoteric taste in music that has a term or like it just an eclectic taste. Oh, yeah.

Chris Seiter 21:41
I mean, you see, I mean, like, we like, Yeah, little text, the fun text message,

Lee 21:47
like, be listened to, like Darkwave. And like, shoegaze, all the stuff that like when we were like, I was younger, in the 90s. You know, it was kind of like, not everybody liked. And now it’s kind of gets resurgence and things and we’re like, wow, like, wow, but it, it goes beyond that. Like we were both raised in st part of the country, when we moved to another part of the country. There were same motivations behind that. So there were a lot of like similarities that we had. And in the beginning, like, I was just like,

Chris Seiter 22:23
like, then somewhere somewhere along the way that changes throughout your relationship to where you’re like, desperate to keep it together. Yeah, at the end, which is really interesting to look at maybe your attachment style throughout that relationship. You might have started out, maybe a little bit avoidant, potentially. But then slowly, but surely, which is the case with the fearful avoidant side, you know, bouncing back and forth. Did you ever feel like you were bouncing back and forth a lot throughout the relationship where you go from anxious to went into anxious, avoidant?

Lee 22:55
Yes. And then I mean, reading and learning about protests behaviors and what they were, and just sort of understanding that I wasn’t like trying to make them jealous and trying, you know, certain things like that. Really, just, that’s a protest behavior. That’s just something that I learned to sort of irritate his nervous system and kind of get a response in a certain way and how it doesn’t work if that switch isn’t turned on. Yeah. So yeah, it was it’s this has been like a super fascinating journey. For me.

Chris Seiter 23:40
I like that you’re so self aware of it. Because most of the people I talk to, they only focus on the x, x x x, and they kind of neglect the internal stuff. And that internal stuff, I think, is the most important part of the entire process.

Lee 23:54
Well, because this program isn’t about the X. It isn’t about you, it’s about it’s about me, and when that light got turned on, which wasn’t immediately, like it took a good that 45 days of my nervous system kind of M that was what I found interesting about, like, there, there is a scientific approach to the way that you have, like things laid out and also in the way that the materials are laid out. It’s like for that anxious brain. It’s just like, like, you go through it, and just get it but what I realized is that anxious brain did not learn a lot and I had to go back and reread them. Because we’re being the information, you know, wants to go into the texting phase, like right? It’s like no, and then when you’re in it, you’re dying. You’re dying. You’re bound it’s been

Chris Seiter 24:58
going on, it’s like Yeah, yeah, you know, there’s like a couple of things to bring up here. The first thing I would say is like, psychologically or I guess, neuro chemically, what you’re what the No Contact is meant to do is lower your cortisol levels. So they’re a little bit more normal. But I think the mistake a lot of people make is they’re doing things that constantly make them stressed and anxious and obsessed about the X. And that keeps those cortisol levels elevated. And the longer they stay lol, I think there was like a study I found that said, like, if your cortisol levels stay in this constant state of elevation, normally, it should take like three to four hours for them to come back down to normal. But if they are constantly used, it can take six months for them to come back down to normal. This is why I think so many people struggle in the post breakup period, because they’re just checking their exit. No. That’s interesting, though, because Alright, so the number one thing I noticed that people do is they check their exes, social media accounts, boom, cortisol level, like, what are they doing? Your ex didn’t have social media, you didn’t have any choice to find.

Lee 26:02
That’s all I have. Spotify was like, you know, like, combing the Spotify plates hilarious or things that he added? Like, what does that mean, you know, and then I realized, like, he had taken me off a joint playlist, and I was like, Oh, my God, you know, because the only thing we had

Chris Seiter 26:21
been the best thing for you, though. Right? Is it probably helped this cortisol levels come down without you realizing it.

Lee 26:28
Interestingly enough, the first time we actually talked on the phone was six months to the day of us breaking up.

Chris Seiter 26:37
Interesting. That’s kind

Lee 26:39
of that’s kind of interesting. Well, how were

Chris Seiter 26:41
you feeling during it, though? So obviously go through this period of no texts, no contact and texting for a long period of time. But like when you get to that phone call phase? How are you feeling? Do you feel like, do you still want him back at that point? Are you just kind of like, okay, whatever happens happens?

Lee 26:57
Well, and that’s that, is it like, I did the 45 days. And then after the two weeks, I kind of was like, Okay, do I want him back?

Chris Seiter 27:08
Yep. That’s the secret sauce of everything.

Lee 27:11
I I’m a wonderful person. And there’s no way that a wonderful person is going to be single forever. So. And that was like, that was really it. That was when I knew I was like, I had to be willing to let him go. And let go of the idea of what he was and who he was. Because if I maintained holding on to that idea of who he was, and what he was, I don’t think that we could have continued this second relationship. Because I wouldn’t have been able to forgive him. Because I was I was abandoned in my mind. He abandoned that little he

Chris Seiter 27:50
literally did abandon you showed up to your house and his stuff was gone. That’s a definition of abandonment. Yeah.

Lee 27:57
And like, my, that I have friends that are like, Well, I’m not going to do David anymore. I’m not going to be friends with him anymore. I don’t want him to show up. At you know, x y party. And, you know, and this is to this day, because of that action, you know, and it’s like, I think he’s proven himself. But, you know, it’s not just me in my life, you know, and I get those are the people I exhausted. Yeah, you know, and it’s like, so that was why I felt like this. This program, like was super helpful and integral to my own personal healing, because it propelled me on a journey of trying to figure out why I was a accepting substandard treatment from another individual. Because in combing through my memories, I realized that there were things that weren’t normal like him taking his ex wife back

Chris Seiter 28:54
to not cool. Not cool. Yeah, knuckle right.

Lee 28:58
Things that were not cool. Were coming to the fore. And I was like, oh, oh, yeah, he wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t this person that I like, you know, yeah,

Chris Seiter 29:09
he kind of had them on a pedestal, I think, especially in that post breakup period, where you’re desperate to get them back. Everything they do is on a pedestal on spot and kind of bringing them back down to your level.

Lee 29:18
And it’s like, oh, he’s, you know, he’s the only one and blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, no, there’s no granted, it is hard to meet people. And I found that out because I did start dating. But he needed to also start dating too, because that’s what made him miss me, you know, and these texts that I was sending him, reminding him that I knew who he was. I like that, ya know, like, who he really was, like, the things that were really important to him. And I know that it sounds like, oh, well, it’s just weightlifting and coffee, but it’s more than that. Because like the moment you know,

Chris Seiter 29:57
it’s empathy. Like you you’re having a conversation with someone, I think you might have also benefited from the fact that he was dating other people. And maybe they’re not asking the type of questions that is going is like nurturing for the soul. Whereas you pop in and you can know exactly because you studied him, and you were with him for a long time, and you knew him for a long time. I mean, that’s an interesting take on it. I liked that actually, a lot. A lot of times when I’m, I’m doing these interviews, I’m always looking for ways to frame things for the people who haven’t bought in yet. Because what you basically said is, once I outgrew my ex, that’s when I started to see the snowball effect really start occurring. But it’s, it’s really about convincing people to outgrow their ex, because so many people do not want to outgrow their ex, they just want to fix the problem get their ex back. So a lot of it is hearing from people like you that I think helps the light bulbs go off for them.

Lee 30:59
I did not I was so resistant.

Chris Seiter 31:03
I didn’t know scary, there’s no guarantee. Yeah, there’s like,

Lee 31:06
yeah, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t. And not only that, it’s like I’m older. So I was like, oh, there’s nobody out there, you know, and it’s like that, you know, but that’s also not true. And, you know, it’s

Chris Seiter 31:23
just your, I think anxious fears talking, you know, that voice in the back of your head that knows exactly what to say to like, really got you.

Lee 31:34
Everyone has that. And then, you know, there was like, there are a few things that I knew when I had him. And it was like I had had these conversations with him about coffee about, you know, his top interests, I asked him about other things and got sort of like, sort of brush off. Like I asked about nonfiction books that he’s very literate. And like, I kind of got like a little on that. And then I asked about workout playlists, like have you heard anything new. And once he started sending me music, I knew that I like

Chris Seiter 32:22
that was like your inside way of talking to no other people might have had that you connected on that level.

Lee 32:28
Right? And so then once and then we had a conversation and then we ended up having like a FaceTime. And he saw my face and he started to tear up. And I was like, okay, you know, like, this is really happening. Like, I’m getting my ex back. I’m getting my ex back, you know what I mean? Like in my mind, on myself down. So it’s like, alright, just because you don’t cut your chickens before they like you kind of calm down and like, and like slowly smooth and smooth as fast. You know, I’m just like, Alright, all the things the outages are like running through my

Chris Seiter 33:13
that’s funny.

Lee 33:14
But it’s like once I had gotten the music and gotten like the things that were like the flowing of communication that was probably like mid October. And then, you know, the FaceTime conversation was six months of the day, but like we had talked on the phone. And then it was like after that probably excuse me with the likes and things. We had met in person, he had asked me for a cup of coffee. And I remember him telling me, you know, there’s there’s no such thing as an innocent cup of coffee. And so

Chris Seiter 33:51
you’re like, No, there’s, there’s What are you talking about? You know,

Lee 33:55
like no cups of coffee. And but no. It was

Chris Seiter 34:03
unfortunately, fortunately for you, it was not an innocent cup of coffee.

Lee 34:08
And what I found like a month or No, I want the month after we are a couple of weeks. Yeah, it was a couple of weeks after we had been seeing each other. He had put in his calendar because he was putting something else in his calendar that that day that we met for coffee. It was new anniversary.

Chris Seiter 34:28
Oh, that’s how you knew, huh? Yeah.

Lee 34:32
So but I knew because when we first met in person, he’d asked me to be back together. So it’s like I’m skipping the value chain in terms of like the conversation.

Chris Seiter 34:41
I mean, he’s skipping it for you. You’re not really skipping it. Right.

Lee 34:46
Right. And so then I’m like, Well, you know, I’m wondering what am I supposed to do mice to slow them down so that resistance again. And that emotional control on my part was like this Did you know he did? So?

Chris Seiter 35:01
did? Did you slow him down? Yeah. Yeah, I did interesting how that correlates with when you first met how avoidant you were specifically.

Lee 35:12
Yeah. And then being physically intimate I was, I said, we have to go see a couples therapist before that happens.

Chris Seiter 35:19
Smart. Very, very smart. I’ve interviewed a lot of success stories, who it’s like half and half for them. Sometimes they sleep together too soon, sometimes they do what you did, it always seems to work out quicker for the people who have that boundary, as opposed to the people who kind of end up in this friends and benefits limbo for a

Lee 35:40
while. You know, I have baggage, I have a child. And so you

Chris Seiter 35:48
have to think for more than just you. Right. And I know, it’s not just you.

Lee 35:53
And then you know, to be back in my life, he had to be back into my son’s life. And because I have him 50% of the time, ya know, that also imposes a boundary, because I would not hang out with him with my son for X amount of time. And then I had to make sure that my ex husband was okay. Because a lot of our safety in, you know, my son and my safety in the way that my son felt about himself, I had to discuss that with him. I had to discuss how I felt about myself in that situation with my son,

Chris Seiter 36:37
but I love that these are all hoops that you’re making David, jump through, you know, and he’s doing it. He’s jumping through time after time.

Lee 36:47
And he’s doing it and he’s proving it. And he’s, you know, when I went when we went to therapy is when she said, You know, I could see his anxious side, because he is clearly to you. And he wants to please you, he’s just, but it’s like, is that anxious. And now we’re in a very secure attachment. But it took us a little bit to kind of like work out the kinks and to shake them through. And it also took a lot for me to say, these are the things that I want, these are the things that I don’t want, because I would there are times that I was just, you could steamroll over all of my needs and wants. And that’s just not who I am today, I was in a relationship with it with a narcissist, who talked himself out of therapy for seven years at one point in my 20s. And it pretty much ruined my sense of self and set me up for, you know, accepting, you know, substandard treatment from the nicest people who hadn’t figured themselves out. And then I tried to save them and things of that nature. And yeah, yeah, no, you know, and since it’s like, I have this, this history, this long history of life, you know, I’m 46. So it’s like, I see me and what I’ve done wrong, and what I can do better. And I don’t think I could have seen it without this particular program. All of the other programs. Thank you. I mean, and I work in Psych. I do this, like, I deal with people with all these different problems, that see things that aren’t there, you know, what I mean, and have been deeply, deeply, deeply hurt from childhood and have these like, injuries and to their psyche. And it’s just like, I have to choose as a human being the power I give somebody else, and how they affect me. And if you can, like help somebody realize that they have that power within themselves to make themselves change, to make themselves see something to not accept bad things and look for the good because there were good things in that relationship. I had done a great job of mucking a lot of good things up. And he did too.

Chris Seiter 39:26
I think, would you say looking back at the entire experience, the most important epiphany for you was realizing I just need to get myself right first before I try to get him back.

Lee 39:38
Absolutely. Because I could not I was just going to head back. Because here’s the thing, they do always come back in my history. I mean, and I’m not joking. I’m talking 20 years down the line. They come back, they find you on Facebook, they find you on Instagram, like they’ll say Search for you. The they always come back. They do men and women. You know, I’ve also been guilty of that, you know, where I like, tag somebody after, you know, 15 years? And it’s like, yeah, they do. So I had to make sure that I was right. Because if I’m not right within myself, then I may be making the wrong decision. And I’m trying to learn somebody back into my life who may not be well suited for me, or my life or my son.

Chris Seiter 40:34
I mean, it seems like you did an amazing job.

Lee 40:36
Yeah, I mean, we live we’re living together. Now.

Chris Seiter 40:40
I would argue it’s not the program that did that. I would argue it’s you. The program was just like, hey, do this. You’re the one that actually had to do the work.

Lee 40:46
Agreed. But I mean, like, I don’t think I would have had a systematic approach to it.

Chris Seiter 40:54
Yeah. I mean, we just basically gave you the the bumpers to the bowling lane. Right, exactly.

Lee 40:59
Like, and, I mean, I did the work. I’ve been, you know, and that’s the thing like, was it Elizabeth Gilbert, who says, I haven’t met anybody who wanted to change who wasn’t sick of their own BS, you know, and it’s like, I had to really get sick of myself and sick of the crap that I was putting myself through. And that’s really what I had to remember, I’m not a victim here. I allowed some of these things to happen. There are bad people out there that do bad things to people.

Chris Seiter 41:27
And unfortunately, it seems like you did encounter one of those bad people in that seven year relationship. And that might have ruined your perception of other relationships.

Lee 41:39
Absolutely going forward. Absolutely. Dan,

Chris Seiter 41:44
thank you so much for coming and doing this. I know, you have to you have to leave soon.

Lee 41:50
After picking up my son, the one thing I did want to say is like an you know, is, it was the it was the group. It was the practice, practicing being a part of an unrehearsed authentic self, the practice of taking risks, that the practice of, you know, observing some sort of self control, emphasizing the role of having self control. That was really big, and putting the emphasis on yourself as the, you know, the person who needed to change because I, there are things that have happened in our relationship. Of course, there are we always have kinks. But I’ve, you know, I learned to speak up for myself, I learned to say things like, Hey, we’re not going to go to this point until we have seen a couple therapists, you know, and we do we see a therapist once a month. And we and they’re like, they’re, you know, I make sure that we read the books. And yeah, it’s important. So thank you, and he thinks you so

Chris Seiter 43:04
well, thank you both. Thank you for coming on. Because this interview already has so many golden nuggets that I’m going to refer to in the community.

Lee 43:15
And honestly, I’ve only been out and not helping, you know, be could just because of my own personal stuff. But as soon as that kind of comes down at

Chris Seiter 43:23
no pressure, you’re in the golden era. Now you’ve accomplished your goal.

Lee 43:28
You know what, like, I feel like there are things like, I don’t mind talking to people about this stuff, because it’s like, I’ve suffered with this for so long. And if I had figured this out earlier on in life, like who knows, but I can’t go there and I can’t do that type of shoulda coulda woulda, so, right now, I, I’m just grateful that I had the community that I had people. You know, it was just, it was really good. And, you know, the reading lists that were recommended and things like that, just like amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. So,

Chris Seiter 44:04
thank you so much. Thank you. We’re playing Thank you tag. Thank you. Thank you.

Lee 44:12
Yeah, but I gotta go pick up the little. And, ya know, we’re, you know, it was really funny, because when I had, I had started to introduce the idea of bringing David back. And one of the things was he had to apologize to my son. Any, any did? Yeah, that’s scary to do. But he had to, because if you’re going to be a person who’s a representation of what our relationship is, for another, and you know, for a little growing person,

Chris Seiter 44:46
I don’t know. I just love that. You made him apologize. But

Lee 44:49
did I made I mean, there was a lot he had to do. And he did it though. You did it. You got to know we’re doing and we’re doing it and It’s like we’re in this so thank you again and thank you to the group and everyone that helped me because I know they know who they are

The post Success Story: This Woman Got Her Ex Back After Finding Herself first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

I had the pleasure of interviewing “So.” A member of our community who has just gotten her ex back,

In the interview we talk about things like,

• The breakup that led up to the reconciliation. 0:01
• Meet the woman who got back together with her ex.
• The dark times.
• The first Christmas apart from her boyfriend.
• The first serious boyfriend.
• The grieving period before moving forward. 3:32
• Being kicked out of the house.
• The grieving period after the divorce.
• Crying, ice cream and watching movies.
• How long it took him to give it his all.
• How did you find out about the other woman? 7:22
• He got back in contact in January this year.
• He wants to change relationship dynamics.
• Being kicked to the curb again.
• How to cope with the no contact situation.
• What were you doing during the no contact? 11:35
• No contact, meetup groups, gym, therapy and therapy.
• End date for no contact.
• Breaking the no-contact rule three or four times.
• Building up a relationship.
• How to deal with the fear of rejection. 16:00
• Mentally and emotionally affected by the cycle.
• Holding boundaries for yourself.
• Cold turkey, no contact, no explanation.
• Fearful avoidance, anxious and avoidant responses.
• What happened with the other woman? 19:27
• What happened with the other woman.
• How his ex is handling his grief.
• Holding boundaries and not ignoring calls and texts.
• No contact for 45 days.
• Setting the boundary on no contact. 23:22
• Breaking up with her boyfriend.
• No contact, no contact and no contact.
• Coming out of his shell and asking for her back.
• Being upfront and honest.
• Holding boundaries and setting boundaries. 28:54
• Hedging his bets with probing questions.
• Lying on the hook for a bit.
• The fear of loss aspect worked on him.
• The difference between this and the previous go-around.
• Advice on how to get help. 32:16
• Getting professional help to make the relationship stronger.
• Taking responsibility for the relationship.
• The most important tactics that got her to success.
• The no contact rule.

Interview Transcript:

Chris Seiter 00:01
This meeting is being recorded. All right, today, we have a very amazing success story we have. So who has been kind enough to come on here and basically give us the rundown of her entire situation on how her and her ex have gotten back together. So thank you so much for coming in doing this. Yeah, cause so is this is this pretty recent? Like I noticed, like a day ago, you posted in the community? Like, yeah, I got back. He wants to like go seek professional help to kind of work through things. So is this like, are you still riding high? A little bit on on it?

So 00:44
Yeah, no, but yeah, it was. Honestly, very unexpected. And you’re literally right, a day ago, pretty well. So. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 00:55
Okay. So I mean, why don’t we go back to the dark times? Can you can you kind of take us through the play by play of the breakup and how that went down? And everything that kind of led up to this point?

So 01:11
Yeah, so it was Oh, my God, like, honestly, reality TV drama, almost the Ricoh it was, it was a border poll, a lot of things. A lot of it was just arguments, not even getting a relationship. It got to a point where my partner was unemployed for a couple of weeks. And obviously, finances not a great topic for you know, potentially relationships that are breaking down, you got into that topic. And it was just explosive, and just kind of walked away from that. And that was back October 2022. So that was quite a while ago. That was all going on. So yeah, that did mean that like for majority, I think of like Christmas time and everything. It was just first Christmas without him, which was very weird. But

Chris Seiter 02:04
How long had you been together before that point?

So 02:06
Three and a half years.

Chris Seiter 02:10
Okay, so And how old? Are you?

So 02:14
So I’m 2222.

Chris Seiter 02:15
So, like, was he like your first serious boyfriend? Yes, yes. So so that first Christmas apart must have been really, really difficult.

So 02:29
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just yeah, it was not a great point. I mean, luckily, obviously, you have family around me. So that was pretty nice. But yeah, it just felt so weird. Cuz another factor was our family’s live, like five minutes away, driving time. So it was just kind of knowing the fact that he was so close five, but obviously, you know, we’re not in contact. And that’s the breakups happen. So it’s this kind of single family thing.

Chris Seiter 02:59
Yeah. So he initiates the breakup. What does he actually say during that conversation? How does he do it?

So 03:08
Um, yeah, so that was very spur of the moment. It was very much we got into an argument about finances and how it’s not marrying up. And it got to a point where he literally talked me out of the house, because we were living together and he was just like, pack of things and go, and I was like, Oh,

Chris Seiter 03:28
right. Oh, man.

So 03:31
I mean, obviously a lot more upset. I was, yeah, it’s kind of tearing up. I was like, Okay, I got my sister’s picked me up and just

Chris Seiter 03:38
Batman. So alright, so you guys have this argument about finances, which obviously, is such a huge stress for not just, you know, like a young couple, but even like married couples, and you know, that, that, that almost always seems to be a huge, huge point of contention. So anyways, you’re kicked out of the house, your sister picks you up? What happens next? Do you immediately start thinking like I want to back or is it more of just a grieving period before you get there?

So 04:10
Um, so for that, yeah, for me, it was a grieving period because it was so another thing, it was my first kind of proper relationship as well. So it was kind of understanding where my headspace was that and kind of experiencing actually kind of always being single for like, the first time in quite quite a while. But yeah, my headspace was definitely just kind of like just keep away focus on yourself. Focus on friends and family and just Yeah, hold your head above the water as best you can.

Chris Seiter 04:44
I imagine that must have been really difficult, though. To do that. Did you have any like big setbacks?

So 04:51
Um, yeah. So I mean, I wasn’t. I think the setback for me was that the house you were in was actually over. by his dad. So it meant I had to be back with my parents, like, time. That was kind of a setback conspicious obviously, not particularly one thing that I think it’s also just, for me, it was just kind of privacy in the sense of like, I want to grieve. But obviously, you know, parents as much as I love them, they kind of want to pry. So your cadence is like I am, but I just need this time to grieve myself and just get out of my system. Yeah, there was a lot of days of like crying and like Ben and Jerry’s ice cream watching movies.

Chris Seiter 05:36
All right, we did the whole Netflix thing. So what point do you I’m assuming? So you mentioned to me off off air that you you listen to the podcast? Is that was that like, your entrance into our community in our space? Or was it mostly just like a Google search that that led you?

So 06:03
It was a bit of both. It was a bit like I was listening to the podcast, and also some days by you do I do the whole like, Oh, I really wouldn’t back and kind of Google search it. But I think in both those times, I was trying to be as hard as it was, I was trying to be kind of logical and say like, just take a step back, see how you’re feeling. And if you want to do this, do this, but do it for yourself. Not for like anything else, do it? Because you’re nervous, right? And that’s something you really want. And I listen to the podcast really helped with that kind of understanding my mindset and kind of initially being like, Yeah, I do want this. And I think it’s something that we could work through. Kind of

Chris Seiter 06:51
so so basically, you’re listening to the podcast every once in a while you’re kind of doing the Google search thing. Do you have any idea of like how long that went on? Before you were like, Okay, I actually want to give this my all.

So 07:06
So there, I was kind of initially searching, I probably should preface this by saying this was a very long process. So in terms of Christmas time, December, when all of that was happening. It was back in January this year that he got back in contact, and was like, Hey, let’s have a relationship again. And I was like, at this point, I think I’d signed up to the course I looked through kind of a few of the classes by hopefully, like gone right into it. So I was, at that point, I probably I probably should have been like, let’s just, like, slow it. But I was just like, Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go on in. And

Chris Seiter 07:53
oh, my God, this is like, wow, this was easy. I didn’t have to do anything. He comes back. And I’m assuming it does not end well.

So 08:00
No, no, no. So it was quite a weird one. It was He wants you to change the relationship dynamics. We know from relationship. The person that he was kind of in this other relationship with didn’t want to know for relationship. I made that very clear. And that is some awkward times where essentially, he definitely for her.

Chris Seiter 08:27
Oh, did you find this after the fact? Did you find this out after the fact?

So 08:33
Yeah, so it was it was a weird one where I have a kind of inclination. And yeah, he just just outright he said to me, Oh, I’m leaving you for her. And I was like, wow,

Chris Seiter 08:48
my gosh, okay, so So let me get this straight. He breaks up with you in before Christmas, last year. You’re grieving. You’re kind of like in and out of the podcast. At some point, you sign up for the program, like right after you sign up for the program, boom, like a bolt from the blue. He comes out and he’s like, Hey, let’s get back together. And you think like, oh, yeah, absolutely. But then he drops another bombshell which is saying like, hey, I want an open relationship. And then you’re like, No, I do not want an open relationship. And then he leaves you for some other girl who is willing to do an open relationship. Yeah. Yeah, I literally cannot say I’ve ever interviewed anyone with that situation before. Your first.

So 09:37
It was weird. I mean, I met the other person and we like kind of hang out this was for it was started to be a thing. And there was a whole phase where my ex boyfriend at a point was just like, yeah, that’s all kind of get involved in those sorts of things together. Which Oh, don’t don’t ever do this. But I was restarted to kind of casual thing. And it just ended very badly. And the other person made it very clear that they just wanted my ex boyfriend for themselves. And I was just like, well, that’s not how relationships work. Got it. And it was the whole thing of just.

Chris Seiter 10:24
So there’s this other, there’s this other woman involved. Yeah. And he basically leaves you for her. Now, obviously, you’re kind of doubly you know, you’ve been kicked to the curb one time now you’ve been literally kicked to the curb again, but he’s also with this other woman. How do you cope with that?

So 10:49
Um, I, this is where I just I use the whole no contact thing I just witnessed like, right? I’m, I’m not why didn’t say this. But in my head, I was just like, I’m not going anywhere near you. And I’m not going anywhere near you. Yeah, I guess. And that was it was another car for here. It was a lot of things. When that whole dynamic started. And it was going well. I made the decision to say I don’t want it with my parents. But I obviously I can’t live with you. So how about we live in the cities that kind of together, and I live, still do 20 minutes away in a different house. And a week after it helped me move in was when he drops the bomb just out of? I’m leaving it for this other woman. So which was

Chris Seiter 11:37
like helping you financially to get that place?

So 11:41
No, no, it was literally just helping me move my furniture, things up. So

Chris Seiter 11:48
you’re independent enough to where you’re not having to rely money wise on him. But obviously, now you’re devastated because you just moved to be near him. And now he’s kicked you to the curb again. Okay, so obviously you do no contact, you’re like, I’m not going near you. I’m not going near you. What are you doing during that no contact to kind of help cope.

So 12:15
Oh, um, so I know myself very busy. I signed up to all these meetup groups. It’s a thing we have, I’m not sure if it’s in the States. It’s a UK kind of app where you can go to local groups that have a similar interest. So I was going to like kind of meeting up with people who have like minded interests, like Dungeon and Dragons, or just like meeting restaurants. I started going to the gym, I started therapy. And just trying to do all the things that keep you busy. I’m just focusing on my career at the time. And just getting out of my mind.

Chris Seiter 12:51
Yeah, so, so. So you did the No Contact? Did you ever have like an end date? Like, you know, usually we have like those three timeframes. 2130 45 Did you ever have like a specific end date on how long the no contact was gonna last?

So 13:04
Yes. See, this is where I tend to look like a very bad student. And I wasn’t very bad student at that point. Okay.

Chris Seiter 13:14
In my experience, most students that I’ve coached are not good stuff. It’s, they don’t, they don’t stick to the no contact. So good. But anyways, go ahead.

So 13:23
So it was an going back to the fax that it was I think, end of March, but he said I’m going live the other one. I did that no contacts about three to four times last thing about 30 days.

Chris Seiter 13:41
Okay. Last 30 days. Sorry. Did you actually last 30 days you did it like three or four times? So it’d be 30 days reach out? That didn’t work. 30 days reach out? Oh, that didn’t work like that.

So 13:57
There was a specific reason why it’s time that it never works. And I had to restart the no contacts. Okay, which was, you see,

Chris Seiter 14:11
I’m getting worried.

So 14:13
I did the whole thing which you say you should have which you really, really should earn, actually at all. And so I start with my axe.

Chris Seiter 14:22
Like each of those times. Yeah. Well, hey, you got it. This is okay. All right. So it was very,

So 14:31
um, I think this was also the time where I just started therapy. I was working through some things and I think mentally I was just kind of I was listening to classes, but obviously not fully taking it on being like, no, it’s fine. So good. And then being like, oh, no, no, it’s really not.

Chris Seiter 14:54
Okay, so you’ve broken the no contact, so it’d be 30 days. And then you would reach out, was there was it like an immediate like reach out, then you would sleep together? And then you’d be like, Oh, no, I need to go back into no contact or was there like a little bit of a grace period where there was like some attraction being built?

So 15:13
There was actually so I think this is the second or third time that I think it’s the third time where he was actually like, oh, that’s like, that’s our relationship again. And I was like, we’re okay. Potentially. Why don’t we? Okay, let’s like, text, let’s, let’s do it that way. Let’s take it take it slow. And we started off that with the whole kind of like texting phone calls going on dates, kind of building up like a value ladder or something. I’m sorry, I’m getting totally wrong. Yeah. And two weeks afterwards, he was just like, actually, no, no, I don’t want to be in a relationship.

Chris Seiter 16:00
So what does that do to you? Because it’s like, you’re getting this hope. And then it’s being pulled out from under you? Like, How are you coping with that? Like, mentally I feel like that has to be difficult because like, you sleep with them, you feel like you have this hope. It feels like oh, hey, I got it back again. He wants to try the relationship. And then boom, third time now he’s saying like, Ah, no, I’m not feeling not feeling that anymore.

So 16:29
Very bad. I was, yeah, a lot of nights. But I was just very much like crying, very depressed. Very, doing the whole kind of repeated, I’ll go, I would like route with my friends, we’d go walk. So we’d meet up. And it was the same story. And it was it was them being like, Sophie, you’ve just you’ve got to focus on yourself. Like, really just got to do your own thing. And just focus on going to the gym, go to therapy, focus on your career, and just put it out of your mind because it’s just, it’s not good. It’s not mentally, and emotionally, we can feel broken down.

Chris Seiter 17:08
It seems to me like you’re caught in this, almost like this negative feedback loop where you get like this hope you get back together. He sleeps with you, then he discards you, and then you kind of like go through the whole cycle again. And again. So at what point did does that like stop? Like, like, or is it like about holding boundaries for you? Like when? When did when does things turn into a more meaningful thing?

So 17:36
So I think it was when the whole Alessia relationship lasted for two weeks. And it was I actually know, at that point, I was like, Okay, I just completely went cold turkey, no contact, no explanation. And just focus on my thanks. I was like, I can’t, you’ve done this so many times that I just don’t have the energy to deal with this. And I’m not going to deal with error. So, goodbye. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 18:08
So you basically decide, all right, I’m going all in on this no contact, but he’s not getting a warning. This time. Were you wanting him prior to that?

So 18:17
Like, Hey, I was never wanting, which was, which was weird to me. That had a very weird thing of every two to three weeks, he would be would like start a conversation. And it’d be very every time two to three weeks.

Chris Seiter 18:35
Yeah, so the you know, if if we were in a coaching session, I think I think I would say is like that sounds like very fearful avoidant response. So like, you know, they’re they have both of those core wounds, anxious and avoidant. You give them the space by the No Contact Rule. And they’re avoidant side kind of likes that at first, but then over over time, that anxious side begins to take hold, and they can’t contain themselves and they reach out. So he’s like a consistent practice. I think that may have been what’s happening also, one of the interesting things about fearful avoidance is they tend to have very rocky relationship histories. They also tend to jump from person to person, they do kind of do open relationship type things. So he’s sort of checking some of the boxes here. I never asked throughout this period, what happened with the other woman? Did she discard him? Like what what’s what’s the lowdown there?

So 19:36
Um, so yeah, that was so at that point. We were kind of so let me go back. So yes, that was we were in a casual relationship was the other woman and then up for her. At that point, I blocked her I blocked him. Yeah, so she very much was was was like blowing up his phone being very active. Sorry. Yeah. I think after a couple of weeks, the end of things, not after, she called me up, kind of accusing me of potentially going going out with him to a club, which I wasn’t I was just out with friends, but it was on my Instagram. And she didn’t know that. And where apparently she was kissing other women at a club. And I was just on the phone like, I look, I can’t help you if you need to talk to him talk for him, but I’m not involved in this. And then for the books on America’s Yeah, I did.

Chris Seiter 20:40
Let that anxious energy come through. But also it’s interesting. Your ex is almost like volatile and how he’s handling his grief of the breakup. So he’s with you for three, three and a half years before the initial breakup. And it seems to me like he’s not coping with the breakup very well. Like he’s trying to grasp at things that will distract it, you know, him from feeling the grief. You know, there’s the other woman, obviously, but he still kind of keeps coming back to you like, you’re the one consistent touch point. And that, okay, so I’m just kind of like, like, trying to grasp all the puzzle pieces here. I feel like what’s what, what makes a difference for you as you started holding your boundaries? So like, you know, it’s like, clearly once you call me twice, yeah, for me three times. Yeah. Not the fourth time. That’s it. You know, you stick the boundary. And what starts happening when you start doing that?

So 21:42
Yeah, he does a whole thing. He starts like, kind of sending me texts, hawks texting me. They are like, Hey, you up by what’s going on? Again, shy, ignored. Like, there was like miss calls, which, yeah, just ignoring it. Yes, it’s does a whole thing of just starting to blow up my phone through that. Which made it actually a lot more difficult because of all those kind of no contact periods. He hadn’t basically done anything, and then just had the whole thing of like, oh, that’s like exchange items. That’s meetup and then one thing led to another, which again, shouldn’t do. But this Yeah, this time, it was funny blowing up my phone. I just, I was just like, I just have to ignore this. So that was really, really difficult.

Chris Seiter 22:33
So did you have a set? Was this for you like an indefinite period of no contact? Do you have a set endpoint this this last? No contact that you did?

So 22:43
I think the start when I was trying to make it 45 days, I think it’s just because after the whole 30 days, not working, I was like, Okay, let’s make it even tougher. Let’s do 45 days, and that’s really just focus on you and not him and just, yeah.

Chris Seiter 22:59
Okay, so, did you end up making it the 45 days?

So 23:04
I made it to 35. And that’s

Chris Seiter 23:07
more than 30 You know? Alright, so what happens with day 35?

So 23:12
Day? 35? Okay, so this goes back? Quite a lot. there a reason why no contact sign? unsuccessful? Um, I think that is when that’s when he basically was just like, I are wanting relationship with you. But not yet. Oh, oh, right. Could you elaborate? And he was basically saying, Yeah, I just don’t think I’ve mentally dealt with this breakup very well. I don’t think I fully processed the fact that, you know, like, I broke up with you, you could be leaving. So there was a phase where I potentially was going to university this September. And it was, I think it’s just actually got to me that you’re going to university, I’m not going to see you. You’re actually going to be gone from my life. That’s really true. And it’s me and I just need to work through this. And I was like, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it’s surprising because very much thought he would just turn around being like, oh, let’s just be that was his that was his whole go to was, Let’s just be friends. But can we be friends with benefits because those are working through the breakup?

Chris Seiter 24:42
Okay, that was done the previous versions of No Contact. This was a little different, where he’s starting to admit like, I don’t know how to cope without you. Like, I might lose you forever.

So 24:59
Yeah, I think goes actually hitting him that. Yeah, I could potentially I could be like gone. And I was like, and that was when I hit the boundary of like, I’m, I’m not going to be friends with benefits. That’s not what I want. And I don’t think it’s good for both of us working through this breakups to do that. That’s just not healthy for both of us. And we can’t. But past that just keeps happening. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 25:28
Yeah. Yeah. So you start setting the boundary, how do things progress after this date? 35. No contact where he seems like he’s starting to MIT like, this is the real reason for why I’m like struggling.

So 25:46
I’m completely ghost. He says that we have that conversation. Because I think he pointed that in person. Yeah. And just never met with each other. I think for like, a week or two. I just completely like nothing. No, like sending me tech talks or any messages. Yeah. Okay. is completely off the radar. So yeah, so which I was just like, Okay, well, then I’ll just do my own thing. I’ll just leave you to it. Because I think it was just pulling back because he was like, so vulnerable, and was just don’t want to talk about it more. But yeah, just very, very much mixed signals that I just really was very.

Chris Seiter 26:32
Yeah. Yeah. So what, at what point does he start to come out of his shell?

So 26:39
So this was actually yeah, this was kind of recently, I think about Yeah, we can go where he saw it’s kind of like, Oh, yeah. Can we can we talk? Can we talk in person about everything? And that’s when he kind of says about, oh, I actually think I want to be in a relationship. And almost kind of says, I’m actually not sure if you bought me. And this has to be and I’m just like, sorry. It’s like, I don’t think you want me. I don’t think you’d want a person who’s done all of this. I was like, oh, so that is the reason you’re actually guilt? Guilt? Yeah. Yeah, so it’s like, Hmm, interesting to

Chris Seiter 27:28
see how he asks for you back.

So 27:31
It was yeah, it was kind of a weird one where I think he was trying to ask me back, but also kind of go through the reasons of why he wasn’t sure. I think he was trying to kind of understand where I was, where my mindset was out before potentially asking because he’s not. He’s not great with like, variabilities, which is the way that that kind of conversation happens of that’s the real mindset. And then also, it’s the same as fine then I’ll say, which, yeah, phone conversation of just, oh, I didn’t think he’d want me. I think I I think I’ve been acting crazy. Honestly, I calmly I’ve done all of this. And you’re is still here? And like, do you want to be with me? And artists like, wow, okay, we’re really, really getting into it here. Right. Which kind of caught me off guard a bit. But I just literally flat out looks at him and was just like, yeah, I worked. And he was like, right. Great. I would too. And I was like, right. It’s a very old one, where it’s say they seem to kind of avoid talking about the feelings, then also, what used to be very upfront and honest. I think that was a difficulty.

Chris Seiter 28:54
I mean, I guess my take on it is he’s trying to hedge his bets to where, before he becomes fully vulnerable, he wants to make sure that you’re not going to reject Him. So that’s, I think that’s what those probing questions are like, you know, why would you want me that’s like a way of him soothing himself to try to get you to like, say, like, oh, no, I do want you. Did you like I’m curious, did you actually sue them in that way? Or did you just kind of like, let them lie on the hook for a bit?

So 29:22
That was so there was a little bit of lying on the hook. So when it was kind of good, though. So there was like a conversation we had beforehand of like, potentially going into relationship then he went cold turkey. And at that point, I did the whole thing of like, right. If that’s the case, then I’m going to start going on going on dates and doing things and just not posting everything but some of it on my social media just to see how things are. And lo and behold, all his friends are watching my stories like Looking at my posts, liking my posts, and I’m just saying like, Okay, right? You’ve never liked my posts before at all, who’ve never looked at my stories at all before. Interesting. And then a week later, he’s just like, oh, yeah, can we talk? Okay. I think that was the time, but he was just like, yeah, I, you know, started seeing you with other guys. And I don’t, I don’t want to do that. And I was like, well, we’ve broken up you. You can’t do anything like that. Is that Well, no, but I actually do want to be with you. Ah, okay.

Chris Seiter 30:50
Okay, fear of loss aspect really worked on him.

So 30:56
I think it’s just because which, which was, I think he kind of knew this from we were kind of doing the whole, no contacts, and then stuff happens is I kind of had an inclination that I wasn’t moving on. And I think he was just like, Oh, she’s not moving on. It’s fine. She’s there for me. I don’t have anything to lose. And I was like, No, I’m actually like, fully moving on. Like, I’m going on dates. I’m talking to other people. I think that’s when it really hit him like, oh, like she’s actually gone, gone.

Chris Seiter 31:31
Yeah, I guess it’s like the question of steaks. Like there’s no stakes involved, if they think you’re just going to wait around forever. And I guess that’s the pattern that had been established by you sleeping with him, each of those no contact rules. Like he’s always in the back of his mind saying, yeah, like, Yeah, but, you know, I can always get her. And I think when you actually hold the boundary, or at least create the stakes of like, Oh, I could lose her. She looks like she’s actually moving on. That’s when it that’s when it triggers but I guess my main question for you is, what makes you think this go around is different? Like what’s, what’s the big difference other than the boundary holding in the whole fear of loss thing we just talked about? What for you stands out about this go around? The big difference? So yeah, actually, like, talk to me about getting professional help with a therapist to talk about the breakups or work through things to see if we’re compatible. That is something he’s never, he kind of also already wants to go to couples counseling together. And I was like, oh, maybe that kind of brushed it off as like, oh, but you know, we’re broken up. Maybe it’s just to get through things. Whereas this time, he was like, No, I want professional help. I want to talk to the breakup, I want to make this relationship stronger. And I was like, wow, okay. And actually really wanting that, and even saying, Oh, before we go to relationship, I want a couple of long conversations where we go through literally everything. And I was like, okay, all right. Wow. Yeah, you should, you should have moved on quicker than it would have sped the whole process up. Yeah. But yeah, it was good to see kind of bite taking that kind of responsibility in actually having kind of maturities to think, oh, yeah, let’s do this. And again, it was just surprising because it’s just from his previous actions, it was hard to understand. Like, where he where he was at, in terms of like, the relationship and then he said that and I was like, Okay, that’s a bit of a turnaround, like, what makes you think that and he was just like, well, I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to I want to be in a relationship with you. And I think it’s taken me this long to read eyes. Mm hmm. So when you look back at your entire experience throughout this very rocky up and down roller coaster process, what really stands out to you as being some of the most important tactics that you employ that got you to the success

So 34:17
got reached? Okay. No contacts. And actually doing that kind of successfully on the fourth time? No, see, yeah, the No Contact is very helpful. Just kind of focusing more on like focusing more on yourself on just like friends, family, gym, therapy, hobbies, whatever, just focus on your own thing. And just kind of increasing that part of you and not tying everything to your like, boyfriend. I think that was the mentality I had to really switch up. And that was really helpful. I think also just kind of going through your classes and oh my gosh, the Facebook bulk like a lot Facebook and Mobile community. Yeah, it was so helpful. Yeah, the amount of times I was posting in there being like, oh my gosh, my ex is calling me and they’re just like,

Chris Seiter 35:09
Don’t contact don’t go on.

So 35:13
Yeah, that was so nice. And just to like, see people who are kind of in similar situations and how they figured out. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 35:23
Yeah. Okay. I mean, I would argue the, I guess this will be the final, the final thoughts before we end here. But I think when I look at your situation, you tried the No Contact Rule, essentially, four times. But I would argue that the difference is the fourth time you actually got to the essence of what makes it work. And that has outgrown your acts like you put forth those signals. Like I feel like maybe you were doing a little bit of the Holy Trinity stuff in the failed the failed. And I put that in quotes, no contact rule, because you kind of like got him back. I mean, you slept with them. And then you had to go back into the no contact, but I feel like you were doing some of that Holy Trinity stuff. But maybe the thing that wasn’t present was the outgrowth mindset. Like, I don’t feel like it was until he started seeing you out with other people, or I think the university thing created a really nice clock that works in your advantage, because now it’s like, oh, wow, I could like lose like, it’s it’s happening. She’s going to this university. I think that all plays into that, bringing him to the table thing. So that’s my take on what really worked. Obviously, you were better at having the boundaries by the fourth, the fourth time of no contact. And you also made it a little bit longer in that period of no contact, which I think also exacerbated his stress, because he does seem to have some anxious tendencies throughout. But yeah, this was a really interesting success story. Thank you so much for coming on and doing this

The post Success Story: She Started Setting Boundaries He Started Coming Back first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. John Garrison.

A clinical psychologist and body language expert who runs the YouTube channel Dr. G explains.

In our interview we discuss,

• How do you know when someone’s behavior is Ocd?
• What it means to be caught in the honeymoon period.
• Understanding body language at its core.
• How to identify if someone is lying
• The body language of someone in love with you.
• How you decipher the body language of aggressive people
• How can you tell if someone is being serious
• Understanding narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder.

Interview Transcript

Chris Seiter 00:11
so today we’re gonna be talking to Dr. Garrison, who has an MBA and Doctorate in clinical psychology is considered a body language expert and specializes in took specialized training and counterterrorism. His work has been featured in numerous media outlets, including Business Insider, Forbes, vice, Huffington Post, Yahoo News, real, some real simple and fatherly. I mean, I was just sort of like stumbling over myself with how how often you’ve been featured places. Thank you so much for coming.

Dr. G 00:40
I’m super happy to be here.

Chris Seiter 00:42
So we were talking a little bit before we actually started recording a little bit about how you have a background in diagnosing clinical disorders. Like, I guess, specifically, what I think is interesting to me here is the narcissistic personality disorder. And little bit of the, let’s just talk about the narcissistic personality disorder first, because I have noticed a lot of people in our community will say, Oh, my ex is narcissistic, but I’m not actually convinced to that. I think they just have some narcissistic traits not sure. Can you maybe speak to that a little

Dr. G 01:16
bit? Sure. So to make sense of that, I’m going to try to explain what personality disorders are because personality disorders are a little bit different than mental illness. And the way we differentiate that is something like depression, anxiety. The more common disorders that we hear about those are considered mental illness. A personality disorder is a dysfunction of the personality, they’re missing parts of their personality, that allow them to be a whole person to learn from interpersonal interaction, to get better to have a full satisfying life. So people that are missing these parts, they’ll have one part that is very dysfunctional, and it dominates their whole personality. So for a narcissist, for example, for someone with narcissistic personality disorder, grandiosity dominates their entire personality, they are genuinely pathologically grandiose. Historically, people have said, now it’s low self esteem being masked, it’s like no, they have pathologically high self esteem. They genuinely believe if someone is an actual narcissist, they genuinely believe they are better than other people, and other people are there to serve them in a very real way. So when we throw around the term narcissist, I think that can be used as a late term, it can be used casually, but oftentimes, it doesn’t actually mean narcissistic personality.

Chris Seiter 02:23
Yeah, I mean, we still, you know, obviously, we’re dealing with a lot of people who are heartbroken. So you know, there’s a lot of blame going on the other side they’ve been broken up with. And sometimes when I’ll talk about narcissists, I’ll talk about how they almost have like a supply Rolodex, where they’re just going from person to person getting their supply, and then moving on to the next person and kind of just they always have like someone for the different areas of their life that they need their, quote unquote, supply for, but I think people will sometimes take it too far and don’t under understand or differentiate that aspect of it.

Dr. G 02:58
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people and I think fairly so will describe someone as a narcissist, just because they seem focused on themselves. They don’t have good empathy. They’re not caring about their partner or former partner’s feelings. So I get why people use that term. I use it sometimes to describe somebody even if they don’t literally have narcissistic personality. So, you know, I think it’s pretty common that we use that term and I get why people use it.

Chris Seiter 03:20
Yeah, Yeah, same. So the other really interesting thing, or at least one of the things I wanted to ask you about is we talk a lot about attachment styles when we’re trying to diagnose or at least like take educated guesses on like, Hey, this is why we think this x is acting this way. And after polling our community most of our community believes that their ex has an avoidant attachment style, but there’s a there’s I think it was like 60% believe that their ex has an avoidant attachment style and then around like 25% believe that their ex has a fearful avoidant attachment style. But everything that I’ve read about fearful avoidance and understand about fearful avoidance, this is incredibly rare. And sometimes it can be mis classified as multiple personality disorder. Kind of just curious want to get your take or thoughts on that.

Dr. G 04:06
So when we talk about and I’m not a specialist in attachment theory, but I’m familiar with it. So you know, if we may discuss this a little bit more as we go with when you think about avoidant, avoidant is anxiety really, because anxiety is built around the concept of avoidance, we can’t be anxious and not avoid it just comes with the territory. So someone like a narcissist, they’re not anxious. So if we see someone that we think of as being a narcissist, and that we think that there have avoidant attachment, that’s actually I mean, it’s possible but that’s typically not what we would associate with that. Same with, when we think of the fearful avoidant, there’s a lot of people that think of that as being closer to borderline personality disorder, which is an unstable personality, like that’s the characteristic of borderline personality, this most prevalent is the instability because they struggle being proportional and stable. That’s the challenge there. So actually, though, Even though people oftentimes think of that, because I’ve discussed this with people, borderline personality actually, if that’s Take this too far sideways is actually more of the preoccupied anxious, preoccupied style of attachment because they get obsessive and preoccupied with things.

05:15
Okay, so can you maybe even like talk a little bit more about that or dig a little bit deeper for me about that. That’s interesting, because most of the people that we’ve polled in our community, not only they believe that their ex is avoidant, but they believe that they’re, they’re anxious and preoccupied. Anxious. So like, can you maybe even just talk a bit about that multiple personality disorder aspect from the anxious perspective? And like how that stir of it, I guess,

Dr. G 05:40
definitely. Okay. So. So, when you’re talking about multiple personality, are you talking about somebody who is kind of like Jekyll and Hyde, who was like, nice, one minute, and me the next or someone who literally has multiple personalities, just to be super clear on the fact.

Chris Seiter 05:53
Okay, so I want to dive into both. But I will say this that most of the time, what our clients would be really interested in is understanding whether X X Hot one moment cold the next moment, got it. So I guess dive into both.

Dr. G 06:07
Okay, so. So I’ll talk about the diagnostic piece first, because this is what I’m sure is a little bit less relevant to your listeners. But for someone who has multiple personalities, we call it dissociative identity. It’s where they literally phase between different personalities that don’t recognize each other. I mean, it’s a really serious diagnosis and a very rare with so probably not a lot of

Chris Seiter 06:28
people. Have you ever met someone with multiple personality disorder? One that

Dr. G 06:32
claims to have it so whether or not I’ve ever met an authentic person with it? I can’t say I’ve, I’ve, I’ve evaluated one person that claims to be experiencing that. But I couldn’t even really fully get clarity on whether or not that was legitimate. So it’s pretty rare. It really is. But but as far as, like someone who is hot, one minute cold the next. So just to get some clarity from you, would it be like that? One minute, they’re, they’re caring and close? And then one minute, they’re angry and aloof? I mean, is that sort of what you’re talking about?

Chris Seiter 07:10
Yeah, usually it’s, you know, they’re doing something that makes the client believe, Oh, they’re interested in coming back. And then, and then, I mean, I certainly have my own thoughts about like, why this is happening. But I’m just curious, and I don’t want to like, infect your your thinking at all. But basically, they’re doing something that makes the client believe like, Oh, they’re interested in coming back, and then all of a sudden, they disappear, or they even just lash out and grow angry.

Dr. G 07:37
So one of the things that can make somebody do that? Well, it’s kind of okay, so here’s where I’m struggling with this. Because I’m thinking about this, as we’re talking, I see a lot of couples, and there’s always there’s so many reasons for people’s behaviors. But one of the reasons that we see when someone is hot and cold like that, it can be because they’re manipulative, and because they want to have control. So they want to maybe throw some strings out and lead people on. For some people, it’s because they are anxious, and they just don’t know what to do. So it really depends so much person to person, but there’s there really is a wide variety of, of behaviors that can explain what we’re talking about.

Chris Seiter 08:14
Yeah, I think I think the context here would be going through a breakup. Okay. So the way I’ve always kind of tried to explain it to people, and maybe you would just sort of correct me if I’m wrong. Sure. I’ve always tried to explain to people that oftentimes, indeed, your ex is avoidant like, you think that it would make sense that they have this period where they’re kind of grown nostalgic, especially if they feel like you’ve moved on, or there’s enough space or whatever, that they, they grow nostalgic, they kind of paint you as the Fantomex, they, they start to gravitate back towards you. And then when they realize, Oh, someone’s here to take my independence again, they kind of bail and they freak out. And that anxious aspect kind of comes up. That’s why I’ve been interpreting it.

Dr. G 09:00
Okay, that makes a lot of sense to me, because I work with a lot of men who deal with this very thing, which is, they will, I mean, I’ve worked with couples trying to get married, where the guy would just couldn’t do it. I mean, I

Chris Seiter 09:13
swear to God, that’s like, 90% of our of our weapon. Okay.

Dr. G 09:17
So, so, you know, and I’ve seen in very real ways, where and I’ve actually helped people work through this. So I’ve been in the trenches, and this can take a lot longer than you might think. Or maybe you know exactly how long Yeah, so, so I’ll have someone come in. And they have these unreasonable fears about, well, what if this happens in the relationship and what if that happens, so then they were like, Okay, well, now I feel good about the idea of being together so yeah, so they come closer, they go, alright, we can do this. And then the other person is like, Hey, you’re coming back and then they go, hey, you know what, maybe I can’t do this, you know, maybe things are gonna get terrible and they run away. Okay, now we’re on the same page. Now I get what you’re talking about. And that is now this is not universally true. But there can be a form of OCD actually, that’s related to this, this can be an obsessive compulsive disorder process. And so what happens is, is that it gets to be the cycle where there are different neural pathways in the brain, ADHD, OCD, these other multiple disorders that overlap this pathway, but they have to do with being obsessive. And so some people call it our OCD like relationship OCD. Some people call it just call it OCD, because it’s the same thing. Our OCD is not technically a diagnosis, but if it’s relationship focused, it helps people, you know, Google it, or talk about it or whatever. But it’s still the same thing. But in essence, it is, you know, when someone’s obsessive compulsive, they have obsessive thoughts, and then they engage in compulsions to relieve those obsessions. So in other words, if someone’s obsession is, like, if I get to be with somebody, and I commit to them forever, if their obsessive thoughts, then oh, God, I’m going to lose my independence, then the compulsion is to withdraw or to pull away. And so and then they try to get close again. So then they get stuck in this loop. So it really can be and this is not universally true, but it can be a form of obsessive compulsive disorder, it really can.

Chris Seiter 11:09
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me, because one of the things I talked about is sort of the lifecycle of the cycle that a lot of exes we’ve observed are caught in there, which is they really liked this honeymoon period, because there’s no threat of a deeper commitment. But when that deeper commitment starts to be expected, they start to grow scared. And to your point. I think it’s almost like, this is just my opinion. But I think it’s almost like they’ve always learned to cope with this problem this specific way. And so it’s like this behavior that’s ingrained in them, maybe even from childhood. And so and so they just, they just, like, get caught in this cycle, where they’re just doing this from relationship to relationship and jumping from, from relationship to relationship, and can be really difficult for people too. And, you know, our clients are very particularly anxious. So they’re natural problem solvers. They want to get in there and just fix everything, which is the wrong thing to do sometimes, because that just exacerbates the problem.

Dr. G 12:09
Right? It’s the solution is not always obvious. And that’s the problem is that it’s like, if if the solution was logical, then yeah, your clients would probably be doing the right thing. The solution is not always the logic that the logic doesn’t always apply the way you think. So you go, yeah, this is what I should do to approach somebody who is running away or someone who’s anxious in this situation. And but then it’s not working. You go, Okay, I now I really don’t know what to do. So it’s very confusing, very, very confusing to know what to do.

Chris Seiter 12:36
So someone who’s in that specific situation, if they’re sitting down and have paid for like a session with you what what I’m just curious, like, what advice and by no means if it’s completely different from what I said, go for it. Because I’m I want to learn?

Dr. G 12:50
Sure, sure. So what would I so just to work through this example? So in other words, if it’s a couple that comes to me, and they say, this is the issue we’re having, like,

Chris Seiter 12:59
yeah, so the the woman comes to you, and she’s saying, um, you know, I’m trying to get him to commit, he won’t move in with me. Every time we talked about, he just sort of disappears or even threatens to break up with me, what do you typically advise to someone in that situation?

Dr. G 13:16
So the first is to figure out and presuming that I’m sure there have been plenty of discussions about this, because oftentimes, these things have been talked to death through through the couple already. But to find out, what’s the motivation behind that, is it because he’s, is it anxiety? Is it because he’s controlling? Is it because he’s angry? I mean, that’s the first step is to know okay, what’s motivating that behavior? If it is that someone’s anxious, then we got to figure out what life experiences are they’re basing this on? What is it that they’re afraid of losing, right? Because there’s always a fear of, okay, I’m gonna move in with somebody, what do I lose in that situation? Am I losing independence? Am I losing my ability to go with my friends, whatever it is, like, what would motivate what sort of loss is going to happen? By moving in, if we can really pinpoint what the anxieties are, we can figure out how to how to approach them and how to work through them. Because that really is in a very real way, for the ones that are for relationships that could be healthy, oftentimes, it’s anxiety motivating that, for relationships that are not so healthy, it’s oftentimes anger that’s motivating it. So when it’s if it’s the somebody’s too angry, and they need control, and they refuse to move in with you. That might be a very different discussion that we’re going to have than somebody who just like get so nervous.

Chris Seiter 14:27
Yeah, so basically just get out of that relationship. Time to move on.

Dr. G 14:31
I mean, that yeah, basically, that’s, that’s the long and short of it. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 14:35
Okay, so I’d like to actually switch gears here. So I mean, obviously, I told you how we came about my wife basically just obsessively watching through your YouTube videos. But of course, what makes you unique not only do you have this background in almost couples counseling, and obviously all of the clinical psychology elements but you also are a body language expert. And you are going through like some of the More recent like I think the with the Gabby Gabby PITINO?

Dr. G 15:06
Gabby petite O’Brien laundry case. Yeah,

Chris Seiter 15:08
I went through the Right. Right. And I think the the really horrible one in Colorado I

Dr. G 15:14
could see. Oh, there was Chris watts, Leticia Stella. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 15:18
Basically you’re going through all the footage and basically saying, oh, yeah, they’re lying here. They’re lying here. This is why I actually want to dive into that and apply it to breakups. Sure. So I actually went to our listeners and compiled a huge list of questions. So I’m just going to read you the questions. And

Dr. G 15:36
we’ll go from there. Go for it, please. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 15:38
So let’s start with maybe the lowest hanging fruit that should be easiest is how do you tell if someone’s like,

Dr. G 15:44
Yeah, okay. So, a couple of things that I want you to understand about this. So understanding body language, at its core, is recognizing a couple of things. One is that our feelings are connected to our bodies, you’ve got to recognize that if you believe the body language is even readable, you have to be able to believe that when you’re feeling angry, it’s going to show in your face, your body anxious, and so on and so forth, is that our brain and our bodies connected. Alright, that’s good science to show that that’s true. But you have to agree with that, to believe that body language is reasonable. The other part of it, if you want to really read lying and deception in particular, is to recognize most people don’t like to lie makes us anxious, we get nervous when we lie, at least for those of us that are not psychopaths, we get nervous when we lie psychopaths don’t. But that’s a whole different discussion, which we can get into if you want.

Chris Seiter 16:32
I’m already thinking of Ted Bundy. Yeah, and the reason I bring him up is because one of the things that people often said about him was how convincing he was. Sure. And if that whole, you know, your your brain, you know, your your feelings are kind of connected to your body. If that showed up for him.

Dr. G 16:51
It does. I did a video on him, actually. So it does sweet. But it’s also

Chris Seiter 16:55
super disturbing. So sorry, if you’re listening, but yeah, very disturbed individual well,

Dr. G 17:01
but one thing I will say before I finished explaining body language, because part of the relevance for true crime with this is that true crime, body language is often just an exaggeration of the same stuff that we see with everybody else, they might show a little bit less in some ways, or show exaggerations, and others, but it’s still human behavior, it’s not as different as you might think, actually. So the people are more disturbed, they’re doing more awful things, but the body language is still relatively similar. But it but in terms of the idea that people need to be anxious to show deception. And lying means that when you’re uncomfortable, you’re probably going to want to protect yourself in some way, like our head and our body are very vulnerable places, if we’re talking about things from a survival standpoint, because not to try to take these to get to try to explain too much. But I do think this is another important part is that the body is really good at survival. Like we as humans, we want to survive. So we do a lot of things to protect ourselves. So oftentimes, when people feel uncomfortable, they protect their abdomen, in their chest, they protect their face, or they do things to suit themselves, like our lips have lots of nerves in them. So he will do this kind of stuff a lot when they’re feeling nervous, because it makes them feel calmer. Same with men to the stroke their neck a lot. Women tend to touch their face, there’s things like that, that

Chris Seiter 18:14
are making me self conscious. Like I was doing that when we started the interview.

Dr. G 18:19
And so it’s so the important thing to recognize is that no body language is random. It’s all connected to something it’s all about a matter of how do I interpret it? I don’t want people to overeat body language, but also it can be used to keep yourself safe. It can be used to prevent people from manipulating you, I think they’re really important ways we can use body language. So

Chris Seiter 18:39
So okay, so obviously, feelings connected the body how, like, Are there any specific signs you need to look out for if they’re deceiving you in some way?

Dr. G 18:50
The one is, okay, so if they are just being manipulative, and they are just lying, but they’re not being asked questions, if they’re, if they’re sadistic, and they like hurting people, I mean, if we’re talking if someone is really someone who is good at lying, and it’s just them getting to act out wise, it’s harder to read, if you’re asking them questions, then it’s, that’s when things will show up that you can see. So in other words, like if somebody just, you know, I’ll use infidelity as an example of somebody cheating, right? They come home from cheating, and then they just say, oh, yeah, I just got back from the gym, and they’re just talking about it. They might not feel a lot of anxiety about that. But if somebody asks them, Hey, where were you, then they’re going to feel more anxiety. There’s a difference. So they can be deceptive and be convincing when they’re just in control of what they’re choosing to say. But once they’re under a microscope, and somebody has asked them questions, that’s when the body language comes out. But what we’re going to see with lying oftentimes is pacifying behaviors and defensive behaviors. And those can appear in many different ways, which we can talk about, but that’s what we look for.

Chris Seiter 19:56
Yeah, so this may be a dumb question to ask. I’m just an add on to the users question here. But, you know, a lot of our users are not at a place, usually when they’re interacting with their ex, or they’re doing it in person. So they’re either texting back and forth. Sometimes they’re sending voice notes back and forth, she can kind of hear the tone of voice, or very rarely do they do the FaceTime or Zoom type things. Sure. Is there any way to apply this to a text messaging medium, which I realized might be a stupid question? Yeah,

Dr. G 20:26
no, no body language expert. But no, I mean, you know, I’m a psychology expert, as well. So I mean, lying. And deception is also a very psychological manipulation as well. So yeah, they’re there, it would be a different set of rules. In terms of what you would look for, I can’t think off the top of my head, the best way to identify if somebody is is lying, other than learning to trust your gut, because that’s one thing that a lot of people don’t do is they’ll go, I know, this makes me feel anxious, but I’m going to ignore how I feel. Because I shouldn’t feel this way. I think really learning. If you have if, if you trust how you feel, to to learn to trust your gut to learn to see red flags, which I’m sure we’ll get into more of that as we go. But learning all of those things, I think, is important when it comes to texts and voice messages and those kinds of things.

Chris Seiter 21:09
Okay, so what if you have someone who is lying to you, but they have literally convinced themselves that the lies the truth? Is, does it still show up for them,

Dr. G 21:23
if in a very literal sense, they believe it at that point, it would be less likely to and I know, this is maybe slightly less relevant to your clients, but but I would say, and it probably is for some people, but like substance abuse, for example, that’s a good example of where people do that. There’s people that can be deeply into using substances that really do get to a place where they lie so much, they do start to believe their own lies sometimes, so they would show less of the anxious body language around that. When I’ve worked with people in substance abuse in the past, they can lie better than anybody I know. Truly. That really, yeah, absolutely. So somebody that’s had a history of pretty significant addiction. I’m pretty good at reading people. And I oftentimes won’t believe them if I know their past, but not because of their body language is but just because I know the logic of what they’re likely lying to me. But they don’t show it in the same way. So yeah, if somebody truly believes their own lies, they’d have no reason to show because they don’t feel anxious about it if they believe it.

Chris Seiter 22:19
Interesting. So I guess that kind of goes back to that Ted Bundy example. You said you did a video on him. He always struck me as someone who believed his own lies or was so good at manipulate, so narcissistic, he knew how to, you know, not have the tells? Well, I’m curious, what did you find with someone like that?

Dr. G 22:41
He does have some tells it’s interesting. His I analyze the video right before he was executed. So that’s trying to get to more of it. I know, sorry. But that’s just the reality of what he’s talking to somebody. And once you understand the context of why he’s talking to them, and you watch for patterns, you can start to figure out his tails, his tails are with his eyes, he closed his eyes a lot when he was lying. And he started doing that everybody’s got little tail, so his tails will be smaller and less frequent, but they’re there. So for him there, because the parts of the brain and psychopaths are less developed that get activated. When people lie, you can still see it, there’s just less of it, but he has cells too. So

Chris Seiter 23:25
that’s interesting. You know, the first time I ever learned about Ted Bundy was like, through some sort of Netflix documentary where he was, it was like the tapes he had recorded or something. And he was referring to himself in the third person or using some weird way to kind of like not be liable. Yeah, I don’t know. So is that what you ended up kind of like studying through those tapes? Or was it some other footage?

Dr. G 23:51
It was different footage. Actually, it was this was footage, the it was the final interview he chose to do, which he had his own reasons for wanting to do, you’d have to get into a lot of specifics to make sense of it. But But point being is it was something different, and it was, it’s pretty interesting.

Chris Seiter 24:07
Okay, well, okay, so after that more bit, no, let’s completely shift to the other end of the spectrum. Sure. All right. So what is the body language of someone that is actually in love with you? Okay,

Dr. G 24:19
so what we see with people that want to be connected, you know, I talked about how the most vulnerable parts are our chest or abdomen, our head, people that leave those open. Now, if somebody covers that a lot, that can also be that they’re very anxious, but we’ll talk about in a second. If you’re someone who feels true love, true vulnerability, they will leave this open. I mean, you think about somebody going in for a hug, they leave their arms open, right? Like that’s as vulnerable as we’re gonna get. Also leaning in, but it’s a little bit complicated. The language of love. Being close to people physically, is also unfortunately the same language, body language wise, it’s used to manipulation. So when you see somebody, I did a video on Charles Manson recently when he had a point to make he would lean in to talk to Diane Sawyer, and make sure that he got his point across. So I’m sorry to keep bringing this back. But I just want to point out that like, I don’t want people to be like, Oh, good, you know, my ex is leaning in, that means they’re feeling closer to me, it might be what it means it might also mean that they’re being manipulative. So that’s the challenge with this, but the but the body language of love and of closeness oftentimes is, we physically react the same way that we feel emotionally. So if you and I are talking and I start turning my body, it’s probably because I’m feeling uncomfortable talking to you, it’s because I’m not feeling connected to you. If I’m leaning in, it’s because I am feeling emotionally connected, or I want you to feel emotionally connected. So it is, in a very real way, for somebody who is comfortable with physical contact, who is comfortable being with people, they will engage in those kinds of behaviors when they feel real love.

Chris Seiter 25:46
Do you subscribe to the mirroring concept? You know, I took this class, I think it was a psychology class in college, where they showed us this video of these couples that were in love with each other and one would lean in the other was lean in when one would lean back. The other would lean back. Do you see that at all?

Dr. G 26:05
Absolutely. That’s very real 100%. And that’s actually something we learned as therapists when I was in grad school is when we’re talking to clients, when people are feeling when there are certain times where we do use our bodies, we might lean a little bit further forward if they feel if they need that kind of support. So very much in a very real way. Mirroring is very important. That’s part of the reason why people on the autism spectrum spectrum struggle in relationships, because their mirror neurons don’t work the same way as everybody else’s. So they struggle to mimic in that way. So it can make them seem withdrawn or make them seem aloof. Even if they feel really intense love or caring. They don’t know how to show it in the same way because they’re not good at mirroring. So yeah, mirroring is a huge part of the human experience actually.

Chris Seiter 26:47
Interesting. Okay, so let’s switch gears with the so this, hopefully you can answer this one sure is a long one. How do you decipher the body language of someone who squares their body and stares directly at you while taking an aggressive tone. But when I do the same, he cowers and looks to the side will make eye contact and softens his voice also swaying side to side to avoid eye contact.

Dr. G 27:11
Right? So if I’m understanding this, right, it’s like when this guy talks to somebody, he has an aggressive body posture, but when it’s when it’s flipped, and this person does it back to him. They don’t like it so much. Right? So it looks

Chris Seiter 27:26
like it’s the square their body staring directly at the girl. Yeah, while talking in an aggressive tone. But when she does the same to him, when she tries to mirror that back, he cowers and looks to the side. I mean,

Dr. G 27:41
it’s obviously it’s the dominant stance, right? Like when when you’re going to have, you’re going to square your body, you’re going to speak in a dominant way. The purpose of that is control. Obviously, I don’t know these people, I’m not saying that specifically is his intent, but that’s how I would interpret the way it’s described. And so when somebody tries to take any sort of similar position, and they, they seem uncomfortable with that, that sounds like somebody who needs a lot of control. It sounds like somebody who doesn’t like it when somebody else tries to assert control, and it makes them uncomfortable. And so they turn away. Interesting. Control dynamics and couples is very complicated, like control and all that is yeah,

Chris Seiter 28:17
a lot of it, I think requires a lot of context and nuance to like give the perfect read on it. And so it’s hard with just like one paragraph of explanation without knowing, like, every every element. But I mean, what you’re saying makes total sense to me. Like, the interesting aspect to me is like when she mirrors it back to him, he sort of cowers but I guess that would make sense because he doesn’t have control of her. And so he’s reacting to that.

Dr. G 28:44
Yeah, so some people that feel uncomfortable will cower. Some people that feel uncomfortable, will double down and get more aggressive, right? Everybody’s a little bit different, or will handle that type of thing a little bit differently. But that speaks to an unhealthy dynamic, right, like, hopefully that would that that doesn’t speak to the positive things about those interactions, I

Chris Seiter 29:03
think, yes. I mean, we are dealing with a breakup here. So obviously flawed relationship. Yeah. This next one. I’m actually curious to hear what you say. Do you believe it’s possible to fake confidence? Like to fake it until you make it?

Dr. G 29:17
Definitely, absolutely. I think half people out there faking confidence. But since I’m so sure, I teach people all the time, how to fake it until you make it because having real confidence and I don’t mean like bravado and like going over the top with feeling confident. Sometimes it can do with your posture and how you say things. And when you get used to that you go, hey, you know what, I actually feel more confident doing this. I’m going to do it again. A big part of working through anxiety is going hey, I know this makes you feel anxious to ask you to do this anyway. Just see, see how it feels afterwards and we’ll talk about it. So absolutely. Faking confidence is something I encourage people to do when they’re comfortable to do it.

Chris Seiter 29:54
So what are your tips for faking confidence from a body language person?

Dr. G 30:00
octaves? Well, I think part of it is, you know, taking on not a rigid posture, but having a being aware of what your body’s doing. Because oftentimes we don’t sit and go, Hey, am I relaxed right now my tennis right now, doing all of that is such an important part of being able to feel calm, being able to feel confident, recognizing how you’re going to come across to others. A big part of anxiety is avoidance, as I said before, so if people are avoiding certain situations, they’re avoiding confident body postures, they need to ask himself why why is he standing up and, and looking confident looking straight ahead, not looking down those types of behaviors? Why am I uncomfortable with that? And if I am, I’m going to challenge and try it this time and see how it feels afterwards. So oftentimes, it is saying, What am I comfortable doing right now? Can I try and experiment and do this differently this time? You know, what’s the worst that can happen? If I do this? I walk away later go, Yeah, look, I felt foolish doing that. I don’t want to do it again. Okay, fine, but nothing catastrophic is going to happen. So let’s try it out. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 30:56
All right. Can you tell if someone is in love with you, by the way, they look at you, I’ve heard something about pupils dilating. So

Dr. G 31:03
there is truth to that arousal is tied to pupil dilation. So I mean, you gotta have some really good eyesight, but I suppose. So sit still, let me look at your at your pupils. Now. I mean, there that is true. Although I would be hard pressed to imagine that you could, you could actually see that. So I mean, you can see it in a picture, but it’s hard to see like when you’re looking at someone.

Chris Seiter 31:27
Okay, going back to the cheating example that you use, if someone believes that cheating isn’t wrong, does reading body language still work? Are the cues still the same?

Dr. G 31:36
Everybody knows it’s wrong. Yeah. Still the same. They’re just like, I mean, honestly, like, nobody doesn’t think cheating is wrong. They might legitimize it or they might, you know, do it anyway. But there’s nobody that’s not gonna feel some level of discomfort when being confronted about cheating.

Chris Seiter 31:52
I mean, the thing I always tried to tell people is, if your ex is feeling the need to hide something, that means inherently, they understand on some level, it’s wrong. And it’s going to hurt you. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. So the cue viewers saying basically, no matter what, it’s most likely, they’re just lying when they say cheating isn’t wrong?

Dr. G 32:13
Yeah, I don’t think there are many people that truly believe that unless that’s some sort of relationship rules that people have made. And they’ve agreed upon. But like, as far as just like, guys were like, Yeah, Cheating is not wrong. I can do whatever I want. You know, I think that someone’s lying to themselves if they’re actually saying that nobody actually believes that.

Chris Seiter 32:33
So I mean, that’s pretty much it for the for the main questions. The other two questions that have were basically already answered, how can I appear more confident? I literally asked that just organically. And how can you tell when someone is being serious, even when their words are the opposite? Which I feel like is, well, okay. Yeah, that last one? Yeah. Okay.

Dr. G 32:51
So how can? How can you tell if someone is being serious if their words are the opposite? That’s a good question. I guess the question, is it? Well, here’s a question I really want to pose to people because I think it’s important is, do I want to be with somebody who’s like that? Right? Like, if they’re, if they feel the need to be deceptive? Is there a point where I go, you know, this, these are red flags, I should probably pay attention to these red flags and not lean into them. I should say, you know, what, maybe this person, I know, I feel a kinship with this person. I feel close to them. I want to be with them. But why am I ignoring these red flags? I think that that’s the better question, honestly.

Chris Seiter 33:31
Yeah. So I mean, just giving you some of my impressions of our audience. Sure. I’ve been doing this since 2012. So for 10 years, we’ve been running the community for six or seven years. So I’ve had a lot of time interacting with them. And one of the things that I’ve noticed, or at least one of the trends I’ve noticed is how codependent like a lot of my work. When I work with someone, they’re hiring me to say like, Hey, how helped me get my ex back? And I’m saying, Well, before we worry about that, let’s actually get used to that you’re not so codependent on them. So then you can make the decision on whether or not you want to get back with them or just move on with your life find someone better? Yep. So I feel like a lot of the time, what you’re what you’re saying is like, Well, why would you want to be with someone like that? I think our audience is so stuck in that codependent, you know, was rolling around their world that they can’t break free. Do you have any advice for someone who is stuck in that?

Dr. G 34:25
Yeah, I that’s that’s a great point. Because it’s not that I think that people can’t have flaws. And they can’t have exes with issues that you guys can’t work through. I think that that’s a very common and normal and healthy thing. But I think that there’s a point where you go, how big are the red flags I’m looking at, right? Because that’s one of the issues I see with people like the people that ended up with a narcissist. There’s a variety of people, reason people end up into situations and sometimes the flag the red flags will be right there. I’m gonna go I see those. I’m going to choose to ignore them. And it’s like, that’s fine as long as you know what you’re doing. And so I think you really have to measure the severity of What’s going on and go if the if I’m trying really hard to get them back, and they’re really resistant, and there’s just a lot of dysfunction there? Yeah. Is this worth it is are these red flags? Should I be paying more attention to these? So that’s it’s always a matter of magnitude and whether or not these are bumps in the road, whether or not they were genuine red flags if for whatever reason you’re just insisting on ignoring.

Chris Seiter 35:20
Yeah, and I think that kind of comes back to that narcissistic aspect you’re talking about. One of the pairings that we see a lot is, you know, someone who’s very codependent being in relationship with the narcissistic person because the narcissistic person is just like, ooh, jackpot. You know, I could just sort of like continually use this person. I’ve always tried to explain it like, I don’t think someone who has narcissistic personality disorder views you as a human being normally they view you as like, oh, they are the person who can give me sex, they are the person who can I can come to for emotional support, and then just ditch them. Is that do you think that’s an accurate way of looking at it? That is

Dr. G 35:59
an incredibly accurate way of looking at it because what it is, we use the term like terms like objectify, you know, like this, like people are objectifying other people. narcissists literally see people as objects, like in a very literal sense. And so that’s the thing you got to understand these are not people to them their ways to get their needs met, just like you’re describing. So that is very accurate, unfortunately. And it’s hard for people to recognize that that aren’t narcissist because they go, what? Who thinks like that? It’s like, you’d be surprised some people really do.

Chris Seiter 36:27
Yeah, it I think we’re getting into this really complicated discussion is the fact that everyone has I feel like some narcissistic traits, but they’re not narcissistic person like diagnosis and Narcissus, you know, like, yeah, so I feel like sometimes our audience just sees like, Oh, my ex did this, this thing in this thing, which a narcissist does. He’s a narcissist. And that’s not always the case. They’re they’re pretty rare. Yeah, they’re

Dr. G 36:55
about let me think the percentage, I think it’s about one and a half to 2% of the population. So they’re not like, super rare, but they’re rare enough to where everybody’s boyfriend or ex is not a narcissist.

Chris Seiter 37:08
Right? Well, so Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, so obviously, you run this really amazing YouTube channel. And I’m going to 100% link to it and all of the socials when this interview goes up, but do you want to tell us a little bit about your YouTube channel and kind of pit yourself?

Dr. G 37:24
I would love to Yeah, so my YouTube channel is Dr. G explains. And basically, it is me Dr. G, explaining different aspects of mostly true crime nowadays, I also cover some about personality disorders. I’ve done some videos on narcissism. I’ve done some videos on on relationships, but for the vast majority, 95% of my videos are covering current true crime, reading body language, understanding behavior, and understanding the psychology behind these various heinous acts that happen. Oftentimes, I watch parts of trials and analyze interrogations, all sorts of interesting stuff that intersects in ways that you may or may not realize, with your clients, because 90% of the people who watch true crime are women actually. And it’s because people feel like they’re equipping themselves with knowledge to protect themselves by watching true crime. And that’s part of the part of the attraction to it. So what I My goal with my videos, really is to help people learn how to not get manipulated. So I’m pointing out, these are masters of manipulation, here’s how they’re doing it. So if you can watch for these kinds of behaviors, then you are less likely to be manipulated. So that really is my goal. I don’t do it. Because I think that serial killers are interesting or cool. I really don’t. I think they’re very flawed and broken people. And what I’m showing you is how they’re broken and how you can avoid interacting with people like this.

Chris Seiter 38:46
Yeah. And identify, I mean, I think that’s spot on for anyone listening. You know, I don’t know how good of a review I can give you other than my wife literally got so sucked into his YouTube channel. She could not sleep. So go watch it. Thank you. Thank you for coming on and doing this. I really appreciate it. Yeah,

Dr. G 39:05
no, it was. It was my pleasure. I had a lot of fun.

The post Talking To A Psychologist About Your Exes Body Language first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

Today I have an amazing success story of one of our clients who rebuilt herself and as a result got her ex back.

Meet Ashley!

Her situation essentially ran the gamut on “ex back scenarios.”

I mean, just listen to this:

• She was high school sweethearts with her ex
• She lived together with him
• The bought an entire restaurant together
• He blocked her after the breakup

That’s essentially half of the most difficult situations all wrapped up into one.

Here’s how she got him back.

What Are Your Chances of Getting Your Ex Boyfriend Back?

Take the quiz

Interview Transcript:

Chris Seiter 00:02
Okay, so today we have a another success story interview. Today we’re gonna be talking to Ashley. And the interesting thing about Ashley is I know probably as much about her situation is you listening to this? So this is gonna be an awesome interview. But thank you so much for doing this actually.

Ashley 00:21
Yeah, of course.

Chris Seiter 00:23
So like, why don’t you just sort of take us back to the beginning and tell us like a little bit about your relationship and your breakup? And what happened after that?

Ashley 00:32
Yeah, so um, we were together for 206 years at the time that we broke up. So we were together for quite some time, literally, since end of high school senior year we’ve been together. And we’re kind of

Chris Seiter 00:49
going so you’re like, high school sweethearts? Yes. Oh, that’s awesome. Okay, sorry.

00:58
No, it’s okay. And we are going through a transition in our life to where we, we bought a restaurant at a time, we both pretty much quit our jobs to do that, we had to move at the same time. It was also the time when the market was going crazy. So while we were trying to find a place near the restaurant, we were staying with his family. And I’ve always been on my own, so kind of been with, like, confined like that. I guess it just, I didn’t realize I would take a toll on me as well as our relationship. But once that started happening with the stress of the restaurant stress of being a whole new environment just being so when I felt like constricted, it puts so much tension on our relationship, and just ourselves as individuals. And it just kind of spiraled out for the both of us. And for his way of coping things as he’s from what I read from your program is a distance. avoidant or

Chris Seiter 02:14
dismissive. Yeah. But, you know, I could see, you know, the distant, dismissive, you know, same depth, right?

Ashley 02:25
Yes. For me, I was an anxious attachment. So, when there was conflict, I would be the one that was like, Okay, let’s, let’s figure this out. Let’s figure this out. And then my nerves will get high. Meanwhile, he would just shut down and be like, No, I don’t want to talk. And he would go days without talking. Meanwhile, I’m like, suffering in silence. Yeah. So I knew that that wasn’t good. Dynamic, ended up, blowing up. And I went and stay with some family out like two hours away from where we were, and for the weekend, and when, during that time, I was staying with them. He pretty much was like, come get your things. I’m gonna I’m gonna leave them on the side of the road. Like, I want to, I want you out. Like, now, and I, at that time, and these were all text messages. So I, I couldn’t even fathom just reading them. So I had my, my family. I was like you, you read them? And you tell me if I need to, like, do anything. And they were pretty much were like, yeah, so we got to figure something out. So I went and I picked up all my belongings, and I

Chris Seiter 03:47
like he literally kicked you to the curb. Like even your belongings. Yeah, everything. Well, yeah. Okay.

Ashley 03:54
So, yeah, so it was it was not, oh, it was not good. I like, and at that time, I didn’t have a place to go. So I was bouncing. Back from my family. I was two hours away and staying in my brother’s place. And by this this same time, like we had already given the keys back for the restaurant, because it was just, there was too much drama with that. And I was reminded,

Chris Seiter 04:22
do you mind if I ask you a question about that? So you guys, yeah. Did you sell this restaurant back? Or like, how did that dynamic work exactly with buying this restaurant? Yeah,

Ashley 04:31
we pretty much we were like in a contract before because it was already in a lease with the previous owner. And so we were in a contract with her. And at the end of that lease term, we were going to pay the remaining off of the restaurant and resign everything into our names. So at that point, it was just conjoined ownership with the previous owner. Right was signed as like a silent partner. But she wasn’t very silent. So we were like, okay, they’d never open. She wouldn’t let us. Yeah, she wouldn’t let us hire people or anything like that. And when we walked in there, it was just me my other half, and then we had one, one server. So we had a lot to build up on.

Chris Seiter 05:24
But and so obviously, that creates a very stressful environment.

Ashley 05:29
Yeah, especially when he has one way of thinking, I have one way of thinking when it comes to business. So very two different entities. But it was just too much. And then the landlord on top of it was just seeing too much. So we’re like, you know what, here’s the keys. Good luck, have fun. So I decided I was going to take some time away from work and go back to school full time, because I took time away off from school, to run the restaurant. And so I didn’t have a job at the time that I was kicked out, I also didn’t have a place to stay. So I had to, like rebuild everything. Which helps me in the time of not communicating, not reaching out, it was really hard to not reach out because I just kept questioning in my head like how, like this is it? This isn’t like him, like this isn’t his character? Why? I just, you know, I had so many unanswered questions. But I just kept religiously, just going through your podcasts and reading everything trying to keep my mind occupied. And then on top of that, I had to focus on school, I had to focus on finding a place and everything else. So that was kind of a little bit of a distraction. Yeah, but it was pretty strenuous.

Chris Seiter 06:55
So. So you’ve obviously kind of come into the orbit, you started learning about the No Contact Rule and the attachment styles, and you’re listening to podcasts and everything. So you’re, you’re kind of implementing what you’re, you know, the no contact at this point of the story, right?

Ashley 07:11
Yes, yes, I was actually implementing it prior to being kicked out. I did. I was reading things prior. So I had an idea, but I was also kind of being forced into it, because he wouldn’t talk to me, and we were under the same roof. So I did the best I could to not cross paths with him. While like I was staying in a completely different room. And whenever he would come home, I, I wouldn’t be seen I would be in my room. And when he left and as typically, you know, I would try my best to not cross paths. Now there was a point in time it was I was doing the no contact before I actually discovered your program, because I was just doing research of like, how can I get myself like, in a in a better spot with when, when there’s like kind of a breakup, essentially, it’s what it was at that time. And I heard the No Contact Rule. So it’s like, okay, you know what, let me just create this distance, because we’ve never really had that distance. And it was a fun day. I think like 16 the first time. Before I got before I left the house. We actually crossed paths in the gym. And he, like I’ve never said anything I didn’t even turn around to acknowledge him. I just kept going on walking into the gym, and I was doing my thing. I had a hair appointment later that afternoon. And shortly after that, he texted me saying, Hey, can we talk? And it took me a few hours respond, because I didn’t know if I wanted to respond yet. And he just he sent me like question mark. So I’m like, holy can’t keep ignoring him.

Chris Seiter 09:04
So you broke you broke down on day? 16?

Ashley 09:08
Yeah, yeah. So I broke down day 16. I said, Yeah, we can talk. So when I came home, we did talk and he was saying how he didn’t want me out of his life, things like that. But shortly after that, it’s all rolled out. And that’s when I started back on the no contact. And me being out of the house definitely made it so much easier to not be able to do that. He also had blocked me on social media. So it wasn’t, I couldn’t reach out to him. Well, it’s

Chris Seiter 09:43
interesting. You’re taking off so many boxes here. I have your high school sweethearts. You worked together. You live together. Now you’re telling me you were blocked. Yes. And you kind of you kind of got it seems like to me, you kind of got like minigames get back together. After the 60 days, he kind of asked for you back, but then that obviously didn’t last. Is that accurate?

Ashley 10:06
Yeah, it was not entirely. He was pretty much just saying that he needed to figure themselves out. But he knew that he didn’t want things to end maybe to just slowly, like get back into.

Chris Seiter 10:21
Oh, so he’s keeping you on the hook, essentially, then

Ashley 10:24
yeah, that’s exactly what that was. Yeah.

Chris Seiter 10:27
So okay, so you spiraled out of control. Now, you’re telling me that you’ve moved out? Yeah.

Ashley 10:34
And from that point, I just, I kind of just had in my mind that I needed especially with all the anxiety that I was struggling with, I knew even from prior to that, that I wanted to get rid of this anxiety there was, it was not how I was prior, I was like, this isn’t who I am, I need to change this. So taking that separation, I start focusing back on school, like I said, I was finding a place I did find a place and I got a job. And then I started working out a lot more I was I was having some some anxiety in the gym. So I just kind of forced myself with that. And I started just getting back into a routine of things independently. And I was I, at first for a little while. I wasn’t posting on social media. I was active on social, like, I would be scrolling through social media, but I didn’t post anything. I was kind of a what I consider like a go lurker. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And, like, I also wasn’t, I wasn’t searching like anybody’s knee, like, I wasn’t searching to see if he was if I was still unblocked, or, or if I still was blocked, or anything like that. I was just kind of scrolling, naturally. But I also tried to keep myself off social media in case like, because I did have someone whose family on social media. So I didn’t want to see anything in passing that would upset me. So I do my best to kind of stay off of it to not trigger myself. And then, what was it? One day I did go on, on social medias probably like, three weeks into my second, like my official no contest. And I went to go search a friend, and I noticed that his name had popped up in my search bar with his icon. And I was like, Oh, did he unblock me? And behold, he did unblock me. So I was like, Oh, interesting. I was like, what does that mean? But I kept my I kept my composure, I didn’t want to reach out to him or anything, and then just be blocked again. So I just kept and once I noticed, I did like, unintentionally notice that I was on black. I did start posting on social media. But I did it very rarely, I would post on a story. I wouldn’t post like a picture. I posted like a story of me at the gym, and things like that. But I also would, I didn’t really show my face too much. I would show just like my feet.

Chris Seiter 13:21
I also had our feet at the gym. Yeah,

Ashley 13:23
like my feet at the gym. I had friends I would post about fun their stories, because I knew that they would be friends. And well, they actually were like, Oh, let me post a story of us. You know, he’ll see it. And I was like, Alright, let’s do it. So and he would see that I’m be I’m out with like friends and like guys that are with us. And

Chris Seiter 13:48
you get that jealousy going a little bit.

Ashley 13:51
Yeah, he wasn’t he wasn’t too fond of that. But, but yeah, I just started, I started just focusing on myself. After about like two weeks, I wasn’t too focused on the relationship. There was some times like we had our cellphone plan together, we had our insurance plan together, like there were several things that we still had to figure out. But I wasn’t focused on that. I was like, it’ll, you know, when that time comes, we’ll come. And then it came down to the round the 45 day mark, and he messaged me asking about the phone plan. He said, and well, prior to that, actually, we backtrack. I got a job with a cellular company. And there was like a strenuous training that we had to do for like, several weeks. So that was also kept me pretty occupied. And when we graduated from that training, we all took a class photo essentially. And I posted that so that was like my first thing in a while that I posted and cuz I thought that was pretty like, as big as he could Yeah,

Chris Seiter 15:04
like that. That’s a base most.

Ashley 15:08
Yeah. So I posted that and then I went back to being a ghost on social media. And around that 45 Day marquee messaged me asking about the proper cellphone plan because he knew that I was working for a different cellular company. And I was like I said something along well, first, I did posts on on the group asking for advice, like, what do I say? And realize like, Oh, you gotta you gotta keep at it. And like, Oh, but I am kind of around that point.

Chris Seiter 15:44
Yeah. 45 days. Yeah, yeah, you take it.

Ashley 15:47
Yeah. So. And so I did wait a little while to respond. I think I waited maybe like, a couple hours. And then I said, I’m not. I’m not too worried about it. At the moment. We can figure it out later. And then I did. I meant I mentioned to him saying, I didn’t ask him I did say, I would like to maybe sit down for dinner. And and, you know, talk about some things whenever you have creatively

Chris Seiter 16:21
worded it, you worded it very carefully.

Ashley 16:26
I wasn’t like asking him right then and there. He said, I would like that. And he asked me, how about that night? Like, later on that evening? And I was quick. Okay. So, yeah, we

Chris Seiter 16:44
got yourself like an instant date?

Ashley 16:47
Yes. Yeah. And so we sat, we sat down for several hours talking at dinner. And we talked about everything like because I never was able to say, like, my side of the story of, of when things spiraled out. And I know, like he had family as well, that were kind of interfering in, you know, putting words into his ear of what their perception of everything was, and without my my story of anything, so I was he we didn’t even get into that. At first, I was just saying, how are you? Like, how’s everything going? His brother was off at boot camp at the time. So it’s asking, and he recently graduated. So I was asking how his brother was. And then he was the one that actually initiated saying, like, you know, I talked about this. So I just listened to what he had to say. And I just continued, I would just nodded, I didn’t intervene, which was hard, because there’s some things I just wanted to like, interject, but I didn’t want to cut them off. And so I just let him talk, and then everything out. And then afterwards, after he said, everything he needs, say, I said, Well, let me you know, say my piece. And so I did. And he even said, once I said everything that I needed to say it was kind of like a light bulb, light bulb. That kind of went off for him to where he was able to switch his perspective. And realize that it wasn’t entirely like, my fault those how things went about. And not saying that, like I, you know, I wasn’t at fault for anything. So, but I definitely like especially being like kicked out and things like that, you know, there’s lots things that I know I was not at fault for. So having that, that that piece, you know, but we ended up just hugging it out and went on about our evening and I went back to my brother’s uptime trust the waiting for for my place to be ready. And and then that weekend, actually, he I waited a couple of days, and I messaged him, well, that evening after dinner, I did say like, you know, thank you for dinner. It was it was nice seeing you or nice talking with you and you know, getting some things off our chest. And he or she appreciated the same way. And a couple of days later, because we both really like cars and car shows. There was one going on where I was near where I was, and I reached out to him and I was like, Hey, I’m going to this I plan on going to this car show. Just wanted to see if you’d like to go along with me. And he responded saying that he wasn’t sure if he was ready for that. And I was like completely fine. You know, I understand and He actually I ended up not going to the car show. He actually did decide to go to the car show thinking that I was gonna be there. When he saw that I wasn’t there, he messaged me and was like, Hey, do you have plans for today? And I go, No, not that I can think of. And then he invited me out that evening.

Chris Seiter 20:29
So, after you stood him up at the car show, he invites you out later that evening.

Ashley 20:37
Yeah, but I didn’t. I didn’t necessarily

Chris Seiter 20:44
look at my perspective from the optics, you invite him and then you don’t show up. So But what’s interesting is it really worked you got so obviously you go on this. I guess this is more of a romantic date. If he’s inviting you out at night. Would it be is that you kind of took it.

Ashley 21:02
That’s not really how I like it. Because we went to um, are you familiar with like, Halloween Horror Nights?

Chris Seiter 21:10
Yeah. Okay. It’s around October.

21:14
Yes. So though

Chris Seiter 21:15
you can easily argue that can be like, like, you know, you go into something scary. And it kind of, you know, makes you want to grab on, you know, I’m just saying, yes. You know, it’s

Ashley 21:29
something that we’ve always done. Yeah, no, he definitely didn’t know what he was doing. But it was something that we always we did every year with each other since we started dating. And we even said, when we’re at dinner, we were talking about the Halloween Horror Nights. And we were both like, yeah, just, you know, I was planning on going with some, some friends myself, but it just didn’t seem right. Didn’t feel right. Not going without him. He said, Yeah, that’s exactly how I felt. And so I, when we went, in my mind, I was like, you know, this is strictly going to be platonic. I don’t want to push anything, I don’t want to rush anything, to where he’s going to get pushed away. And so I didn’t like reach for his hand, we had a few drinks prior to going in. And that’s exactly how I kept it was strictly platonic. And then we ended up getting some drinks, and we sat on a bench, and we’re just sitting there just kind of people watching. And he went over and kissed me. And I was like, whines I was, like, where did that come from? And he said, it just felt right.

Chris Seiter 22:41
Okay, so what, though? What happens next?

Ashley 22:45
Um, so basically, from there, what’s gonna happen next, actually, from there? I’m,

Chris Seiter 22:51
like, I guess I’m getting as how long did it take after that point, to get a commitment out of him?

Ashley 22:59
To actually see the opposite. So, at that point in time, I was pretty secure with where I was, to where I, I was like, okay, you know, if you want this, you’re gonna have to show me once this because I’m not going to continue Chase. Yes, like that clearly wasn’t working. So. And I think it scared him a little bit. Now, like seeing that I was going to school, I got this new job, I got this place by myself. Like I was doing all these things without him being there when we were next, you know, hip to hip with each other throughout several years prior. And I think that that scared him a little bit. And for a few months, after, actually about a month after that, we only would meet up for dinner every so often, or go get dessert together. Every so often. And we would text each other but we weren’t like kind of going back into old habits to where we were seeing each other every single day, you know, staying the night. This scenario like that.

Chris Seiter 24:14
Were you texting each other every day though?

24:17
Not really.

Chris Seiter 24:19
So it was just like sporadic here and there as friends with text.

Ashley 24:24
Yes, because I I refuse to text first. For a little bit, for a little bit. I was having him reach out to me first. For like several weeks to, I’m like, Okay, do you really want to have a conversation with me, you know, trying to see like where he was at with everything. And then it just started gradually progressing and progressing. And then I moved into my place. And he would come over every so often and then go back to where he was saying And then he started saying a little bit more and more. And then he asked me, he was like, you know, I just want to know, like, where you’re at, he was asking if I was talking with other people. And I said no, like, not at all. I’ve never wanted to talk to anybody else. If I wasn’t talking to you, I wasn’t talking to nobody. And so he got a little worried. But that’s kind of where that commitment came by. And keep in mind, I didn’t mention this prior, but we were engaged. Before we initially split up, we were actually supposed to get married that November.

Chris Seiter 25:41
That seems like a big Ashley, that seems like a very big detail to kind of leave out out there.

Ashley 25:49
Yeah, so we were actually engaged. And he, he called it off, but I still had the engagement ring when we split up. And when we rekindled when we had that conversation that he initiated, he initiated a conversation. I told him, I’m like, I’m just kind of going with the flow with things, seeing how everything’s going, I’m trying not to, you know, bring bring any old habits back. And he was the same way. Like if there was a disagreement or not really disagreement. It was more of just a conversation. It was like, not how was in the past where this disagreement was turned into some sort of conflict. I would say something he didn’t, you know, didn’t see it that way. He would actually want to talk about it, versus before he was being so avoided. And so I started seeing that change as well. And I was like, okay, yeah, he’s really, he’s really trying to make a change. And for this to really work, I did end up giving him the ring back. Once I felt comfortable, I was contemplating it for a little while. But I sat down with him. And I gave him the ring back. And I said, when you are 110% Ready, to, you know, to be committed. Right? Yeah. And, and to plan a wedding and you’re 110% understanding or believing that I’m going to say yes, then you can ask me again. I feel like that was 100%.

Chris Seiter 27:30
That was a smart move on your part. That’s the right way.

Ashley 27:36
I, I felt, I felt pretty confident about it. I like I said, I thought about it first.

Chris Seiter 27:41
That’s sort of a sort of a think like, you know, you’re making a bet, like this ring is gonna come back to me. Like, it’s still really around your finger. But you know, it’s just a while before it arrives.

Ashley 27:53
Yeah, exactly. So, but now, we’re just kind of, we’ve had the conversation several times, you know, what we what we want out of life. And, you know, he definitely wants to have marriage within the future and, and for us to buy a house together. But I told him, I was like, You know what, before we go on with the marriage, I wanted to be able to be settled, and, you know, stable before we do that. And we’re both on that understanding of it.

Chris Seiter 28:26
So the thing, just your story that struck me so much was how patient you were, which is interesting to hear you describe yourself as having an anxious attachment style, because that is like literally the antithesis of someone with an anxious attachment style. But I feel like towards the end, just have extreme patience. Like, most of the time, if a guy would kiss our clients, they would be the ones to kind of rush to the commitment conversation, but you literally just kind of stayed cool. And I guess my my question is, how, how did Were you always this patient? Or was this something that you made a conscious decision to do after the breakup?

Ashley 29:09
It was just a conscious decision. I’ve had I’ve been patient, you know, prior to certain to certain extent, like if we got into an argument and he would just go sleep, or sleeping on silent treatment for several days, like, I would try and like let him cool down. But then it would get to a point where I’m like, alright, we need to talk, you know, but this time, you know, of course, now that we’re split up, like there’s no reason for me to reach out. But with I just because of the program and like everything that I was reading, I was just trusting the process. And that’s, that’s what was helping me and it was distracting me of saying like, okay, yeah, what’s your feeling right now? It’s valid, but you don’t want to be react. active on it.

Chris Seiter 30:02
I wish you could

Ashley 30:03
have reminding myself,

Chris Seiter 30:05
I wish you could just tell that to every single person that comes to the program, because that’s what they need to hear. I mean, you kind of are but on a personal basis, but no one has that kind of time. There was one other question that sort of struck me. Did you ever talk to your ex when you got him back about why he blocked? You?

30:28
Know, oh, man,

Chris Seiter 30:30
so I’d be, do you have any idea or guesses, because there’s a lot of people who are feeling completely helpless in a situation where their access blocked them. And the only thing I can usually tell them is like, hey, the statistics show that if you do nothing, and just kind of stay patient, to your credit, they’ll unblock you without you having to do much. But that’s a lot to take on faith for a lot of people. So do you have any idea like what was going through your head during that time.

Ashley 30:59
Um, I will say my assumption as to why he blocked me was because in the past, because I was so anxious, and I was the anxious attachment, I was always reaching out. And he didn’t, he didn’t want any, any sort of way for me to reach out to him. And which I really respected. In regards to trying to cope with that, on the receiving end, is, it’s hard, it’s hard to say, because it really is just coming down to trusting the process. You have to, you have to trust the you know, whichever way it’s gonna go. Whichever way it’s gonna go. That’s what’s meant to happen, you know, and as long as you’re following the program, and you’re doing the things you’re gonna need you need to do in the end is just, you’re finding yourself, and that’s where the person, you know, come once you find yourself, they end up coming back.

Chris Seiter 32:11
No, I, I try to tell people that exact thing, but it’s the whole faith argument. Like, it’s really hard for people to hear that. And I’m sure at one point, you were there, too, you know, like, there’s moments of doubt, and everything like that. How do you feel you? Because you like just listening to, you know, your story? It seems to me like you had just a lot of mental strength. Because as you’re talking, I’m writing down notes, you know, you had so the there’s three adjectives that I wrote when I was listening to your story, patience, independence, and outgrowth. So it’s like, you were incredibly patient. You you outgrew your x, or you outgrew the previous relationship. And what I noticed is you started doing things that show that you could be independent on your own, like, you got the job, you started going back to school, you got the apartment, you mentioned that you had always done things together with him, like hand in hand. And for the first time, he’s starting to see oh, wow, she can survive without me. How did you I guess, like, what was your mentality to start achieving these things? Because it’s, it’s impressive, quite frankly.

Ashley 33:28
Um, well, I, I personally, I because I grew up, like I said, I grew up by myself prior to us. And when I was super young, while I was a super young, I was 19, I had lost my mom. And that’s how I had to, like, start really growing independently, and like I had to find a place I had to do things on my own. And what I kept telling myself is, I’ve been through worse. And I’ve done this before I can do it again.

Chris Seiter 34:05
Confidence, basically, you had confidence with yourself, like you’d be able to get through this. And I think maybe that’s the difference between someone who’s struggling and someone who’s not because you’ve been through war before essentially you knew that no matter how bad it got you there’s a light at the end of the tunnel whereas I feel like sometimes we get clients who are completely codependent on their axes and they don’t have that confidence to brave the storm, so to speak. So do you have any advice for someone like that? Like how did what works for you, I guess is what I’m asking.

Ashley 34:41
When the time so I felt like that I was just kind of crying to myself and the anxiety was high. I kept like just reading and I was reading about you know how how to pretty much better yourself. mentally and emotionally. And those things helped me with a competence. When I felt the lowest thing was, like, you know, working out and things like that I just, I had to push myself, I really did have to push myself to do those things. Because a lot of the days, I just didn’t want to do anything, it was just, there’s too much anxiety for me to even handle certain day to day, things or even a conversation because my head was just going a million miles a second. But I just had to, I had to find my other ways of, of distracting myself to within, of course, a ways to grow. So it wasn’t just like, simply distracting my mind, I was distracting my mind and things I worked with that were going to better myself. That was gonna make me happier. So like, you know, working out reading, I was, you know, going to school, I was just trying to do things for myself. I was trying to take it day by day also. And each day, I was doing at least one little thing. It didn’t matter if it was like a bath or, you know, a shower. You know, I went and took myself out to dinner I was doing one thing was taking

Chris Seiter 36:17
care of yourself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you’re bettering your circumstances, you’re taking care of yourself, you’re improving. And I guess it has like a cumulative effect. You know, like, day after day of doing these little small things, it starts to add up and you start to get more confident. And I guess you kind of had a really beautiful snowball effect, where you almost got even like an interesting little hint around, do your first no contact like day 16 You said, where you kind of see where his head was, like he he was sort of like 70% out, but 30% still wanting to hold on it maybe it wasn’t until you moved out and you started doing all of that stuff, that he started to recognize the opportunity cost of being without you was worse than being with you. So you know, that? So let’s let’s get down to the fun details. Has he proposed again yet?

37:22
No, he has not right. Shame on him.

Chris Seiter 37:26
That’s, that’s the next mile. So we gotta get you that ring back.

Ashley 37:30
Yes, it is, is me I’m the one that’s not pulling on off on it. Because you said many times, he’s like, you know, I just want to, you know, focus on us, and, you know, the wedding and this and that. And I go well, hold your horses. You know, we’re not quite there yet. It’s only been several months, since we’ve really rekindled. So. I want to give it some more time. And you know,

Chris Seiter 37:54
it’s for good this time. You know, no more. Yeah. breakups.

37:58
Yes, exactly.

Chris Seiter 38:00
So any final words for anyone listening, that you’d like to impart words of knowledge.

Ashley 38:08
Um, I would just say it’s this, this breaking up, you can’t focus on it’s so hard not to, but you really have to push yourself to try not to focus on the other person or the relationship or what happens then you have to really take that time to rebuild yourself. And like I said, the feelings are all valid, you know, being hurt frying, that, like, everything is all valid, but you have to take those feelings and utilize them for your strength as becoming a better person, for yourself. And once once you do that, you know, you’ll start having the confidence to where you’re like, Okay, well, I can do all these things on my own. I don’t need that person. And if they come back, it’s up to you. Like do you know, do I still want them to be in my life? I don’t need them to be in my life.

Chris Seiter 39:09
I love that. I mean, that’s just thank you so much for coming on and doing this.

39:15
Yeah, of course. Of course.

The post Success Story: How One Woman Rebuilt Herself And Got Her Ex Back first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

This is a complete breakdown of the major reasons why walking away is so powerful.

In all, my team and I have found seven distinct reasons that we’d like to talk about today,

1. Allows You To Take Them Off The Pedestal
2. The No Contact Triad
3. Success Stories Consistently Cite That “Outgrowing An Ex Is Key”
4. Gives The Avoidant A Chance For Nostalgic Reverie To Kick In
5. You Are Setting A Firm Boundary
6. You Finally Have Space To Heal
7. You Are Removing Yourself From A Potentially Toxic Situation

There’s quite a bit to cover today so I’m just going to dive right in!

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Reason #1: Allows You To Take Them Off The Pedestal

A few weeks ago my wife and I partnered up on writing an article about codependence and noticed that many of our clients exhibit codependent tendencies.

Basically their entire world revolves around their breakup, their partner, or their ex.

This creates what I call the pedestal effect.

Here’s a video I did on it,

So what we’re always trying to caution our clients against is the idea of putting your ex or partner on a pedestal.

You want them to be equal to you or perhaps a little bit below.

The goal is not to punch above your weight class, so to speak.

However, in some codependent relationships, things can shift. What might have started as you being above or equal to them on the pedestal can change.

Suddenly, you find yourself below them on the pedestal, and you have placed them above you on your own pedestal.

Essentially, by walking away, you can attempt to reclaim your position and knock them off that pedestal, so that you both stand on equal footing.

Reason #2: The No Contact Triad

One of the things we always recommend to our clients after a breakup is to implement a period of no contact, which can also be interpreted as walking away.

This can be scary for a lot of people, but what many don’t realize about the no contact rule is that it incorporates three specific strategies:

1. The theory of reactance
2. The informational gap theory
3. The Zeigarnik effect

Let’s do a quick breakdown of these.

Theory Of Reactance

The theory of reactance is based on the psychological principle that people don’t like it when their behavioral freedoms are taken away.

You can read more about it here.

When this happens, they are more likely to respond in a way that seeks to regain that freedom.

By initiating the no contact rule, you are not engaging in communication with your ex, effectively taking away their behavioral freedom to converse with you.

This can trigger some exes to take actions to regain that freedom, sometimes resulting in unexpected reactions.

Like this,

(Yes, this was a real screenshot from our community!)

However, it’s important to note that most exes don’t reach out at all during the no contact period.

Thus, reactance actually does seem to be the exception to the rule.

Information Gap

This suggests that what your ex doesn’t know about you creates curiosity and prompts them to seek answers.

They may not directly approach you, but instead, observe from afar or even enlist friends to gather information.

This has happened to me.

Back in 2008 when I was around 18 years old, I went through my very first breakup.

During that time, I used to never talk to my ex’s best friend. However, all of a sudden, the best friend started calling me and probing for information about “how I was doing.”

It turned out she was doing so on behalf of my ex, trying to gather details about how I was doing.

All because of the information gap.

Last but certainly not least is…

The Zeigarnik Effect

This states that people remember interrupted or incomplete tasks better than completed ones.

The desire for closure or to finish unfinished business can become a strong driving force. By denying your ex the opportunity to gain closure, the unfulfilled task of achieving closure can upset them and potentially increase their desire to come back.

Reason #3: Success Stories Consistently Cite Outgrowing Their Ex As Key

It’s often said in the breakup industry as a cliché that if you should

“Just move on from your ex.”

Do that and they’ll come back…

Simple, right?

Well….

Ironically, this cliché is often proven to be true.

One aspect I take pride in, particularly within our community, is making the interviews I’ve conducted with success stories readily available for listening.

During these interviews, my main goal is to uncover what strategies worked for them.

It doesn’t matter to me whether they used our program or not; I simply want to understand what led to their success.

Over time, I’ve noticed consistent themes and patterns that emerge.

The no contact rule is a major theme in every success story I’ve interviewed. While it’s possible that this emphasis on no contact is because of our influence in their lives, we can’t ignore the fact that implementing no contact and walking away appears to be crucial.

However, the larger theme that I’ve observed is that those who are able to successfully outgrow their ex reach a point where they question whether they even want their ex back.

It’s at this stage that things start to fall into place for them.

Outgrowing an ex becomes a pivotal factor in their journey.

Reason #4: It Gives The Avoidant Nostalgic Reverie A Chance To Kick In

I want to bring up coach Amor here because she raised an important question that her clients often ask her when she tells them to outgrow their exes.

The question was, what if walking away makes your ex give up on you or forget about you, or it makes them move on because they can sense you’re moving on?

My response: You actually want them to think you’re moving on.

Statistics and internal polls within our community indicate that many of our clients have avoidant exes.

Avoidant individuals typically don’t allow themselves to miss someone until that person becomes unavailable, once they’re out of the relationship.

The code is essentially this: once you have moved on to a point where the avoidant thinks they don’t have to worry about getting back together with you, that’s when the avoidant starts experiencing nostalgic reverie.

I basically made an entire video on my YouTube channel arguing this singular point:

Ironically, it is during this period of nostalgia that the concept of the phantom ex comes into play. It serves as a mechanism for avoidant individuals to maintain distance, avoiding commitment while engaging in daydreams from a safe distance.

As strange as it may sound, we have discovered that the reason outgrowing your ex is so effective in breakup scenarios is due to the avoidant aspect.

When you outgrow your ex, they perceive that you no longer desire them.

This realization can trigger a sense of longing and daydreaming about you, resulting in that nostalgic reverie. This state of nostalgia often leads to a specific action that we frequently hear about: when someone has moved on, found happiness in a new relationship, and suddenly their ex, whom they once wanted back, starts texting them.

However, the irony lies in the fact that, by that point, you no longer have the same desire for them.

Reason #5: Setting Firm Boundaries

Once again I’d like to bring up that article that my wife and I worked on together, we discussed codependency and the struggles individuals with codependency issues face when it comes to setting boundaries.

This is particularly evident in on-again, off-again relationships.

The on-again, off-again cycle occurs because one person walks away, and the other person chases.

By setting firm boundaries, you prevent this cycle from continuing.

I understand it’s easier said than done, but often the reason boundaries aren’t firm is due to a lack of accompanying actions.

To use an analogy, it’s like rewarding a dog with a treat after it bites you.

If you have an ex who consistently mistreats you and behaves poorly, why would you continue chasing after them?

Instead, set the boundary and back it up with action.

Let them know you won’t allow them to treat you that way, and instead of telling them the consequences, show them the consequences.

Often, the consequence is walking away and being okay with it.

Reason #6: It Finally Gives You Space To Heal

By starting the no contact rule, walking away, you get out of the picture and gain a clearer sense of what has really happened.

It doesn’t mean you’re going to be totally okay afterward or that your feelings will vanish. It’s not like that, but you will become less emotional about it.

It will be easier for you to establish a new routine if you stop talking to the other person because you’re not really helping yourself start over if you keep doing what you used to do, if you keep talking to your ex and placing yourself in the friend zone.

When you keep talking to them, you’re giving them your attention and time, which are two of the most valuable things you can give to another person because time cannot be retrieved.

It’s literally the most valuable resource you have.

That’s why, when it comes to commitment, I believe that the most important aspect of gaining a commitment from someone is obtaining a share of their time.

This is a concept I’ve talked about in my commitment guide.

If they invest a lot of time and energy into you, giving you their attention, it usually indicates they are more invested because we want our time to be used wisely.

Reason #7: It Allows You To Remove Yourself From A Toxic Situation

There are countless ways to approach this, but the prevailing thought that comes to mind is that many people come to us believing that our sole purpose is to help them get their ex back.

However, that’s not entirely true.

What we’re actually trying to do is help you get yourself back.

To go from this:

To this:

My team and I are not going to sit there and encourage you to pursue getting an ex back if you’re in a highly toxic or even life-threatening environment.

We have advised countless individuals to distance themselves from such people because what truly matters isn’t necessarily getting an ex back, but rather healing and regaining yourself after the breakup.

Our goal is to help you become a more secure individual from an attachment style perspective, and part of being secure is recognizing when you’re in a toxic environment.

Many people don’t realize they are in one until we point out the patterns and behaviors of narcissists or highlight how they are being mistreated.

The post Reasons Why Walking Away Is So Powerful first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

This is a complete guide to the major stages of heartbreak after a breakup.

In this in-depth guide, you’re going to learn,

• About the science of heartbreak
• What I believe to be the 8 stages of grief after a breakup
• What the most challenging stage is after a breakup
• How long you can expect the typical heartbreak period to last

So, if you’re ready to learn about the significant stages of heartbreak, this is the guide for you.

Let’s begin.

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The Science Of Heartbreak

The first thing you need to understand is we need to set the stage for what’s going on inside of your body.

And to set the stage for what’s going on inside your body, we need to look at the various chemicals or, rather, the various players.

And ultimately, those boil down to:

• Cortisol
• Dopamine
• Norepinephrine
• And Serotonin.

All right, so a quick crash course on each one.

Cortisol is considered a stress hormone.

So often, you’ll find that it’s exceptionally elevated during breakups.

Dopamine is actually associated with pleasure, reward, arousal, and desire.

We often see this often with the honeymoon period at the beginning of a relationship.

Norepinephrine is about increasing memory for new stimuli, but it just makes you extra excitable.

Once again, very common to see this during the honeymoon period.

And then, finally, we have serotonin.

Serotonin is cortisol’s foil. So cortisol is the stress hormone that makes you almost obsessive-compulsive after a breakup.

Serotonin is considered a mood stabilizer, and it helps stop OCD from occurring.

Okay, now that we have sort of the stage set, let’s talk about what happens at the outset of a breakup.

So at the very beginning of a relationship, a lot of the chemicals your brain will release into your body are elevated.

Cortisol will be slightly elevated, but dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are significantly elevated.

And this is what creates the euphoria of a honeymoon period.

In the middle of a relationship, those various chemicals come back down to normal levels.

Heartbreak is a little bit different.

When you go through a breakup, dopamine, norepinephrine, and, most importantly, serotonin go way down, and cortisol goes way up.

This is important because cortisol creates a potentially significant issue for you when it becomes highly elevated.

So one of the best quotes I’ve seen on cortisol after a breakup happened was from this particular man named Jamie Lee, who was featured in an article for bodyandsoul.com.

He argued that, on average, it can take three to four hours for your cortisol levels to return to normal after a stress response. So let’s say you get into an argument or have a high-stakes meeting, and your cortisol shoots up, but after three or four hours, it returns to normal.

But if your levels have been high for some time, it can take up to six months to balance them out.

On average, it’s only supposed to take you three hours. But imagine you’re going through something so stressful that it keeps cortisol in this elevated state.

In that case, the cortisol takes so much longer to level out. And this is the core foundation for why people struggle so much during breakups.

The breakup is obviously stressful.

It triggers cortisol to stay in that elevated state for an extended period.

And if it’s in that state for a long time, what happens?

You will be very, very stressed for the next six months. There’s just no way around it.

Let’s move on to the eight stages of grief after a breakup.

Understanding The Eight Stages Of Heartbreak After A Breakup

This one requires an introduction. I was inspired by this article I found on Psychology Today, written by a clinical psychologist named Susan Lachmann.

She argues that we always know the five stages of grief after a breakup.

But when it comes to breakups, she claims there are seven grief stages.

And I’ve written about this in the past, but the more I’ve sat and thought about it, the more I would like to alter her stages.

It’s not that I disagree with them.

I actually do agree with them.

I just think they’re not ordered correctly.

And there’s one stage that is missing. So to give you a reference, her seven stages are as follows,

1. Desperate for answers
2. Denial
3. Bargaining
4. Relapse
5. Anger
6. Initial Acceptance
7. Redirected Hope

I love these stages, but for me, there are eight stages.

So, here are my eight stages.

1. Desperation
2. Pain and Guilt
3. Bargaining
4. Anger
5. Depression
6. Initial Acceptance
7. Relapse
8. Actual Acceptance

So let’s take a moment and go through each one of these because I feel like each one merits an explanation.

Stage #1: Desperation

So stage one is considered the desperation stage. This is where you are desperate for answers after a breakup.

The most common marker you are in this stage is frantically going to Google or YouTube to search for breakup information.

• Why you’re feeling, what you’re feeling,
• how to get your ex back,
• ways to trick your ex back,

You find yourself typing into Google all these things that you would never have thought you were capable of typing. And it’s all just because you’re desperate to understand what happened.

Here’s the funny thing. My team and I have found that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles.

And the fascinating marker for someone with an anxious attachment style is they are very big on trying to solve problems.

And it fits, you know, if you’re desperate for answers, you’re going to Google or YouTube to solve a problem.

So that’s the desperation stage.

Stage #2: Pain And Guilt

This will be where you start to notice many of those anxious triggers coming into play.

• Desperation
• Fear of abandonment
• Begging
• Pleading
• Seeking re-assurance

But more than anything

I want to turn your attention to what I consider to be codependent shaming.

So my wife and I recently wrote this great article on how to handle codependence after a breakup.

We personally believe many of our clients tend to be too codependent. And as a result, they shame themselves and have these negative self-beliefs that they trap themselves with. And this is pretty common for someone who is codependent.

They rely too much on that particular relationship for their well-being and self-esteem. And when that relationship ends or that specific person who their entire world revolves around leaves them,

They find themselves dwelling on every perceived problem they believe is their fault, consequently driving their anguish and guilt to unbearable levels. The emotional aftermath of the breakup is excruciating; they’re grieving, deeply immersed in the mourning process. They’re laden with guilt over issues that may not even be their responsibility.

Stage #3: Bargaining

The third stage is where you enter into my orbit.

This is where you determine that you will get back with your ex.

You think to yourself;

• I’ve been doing all the searching.
• I’ve read Chris’s stuff.
• I’ve listened to his podcast.
• I’ve listened to his interview success stories.
• And you know what?
• This is possible.
• I can do this for myself.
• I know the path forward.

This is the bargaining stage.

Now, it’s not to say that you can’t succeed. I’m not insinuating that at all in this discussion.

I’m just working through the journey that most of our clients typically go through.

So this is where you are set on returning with your ex.

Simple as that.

And then, of course, at some part, stage four is going to occur. And that’s anger.

Stage #4: Anger

If I’m candid with you, I put anger in here because it is a normal part of the grieving process.

But a lot of times, I find that our clients do not get angry with their exes. As I mentioned earlier, most of my clients find their way to me during the bargaining stage, typically when they’re trying to reconcile with their ex. For many, the perspective is not that their ex is incapable of wrongdoing but that they harbor no significant resentment towards them.

The onset of anger usually emerges when their initial attempts to win back their ex prove unsuccessful. This is a common experience among those who seek my guidance.

Then they get angry, not at their ex, but at the situation. They lash out. Sometimes they blame me. Recently, there were a couple of examples in our community where I didn’t get back to people quick enough with answers, and they grew incredibly frustrated.

I see this all the time; it’s pervasive. And I don’t even take it personally because I understand everyone’s going through this.

Stage #5: Depression

I don’t know if I should go deep into this because you need to understand the roller coaster someone is going through up to this point.

They’re incredibly desperate initially, so they’re at a negative. Then they feel pain and guilt; they’re even more negative.

Then they enter that bargaining stage. As odd as it sounds, bargaining gives them some hope.

They start looking online and at stories of people who have succeeded in getting their exes back.

So that is looked at as a positive.

And then anger occurs, which is in between a positive and negative because there are instances where anger can make you feel better.

But obviously, it’s not great as a whole to live in this angry state.

So after that roller coaster comes depression, and what I’m finding at this point is that your cortisol is incredibly elevated, as we talked about in the science of heartbreak section of this discussion.

And one thing we know about elevated cortisol is it makes you so much more susceptible to depression.

So one of the jobs I’m constantly working on with my clients is helping them find ways to lower that cortisol because we don’t want them in a depressed state.

Stage #6: Initial Acceptance

The stage of initial acceptance essentially arrives when you decide, “I’m not sure I can get them back anymore.”

This realization is entirely normal, often culminating in the thought, “I think I’m okay if I don’t get them back anymore.” Much of what we’re discussing here parallels the traditional five stages of grief.

However, we’ve repurposed them for the context of a breakup.

But here’s where it becomes particularly intriguing: initial acceptance differs from true acceptance.

The former involves convincing yourself that you’re okay, that you’ve moved on.

This notion is something I’ve seen repeatedly in the private community I’ve been running since 2016.

Members often post about their newfound happiness post-breakup, only to share their feelings of depression and sadness a few weeks later.

They had convinced themselves that they were over their ex, didn’t want them back, and were okay.

Yet, deep down, they were not.

This is the complexity and challenge of initial acceptance. At the moment, it feels genuine, like they have genuinely moved on and are comfortable with the reality of it. But often, it’s just the surface-level feeling and deeper emotions are still at play.

Stage #7: Relapse

But then comes stage seven, relapse; something happens, something triggers you, and it causes you to start the entire grieving stage over again.

• You go through a desperate stage where you look for answers on ex-boyfriend recovery or ex-girlfriend recovery.
• You go to YouTube, watch the videos, and listen to the podcast.
• You feel pain, guilt, and anger.
• You bargain with yourself.
• You’re incredibly depressed.
• You’ve accepted it again.
• And then, guess what happens once more?
• You relapse again.

Relapse is the worst thing possible because it’s arguably the stage that takes the longest. When I often talk about the relapse stage, people think, okay, stage seven relapse. That means we’re starting over from stage one, right?

Well, no, not exactly.

The way relapse works is sometimes you can get caught in it for two, three, or four revolutions where you’re convincing yourself you don’t want them back, only to relapse and want them back again.

And it makes that cortisol stay in that elevated state, which makes your life more stressful, which makes you more susceptible to depression.

And it’s only after going through relapse a bunch of times that, at some point, you skip it.

You go from initial acceptance to our final stage, stage eight, actual acceptance.

Stage #8: Actual Acceptance

Now actual acceptance is where you actually accept the breakup. It’s the real thing this time.

You think,

“I’m over them. I’ve accepted that this breakup has occurred. I wouldn’t mind them returning to me, but I don’t need them back.”

And it’s authentic.

You don’t relapse anymore.

You’re ready to move on with your life.

Not a ton more to dig into here, if I’m being honest.

Instead, I would like to talk about is what I consider to be the hardest stage.

What Is The Hardest Stage Of Heartbreak?

Without a doubt, the most challenging stage is the relapse stage.

What’s complicated about it is its partnership with the initial acceptance phase.

So initially, you accept that you’re over the breakup. You convince yourself that,

“Hey, this is it. I’m done!”

Only to relapse and start over from the beginning. It can feel like an unyielding negative cycle that you’re trapped in. You’re stuck in a hole you can’t climb out of and just when you’ve gotten to the top, just when you’ve seen daylight.

Something happens and you relapse, you get pushed back down to the very bottom of that hole again, and it’s time to begin your climb once more.

Over and over again.

But why the struggle to get to “actual acceptance?”

Well, I have found that when I interview success stories,

People who get past these relapse phases and into these actuall acceptance phases that have the greatest likelihood of getting their exes back.

It’s the common thread we’ve seen through almost every success story, not every single one, but nearly every success story.

So my goal as a breakup coach is help move you past the obsessive-compulsive thoughts that you’re having about your ex and help you work through these stages of heartbreak so you can arrive at stage eight more quickly.

How Long Will These Heartbreak Stages Last Total?

Looking at our success stories can give us some insight.

We found that the average success story falls between five to seven months. It’s around 5.2 months, but a range of five to seven months provides a more comprehensive and ideal perspective.

But even that is just a “range.”

For years I’ve been trying to come up with a formula that can be a one size fits all formula. But ultimately, I realized there’s no one-size-fits-all formula to figure out how long you’re going to be heartbroken or how long you should expect to be heartbroken.

Nevertheless, I continue to try.

So I will teach you my makeshift formula, and you should take this with a massive grain of salt.

This is not going to be accurate all the way. There are things that could be improved with it. I’m happy for you to point out the flaws in the comments, but as a general rule, I have found it to be the most accurate metric you can fall back on.

But again, no science is backing it up, and it’s using my polling data.

So with that disclaimer out of the way here’s the formula,

X/Y + Z = Time in months you’ll be heartbroken

X= Time you were together in months

Y= 6 months (our average success story timeframe)

Z= 3 The standard post-breakup processing period

Let’s use an example for clarity.

Assume you were together with your ex for seven months.

• In this case, ‘X’ equals seven.
• Divide that by six
• and add three to the result.

7/6+3 = 4.2

This calculation suggests the typical recovery or heartbreak period is roughly 4.2 months. That’s generally how long it takes to reach an emotional state where you feel settled and okay.

Like I said, it’s not an exact science but it at least creates an expectation for you.

The post The Stages Of Heartbreak After A Breakup first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

This is a complete list of the top female behaviors after a breakup.

And no, the items on this list weren’t randomly chosen just because we felt like it. Each and every one of them was either experienced firsthand by me or one of our coaches, or I actually found research to back it up.

Here are the common behaviors females are likely to exhibit after a breakup,

1. More susceptible to anxious behaviors
2. Are better at emotional expression
3. End up recovering more fully after a breakup
4. Won’t go on the rebound as often as men
5. The glow down phase
6. The glow up phase
7. Getting stuck in the relapse stage

Let’s dive right in

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Behavior #1: More Susceptible To Anxious Behaviors

So, the first thing I’ve noticed is that women tend to exhibit more anxious behaviors or engage in certain actions.

While researching for this article, I realized that I hadn’t answered a fundamental question about attachment styles. It has always been apparent that most of our clients have anxious attachment styles, while their exes tend to have avoidant attachment styles.

Anxious client,

Avoidant ex,

However, I wanted to explore the breakdown of these attachment styles based on gender roles.

Do women tend to have more anxious attachment styles compared to men? I delved into research and discovered that it argues,

Women indeed tend to have more anxious attachment styles than men.

This finding sheds light on the next aspect we’re going to discuss, which further supports this notion.

Women, especially after a breakup, tend to display more anxious behaviors.

If you aren’t familiar with what that looks like then allow me to give you a quick crash course,

• They’ll seek constant re-assurance
• Become overly clingy or dependent
• Constantly fear you’ll abandon them
• Get jealous
• Become possessive
• Overanalyze
• Be quick to emotional fluctuations

But by far the biggest thing I’ve witnessed women do after a breakup is exhibit what I refer to as “Gnatting” behaviors, which is an acronym I came up with for G.N.A.T. (Going Nuts at Texting).

G- Going

N- Nuts

A- At

T- Texting

But this leads me to my next question: Why?  Why are women more susceptible to anxious behaviors?

Behavior #2: Women Are Better At Emotional Expression

Is it the concept of the core wound?

Well, ya that’s part of it. But I also believe another factor is the second significant behavior we’ve noticed women experience after a breakup. It’s the fact that they are generally better at emotional expression.

Women tend to openly express their feelings more compared to men. Consequently, after a breakup, they often discuss it with their friends or family members, which can aid in processing their emotions and facilitating a quicker healing process. On the other hand, men have been socially conditioned to suppress their emotions, which can prolong the healing journey.

Interestingly, a study conducted by Binghamton University in New York sheds light on this phenomenon.

The study revealed that women experience more pain during a breakup but eventually achieve more complete recovery. This finding, to me, highlights another significant behavior exhibited by women.

They may initially feel greater distress, but ultimately, they recover more fully.

Behavior #3: Women Recover More Fully After A Breakup

What’s fascinating about these first three behaviors in women is the synergy that exists among them.

Think of causality.

The cause and effect of the situation.

Females tend to be better at emotional expression. (which leads them to) Exhibit more anxious attachment behaviors (but because of that outward expression) They tend to get over breakup more fully.

Have you ever come across that meme depicting how men and women handle breakups?

It portrays men being initially ecstatic and women in tears, but then it reverses as time passes.

Surprisingly, there is often some truth to these memes.

The Binghamton study suggests that because men internalize their emotions and lack open communication and support systems, as dictated by societal norms, their healing process is prolonged.

In contrast, women feel the full spectrum of emotions, possess better emotional expression, and have support systems in place, leading to a more thorough recovery from breakups.

So, while they may feel worse initially, the positive aspect is that they tend to overcome it more completely.

Behavior #4: They Tend NOT To Go On The Rebound (Men Do)

The next significant behavior I’ve noticed among women after a breakup relates to their tendency not to engage in rebound relationships, whereas men often do.

I came across an intriguing divorce statistic that argued,

Men are more likely to seek rebound relationships following a divorce, while women generally do not.

This observation has been consistent in our coaching practice as well.

Although we don’t encounter many women or men attempting to recover relationships after marriage, it has occurred. However, when it comes to breakups, we have frequently seen female clients implementing the “being there” method.

The “being there” method is a strategy we developed for situations where one’s ex has moved on to someone else.

Interestingly, we have noticed a higher number of women utilizing the “being there” method compared to men.

I believe this relates back to the fact that women tend to refrain from entering rebound relationships as frequently as men. It’s not to say that women never engage in rebounds, but men appear to do so more often.

I attribute this pattern to the avoidant cycle, which I often discuss using my “avoidant death wheel” model consisting of eight stages.

As individuals progress through these stages, the avoidant (who we often find to be the exes of our clients) reaches a point where they start missing their former partner, and the grief from the breakup begins to surface.

At this juncture, they have a choice: either confront and process their emotions, something women tend to excel at, or distract themselves.

Rebounding is often a way of seeking distraction. We have observed that fearful avoidants are more susceptible to rebounding, although avoidants in general may also engage in this behavior.

Interestingly, according to the research, rebound relationships tend not to last very long.

They have a relatively low success rate, with only 19% of rebound relationships lasting beyond two years.

So, in the long run, a rebound relationship is unlikely to endure for an extended period. Nevertheless, men are more inclined to pursue rebounds as a means of temporarily forgetting or processing their grief.

Behavior #5: The “Glow Down” Phase

Now, the next two breakup behaviors exhibited by women are closely interconnected.

1. The glow down phase
2. The glow up phase

They care considered separate, but they can almost be combined into one simple behavior if that makes any sense.

To truly understand this, we need to explore a crossroads that individuals face during a breakup. At this crossroads, one can either experience a “glow down” or a “glow up.”

Let’s first discuss the glow down phase.

What is the glow down phase?

Essentially, it’s when someone reaches a crossroads and allows the grief and trauma of the breakup to negatively impact them. They may engage in unhealthy behaviors such as excessive drinking, smoking, or seeking validation through multiple casual encounters.

Ultimately, these behaviors serve as distractions.

Similar to men who may be inclined to pursue rebound relationships, women also resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with the pain and trauma they’re experiencing.

Unfortunately, they neglect what we refer to as the Holy Trinity, a concept we emphasize emphatically here at Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

Instead of actively working on improving different aspects of their lives, they engage in actions that may provide temporary relief but do not contribute to long-term growth.

For instance, Coach Amor (in the podcast attached to this article above) shared the story of her friend on our podcast, who thought drinking socially would help her relationships, but it ultimately influenced her social circle negatively and hindered progress in other areas of her life.

This phase, known as the glow down, worsens one’s situation as it involves engaging in behaviors that do not lead to genuine improvement.

Now, let’s turn to the other side of the coin, the glow up phase.

Behavior #6: The “Glow Up” Phase

Coach Amor made an insightful point during our discussion about this phase.

She mentioned that sometimes one has to go through a glow down before they can experience a glow up.

It’s about allowing yourself to be broken by the breakup, hitting rock bottom, and then beginning the journey of self-recovery.

This is where the glow up phase comes into play.

During this phase, individuals wholeheartedly embrace the Holy Trinity concept.

Amor herself generously shared her own breakup experience, describing how she initially went through a glow down phase, engaging in negative behaviors and neglecting the Trinity, despite being aware of its importance.

However, once she reached rock bottom, she shifted gears and decided to rebuild her life.

She focused on balancing different aspects of her Trinity, creating momentum that gradually gained strength.

Ultimately, her self-confidence grew.

This is the key we strive for when assisting our clients through breakups – helping them reach a point where they are not only okay with their ex, but also content with being single.

They become confident in the knowledge that a successful relationship awaits them in the future. This is the essence of the glow up phase.

By working on oneself internally, positive external changes begin to manifest.

Finally, let’s address the last significant behavior,

Behavior #7: Getting Stuck In The Relapse Stage

This is going to resonate with many of you.

Let’s start by discussing the stages of grief commonly associated with breakups.

While experts often talk about the five stages of grief, according to psychologist Susan Lachman, there are actually seven stages of grieving a breakup.

The seven stages are as follows:

1. being desperate for answers
2. denial
3. bargaining
4. relapse
5. anger
6. initial acceptance of the breakup
7. redirected hope.

I’ve noticed that many people tend to get stuck in the relapse stage.

Let’s take Coach Amor as an example.

During the podcast episode for this article, she shared her own breakup story, describing how she went through the glow down phase and then repaired herself by going through the glow up phase.

However, she recently found herself in the relapse stage, where she constantly cycles through different stages of grief, desperate for answers, getting stuck in denial, or growing overly angry.

Her argument was that her momentum was negatively impacted, causing her to regress.

Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of her past relationship, she started reminiscing about the good times. This is an important concept that is often overlooked.

And that’s the thing, the stages of grief are not experienced in a linear fashion.

People often find themselves jumping from denial to anger to acceptance and then back to bargaining, constantly relapsing.

The relapse stage itself is characterized by this jumping around, tricking oneself into thinking they have fully accepted the breakup, only to realize that they haven’t truly done so.

It becomes a cycle that people can remain stuck in for a significant amount of time.

It’s crucial to recognize that this is a normal part of the grieving process that occurs during a breakup.

However, if you want to move past the relapse stage, there are three things you can do.

1. Accept your circumstances
2. Distract yourself
3. Re-appraise your ex

Accept your circumstances

Acknowledge that the breakup has happened and that you need to adapt to this new reality.

Distract yourself

Take a page from Amors book and find healthy distractions, such as going to the gym. It’s important to note that if the distraction is removed, as in Amor’s case when she couldn’t go to the gym anymore, a relapse may occur.

This brings us to the third point.

Re-appraise your ex

Take a comprehensive look at your time together and acknowledge that while there may have been good moments, there were also significant challenges and negative experiences.

Focusing on the negative aspects will help you detach emotionally from your ex.

Strangely enough, even if you want your ex back, falling out of love with them is often an essential part of the process.

Consistently the most effective approach is to outgrow your ex and move forward.

The post Female Behavior After A Breakup first appeared on Ex Boyfriend Recovery.

Today Coach Amor and I will be breaking down this concept of pushing and pulling during a breakup.

More specifically,

• We’re going to define it
• Show you our push pull equation
• Look at the healthy way of utilizing push/pull
• Look at the toxic ways in which it’s utilized
• Show you how to implement it during the rapport building phase
• And most importantly have you sign up for coaching with Amor!

There’s a lot to cover here so let’s jump right into it.

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Interview Transcript Summary

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pull, give, push, people, response, toxic, mirroring, negative, strategy, love, ghosting, positive response, implement, girls, pace, reach, move, argument, bare minimum, interesting
SPEAKERS
Amor, Chris Seiter

Chris Seiter 00:00
ready? Okay, today, a more and I are going to be talking about the push pull method of flirting as it relates the breakup situation. How are we doing today? We’re

Amor 00:17
doing great. I’m excited for topic today. It’s very interesting.

Chris Seiter 00:22
So I want everyone listening to this to know that more, and I spent an hour. And I literally, I don’t know if you know this more, but I timed it. You can see my screen here. I timed it below. It’s an hour and five minutes. Yeah, this outline. We barely have anything. No, I’m just kidding.

Amor 00:40
We had a lot of arguments. We did.

Chris Seiter 00:43
We did. And actually, what a great segue. Our very first argument was revolving around defining push and pull. Yeah. So so we had a fundamental difference on what push and pull meant. So I believe I think you need to

Amor 00:59
adjust that. Okay. Some people might have the same idea as I did.

Chris Seiter 01:05
Yeah, you know, it is kind of confusing because of the way they I’ve also heard it referred to as rubber banding, which might actually be an accurate way of looking at it. But of course, push and pull is the keyword people type into Google. So that’s the one we got to play with. Anyways, basically, this is funny, this is the big argument that I’m worn, I had basically for like 15 minutes. And I think I won the argument after I pulled up like multiple references, or at least a reference. But basically, I believed that pushing was essentially the kin to ghosting someone or avoiding someone and pulling was kind of like love bombing or showing a lot of interest. But a more had this wacky other way of thinking about it. And now tag your it because I don’t even know how to explain that.

Amor 01:53
In my point of view, when you push, it’s not your it’s your time of giving so much investing so much giving attention, you know, texting a lot, calling a lot, showing up a lot. And then when you pull, you suddenly take it all back. It’s a very toxic way. But that’s how manipulators do it in their mind. They’re investing investing, investing in the receivers point of view. That’s the push and when they pull away when everything is gone when they’re bread, crumbing or ghosting, that’s the pull away stage. That’s actually yeah, I realized that’s wrong. I mean, that’s not the right definition. I just really did it that that.

Chris Seiter 02:35
So the thing is, I see what you’re talking about. But for the purposes of this discussion, we’re gonna go with my definition, since I think that’s probably the most accurate one. Not to say you’re wrong, but you’re wrong.

Amor 02:52
I am wrong. Okay, but defeat.

Chris Seiter 02:55
Finally, God only took an hour. Okay, so basically, for the purpose of this discussion, push is going to be ghosting. Polling is going to be kind of love bombing. And we kind of came up with this fun little equation about really, I don’t know, maybe if equation is the right word, but basically a frame of reference to look at pushing and pulling. And, and it was actually a Moore, who had this really intriguing way of looking about how girls and guys kind of handle relationships. Yeah, so why don’t you go ahead and take that.

Amor 03:33
I used to hear this a lot from other women. not that old, but since high school. And you know, how, you know, how is the courtship starts with men pursuing the flirting stage. And we don’t know this that, at first, the guys are, sometimes they’re always into it, like, they move too fast. They give everything and when they’re excited, you know, they want to do everything they plan everything they want to see you always what the girls are not aware of is that the guys set the direction of the relationship or the courtship stage, but the girl should be the one that’s deciding about the pace of how, you know how everything goes, That guy set the direction the girl set the pace. So in that way, you’re both incorporating the push pull equation, because if you’re, but most of the time, girls are not aware of that. They just let the guy pursue and pursue and then in some cases, if if the guy is toxic, if the guy is manipulative, they know that the more they invest, they’re gonna, they’re gonna hook you in and then that’s when they ghost you or they read Chrome, you now you’re confused. There’s only one person is implementing the push and pull. The guy is setting the direction and he’s also setting that He’s so yeah, just to share girls, you need to be aware of that you should be the one setting the pace. And I think you gave a better example on how to implement it equally, because I didn’t I wasn’t even. I didn’t realize that we can. You know, the guys are the one that’s the guy should allow the girl, I think you need to talk about that more. Okay.

Chris Seiter 05:27
So yeah, I mean, believe it or not, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. It was the first time I had ever heard this take on relationship dynamics, and I loved it. So

Amor 05:37
I think it’s more of a cultural thing. Because in Asian, you know, in Asian culture, the guy should be the pursuer. It’s not encouraged for the girls to pursue. You’re allowed.

Chris Seiter 05:51
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can’t tell you how often people want to crucify me for saying like, Oh, yeah, no, you reach out first, especially if they’re women. They’re like, No, but no. So I don’t necessarily think it’s just Asian culture. I think it’s almost as a universal thing. But yeah, so

Amor 06:04
basically, your wraps in the topic of, you know, feminine and masculine energy. right into that.

Chris Seiter 06:12
I think they are

Amor 06:13
interrupting you. Okay, good.

Chris Seiter 06:17
So yeah, basically, the argument you were making is like, Guys, in general, in relationships, they’re thinking about the direction you know, where to go, what to do natural. So like, they have this, this natural inclination to want to move really fast. They, they’re kind of in love with this pursuit stage. Whereas girls, on the other hand, they’re all about the pace of the relationship, which I really love that you talked about that. So like, you know, oftentimes they’ll say, you know, that date doesn’t work for me, or I’m not ready for that. So they kind of dictate the pace, but

Amor 06:45
we’re worried about it, but we love it, that you move fast, but we are worried about it.

Chris Seiter 06:51
You’re kind of like slow down their head honcho? You know, we’re not, we’re not quite ready for that yet. But yeah, more than I had this really another one of the big debates we had when we were kind of like outlining this topic was the healthy ways of push pull, and the toxic ways of push pulling. And I think that was that was an idea that came up with you. So basically, like, she was asking me like, Hey, what is the healthy way of of implementing this push pull thing, and I was arguing that I think there needs to be a reset in the way that we’ve looked at pushing and pulling, you know, we often look at the pushing and pulling as his way of manipulating this person to feel a certain way about us. Instead, I think a more healthy way of looking at it is the mirroring approach, you know, so when they pull back, you pull back. And what often happens in healthy environments is guys, they’re allowing the girl to set the pace, and girls are knowing when to set the pace. So oftentimes, this push pull mechanism, these two elements are present. But on the other hand, a more was talking about this toxic way of pushing and pulling. And we actually had a really long spirited debate about like, Okay, well, let’s define what the toxic way of pushing and pulling is. And the toxic way is, basically you’re trying to manipulate the person with selfish intent, so you only care about what you feel. So you’re kind of like in love with this high being chased. And we see this a lot with guys specifically, who are not allowing a girl to pace and girls not knowing that they are allowed, they let the guy dictate the pace. And these are kind of like the this, if you look at this equation of like, Okay, girls, set the pace, guys try it or think about the direction. And if that is present, you tend to have a more healthy way of looking at this push pull. But on the other hand, it’s very toxic. If guys are setting the pace, or yeah, basically, guys are setting the pace and direction. So to kind of bring this back to that masculine feminine energy or a yin and yang, both of these elements need to be in place for a healthy relationship to potentially develop. Yeah. And I do you want to take the implementing the because really, you so I want

Amor 09:15
to be more clear that go over I know, I mentioned this earlier, but if the toxic way is leaning more on what the intent is, for example, if it’s a long term relationship, and just like what we talked about, once you’re bored, you pull away everything, just because you’re bored. But sometimes, you know, I don’t know how you would react to this stress, but sometimes a little bit of that for me, for me, it’s okay just to spice things up, but don’t do it in a routine way. Like you need to you need to set it so that when you know there’s an imbalance in the relationship. Like you’re giving way too much. You have to pull back. And that’s that’s although the intention is more for yourself. You’re thinking about I like how we advise the UG hours because some of them would think so the UG hours or more for myself than that it’s toxic right?

Chris Seiter 10:08
Now you can easily argue that this is girls just setting the pace.

Amor 10:13
Yes, yes, exactly. But if they do it, is it also toxic if they need more time for themselves?

Chris Seiter 10:22
I don’t think so.

Amor 10:24
Right? Because yeah, they are basing it, but it’s not. I just want to make it clear that it’s not black and white. But you would know that if it’s toxic, if it keeps happening, if it becomes a pattern. Ghosting, you know, right bread crumbing. That’s a push and pull tactic. And they’re doing it for fun, not because they want to be want to grow, they need time for themselves. No, they’re doing it for the height of the feeling of being chased. Some because I want to address that this people, some people are, they’re not really into this, because they feel like they’re manipulating their ex. So, yeah.

Chris Seiter 11:05
But yeah, I mean, I think certainly that’s the case with a lot of people, I think the the long pole in the tent for people to understand, I guess the thing we’re trying to get out here is probably the mantra you should be having when you’re looking at pushing and pulling is instead trying to approach it from a mirroring perspective.

Amor 11:27
Racing,

Chris Seiter 11:29
because, like, if you think about it, like if you’re marrying someone, it allows a relationship to kind of unfold organically. And really to kind of hammer this home, you know, a more was asking me like, Okay, you, you’re arguing, Chris, that the the push pool concept is sort of not even the right way of looking at it. Instead, the mirroring concept is probably the better way, you know, when they pull away, you, you pull away when they pull back, you pull back. But how do you actually implement it? When you’re building rapport? And you do it? Exactly. And so my argument there is, it’s important when you’re in the rapport building stage with an ex, or I guess, just in general with anyone. We’ve had actually a lot of interesting. People in the Facebook group specifically telling us like, yeah, you know, I’m not trying to get my ex back anymore. But I use some of the stuff that you’re teaching to get exes back on, just like normal dates, and it’s working. So I do think there’s some applications here with just non breakup situations. But it’s important that you have a framework like the value ladder, and within that framework, be implementing the mirroring approach with some guardrails or bumpers. And to kind of, we kind of created a chart, I guess, to help with that. Do you want to just set up the chart? And then I can kind of go into it?

Amor 12:58
Yeah, we we talked about how do you really handle it in the real world? Because that’s probably what your concerns are, how do you implement the push pull while you’re building rapport? And with the responses that, you know, you’re gonna get? So how do you implement the push pull when you get a positive and negative and neutral and no response? That’s, that’s what you’re gonna encounter, whether you’re trying to build rapport with your ex or with a new person. So the first at first, I thought, if you always, you know, get a positive response, which what we all want in a fairytale setting your positive response? Yeah. And everything’s good. And you’re getting back faster than everyone else.

Chris Seiter 13:41
It’s true.

Amor 13:45
In real life, specially with our listeners who have avoidant access, or let’s say fearful avoidant, let’s say you get a positive response. This, does that mean, you’re not going to implement the push pull? Well, how do you? Yeah.

Chris Seiter 14:02
Are you asking me more?

Amor 14:04
Yeah. Okay.

Chris Seiter 14:08
So yeah, I mean, this is actually something like not to belabor the point here. But this is actually something I struggled with a long time. Because we see it a lot in the group. This concept of people really falling in love with being Eugene, and a lot of times they associate being Eugene with being unavailable. And that is a huge part of it, you know, but if you’re unavailable all the time, that’s not going to foster necessarily the best environment for attraction to happen. You have to be available some time for attraction to happen. And so yeah, one of the reasons why I like the mirroring approach so much is actually how it handles positive interactions. So oftentimes, what I see people or a mistake I see people making in the group is they get a positive response from their ex And then they’re almost trained. And a lot of this is my fault for the way I had the program set up in the past before we kind of like had it evolve, but they’re trained to like, Okay, I got the positive response. Now I’m gonna kind of go back into my bunker and wait a little bit, and then I’ll come back out. But what’s interesting is, when I’ve interviewed a lot of success stories, I found that it’s usually the people who take advantage of the momentum that end up having the greater successes in the end. So in my opinion, when you get a positive response with someone, it’s important to keep going. But you don’t want to match their exact enthusiasm. So if they’re like, if their enthusiasm is at a 10, you want to match their enthusiasm, but a bit at a seven. So you give them a little something, you acknowledge how they’re feeling, and you can kind of keep the momentum going, but you’re not matching them. Exactly. So you’re there’s always like a little, little sum. So I think that’s kind of the thing that makes the biggest difference. And that that is that is my way of being available while being unavailable.

Amor 16:02
Like what I basically you’re basing it, you’re trying to take it slow. Yeah. But you’re not totally pushing them away. By being predictable. You’re there, you’re like, you have to validate, but also take the lead of taking, taking everything. So because the tendency for some of the excess is that they get excited, because they get the attention back. Yeah. And then they realize later on, that they’re overwhelmed. So to avoid that, you need to give just 75% As you say, yeah, not blowing them off. Yeah,

Chris Seiter 16:33
right. I think the one other caveat I would have with positive responses is we’re talking about positive responses after the no contact rule. And after you’ve already engaged in some conversations with them, this does not apply to our rules for first contact text messages after the no contact rule. Because in that case, you usually want to give them a day or two before you reach out again and slowly. This is like when you have connection built up. But you’re kind of stuck in a stagnant limbo. But anyways, you want to you want to set up the next one for me.

Amor 17:06
Okay, I think this one’s the, when you’re getting a negative response, this is more of the concern of probably a lot more of the listeners, what you do when they’re really negative.

Chris Seiter 17:19
So when they’re really negative, how do

Amor 17:21
you can can you still implement the push pull? Yeah, like they don’t want to talk to you?

Chris Seiter 17:27
Yeah, like I said, our version of push pull is we’re trying to shift it more towards mirroring. So it’s a more organic approach or more organic unfold. So when you’re getting a negative response, the mirroring approach would actually not be perfectly correct here, because the mirroring response would have you be like, you know, they say something mean to you, and you say something mean back? Well, especially if you’re trying to get your ex back. That’s not necessarily the best thing. But instead, you want to, quote unquote, mirror that as you don’t want to reward negative behavior. So you give them space, but the question becomes, how much space and how many days depends on how negative they were, and how often they were negative. So like, for example, let’s say your ex was just kind of negative, they said something snarky to you, maybe you would just say, Okay, I’m gonna wait a week before I try to reach out again. But let’s say this is your fifth attempt to reach out to them and every time you reach out to them, they’ve been incredibly negative. Well, each time that they’re more negative, subsequently, you want to extend the amount of space that you give them. But a more you brought up a really interesting question, which is, okay, well, let’s say when you’d like you have to reach out to them. Yeah, remember, you were you were asking me, like the negative? Like, if they’re incredibly negative, you give them the space, and then you have to reach out to them again. Yeah.

Amor 18:52
How do you watch out again, how do you initiate? Like, if they seem like they’re, they really don’t want to talk to you? How do you start again? What kind of message do you send or open up in a call?

Chris Seiter 19:05
Yeah, so that’s another really great question. And I think the answer to this can be found once again by looking at our success stories. So if you Oh, well said a few years ago, a few weeks ago, I was interviewing this, this girl who ended up using our program to get our ex back. And she told us really interesting story. And maybe this isn’t an apples to apples comparison. But it gave me kind of the perfect essence of oh, this is the correct way to approach this. She told the story of how she reached out to her ex and got him to be incredibly interested back. And basically, it was during the World Cup and her ex’s favorite team got a big win during the World Cup. And she texted him like, hey, congratulations. And when he was in this really highly, I don’t know euphoric state. He responded to her in a so like, it’s finding like sometimes you just have to wait for the universe to provide the correct answer for you. So for her, it was matching something newsworthy that was going on with a happy, positive emotion. And if you can kind of find those two things and craft a text around it, you’ll tend to get better results. So that’s the best, I

Amor 20:16
actually messaged him right at that moment. She didn’t wait for, like, a few days after they won. That would be weird, because the expectation was that her ex was probably also very happy about it. And you have to give the opportunity of that moment. So you have to, yes, you have to be present at the time that when you’re about to reach out, find out what’s currently happening, that’s going to be interesting for them, even if it’s not just, I think for me, it’s also about their personal lives, you know, if there’s nothing newsworthy, you have to like, be more observant on what’s more pressing for your ex so that it comes off natural. what’s currently going on in their life.

Chris Seiter 21:01
Yep, that’s like the common theme that’s coming up here, a more which is like, natural, organic, you want things to unfold in that way

Amor 21:10
natural? Yeah. So

Chris Seiter 21:11
it doesn’t feel forced.

Amor 21:13
But with the next one with the neutral responses, when you’re not sure if it’s positive or negative? does that also mean it’s easier? Or is it harder compared to negative and positive ones? Because you’re not sure?

Chris Seiter 21:27
Yeah, I think probably the challenge lies in figuring out if it’s positive, or negative, or neutral, or like basically just defining what neutral looks like, for me, neutral is like they gave you the bare minimum. So they weren’t mean to you, they weren’t overly happy to see you, they just gave you the very bare minimum, oftentimes, this is going to be very short, quick responses, sometimes one word, they’re giving you something. So it’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world. But if you’re going to approach the when they pull back, you pull back approach, the neutral can be construed as them pulling back a tiny bit. So to mirror that same behavior, you want to pull back a tiny bit and a tiny bit. And this frame of reference is anywhere between three to five days, you’re just going to have to pick that based on your your gut on that. I don’t know if there’s too much more to talk about. Do you have anything else on neutral that you want to

Amor 22:26
know, I just realized something that in a way, it’s kind of hard because it’s kind of harder compared to negative responses. Because when someone gives a negative response, it shows that they’re still emotional about you or with you. But with a neutral one, you’re not really so sure. So, but it also shows that they’re not angry. So yeah, they’re just pulling back a little bit. They’re less emotional. So you just have to mirror that if it shows that you have a chance, a little bit. They’re not totally closed off. But in comparison to the next one there no response. Does that mean? It’s a total loss? Like, they really don’t want to talk to you anymore? Yeah, emotional and they’re not neutral? It

Chris Seiter 23:11
it’s dependent on on a lot of factors. Usually, it’s dependent on factors that lead up to your

Amor 23:17
Yeah, with no response, is there something to mirror with? Nothing.

Chris Seiter 23:24
I think the only thing that you can do is you’re texting them something. So the first thing I would always try to do is diagnose if the text messages the problem, because sometimes I see text messages in the community that people are sending. And I’m like, that was clearly a problem. Where they’re just not, you know, it’s just not good enough to get a response. And not to make this about me. But I’ve been thinking a lot about this ever since chat GPT came out. One of the interesting, maybe positive ramifications of chat GPT is the fact that it’s going to require quality content to go upwards. So now articles that are going to be picked or stand out will be higher quality, because everyone’s going to be using chat GPT to just mass create these articles that don’t have any life to them. And to kind of relate that to text messages if you just do the bare minimum in your text message. And that that in you kind of expect the response because hey, you were together at one point, this is your ex they used to respond to you all the time. Well, the rules are different now. And if you just did the bare minimum and you’re expecting a response, and you got no response, that might not necessarily be indicative of like, oh, they hate you. It might just be indicative of you sent like kind of a lame text that’s not going to get a response. So right. The first thing I would always do is diagnose if the text message is going is essentially the problem. If it is then I would fix it and try again in about a week. If you get another no response, then you’re going to want to go into like a no contact like a straight up 21 Day

Amor 25:00
For, oh, not because just 21 days, okay?

Chris Seiter 25:03
Because in that case, then it’s not your text message, that’s the problem, it’s most likely they’re really holding a grudge based on the relationship, and they need more space. Okay, and, and the most important through line throughout all of this is, I wrote this article today where I was talking about, you know, really, the strategy for getting someone back is the same, if you want to get over them, you know, consistently, we’re finding the most meaningful thing that you can do to get your ex back is to move on from them. So if you’re not

Amor 25:35
specifically has to be genuine. Yeah, you can’t really

Chris Seiter 25:39
fake it. I used to think you could, that you know, if you actually go and read any of my articles from like, 2013, or 2014, it was like, well fake it till you make it. But after talking with people, and just through authentically saying, Yeah, I, I actually had to move on, I had to get to this point where I got to this place where I was like, you know, what, whatever, I’m okay without them. And that’s when they came back. I’m not one for the masculine or feminine energy type thing. But if you want to make a case for its existence, you know, it’s there.

Amor 26:10
Yeah, I want to share something personally, because I decided to move on from a recent ex, but that doesn’t, but when I broke up with him, I still loved him. So Emotionally, I was still there, there was a part of me, that’s wanting him to get, you know, to reach out to try to get back together with me. But what I noticed is when I’m really because because I mean, this, like we’ve you know, feeling like there are times that I want him back, but I’m logically decided that I don’t want to get back together with him emotionally, there’s this wanting from me. And every time I emotionally accepted that we’re not going to get back together, okay, I need to focus on moving on, I need to focus on that I need to cut the hope. And just really focus on myself. That’s when he reaches out and it throws me off. And I have to remind myself, you have to help them avoid. So even from someone that surgically decided that they need to move on by being by saying genuinely, you have to both emotionally and logically decided to get you have to move on guys.

Chris Seiter 27:16
Well, okay, so this is an interesting thing, because you were talking and it made me think of what the article I was writing today, because I was making this point that you’re basically making, but I found some research to kind of back it up, which is really cool. So basically, these these scientists were, were looking at romantic breakups, and essentially what caused people to heal from them. And they found that there’s like this triad of strategies. So they took 24 Heartbroken individuals who had recently experienced a breakup. And they basically tested these three strategies on them. And then they would show them pictures of their acts and measure their brainwaves or what have you. And the three strategies were really interesting. So the first strategy was like negatively reappraising their acts. So basically, like, like a more think of all the horrible things about your ex. And just think about that all the time. That was strategy number one. Strategy number two was called Love reappraisal, which is essentially like accepting like, okay, we’re broken up. This is my new reality. Strategy number three was distraction. Okay, so here’s the mind blowing thing. If you do all three of these things, it can make a huge difference for you, authentically getting over your ex,

Amor 28:27
but you need to publish that.

Chris Seiter 28:31
By but these three strategies are not all created equally. So for example. Yeah, I think it was like

Amor 28:39
the negative segue for the next podcast, like a sneak peek. No, no,

Chris Seiter 28:45
I just literally wrote this article today. So it’s really top of

Amor 28:48
mind just thing.

Chris Seiter 28:50
But basically, distraction was maybe basically the most effective approach. But when they conducted brain scans, they showed that it didn’t look like distraction did not remove how they felt about their ex. It helps them get their mind off the experts did not help them what helped us get over their ex or like stop loving them as much is

Amor 29:21
perfect definition

Chris Seiter 29:26
was okay, here’s the here’s the thing. Distraction works to get your mind off of your ex, but it doesn’t Yes, prevent your love for them doesn’t go away as quickly. What makes your love for them go away is negatively reappraising them, basically thinking about all the horrible ways they treated you And so essentially, those are the two important strategies to remember

Amor 29:47
stop missing the good times. Because logic can be as you said, Yeah, I’m good with distracting myself logically. I know I’m not gonna get back together with him. But the feelings of missing the good times is still there. I want that back. And I’m like, No, you’re not. Instead, we’re having an argument with myself every day. You should,

Chris Seiter 30:06
like try to remember the experience as a whole, according to this research by him.

Amor 30:11
Yeah. In short, vilify him

Chris Seiter 30:15
if you want the love for the go down, but also, I think it’s more than that, you know, the one thing that they didn’t really talk about was that middle strategy, which is just kind of accepting this as my new reality and being okay with it. And that is what we’re trying to teach our clients. Yeah, be okay have

Amor 30:30
a new reality. Yeah, I have another take on that. Because I heard another one of those advices from I can’t remember if it’s YouTuber tic toc that it’s harder, because when we tend to remember the x, we remember the beginning or the middle. And then we don’t remember how it ended when the mask came off. When when the problems arise. And that’s, I think, how I should remember him. So that, I’m reminded that

Chris Seiter 30:57
that’s similar to the peak end rule, which is like, we don’t really remember experiences so much.

Amor 31:05
Yeah, we remember difference, the highs and,

Chris Seiter 31:07
or the ends. And so was this. The other thing, though, with the peak, enroll the people that people mostly think like the peak, like, oh, the most exciting moment of the experience, but actually peaks can also be peak negative moments in the middle. And so it can swing both ways. But what I found, like you just said is most most of our clients, they tend to only romanticize those really positive moments, but it’s important for you to realize, not all of it was perfect. And that will actually help your coping process.

Amor 31:38
It does unconsciously mean unconsciously, unconsciously remembering the bad times, but I have to keep reminding myself that you have to remember why it ended, no matter how good they look like with his current girlfriend. It’s probably not. I’m not seeing everything.

Chris Seiter 31:56
No. And I think also, there is indication in statistics and science behind people who post a lot on social media tend to be more unhappy. So I think there’s a lot of facts, I think, this going and I think also, you know, if you want to get really technical, like cortisol is not. So cortisol, when you go through a breakup it shoots way, way up. And if it’s in this elevated state, then it will stay in that eldest elevated state much longer. So normally, it takes like three hours for it to kind of come down to normal. But if you’re checking social media, thinking about that, their cortisol up, and now all of a sudden, what should go away in three hours take six months to go away. And that’s not what we want. So a lot of what we’re trying to teach people is getting them to that emotional place. But I think that’s a perfect place to end this podcast.

Amor 32:51
We went way off topic we did. So they got a sense of how to move on. So

Chris Seiter 32:58
but a more. Okay, how many coaching session availability spots do you have for this week?

Amor 33:07
This week? I have to check, but I think I have a lot of someone. I have some news this week. I have a few.

Chris Seiter 33:17
Cool? Do you want to tell people how they can sign up with you? Or potentially what coaching sessions look like with you?

Amor 33:26
Okay, guys, so are you going to put in my Calendly link in the show notes

Chris Seiter 33:31
that they have to pay to get access to that? Unfortunately, yes. We will put in a coaching page.

Amor 33:39
Yes, you have to put in the coaching page. So yeah, if you want to like if you need more one on one coaching and with specifically with your situation, you can check out the coaching page that Chris is going to put in the show notes. And if you want to know how it works, usually, we you send in a summary of your situation. And I talk about the perspective of you know, I’ll give you an outsider’s perspective and strategies and techniques on how to increase your chances, though we cannot guarantee that you will get your ex back, but it will help. I’ll help you have a more logical perspective on what’s happening with your situation. Because the tendency is most of the clients or all of them are very emotional and they can think straight and you know what, sometimes they actually know what to do. They just need like a reminder and a different date because your friends, your co workers, your family, they’re also emotional about your situation. So even if they’re giving they’re probably not. They’re not going to give you a sound advice when it comes to you.

Chris Seiter 34:50
They’re also not maybe everybody else. When they find out you want your ex back to

Amor 34:54
yes, they’re not going to be as supportive. So yeah, if you need more professional, maybe not super professional, I’m not a therapist, but a more experienced point of view and a logical point of view to see if you have I don’t want to see if you have a chance, but to assess on what the real situation between you and your ex is on which one of your thoughts or just, you know, you overthinking. So, yeah,

Chris Seiter 35:30
I can see incredibly, was incredibly authentic with her

Amor 35:35
with your coach on this. Need to see this. But how are we doing?

Chris Seiter 35:45
I’m a real person, you know, you’re not an AI.

Amor 35:48
I’m not chat TP. I wish I am. Because

Chris Seiter 35:53
knowledge base would be pretty impressive, but you would also hallucinate data and give me so I went to church. So last thing, before we leave, I want to chat GPT extremely excited about its potential of looking up studies because I was like, this can be a great resource for me to like, look up studies to prove the points I’m making. And it it came up with like all these studies, and I was like, blown away by this. Yeah, every single study it came up with it made up it was lies. It just made it up. Oh, no, I found out later that that’s a very common problem with these chatbots. They hallucinate data, but they’re so confident with themselves, that they make it 10 pages on websites. And so I click on that, I’d be like, Hey, give me the source for that and click on the link and be like, Where the heck is the page? It’s, it’s a broken leg.

Amor 36:39
That’s scary. Yeah, so they hallucinate. So they’re like imagining pains now. Oh, my God.

Chris Seiter 36:46
Yeah, they are. They’re very confident about it, too. So you always have to check when you’re like asking it stuff. The only thing I’ve ever been using it for so far is is proofreading. But even if proofreads I’m not loving, like the results, I get with it when it proofreads because I’m like, like, hey, proofread this, but don’t take away my voice just like check for grammar and fix all the run on sentences. Yeah. And it it makes me sound like a robot and I can’t stand it. But it’s so yeah, that’s what I’m like.

Amor 37:15
Yeah. That’s what I don’t like actually, with chatty be, you have to be really clear with your instruction. It’s like programming. You’re like a programmer, because if you’re not near, they’re going to decide decide on what to give you that it’s kind of weird, do not create deciding, but just based on their algorithm. It’s pretty impressive though the church Yes. chatbots. And it’s scary. It was scary. They’re still different with human interaction is very different. Because with us, of course, it’s authentic and there’s feelings involved. You know, we understand what you’re going through that the AIS don’t, they’re gonna give you made up solutions or logical solutions, it’s probably gonna hurt your situation more than help you

Chris Seiter 38:04
because they don’t understand what you feel. So you sign up with a more she’s not an AI chatbot and all that. I think that’s the perfect place to stop.

Amor 38:15
Yeah. And

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