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Breakups—few life events are as universally painful and disorienting. They can make even the strongest among us feel powerless, consumed by obsessive thoughts and emotions. When relationships feel addictive, their end can trigger a withdrawal-like experience, leaving us caught in a whirlwind of grief and longing. But how do we distinguish between healthy attachments and these addictive patterns? How can we navigate the heartache while reclaiming our sense of self and stability?

In this episode, we delve deep into the intricacies of love addiction and breakups, offering listeners tangible strategies to handle these challenges. Through enlightening conversations, we discuss how to recognize and manage obsessive post-breakup thoughts, differentiate between healthy and addictive relationship tendencies, and understand the underlying psychological mechanisms at play. By equipping listeners with cognitive and behavioral tools, the episode aims to provide a roadmap for moving forward, emphasizing personal growth and self-awareness as key components of healing.

Cortney is a Board-Certified Clinical Psychologist. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Texas A&M University in 2006 after completing her internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Cortney is an expert in eating pathology, addictions, self-deception, and cultural diversity in Psychology.

In this episode

07:52 Identifying love addiction symptoms and who it affects.

10:50 The process of breaking free from addictive relationships.

14:40 Differentiating between healthy attachment and love addiction.

17:21 The reality of relationship phases and their emotional impact.

20:28 How breakups can trigger obsessive focus on ex-partners.

24:52 Recognizing love addiction in high-functioning individuals.

28:37 How early childhood influences love addiction patterns.

33:07 Dr. Warren’s personal journey toward relationship health.

35:26 How therapy and self-awareness help overcome relationship dysfunctions.

40:45 The concept of love as a necessary human experience.

43:57 Strategies for managing emotional distress post-breakup.

47:09 The role of cognitive-behavioral interventions in handling breakup symptoms.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Initiate a period of no-contact with your ex to manage withdrawal symptoms and prevent recurring emotional triggers.
• Keep a journal to note the time and context of emotional triggers, helping you identify patterns and develop alternative coping strategies.
• Interrupt obsessive thoughts about your ex by consciously shifting your focus to something else, using methods like mindfulness or positive affirmations.
• Redirect your energy by pursuing new hobbies or interests, which can help distance your mind from the past relationship and foster personal growth.
• Challenge and reframe negative beliefs about yourself and relationships that stem from early childhood or past experiences.
• Join a support group or seek therapy to discuss your feelings and gain professional guidance in managing love addiction behaviors.
• Clearly define and maintain boundaries with your ex and others, ensuring you protect your emotional wellbeing during the healing process.
• Regularly take time to reflect on your relationship patterns and attachment styles, with the aim of gaining deeper self-awareness and learning from past experiences.

Mentioned

Letting Go of Your Ex (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

TEDx Talk Honest Liars: The Psychology of Self-Deception (*Youtube) (video)

Evolve in Love (*Dr. Jessica Higgins program) (link)

Connect with Dr. Cortney Warren

Websites: drcortney.com/dr-cortney-warren

Facebook: facebook.com/CortneySWarren

X: x.com/DrCortneyWarren

YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQGXD7Ms5oR3GzsPZl3Tjl_9qj71MezHj

Instagram: instagram.com/drcortneywarren/?hl=en

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drcortney

Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ka7bam4AAAAJ&hl=en

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About this episode

Cortney, thank you for joining us today.

Jessica, I'm so happy to be here.

Yes, and I am thrilled to have you on the show. I always very much personally appreciate when somebody has a wealth of research in what they're doing—either currently, or engaged in academia—and then also have the ability to offer it to the world and a practical application. Because that's not always easy to do, to bridge the gap between research and actual practical living. So I appreciate your perspective here.

Thank you for that. I think sometimes those of us who are in academia or have been, we write these wonderfully interesting and important research papers that only other academics ever read. Really, the goal of psychology is to reach each and every person. Because it's the study of you, it's the study of us. So I really value trying to disseminate and promote some of the core psychological material to anyone out there who might be interested.

Yes. I know, in my undergrad years and years ago, this was less available. So I'm very excited in the current state of things that the average person can access people like yourselves, that are able to speak and making themselves available. So it is a treat and a gift.

One of the topics that you've recently wrote a book about and support people in is love addiction. I have some questions myself around how this might differ from limerence or heartbreak. But before we even go into how it might be different, what are you hoping to look at? How do you define love addiction?

I think what's most compelling to me about love addiction, which as an aside for anyone listening, is not a clinical term, it is not a mental health diagnosis. It's really more of a way to describe a pattern of behaviors, thoughts, experiences around romantic relationships that are unhelpful and cause clinically significant struggles in people. And what I think is interesting about this idea of addictive behavior is that from an evolutionary and biological perspective, we're really meant to fall in love. That really intense falling in love experience, for anyone who's ever been through it, is euphoric. It's magical. It feels like probably the best natural high any of us are ever going to have.

And in that way, hopefully we will have sex and procreate and promote the survival of our species. So I think what happened, from my own experience, is that seeing that natural euphoria of falling in love, and then seeing how painful it was for people to go through a breakup, particularly with someone who they were madly in love with. It looked a lot like addictive withdrawal, where you're still thinking about them, you're still craving them, you're still wanting to be with them. You're reliving the experiences of when you were together. You're thinking about how you can get back together again. You're wearing their old t-shirt. You have their toothbrush in your bathroom. It's almost like you're going through a drug withdrawal to a person. So really, that's the idea of what love addiction is based on. It's this natural biological drive to fall in love that then can hijack your experience, either when you're in the relationship because you're staying with someone who you might even rationally know is really unhealthy for you, but you just feel stuck and you feel attached in a way that you know isn't good for you, but you can't leave. Or because you broke up, and now they're not in your life, but you are living as if they're still there.

There's so much that you're saying that's helpful for people to have as context. One of the ways that I have associated what you're describing is that honeymoon first phase of relating. That it is really our whole biological mechanisms of bonding and pairing and that emphasis of connecting, and the neurochemicals that support that. Typically, I think it's 9 months to 18 months that that intensity lives. I wonder, in your opinion, if someone is in that phase and then they have a breakup, do you think it's more intense than someone who has then gone on to another stage of intimate development? Like, next stage is often power struggle stage. Do you find that this intensity can amplify if a couple, if they're in a monogamous relationship, breakup in that first phase?

I don't know that I would say it's so much about the phase as much as I would say, do you feel compelled to be with this person still? They either don't want to be with you, or you know that you need to leave because it's so dysfunctional. That it's really that experience that's going to be the biggest red flag for me, of: Okay, this feels more like an addictive breakup, this feels more like an addictive relationship. Which, to be very perfectly clear for people, that experience of being addicted to a mate, when it doesn't have any problematic consequences or if it's a healthy relationship, I don't want to suggest that that's unhealthy for you. I actually think that's probably what we're all going for as the ideal, that you do feel compelled by your mate, that you do want to be with them, that you are thinking about them, that it feels like a really important person in your life who you are considering and want to be around.

You're absolutely right that as we go through time, it's not always time, but oftentimes it's time in a relationship where you start with the honeymoon, you don't actually know the other person yet really. You don't actually understand who they are, and you might not even understand yourself in the context of this relationship yet. That phase is distinct from what happens as you do get closer and you do get more intimate and you do get more vulnerable. Through those experiences of learning about the other person and yourself, hopefully you come to a place of attachment where you actually see who they are, which includes a whole host of things you don't like about them, and you see who you are, and some things that maybe aren't ideal about yourself. But you still choose to stay. Because you feel safe, you feel connected and bonded in a meaningful way, a meaning-making way, and you actively choose to go on a path of life side-by-side in some way that you determine for yourself. So when the breakups are most bad, and sometimes I see this 10 or 15 years into a marriage or into a relationship, I think, is when the romantic love blows up in some kind of extreme way that was unexpected.

Something like an affair, or something like a realization about your partner or about yourself that leads you to say: I can't do this anymore. A lot of times it's self-reflective, for the people who I would see. The people who I generally would be working with are the ones who are coming in, going through a breakup, trying to figure it out. But something kind of broke the camel's back. It might be that they were still madly in love with them. Or it might be that they don't have those over-the-top euphoric feelings of love, but did feel attached and did feel safe and did feel like we're in this life together. Like, I bought into this relationship, I bought into this marriage, I was all in, and now my whole world feels like it's falling apart. Because what I believed was true wasn't in some way, or my expectations about what we were doing or who they were exploded in my face. Maybe my whole relationship was a lie. I hear people say things like that. That leads oftentimes to that addictive nature of love, where even if you're mad, maybe you're not even in a state of euphoria, maybe you're furious, it's still hyper-focused on your ex. It still consumes your thoughts. It still is like they are the center of your life even when you don't want them to be. I think that's the crux of what the addictive nature really is.

Well, my mind is associating so many different variables as you're describing this. Just as you're saying, even in a relationship that had earned a level of secure functioning, and then the level of shock and surprise when it dissolves or something dramatic or traumatic happens. That one who's contending, it might even not be this hoping to get them back or not letting them go. But just the preoccupation, the level of consumption of energy and thought that is so dominant. I do think that that shows up in grief. I think as humans, we're prone to want to make meaning or having a level of understanding. So that can be a bit of a hijack. If it's not understood or it makes no sense, there can be this seeking to make sense, which can have an aspect of it that can be this addictive as you're describing, like all-consuming, that I've even lost myself.

Even your response to my query about that honeymoon, and what you're distinguishing for one to really look at. Is it problematic for me? Am I in some level of imbalance? I remember interviewing someone who didn't believe, he's a psychologist and he writes about codependence, and he was not even condoning the word codependence. He was saying, to your point, it's really important for us as humans, especially when we love someone, to want to show up, to want to be of service and help in ways when someone we love is hurting. I think the thing through that interview we were getting at was the interdependence, and being able to still hold some sense of self, but also be in a giving way. That's not always easy, and it is probably individually. It's not prescriptive. Like, it's not an exact formula that we can all follow. It's more individualized, where someone who is attending to themselves and their wellbeing, but also is loving and showing up. That's something for one to evaluate: is this problematic or not? So there's some layers here. Am I hearing you?

So many layers. I think at the crux of it, which you're really highlighting, is this fundamental truth that navigating romantic relationships over time is incredibly difficult. Because you have you as an individual who is going to go through your own life journey of personal development and exploration and value evaluation and experiences, which is in and of itself a journey for all of us. You have another person who has their whole own experience of the same things. And then you have trying to come together and share that over the course of time. How do you feel close and connected but still have individual autonomy? How do you find mechanisms to overcome conflict or disagreements in ways that are healing and helpful for you? Or are there times where maybe it's time to split and that isn't even inherently something negative? From my perspective, sometimes that's the best choice with the information that you have.

So where the love addiction comes in, again—oftentimes with people who I am talking about are the people who are going through it and trying to get over an ex, or they're in a relationship that they know is not helpful but aren't leaving—is when that is causing so much distress and impairment to their daily life, where they have come to a place of either they don't want to be with me, or I know I've got to get out of this and I am still completely obsessed. I feel like they define me. I can't stop thinking about them. I can't stop searching for information on them online. I ask my kids who they're dating. I want to know everything about their life. That, and then the emotional distress and the anxiety, along with a potential grieving process, which you described, that many of us go through any time we have a profound loss.

The research suggests that most people report they go through a really miserable heartbreak at some point in their life, and most people also report that they know that they broke someone else's heart. So we're not going to get out of this life without going through a really bad breakup. If someone finds themselves in a position where they're going through it and feel addicted to their ex or feel addicted to their mate in a way that's really damaging their current quality of life, that's really what I think about as the problematic love addiction that I talk about in the book and that we're really exploring today.

It almost sounds, Cortney, as if not accepting the reality. I remember, speaking of limerence, the way I've understood limerence, and I know that still there's research being done and how to define this. But limerence, in the way that I've understood it, is when it's almost this unrequited love, and perhaps the fantasizing that could look like preoccupation, but it's also one's own narratives and thinking and belief, that they haven't necessarily done the reality checking. So maybe you didn't even have a relationship, the pain and the angst and the distress that you're describing can also happen for one that is limerent. There's someone that they've fantasized about or had this intense love feeling towards, and all the things you're describing, even without having a so-called how we might define relationship. I remember when I interviewed somebody who really specialized in limerence, he had said, there's a high correlation for people who tend to internalize their thinking and perhaps have a high level of anxiety even, or are prone towards a little bit more of that anxious or even obsessive control tendencies.

Because I can appreciate it. I work with a lot of people that are extremely high functioning, high level in their industries. In the West, we get a lot of accolades for having things in a controlled or being able to accomplish things, which requires a level of organization and management and being able to have things dialed in, which is a level of control. So all that to say, do you feel like there's some elements that might make someone a little more susceptible to love addiction? Whether or not it is being a little bit more oriented towards wanting to control or feeling anxious or internalizing their thinking, not always checking things out, this sense of fantasizing?

I really do. Much like you're describing with limerence, I think limerence and love addiction, neither of them are diagnostic labels. Both of them are used to describe early romantic experiences at some level. I think limerence, as you pointed out, is much less about being in a relationship or falling in love with someone that you actually are connecting with. It's much more about the fantasy and sort of desire to be desired by this object, this person that you have put on a pedestal and decided they are the most amazing thing, and you have this idealized crush on them. But they may never actually know you or have a relationship with you. Whereas in love addiction, I think it is much more about trying to build a relationship with someone, or building one and having that not work the way that you ideally wanted to. The fantasy might still be very similar to the limerence, but there is more interaction and more of a bonded experience.

In terms of risk factors, I do want to say that I think all of us are programmed to fall in love. So I think someone could experience a love addiction with one person and no one else in their life. Just by virtue of the fact, I see this a lot in college students, I would say, where it's their first love and they just went all in and it was just this amazing experience. Then they end up in college counseling centers, which is a very common reason that young adults go to therapy is for breakups or for romantic relationship struggles. It's sort of this all-consuming, all-encompassing experience of love at a developmental period where you are trying to figure yourself out and there are a host of social learnings going on. That's kind of a unique population that I think struggles with breakups a lot.

If you recognize that you have done this in multiple relationships, or you fall in love with someone and realize that there's something about the quality of how you relate to them that is damaging. Or you pick people who are perhaps emotionally unavailable or represent some idealized person, that doesn't mean you actually like them, but on the outside you're attracted to it. That's where I think we have this amazing opportunity in mental health to explore what you learned about love, what you learned about yourself and your own value, through your early childhood experiences to now.

One thing that I see very commonly in people who, on multiple instances, struggle with love addiction, with different people at various times, that there are issues with early childhood attachment and adverse experiences. So it could be abuse, it could be having a parent with a mental health condition, it could be some kind of a trauma, where they made some really fundamentally flawed conclusions about themselves. For example, they don't believe that they're valuable as they are. They think something is wrong with them. They think no one will ever stay or no one will ever love them. They may have made some conclusions about romantic love that are very flawed, like two people come together and become one. Like, if you love someone enough, it's bound to work. Like, I need another person to complete me, which are very socially reinforced messages in western cultures, including certainly us here in the United States.

So when I see someone who is chronically dealing with love addicted tendencies, may seem needy, may seem like they need continued validation, maybe anxious, may not trust other people or themselves. That's where I think the deeper dive into what did you learn in early childhood about yourself and other people, what did you learn about romantic love, and how can we start to unpack that? Both cognitively, from a restructuring perspective of: Let's evaluate some of these conclusions that you made and how they aren't serving you well and probably aren't true. To unpacking emotional experiences that accompany those beliefs. 

So having that kind of holistic—even bringing in a spiritual perspective, if you have a client or are working with someone who does have a strong spiritual belief system—to reframe what healthy romantic love looks like and how to build it. First, starting from yourself, building your self-esteem, building your sense of self-efficacy, learning how to set boundaries, learning to identify values that really matter to you and how you might meet potential partners who actually have those values. As opposed to what many people do when they date, which is let their lust lead the way and date someone who they think is physically compelling in some way—they are good-looking, or they have money, or whatever. They have the je ne sais quoi that you tend to be attracted to, who repeatedly ends up to be the same kind of person that you've been in relationships with, where you fall in love and it doesn't go well.

Well, I am grateful that you're highlighting, if one has noticed a pattern of experiencing this love addictive tendency, perhaps there's an opportunity to really look at some of those early foundational, I would say relational imprint. Based on our early environment, we have a learning that we developed, and to your point, flawed thinking. But I would also add, and I'm sure you would agree, that based on the circumstances, that was perhaps the best move to survive, and it was adaptive at the time. However, when we look at current functioning and adulthood, perhaps that is no longer the case and is actually not helpful. In a lot of ways, you're really describing an opportunity to learn what we didn't get, or we didn't have the opportunity to develop this healthy relating, secure functioning to be able to honor self and needs and values, and also how to hold space for someone else, and the inner exchange there. If that hasn't been a part of one's experience, it can be totally foreign territory.

It's so true that what we imprint, what we conclude from an early age, we actually believe is true. In the moment, it may have served us well, because it was a representation of what we were observing and what we really thought: Well, this is accurate. 

I'll use myself as an example. I actually use myself as an example many times, because I think it's really helpful to normalize struggles in romantic relationships, because they are difficult often. I gave a TEDx talk on self-deception years ago now. Because I think that actually, the lies we tell ourselves emerge so strongly in our romantic relationships. Like many of the people perhaps listening right now, I came from a very tumultuous, pretty abusive early childhood environment. When I started dating as an adolescent and young adult, I was a mess. I found it so difficult. The first time I fell in love, at first it was exactly as it is for many people. It was just this magically wonderful thing. I thought I had met this incredible person who I felt so close to. It was like: Oh good, he loves me. I'm enough. I love him. This is going to work. It has to work. We're meant to be together. And then we broke up.

What I didn't understand, and couldn't possibly see at the time, is that I was telling him all of the things that he needed to change to make me feel better. The truth was that there was nothing he could do to make me feel better in this relationship or any of my future relationships. Because the reason that I didn't feel better was because I didn't trust men and was absolutely never going to attach to them, because I had already concluded that they were always going to leave me or abuse me, and so there was no point. So I think when you start to unravel, you have the in the moment experience as an adult with another human being, that can be a pretty amazing connection.

At the time, I was desperate to get back together with him because I was so in love with him. But I thought that for us to get back together, he would clearly have to change. It wasn't until years of therapy, and much later in my life, as I started to understand human nature—the process of falling in love, the process of intimacy, the process of early childhood attachment—that I could say: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, it was really me. I mean, there were ways that you were not ideal either. But really, I absolutely contributed to not being able to move on from you, and to creating dysfunction in a relationship that you had no power over. Until I could look in the mirror and start to acknowledge some of the ways that I was systematically harming myself in romantic relationships, I was going to be unable to form a healthy one.

So there's an entire section in the book that I just wrote, that really is about understanding your own ability to be honest with yourself and what you learned through your early childhood into your early adult relationships, and how it may be influencing your experience of this breakup and of your romantic relationships in general.

Thank you so much for sharing just some of your experience with this, navigating this. I can also appreciate my experience in the journey of also coming from not the most optimally secure, stable environment growing up. I had many tendencies, but one of my tendencies early in life was choosing people that weren't fully available. But I later realized: Oh, that's my clever way of not having to confront my own things. There are many, many, many things I could speak to.

But it's interesting that you're sharing this. Because prior to what you were describing, I was feeling that likely some of this addictive tendency is part of the threat system. That again, unconsciously or consciously, and you said so beautifully, how we are all wired up to be in this loving, connected place. Actually, I would say, and I think some research really describes how our nervous system sees, in adulthood, our romantic partner as survival. So when that feels threatened, our activation starts to come on and starts to get in the mix. If we have certain strategies and we're operating from a place of threat or fear, and we're not aware of what we're doing, I don't know how we're not going to muddle the waters or muddy the waters of actual seeing and intimate, or seeing our partner clearly, or even seeing ourselves clearly. Because of the threat and the intensity of that fear is so prominent. What would you say?

That emotional activation, that in many ways, I think it feels like a threat response. It feels like the ultimate anxiety for a lot of people, almost like a fundamental loss of who I am. The number of people who I see as love-addicted conceptually, who are going through a breakup and will say: I don't know who I am anymore. The person I thought I was doesn't exist. My entire lifestyle is different. But also, I compromised my own values by how I responded to this person. I see that I lived, in many ways, a lie of some sorts, in taking responsibility for my role. I acted in ways that I'm not proud of. I have let some of my friendships or social relationships or interests just completely die out, and now I'm sitting here as if I'm bare naked in front of you going: Well, now what? I don't even know who I am. I think perhaps that's something that really comes out in the context of pair bonds and social relationships that doesn't emerge in very many other contexts of life. Because we do need people.

That I rarely hear in people dealing with other mental health struggles, I would say, in quite such profound of a way. Like, I don't know who I am anymore.

Well, this makes sense. That really, for me, emphasizes the addictive quality. Because often, when someone is in this compelled way, addictive way, it's this idea or feeling that if I can just get this one thing figured out. It's like just this one other thing, whatever that thing is, then we will be smooth sailing. Like you're saying, it's this flawed belief or thinking. The other thought that I'm having is, I think it is difficult when we look at the addiction. I've heard someone who focuses on more food addiction. Love addiction, I would say likely similarly, that we need love and belonging to survive, we need food to survive. We don't need alcohol, we don't need drugs, we don't need porn. We don't need a lot of these things to survive. So it is an interesting thing to look at that we very much need, but our relationship to it, but then also how we've experienced that relationship and what we feel we need to achieve or do, or all the complexities around it. It's quite difficult.

It is, absolutely. You need to eat, you need love, and you can't cut it off fully. You can't be abstinent. It's not going to work. One of my first recommendations for people is to cut off contact with your romantic partner or your ex if you're really trying to go through a breakup, because it is a version of abstinence. It's trying to kind of sever the contact. Because when you get contact, it is like a little dopamine hit in your brain. It is reinforcing. It's tackling the withdrawal symptoms that you're seeing. Even if it's a negative interaction, even if you learn they're dating someone else or something really terrible that you don't want to know, it still feeds your brain a little bit. But eventually, hopefully you're going to meet new people and you're going to start dating again, and you might have sex and sexual behaviors again with someone else. Actually, even those other ways of stimulating dopamine can kind of make you go back to craving your ex or craving the food.

In this way, this is when people talk about the addictive overlaps. That when you try to cut off one addiction, you see addictive behavior somewhere else. Because it's the body and brain's way of getting those stimulations that make you feel temporarily better in the very, very short-term, but in the long-term, just keep you hooked on an addictive process that isn't going to help you move out of it. So I absolutely do agree with that. I think even for people who've really been working on a love addictive breakup, maybe they're six months in and they've been practicing some skills and they feel like: Okay, I'm ready to start dating again.

Sometimes when they start feeling feelings for a new person or when they start becoming sexual with somebody else, it flares up again. I think some of that is the brain. I think some of that is the visceral memory of having the stimulus, again, that reminds you of your ex, because maybe you haven't been touching someone else for a while. It brings back that experience. Dreams sometimes start again, not sleeping well, the rumination may come back, all of those core craving symptoms. Those are really characteristic of any addictive behavior.

And what I'm so aware of, Cortney, as you're describing, is the word you just used, process. That someone can recognize their process, and when it is so insidious. Like, it's just a text. We can be in this place of self-deception. So to get really clean, to get really honest, to really have a place to look at this very consciously and intentionally, it's making a lot of it more visible, doing the deeper work around learning where did this tendency or this attachment system come from, and really helping perhaps provide some scaffolding to look at new ways of operating with these core beliefs.

Talk to us a little bit, I know we don't have a ton of time, but you talk about value purpose or value-based choices, and also really looking at the CBT, beliefs and thinking. With this deeper dive, you gave a little bit of scope to that, and I know that would take much more extensive than we have time for today. But you gave somebody, or us as we're here with you, a bit of what that is to understand those early learnings. As someone learns that I had to earn love, or I didn't know that I was lovable, as they start to bring more awareness to this, how do you help people get some stepping stones towards recovery or healing?

I generally think of it as three phases, for people who often come into therapy. The first is to stop the symptoms. So oftentimes when people are on the throes of a breakup, the symptoms are really unpleasant and they're really strong. So the rumination, the obsessionality with the thinking, the emotional activation—sadness, despair, guilt. Any of the behavioral acting out, which might be really impulsive, doing things like texting them late at night, their ex, or searching for information about them online. Or they could be more compulsive, where it becomes a daily process of, every morning when I wake up, I look online to see if they've emailed me, or I reread this love letter that they wrote me last year.

The first phase is really to help give you tools to stop engaging with those symptoms. Because the more you do, the more you're going to stay stuck on this person. Because like all addictions, it's this hyper-focus. It's as if your ex is consuming all of the space in your life, even though they're not there anymore. So ripping that away, you can work on thought-related interventions. The book is really a CBT perspective. But things like mindfulness, thought stopping. We get to the cognitive restructuring much later. Radical acceptance. Living in the truth that currently you are broken up, so any thoughts that tell you otherwise are not allowed to enter your mind.

Maybe they didn't really mean that.

Like, are you sure? So there are all these cognitive skills that we can help, as professionals, teach you, that you can practice, that actually can be incredibly helpful at helping you stop your thinking. We have a bunch of behavioral interventions. We have a bunch of emotional interventions. So using the tools that we know work to stop those symptoms and understanding the cycle. So the cycle of addiction really, it starts with your addictive stimulus, which in this case is your lover or your ex. But for an addict of other kinds, it could be a slot machine, or it could be porn, or it could be cocaine. That there's this cycle of the stimulus is the most important thing in your life. You have all this obsessive thinking, you have all this preoccupation, you craft a life around when you get to use. Then in that cycle, you use, and when you do, you get some temporary relief from symptoms. But then they're going to start again, and it's going to lead you back to the withdrawal. Because after you stop, then you're going to have the cravings kick back in, you're going to have the preoccupation kick back in. You're going to have this whole re-experiencing, which leads you to plan for use again. So how to help people stop that cycle?

As people develop more efficacy, more of a sense that I can handle this. When I have this obsessive thought, I know what I can do. When I have this behavioral tendency or this strong emotional reaction, I'm going to practice this. Then we can delve into, let's really look in the mirror and understand how you got here. Look at some early childhood learning, look at some core beliefs that you may have internalized. Look at your automatic thoughts and how those fuel your symptoms. I use a lot of self-monitoring, because I find it to be so helpful. I know it's really annoying for a lot of people, but it gives us so much data. I'm a researcher, so I want as much data as possible. Because then I can really help see what's helping and what's hurting, and you can see it for yourself as well.

As an example of that is, if you did something that's like, what was I just thinking? Tell us just in one example.

One example, I usually tell people to start with any situation they have in the day where they notice they're most emotionally activated. So let's say you are going through your day, and all of a sudden, you feel this extreme panic. Pause, write down what time it is and what's the situation, what's going on in your environment right now. For example, oh my gosh, it's lunch on a Tuesday. I would usually meet them for lunch. Your symptoms: panic, anxiety. Your automatic thoughts: I would ordinarily meet them for lunch, I'm so upset, I'm never going to see them, our relationship really is over. Effect on your symptoms. I usually use the subjective units of distress as a suds rating. So how upsetting is this to you?

As we start to understand what triggers you, what kind of symptoms you usually have and when, now you have the power to craft interventions to help yourself, to prevent some of the reactions, to more effectively dealing with them when they happen. To say, it's noon, you wrote all this down. Now what are you going to do to help yourself? You're not going to go into a corner and cry. You're not going to text them. You're not going to call them. What are you going to do? I'm going to go to a CoDA meeting. I'm going to text my best friend. I'm going to let myself cry. I'm going to schedule a rumination time so I can just absolutely only focus on how miserable this breakup is. Then I'm going to get dressed, I'm going to continue with my day. I'm going to practice thought stopping and go over some mantras that remind me that I'm still me and I still have value. Example!

Yes, thank you. I love it. I want to just drop the mic. It was so good.

Yes. So as we get a picture of that in your life and how long it's been going on and in what context, now we start to see the stages of grief and the much bigger picture of your life. That moves into phase three for me, which is really more about understanding that when you're going through a difficult experience, a lot of people get very myopic and they focus on it as if this moment in time defines my entire life existence. To help them broaden out, understand that this is just one relationship in a very, very long life that you have yet to craft for yourself. That we can evaluate your identity now. That we can go back and think about, well, who are you now? What does really matter? What would you like in your next partner? How do you want to be different in your next relationship? Then how can we utilize all that you're learning about yourself to make choices that lead you to the life that you're going to live now, without your ex, which can maybe be even better than your last year, than your last life. 

So really, to take a bigger picture scope on, if you feel lost and you don't know who you are, that's okay. You know why? Because we're going to start to figure it out. And you exist truthfully—this is where the existential parts of me come out—as a solitary individual, in one solitary body, who gets to share that with a variety of people over the course of your life that you get to choose. But at the end of the day, you get to define who you are. So even if you don't know what that is right now, we're going to create some experiences so that you can figure it out and feel really good about it.

I so appreciate all that you're bringing in this comprehensive, holistic approach. One of the things that just feels so clear is how you're supporting people stabilize in the crisis of it all, being able to have some deeper understanding and meaning, giving them space to process, and also the conscious, again, intentionality, the self-efficacy, the choosing. That people have choice, that they can create and participate in the type of relating that they so choose and is available. That is a responsibility, but it's also extremely exciting, like: I actually have choice. Thank you so much for everything you're doing and what you're sharing here.

My pleasure. I really just so hope that anyone who is listening, going through a rough breakup, understands that no other human determines your value. I absolutely see how devastating it can feel and how heartbroken we can be when we lose someone we really loved. Sometimes it's not even the person, sometimes it's the dream that we created of what we thought it was. 

So really hammering home some of the truth, which I call Truth with a capital T, which are the fundamental realities of human nature that I want people to know in their core, in their gut. So that a tsunami of breakups could come their way and they could stand strong in their own skin and say: Ooh, ouch, this is not what I want to go through, but I am still me. That's really what we're going through. That's really the goal of any kind of therapeutic orientation or any kind of healing that I think people are experiencing after a romantic relationship ends.

Well, Cortney, you've done such a beautiful job in helping people have access to the resources you've mentioned. Tell us about your book. I can appreciate so many people are going to wanna be able to reference this. Even if they're not in a breakup, it sounds so applicable, just being able to really do the deeper dive, be able to set one up for this choice and this efficacy and really knowing this. I think anybody could benefit from this. So tell us a little bit more about your book.

Thank you for that. It is called Letting Go of Your Ex. It is available on any book website that you like to buy your books from. I also think I found it to be really helpful sometimes for your friends or loved ones that you think might be going through a tough breakup. Sometimes when we are really struggling, it's hard for us to see through the weeds, and having the care, either because you've been through it or because you see them struggling, to say, whether it's my book or anything else: Hey, I'm here for you. Going through breakups is hard. If you still feel like you really can't stop focusing and thinking on your ex, there are some tools that you can try, that a whole bunch of psychologists really research and believe work. I think that can be a really loving thing too. So Letting Go of Your Ex. You're also welcome to follow any of my more academic work on DrCortney.com. I do a lot of research in the behavioral addiction field, as well as eating disorders, body image, and self-deception.

Well, I'll make sure to have your TED Talk, the link to your book as well as your website. I, again, am really grateful for you spending your time with us and all that you've shared.

Oh, such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

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