E125 - (PA) Why Being Without Him Hurts EVEN MORE Than When You Were Together—Even For Strong, Successful Women

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Speaker 13: [00:00:00] Episode is going to help to finally explain why it hurts more after leaving a relationship that you know was too painful to stay in.​

Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.

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Speaker 14: .

Welcome back to the episode. Okay, so you have left a relationship that you know was unhealthy, and I know that you are self-aware, you are intelligent, you have journals full of all of the reasons that the relationship was not good for you and that it needed to end. aNd yet you are so frustrated and confused as to how this could actually hurt more than when you were in something that you know, logically was so painful.

You might be asking yourself things like, why am I still crying over someone that I know drained me? [00:01:00] Or why am I missing someone that I know was intentionally manipulating and confusing me?

It's maddening because you're thinking, I'm smarter than this. So in this episode. It is my intention to help you understand why your pain feels so intense, even when you logically know that leaving was the right choice. I'm gonna help you learn the difference between missing a person and withdrawing from an addictive emotional pattern, and I'm going to help you discover how to support your nervous system so that you can actually move through the pain that you're feeling instead of feeling so stuck in it.

And at the end of the episode, I'm going to pull an Oracle card. So stick around so that you can receive your message. This is a message that you can use to sit with this week as you contemplate where you are and ponder what you need next in your healing.

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Speaker 15: I know that you really pride yourself on following logic and sticking with something until you find a solution that makes sense. And I know that this specific issue of [00:02:00] leaving a painful relationship because you know it was so painful, yet feeling such and intense pain on the other side of it is just not adding up in your brain.

It's not making logical sense.

Logically, you know that he drained you. You know that he lied to you. You know that he kept you on the cycle of broken promises and spun you upside down and inside out on everything that you thought was real and logically it made sense to you before you left. That leaving would really bring that relief and that peace and that clarity, which is why you left.

Yet now it feels like you are spending a lot of your time, the majority of your time crawling out of your skin. Your heart doesn't just hurt. It feels like something is missing and you're going to actually like die without it, and you don't understand it.

You don't understand what is happening inside when it doesn't make logical sense.

Oftentimes when we are stuck in that, like I can't make logic [00:03:00] sense of this. I can't make logic sense of this. What we're experiencing with our feelings is really feeling like we're stuck in this cycle. We're just, we're crying, and you're feeling that grief and that emptiness over and over again. Rivers of tears are coming out, but there's never a relief on the other side.

There's never that like, oh, I feel so good from that ugly cry. It's just like kind of a perpetual, ugly cry that you are, you're stuck in, you're like hovering on top of the emotion,

and because you can't really get a handle around your emotions or around this grief or around this heartbreak that you're feeling, it's like you're second guessing all of the work that you've done. I'm, I'm sure you have spent years in therapy or coaching or doing retreats or

other types of shadow work and trying to understand who you are, what makes you tick, your patterns, and maybe you thought you had a really good handle on that before this relationship, and now you're just watching yourself like sort of crumble [00:04:00] in these emotions and it's making you second guess. Like, did I actually even do anything?

Am I totally reverting back to who I was 5, 10, 15 years ago, or in childhood? And because those feelings are feeling really frustrating. You're like, okay, let me go back to this logic place, this analytical place. And you might be writing out the lists of the red flags and explaining the intermittent reinforcement of the trauma bond cycle and why that was addictive.

Like reminding yourself of all of these things, all of these reasons that you left and why it was so bad, and why you shouldn't be feeling pain, and yet you still can't get 'em out of your head, right? There's still this pain that feels overwhelming and confusing, and that gap between what you know and what you feel or what you're doing feels extra intolerable because.

You are a woman who's really built her sense of self and in your identity on some level, on being able to figure things out, on being able to depend on and rely on your logic. [00:05:00] I bet in your business side of your life you have really capitalized on your ability to.

Think through problems, problem solve, analyze things, figure things out. Stay, stay determined to find the answer, and then eventually find the answer. That's a really useful skill in that side of your life but it's not translating. Something's not translating here, and because you're, you're stuck in this. Self-critical place of, I know I shouldn't be feeling this, but I'm feeling such pain. I know the relationship was bad. I shouldn't be feeling pain because why would I miss something or, or grieve something that was so painful.

It's almost like you're staying stuck, drowning in that feeling. And that stuckness is affecting other parts of your life.

Maybe you're noticing that at work you used to show up really sharp and productive and feeling really in control of your tasks and your day and your accomplishments and what you were doing. Wrapping all of that up in time to still get your [00:06:00] workout in and pick your kids up from school and function in the other part of your life as well.

But now you might be just staring at your screen like, what the hell was I doing? Blanking out. Not feeling as productive as as you used to be. And maybe even it's gotten to the point where people are asking you what's going on. Like, are you okay? And that question in of itself is like another opportunity for your self-critical part to come up because you hate being the one who is not okay.

You are used to being the one who is holding it down, holding it together, leading everybody else. You're the one that people come to, not the one that is crumbling.

So that's really got you feeling some sort of way about yourself and how you can't get yourself together. You can't get these emotions together, these emotions that you think you shouldn't even be feeling when you're stuck again in that sort of like drowning of the emotions, it still feels like you're on edge.

It still feels like you're in survival mode, which [00:07:00] is what you felt in the relationship even though you left. You're still recognizing that same feeling in your body, in your nervous system, and that is feeling really familiar, which also feels really icky for you and brings again, that self-criticism.

So this is really hitting like you on so many levels. The internal self-criticism, the internal stuckness, the internal self-doubt of how much work you've done, the external of it affecting your work and your ability to use your brain for anything else other than trying to manage these painful emotions and not being able to like work your way through that. And it can feel like you're stuck in a loop, even though you left the relationship that was actually in the loop. When you're stuck in this loop because of the belief of I shouldn't be hurting after a relationship that's painful. Why am I still stuck on this person? It really keeps you hovering above what was not healing so that you can move through it. It keeps you [00:08:00] still unavailable for finding the peace that you want in your body, finding that stability, finding the love eventually that you actually want.

What's happening is you're feeling, again, that incongruence of I know better, but I'm feeling this. So you are just focusing on work. You're trying to stay busy. You're trying to convince yourself out of these, these unbearable, uncomfortable feelings that you're having and it's not working.

And I'm here to tell you that it's not working because it's not addressing the real problem.

The real problem is that your body got used to a cycle with your ex that you can't logic your way out of. So with him, you felt this cycle of pain and relief, pain and relief.

Something would happen whether you were physically apart or emotionally apart or taking space, or he was ghosting you or something was happening where there was a separation that caused these really unbearable feelings of panic and anxiety and loneliness.

And then he would come back and he would apologize. He would [00:09:00] say the right thing. You would have that moment of reconnection and that those feelings would go away. That relief would come because the, the pain and the feelings were going away.

So after you go through that cycle several times, you get really accustomed to that reconnection, that reunion being the relief of your pain. Your body associates. He. Is gonna come and take that pain away.

So when you remove him, you're grieving the loss of, of him and the relationship, of course, but you're also removing the relief. So your body is just now stuck in this pain that it doesn't have other tools to manage its way through.

So the distraction, the trying to work more, the trying to convince yourself out of those feelings. It's not actually helping you replace the relief.

What you actually need is very, very simple. You need another source of the relief.

Not from another person but you. But by learning how to create [00:10:00] safety and move through these really uncomfortable feelings yourself within your own body.

I had a client I will never forget because it was the way she described her experience was so vivid to me. She would literally scratch her way out of her skin after like about two weeks of being no contact with her ex, right? She would get to the point in the cycle where she's like, fuck this, I'm out.

He's terrible. I understand it. I see it. She would go no contact, and then she was almo, like literally crawling out of her skin. It was so uncomfortable.

And inside that uncomfortableness was fear. She was really starting to believe that she was never gonna find somebody that can love her like he did something that he actually told her in the relationship.

And therefore she was feeling panic, like, oh my God, I'm gonna be alone forever. Maybe I made the wrong choice. And then going into the second guessing of, I over-exaggerated. Maybe it's my fault. I'm just being crazy. I just need him back. I, we can work this out. He can be different. I [00:11:00] can be different and this can work.

And it was like clockwork right around that two week period where she had to get out of those feelings. She couldn't sit with what was happening inside of her.

Through our work together, we used really specific tools that helped her be able to regulate that fearful nervous system while she was processing through what actually needed to be processed. It was like, I love this metaphor that I use with my clients. It's like surfing the wave. Right. This big wave of emotion is coming and if you don't know how to surf it, it's going to drown you.

It's going to take you under down to the bottom of the ocean without any oxygen. That's a really scary place to be. So the tool helps you surf the big wave, which can feel exhilarating and scary, but then the wave ends and you're still on top of the water.

So once she learned how to surf through the feelings of panic and anxiety and oh my God, I'm gonna be alone forever, and did I make a huge mistake, she was able to resource, she was able to get curiosity about what was [00:12:00] actually happening with those parts inside of her, and she could give herself the relief.

She didn't have to reach out to him anymore at that two week period because she knew that she could ride the wave. She knew that the wave wasn't going to take her under,

And that is a lifelong tool that she now uses even outside of the relationship, emotions that are coming up for her.

And that that right there is why I'm so passionate about the type of program that I have and the type of work that I offer clients, because what it does is it helps you stop relying on somebody outside of yourself, your ex, in this case, to make you feel okay.

It helps you start to create that stability within yourself, and that comes from having the tools to move through the panic and the anxiety and the heartbreak, and regulate your nervous system out of that panic, survival state. So that you can actually stop reaching out to him so that you can let go of him, so that you can heal from the trauma of all of what was in that [00:13:00] relationship, and find yourself again.

Because if you're stuck in the loop of needing him to give you the relief, you're never gonna get to the place of actually processing through that relationship fully and finding yourself again. You're still gonna be reliant on him to make you, okay. So this work, this work that I do with clients. Gives you what you need so that you can stop trying to logic your way through what you should or shouldn't feel, and actually help you process and release it.

Because I know you wanna stop going back. I know you wanna stop being preoccupied with him or the feelings that are surrounding him or the relationship. And I know you know on some level within you that if you go back right now to get that relief, you're not gonna be getting a different relationship.

You're gonna be getting the same cycle with a little bit of relief at the beginning. The short term relief at the beginning.

So remind yourself that it is hurting so much right now because you have removed [00:14:00] what your body got used to being your regulation source. You removed him, he was bringing the relief, and now that there's no more hope of him coming back around to bring that relief. You're stuck with the pain

and you just need the right tools to be able to move through that pain. So the goal here is not to stop missing him or not to stop having feelings about everything that the relationship was. Because the reality is there will be things that you are grieving from that relationship. There will be a lot of duality that you have to hold between.

This was a good part of that relationship. This was a really abusive or really painful part. How do I make sense of this? How do I let myself miss the good things and release the bad things?

The goal is actually to support your nervous system as you ride the waves of all of these different emotions that are coming up.

To, to hold yourself in all of the layers of the complex, nuanced grief and all of your old shit that surfaces because of [00:15:00] these relationships.

It's to give you the tool to be able to be with whatever is presenting. Clients of mine, when they come into session, they're usually feeling anything from deep emptiness and sadness and hopelessness and longing to feelings of rage and betrayal and anxiety and injustice.

And they learn how to surf. They learn how to surf with whatever emotion is coming up so that they're not being reactive to their old patterning. So they're not being reactive to their old source of relief.

And when they learn how to surf, they get through the uncomfortableness, they get through the intensity. And then they actually find clarity and peace and calm. They're training their nervous system to come back into that calm,

and then they don't need to reach out to their ex. They don't need to find the calm from somewhere else. I can promise you with a hundred percent certainty that there is a way for you to get through the pain that you're feeling to make sense of why it hurts so [00:16:00] bad even though the relationship hurts so bad, and to be able to release that so that you're not feeling this way forever. So if you're in that space right now where you know you've made the right decision to leave a really horrible relationship, but what you feel is so unbearable that you don't know how to be with those feelings, and you're second guessing going back,

or maybe you're just dead tired of overanalyzing and trying to make sense of why you're missing someone that you shouldn't quote unquote miss. That's exactly the work that we do inside of my program called Becoming.

I will help you be with all of the emotions that feel unbearable so that you don't just understand them, but you can actually get to the other side of the pain that you're in.

I know you're ready to stop the cycle for good. I know you're ready to get out of this pain for good. So please go to the show notes. There's a link to schedule a free intro session where I will get a really good understanding of where you are, where you wanna go, what's feeling the hardest for you, and then if we're aligned, I'm gonna share about my becoming program and how I can [00:17:00] help support you in getting there.

Because you don't just need more time for these feelings to go away. You need the right support to get through it.

So go and book your spot on my calendar right now for that free intro session. And to end the session, let's pull an Oracle card. 'cause I know you wanna know what the message is for this week. The message is The herd. The herd. Let me find that in the book and I will read to you what it says.

The herd is a message from the Divine Collective letting you know that you belong. You are an integral part of the herd and there is great power in the collective, the herd. Your herd values, your talents, flaws, individuality and needs your gifts in order to enhance and harness its collective power.

Feel your place. Settle in. You belong here. The herd is an affirmation that you are where you should be. You have your people. Let the safety of the herd hold you while you explore you. Your unique contribution to the larger collective. If [00:18:00] you are feeling isolated, lonely, or afraid, allow the herd to call you home.

Find your people. They're out there. The ones who get you, love you, see you. They're waiting for you. You won't find them at home all alone though. So take the risk, make the connections network. Be brave. They are waiting to embrace and celebrate all that you are. Hmm.

The support is here for you. So until I see you in that intro session or in the next episode, please remember that you are not alone.