by Amy Chan
Then he proposed.
He shared his aspirations of starting a business, of starting a family. He promised a new life and that he was going to get his act together.
“I thought maybe if we had a family it would change him.”
But things didn’t change.
“We were fighting a lot. I knew it wasn’t a healthy relationship. I knew, but I was trapped. I felt lost. I really loved this person. He became my social work project. And then I came across Renew. I knew that would be the time I could finally break things off. Before I left for the retreat, I told him to move out.
“When I was at Renew, I had hopes that it was the final push that could help me finally get out of this thing.”
When Cindy showed up at the bootcamp, she was slouched over, avoided eye contact, and hardly spoke. One of the coaches pulled me aside and told me she was really worried about her. We didn’t know if she was retaining any information, because her eyes looked glazed over and she didn’t speak. Per Renew protocol, the retreat is tech-free, and Cindy had her phone off the entire time. Upon the retreat’s end, she turned on her phone to dozens of messages from Martin:
“You told me you were going to a retreat and I know you’re whoring yourself out.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
One after another the texts came in. Cindy was literally shaking.
RESILIENCE IS NOT ABOUT PERFECTING EACH STEP; IT’S ABOUT CHOOSING TO PERSEVERE EVEN WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE FALLEN BACK A STEP.
Cindy went home with one of the coaches, and together they put a plan in action to ensure her safety. She told her landlord what had happened and asked him to change the locks to keep Martin away. She asked her mom to come and stay with her. She blocked his number.
“I knew I had to have no contact. Because I knew me—and if I opened the door of communication and thought we could be friends, I’d fall back into it again.”
After her first divorce, she had made a plan to get her life back on track, but she had lost herself in another abusive relationship. She was ashamed of how she got into this toxic relationship that could have had dangerous consequences for both her and her son. It happened gradually, until she was so deep in it that she couldn’t even recognize herself anymore.
A year later, Cindy flew to San Francisco to attend the first Renew alumni retreat. When she walked through the door, I thought I was seeing a different person: confident, with her head up high, laughing and vivacious. Cindy had gotten her life back together. She had taken self-defense classes since Breakup Bootcamp, had a steady job, and had started hiking and dancing again, two hobbies she loved. She was focused on getting her degree and had stopped dating completely to focus on herself. She took the tools she learned seriously and implemented change right away. She was proud of how far she’d come.
But it wasn’t easy, and many times when she missed her ex, the thought of opening up the door did cross her mind. She recounted a time, eight months after the breakup, when she was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge during a visit to New York. A flood of memories came rushing back, since this was something she and Martin often did together. She was overwhelmed with emotions—she still loved Martin and missed him terribly. She started to cry, feeling ashamed for still having such strong feelings for him and for her desire to see him again.
“I had to fight every urge in my body to not contact him. I missed him. I wanted to see him. But I knew if I reached out, I’d get sucked back into drama.” Her awareness of her patterns gave her the ability to pause and not react to her craving. She didn’t contact him that day, and at the time of this writing, she is still Martin-free.
You’ve now looked at your old, unhelpful beliefs and have a framework on how to update them, one rung at a time. You understand that along the way there will be bumps and detours, and that this is a natural part of the process of change. Our final step is to access the bigger picture of where you want to go. Just as we have challenged old beliefs, let’s challenge what we think we should be chasing.
SEEKING HAPPINESS
Let’s discuss a trendy topic in today’s culture: the pursuit of happiness.
Popular media, literature, and self-help books are all marketing the hell out of happiness right now. Happiness is a big business—a $10 billion business, that is, according to a report by Research and Markets.14 It’s designed to sell you the book, the course, the app that will give you the cure—to fix you from being broken. It underscores the idea that we should be happy all the time and leaves no room for the entire range of emotions that makes us human. This approach is fundamentally flawed because it sets us up for a never-ending cycle—happiness is an elusive object, and the minute you get your hands on it, it slips from your grasp. What you don’t realize is that you’re playing a game that’s designed to keep you suffering.
When you see happiness as something you can buy, achieve, or find outside of yourself, you create suffering. When you see happiness as an absence of pain, you create suffering. When you believe that you should be happy all the time, you set yourself up for suffering.
Here’s the thing: you actually don’t want to be happy all the time. In fact, being constantly happy can be detrimental for your health and growth!
Our emotions exist for a reason and help us navigate life. Emotions lead us toward and away from decisions that are necessary for our survival and well-being. Also, a great misconception is that the road to happiness means an absence of pain.
Pain is not good or bad. It’s a messenger. Pain is telling you that something is out of balance, that something needs attention, that there is change or growth waiting for you. This applies to both physical and emotional pain.
Pain is not your enemy—it’s energy, tapping you on the shoulder and whispering, “Notice me.” Ignore it long enough and the whispers get louder and louder, until you’ve given it no choice but to scream, “Notice me!” The pain grows. It becomes more intense and more unbearable, begging you to finally give it the attention it needs.
When you experience a life-shattering breakup, when you feel like your world is falling apart, this is often pain that has been ignored for a long time, until it finally had to break you apart so that you’d actually notice and take action.
If you are hell-bent on being happy, what happens when you experience darker emotions? You will think something is wrong with you or become disappointed in yourself. That shame might beget more self-loathing, causing you to feel even worse. Resisting the emotions you perceive as negative will only intensify them. You can also feel contradictory emotions at the same time. Life is not black and white. What if instead you embrace the light and dark, positive and negative, happy and sad, and all the emotions in between as part of the human condition? The wide emotional range indicates a fully lived life, each peak and valley necessary for growth.
Think about some of the greatest singers in the world, from Adele to Celine Dion to Mariah Carey to Lady Gaga. What do they all have in common? Range. It’s the breadth and depth of range that make them masterful vocalists. Imagine your life as if you’re singing your own opera. Would you really want an opera in only one key, with a simple melody, with no range?
So Feeling Bad Isn’t Bad?
What if you replaced your goal of happiness with the intention of acceptance?
Acceptance is being aware of the present moment without judgment. Author Jon Kabat-Zinn describes acceptance beautifully:
Acceptance doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, mean passive resignation. Quite the opposite. It takes a huge amount of fortitude and motivation to accept what is—especially when you don’t like it—and then work wisely and effectively as best you possibly can with the circumstances you find yourself in and with the resources at your disposal, both inner and outer, to mitigate, heal, redirect, and change what can be changed.15
With acceptance in mind, when you feel uncomfortable emotions, accept them and give yourself the permission to feel them, process them, and learn from the
m. The ironic thing is the more you accept what is, the happier you’ll be.
Cautionary note: There’s a big difference between the functional sides of emotions that help you and the dysfunctional sides, which usually come from overattachment. For example, functional sadness enables pause and reflection; dysfunctional sadness can turn into depression. Functional anger can compel someone to be assertive; dysfunctional anger is rage. If you veer more on the dysfunctional sides of emotions where they are putting you and others in danger, it’s crucial that you immediately seek professional help for support in transitioning them into a manageable, functional range.16
Having < Doing < Being
Look, I’m not saying happiness is to be avoided. Feeling positive and joyful in life is a state that is satisfying and rewarding. I just want you to challenge the misconceptions of constant happiness, and I also want to encourage you to accept the other emotions that come along with being a human being. When I feel sad, I say to myself, “Oh, I’m stretching my emotional range right now. I’m growing my capacity to feel.” Because guess what? If you numb your ability to feel the bad, you also numb your ability to feel the good. You cannot suppress one side of the emotional spectrum without affecting the other.
This brings me to another important concept on the emotional plane. It’s a big one: inner peace.
When I was in my relationship with the man I thought I was going to marry, I thought I had it all. I had the high-status job, the salary, the apartment, the boyfriend, the life plan. #WINNING.
But when I lost every element that I based my “happiness” upon, I was miserable. Not just your basic kind of miserable, but the can’t-get-out-of-bed-my-life-is-over kind of miserable. I learned a critical lesson after I came out the other side, one that has forever changed the way I approach life. You see, my former approach consisted of me basing my happiness, peace, and identity on all the external factors to which I was attached. As long as those were in order, then I was “happy.” But they could never bring me true happiness or peace, because they were completely dependent on things outside of my control.
Now, I see myself as the center of my universe. And all these incredible things—the career, the relationship, the status—they are orbiting around me. If one gets plucked out, I may lose my balance momentarily, but I won’t be completely knocked off my center.
Serenity is not finding calmer seas, it’s building a better boat.
Ryan Soave
I’m far from monk status, where I’m unaffected by my environment and external circumstances. But I am working to look within myself to be my own source of love, joy, happiness, and peace. I hope to continue evolving to the point where I can feel peaceful even if my external world is weathering a storm. To me, that is true inner peace.
So, my question for you is: What are you striving for? Is it something external? Is it only after you’ve achieved the job, the salary, the relationship, the house, and the family that you will finally be happy and truly at peace? Or would it be more fulfilling if you shifted your intention inward—to accept, to be peaceful, regardless of the external? Which path would be more helpful in the long run?
BREAKING THROUGH
Each woman who has come to Renew Breakup Bootcamp came feeling broken. They arrive hunched over, their eyes dull, their faces and bodies tense. By the time they leave the retreat, they have all come to the same realization: it’s not about the guy, it never was. Nope, it’s not about the ex, the relationship, or what he did or didn’t do.
It’s about relearning how to love themselves, whether single or coupled, and regain their worth, identity, and power. The breakup was not the ending; it was merely the spark to catapult them into transformation, to break free and break through into the women they were meant to become—empowered, inspired, awake.
So many women who’ve come to Renew have been living asleep, shackled by limiting beliefs of gender roles, what love should look like, what they are worthy and not worthy of . . . Without the traumatizing breakup to snap them out of their trance, they would have never stopped to question if the path they’d been walking on was the path they actually wanted.
Some of the women who come to Renew have since launched new careers and explored a journey of healing and spirituality, and many are now in loving, healthy relationships they never dreamed were possible. Some have even joined the Renew team, making it their mission to help others through heartbreak too. Sometimes a breakup is the shake-up we need to redirect our life.
4
Feelings Aren’t Facts (When It Hurts So Good)
Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.
Unknown
Have you ever googled pictures of Amy Winehouse before and after drugs? It’s legitimately terrifying, right?
Cocaine, speed, alcohol—we all know how bad these things are for us. Watch any “Faces of Meth” YouTube compilation and it’s the stuff of nightmares. It scares most people away from drugs forever. But you know what doesn’t exist and really should? A “Faces of Emotional Addicts” YouTube compilation.
I’m only half kidding here. The fact is “emotional addiction” is a very real phenomenon that affects an untold number of highly sensitive individuals. And it takes a toll on their hearts, minds, and bodies.
Ever wonder why people keep creating drama in their personal lives?
Well, just like the drug addict who is always craving more, the emotional addict can’t get enough either. We may not be snorting white powder like Al Pacino in Scarface, but we are junkies all the same. In fact, the substances that get us high—even though they may not be illicit—are involved with emotional addiction too.
Everybody’s heard about endorphins, right? Those incredible mood-lifting chemicals that are released during sex and long-distance running. But few people understand how they actually work.
In fact, it was only as recently as the 1970s that endorphins were discovered by scientists who were trying to figure out how heroin works in the body. What they discovered instead: endorphins are this amazing personal narcotic that we all have inside of us that works similarly to morphine. No dealer required.
But what many people don’t realize is that these endorphins are created from both pleasure and pain. The emotional addict doesn’t even realize that she has become fully addicted to her negative emotions.
Neuroscientist and author Dr. John Montgomery notes that when “cutters” intentionally hurt themselves, endorphins are released that can initially feel like a high dose of morphine. “When people who are chronically depressed think sad, painful thoughts—such as recalling a painful romantic breakup—the pain thought itself will instantly trigger the release of endorphin in their brains.”1
WHEN YOUR HOMEOSTASIS IS ONE OF CHAOS
Our body does not like change because its job is to maintain a state of equilibrium, known as “homeostasis.” We are wired to stay in balance with what is familiar, because what is familiar is comfortable.
You may have heard the expression that neurons that “fire together, wire together.” When a circuit keeps firing, it can become the default setting, making the same response likely to occur in the future.2 So, if we’ve felt safe and loved since we were young, our brain becomes really good at play, cooperation, and trust. If we felt unwanted, afraid, and abandoned as children, the associated chemicals have stuck around for decades too, resulting in us specializing in anxiety and shame as adults.
The brain wants to preserve the chemical state it’s accustomed to. One of its primary biological functions is homeostasis, and it will do anything possible to maintain that chemical continuity. Cells eventually become chemically desensitized (resistant to the stimulus) and need more stimulus to create a reaction. Over time, more worry, more anger, or more anxiety is needed to turn on the brain.
All our feelings and attitudes—ones we believe are caused by outside forces—are a result of how we perceive reality based on our belief systems and also how addicted we are to particular emotions. You perceive
the environment in a way that reinforces how you feel. When you leave a situation that was a source of negative emotions, whether it’s by exiting a relationship, ending a friendship, or leaving behind the people, places, and things associated with bad feelings, you may find that even though you’ve changed the circumstances, the feelings still persist. When our cells are no longer getting their usual chemical fix, we then recall memories to do the job. When we are in the midst of change, the memories are working their hardest. If we are not careful, we will likely choose a new mate who will create the same negative feelings, because this allows us to maintain the chemical state we have become conditioned to feel as our homeostasis.
Emotions are the chemical residue of experience. If you’re addicted to the emotions of shame, you might use your critical boyfriend to reaffirm your addiction to judgment. You might use your parents to reaffirm your addiction to guilt. You might use Instagram to reaffirm your addiction to insecurity. If you’re addicted to feeling victimized, you might create stories about how you were wronged and how everyone else is to blame. You may repeat a story over and over again to anyone who will listen to “what happened to you.”
BUT . . . IT’S COMFY HERE
Homeostasis is helpful in the sense that it maintains our bodies’ natural body temperature, metabolism, and other functions necessary for survival. However, since your body is primarily concerned with keeping things the way they are, when you introduce something new, its first reaction is to resist. For example, say you rarely exercise. One day you decide that you should start working out, so you decide to go for a run, but after a few blocks, you start to feel dizzy and nauseated, gasping for air. What do you do? You could stop running and walk home in defeat. But that might be an overreaction, because your brain was just receiving signals that detected measurable changes in heart rate and respiration. Your typical homeostasis was disrupted, so your system sent alarm bells to your body to stop what it was doing immediately! If you didn’t know about homeostasis, you might interpret those signals as a threat. Now you know that it is natural for your body to resist change—the status quo is just more comfortable. Keep running, or, in this context, keep pushing yourself past your comfort zone.