Getting Closure
In her recent workshop Break Up Better, Libby answers a question from a participant: "How can I get the other person to own their part to help with closure [after a breakup]?"
The Break Up Better Workshop is still available!
You can purchase the recording here: https://libbysinback.com/break-up-better/
Transcript
First of all the attempt to get closure doesn't work because in that moment, there's too much pain to even see what the heck happened a lot of times.
This is another question owning your part in things was brought up early on, and I'm interested in learning how to ask someone to do this when it's needed to help with closure. Okay. Are you ready for this? This is not the moment to get closure in the process of a breakup is not the moment you're gonna get closure. Closure comes a month later, six months later, a year later, five years later. And I'm sorry to be the barrier of that. But the truth is in the moment when things are ending is not the moment to have an accounting of everything that happened. It's the moment to give people a lot of space to make sense of it all.
And I think that that's the problem. We think that because breaking up is painful and again, it's painful, whether you are the one who says, oh my gosh, I have to end this. Or whether you're the one saying, oh my gosh, I'm being left. It's painful for everybody. And a lot of times what we do with the reason why we want closure is because we think if we have closure that that's gonna give us relief from the pain. And unfortunately, first of all, the attempt to get closure doesn't work because in that moment, there's too much pain to even see what the heck happened a lot of times. And even if you're clear on your story of what happened, the other person's gonna have a different story. And if you're in that moment, insisting on trying to get a shared reality. When what you're really trying to do is separate. It's just not gonna work. And it sucks. I wanna be the first to say that it, I've been in that situation where I don't understand what happened and it just hurts. And I just wanna make sense of it so that it stops hurting. That's our brain trying to protect us, right? Our brains really like to solve puzzles and make coherent narratives. Because when we do that, it literally squirts out dopamine in our brain. We get rewarded for it. We feel better when we can make a coherent narrative out of something. And I encourage you to do that, but you can't do it in a shared way. In the context of a breakup. You just can't. And I would say that you can't even do it in the context of an active conflict when you're actively like triggered and flooded with someone and you're, and you're actively, in a disagreement, a lot of times, the only way you can get to a place where you can actually share a reality with each other is after you've taken a break, calm down, reflected, and then you can come back and then maybe you can get that closure.
And again, only if that person is willing to put in that labor of talking to you about it, which if they broke, if they're in a relationship with you, I hope they will, If they're, if you're breaking up, they may really just wanna move on and that's okay. And it's okay to try to make a narrative for yourself without their participation. And that might be how you have to achieve closure. And honestly, there are times when I've achieved closure on a relationship only years later if you're trying in a moment of breaking up to get the other person to see what they did, that is just going to perpetuate a process, it's gonna sty me the process. It's gonna keep it stuck, and you're gonna be fighting instead of lovingly separating. So I don't recommend looking for closure again, it's in this moment, the goal isn't to try to get on the same page, the goal is to close the book.
Now that is one small clip of a two-hour-long workshop, but I don't wanna leave you hanging with just, yeah, you can't get closure right now. So suck it up. Instead. I want to give you some other things you can do instead of seeking closure. One thing that I think really helps is to think of a breakup, like an injury, or maybe the culmination series of injuries that now you are ending by ending the relationship. But as I said, when we're in that moment of a breakup, we are in pain, either pain because we needed to leave or pain because we're being left or both just the loss. We want that closure to relieve the pain. But closure in this context is more analogous to healing, which just takes time. And in the moment of a breakup, what you need to address that pain is first aid.
What you need is to reduce inflammation, cover the wound, prevent it from being agitated, apply ice, pressure, a bandage, rest. So here's what first aid looks like in the context of a breakup. First, just space. So that is like a bandage on the wound. It is going to, to protect you and the other person from inflicting any more damage. It feels like the opposite thing you want to do, but I promise you going no contact or minimal contact or setting a lot of very strong protective boundaries is going to help the pain subside and stop any further wounds. The next thing is to actually, and this is the one that kind of sucks is to tune into your pain rather than trying to alleviate it right away. Now, this is the classic thing of feel. Your feelings y'all allow whatever is there to be there.
You might notice rage or sadness or love of, or longing or gratitude or peace or relief. There's so many feelings that can get wrapped up in a breakup scenario. And I think we really miss out when we don't allow them to be there. And as we are allowing our feelings and listening to our feelings, that's when the healing can start, because we will start to understand within ourselves what is happening and what we're responding to. And, you know, in the same way, that if you are injured and you wanna figure out how to best care for the injury, you have to tune in to your body and figure out where it actually hurts. Where does the soothing need to be applied? Where is there a significant injury where you might need some medical attention? So this is that.
Now next piece of first aid is to create any kind of practice that you can to help you move through those feelings.
So if the feeling is anger, rage, or a last word that you didn't get in, sometimes the thing that can really help is to ride it out or rant to the person when you're driving in the car and there's no one in the car with you and just get out whatever it is you really needed to say, or what you needed that other person to know without actually sending it to them or sharing it with that can really help just get it out of you, but don't share it. And I would also be mindful to not share it with people that you both know either. Like if you have a trusted friend that you can vent to who, you know, will be a vault for these thoughts and feelings, that's perfect, but just be mindful of who you share with.
Next, except that you are injured and therefore you may be not as capable, you might not be at your top capacity. You may in fact be cognitively impaired by the grief and the pain. So I recommend slowing down your decision making. This is not the time to cut bangs, probably. Next, find soothing. And again, by listening to the pain, it's gonna help you find what kinds of soothing you really need because soothing runs the gamut. Soothing could be self-indulgence, like comfort food, a warm blanket, or binge-watching a show. I wanna say, I really am in favor of these things, but I think it's important to be aware of whether you're using it as self-soothing or whether it is a form of either self-harm or dissociation because using these kinds of things in that way can definitely get in the way of healing and any of these other things that I'm gonna suggest, like, you know, moving your body, getting more sleep, deciding to pick up a new activity or spend time with friends. All of those kinds of things can also be soothing and nourishing. They can also be ways of self-harming or dissociating. So you just gotta notice what you're doing. And that is, you know, goes in with the, fill your feelings, notice what's going on with you have a consciousness and mindfulness about what you're doing and why and what the effect of it is.
And lastly, a thing that's really gonna help just overall is just to keep reminding yourself that whatever your story is, is your story. And it matters and you get to do with it, what you want, right? And at the end of the day, thinking about what's gonna serve you, how you're gonna construct this and how you're gonna grow from this, or learn from this or move through it, make different decisions next time. All of that, again, it goes back to what I said on my podcast about disruption. It can give you an opportunity for growth rather than trauma. So that's what I have to offer you about why you can't get closure, right? When you're breaking up with someone and what to do, instead, if you want more than this, this is like the 10-minute version of my breaking up workshop. I have over two hours of workshop material on breaking up well, that if you're interested is still available, it's available via recording, and you can find it on my website and it's only $27. So it's, you know, not that expensive. And I welcome you checking it out if you'd like, otherwise, thanks for being here y'all and I'll see you soon.
