Letting Go Of Someone You Love (Autism and Broken Relationships) | Patrons Choice

letting go of broken relationships welcome to this month's patrons choice video you're here with Paul from Asperger's from the inside I make weekly videos sharing the human side of autism occasionally sharing also my experience and expertise in emotional intelligence and relationship coaching so this video today is gonna be a little bit messy I started off trying to find a nice neat logical concise effective efficient way to deal with the topic of letting go of broken relationships and I quickly realized that it just doesn't work like that relationships are messy especially breakups are really messy and there is no neat clean ordered logical comfortable way to deal with this topic unfortunately because that's you know a lot of us would much prefer that so I know that for me one of the reasons that makes it so difficult to let go of a relationship is that I'm really good at holding on to a relationship I'm really good at trying hard doing my best doing everything that I possibly can to try and keep a relationship going to attempt to maintain the relationship and I spoke about this in my previous video on the endless chain of broken relationships one of the reasons for a lot of broken relationships is because one person cannot hold a relationship together it requires two people so when I end up trying too hard and taking on too much responsibility for holding the relationship together ironically that actually makes it even more likely that it's that it's going to break down so if I am so good then at putting in effort to hold a relationship together when it becomes apparent that it that it's over and need to do a massive a hundred and eighty degree shift from putting all my energy into holding on and maintaining the relationship to putting all my energy into letting go that's really really challenging especially especially if you if there is even the smallest chance that the relationship might not be over because then it feels like letting go is giving up and I'm not good at giving up I'm good at persisting and being really stubborn you can phrase these skills or traits or characteristics positively or negatively I can be really really stubborn I can be really really persistent what's the difference it depends on the context and if it's actually useful so you may have noticed this video today is going to be a little bit more raw I promised myself that I would just keep going through to the end and it's going to be a bit messy and wet and we're going to get there so how do we let go when we've put all of this energy into trying to hold it together so today I essentially want to share two main concepts from acceptance commitment therapy which are which I'll outline a little bit later so when I get to the point of giving up I have there are a number of thoughts and feelings that all kind of come together at the same time right tell me if any of these are familiar to you if you've ever lost either a romantic partner or even a friendship right can can still feel the same it feels like it's not fair I put in so much work in this relationship and now it's gone that's not fair it feels like I'll never find somebody I'll never find a real friend I'll never find someone who can accept me or I'll never be able to be the kind of person who can maintain a relationship everything that I do is wrong everything that I try backfires what else right what the point of even trying when all of these things inevitably happen no matter how hard I try these kind of thoughts actually make the situation significantly worse so here's the concept and I recommend a book called the happiness trap by Russ Harris that describes this really well the concept is called clean discomfort versus I guess the opposite must be dirty discomfort or something like that basically when you've gone through a breakup of course you're gonna be upset you're gonna be grieving the loss of something that you had you're going to be frustrated and tired and lonely and all of these negative things and it's important to feel all of those things and to sit with all of those emotions and to let them go through so you can actually express them and release them however there are all of these additional things that our mind puts on to the situation so not only is it I'm sad because I don't have I can't spend time with this person anymore all of a sudden it's I'm sad because I feel like I will never ever meet someone ever again in my entire life right you can you can hear the extreme black-and-white thinking they're thinking that this will never ever ever happen and that thought is really scary and really hopeless essentially so if I'm reacting to the thought of I never do anything right and everything I try turns you know that never works out and I'm I'm not ever going to have a partner or a friend then I'm trying to deal with something much much much bigger than what is actually happening right now right here in the present moment so in the present moment I'm sad because I'm alone and I'm sad because I've lost a relationship with a person but instead of grieving that I am grieving 20 years into the future of I'm not gonna ever be able to meet someone so that's called the clean discomfort is dealing with what you're feeling right now in the moment and when we add a layer of thoughts and judgments on to that then we end up trying to deal with the future as well as the present which becomes significantly more difficult so one of the one of the ways to more effectively deal with the present is to just focus on what is happening right now rather than listening to all of those thoughts and worries about the future as well so the the second concept from the happiness trap is around sitting with emotions and you can think about this in terms of if I want to let an emotion go I have to let it be free essentially instead of whole I don't want to hold on to it and I don't want to stop it from coming in because if I'm ignoring an emotion if I'm avoiding it or suppressing it or repressing it it's a little bit like it's standing out the door and it's knocking and it's wanting to come in and it's got a really important message for me and if I don't listen to it then it's gonna it's gonna be there and I'm gonna have to be fighting against it forever because it's not going to go away whereas if I let it free it's gonna come in it's gonna make me feel a certain way and then it's gonna and then once the message has been delivered it's gonna go away by itself and so that's what it looks like to let go of an emotion you're you're allowing it you have to allow it in so that you can allow it out as well so a trap that a lot of us get into it's really easy to try and get out of feeling sad by trying to feel happy whereas actually a lot of the time the only way out is through essentially so another thing that I that I've noticed in our community and I know this was the case for me as well is I would often essentially put all of my eggs in one basket when it came to relationships I would strongly rely on one friend or strongly rely on my partner at the expense of friends so that when that relationship if that relate was notice I accidentally said when that relationship breaks down that tells you something about my past history that I'm working on it does not have to be that way if that relationship breaks down then you're left with absolutely nothing because you put all of your energy into that one person and one person will eventually let you down whereas another way to do it is to spread out your support network so instead of relying on one place it relies on lots of different places so what that looks like is a group of friends a family a community something like that so that whenever one of those people is unavailable or whenever one of those ties goes away you've still got the support of the others and this is another common relationship trap that it's easy to fall into when we go through a breakup I know the the biggest relationship breakdown that I had someone told me don't worry in a year or two you'll be over in like a year or two I need to find someone else right now how am I going to survive if I don't find a you know someone to be my partner right now and what I realized in hindsight is if I had just found someone else to replace that gap I wouldn't have learnt anything and I would have been straight back to square one at the beginning of the of the rejection and relationship breakdown cycle because I didn't learn anything and I didn't listen to my emotions and I was just allowing the patent to go through again so that's why sometimes it's good to take a break from from especially romantic relationships and instead focus on looking after yourself and bringing up that support network and ironically well I don't know if ironically is the right way but it actually helps significantly to let go of the relationship that's in the past if you've got something to focus on in the future that is not just about trying to find a new relationship so I might try and wrap up there hopefully I've made some sense and this has been helpful like I said this is a really complicated topic to try and go through in a structured way because sometimes it just takes time there is such a thing as clean emotions that are a hundred percent necessary to sit with and feel and express and let them pass through you and that's the most emotionally healthy thing you can do to pass through and let it go as quickly as possible so that's essentially the message of these two techniques that I've shared with you from from the happiness trap and I can give you a link to that book if you're interested in reading more about acceptance commitment therapy because yeah as I mentioned it's easy to try and stop emotions but the best way is okay I'm repeating myself now so I hope that's been helpful if you're after more about emotions and learning how to manage your own emotions I've created an emotional intelligence course on emotions explained that's a it's a self-guided course if you're interested in more than that and there's also a free webinar coming up on how to learn emotional intelligence which I would strongly recommend you check out also via the website at www.yourmathgal.com where at this channel for less than a dollar a week so consider that and I will see you next week bye

Channel: Autism From The Inside

Views: 58,827

Keywords: real life aspergers, aspergers emotional intelligence, autism emotional intelligence, autism communication, how to fix broken relationships, letting go of someone you love, autism relationships, autism romantic relationships, aspergers in relationships, personal growth after breakup, autism breakup, aspergers breakup, paul micallef, autism, aspergers, relationships with autism, autism rejection, patrons choice, autism broken relationships, autism letting go, coping strategies

Id: 4nCfNmg2T_M

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020