Breakups are, among other things, painful. Pain is a good teacher though. A tough, unnerving, total a****le, but a good teacher. I think we live in a society where we associate breakups with the end of romantic relationships, but they are far more widespread and nuanced than that.

In this episode I talk with Aimee Duroux (who you may remember from our social media episode) about why they hurt so much, how to go about them, and what is to be gleaned from them. Aimee is an actor, producer, writer, social media maven, voice over artist, and the human personification of sunflowers. She brings such warmth and insight to the conversation, and I genuinely cannot wait to share it with you. Let us know what you think! Tag us in your insta stories when you listen to it, or join our Facebook group to share your response! I’d love to put some human faces to the numbers.

Keep well,

-Paula

P.S our loud siren friends from the fire department make another appearance about halfway through this episode, so again, do not be alarmed if you hear some distant sirens, that’s on our end.

EPISODE NOTES:

Things We Mentioned

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Starlight Children’s Foundation is an amazing charity very close to my heart. Find out more here about them and how they bring some much-needed levity and distraction to sick kids.

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Generation Why? Is yet to be released but you better believe that Make sure you stay in the loop by following the Facebook page

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In the episode I talk about one of my most painful platonic break-ups from back when I was in primary school. I heard myself using the phrase “distress they caused me” and I just wanted to, firstly, clarify that break-ups cause emotional distress, but it would be unfair of me to blame that on the people involved, as they have no power or responsibility over my emotions. And secondly, I wanted to say that none of the people in question were cruel. Sure it hurt; it would always hurt. But they did it in the most mature way possible, which was really impressive considering we were all 13. I was aware at the time that there wasn’t a better way they could have handled it, and it was just going to hurt for a while. A lot of my distress came from the narrative I had created around it, and they had no control over that. I have since done a LOT of work on myself in therapy to rewrite this narrative, and address the nasty core beliefs it was rooted in. Yay progress!

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Memory distortion Look you don’t need me to tell you that memory is not perfect, they’re not even static. Memory is a malleable tool that our minds use to reinforce personal narratives and lessons, as well as survive. That’s why people can have repressed memories when they have a traumatic experience. Here’s a Psychology Today article on the mechanics of memory. And here is one on Business Insider for a more general overview of what it is and how we can use it as a tool.

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School of life is something you have almost certainly seen on YouTube. It was founded by Alain De Button (that dude with the TEDtalk about why you’ll marry the wrong person) and Sophie Howarth (a writer and social entrepreneur with quite a few interesting ventures, start here if you fancy a google). In case you haven’t heard of them, here’s a video on Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/stumble-through.

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