Can't Keep My Mouth Shut - The Mental Fuckery that is Post-Breakup 'Euphoric Recall'

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

This mofo has a lot to answer for, let me tell you that. Let's discuss, shall we? With love, Nixalina. For more awesome content to read including beauty, fashion or dating & love features, please do head over to my digital platform www.nixalina.com. Don't be shy, come say hai! Head over to my Instagram or Tiktok @nixalina to slide into my DMs.

This podcast contains strong language and discussions about relationships, sex, and love. It may not be suitable for younger listeners. This is the Can't Keep My Mouth Shut podcast, and I am Nick Salina. Hello, it's Nick Salina, and welcome back to another episode of Can't Keep My Mouth Shut. And today, my darlings, my dudes and dalds, we're talking about the mental fuckery. That is post-breakup euphoric recall. Oh, this mofo. This mofo has a lot to fucking answer for.

For those who don't know, you're like, bitch, what are you talking about? What is euphoric recall? Well, bear with me. I'm about to tell you. Calm down. Have another glass of wine or a coffee if you're listening on the other side of the world. And bear with me, please. euphoric recall is basically a state of your brain right and it's not a choice we don't choose it

in individuals right who remember the past with that fucking annoying rose colored damn glasses if you're like i've never heard of rose colored glasses i don't wear glasses okay rose colored glasses is also a saying where basically you look at the world in a prettier version than what is reality. You put on those glasses and everything is like nicer and softer and happier. And then you take the glasses off and it's a shit show. It's a shit show. That's the rose colored glasses analogy. And euphoric recall connected to that is what happens very often after breakups, especially toxic breakups, where your brain goes, oh my God, everything was better than it actually really was. So what happens is you have this sort of semi-addictive thinking, which exaggerates

any past positive experience, but then fails to bring up any negative side, right? So you're like, oh, the glory days, weren't they amazing? Do you remember when we danced on the balcony? Do you remember when we slow danced in my living room? Do you remember when we watched the monsoon rainstorm until 3am together? Do you remember when I was on the back of your bike? Do you remember when we went out together when we got in at 5am and then we ate curry and prata and we just, like laughed and giggled. And do you remember when we did that staycation and we had, right, okay, your brain does that, right? And it forgets all the other shit. It forgets the time that you cried yourself to sleep at night. It forgets the time that they grabbed you by the neck and threw

you across the room. It forgets the time that they said they loved you, but they just spent the night balls deep in another woman it forgets the time where they said such shitty things about you they called you insane they called you crazy they called you nuts what about the time they disappeared you couldn't get hold of them i could go on but what you're you get you get the memo basically they're a piece of shit and i don't want you to have any euphoric recall the end bye um no i'm being serious now informative so euphoric recall is a cognitive bias and actually happens a lot in addictions right i mean actual physical addictions this is way beyond dating but i'm bringing it back so this is why people relapse in any kind of their addiction because the brain

goes oh my god right and it selects selectively selects highlighted versions it's basically your Instagram highlight reel. You can look back at that and go, look how fucking wonderful my life was. Yeah, because you weren't posting on your fucking highlight reel. That time you cried yourself to sleep and gagged up air in the morning because your anxiety is so sky high because you just found out he's been cheating on you with two other women. Didn't post that, did you? When you couldn't focus at work, when you couldn't eat, when you went to the toilets and silently cried and had a panic attack and then had to pull yourself out and take yourself back to the desk because you got too much work to do to be heartbroken we didn't post that did we

and this is what your brain fucking does and it makes sense right because our brain doesn't want to live in pain our brain want we don't want that who wants to keep feeling sick who wants to keep feeling punched to the chest? Who wants to sit in that heartbreak misery? And what makes it even worse post-breakup is it is in fact your brain's attempt to cope with the loss and emotional pain of that person, right? So your brain is going, I can't handle this. This is too painful. This breakup is, I don't want it, right? I don't want it. I know what I'll do. I'll think about the good stuff. And it's also the way your brain justifies to yourself that the relationship was valued, right? And if you've been in a toxic relationship, my dudes and dolds, what happens in that toxic

relationship is there's that cyclical release of oxytocin and dopamine. I've talked about this a lot before, but for those who've just tuned in, new people, hey, your oxytocin is your stress level. You've got that. You've got cortisol. It's your bad shit, which your body goes into when you're in a very stressful environment. Maybe you're thrown into a fight or flight. You've just found out some bad news. You've got that, and then you've got your dopamine, which is all your good shit, your great hormones, your dopamine hits, your serotonin hits. Well, life is good if you're in a toxic relationship there's always a cyclical fluctuation of that always a roller coaster they bring you up they bring you down they bring you up they bring you

fucking back down bring you up and they bring you back down and what your brain does over time is it gets fucking chemically addicted to that up and down that high that low that dopamine release that oxytocin release and then this is why we all stay with the motherfuckers because we go if we just do x y and z we're gonna get more of the dopamine and it's it feels so good oh it feels so good that we don't want to let it go that we ignore all the shit because we want that good shit we're up we're up for the highs those highs are high high highs glorious magical and you want every day, all day for the rest of your life. But that asshole in your life, I'm sorry, it's bringing you back down at some point. You might have a long run of a bit of dopamine, but no, oxytocin, the dip,

the roller coaster low, it's coming. If it's a pattern of behavior that's already happened, it's happening again. But that's why we stay with these toxic pricks, right? Because of that chemical addiction. And then if something explodes or they leave you, right? Say they dump you or they do something so egregious that you go I can't stay through this then there's the breakup then there's the silence then there's the pain and misery of missing their existence in your life then there's the sadness loneliness and in creeps euphoric recall just imagine euphoric recalls is like really jazzy jazz hands human you know all dressed up bright colors like oh hey I see you're sad here I come to make it all better and we just relay back to ourselves every glorious moment

it's bollocks isn't it right and it's something you've really it's not a conscious decision you really can't find it right it's a especially if say it was toxic or a bad breakup you go into withdrawal it's like i said it's about it's a very similar addiction um survival mode and as we've all discovered and i've said many times before human beings are addictive to other human beings there is no greater addiction than love and i believe i wrote that in the prologue of my novel and I'm never wrong I wrote that about yeah eight years ago still fucking stands so your brain is trying to debond itself from that person it's trying to adjust to the loss of all the good feelings and it can't cope with the bad shit so euphoric recall is your coping mechanism right

so what do we fucking do well you can't live in this euphoric recall phase forever it's hindering your healing firstly and it's keeping you fixated on that relationship which makes it harder to move on and it's actually bumfucking you no lube about the reality of the relationship you know you were trauma bonded you know that person's a piece of shit what are you doing? Like, for instance, say you're with someone who's really rude to wait staff, right? Really rude, always. They're rude to anyone they think's beneath them. If you go back, they're going to continue being rude to wait staff. They're going to continue belittling people they think are beneath them. That's who they are. It don't matter if they're really sweet one night and

on the sofa that's who they are so I'll give you some examples um I know you love my personal experiences um I don't it's all bullshit so the fiance my darling fiance he um as we know did some pretty shitty things I'd say proposing allowing me to tell the world we were gonna get married letting me plan my wedding and then fucking a woman three weeks later having put a ring on it that's pretty shit isn't it on a scale of one to ten that's got to be well up there so I broke up with him and when I broke up with him I went oh the spiral down the I went to to the darkest place I've ever been to he's he's the only one that took me there I've got to be honest he took me there and it was because I couldn't comprehend how happy we were versus what he's

do him by my back because whilst and this is why even now I could I could sit down with him and have a beer happily because I don't hate him as a person he was a mess and he had his shit going on but we now in hindsight of course at the time I thought it was a narcissistic addictive fucking cunting prick some of that still stands but as I reflect back as I get older as I meet new men and I'm going from narcissist to fucking sociopaths so we just get worse I look back and think you know what he did love me in his own way right I can be now objective about it but at the time I did I felt that I did feel that so getting over him was so difficult and it was pulling the rug on my whole life right I lost my home I lost my dog my engagement was doomed but

then also my relationship was fucked and I had to move home so my routine was gone like everything everything every pillar of my life apart from my fucking job changed and I spent nine eight eight months just in hell watching our engagement video on repeat crying my eyes out on the balcony didn't leave the house the whole of the weekends didn't eat god I dropped so much weight and I'd go out to drink and just numb myself I wasn't having fun I was just peppered with sadness and of course throughout this euphoric recall just took over he came back he came back eight months eight and a half months later and he told me he'd been knee-deep in grieving and he basically realized how much he loved me and missed me. And I considered taking him back. I considered

taking him back. I let him into my new home. I went back to talk. I went to his new home. I went back to talking to him again. I really considered it because the pain of not being with him was too difficult to deal with. I couldn't deal with it. So I thought, well, I'd rather go back I was happier I was happier back then yeah euphoric recall was telling me I was happier I was being cheated on of course I was happy I was living in ignorance do you think I would have been happier if I turned up at the hotel and watched it happen oh yeah this is my man this is my future husband yeah is she feel good does she let me know when you spunked we'll go home what in what world anyway I let the motherfucker back and I considered it I went

back into communication with him. Do you know what he did? He did exactly the same shit. He fucked off to Vegas, told me he was going on a work trip. He wasn't. He had his phone and his wallet stolen. I think we can probably guess by who in Vegas, can't we? He disappeared. Even before he had it stolen, he disappeared again. He was getting drunk and sending me shitty messages again and it was just I got the slap I needed like you were not changed this this shit is why you are not my dude you're not my man you're not my person and honestly I will be honest that is the only way I got over euphoric recall is I kept um I went back I needed to see once again

i needed to see once again who they really are and that's the shit part is you might have to do this right so there are ways to overcome your throat recall firstly educate yourself obviously you're listening to this wonderful great start love you for it do some more research online try and see where it's come from what's caused it right where you are you at right now and then you need to basically restructure cognitively right you're like well that sounds complicated what you need to do is you need to challenge any negative thought patterns and focus on the reality the reality the reality you keep bringing it back write that shit down post it no all around your damn house right stop looking at their fucking social media because social media

is your highlights, as I've just said. Yes, they look pretty in that tile. Yeah. But remember how evil they look when they're screaming at you and throwing stuff across the room. Do you know what I mean? Remove yourself from the situation, right? And you give yourself an objective, balanced outlook on what happened. Yes, I know there were good times. Even in abusive relationships, there were good times. Abusers are lovely 95% of the time. That's how abuse works. You don't have someone who's a cunt 100% of the time. You'd never have been with them from day one. They lure you in. They're kind. They're charming. They're devoted. They're all this bollocks. And then the reality steps in, right? But that's why then when euphoric

recall happens, it makes it so fucking hard to rip that apart because your brain goes, but, but, but they were that, but they were that, it's your brain, but, but, but, but, yeah, okay, brain, calm the fuck down, this, they were that, but they were all the other stuff, and we broke up for a reason, I always focus on the breakup, what was it that happened for you to go, this relationship is over, or they walk away from you, can't do it anymore, done, where, where, where did you get there? How did you get there? Why did you get there? Focus on that. That really helps. And sometimes, my darlings, we just need to accept that perhaps our exes weren't really good for us. I don't care how much your sunken cost has done. How many years

have you invested? I don't think that matters because we can invest so much time with the wrong person. The breakup happened for a reason. You were unhappy for a reason. Do not let your addicted, chemically annoying, shitty little brain and its euphoric recall fuck you over and neglect the fact of the reality of everything that you went through, of everything that you live through, of the reality of that person. You know who they are. You know. You know who they really are. You've seen their core. And even if they're not toxic, what if they're just not for you? Do you know what I mean? It's okay. It's okay that they're just not for you at this point. So whilst I'm going to wrap this up, whilst I completely understand this is so beyond your

control. I get it. It's fucking annoying, but it's also normal, right? So don't start beating yourself up because you're missing someone who was a cunt to you. It's normal. Accept it. Give yourself judgment free. I'm telling you it's normal. It has a fucking term. It's a label for a reason. You are scientifically, chemically trauma bonded to that person. And even if you're not trauma-bonded. Your brain does this anyway post-breakup, right? Give yourself some grace. So breathe in and out together. Give yourself some grace. Give yourself some love. Sit down with yourself. Give yourself some reality checks. Write everything that happened down. Discuss with your friends, your family. Get a therapist if you must to untangle what really

happened and all the while start your healing start your healing journey go no contact with them sit through the pain once you you're sorry i need to make this clear euphoric recall don't happen forever oh no mine is usually a three month out of push six months if i actually buy sit i'd say six months i then have no rose colored glasses i look back on them and go obviously the fiance managed to win me back after eight and a half months but he was a special breed of man I'll leave that there and also I was a lot younger and I really loved him and I was I'm gonna marry him I wanted to marry him so six months is usually my it's but if I've got no contact right it's very important if I start to it six months is when I have a cyclical change in

my brain and i go oh really oh i see them out and i look at him and i'm like really and i say to my friends was he really was he always that unattractive they're like yep i'm like really really yes he's always been this way what what was i thinking do you know i mean give yourself the grace three to six months euphoric recall won't last forever and i promise you once you get through this with me i'll be there i'll hold your hand every step of the way you will just ah my god isn't life great again no more mental gymnastics no more thinking about them from your the waking moment to the night you go to sleep no more it's all gone you are free you feel free and it's the honestly that is the most addictive feeling that is fucking epic you wake up like

you on cloud nine every day. And all you are is at peace, just mental peace. Glorious, fucking glorious. And on that note, that positive note, I shall end this episode. If you want to talk to me about euphoric recall, toxic relationships, bad breakups, or anything in between, my DMs are always open for you. Reach me on Instagram at nixalina, N-I-X-A-L-I-N-A. And with that, I am closing season nine. What? Yes, my darlings, this is the end. This is the end of season nine. Why do I sing everything? I cannot believe five years, six years, five years and fucking nine seasons. And you guys have stuck with me through everything. I am so grateful. I'm so happy. I can't, I cannot thank you enough. You guys are still keeping me in the charts. Wild. Globally.

Globally? Man, it freaks me out whenever I look at my statistics. And I have you to thank. All of you. Are you listening right now? Like, you mean something to me. Because you listening, staying till the end, listening every week. You make this just such a pleasurable experience for me. And I'm not all about the ratings. You know I'm not. I'm about helping the community. I'm about helping individuals overcome shitty situations. But do you know what? Do you know what? This is the parasocial relationship that we have because you guys help me overcome my shitty situations. I get to talk about it it's cathartic

I get to express myself and I get it out of my body which helps me move on to so it's beautiful it's poetic I love it I'm going to take a short break but season 10 it won't be long

it'll only be a month max and season 10 I'm going to come in hot have some really glorious episodes already planned for you I'm literally just dipping out for the summer so I will wrap this up here have a wonderful summer my dudes and dolls I love you lots and I'll see you in season 10 thanks for listening to the can't keep my mouth shut podcast produced and hosted by me Nick Selena I'm recorded in the Splice cast studios in Singapore I'm available

to listen to on spotify apple podcasts google and all major podcast listening apps do subscribe to enjoy a new episode every monday evening please do give me a five-star review it helps other people also find my podcast for more content and features to read you can check out my website nixalina.com that's nixalina.com i'm also on social media simply search at nixalina N-I-X-A-L-I-M-A to find me don't be shy come say hi