Samantha Morris (00:11)
I've been talking to a lot of people recently and a common thing keeps coming up, a common question keeps being asked of me of how do I get over the past? How do I move on from the ex that hurt me so much that I just want to kind of crawl under my quilt and never come out again? And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today.
If you don't already know me, I am your host, Sam Morris. I am an empowered dating, healthy relationships and sex coach, and I have been doing this for over 10 years. Welcome to the podcast.
So many people will struggle with this. And I think it always shocks me that when I tell people, when I speak to people on a one-to-one basis and they say, I must be the only person that struggles with theirs, everyone seems like, you know, they break up from someone and they just get on with their life.
And then when I say to them, I've had five conversations this week about the same thing.
They're shocked.
because they think that other people don't have those problems. I'm not going to get into the whole reason of why that happens. know, social media has a lot to do with that. Everyone posts about how great they are all the time. But inside, probably not.
what I will say is...
It is a pain. It is a wound.
If someone came up and stabbed you in the arm, like I'm going too excessive here, stabbed you in the arm, what would happen?
you would need to go to the hospital.
You probably wouldn't just pull the knife out and stick a plaster bandaid for my American listeners on it.
You would go to the hospital, you would get medically trained professionals to help you. They would stitch you up. You would probably have to go back for check-ins. Depending on how serious the cut was, you may need to stay in hospital for a while.
But when it comes to having your heart broken, when it comes to being hurt over and over again, we're just expected to get on with it.
Just because you cannot see those wounds doesn't mean they're not there. There are studies that have proved that people can die from a broken heart. And you see it with animals.
They get so sad that their owner or like parrots, I always use parrots in a lot of my images because they have like one...
other parrot. They're like, they're the ultimate soul mates.
So why do we feel like we just need to get on with it? And especially if you've been through a relationship where actually the majority of the relationship was painful as well, even if you didn't realise at the time. So this is where someone has kind of broken you down, someone is constantly kind of telling you that you shouldn't be the person that you are. I seem to speak to a lot of people who have had that experience where
they have set their boundaries, they set their standards of, you know, I don't want you to behave this way, I don't want you to talk to other women, I don't want you to go out drinking all the time. And then those boundaries have been broken.
And it's not even that they've just let it happen because the majority of the time these boundaries get broken really, really small. they owe, someone will overstep a boundary just slightly. So just, I'm gonna stay out a little longer than I said I would.
So then the person will be like but you said you'd be back at this time and then this person starts to make you doubt yourself by saying well It was ten minutes like it's not a big deal and It's a pattern and it's how you get drawn in
So over a period of time, you have been hurt several times. Most people do not fall in love with someone and then the first thing that they ever do wrong say, that's it, done, get out.
The majority of people don't do that.
because love is an emotion and you can't just shut it off.
So when you've been through that pain, your body sees you as being in danger.
It's not a physical stabbing, but it is a physical pain.
And so your body is then wired to try and help protect you and keep you safe from that.
Suppressing pain does not work.
It is no different to if you got stabbed in the arm and you put a plaster over it. That would not fix it. Eventually you would bleed out. And the thing with emotional pain is so many people they push it down and they're like, you know, I'm just going to get on with my life. I'm not going to process it. I'm moving on.
And that pain then comes out in all the ways. So it may come out in the next time you talk to somebody that you want, you you're looking at potential relationship with. You remember the pain that happened before. And so you don't put yourself forward or you don't say to them, yes, I like you, or you don't go for it because you're like, I remember the pain.
I really want to go through the pain again. I haven't dealt with it.
What can also happen when you suppress that pain is you can get other emotions come about. So instead of you sitting there and crying and being like, actually I'm in pain here, you could get angry and then, know, angry people don't make the best life decisions. You could do something stupid. And that's why, you know, I hear it all the time where perfectly rational people who normally
you know, never do anything wrong, go and do things like smash someone's window in. I'm not excusing the behaviour.
But if you just sat and cried, you probably wouldn't have got to the anger point.
because those emotions have got to come out in some way or another.
So today's episode, I just want to give you a few tips on what you can do. And obviously I've just given you one. Have a cry. If you are in pain...
Have a cry, feel it. You don't need to do it at work. You don't need to do it in front of other people. That's fine.
But you can do it. The majority of people that I have one-to-ones with will be at some point crying.
because they feel safe enough to open that up.
And that is exactly what you need to do. You need to feel it and you need to find a way to feel it. And if that is going into a deep meditation, there's all sorts of different kind of relaxation techniques nowadays. You can go into those pods, I haven't tried them so I can't recommend them, but the pods where you're laying in the water and like it's, you're like locked in. I don't know whether you're properly locked in, but go in there, be in your own.
Go and speak to a professional. Go and see a healer.
Get out those emotions. Listen to music. If music is your thing, listen to music. Play music if that's your thing. Whatever it is, you need to be able to feel those emotions because if you do not, they will come out somewhere else. And that might be in the future when you are trying to date again, or it might be in everyday situations where because you are in a heightened state of emotion,
that you haven't dealt with, you may not be able to cope with regular things like your boss telling you to do something that you don't want to do.
something happening within your life that is outside of your control. Children. If you're in a heightened state of emotion and you're not dealing with it, trying to deal with a child is extremely difficult.
So process it.
One of things that I always advise people to do is to write a letter. If there are things that you want to say that you haven't had a chance to say, write it out. Don't send it because that just causes more drama than is necessary and you're trying to be drama free.
But write the letter and then release it. Rip it up, burn it safely. If it's written in pen, put it in water, whatever you want to do. Write it out, write it out as though you are writing to your ex-partner, this is what you did to me and this is how it felt. And then notice how freeing you feel afterwards.
Because so many of our emotional states, when we actually then release them...
what happens after is actually magical. If you are constantly trying to suppress that emotion, you are constantly staying in a state of feeling like you're in danger.
And we know from research, you know, that sort of thing that causes stress, that causes anxiety, it causes depression. If you are constantly in a state of fear because your body thinks they're hurting, they're in danger and I need to do something, you have no energy.
when you start to release that, that's when things get better.
The other thing is, speak it out. Tell your friend. Actually I'm really hurting here.
Speak it out, just talk to yourself in the mirror. You know, I always ⁓ tell people to do mirror work and they always are like, you're insane Sam, but you know, maybe I am. Who knows? It works.
Look in the mirror and tell yourself, this person hurt me, this breakup hurt me, whatever it is, speak it out, speak it out into the universe and release it.
Release that pain, stop keeping it inside you. It happened.
and
The final thing that I would say is, if it is...
taking over your life.
go and get some help.
these things.
can start to manifest into your life and when you are constantly sitting in a vibration of negativity more negativity comes in and this is why you hear about people going into a spiral of depression because they will be upset about one thing and then that will then spiral and spiral and spiral until they're at a point where they can't get themselves out of it.
I don't want that for anyone that's watching, anyone that's listening. There are so many people out there that can help you. I'm not just talking about myself. There are lots of therapists, there's lots of coaches, there's lots of different people, shamans. There are lots of people out there that can help you.
And it is the quickest way because dealing with this all by yourself without the professional skills.
takes longer.
and no one wants to be sat in pain for longer than needed.
if you try to patch up your arm that you know is bleeding
probably wouldn't work that well anyway but even if you did, you know, you decided to sew it back together, the healing process would take longer than if you had a professional do it.
I want to remind everyone that listens to these podcasts that watches the YouTube that you aren't by yourself.
There are so many people.
that feel this way. I have over 2,500 people on my email list and 90 % of them...
have all been her.
and are all sitting in this space wondering how to get out of it.
So you're not alone. And finding other people that can help you get through that is absolutely key.
So the last thing that I want to leave you with is a lot of people that I speak to, they tell me that there are specific times within the day when they feel worse than other times. And so my quick tip for you all is during those times, you need to start noticing it. So start putting it in your photo typing. You know, it was half four in the afternoon.
start to notice that, start to notice the pattern and then when you know that knowledge is power so when you know that every day at half four I get this wave of sadness overtaking me then you can start to plan out your day you can start to plan that at half four every single day you're going to be doing something else you're going to be on the treadmill or you're going to be
speaking to a friend or you're going to be listening to a podcast.
because you know that it's gonna happen for you.
because the problem is that so many people try and deal with the problem when they're in it.
Healing takes time. The majority of people do not heal whilst they're in the emotion. So if you came to me and you were like, I am literally so sad.
In that moment, we could do a load of work, but in that moment you're not going to be okay to do it. The healing is done outside of that time, when you're not in the deep state. So you need to learn ways to bring yourself out of the emotion, whilst you're in it, so that you can then start to do the healing process.
I really hope that that makes sense. Essentially, when you have that wave, if it is at half four every single day, when you have that wave of sadness, in that moment is not the moment to be trying to do any healing work. That is not the moment that you go and sit down with your journal.
because you are in such a state within your body that you cannot process.
but you can process that pain at a different point. So if it is half full, you can sit and you can do...
some writing, some speaking to a coach, a therapist, whatever, speaking to a friend at 8.30 because that's when the magic will start to work because that's when you will get the skills because it's no different if you saw a really really angry person and then you try to go up to them and you're like calm down it just doesn't work
because they're in the emotion. Whereas if you then afterwards start to do some work around, right, what are your triggers within your body when you're starting to get angry? Okay, now you need to notice that because when it happens you need to bring yourself out of it.
That's when the healing happens.
Okay, I hope that that was helpful.
And if you want to hear more from me, there are other episodes below.
I have created a really, really, really cool ready to date calculator. And it is based on like an algorithm based on the people that I work with and based on theory and research. And so the calculator, you fill it in, there's five questions, and then it will tell you, give you like a percentage of how ready you are today.
I will drop that in the show notes for you. Go have a look at it. See where you're at. Because once you know your starting position, then you can see how you can get to the finish line. That is all. I'm Sam Morris and I will see you or speak to you very, very soon.
