The Jordan Harbinger Show - 66: Guy Winch | How to Fix a Broken Heart

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

Guy Winch (@GuyWinch) is a licensed psychologist, leading advocate for integrating the science of emotional health into our daily lives, workplaces, and education systems, and author of How to Fix a Broken Heart. What We Discuss with Guy Winch: While our physical body works overtime to heal itself when injured, our mind counterintuitively works against healing the wounds of emotional trauma. Guy explains why this happens and why it's imperative to intervene. The insidious lengths to which the mind will go to keep us perpetually experiencing pain and how we can take back control from our default autopilot. We can't passively count on time to heal all wounds. We need to take a more active role in our recovery from an emotional wound. If you shame someone who is coping with the death of a pet or otherwise lack the ability to empathize with their pain, you might be kind of a monster. Getting comfortable asking for help when we're recovering from emotional trauma helps others understand that it's okay for them to ask for help as well. And much more... Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. Today, we're talking with Guy Winch. He is a licensed psychologist, author, and friend of the show. You might remember his wildly successful TED Talk entitled Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid. His new TED Talk, How to Fix a Broken Heart, is also a viral hit. We need to take our emotional health more seriously. Most of us just ignore our emotional health, and we use food, alcohol, substances to address any emotional distress we feel. However, as we all know, those just numb and cover our distress. They don't address it at the source. There are science-based techniques and tools we can use to actually treat our distress in order to minimize its intensity, duration, and the spillover

into other areas of our lives that all of us have experienced at one point or another, or maybe we know someone who's going through that now. Today, we'll learn why when it comes to recovering from common emotional wounds, autopilot is not the way to go. We'll also discover how our mind is going to be working against us and what we can do about it. And finally, we'll uncover some very practical strategies for finding or being a great source of the right type of support when someone or even ourselves is dealing with the loss of a relationship, a loved one, or even a pet. Lots of great insight into the science of heartache here on the show today. Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of all the key takeaways here from Guy.

That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now, here's Guy Wynch. Guy, thanks for coming on the show. This is a topic I think a lot of people need at one point in their life for better or for worse. Thank you so much for having me. So one thing that I thought was quite enlightening was the idea that when it comes to recovering from common emotional wounds, such as a broken heart, for example, autopilot is not the way to go. What do you mean by autopilot?

and what does that mean that it's not? Why shouldn't we listen to that autopilot? Well, when we break a bone, you don't actually have to instruct your body to rebuild soft tissue and collage. The body kind of does that automatically. But when we have an emotional wound, our mind and our actual purposes can actually be in conflict because it's this hot stove situation. When we're kids and we touch a hot stove, our mind is like, oh, that was really painful. I'm going to make sure you remember never to do that again, and I'll make sure you remember by reminding you about it frequently, by making it very clear that you were very hurt by this, by making it very difficult for you to forget that the stove was hot and it really hurt to touch it. That's great for a hot stove. But when our heart gets broken as an example of an emotional wound, our goal is to get over it. And to get over it, we actually have to be able to move it out of our mind, to diminish its presence in our thoughts. except that our mind is trained to keep very painful things present in our thoughts. And so we actually have to assert control over our recovery,

because if we just let our mind do what it wants, it will keep reminding us of this person that broke our heart, reminding us of how painful it is and doing all kinds of things to make sure we are in significant pain because our mind thinks that will help prevent us from doing this bad thing again, even though the thing is something that's not bad and we would like to do it again. Right. So our mind might say something along the lines of, well, you should definitely never trust another person again in a romantic sense because you're just going to end up feeling this horrible. So next time you go out on a date or you meet someone through a friend, just remember how terrible you feel right now and don't ever go out with them or open yourself up to them because just remember how crappy love is. And we sort of see this. in friends who have been burned in relationships.

We see it in a lot. It's a common plot even in romantic comedy movies. You know, I'm giving up on men and then suddenly she finds someone, right? We see this all the time in society, in pop culture, and possibly in our own lives. This is a defense mechanism emotionally. This is the emotional hot stove. Yeah, but it's actually even worse than that. That's that, you know, at that point, the person is even considering going out again,

What the mind will do in the initial stages of heartbreak is it will bombard you with thoughts and images about the person that are extraordinarily airbrushed and idealized. You'll remember only the good parts, only their smile, only the lovely moments, only the potential, only the way of looking at them that has to ignore all their faults and bad qualities. You will, every time you think of them, it will really, really hurt. And your mind will make you think of them all the time. your mind will make you come up with a brilliant idea of why you have to contact them yet again to ask, because you know you forgot that toothbrush at their house, and you always loved that toothbrush. So you really should get it back. Let me let me call and just see if I can go over and get the toothbrush back, that kind of stuff. So it's really insidious because it feels compelling

in the moment, and it feels very true and real in the moment, but it's actually very idealized and very skewed. That's the exact word that I was going to use, insidious, because it does really sneak up on you. And it's almost counterintuitive. Why would if my brain says, hey, look, this is going to hurt you, never do it again, idealize a past relationship. Why wouldn't my brain just look at all the negative things and go, look at all these terrible things that happen when you open yourself up? But I guess you're right. It is truly more painful to feel the loss of this idealized airbrush person than it is to feel like, oh, maybe I can find another one who's just as good. Right? We want to feel like they were.

the only person and we will never get back to the way that we were and, you know, we might as well just give up unless we can get them back. Right. And that's the thing that keeps the pain alive. You know, that's the thing that keeps it really the pain fresh. If our brain was actually doing the opposite, that would benefit us because we'll be able to move on, but then we'd forget how painful love is and we'd forget that the hot stove is really hot. So the idea is, yeah, show the idealized stuff, bombard with the idealized stuff, and that'll keep the pain as fresh as possible. This is super interesting. I really think that our brains are trying to do us a favor, but it doesn't really help in the social sense. So how do we avoid then idealizing our exes? Yeah,

we have to realize they were not perfect, but how do we remind ourselves of this when it counts? When we start to idealize them, it's kind of hard to go, well, wait a minute. You know, what about all these crappy things they've done? Because we don't want to think about that, right? The brain wants to make sure we feel the sting. Yeah, look, it's difficult. to do, but that's what I mean by don't be on autopilot, because in order to recover, we need to present ourselves a balanced picture. I'm not suggesting that people need to vilify the person or really see them in the worst, you know, possible light, but just see them in an accurate light. And what I say to people is I want, I ask them to construct a list of all the

person's worst qualities, all the compromises they had to make in the relationship that they didn't want to, all the bad moments. And I ask them to keep that list on their phone. And all I ask them to do then is when the idealized image occurs in your mind, just go to your phone and read the balanced picture, read the other stuff, because you can't force the idealized image out of your mind, but you can add in the negative one that balances out and gives a more complete picture. But you have to do that very judiciously. You kind of have to do it each time you get those bombarding, idealized thoughts or images. Do we have a little trick? Like, do you have a post-it note next to the phone? that says, well, I guess we don't have phones that you could have a post that no next to you,

but do you have a background screen on your phone that says, do not call your ex or remember all the crappy things that he did to you? Do we do that? Look, yes, if that's going to help. And actually, you know what? I've never said this because I never thought of it, but that is a really brilliant idea. Yeah, put it on the home screen of your phone. Don't call X, you know, and that's the first thing you see when you look at the phone to remind you, do not contact X. I think that's actually pretty, that should be a screen. screen saver right there. That's very good. There you go. Jason, maybe we can whip one up that's in the right format for most phones.

Just put it in the show notes. Don't call your ex, right? Yeah. Yeah, good, good. Yeah, see, we don't ever say we don't give you the practical tools here on the show. And by the way, not just don't call. Don't stalk them on social media, because that's not going to be helpful. Because all you're going to see on social media is their best moments, right? We rarely go on Instagram and put in our ugly pictures and the flight delays, we put in, you know, oh, this is how beautiful this is, and this is me smiling with this person, and look, sunset.

And so all you're going to see is a very cherry-picked, curated image of the person's live, which will make you think, wow, they've completely forgotten about me. They've moved on. They're entirely happy, and that's just going to make you hurt more. So don't stalk them on social media either. Have that as a, add that to the screensaver, perhaps. Yeah, of course. I can see that working against us pretty strongly, of course.

And it's, look, it's really common, almost common knowledge to say, well, yeah, don't look them up on social media. But what we might not realize is you're not just getting a dose of that person on social media, keeping them fresh. You're getting the, speaking of airbrush, sometimes literally airbrush dose of that person. Oh, it's my ex hanging out on mechonos or something, having tons of fun with her new boyfriend and all of her friends. Her life is so much better now. Look at that tan. I'm in my garage scraping motor oil stains off the floor, right? It's the worst possible thing that you could do in the moment.

You're just punching yourself in the face repeatedly when you do that. What about blocking their phone number, knowing that or making it impossible for us to contact them? Or is it more of us having to deal with the emotions rather than the logistics of the situation? I really think it's a combination of both. And I am for blocking and unfriending and unfriending and unfollowing.

And if you feel that that's harsh, then do it temporarily. Do it for a few months until you're over the person. And then if you really feel, you know what, I can see them now on Instagram without having my heart twist. If that's the case, then fine, then you can refollow or unblock. But temporarily, that would actually be useful. How do we start to balance out our perceptions, right? Because I don't know.

And guy, you tell me whether I'm barking up the wrong tree here, but it almost seems a little unhealthy to just focus on negative qualities about someone else. It seems like we're not just going to demonize this person, but maybe we should have something where we have a more balanced or realistic perception, because otherwise we just develop hatred towards that person, which seems like it could do just as much damage. Well, look, the idea is with the negative stuff is you're trying to balance out because your mind is going to provide all the pluses, all the idealized, all the great versions, and your mind isn't going to provide many of the negative ones. And so you're doing that to really balance things out. If you're one of those people

who actually tends to think in a very balanced way and you're remembering the good and the bad, fine, you don't need to do that. But the idea is that your mind will tend to focus much more on the good than the idealized stuff. And when you hear it from friends, I'm sure we've all been in that situation ourselves, we tend to notice it more when it's friends, because we'll notice our friend is talking about their ex in a way. They never spoke about them when they were together. When they were together it was always kind of mixed, kind of complainy, kind of annoyed, and now suddenly they're the second coming. And that feels, you know, and that's very clear that that's just very, very idealized. So the idea is not to think of them as evil, but just to remember, again, the

compromises, the arguments, the bad times, the stuff we wish they did and didn't do, and all the disappointments and all the loyalty hurts and all those things. But in a realistic way, because that is who we're trying to get over, a flawed human being and a flawed relationship, not a perfect one. Do you make a note like this? Do you take a little notebook out and you write in the left-hand column things that I liked about this person? And then in the right-hand column, things I did not like about this person so that we kind of, if we need a reality check, we can be like, yeah, she was good looking.

Oh, yeah, and she was a really good cook. And we had a lot of fun together. Oh, right. She cheated on me and posted a bunch of revenge porn on Facebook. Oh, yeah, that's why I don't like this person. I mean, does it help to have something we can go to when we're feeling a little bit like lonely or vulnerable or something along these lines? Yes, but I don't think you need two columns again. I think your mind will provide one column itself and you need the other column.

You need the one that reminds you about the revenge porn, not the fact that they were so good looking. Not the fact that she was so beautiful, but the fact that she was so beautiful because even when you're looking at the revenge porn, she kept looking at the camera and making sure she looked good. Yes. So you really don't need the pros and cons. You just need the cons because your mind is going to be all too good at the pros. That's kind of a funny visual, definitely. I can only imagine the stuff that's in your inbox. All right.

Now, you'd mentioned, you'd mentioned as well before that we have to take actions that are emotionally uncomfortable when we're trying to get over somebody. What are you referring to? What actions are emotionally uncomfortable? Well, pretty much anything you have to do to get over someone is emotionally uncomfortable, Because again, our natural way of being, the autopilot is to ruminate about them, is to stalk them on social media, is to write them 100 texts and 5, you know, 50-page emails and to think about them and to go through all the pictures and to talk about them to our friends all the time. And doing something emotionally uncomfortable means really sitting on those reactions, balancing them out, stopping yourself from contacting the person. And if, let's say you have the strong impulse, because, you know, the way it works is, you know, we, if she's at Miconos or he's a Micanos, it's not that we think, oh, they're a Micanos. We go, oh, they said they're going to be a Micanos on this date.

Let me just check Instagram to make sure they're there that I didn't get that wrong. Why that's important? No, it's not. But you suddenly had a brilliant idea that you really gave yourself an excuse to do something. So to sit on this impulse, it's like when you have a craving for cigarettes, for those who want smoked and stopped smoking, you have to kind of. of ride through cravings. And the best way to do that is to distract yourself by getting focused on something else. But that involves an emotional effort. That's discomfort when you're very much yearning to want to contact the other person, to look at the other person, to remember the other

person, to prevent yourself from doing that and doing the thing that's quote unquote better for you, but not the thing that comes naturally, requires emotional effort. It's emotional discomfort. That's why most people don't do it, because it's not comfortable. to do. I make an analogy to physical therapy because in physical therapy, for those who have been through it, you are constantly in discomfort physically because you're working tendons and muscles in a recovery way. So it hurts to do that, but you need to do that to get strong and get well. So you have to tolerate the discomfort. And recovering from emotional wounds involve very similar kinds of tolerating emotional discomfort. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest,

Wynch. Stick around and we'll get right back to the show after these important messages. Thank you for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show. To learn more about our sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash advertisers. And don't forget to check out our Alexa skill. Go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa app. Now let's get back to Jordan and Guy Winch. I like this a lot because I'm imagining a lot of folks to take your smoking analogy one step further,

the logistics, the blocking them, the reminding yourself that you can't do this. This is the equivalent of not having cigarettes in the house, but maybe having a picture of your aunt who died from emphysema somewhere with an easy reach. Right. And then the emotional uncomfortability, of course, along with the picture, might be, okay, whenever I feel a craving like this, I'm going to go in my garage and do 25, 30 push-ups so I'm winded. And the last thing I want to do is inhale hot carbon monoxide.

into my lungs because I just went out and did 25 pushups or ran around the block or something like that. Right. Not everyone's favorite activity, but certainly better than going to your garage where you keep your secret stash of cigarettes and having a puff or two because you had them with an easy reach just in case, right? So we have to sort of use our own psychology against us by knowing where we're going to cave and then finding something else that's engaging enough to do that is also, like you said,

I suppose by requirements mildly or massively uncomfortable instead. Exactly. And here's the thing. I mean, and this is why I was saying earlier that it's not, you know, it's not autopilot because you really have to take charge. You know, you really have to be very mindful and manage a recovery fully because there's so many moments. There's so many moments like this in a given day that you have to be on top of things, that you have to really try and make these efforts toward health. And they pay off because you'll recover more quickly. The problem is most people tend to associate heartbreak, for example, as, well, you just time heals all.

Well, kind of, but A, not well when it comes to emotional wounds. And B, not, you know, can do it much quicker if you actually take the steps to recover more quickly and more properly. But you have to be aware of it and you have to be judicious about following. those kinds of steps. So how do we revive our self-esteem when we need to? Because I know that's sort of the third or I don't know how many pillars we're on. It's one of the pillars here that we have to revive our self-esteem because otherwise we're going to continue, of course, idealizing them. We're going to continue thinking maybe we didn't deserve them in the first place. We took a couple of jabs or a hook to the jaw in terms of our self-esteem, most likely,

especially if we're not the one who did the breaking up, right? That's usually how the broken heart happens in the first place. If we're not the ones that destroyed the relationship, or at least we're the catalyst for that, where do we start to do this? How do we begin to do this? So first of all, I don't think we took a couple of jabs. I think it was a, you know, when we are heartbroken, in terms of our self-esteem, it's a KO. It's a total knockout. We are on the floor. You know, jabs is when you swipe left and the other person didn't. All right, whichever the swiping is. So that's a jab. This is much, much more devastating. And typically what happens, again, rejection is another emotional wound, a kind of milder form of heartbreak, right? And what happens there? Our mind, again, kicks into gear and does the wrong thing. In this case, the most common thing we do when we get rejected is to become incredibly self-critical. We start thinking of all our faults and our shortcomings, because if only I were taller or richer or smarter or something, then this wouldn't have happened. and she would have stayed with me or he would have stayed with me or they would have never left or

whatever it is. So we start to literally think about all our faults, all our shortcomings, all the things we're not happy with in terms of ourselves. We'll go to the mirror and look at our nose and go, yeah, I just hate my nose. It's my nose's fault. And, you know, it's not just a nose. It's going to be a lot of things that's fault it is. But that is actually really bad for us because what we do in terms of our self-esteem is

it's already hurting, and then we go and we absolutely demolish it. And when it comes to self-esteem, a huge percent of the damage that we sustain is self-inflicted after rejection, because we just go on this litany of self-criticism. And it's very natural, and it's absolutely horrible. And I said in one of my, in my first TED talk, I gave the example of it's the same thing as getting a cut on your arm and running to the kitchen to get a bread knife to see if you can make it deeper. Well, it's just not something we would do when it comes to a physical wound,

but it's something we do extraordinarily automatically when it comes to our self-esteem and an emotional wound. And so really what we need to be doing is absolutely the opposite. Instead of actually going through the litany of all our shortcomings to revive our self-esteem, we actually need to focus and remind ourselves on our strengths on what we actually do bring to the table. And it has to be accurate. You can't just, if you're not feeling attractive, you can't look in the mirror and go, well, I'm stunning. No, not feeling very stunning. That's not going to be convincing.

What you can do is look in the mirror and go, you know what, knows whatever, I have great eyes. And really what I suggest is a series of self-affirmation exercises. And if I may just in a second, what those are is that you make a list of the qualities you have that you know are valuable in a relationship. For example, you know you might be emotionally available or very reliable or trustworthy or a great listener. or you give amazing back rubs or you're great at sex or you make great muffins, whatever it is. But you make a list of all the things that you know because you've had enough feedback and you know yourself well enough to know, no, this stuff, these are my strong suits. And then you make that list and you choose one item from that list every day or twice a day if you need

and you write a paragraph about why this quality is important, why it's going to be appreciated by the next person that comes around or why it was appreciated by others in the past. and you kind of do that to remind yourself, no, I have all these things going for me. I need to focus on everything I have to offer rather than the few things that I don't, because I'm not even sure that that was the reason that other person, you know, broke up with me or rejected me, in fact, which is usually true. I don't know that.

So I'm just going on a wild goose chase to make myself feel bad. I'm going to do the opposite. That's insightful, right? Because we don't actually always know, even if the other person's, says, well, the problem is, you know, you're just not that good in bed, so I am leaving you. That's not necessarily accurate. In fact, they might not even know, or they might just be mad at you for something else. They're trying to hurt your feelings. So we don't really know the reason, or we don't really know the quality that we have that the other person didn't like as much.

And besides that, we also don't really know if the quality that person didn't like, assuming that it was an accurate sort of assessment isn't something someone else would love. Like, what if they're like, oh, you never want to go out. All you want to do is stay home and read books and talk about news and politics. Somebody else might go, I just want to find somebody that doesn't want to go out all the time and wants to discuss important things. You know, so it's, I think that's important to know because I do see, especially looking at my own past relationships or friends of mine that go through breakups, they make efforts to

change themselves in ways that don't necessarily need. to happen based on the preferences of someone else that they perceive as then a deficiency because it was the cause or the catalyst for their current pain, which is the breakup and the heartbreak that we're talking about. Yes, but you're absolutely right. They think is the cause because most likely they're absolutely wrong. Look, as a therapist, I've worked with many, many people on both sides. So I've worked with the people who are doing the breaking up, who are explaining why they

want this relationship over, why that's not going to work for them. And in almost every single one of those cases, I mean, yes, on occasion, somebody can have certain habits or do something or have something that just, it just turns the person off so much. But really, in almost every single case, it's the person drifted emotionally, or they weren't ready to commit, or they love the person, they just weren't quite in love enough. Or they really, they've changed over the years and they find they're no longer compatible. So it's usually, it's not stuff that the other person needs to go and address. And by the way, when it is stuff, the other person needs to go and address, in most cases,

that's been voiced many, many times. And so if somebody broke up with you, but they broke up, broke up with you after telling you 20 times, you really need to stop doing this or really you need to start doing that, this is really bothering me, then, okay, yeah, you have an idea that somebody was very displeased with something and that they kept communicating it to you and you chose not to do it for whatever reason. So maybe you have something there. You maybe need to look at whether that's something you do want to change, important for you to do that or not. But usually, you're just guessing.

So what's the point of it? What's the point of changing something where you don't, and as a great example, maybe you're changing the very thing that will be attractive to the next person, number one. And number two, by doing this self-affirmation exercise, You might, for example, be reminding yourself, I'm really good at staying in and having meaningful discussions. And that will then prime you a little bit to maybe I need to look for somebody who likes staying in and having meaningful discussions. It'll remind you the kind of person you're actually looking for. Yeah, that's a great idea.

This goes beyond the whole, and I'm sure you're familiar with this. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone it people like me. This is different, right? Because we're actually writing this out and saying, yes, here's what I like and here's why this is important. here's why this is a beneficial or positive quality, not just repeat after me, believe my own sense of self-worth by staring in the mirror, right? Right.

And in fact, it's even more profound than that, because that's Stuart Smalley, that's the character from Saturday Night Live, who stare in the mirror and go, you know, I'm enough and I'm great. And I mean, those are positive affirmations. The exercise I'm suggesting is called self-affirmation. And there's a big, big difference. Positive affirmations are generic. I'm going to be a great success. I'm worthy of love, I'm beautiful, I'm everything I need to be.

And the research shows something really interesting. Positive affirmations make people with low self-esteem feel worse. Actually, worse, because they fall outside the realm of their belief system. If you're just got rejected, then you're not necessarily feeling very worthy of love. And so when you say, no, I'm amazing and I'm worthy of love, it feels so different than it's so different than how you actually feel, you will actually reject it and feel worse for it. So positive affirmations in the research are only helpful to one group of people, and that is people who self-esteem is high anyway, who actually don't need the positive affirmations.

So they're useless. You know, I know we all have them in books and refrigerator magnets, and that's lovely. They're not very useful. Self-affirmation, again, is not a generic statement. It's curated to qualities that you decided, that you know you. you have. You know you make good muffins. You know you're good at backgrubs. You know you're a good listener. So those are qualities that that won't fall outside your system of belief. That will fall squarely inside it and reinforce that feeling, as opposed to falling outside it and actually

reinforce the opposite. That is highly unfortunate, both for people who have been sucked into the self-help BS and also for people who keep propagating it, because they're actually making everybody feel worse instead of better. Although for some self-help people, that might actually be the idea because then they go to their dumb seminars or whatever to feel better about themselves. But I don't want to give them that much credit. I think they actually thought this was helpful in the beginning. And let me say what about the seminars since we're running.

There's research about them too. And I don't mean that in the most general way. I mean specifically the ones that are about self-esteem. A lot of seminars, and I'm not targeting anyone in particular. But generally the research shows that when you're going to be. go to self-esteem seminars and you give people a questionnaire that ask them two things. One is a self-esteem questionnaire. And the other is a question that asks them, do you feel your self-esteem has improved

after this seminar? So a vast majority of people will indicate my self-esteem has improved after this seminar. But when you look at the self-esteem scores that they had before and after the seminar, they didn't move. So your impression was, well, I just spent a whole weekend talking about things, I must feel better. But when you actually look at the self-esteem, no. And that's why these seminars get popular, because people go and say, no, that was really useful, except it actually wasn't. I mean, I'm sure there are a few that might be, but a lot of the generic ones, again, especially the ones that are full of

positive affirmations. And, you know, self-esteem is an industry and very little of that industry is founded on good science. Some is, but the most is not. Yeah, I agree with you. I think my rule of thumb after having been to a bunch of different things is if I can't look on the website and find a concrete list of skills that I will take away or if the itinerary or curriculum doesn't have a concrete list of skills, something that's like, you'll learn negotiation, you'll learn this and that about this particular skill. If it's just you'll come away feeling amazing and ready for the next step of your life, then I get rid of the idea that I would go to that. Because usually you go there and you end up, you know, clapping and jumping up and down and running around and things like that to make sort of pump up your emotional state.

But then you leave and you go, what did I learn? Oh, I learned that I need a bunch of these supplements that they have in their catalog. And I learned that I need to buy all these different books that the person wrote. But I don't really know how to negotiate my salary any better or create a better positive impression on my people at work or something like that. And I think that's really been sort of the dividing line. because the hype doesn't have any substance if you look closely enough. They just hope that they're going to get you excited enough not to actually take a close enough look in the first place, I think.

No, and I think that's a wonderful thing what you're saying, which is very true, that you should actually look into what are the takeaways going to be. And if it's self-esteem, the takeaways, if the takeaway says it's going to be that you will feel, your self-esteem will feel better. Ah, not so sure. If the takeaway is, you will feel much more in touch with all your best quality. more specific. It will remind you of all your strengths and allow you to really capitalize on them fine. So really look at what the takeaways are supposed to be. I think that's a very good guideline

for these things. Yeah, I think a lot of people who don't have something quantifiable in their marketing, or at least when you dig deeper and ask, if there's not something quantifiable, then that's a big red flag. You know, you'll come away, you're going to feel awesome, your business is going to grow. Why is that the case? But if somebody says you're going to learn how to negotiate from professional negotiators, you're going to learn how your brain tricks you into doing this when you should be developing these better habits and we'll outline these processes, now you've got something concrete where at the end you can go, yes, I have these results or I have this plan. Now I just feel good.

And I'm going to feel good after this too because I signed up for the next one, which is the general plan for I think a lot of these seminars. In fact, I've just seen that so much being adjacent to that industry for so long. I don't want to get too far off track here, but I think that's important because it saves people a lot of trouble and money. Hey, we'll be right back with more from Guy Winch after these extremely brief announcements. Thanks for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show. Your support keeps us on the air. And for a list of all the discounts from our amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash advertisers. And if you'd be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and review.

in iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really helps us out. And if you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe. Now for the conclusion of our interview with Guy Wynch. What about pets, right? And I know that's a weird angle here, but a lot of people, they go,

well, I didn't lose my husband or wife. I didn't lose a boyfriend or fiance. I lost my dog. And I think that creates a lot of grief as well. And I know you and I talked about this pre-show a little bit, I think a lot of people underestimate how much grief this can cause. And also, there's not the same kind of gravitas around the death of a pet than there is for the loss of a relationship or something worse. And that actually makes this problem uniquely isolating.

Yes, that's exactly right. My last book, it's called How to Fix a Broken Heart, and it deals with romantic heartbreak and with pet loss. And people always say to me, well, really, why those two that seems so arbitrary. But in fact, that's exactly what unifies them. What unifies them is that both of those experiences cause authentic grief responses, but they're not really sanctioned in society. In other words, if you're a 40-year-old man,

you are not going into work to say to your boss, I need a couple of days off because my cat died. You're not doing that. And you're also not going in to say, I need a week off because my girlfriend done me. You'll feel equally idiotic about doing that. If you're getting officially divorced, maybe. But if it's just a girlfriend or a boyfriend, no matter how serious a relationship,

you know, you're not going to get probably the support that you would expect or the reaction that you would expect and it actually might end up costing you. And why I wrote the book and why I'm talking about these things is because that is how we treat it in society. But in fact, what the research shows us is that those two things can cause significant grief responses which some people can rival the grief they experience after losing a first degree relative. Pets, for example, cats and dogs and horses for some people, you know, we live with our pets. They can follow us through every critical moment of our lives.

They can be there for us through thick and through thin. And, you know, with dogs, they are so loyal, they are so unconditionally loving. They are so much a part of our lives. We think about them all the time because we have to get up in the morning and time to walk the dog and get home at night in time to walk the dog and then feed them during the day and find a dog walker and then we want to go on vacation. So where should we leave the dog with? Who's going to take care of the cat? Like everything we think about and do considers our relationship with these pets, with these animals. So the bond we conform with them is profound. And then the loss is profound because,

you know, you might lose a first degree relative, you know, but that relative lived far away. You speak with them on the phone once a week or something. They're not necessarily a part of your daily, life. The cat is. The dog was. And so that loss can feel so much more profound. And again, it's, we belittal it. We really don't take it seriously enough. We really don't. And people when they come and talk to me about it in therapy almost always begin with, I know this is silly, but. And then they'll talk about how heartbroken they are over the less loss of a pet. And the first thing I say is that there is absolutely nothing silly about that. It is absolutely terrible. and it's awful and it's incredibly sad.

And so we really have to take it more seriously than we do. So how do we begin that process? Because I feel like there's a lot of shame about feeling so bereft over a pet. There's not a lot of, like you said, there's not a lot of support because we could tell our friends and family members and they might send us a card or they might say, yeah, let's get lunch and catch up. I know you're feeling bad. And you're thinking like, are you kidding me? I'm not going to do that. I can't leave my house.

And like you said, you're definitely not getting time off. That's just, just forget about it. If you ask for time off because your pet died, people might be like, oh, gosh, is she going to be or is he going to be always like this? What a, you know, what a weirdo. Even if we've lost our own pet, a lot of us just forget how terrible that was because it happened 10 years ago. Right. And we don't remember how we dealt with it at all. Right.

And so, look, so the first thing we have to do is, A, be very clear with ourselves that what we're feeling is legitimate grief. and there's nothing silly, shameful, embarrassing, weak or bad about it. It's just nothing to do with that. These are authentic, authentic feelings of a real loss that is in our lives. That's the first thing we have to recognize. We should get support because we know that social support, both for romantic heartbreak and for pet loss, are extremely important. And if you're not sure where to get support, ask your local vet.

A lot of vets are aware of where there are short-term groups for people who have loved lost pets, they might be able to put you in touch with other people, their Facebook groups. There are places you can reach out and get support. And then the third thing I would say, and there are all kinds of things you need to do, you know, but a big thing that we need to consider that we often don't is that when we lose an animal, and really this is true for heartbreak as well, for a romantic heartbreak as well, it creates a lot of voids in our lives, right? Because you were going out with that dog three times a day and you were going to the dog run

where you would meet all these other dog owners who you would chat with and, you know, and everybody knew you in the neighborhood, but they didn't know your name. They knew that, oh, there's Rexy, and, you know, Rexy's so cute. And can we pet Rexy? And you're Rexey's dad or Rexey's mom.

And then you walk around in the neighborhood without Rexy and you're no one. And you become invisible. And you're not socializing in the dog run. And no one's paying attention to you. And you're not getting the exercise you used to get by running with your dog or walking with your dog. And you're not getting the attention on Instagram,

of posting all those adorable pictures of your dog. And there can be real voids that that creates in your life. In my book, I follow a number of patients who are impacted by pet loss. And I talk about how, you know, there were real voids, real changes in their life that got created by the loss of the pet that they really need to be, to pay attention to and to find ways to fill because those voids are just going to hurt and make the recovery take longer. So if that was your social outlet to walk your dog and go to the dog run and, you know, feel connected to the neighborhood, you need another way to feel connected to the neighborhood. And if your cat was a star on Instagram, then you need to figure out another way to maintain and to connect with your Instagram followers because that's obviously it was an important part of your life.

You spent many hours a week doing it, you know, that you need to find a way to keep doing it or to replace it. So we really have to ask ourselves, what voids were created by the loss of the pay? by the loss of the relationship, if it's a romantic relationship, and what steps do I need to do to fill those voids? How do we begin with this? How do we even identify the best sources of emotional support? So I'm going to give you just an example in terms of the void. Somebody told me, like, just a few weeks ago,

that, you know, one of the things they did is that they would always text pictures of their dog to their mother, because their mother loved dogs, and they didn't have a strong relationship with their mom. So it was a great way to feel connected. Oh, here's a picture of the dog. And that kind of was the touch point. And I said, well, now you need to find another content area that you can connect with your mom about, like literally something that basic of, well, what do I talk to mom about

if I can't talk about the dog? Because that's what we connected on and we don't really talk well about other things. So that's one thing. You want to talk to other people who've lost their pets. You want to talk to friends. And there are friends who are going to be supportive. and there are friends who are going to, you know, be there for you and allow you to talk about it. But you need to find those people and connect with them.

And when you make that assessment, some people are very good listeners, that they'll listen very patiently, that is really bad at expressing the emotional validation that we need at the end of it. So if you just spent half an hour spilling your guts out about how bereft you are over the loss of your dog, and somebody listened to you very, very carefully, but at the end of that, half hour looks even goes, wow, bummer. Yeah. It's just not going to feel very satisfying. But if somebody can actually listen and say, oh, my goodness, it just seems so tragic and so sad when you talk about it that way. And I remember how much this dog was important

or this cat was important or this horse or whatever it is, you know, somebody who can actually express their sympathy and support would be more useful. So actually ask yourself, because we typically will just talk to whoever's around, but ask who's good at expressing it? Because that's a very kind of important ingredient. So who's good at expressing their support or their empathy? Who can do that well? I am for talking about it with mental health professionals. If you happen to be working with one at the time, don't hide that because you think it's city. That's kind of what you should be talking about, maybe for weeks even. Also, again, use the resources online to find other people you can connect with. Most importantly, look at your life and see what's

missing in it now that you've lost out and see how you can start to fill those gaps. Is there a process for this that we can do? Is there something we can write down? How do you do this? Do you just sort of do it in your head or do you have your clients and patients actually go through this in a systemized way? Well, the systemized way is like when somebody's telling me, for example, that they would walk the dog three times a week and they would always go to the dog run because they would always see the same people and socialize with them, then I would say to them all right. Then that's a chunk. I literally say, how many minutes a day did you spend chatting with people at the dog run?

And they would say, oh, I'd say 40 minutes a day. I said, how many days a week? Seven days a week. Great. So that's 280 hours worth, a minute's worth socializing a week that now you don't have. It was five hours of social life that you just lost. How can you replace that? what other social activities can you take on to replace that?

Because if, you know, five hours of socializing a week for most adults is a lot because we have other obligations. We don't, you know, that's a big chunk to lose all of a sudden. It needs to be replaced. And so it's not that systematic in terms of, I mean, you can sit down and write down the things that the voids that you think were created. But really it's when you come upon them, when you or thinking about what they might be. And then the tricky part is really brain. storming and trying different things to figure out how you can fill that void and how you can get those emotional needs filled in other situations by other people and other contexts.

Speaking of other contexts, going back to humans for a minute, you'd mention pre-show that we should take out the emotional support or maybe remove from the equation, people who were looking at giving emotional support. Take out the ones that are, that have an agenda, right? The ones that, Oh, they never liked your ex, right? This is a little counterintuitive for me because if I break up with somebody, don't I want to go to the friend who goes, yeah, I always hated her? And I'm like, great, let's dish on this and just go to town for a couple hours over a couple beers because I need to vent. Why don't we want to go straight to those people? Why do we want to remove them from the equation?

Because we are probably not stunned about the fact that they never liked our ex. we probably felt that all along. We probably felt really annoyed that they weren't supportive of our relationship when we were in it. We probably wanted them to put on the same blinders we might have had and said, oh, no, no, she's perfect. She's just, oh, she's just, you know, forget the criticism. She's perfect. And they don't do that and they didn't do that.

And so now to go to them is to feel like they get to say, told you so, told you all along. you didn't listen to me. Now look. I mean, in other words, it really doesn't feel great to have that put in your face because it had been in your face. Now, if it's a friend

who seemed to be super supportive and you go to them and they say, well, actually, I never told you, but I couldn't stand them. Couldn't stand her or him. And here's why. That's different. But to go to the friends we know

didn't like that person is going to make us really pissed off with the friend because it'll feel like, really, it's salt in our wound. They, you know, they told us all along and we refuse to listen.

Ah, okay. So that's, all right, that's something I had not thought about. I like that. So what we're going for here, it sounds like, is a novel perspective or a more realistic perspective, not just someone who's going to confirm what we want to say. Why is it, explain to me once again why that's not that helpful? I want to make sure I understand you clearly.

Because it still seems to me, yeah, okay, we didn't listen to them before, but what if they're empathetic? And they're like, they're really, yeah, you know, I told you this, but you're hurting now. What if they don't rub salt in the wound? What if they just want to vent with us? Is that still less helpful than somebody who's realistic? And if so, why?

No, that's actually really good. If the friend was very critical of the relationship, but once the breakup happened, they completely switch gears and they're only supportive of the fact that you're in a lot of pain, good friend. And in fact, bottle that friend and sell them because that's terrific. except when friends were very critical of the relationship or were critical of the person that you were with, you're not quite sure whether, maybe you are, maybe you know that person well enough to know, no, no, they'll put that aside and just be there for me, in which case, terrific.

But you might not be sure. And the risk of them saying, well, you know, but I kind of thought she was bad all along, or I kind of thought he was, you know, like really bad for you all along, that is just so something you don't want to hear. It's just going to be incredibly irritating when you're hurting for somebody to give you any kind of subtext of I told you so. You just don't want to hear. You're going to have tolerance for that at all. So if you have a sense that that's not going to happen, fine.

The other thing is you can actually say to that friend, look, I know you didn't like her, but right now I just really need you to be supportive and empathetic because I'm really a wreck. And then that might be enough for the friend to just be there in a supportive, and have a lot of empathy. But the other thing about agendas is that almost everyone we speak to has an agenda, right? Because, you know, your girlfriend cheated on you, and that's why you broke up with her. So you go to the friend whose girlfriends cheated on him and he broke up with her, but the circumstances were very, very different.

And so their philosophy is that, you know, that's why you should never have girlfriends to begin with and monogamy sucks. But that's not where you're coming from. But that's the agenda that they have. And so if you go to them for support, their agenda. is going to be to tell you why monogamy sucks and your mistake was to try and enter into monogamous relationship and why do that anyway? So you're going to get a real read of where they landed after their breakup. And that might be useful for you or not. But, you know, it might not be

because it might not be where you are or how you think of things. So all I'm saying is ask yourself what you know about the person, what you know about their agenda, do you anticipate they will be supportive or do you anticipate they will try and introduce their own philosophies and values and feelings and life lessons that might or might not be a good fit for you? How do we evaluate that before we get in there? Because I can see this going wrong where like, oh, she'll be so understanding. And then they just go, yeah, I told you, you never listened to me. She's awful or he's awful.

I can't believe it. I was right all along. And you go, I am so sorry that I asked Angela about this. How did I not see this coming? Or I thought my mom would have known better than. to react like this. Is there kind of a way that we could predict this maybe in advance before it's right in our face and we're stuck at the table? Yeah, because you should, look, if you're going to the person, you know the person, they're a friend. You've probably spoken to them about painful things

before. You've probably seen them deal with other friends in painful situations before. So you should have a sense of how they tend to perform, quote, unquote, under these conditions of needing to be supportive to a friend who is in pain, whatever the pain's about. And so you want to go to their past record and see what they tend to do, how they tend to be, whether they tend to just be flat out supportive, or whether they always need to put in their own little two sense of wisdom, or, you know, you'll have previous incidents, even if they're less severe, even if they're not exactly about this, but you'll have a sense of how they tend to respond to friend in need situations, and based on that is where you make a judgment. Okay, so that's, so,

predictable but still really good advice to look at how they've reacted before because I'm thinking about people in my own life. And if I think about it for a few minutes, I go, did this person react empathetically or did they say something that was not helpful at all? And I think we all kind of have that parent or that uncle or that friend who you know is just going to be like, well, I'm going to be smug about this because I'm going to make it about me. And you go, I knew this was coming. So we just want to avoid that. And I think, it is easy to ignore that in the moment when we need someone and we think, oh, they might smarten up this time.

But are we really ever lucky enough that that happens? Usually they do exactly what we thought. And then we go, I'm so stupid. I should have known that they were going to say this or react this way. They always do that. And then we're just in a fight with that person too. Right. Now look, when psychologists testify in court, and they're asked to, which they're not really

asked anymore because of this. but when they're asked to predict how somebody might behave in the future, they say very clearly, we can't predict human behavior. The best predictors we have are past behavior. So the best indication we have of what somebody is going to do is what they've done in similar situations in the past. Therefore, that's why that assessment is kind of important. But I do think that whoever the person is,

if you're concerned about that in any way, shape, or form, go in letting the person know what you need from them, in that moment. Look, I really need to talk and what I really need from you is just to be able to listen and understand and how much pain that I'm in right now. I don't need advice. I just need that. Is that okay? And if you just let the person know what your needs are, then or I need to really problem solve, you know, how I fill this void because I, you know, my whole Instagram following is about to disappear and da-da-da-da. Can we just talk about Instagram because you're very strong there? In other words, just let the other person know what you need.

Now, to be clear, that's still not going to be useful with some people because they'll hear it and then do what they do anyway. And again, you should probably have some past indication that that's how they are, so don't go to them. But ones who might be on the fence, tell them what you need. Most people will respond when you kind of lay out, this is what will be really helpful to me in this time. That's useful, and I think a lot of people might feel an element of shame around that. I just looking at my own reaction to this internally right now that I'm having. It would be a little awkward for me to go to a friend and say, hey, this is what I need from you right now.

I can totally do this. But for some reason, and I don't think I'm alone in this, we kind of expect our friends or family to just know what to do in the moment. And then when they get it wrong, we get mad at them. Yeah. And the problem with that is that that expectation is, far more faulty than it is accurate. In other words, we're much more likely to be wrong because we tend to believe in mind reading. We tend to think that the person can read our mind and know exactly what

we need. Why aren't they understanding that that's what we want? And I don't think there's anything wrong or shouldn't be anything wrong in just letting them know. And when somebody comes to me and says, look, I need to talk to you about something, not saying in my office because different circumstance, but in my personal life, somebody comes and says, I want to talk to you about something. And really what I need is just somebody to really listen. I'll be like, thank you very much, made my task easier because not because it's just listening. Obviously, they want me to say supportive things, but because now I know they're not looking for advice and not looking for this keeps me focused.

Now I know what they want and how I can be helpful. So, you know, I don't think it should be received negatively. And if a person gets defensive like, well, I know that, you know, then you can say, oh, I'm so glad you know that. I just wanted to make sure, because I'm feeling very vulnerable right now, so I didn't want any hiccups, and I'm so glad we're on the same page. Here goes, you know, and there you go. But we have a bias against asking for things that we need emotionally. Most of us are not that comfortable doing it, period. So this is just an example of expressing emotional needs to people around us that we need them to fulfill. And a lot of us are very

hesitant to do that in general because it means that we are admitting we have emotional needs. And many of us like to go around life pretending we don't. Guy, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to make sure you deliver to the audience here? Because I feel like we have covered quite a lot. It's been very useful. Is there anything left on the table? There's one thing I just want to point out, just because it's a very interesting, quick thing.

It's about romantic heartbreak. And what the brain studies found, is that there is a reason when we're heartbroken, we feel such an intense craving for the other person, and we have so much trouble controlling that craving. Because what they found is that romantic heartbreak activates the same reward centers in the brain that get activated when addicts are withdrawing from substances like opioids, like heroin. And if you think of a heroin user who's desperate for a fix and who is cannot focus,

on anything else but getting that fix, is desperate to get that fix, will do anything to get that fix, will act entirely out of character in order to get that fix. We can begin to understand how compelling it is the need to try and get that other person back, the desperation we can find ourselves in, the proud people who end up begging, the resilient people who end up weeping for weeks on end because our brain is reacting the same way it would as if we were withdrawing from heroin. And why I'm pointing that out is because you have to understand how strong the cravings will be and how strong your fight against those cravings needs to be in order to overcome them.

The thing to do is you want to resist the craving, you know, like you, but you want to, people sometimes feel like I'm going crazy and they don't understand why they're reacting. in the way they are. Why am I? I feel like I'm out of my mind. And we also know from research that that distress of feeling that I'm heartbroken and on top of that now I feel like I'm going crazy really sets back the recovery. And so it's important to not go down that rabbit hole and understand, no, no, no,

you're not going crazy. This is what our brain does when we're heartbroken. This is completely normal. You just have to be aware that it's normal and be able to fight it knowing that this is normal. It doesn't mean you're going crazy. Guy, thank you so much. This has been very useful and practical, and I think a lot of people are going to need this or know someone else who does.

So I really appreciate you coming on the show today. Thank you so much for having me. That was a good show, Jason. What do you think? I loved this show. A couple of key takeaways for me was I love that he said self-esteem is an industry. It's so true. It is so true. And I just feel it kind of makes me feel like it's a very dirty industry sometimes. What do you think? Yeah, I agree with that because I think the problem with an industry, like any industry, is they have to create demand for their own product. So a lot of these, you know what I'm saying?

So a lot of these influencers and stuff that you see online that are like, you are all you need or whatever, all this fluffy crap. I don't think that they're deliberately doing this. In some cases they are for sure. Yeah, definitely in some cases. There's a lot of times people will say like, oh, well, if your life isn't like this, if you're not jet skiing with a smile on your face and a perfect physique, you're doing it wrong.

And these entrepreneur system influencer guys do this. this, the self-esteem industry guys do this. Because we don't just have people selling self-esteem, right? People go, look, I have a great lifestyle. Doesn't that make you feel like you should have this? Anything sort of aspirational like that is going to have this. Lifestyle design? Yeah, it's going to have those same effects.

Oh, look what I can do. Look at all the free time I have. Look at all these things I can afford. Look at all the great stuff I'm doing. Look at all the cool people I'm hanging out with. That is creating demand for, let me teach you my secret systems of six-figure earners or seven-figure this or Bitcoin. that, right? So it's designed to make us feel like we need that stuff. So it's not just self-esteem

being an industry. It's any sort of aspirational stuff that's designed to make you feel like you're lacking. And it's bad for you. It is bad for you. That's probably a whole different show with an expert on that subject. But I loved that the, I love that he was sort of taking self-help to task. And I don't disagree with him at all on that. So great big thank you Guy Wynch. The book title is How to Fix a Broken Heart. If you enjoyed this one, don't forget to thank Guy on Twitter and tweet me, your number one takeaway here from Guy. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply everything you heard today from Guy, make sure you go grab the worksheets, also in the show notes at

Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. This episode was produced and edited by Jason DeFilippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty. Booking, Back Office, and Last Minute Miracles by Jen Harbinger, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should hopefully be in every episode. So please, share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got a lot more in the pipeline. We're very excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like Podcast? If you're looking for a new

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