How to Cope with a Breakup (Ep. 15)

Not every relationship lasts forever, and it’s when a relationship ends that all your self-loving and self-caring will really matter. In this episode, Luke and Pascal draw from their own personal heartbreaks to discuss some ways to cope with a breakup: Experiencing a breakup is a normal grieving process, not a sign of being “broken.”...

The post How to Cope with a Breakup (Ep. 15) appeared first on The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Humans are in can be very messy and
complex
creatures, particularly in relationships, particularly when they're falling
apart. When it's your own body that's miserable
and it's crying out for some love, you
have no obligation just to suffer through that
when there is something you can do. Nobody
else has that story. Only you do.

(00:21):
Welcome to How to be an Adult, a
podcast created by the practitioners at the Morpheus
Clinic For Hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada.
This is a show for people just like
you who've inadvertently
become adults and don't know what to do
about it. I'm Luke Chao. And I'm Pascal
Langdale.
And this is the trail guide that your

(00:42):
parents never gave you when you turned
into the age of majority and became an
adult. So this is
our attempt to democratizing
and putting it out there,
how to be more self assured, self loving,
and give you
more useful and practical tips on how to
be an adult.
In today's episode, we're gonna talk about how

(01:05):
to cope with a breakup,
which is perhaps a situation when you really
do need someone reliable in your life telling
you to eat,
to sleep,
to use your heart because it's not broken.
It's just injured.
So this will kind of borrow from our
episode on grief
and our episode on self love.

(01:26):
The first of 7 points we want to
make
is that when you're going through a breakup,
you are grieving
you're grieving the loss of the relationship
and the person
and a shared future together
So for you to go through the stages
of grief, which I know are not perfect,
but for you to kind of expect that

(01:47):
you're probably going to be sad and you're
probably going to be a little angry sometimes
and you're going
to at some point be in denial.
Well, this recognizes
that you're a normal human being.
This is what everyone goes through
and there's nothing uniquely
wrong with you or broken about you just

(02:08):
because your emotions are all over the place.
And that word broken comes up a fair
amount. And
although the sensation might be that your heart
is broken,
I think in many ways it's
well, grief can be an absence, but it
can also be a complete rearrangement
of all the things that you thought of
as being
true and reliable

(02:30):
and, you know, rearrangement as well because there
are repercussions on friends, there are repercussions with
family, there can be
repercussions outside
your
own personal
relationship as well.
But knowing that you're not broken, unless there
is,
obviously, you can have, you can put your

(02:51):
heart through such stress that it is possible
to have a heart condition. But
assuming that that is not the case, then
it is impossible for you to have an
actual broken heart. It can be bruised, it
can be
challenged, but it's never broken. Your heart will
pull through. And even if it doesn't feel
that
way, you can look around, basically, to any
other human being on Earth that's had any

(03:12):
kind of experience in life, And you will
see hearts that have recovered from
extraordinary experiences.
And you can also look at your own
life earlier when usually by the time we're
past 18, we've suffered at least one major
disappointment
and loss and seldom lead us anyone marry

(03:32):
their high school sweetheart.
So you can even look at yourself
to
see that you personally
heal from a wounded heart.
And if even right now you're suffering
a loss, if you take your hand and
you put it over your heart, you're gonna
be able to to feel it beating,
which indicates

(03:53):
to
to us at least that it's not
broken
even
while it's wounded.
And to sort of fill out the sense
of
what's lost as well, perhaps, because that's really
the issue, if you like, is the what
has been lost.
And meaningful connections with other people
is such a pivotal part of the human

(04:15):
experience
that to lose a meaningful connection,
lose, physical touch well. That often means that
you lose physical touch. Even just having a
hug, for instance, shows that it's it helps
with endorphins and with the hormones that help
you relax, that help you feel good with
the world. And often with a breakup,
your response is to pull back and to

(04:35):
withdraw
and
withdraw from all forms of, relationship, all forms
of good connection.
And that's just the time actually when if
you do have people that you can look
to to lean on to
have
a human connection with, that's the time to
actually do that, I'd say. Well, that leads
into our second point, which is that when

(04:59):
a breakup is a process of grieving,
then
where all of this
emotion and pain is leading
is
acceptance.
Just like when all the hamsters and goldfish
that as a child I had lost eventually
led to my acceptance that they were gone.

(05:20):
Eventually,
you'll reach a point
where you will have completely wrapped your head
around the new reality that the person who
you thought could be your life partner
is not going to be your life partner
and your future life partner is somewhere else.
Yeah. There's there's,
something that somebody once said to me is
that it's

(05:41):
not that
the end point is going to be
a sort of a final deciding
yes, no to your ex, or positive or
negative feeling about your ex. The desired
point that you want to get to is
one of basically neutrality,
which is alongside of acceptance. I would say
neutrality
towards the past is

(06:03):
is useful. In some ways,
it's easy when you're grieving as well
to look back into the past as if
it was in color, as if it was
that was where all the happy times were.
That's where all the good things were, and
no new good things will come.
But part of the acceptance, I think, is
to allow that to go into the, you
know, the the gray sepia of the past

(06:24):
and say the future
has potential to have color in it. Even
if you don't feel like it at the
time, it's
it's worth accepting that that's a possibility.
It's the light at the end of the
tunnel.
So in the darkness, if you're gonna orient
yourself in some direction it shouldn't be a
past that you can't change and which is
already over

(06:45):
it should be
where the light at the end of the
tunnel is because when you're looking in that
direction you start to move in that direction
and the more you can bring yourself
to accepting
that it's over,
the sooner the pain will end.
In some cases, there's a desire to hold
on to

(07:06):
the grief because it's a connection to something.
That that's something that almost becomes
familiar and
associated with the value of what's lost. And
that's true of grief as well as it
is with relationships
as well.
In some ways,
you can't be
like Hamlet
and grieve too long. There will come a
day where

(07:28):
you've got to step out into the, you
know, into the sunlight. You've gotta take a
step and say, okay, that is done. Now
what's next? What's the next chapter in the
story? Be able to close that chapter.
And again, even if you don't believe it
at the time or at this moment when
you're watching this,
there will come a time where this chapter
will end.
It certainly will just like as in other

(07:50):
phases in your life, whatever they were, they
had a time, they had a turn, they
had a beginning, a middle and an end.
Maybe you didn't think this was going to
end this way,
however,
it has. And
that in itself is evidence that that was
not meant to be your future.
What I've extracted from what you said is
that your journey continues.
And I would suggest that your ex's journey

(08:12):
continues too.
As long as life continues. There's gonna be
a future.
It's not the end of your happiness.
It's not the end of you being loved.
It's not the end of you being recognized
as a worthy
valued human being when a relationship ends
When you're going to have a future, well,

(08:34):
first, you'll be loving and accepting yourself.
And then at some point on a long
enough timeline, someone else is gonna notice you're
lovable. Our third point is that at the
end of a relationship,
no one has to hang their head in
shame. No one has to think it's the
end of their life or their lovability.
Both parties can walk away with their self

(08:56):
esteem, their self respect, their self worth intact
if each person's willing independently
to remember that they're still worthy human beings.
So often we kind of feel almost obliged
for, you know, if it's not them for
us to
feel ashamed to feel completely rejectable and not

(09:17):
just rejected by 1 person, but rejectable overall.
But there's no such obligation.
I would suggest that that a healthy breakup
is one where both people
are walking away with their dignity,
with a sense of self worth,
with their heads held up high.
And this is it's not just possible.

(09:39):
This kind of thing happens every time you
hear about people who are still friends with
their ex.
So, you know, there's definitely no obligation to
throw dishes
and there is no obligation
to hide yourself from the world for the
next 2 weeks.
There is such a thing as breaking up
with dignity. Part of that though is that
humans are in can be very messy and

(10:01):
complex
creatures, particularly in relationships, particularly when they're falling
apart. And so, it might be hard for
some people to hear that,
my ex did this, this and this, which
was incredibly hurtful
and surprising all those things. Or you're on
the other side and you're saying, I did
this, this and this. I'm
a terrible person. And I think

(10:23):
going back to reaffirming,
in some ways it doesn't really, but it
doesn't actually matter
what you did or didn't do. I mean,
it matters.
It matters because it hurt people and you
can take responsibility from that,
but ultimately it doesn't have an effect on
your value and your worth as a human
being.
Particularly, if you can use whatever has happened

(10:45):
or whatever behavior
showed up when you're under such duress to
learn from about who you are and how
you behave and
what you can learn from that. And that
turns something which
could be a tragedy that ends up with
recrimination
and a lifetime of regret and hatred.
And it can turn it around to
a revelation

(11:07):
of what's possible in your own behavior and
a greater understanding of your responsibility in a
relationship
and therefore a greater forgiveness for whatever it
is the other person did and self forgiveness
for whatever it is, whatever role you took
in that as well. Because
most relationships don't fail because of just one
person.
There's there's 2 people in the relationship and

(11:28):
I'm not What I'm saying is you can
Both parties can kind of release themselves and
each others from
uninstructive
blame.
Mhmm. And says each person's responsibility to take
on responsibility for for what they did or
didn't do. Mhmm. And from that, they can
also allow the space that you both have
fundamental
intrinsic worth as human beings. And that if

(11:50):
this breakup is occurring and it's difficult, it
doesn't actually mean the other person is a
bad person. It doesn't actually mean that you
yourself are a bad person. To translate that
into
a self hatred,
it is
is not actually good for you or even
good for
ending the relationship in the most optimal way,

(12:11):
I would say.
Sometimes
that kind of self hatred or conversely anger
toward the other person
comes from asking the wrong questions.
What's that going? So let's say that after
a breakup, you assume that there must be
something wrong with you. So you ask yourself
what's wrong with me?
How could I have neglected my partner? How

(12:33):
could all of this have happened? And why
am I so unlovable,
bad shape, whatever else it might be? And
such questions that kind of assume you're bad
will never produce a satisfying answer.
Questions that assume the other person must have
something wrong with them often

(12:53):
produce no satisfying answer.
I'll use this analogy.
You probably have had this experience before where
you're driving down the highway
or or someone is driving down the highway
and you're following like a red Honda. Right?
And then for a 100 kilometers, you're following
this red Honda. Right?
And then you feel this pang of loss

(13:15):
when that Honda takes an exit and you're
driving forward now you're not gonna stalk the
other driver. You're not gonna take an early
exit because you're going straight forward. But we
still feel that pang of loss. Mhmm. Right?
Because our highway buddy
is going off in their direction and we're
going in our direction.
That's how a lot of relationships end. Where

(13:36):
there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong
with the other
person. You're just going to different directions in
life. They call that incompatibility.
But
in this situation
where you're going in different directions
the question of what's wrong with me or
what's wrong with them
is never going to produce a satisfying answer

(13:57):
because there is nothing wrong with either of
you.
You could ask questions instead
like
how do I find someone who's more compatible
with me in the future? Who's going in
other words to the same destination as me?
Or maybe you'll ask what is that destination
and how do I figure out the destination

(14:17):
that the next person's going to so I
make sure we're gonna at least have a
chance
of arriving at the same destination.
And these kinds of questions to ask yourself
are going to produce fruitful answers.
But questions that kind of seek blame, like
what's wrong with me or what's wrong with
them,
often just produce
no satisfying,

(14:37):
no helpful,
no illuminating
answer. I think I think it's sort
of it's possible to be trapped in a
sense of self examination,
self approval sometimes even even if you're, you
know, you know, essentially blameless as well. And
there is a time for that. There is
a time for self analysis, but not
necessarily in the period of grieving, if you

(14:58):
like. That will come, you know. And
really, the question then becomes, well, how do
you step away from that feeling
of being
closed off, being stopped, halted, and sort of
static in time? How do you get it
from that back into a reconnection with your
mind and your body, and yes, your soul,

(15:19):
and getting back to the point where you
are owning
the value of the seconds of your own
life. And I think that getting to that
point is the question that I think everybody
ends up having to ask themselves again, whether
it's grieving or whether it's a relationship is,
how do I get back to that point
of actually living and experiencing the adventure of
my life
just as my ex is now going to

(15:40):
experience the seconds of theirs? How do I
get onto that track as quickly as as
is good? What I would advise
a client to do is to look at
2 very different perspectives.
One perspective is what persists
on the long timeline of a human life.
So you've got one heartbeat that continues in

(16:03):
one
thread
throughout a human life.
You've got
still everything that made you lovable in the
first place. You've got everything that made you
dateable in the first place because your ex
didn't take these things from you. You kind
of brought these things to the table and
you still have them.
So to kind of account for everything that
you
have and that you still have and that

(16:24):
you're going to have even 10 20 years
into the future. Well, that is stabilizing
and the other thing which is kind of
like the exact opposite of
that is to look at what is transpiring
in each ongoing present moment
because then your attention is not on
a past which

(16:45):
has no new information to extract and is
not predictive of what's going to happen tomorrow.
And you're also not going into the imagination,
which gives no evidence of the future or
of life
at all. You're
looking at what definitely is so right now.
So let's say it's a beautiful summer day

(17:06):
and
I hear an ice cream truck.
I'd be right to believe my eyes showing
me it's a beautiful summer day and my
ears telling me there's an ice cream truck.
And then if I go outside and I
ask the ice cream man for an ice
cream cone,
then to enjoy that ice cream
cone in that moment, as temporary as it

(17:27):
is,
it reminds me that there are joys in
life. There are pleasures in life that there
are the good things.
I can't find all of that in just
the imagination.
I can't find it in
memories of the past, especially if after a
breakup, I'm ruminating on the person I've lost.

(17:48):
But I might find in the ice cream
truck something that
might ground me
and bring me back to to the current
reality.
So, remembering that you
can exist more in the here and now,
and to be open
and implicit in what you've just said about
ice cream is that you're open to the

(18:08):
potential for joy in the present moment
because
it's easy to shut yourself
off from that.
And so deciding
to refine even to now until now until
now to move from moment to moment looking
for what life could offer up as
joyful. Whether it's the sunlight through, I don't
know, a glass of water,
or whether it's, you know, a sun puddle.

(18:31):
I'm using sun analogies a lot because it's
obviously
it's late spring here. So, being open to
that is an act of self care which
is really into our next point, into our
4th point, which is
that there's being in the moment
and looking to the evidence of your eyes
and ears in the here and now,
but also, therefore,
being open to whatever

(18:52):
joy that life can offer to you in
that moment. Life
will offer up things to you in those
moments that might surprise you.
And just being open to that is the
beginning of a process of
allowing the possibility
of joy in the future. And
it is there in the moment, the possibility
of having the metaphorical ice cream, if you

(19:13):
like,
is available in every
moment. Even if you don't feel like it.
And that's again, I keep on returning to
that because it's similar to depression in the
sense that
whilst you
are grieving the loss of a relationship
or in grief,
it can seem impossible that you will ever
feel differently.
And
that's got to be corrected by saying, as

(19:35):
you pointed out, you know, you can look
to times in the past
but also
look to the here and now. And doing
the here and now is actually the epitome
of self care which is our our 4th
point. Is that
in these times,
these are the moments when
you do need to
pay attention to yourself, to become

(19:56):
your own source of compassion, your own source
of self reassurance.
That the behaviors, even if it's just getting
out of bed and drinking a glass of
water and treating yourself with care and compassion
for having
gone through a painful experience,
though those are the first steps. You don't
need to think about the top of the
mountain and the next relationship at that point,

(20:17):
but just getting through the day
with the the beginnings of self care, I
think, is
is probably the best advice I'd give to
anybody at that point in their life. Have
a drink of water,
don't worry about them tomorrow or the day
after, attend to yourself, attend to being your
own source of self care and compassion.
Internally, we we often feel like our feelings

(20:39):
are
just there. Mhmm. And they're not to be
changed or altered.
But if we have a crying baby it's
gonna be actively cruel and neglectful just to
accept they're not happy without even trying to
do anything about it.
So after a breakup,
let's say that, you know, after getting the

(20:59):
glass of water and having an ice cream
cone,
you return back to bed alone.
And
the natural feeling is that sense of loss,
emptiness, pain.
Well, it is possible
to use the same heart that loves others
to love yourself to and to contain that

(21:20):
love
within, which
is
my current best articulation of what self love
as an intentional act would entail. And
this means that you don't just have to
sit with
the pain and the loss and the grief,
though you can.

(21:40):
And the feelings are valid.
What you would
want for a friend who's going through a
similar situation
and what you might say to a friend
who's going through a similar situation
might be exactly what you would need in
that moment.
So thankfully, us human beings have the privilege
of being able to think to ourselves

(22:04):
where we're not just like mechanical robots.
And with our ability to think to ourselves,
we are able
to direct our attention
to something we do have or someone we
do have or a circumstance we do have,
which makes it feel less empty.
And we can direct our attention
to a good circumstance perhaps and then we

(22:26):
feel less pain. We feel less
sad
And just like
a parent should make an attempt to comfort
the crying baby
when it's your own body that's miserable and
it's crying out for some love, you have
no obligation
just to suffer through that when there is
something you can do. I feel like this

(22:47):
message is not really
spoken enough.
Often, we feel like our feelings are just
kind of sacred and we shan't even try
to alter them.
But that again, it's it's like watching the
crying baby and just observing them scientifically
and like there's nothing you can do about
it. Right? It's actively cruel and neglectful.
To to speak to that,

(23:08):
the roots of that, if you like, are
the roots of the attachment theory. Right? So,
I think a lot of people may be
unfamiliar with the idea that when I when
I am upset is a good time to
give myself care and compassion and self love
because perhaps that's not the reaction that they
got. Mhmm. That's not the that's not how
they were treated in previous years when they

(23:28):
were growing up. So it's a To some
people, it's gonna be a sort of a
foreign idea. But here's the thing,
just because it's for an idea does not
make it any less true.
That's one thing.
And the other thing would
be, I would I just recommend trying it.
They should try and putting your hand on
your heart. Even if you don't feel like
it, you can

(23:49):
choose to be like somebody that does
care for yourself. Be like somebody, what would
they do? And even in emulating somebody like
that and emulating somebody that does give themselves
self compassion and self care,
it becomes something
which is becomes natural and instinctive
even if you weren't told how to do
that as you're growing up. Because as you

(24:09):
say, that simple fact is often
not spoken about enough and and,
yeah, I think a lot of people assume
that they either have to disassociate and say,
I'm not here, I'm gonna run away from
the emotion, or alternatively,
these emotions are gonna envelop me entirely and
that's my reality for the rest of my
life, you know. Our podcast is called How

(24:30):
to be an adult.
So you don't actually have to emulate
the other adults you grew up around. Yeah.
When you are an adult
and now you're hearing how to be an
adult.
And part of how to be an adult
is to exceed your own parents and how
much you love you.
Yeah. If you can. Yeah. I mean, I'm

(24:52):
assuming that many people listening to this podcast
will find that easy and I'm hoping a
large number
of listeners find it hard to exceed their
parents
in how much they they love themselves.
But for for those who find it easy
to exceed their parents and how much they
love themselves, you are already
doing better than your parents

(25:12):
did. Yeah. It doesn't matter if you weren't
shown enough love as a child. When you
have the adulthood today to decide you can
do better than they did now that you
have self authority.
And that and that goes into our 5th
point which is that
nobody else gets to decide your worth. Nobody
else gets to decide your value

(25:32):
and that includes
anybody in your childhood. That includes any adults
in your life, you know,
when you were growing up. As well as
of course your ex or
extended friends that you might lose or whatever.
I mean, you know, again these repercussions sort
of filter out in many occasions.
Nobody has
the right to judge your worth

(25:53):
or to
have the decision
on your culpability, on how bad you should
feel, on what you should or shouldn't have
done.
Nobody else has that story, only you do.
In fact, only you know what it was
like to be you through that experience.
And for our listeners who are their own
worst enemies,
I would say sometimes even you are not

(26:15):
the arbiter of your own worth. I'll phrase
it like this.
Your own worst thoughts about yourself, your own
inner critic is not an arbiter of your
worth, just like your ex is not an
arbiter of your worth and all your other
exes, they're not arbiters of your worth.
I would suggest that if you're looking for
the foundations
of feeling like a worthy lovable human being,

(26:38):
It's that
you're a human being
You have all the complexity, all the depth,
all the feeling, all the potential, all the
capabilities
of a human being,
and there's no such thing then as you
ever being worthless.
The term worthless, the concept of worthlessness,
it applies to objects with commercial value. There's

(27:00):
no such thing as a so called worthless
human being. There are human beings who
we recognize
an intrinsic
worth and value and dignity in.
And then the extra things you do with
your life, like if you are in a
relationship and then you create more happiness in
2 people's lives.

(27:20):
Or if you work in a job and
then your job is of benefit to society
well then you can feel even better than
fundamentally a worthy human being But what I'm
claiming here is that the baseline worth of
a person is not 0. It's nowhere near
0.
The baseline worth of a human being is
what you recognize so easily

(27:41):
in a new neighbor who's moved in across
the street Where you know nothing about them
except Oh they're a human being
That's the baseline worth you have even when
you're miserable in your own bed and it's
3 am and you had enough ice cream
already and you still feel bad.
What happened in that situation is you got
distracted from the worth you have. It's not
that you became worthless. It's you got distracted

(28:03):
from it. Yeah. Even if you don't feel
like you have any worth, that's not true
and the possibly the only thing that you
can do is just forget it.
It doesn't and again, even if you forget
it, you still have worth.
And any friend or even a cat or
a dog
would remind you that you still have worth.

(28:24):
They
have an unwavering
view of your worth. And I would suggest
that that's a clear view of you. It's
not your ex who decided to break up
with you It's the person who never took
their eyes off the worth you possess as
a human being
That's the perspective
to align with yourself

(28:44):
Our 6th point is that there are multiple
paths to a happy and successful life.
So your grief after a breakup is worse
if you believe
that your ex is the only person who
can make you happy
if you believe that the life you planned
with them is the only

(29:05):
future path
that counts as a successful life.
Well, then you compound your grief
now I'm gonna suggest otherwise
I'm gonna suggest there are multiple and perhaps
even infinite paths
to a happy life to a successful life.
So I never knew I would become a
hypnotherapist.

(29:25):
Right? Even when I was 23 and I
started my practice or 25 and I was
in it already. And even when I was
30, I didn't think I'd be doing it
in my forties.
But now I am. And this turns out
to be the path I did take and
I have a fairly happy and successful life.
But if, let's say, instead of hypnotherapy, I

(29:46):
decided to pursue pursue a career in fine
art photography,
I can see myself being happy and successful
having pursued a career in fine art photography.
Or let's say that everyone who left swiped
me on Tinder recently.
You know, let's say that they write swipe
me instead and I met them and I

(30:06):
dated them. You know, there's more than one
woman out there
who I would be happy with. There's, you
know, out of like 4,000,000,000
women on the planet,
there's
definitely
many women out there who I could have
a happy successful life with.
So
I would suggest it is a mistake to

(30:28):
think that it's gotta be your ex or
it's got to be that one path you
planned with them or it's got to be
that one vision of the future. I would
suggest that, you know, if you kind of
give everyone a bit of credit,
there
are multiple
paths
to happiness and love and
success? It's very

(30:49):
tempting
to believe in the inevitability
of consistency.
So if something is
good, that it will always be good and
it's gonna be on that trajectory. And
or alternatively, if something's bad, then it's gonna
always be bad and it's always gonna come
on that trajectory. But humans tend to be
very drawn to the idea
of

(31:10):
a consistent
outcome.
It's what we're kind of built for in
the sense that our predictive model,
we need to map things in the world
so that we can predict what's gonna happen
tomorrow or the day after and day after.
The better that we have that and more
accurate we have that, the more reassured we
are that all is well with the world.
Well, then something like

(31:31):
a relationship breakup or a death occurs
and all those things become upset.
Suddenly,
your map of the world
is challenged. It doesn't now The question is
that, is all the map destroyed? Probably not.
As you said, there are things about you
that that are good that are still
will always be true.
There's

(31:52):
other relationships that may actually flourish as a
result. You cannot tell, you cannot predict.
But that feeling of believing that this map
was always going to be the same, that
the pathway through life was going to be
consistent. It's a very attractive one
and it's hard to let go of, particularly
if it's something that you loved. And that's
really really hard, it doesn't matter if it's

(32:13):
a job or whether it's a person.
When life turns around and says that's not
the path you're on,
it can be hard to accept.
However, I think you
are absolutely right. You're bang on when you
say you have to be
open to the idea that there are manifold
ways that you cannot possibly imagine,

(32:34):
that really are only limited by the limits
that you put on yourself as to what's
possible.
And that
a new
map, a new arrangement
of
what you expect to happen tomorrow and the
day after tomorrow and how you expect the
course of your life to go will be
put in place.
And it might be upset again, but that

(32:56):
is part of the human story.
I would point out that at no point
ever in your life have you been able
to predict even a minute into your future
and yet you're alive
and
You lived your life
moment by moment never being able to predict
the next minute, let alone the next month
or year or decade.

(33:18):
You just kind of navigate by the evidence
of your senses as your own perceptions show
you a changing world and that's how you
ended up at this point in time. So
that's how you're gonna navigate the future.
You don't have to necessarily
have a map or a plan
when you've never quite had one that was
perfectly accurate ever.
We can get very attached to the maps

(33:38):
that we make. That's that's what I'm trying
to drive at. So we can get very
attached to the predictive models that we create
when they are just that imaginative creative models.
And and they can be accurate in the
sense that they don't change for long periods
of time, but it doesn't mean that change
is impossible, nor does it mean that a
new map is possible. It's, I think, Tyson
who said, everyone has a plan until they

(34:00):
get punched in the mouth. Yeah.
So, point 7
is
that every relationship has an end date. Most
relationships have an end date. Why wouldn't you
say all? Because death.
Well, I mean, but we get into a
conversation about life after death, and
do you reunite

(34:21):
with with your partner in heaven? That's
another episode. Yes.
The reason this point
is not just that
most or all relationships have an end date
and it's actually that it's not a bad
thing
for relationships to have an end date
is that
we do go through various phases of our

(34:43):
lives.
And
it's supposed to be that elementary school has
an end date.
It's supposed to be that high school has
an end date. We don't want such a
thing to last forever even if you loved
high school.
It's supposed to be your 1st entry level
job has an end date.
It's supposed to be that

(35:04):
when you outgrow a friendship,
then that friendship is going to have an
end date.
The worst
thing in my view
is if
elementary school or an entry level job or
a friendship you've outgrown
has no end date. I can't believe the
idea of elementary school not having an end
date.
Yeah.

(35:25):
So
end dates are not innately a bad thing
Right? Of course, we all hope for relationships
and friendships
that have no end date
But usually, when the end date arrives,
there is a reason for it.
It's not completely out of the blue. It
might be something in their heart. It might
be something in your heart. It might be

(35:46):
an incompatibility
like with that red Honda. Mhmm.
But there's gonna be some kind of sensible
reason
for why a relationship reaches an end date.
And then to artificially
prolong the relationship beyond the end date makes
2 people suffer
and unnecessarily
just like we all got stuck in elementary

(36:06):
school for the rest of our lives.
I I I don't know what I think
about what I'm about to say, so bear
that in mind. I heard somebody say
that
in their more advanced years should we say,
that they had come to the realization that
love existed
in constant impermanence,
and that instead of seeing

(36:28):
love as being something which is a set
thing, something which
even compounds necessarily
Mhmm.
That
there is no ownership to love. There is
no set quota. It's the constant possibility of
an end date that makes love quite so
special.
I think that's probably what they were trying

(36:48):
to say. Right. Is that because
life is chaotic,
because we can't predict the future,
because there are phases in life,
because humans are
messy,
squishy,
you know, brained, evolved apes or creations,
then
because of all those reasons, it's extraordinary when

(37:11):
love does happen.
And
in that moment, going back to the here
and now, that is the thing to be
rejoiced at and embraced in that moment. And
when it
goes, it goes because it was never
No love is
for is is permanent. It's always around and
it's always to be discovered, but it's never
to be owned.

(37:31):
I just thought
of
one person,
you all know,
who's guaranteed to be with you
until the end of your life.
And
if you vow to this one person,
you're never gonna abandon them.
You're not gonna betray them.

(37:52):
Then that vow can be fulfilled even if
one day you're a 100 years
old.
Do you know who that person is?
I won't make a joke, but go on.
It's
you.
You are the only person guaranteed to be
there if one day you're a 100 years

(38:12):
old. If you vow to yourself right now,
today, that you're never gonna betray you or
abandon you even what other people do, you
can fulfill that vow.
No one else can make that vow to
you. You can't make that vow to anyone
else. Right? So even if you meet like
the perfect life partner,
what if you outlived them? And you're probably
going to outlive your parents too.

(38:32):
So if we're kind of looking for something
constant, something stable,
then self love
and a good amount of it will be
proportionate
to the depth and the breadth of this
guaranteed lifelong relationship.
It's not too selfish.
You've made me think of something else, which

(38:52):
is the memento mori. Right? So,
the remembering that you're going to die. Well,
sure.
To to go to the idea that any
love between
2 people, 3 people,
between your family
is
marked by the impermanence, if you like,
of life's chaos.
The only thing that you can say is

(39:14):
that whilst you are living and whilst you
are breathing,
you can love yourself.
Mhmm. And that if there is a permanent
form of love, that would be it because
it's as permanent for as long as you're
alive. Mhmm. Yep. So by the time you're
dead, I mean, you're not conscious enough to
perceive your lack of self love. Thank you
for listening.
Pascal and I are both available for hire

(39:35):
through the Morpheus Clinic for hypnosis
in Toronto, Canada, and we see clients online.
We see ourselves as practical philosophers in a
way where we think on behalf
of you
to try to figure out the ideal thinking
for the circumstances that you're in. So if
you're going through a breakup, we'll add more
detail on top of what you've heard here

(39:55):
today.
We offer to our new clients a free
consultation and a written treatment plan. So if
you might be in need of our services,
contact us atmorphisclinic.com.
And if you like what you've heard, today
and you want to hear more, you can
always go look at the back catalog
or you can subscribe and follow at Morpheus
Hypnosis on YouTube or you can find us

(40:16):
on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is
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Make sure that you, click on that button
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