Season 3, Episode 20: Coping after a break-up
Breakups are a common reason people reach out for counselling. In this episode, counsellor Rasha Taha joins Katherine to discuss what make breakups so painful. They talk about what healthy grieving looks like, how to rebuild confidence and self-worth, and the small daily habits that can help you recover and feel like yourself again.
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Katherine Hurtig
Welcome to Living Fully. Each episode is a chance to talk about mental health in a way that's simple, honest, and helpful. We'll share stories, tips, and tools to help you feel supported and feel your best. I'm your host, Katherine Hurtig. Breakups are rough. They can leave you questioning who you are, what went wrong, and how to start feeling like yourself again. In this episode, I talk with counsellor Rasha Taha about what makes breakups so hard, how we can heal, and what we can learn about ourselves in the process.
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Today we're talking about breakups, and that can be really, really hard, and that can make us feel all kinds of things. So Rasha, thanks for being here and chatting with me.
Rasha Taha
As always, I love being on these things.
Katherine Hurtig
Thank you. And yeah, it's definitely something, a topic that I've dealt with in the past. I've had breakups that have been really, really tough. So I'm excited to get into this. Yeah. So Rasha, what kinds of emotions or reactions are common following a breakup?
Rasha Taha
I like to contextualize it from the perspective of looking at the stages of grief, which we're going to talk about quite a bit, but all the feelings within those stages of grief in terms of denial, anger, we’re bargaining, there's a lot of sadness. Eventually we want to get to acceptance, but it's super normal to have a plethora of feelings that are going to come up and not all of them are going to necessarily quote unquote make sense. But they're all trying to say something about what just happened and the impact of what just happened. And so I invite clients to walk us through all the emotions, whether they feel like they make sense or not. And so people could be completely devastated, they could be relieved.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, that's going to happen in some cases. Breakups happen for good reasons as well. Yeah.
Rasha Taha
And the thing that I find a lot of clients get hung up on, both within the breakup context and other contexts, is feeling seemingly contradictory feelings. So you can feel relief and sad at the same time. Like you can feel relief and sadness. But when these feelings seem like they're contradicting one another, clients and folks feel like they need to pick one or one doesn't make sense.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Rasha Taha
But we're complex. We can feel multiple opposing feelings at the same time. And the example I like to give folks is, let's say your loved one is traveling for a job opportunity. You're both excited for them and really sad that they're gone.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, that makes sense.
Rasha Taha
So we can hold those feelings simultaneously. But when it comes to breakups, when it comes to intense, not so great feelings, sometimes people feel like they have to choose one.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, we're kind of expected to feel one way and that's the appropriate one. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, so it is, it is a kind of loss. I mean, depending on how long this person's been in your life, it could be, a huge, a huge change. And so how does this experience of grief after a breakup kind of compare to other kinds of loss?
Rasha Taha
In terms of loss, again, depending on the context of how big of a role did this person play in your life, there's going to be a very big difference between someone who you'd been dating for a few months versus someone who we've been with for years and were living together or you have children or pets or what have you. So obviously it's going to differ, but a loss is a loss. And so it's both heavy and people are going to move through it in a way that is going to make the most sense for them. I think a lot of clients like to, or in a way, in order to try to understand the loss or rationalize it, sometimes they minimize it, but the impact can still be huge. So even if, let's say, you were dating someone for a few months and you were really excited about where this was going to go and then it ended, just because it was only, again, for a few months doesn't mean the loss doesn't feel bad.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
Doesn't mean you're not allowed to feel bad about it and to feel the sadness and to feel that loss of potential that you were looking forward to. And so the feelings are valid regardless of how, again, quote unquote, long a relationship was for, example.
Katherine Hurtig
I can totally relate to that. This was, wow, 20 years ago now. It's scary to say. But yeah, I was seeing this person for, it was just a short time. It was like, a few months, but when it ended, it absolutely rocked me. I was devastated, and it just, I internalized it so much. Like, this means something about me as a person. Like, because this particular person didn't want to be with me anymore, it means X, Y, Z. It means there's something wrong with me.
Rasha Taha
A lot of people will go in that direction, and it's in a way, the relationship or the loss of the relationship becomes a tool for them to beat themselves up.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
And so I oftentimes talk in counselling sessions about what clients use as tools to beat themselves up with. It could be anything.
Katherine Hurtig
That's gotta be unintentional, right? Or a subconscious thing.
Rasha Taha
Absolutely. And that's why it's important to bring them to the surface and go, okay, this is how you feel about you. But this is what the relationship, this is what you're taking from the relationship. Let's say in your situation of looking at the relationship ending, going, okay, this relationship ending means X, Y, Z about me. So we've taken the relationship ending and using that as an opportunity to beat ourselves up. But it signals so much about where you were at the time in terms of, I'm not going to speak for you, but in terms of maybe your self-confidence, how you felt about yourself, right, your values, how you were moving through life, of all of those pieces, that relationship in a way signaled that there needs to be some work on that relationship.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. And it was just such a, I don't know if I'm using this word correctly, but very myopic view of it. Because it's like now with these many years of distance from that, I can see like there were so many other reasons for it. There could have been like many things going on with him and just the fact that we may not have been right for each other and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, it took a while to get there, but…
Rasha Taha
I believe it.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
And I want to say this out loud before the thought completely escapes me. And maybe this is going to be relevant or maybe it's not, but I feel like I want to put it out there where I think when relationships end, some folks may feel like, oh, they just didn't love me enough, or there wasn't enough love here, or love wasn't enough. And I really want to pause on that because there's a lot of truth to that. Love is not supposed to be the be-all, end-all of a relationship. You can still love someone and choose to walk away.
Katherine Hurtig
Yup.
Rasha Taha
I think those two things we have a really hard time reconciling where we go, no, but if I love them, then it means I have to be with them, or it means that the relationship is going to succeed.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Rasha Taha
But there are so many other aspects to relationships where just love may sometimes not be enough and it's not a bad thing. But we're so programmed to, when we hear not enough, we're so programmed to thinking it's a bad thing. And I really want to encourage folks to reflect on that and that it's not that love wasn't enough, it's just that it's not the only ingredient of a successful relationship.
Katherine Hurtig
Exactly.
Rasha Taha
It's one of the more important ones, but it's not the only one. And it wouldn't be fair for it to be the only ingredient because so many other things would then be put on the back burner or so many other things would be compromised for the sake of it. And that's not healthy.
Katherine Hurtig
What are some of those other ingredients that you can say?
Rasha Taha
We can look at compatibility.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
Right? Thinking of compatibility as so many items, so many things where people intersect and divert in terms of, let's say, living compatibility. What are they like in terms of whether people want to have kids or not? That's a pretty big one. Whether they even want to live together, where they want to live. But aside from that, thinking of the admin of life…
Katherine Hurtig
Right, like money…Oh, sorry.
Rasha Taha
Yeah, no, that's okay. Money is a huge one, right? Like how people manage their finances. Unfortunately, in today's capitalistic world, we have to take that into consideration. But even life values, you can have deep love for someone and disagree with really important values that they have, but you can't get on board with. What does that look like? How do you define your relationship or redefine your relationship to either make room for that or walk away from it? So there's so many other pieces to compatibility to romantic relationships that are not just love.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, we don't often think about it that way. So I think especially in longer term relationships, if you've lived with someone or been with someone for a long time, your lives really intertwine. You know, you might have the same friends. You are involved in the same activities. You kind of become part of each other, right? So if that ends, I think it's only natural to feel you might have lost part of yourself. What's going on there? How do you work with clients around that idea?
Rasha Taha
It's super, like you were saying, super normal to feel that almost loss of self because there was so much enmeshment that happened. And this is a great opportunity to talk about codependency versus interdependency. And I think this is something that when folks are starting up a new relationship, there's so much new relationship energy going on, kind of like that honeymoon period where, and it can last for quite a long time, where people may overlook continuing to have their own lives and having separate lives as well as joint lives. And so that's something to point out when folks, let's say, they go through a breakup and they feel that massive sense of loss of self, I think it's an opportunity to reflect how much of myself was in the relationship. And what did that mean? What's the impact? Do I want to shift it for the next relationship or am I content with what this looked like? So I think it's a really great opportunity for folks to assess and reassess how involved they were in their partners' lives or how involved they were in that joint life and be able to almost customize how involved they want to be for a future relationship. So if there were, let's say two people had the exact same friends throughout their entire relationship, and those were the only friends that they had, that's gonna be really difficult when they separate.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure, yeah.
Rasha Taha
Because then we're playing, okay, who's keeping who? Right. And it's probably going to happen regardless, but also, do you have your own friends to rely on versus just having the common friends? That's something important to acknowledge that are you able to also hold your own life outside of the relationship? Because that's going to be really important for the longevity and sustainability of the relationship.
Katherine Hurtig
I think you made an interesting point there. I mean, it's something that probably would happen after some time and distance, but trying to see it as an opportunity. Like obviously, if a breakup's very painful, you're not going to see it like this right away. But trying to view it as a time like, okay, well, I get this time now to reflect on what I want, who I am, what I want to do going forward. And that can be a really good thing, like a powerful time for growth.
Rasha Taha
Oh, absolutely. I think with every relationship that we have, regardless of length or intensity or what have you, it's an opportunity for us to learn more about ourselves and what it is that we want. Because again, I can't speak for you, but I can speak for myself where the relationships that I had in my 20s taught me a lot about what I want and what I don't want. And those were really, really important relationships to have. And I hear some clients go, well, if it's just going to end, what's the point? And the point is it's living in the moment and learning about yourself, about the other person having shared experiences. And then if you find yourselves on different paths, you can look back on this relationship and go, what did I learn from this? And how do I want to shift or change moving forward? And the idea is each relationship is going to teach teach you something about yourself or what you want or don't want, so that if you would like to continue having relationships, you can find relationships that feel closer to what it is that you are wanting.
Katherine Hurtig
Totally. I mean, it's a hard process, but it's a good one to go through. Yeah.
Rasha Taha
And it's a human thing to go through, right? We all experience loss at some point in our lives. None of us are immune from it. And relationship loss is a big one that we all are going to experience whether we like it or we don't. And that's the, again, the unfortunate reality of it. And so it makes us human to experience loss and the emotions that come with loss. And I think it's really important for folks to allow themselves to experience this loss and experience grief, because grief is, and this is something that's important to make note of, grief in my experience, both as a person, but also as a counsellor, it affects are additive. And so, What I mean by that is, let's say in the context of breakups here, let's say you have a relationship and it's really important to you and then that relationship ends and you avoid grieving for it. You just go, whatever, just gonna move on. The next time that you experience a relationship loss, you're not just going to be grieving. You're not just gonna be experiencing the emotions from that. There's also gonna be unattended to feelings from the previous relationship that you did not grieve. So that's kind of what I mean by grief is additive.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
Where if we don't address the grief while it's happening, if we just push it down, it's not going to disappear.
Katherine Hurtig
And what does addressing the grief look like? I mean, obviously it's going to be different for everyone, but what can it look like?
Rasha Taha
The very first step is acknowledging it. So acknowledging this sucks in whatever degree that is going to suck and allowing feelings to come up. So this is something that I work with pretty much all clients. When there's a yucky feeling, it's really easy for us to want to avoid it because it's unsavory. We don't want to feel it. But it's wanting to avoid unsavory feelings is very normal. However, those feelings are not going to go away and they're going to find some other way of showing up. And oftentimes they show up when they're not expected to. So when feelings come up, I encourage clients to feel them. And we can work on that in counselling. When folks come in and go, I don't know how to feel my feelings because I've just been suppressing them for so long, I go, cool, we can work on that is something that we can address. And so when we talk about what it means to let the grief in and let it come up is to acknowledge it and not judge it. Because oftentimes people are going to go, well, it was only two months. Why am I sad. Well, no, it's okay. It's okay for you to be sad. It's okay for you to sit in that feeling because it's trying to tell you that there was a loss that you just experienced.
Katherine Hurtig
That's, yeah, that's a phrase that I've heard counsellors say before that, it didn't confuse me, but I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. It sounds very nice. But that saying of sitting with a feeling, what does that mean?
Rasha Taha
Sitting with a feeling can mean naming it. And so trying to allow that feeling to come up, even if you don't know what it is, but just trying to notice it, whether it's somewhere in your body, whether it's somewhere in your brain, trying to ping pong back and forth. Usually I try to encourage folks to try to feel it somatically, so in their body.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay, like whether that's a tightness or yeah.
Rasha Taha
But even if it's not coming through in a somatic way, way, we can try to express what this feeling is like. And so this is where we lean on analogies. This is where we can get creative. This is where we can use art to express it. Because not everyone is going to feel comfortable or even have the language skills or tools to be able to express complex feelings. And that's okay. There's no shame in that. It's the counsellor's then job to find other ways to help clients find ways to express their feelings. And so obviously talk therapy is one of the modalities, but it's not the only one. And so for, let's say for anger, sometimes people don't know how to express anger in a way that's not volatile or that's not unhealthy. And so we encourage, like I would encourage folks to scream into their pillow, right? Like that's a way to allow that anger to come up in a way that is healthy, in a way that's not going to be disruptive to people around them. And so that's kind of what I mean by allowing those feelings to come up is even if there are no words, what are other ways that the feelings are trying to come up and trying to lean in that direction?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, as we go through breakups and we're trying to work through all these feelings, What's the difference between healthy grieving and really getting stuck in it?
Rasha Taha
Getting stuck in the grief process would look like a lot of replaying of the past, a lot of judging yourself, your previous partner, a lot of criticism. So again, it could be used as a tool to beat yourself up with, why did I do that? If I had done this differently, then maybe they wouldn't have left. And so there's a lot of what ifs that come up. And when what ifs come up, we tend to get stuck in continuing to ask what ifs. And then we're, before you know it, we're in a scenario that is completely unrealistic and hasn't happened and will likely not happen. But we're trying to imagine, well, what if this had happened? Things would be differently. And so when people find themselves kind of in that cyclical nature of either what ifs or criticizing themselves or judging themselves, I would say that counts as being stuck within the grief process. And so unsticking yourself from that process, even if it's just learning to observe the feeling rather than judging the feeling. So letting it come up and not saying you're bad, you're not, I don't want you here, just allowing the feeling to come up. That's one process to try to unstick yourself from kind of going back and forth in that cycle.
Katherine Hurtig
That idea of not judging your feelings, that was like, I hate the term. I think it's very cliche, but it was such a game changer for me. It was a game changer. It really was like, because there'd be so many situations where it's like, things would bring me to tears or I'd get so sad. And it was, it was like this feeling of like, oh, I wish I wasn't like this. I wish I could just handle this better. But when I finally got to the point where it's like, nope, this makes me sad. That's just me. I was like, oh.
Rasha Taha
It absolutely. I think game changer is a really fantastic word for it. Like I think you really hit it on the head there with that word because it can really shift your perspective and it can shift your relationship with yourself. When you're not in a place where you're constantly judging your feelings and using the feelings to judge yourself as well.
Katherine Hurtig
You're judging them and like resisting them. Because I feel like if you do just, like you said, sit with them, you're able to kind of move through it a bit easier than if you're really like, yeah.
Rasha Taha
And I don't remember.
Katherine Hurtig
It sounds counterintuitive, but yeah.
Rasha Taha
Exactly, where I was getting at. And I don't know if I've expressed this before on this podcast. I may have, I may not have, but if I have, I'm going to say it again.
Katherine Hurtig
Do it.
Rasha Taha
And I usually like to explain feelings as allowing water to pass through your body. And so those, the water is the emotions. When we start resisting them, we start putting up a dam. So we block and we block and we block. The more that we block, the more intense the feelings are going to get. And then out of nowhere, something could come and that dam will break. And we will have so many emotions that we don't know what to do with. But even just the process of blocking those feelings, it's that feeling of stuckness. There's something stuck in your body and it manifests in different ways for different people. Sometimes it could be actual physical pain. And so that's not uncommon for people to experience. And so I try to explain it as, can we allow those feelings to pass through unobstructed because that way they can find their way out.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Rasha Taha
But if we get in their way, they're going to get lodged and then we're going to have to figure out a way to dislodge them.
Katherine Hurtig
I like the analogy of like a wave. Because you can be, in those moments with really intense feelings and it can feel really scary. But knowing that... it will subside and you're not going to feel this strongly forever.
Rasha Taha
Emotions are not forever.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
As silly as it sometimes sounds, as straightforward as it sounds, it's something that I tell myself all the time.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
As someone who feels things really deeply, I have to remind myself, okay, this isn't a forever feeling. This is a feeling right now. And the more that I feel it, the more I'm allowing it to come up, the faster, it will be on its way.
Katherine Hurtig
And you talked a bit about stages of grief, but are there stages or patterns that people often move through when they're kind of healing from a breakup?
Rasha Taha
The first thing that comes to mind is taking a break from engaging with the person who you were with. So when I think of, okay, people have broken up, maybe it's amicable or maybe there's there's a lot of logistical pieces that need to be resolved or maybe they want to try to be friends. I think taking a break in order to allow yourself to grieve before re-engaging is going to be really healthy because I think a lot of people get stuck in the, well, we can just try to be friends right away. But you were so used to a particular way of relating to one another that you didn't give yourself space in between to rewrite what that could look like. And so a lot of people will fall back into old patterns and then a lot more hurt can come from that.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, that's what happened in this relationship years ago. We did, we tried to like immediately be friends after. And that made it so much more difficult to move on.
Rasha Taha
Yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Because we were just in these completely different head spaces now. Like he just wanted to be friends and I was just, oh, desperately in love. So yeah, it made it really difficult.
Rasha Taha
No, that is exactly the situation that I have found myself most recently and taking, I think we took about 2 1/2 months to cool off and have a lot of, we had a lot of conversations after about how do we... become friends. And I think that actually saved the friendship in a really big way.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, because you can set boundaries, you can communicate expectations.
Rasha Taha
Absolutely. And allow each other the time to grieve. Because there is a loss there. And then there's a gain. So if there's a loss of the romantic relationship and a gain of a friendship, if people don't give themselves time in between, then the loss almost gets tossed under the carpet. And they try to gain the friendship, but there's still the loss that needs to be reconciled with. And people need to feel the feelings of the loss.
Katherine Hurtig
I ask these specific questions, but I know, and try to apply it to broad scenarios. And I know this is going to be very different with every relationship. But do you think that that's possible to be friends with an ex?
Rasha Taha
I think it's super, super dependent on who people are and how the ending came about.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
Right. So I have exes who I am absolutely not friends with and I have exes who I am friends with. And there's various levels of friendship. There's also past relationships that I've had where we realize that dynamic was not good for us. And so we de-escalated to something different. We changed things. So there's a variety of ways that people can go about it, depending on the context and depending on the level of communication, the level of respect, the circumstances. Some people may move across continents and still be in touch.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, it would take a lot of... emotional maturity and ability to have those harder conversations to figure out what that next relationship would look like.
Rasha Taha
I had a very formative relationship in my life that was about five years long. It was everything to me. We were life partners. And then when that relationship ended, she ended up moving to a different country. And we had like a year of no contact. But then we found our footing again. We're not the best of friends. But the other day, she sent me a couple of videos of her climbing, being like, oh, I'm excited for us to climb together sometimes.
Katherine Hurtig
Amazing.
Rasha Taha
Yeah, we touch base every so often. We were so intertwined that I check in on her family, she checks in on mine. It's possible to still have some dynamic, some relationship, depending on if that's what both people want.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, and it's got to be a mutual thing.
Rasha Taha
Absolutely. And we identified in this particular relationship that we still want to have some involvement in each other's lives. And people get to customize what that looks like. I don't think it's realistic to say, oh, after you are done with a relationship, you just can't be friends. I think people absolutely can be friends. It just depends on how they go about it and how the relationship ends and whether their communication and respect towards each other are there.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. So let's turn this around. Let's get it a bit more hopeful. How can we rebuild ourselves after a breakup? How can we rebuild our confidence, a sense of who we are, a confidence around future relationships?
Rasha Taha
Yeah. Biggest piece would be don't avoid it. Don't avoid the feelings. And hey, this is a fantastic plug for counselling because I think that having an outside perspective will be monumentally helpful because you have someone who's completely impartial, who doesn't know the context. It's not like you're talking to friends, mutual friends or family or what have you. I think it can be really helpful to have an outside perspective who's going to be honest with you and is going to guide you through that process and is going to hold a lot of space for you to feel those feelings. So that will always be something that I recommend to folks, especially because I've heard a lot of clients say, oh, I've just talked about this to my friends and they're tired of hearing about it.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
And so not saying that's always the case, but it could be helpful to have a container for where all those feelings can go. And so the therapeutic relationship can be a place for those feelings to go.
Katherine Hurtig
No, it's, I mean, it's amazing and I'm sure as we'll get into like super important to have have the friends and have those people you can go to, but there is a, maybe the word's not a limit, but they can only do so much. They can only hear so much. And that's okay.
Rasha Taha
And that's, it's not their role to be therapists. Right? It's not your friend's role to be therapists. And that's okay. It's obviously they can offer a lot of support. They can offer insight. They can provide comfort. But I think that the therapeutic relationship can help you reflect on your own growth and can help put things into context for future relationships. And so I think that can be invaluable.
Katherine Hurtig
And so when a relationship ends, I think it's going to be natural to look back and kind of dissect how it went, what things were good, what things weren't so good, how you might want to go about doing things differently next time or choosing a different type of person. But what's the balance between doing that dissection and over-analyzing, blaming yourself, you know?
Rasha Taha
I encourage folks to bookend those kinds of reflections. And so if it's feeling like the reflection is spilling over into your whole day and it's taking up a lot of space, can we instead designate some time to it? Maybe at the end of your day, you set aside an hour to go, okay, I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna either journal or I'm gonna listen to music and talk out loud or I'm going to whatever it may be. Trying to contain it is going to help kind of keep it in a form that's more digestible rather than just having passive thoughts or focusing on it throughout the day.
Katherine Hurtig
So, I mean, if we're setting limits for ourselves there, it's like, okay, well, this hour is up, now I'm not going to think about it. Isn't that kind of like, resisting the feelings we were talking about not doing?
Rasha Taha
Oh, that's such a good, no, that's really good. There's a few things that come up for me here. So the reason that I like to encourage folks to kind of put things in a container is also to help us practice wrangling our thoughts and being able to being able to decide when I want to engage with a thought versus when I want to put it aside and engage with it later. So a lot of people will kind of use the terminology of intrusive thoughts, of, okay, thoughts that just come out of nowhere. Some folks have a hard time looking at those intrusive thoughts and then not engaging with them. And so we then get to practice wrangling our thoughts when, let's say we're sitting down and we're watching TV and we get this random thought, we go, oh, can we pay attention to this thought? Look at it, acknowledge it, and go, no, thank you. Not gonna engage with you right now.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay, so that's like a skill you kind of have to go….
Rasha Taha
Yeah, it's that plasticity of being able to be, I'm gonna say in control, but there's a different way of framing it that I'll think of. But being able to acknowledge thoughts, but not let them take over.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, okay.
Rasha Taha
And so when we think of a container, it's another way for us to put things in a designated place. And then when we leave this designated place and we still have these thoughts, let's say they are obsessive thoughts or we're trying to chew on something that is cyclical, we go, oop, nope, that goes in the container, that container is in an hour or that container is tomorrow.
Katherine Hurtig
And we choose when to open the box.
Rasha Taha
Exactly. So it's very intentional compartmentalization. And again, this is another word that I think people use and see it in a negative light. I think compartmentalization is important because let's say you're going through a breakup and you need to go to work, compartmentalization is going to help you, let's say, perform your job, so long as we come back and open this compartment and look at it after work.
Katherine Hurtig
And not just keep it on the shelf forever, but actually go in and deal with it.
Rasha Taha
Yes, exactly.
Katherine Hurtig
What do you do in a situation where you do have to see your ex, whether you work together, whether you have kids, or have those shared friends?
Rasha Taha
Boundaries. So many boundaries. Yep. And again, this is so specific because again, did this end amicably? Did this, was there any hostility involved? Is your ex game to having conversations about how to navigate social situations? Because it's going to differ a lot if they're, let's say, resistant to having those conversations versus if they're willing to talk about, okay, we have shared friends, who gets to go to what? That's going to be different if they're like, oh, I'm just going to go to whatever. And then the other person is going to have to decide, okay, what's going to be good for my mental health. And so boundaries are going to be really important. If you do have the ability to talk about how are we going to plan this, I think it's going to clear up, clear out any expectations that people may have, but it's also going to help you move forward knowing what to expect and knowing what to anticipate, even if it's loosely. But again, does that mean that you're on speaking terms with your ex? If you work with your ex and you're not on speaking terms, that's going to require some boundaries that you hold for yourself, right? What does that look like in terms of self-preservation at work? Are you able to go into work and take care of yourself and not pay attention to your ex or just engage cordially. How are you taking care of yourself through that? And what are you doing in order to process what that's like? So there are so many different scenarios.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, it's true.
Rasha Taha
It's almost impossible to go through them all. But I think ultimately, at the end of the day, people need to decide for themselves how to take care of themselves. And if it means not going to that friend's birthday party because you're feeling particularly vulnerable at that moment in time and you know your ex is gonna be there, there's gonna be some sadness there. Again, part of that process of acknowledging the feelings that are gonna come up. You're allowed to be angry at the fact that you wanna go, but you're gonna have a really hard time if you do go. You're allowed to be upset at the fact that your ex gets to go and you don't. but you're choosing not to go in order to preserve your mental health. So it's really complex, but I think even through this example, we're kind of demonstrating what it's like to... allow those feelings to come up and recognize that there's no, they can be opposing in nature. So you choosing to take care of yourself may still bring up some anger and resentment and upsetness, and that's okay.
Katherine Hurtig
And again, this could be a whole other conversation, but what you're saying about boundaries there, that's something I still struggle with, like wrapping my head around it. And because I always thought, have this idea that, if you set good and healthy boundaries, it's always going to feel better and it's always going to resolve. No…
Rasha Taha
Boundaries suck sometimes.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. And they can cause, other, I was going to say problems, not necessarily problems, but challenges along the way too. Yeah. But it's, I mean, you set them for a reason. Yeah.
Rasha Taha
So even using the example of a shared, two people broke up, they have shared friends, these shared friends invited both of you to a birthday party. And let's say you had already decided with your ex that, hey, with this person's birthday party, I'm gonna go and you're not. And then you show up and they're there. In that moment, it's up to you to decide do I hold myself to this boundary? I put this boundary out for the two of us and for like we both decided on this and they broke it, but it's up to me to uphold it. So it's up to me.
Katherine Hurtig
Right. You can't control anyone but yourself.
Rasha Taha
Exactly. So it's up to you to decide, do I have the capacity to stay and have a good time or is it actually going to be better for me to leave? And that's when a boundary can suck. Right? Like that is a time when you're looking at it going, well, I actually wanted to go to this birthday party, but if I stay, I'm going to have a bad time. And so I'm going to go. And that's still sucky. But it's important to acknowledge that you're choosing to leave an order to preserve yourself.
Katherine Hurtig
Right. And yeah, we've talked about this, like the community we have, our friends and family, how can they support someone going through a breakup?
Rasha Taha
Yeah, I love this. And I think everyone can benefit from having really clear expectations of what support looks like. And so I think, especially with something as devastating as a breakup, The people in your life can show up in a lot of different ways, and I think outlining what that support can look like can help us get ahead of those moments. So, support can look like, I just want to vent, right? Support can look like... Can you give me advice? So even just distinguishing what support looks like is going to make a huge impact on how you receive support. So I encourage folks to outline, and the kind of classic way is, do you need comfort? If you need comfort, what does that comfort look like? Do you just need a space to vent or do you want solutions? Right? Even just outlining those right off the hop can help people kind of identify what it is that they're needing in a given time. But the second piece I want to communicate, especially with what we had, what I had mentioned earlier around, you've talked to your friends about this a million and 10 times, and it's something that you're continuing to talk about. There, I don't think there is anything wrong with letting folks know, hey, I'm going through a breakup, can we talk about it? So you're giving people the opportunity to opt in or opt out of a potentially heavy conversation. So this doesn't just apply for breakups, this applies for everything, but we're using breakups as the example here. If let's say you're going to talk about something really heavy rather than just dumping it on a friend out of nowhere, what is it like to check in with them around, hey, I have this really heavy thing. Can we talk about it? Do you have the space to talk about it?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, we have to recognize that other people can't always carry what we're carrying.
Rasha Taha
Absolutely. And this is transferable to relationships, not just in friendships, but to relationships where you're not expecting someone to be everything. Similarly to how you can't expect your friends to show up every single time for everything. So how do we take care of ourselves? How do we have a diverse network? How do we have different coping strategies? How do we rely on different people, different resources? And so the wider those supports are, the more robust those supports are, the less intense it's going to be on the people in your life to kind of carry through, carry you and them through the difficult times. It's kind of spread out a bit more. So I like to introduce this idea of checking in before talking about something heavy, regardless of what the heavy thing is, because it gives folks an opportunity to gauge their capacity, but also be able to show up for you in the way that you're wanting them to.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. I think I really like that point. And it's something that I had to learn too, is that, yeah, the people in your life, each of them can't be everything. And you shouldn't expect them to be.
Rasha Taha
Yeah. It's unfair. Ultimately, it's a lot of pressure. And we wouldn't want that for us.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure, yeah. We can't be everything for someone either. Yeah. And if we get to the point that we're ready to think about a new relationship, how do we approach that without, you know, carrying the pain, the fears, the insecurities that may have come out of a previous relationship or breakup?
Rasha Taha
I think that's going to take quite a bit of self-awareness in terms of walking into a new relationship without the so-called quote-unquote baggage from other relationships. I think that folks need to be really honest with themselves in terms of what it is that they're looking for, because we oftentimes find ourselves trying to mend a broken heart by finding something new. But ultimately, that places a lot of expectations on the someone new that they may not be aware of. And so it can cause a lot of complications in that way. And so I would encourage folks to really try to understand what is it that I'm wanting out of a new relationship? Have I healed? Am I working through healing these aspects from the previous relationship? What does that look like? Am I bringing any expectations or any resentment or anything into this new relationship? And if I am, can I be honest with myself? Can I be honest with this new person who I'm trying to engage with? I think it takes a lot of that self-reflection to see, am I ready to step into this? Am I not? What does that look like? What does readiness look like? I'm not a fan of this idea that you're supposed to be quote unquote healed from your previous breakup in order to engage with new people. I don't think there really is such a thing because people... We're way too complex to put ourselves in those kinds of boxes. So I think it takes an element of self-reflection to try to understand what am I trying to gain from this, from stepping into something new? And can I be honest about what it is that I want? I think that's a really big defining factor.
Katherine Hurtig
It's, yeah, it's really tricky because like I remember when I, you know, got into a new relationship. it's really hard to separate, like understanding that this is a new person and they're not that other person. They are going to act and think differently. But my anxious brain was still always like, they're going to do what he did. They're going to leave. And bringing that into the new situation was hard.
Rasha Taha
Absolutely. That's a really fantastic example that is It's deeply, deeply relatable. Not just to me, but I'm sure to a lot of folks who are hearing this, where it almost becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the harm that you experienced or the patterns that hurt you from your previous relationship, you start looking out for them. And then your relationship, it may bring them…
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. It's a survival thing, right? It's like, you're trying to protect yourself from that pain, but it can actually cause some harm.
Rasha Taha
Yeah, exactly. And coming back to a point about what it is that you're wanting from a relationship and being honest with the person who you're starting to see, one thing came up for me around the relationship that I had talked about, the five-year long-term relationship. As that was at the tail end of that, I started seeing someone new. And there was a lot of criticism from people in my life around, you're not healed from this, you still need to process this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However, the person who I was seeing, I was open about the fact that, hey, I just lost this super significant five-year relationship that I had. I need space to grieve. Is that something that you're okay with? I'm going to have a lot of emotions. I'm going to have a lot of like sadness. And they were like, yeah, I want to support you through that.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, that openness and honesty.
Rasha Taha
Yeah, they opted into that. They actively decided, yes, I can be there for you through that. And there were months of just a lot, a lot, a lot of sadness, but it was, It was an honest interaction around, hey, this is essentially where I'm at. Do you want to be a part of this or do you not? And I was open to either response.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I think, you know, we have these expectations around relationships ending. It's like, you know, you've been together this long, you should be single for this amount of time. Yeah. But it doesn't always work that way.
Rasha Taha
No, yeah, definitely not.
Katherine Hurtig
So what's one last thing you want to leave our listeners with? Someone out there listening who's just had a bad breakup.
Rasha Taha
Don't isolate yourself. Big, big, big thing. Allow yourself to be sad for, you know, just Be on your couch watching Netflix, eating ice cream, do all that, but make sure that you still reach out to your supports. Make sure you're still getting out and seeing your friends, seeing your family, seeing the people who are important to you, even in small bits and pieces. It doesn't have to be all at once. Give yourself a bit of time to gather yourself, but don't get stuck in that because it gets harder afterwards to unstick from that.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
And so we need connection in order to help us move through hard things. So I would encourage folks to connect, even though it's going to be really difficult and probably not appealing at the start, but it will be helpful.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, that was a big thing for me. It was hard because I felt like I was a big burden. To the people around me, it's like, I am just like this shell of a person. You're not gonna have fun with me. So…
Rasha Taha
People love you and care for you and want to support you in the same way that you would show up for them when slash if they experience something devastating.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Rasha Taha
So I always come back to asking clients, but wouldn't your friend show up? Like wouldn't you show up for your friend in this situation? They go, oh yeah, absolutely. I'm like, okay. So this is now their time. It's their turn to show up for you. Let them.
Katherine Hurtig
Thank you so much, Rasha.
Rasha Taha
Absolutely.
Katherine Hurtig
You've been listening to Living Fully, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Thank you for tuning in. This episode was produced by Luiza Campos, Manuel Montano, Jenna Forbes, and by me, Katherine Hurtig. A special thanks to Rasha Taha.
To stay up to date on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe. We're available in your favorite podcast app. Living Fully is a production of Calgary Counselling Centre and recorded in Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. Living Fully podcast is not a substitute or alternative for professional care or treatment.
Calgary Counselling Centre and Counselling Alberta provide effective counselling to anyone in Alberta with no wait list, no financial barriers. Find us online at calgarycounselling.com and counsellingalberta.com. For help across Canada and the United States, call 211. If you are outside of Canada and the U.S., seek help from your general medical practitioner.