I love this, but I’d also love some practical advice on how we do this. How do we show up for ourselves when we are hurting and feel wronged? Since my last relationship ended I am so mad at the world and at him. I know I’m mad at myself too for accepting less than I deserved and not being able to find calm ways to set boundaries, but I do not know how to move forward. I am exhausted and stagnant, I feel shame because I want someone to come look after me until I feel less fragile but I don’t know how to move forward. I’m so stuck in the disappointment of my life and the loss of my dream( finally I met someone) that I can’t see any hope and that cripples me.
I understand and I'm sorry! I've been there and I found it incredibly difficult to convey to my friends just how upset I was. A lot of people who have less shame or mute their shame or treat love like a very practical thing, like a car that works or breaks down and you just get another one, tend to treat break ups like "Oh, yeah, break ups are hard! Good luck!"
You need to appeal to a friend who understands how intense a break up can be, particularly when there's this layer of shame that keeps telling you that you did something wrong, that your sadness and anger did this, that you are inherently unlovable. But you also need to make this appeal to yourself every day: remind yourself that smart, sensitive, emotional women don't bounce back from these things that easily because all of the pain and shame from every corner of our lives (that we've been suppressing in order to match those who are more concrete and deal with the world in simpler, more reductive, more practical ways) floods out at once. I have two friends going through this right now. They're devastated and angry and it's not just this one relationship, it's everything they've ever felt and buried before.
Breakups can feel like a death because they function the same way in many of our lives, and we need more than to just bounce back for that reason: we need to mourn, yes, but we also have to make some space for all of the grief and sadness and despair that we've suppressed for so long. This part is extremely important, because if you say "I WILL SNAP OUT OF THIS" you're kind of lodging yourself under a mountain of pain and shame and yelling at yourself "MARCH, SOLDIER!"
Tell a friend you need some care. I think that's what you're asking permission to do. But also, tell yourself, every day, that you still need care. You still feel fragile and you're not going to feel hope until you fully allow some space for the despair you're feeling. I need you to get this part, if nothing else: your shame at feeling as upset as you are over this is exacerbating your pain. You're the one person who can decide that this pain is normal and stand up for it. IT makes sense, and you're allowed to express it and mourn for as long as you need to.
Along with that pain I want to strongly encourage you to exercise. That's the last thing you want to do, but it's the one thing that will dig you out of a dark emotional well without fail, even if everything else doesn't improve. Make it a priority if you're able to exercise. Listen to music and cry and walk and then run occasionally and walk again. If you already work out, give yourself a more ambitious goal. Being ambitious about exercise is a fitting distraction and it will give you hope, even if literally every other thing is shit. I am not a big fitness person as a rule but lately running has completely rewired my brain. I can't recommend this strongly enough.
I know that gratitude journals are (big sigh) just chafing, but every time I've been at my absolute lowest, and I've turned to this habit out of utter depressed desperation, it's helped me. I think focusing on tiny things and small favors and small gestures and one or two reliable people is so important, even if one of them is YOU. At night, when you feel angry and shitty, write down that you're thankful you can swallow water. I'm not even kidding. Write down that you will feel sunshine on your face tomorrow. Each little drop of thankfulness will add up. Even if you stay sad that night and the next day, tiny little baby steps toward saying "i am still alive, my life is still full of wonder" are enough. Believe in very very small bubbles of gratitude.
Write BE VULNERABLE on the wall somewhere. When you're in pain, you need reminders not to choke on it. I did this after a terrible, scary, lonely breakup when I was 31 and panicked at being alone, and it reshaped the way I behaved around other people. I made it much clearer how much connection I needed to survive. I asked and new friends sort of appeared out of the woodwork because I was very open and honest and vulnerable about my position in life. Believe in that magic as much as you can, the magic of being your IN PAIN self without expectation or guilt or apology.
After you forgive yourself (many times a day) for everything that's gone wrong, I want you to remind yourself that there is no point in your life when you pull magic and love and fun toward you quite like the dark period where you're just emerging from a terrible loss. When you start to welcome your feelings (even sadness) instead of beating them back, when you start to admit how much shame you lug around, when you're in the process of mourning a whole lifetime of shame, you become unexpectedly magnetic and big things spring to life and good things happen. This sounds absurdly optimistic and counterintuitive, but watch and see. This is one of the most fertile moments of your life so far. Remind yourself of that, even if you don't believe it. Say to yourself I INTEND TO VIEW THIS AS A FERTILE TIME, FULL OF MAGIC, IN SPITE OF MY PAIN! Intention is the first step.
Then put on your running shoes and walk out, into the sunlight, and say to yourself, "I'm still alive and anything can happen."
This is my advice for 19 year olds and 99 year olds. As long as you're alive, anything is possible. You never age out of joy and love, ever. Every single day is going to bring you new adventures and new opportunities to feel alive and beautiful and grateful, if you open your heart wide and celebrate that you're alive enough to feel sadness, to feel pain, to show yourself to the world knowing that you're just a human like any other.
Please hang in there. Buy a vegetable, cook it, eat it, go for a walk. Bring the sadness with you and feel it. You made this man into something sublime - you still own the magic that did that. You can bring it with you to someone else. Love will find you again, trust me on that. You just need to love yourself like crazy in the meantime. You're not alone. xooxoxox
My first baby steps in this direction were very simple: organise genuinely nice things for your future self. My present self was a mess of emotions and too damn hard to deal with, but my future self was a distant concept I could work out how to do right by. I could step in the role of my own PA almost. I organised calls with friends, healthy meal plans, solo dates, the occasional treat online, optimised my morning routine etc. Yes, it's basic, but every time that advance planning paid off I slowly learned to think of myself as a person who makes good decisions for themselves most of the time. Building up that trust made forgiveness easier.
This is so practical and smart! I would only add that I sometimes say to myself, "Treat yourself like you'd treat your own daughter," i.e. "Shouldn't you take a break and have a nice apple for a snack?" "Is the world closing in or are you very tired? Maybe don't think about this problem until tomorrow." "Your friends love you and just being around them might feel good for a few hours. Why not suggest a plan for the weekend?"
This also applies to big dreams and weird desires: whatever your daughter brings to you, you say, WOW THIS IS BEAUTIFUL and hang it on the wall. Treat yourself with that kind of honor and respect as much as possible. Dare to believe that you can have anything you set your mind to, the way you'd encourage your own child to do if you had one. But also, be organized and gentle for your own sake, as you so nicely put it in your post!
This is absolutely the level I was having to sort myself out on! "daughter", "inner child", "future self"...whatever image is easier to project gentle care on to.
Thank you, I’m genuinely doing ALL of this but the grief isn’t easing, 8 months later I’m more filled with rage and shame than ever and out of coping techniques. I gave myself a long vacation and spent it numb and crying. I’ll keep trying and I appreciate you sharing this though X
I did but I parted ways last week because she suggested I could work on my angry outbursts with future partners with her. I was like I’m sat here saying I’m more desperate than ever and suffering now and you want to focus on a hypothetical new relationship? For the record I was proud of how much patience I did show my ex who was neurotic and complicated so that also felt like an unfair assessment of what I need to work on. I felt like she was out of her depth and will look for someone new.
I get it. I understand why she'd go there - as a path to encouraging you to trust yourself and protect yourself - but I also think that if your sense is that she was out of her depth, then you should absolutely trust that instinct. I had a therapist I truly did not trust or respect once, and it was pointless. It didn't matter WHY. It's a relationship. And saying no to something that doesn't work for you is good for you, period.
I don’t have a good, uncomplicated/very specific to my circs answer to your question (I’m hoping HH does!). But I just wanted to say that what you describe is SO familiar to me, I have been there and it’s fucking HORRIBLE. And for what it’s worth, I no longer am, and I’m now able to look at the ex(es, ha!) in question and not feel rage, and look at my past self and feel forgiveness. Saying this both to say, I am so sorry that you’re in that place. It’s SO HARD. And to offer hope as ghost of Christmas future, that there will come a day where you don’t feel like this.
I hope you get some peace soon. Or at very least a night’s sleep without angry conversations in your head xo
Oh wow thank you for this! I used to be such a tenacious person I was so good at looking at the horizon and aiming for it even in the hard times. Somehow this time that eludes me.
I’m grieving the loss of us, and all the bigger dreams I’d held tightly to for so long that only a partner could make possible. It’s a comfort to hear it can pass as that seems impossible right now. Thank you for taking time to offer comfort to me xo
I think that these kinds of break-ups (where we're mad at ourselves as well as them) tend to bring up ALL OUR STUFF in a way that obliterates the horizon. But I promise you I can see it beautifully from here. And not because the perfect other partner came along and solved all my problems, but because I figured stuff out myself (with, of course, help from friends, a therapist and this newsletter!!) Good luck through this hard season. If your natural orientation is to be tenacious, I am CONFIDENT you'll get back to that xxx
I I understand your pain. I used to be quite good at handling emotional crisis as well until I couldn’t for some reason, and I suddenly started having panic attacks.
Exercising helped me a lot. In particular the vigorous type, the ones that get your tongue 👅 out lol 😂
Also going back to my creative self helped me and still does. Writing and drawing to make my Tarot Journals brought me back to myself, even though it brought me back to a different ‘me’ .
Pain changes you and it can change you to give you more dimensions, more depth, you see more, feel more, understand more.
I’m still sad sometimes, but I’ve learned to live with that sadness while also finding moments of joy. It might sound strange, but I’ve learned to feel both feelings at the same time, something I didn’t think was possible.
I truly believe that being creative is when we feel closest to something greater within, something divine and experience deep love and joy again that is not attached to anything external without dismissing the external either.
Thank you for writing about shame and forgiveness. Keep writing about it! Its not like I (and I expect others) can read one column and say "Of course!" and completely transform.
Thank you! As someone who has had to relearn the same lessons over and over, I guess I agree. And shame is one of those terms that's so ubiquitous and can mean so many different things that it takes a while to drill down into the center of all the ways it fractures your self-esteem and compromises your happiness. But maybe I should rename Ask Polly ASK A SLOW LEARNER. Heh.
The really transformative emotional work, in my experience, requires a lot of repetition and revisiting the same core anxieties that rule you, ideally without making them all into neurotic puzzles. That's the key part that I think I also have to repeat often: This stuff is emotional. If you're stuck in an agitated state of "what's the answer? how do I get out of this? what am I doing wrong?" you're going to stay angry and ashamed. You have to move into your body and say, "I won't solve puzzles today. I'll greet the cold air and track each falling leaf. I will treat this oxygen, this aching, this longing, even this sadness as art, appreciate it, celebrate it, relish my pain, and applaud my courage."
In other words, these concepts come in as intellectual exercises (ideas on the page, in the form of words, entering your brain), but in order to make progress and feel better, you have to feel your way toward real forgiveness, acceptance, and presence in the moment. The future is set aside, and the present moment is greeted with an open heart. A lot of the time your brain is saying WAIT ARE YOU FUCKING UP? or UGH ANOTHER SHITTY MOOD, MORE ANXIETY, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? but you're training your body and heart to answer NO IT'S OKAY, I'M DOING FINE, KEEP CRAWLING, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, LITTLE FRIEND, AND I BELIEVE IN YOU.
While "ASK A SLOW LEARNER" would be a great column title... I humbly suggest "WAIT ARE YOU FUCKING UP?" might be even better.
"WAIT ARE YOU FUCKING UP? or UGH ANOTHER SHITTY MOOD, MORE ANXIETY, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?" is basically my brain all day every day. Thank you for expressing it in a way I could not.
I like “little friend” and I also love that in Liz Gilbert’s newsletter “Letters from Love” (?) she encourages people to send in the pet names they give themselves in their own “letters from love.” It’s so much fun to call yourself “my little chickadee” or “my little slice of warm bread” or “ma chouette” (whatever that means) and inhabit that feeling.
I’m working thru my first major breakup post fully embracing my queerness at age 37 and it’s excruciating. I feel too old to feel this helpless! I ended it but have felt painfully ambivalent about the separation. Is this hard because breakups or hard? Is it hard because this *isn’t right*? Did I mess it up? Did she mess it up? Was it simply an incompatible dynamic? Could I have tried harder? Could I have advocated for myself differently and then would she have been less triggered and then would we be in sunshine-and-rainbows land again? Is that even a real place? The mind loops are sooo seductive and wow so hard to escape.
Attempting to practice forgiveness, though, does feel like one of the most actual useful antidotes though - forgive myself, forgive her, forgive myself for not immediately being clear or okay about it. Forgiveness is so soft and so present and so worthwhile. Oof. Deep work, pals. Thank you Heather!! “I INTEND TO VIEW THIS AS A FERTILE TIME, FULL OF MAGIC, IN SPITE OF MY PAIN!!!”
Love this. So much of this moment for you is saying to yourself, while you're in pain, even, or while you're longing for your ex, "I can be present to this feeling and be patient with it. I don't have to fix anything or solve anything. I don't have to own anyone or write them off forever. I can learn from this soft feeling of acceptance in the moment. I can live with this reality and love this day and be a person who is sometimes confused, who can't see the future clearly. I can receive this humbling moment and let it transform me into a softer, gentler, more present person."
The power of that kind of patience and non-ownership and presence is huge. Suddenly you have this strange ability to connect deeply with others, because you're not trying to get anything, you're in this welcoming, accepting position that makes everything you do easier and more beautiful. Okay that sounds super weird, but I think you already sort of get it and you're maybe even almost ENJOYING being where you are at some level?
You're never too old to feel pain, to feel helpless, to crave love. This stuff continues until you're dead! Things don't just get good and stay good. You have to show up for life every day and let it have its way with you. You're at the start of this beautiful path, though! There's so much NEW BIG GIGANTIC POWERFUL magic in the air, thanks to the fact that this might be the first real, true, big love you've experienced? I don't know! The irony of caring A LOT about a breakup, more than ever before, is that it's a sign that you're starting to understand what you're TRULY passionate about. And whether or not you GET the person/place/thing you're passionate about, whether or not you can CONTROL that force in your life, that passion is still there, in your body. You own that passion. And you can take it with you.
Enjoying how much you care is a tough thing, for people who are truly cowed by shame. But once you remove the shame and savor the CARING, the depth of it, the passion of it, it can feel more like a celebration, more like something that feeds you, more like gratitude itself.
Hiiiiiii toxic shame un-learner here. Like, it runs so deep. It’s in my DNA.
I am all about the repetition in your posts recently, especially because I can see and feel the peace and transformation of the beginnings of forgiveness in myself (I have an A+ therapist who is helping me with inner child work, parts work, sticking to somatic exercises like they’re PT, etc).
I guess along the same lines as others are asking, can you break down HOW you forgive yourself in these little bits throughout the day? Maybe explain like you’re explaining to your kid, or a grandma or something… Because I know for me, hearing “and now, forgive yourself” lands like… well I have no idea what it means really, lol. Like HOW??? What does that even mean?? (Also laughing at myself because this is such an anxious response/train of thought and sometimes we can’t explain or intellectualize things BUT if we can you’re the one who can do it ok love you bye)
I've been practicing forgiving myself throughout the day and it's been interesting what I've found. When I'm in shame, sometimes when I forgive myself or give myself compassion, I'm so desperate to feel okay that it can go too far in the other direction -- so I say, "yeah, your feelings ARE valid, everyone really DOES suck!!!" or "I forgive you for saying that weird thing, 'cause it actually wasn't weird at all, and you're perfect!!!!" This eagerness to absolve myself, I know, is the other side of the same shame coin, but it makes a part of me hesitant to forgive myself, fearing that I will only reinforce my worst behaviors and impulses.
So I've found that when I really forgive myself as I think Polly is describing, it's a kind of equanimity and almost detachment -- I guess like a parent -- just giving a feeling of relief and space, rather than justifying or fixing. My mind is so quick to then try and MAKE something of the peace I feel -- "Ok, great, now that you're all forgiven, let's work on changing that!!" And it actually takes a lot of strength and energy to hold onto that moment of presence & relief without having it go anywhere. It takes a lot of trust in myself and the universe that that feeling is worthwhile, even if my logical mind can't see how yet. I do understand how it's like an exercise, strengthening a muscle, because it somatically FEELS like I'm holding a plank or something when I try to sit in that space of open forgiveness. But, when I can, even for a moment, I've sometimes actually taken a big sigh of relief, and can feel my whole body relax.
Anyway, I don't really have a conclusion to this. I just wanted to share how this practice has been showing up for me; maybe others have had similar experiences (or totally different ones!!). I'm so thankful for this space to talk about all these subtle emotional experiences that are always on my mind!
Once I have an understanding of my want or need, I will sometimes ask the other person, "Would you like to hear about my feelings/wants/needs?" "Would you like to know how X came across to me?"
As mechanical as those sound, I don't know what else to do.
If I feel like my thoughts or feelings are not wanted (by the other person) and there is no obvious external signal or message from them that I should just SFTU, then I will ask if they want to hear me. I don't want to simply give in to the belief that my voice is not wanted. But I also don't want to drop my words on them either - because I really don't know if they want to hear me; so I ask.
But I do think that asking if they want to hear me is a new, weird way I am protecting myself and I don't know what to do.
I don't think asking another person if they are ready to hear you is protecting yourself in a bad way. It's actually very respectful to both parties involved.
Like all of you, I take incessant screenshots of Ask Polly posts. This was one for the ages. But I’m actually just making this comment to say that that “No, YOU’RE the wound!!” exchange on “Girls” was downright HILARIOUS. That show was so deeply good and of course we shit all over it at the time because people didn’t like the (female, privileged) creator-writer but rewatching it a decade later I bow down to how crisp and funny it was.
I probably need to read this again, later, and let it sink in, and maybe the unsettling argumentative feeling it gives me will go away. I'm a big HH fan and you're usually spot on, but there's something sticking in my craw with this post. Something about letting bad people, bad actors, off the hook for their bad acts. Because not every bad actor is a wounded person just trying to do their best and messing up. There are many people out there who do bad things, who use, manipulate and lie, and benefit from it, and feel no shame. And it seems counterproductive to tell them the answer is to tell their victims to just let it go. Yes, it is true that they may not be able to exact justice by lashing out, and maybe they need to accept that there won't be justice so they can move on. But that doesn't change the fact that something unjust happened, that wasn't necessarily the result of two people trying their best and failing. And maybe there needs to be some analysis of what the bad actor did wrong and why they fell for it, done through the lens of the other person being a bad actor. There are people out there who deserve condemnation. When we give them a pass, we are, maybe in a small way but still in a way, complicit in their future bad acts.
This is so fabulous. Last week I vowed to forgive myself every day, and did for several days, and then slowly, unconsciously returned to my mummy state. I will be rereading this every day and practicing until I internalize that I am a fairy. A million thanks.
I love this, but I’d also love some practical advice on how we do this. How do we show up for ourselves when we are hurting and feel wronged? Since my last relationship ended I am so mad at the world and at him. I know I’m mad at myself too for accepting less than I deserved and not being able to find calm ways to set boundaries, but I do not know how to move forward. I am exhausted and stagnant, I feel shame because I want someone to come look after me until I feel less fragile but I don’t know how to move forward. I’m so stuck in the disappointment of my life and the loss of my dream( finally I met someone) that I can’t see any hope and that cripples me.
I understand and I'm sorry! I've been there and I found it incredibly difficult to convey to my friends just how upset I was. A lot of people who have less shame or mute their shame or treat love like a very practical thing, like a car that works or breaks down and you just get another one, tend to treat break ups like "Oh, yeah, break ups are hard! Good luck!"
You need to appeal to a friend who understands how intense a break up can be, particularly when there's this layer of shame that keeps telling you that you did something wrong, that your sadness and anger did this, that you are inherently unlovable. But you also need to make this appeal to yourself every day: remind yourself that smart, sensitive, emotional women don't bounce back from these things that easily because all of the pain and shame from every corner of our lives (that we've been suppressing in order to match those who are more concrete and deal with the world in simpler, more reductive, more practical ways) floods out at once. I have two friends going through this right now. They're devastated and angry and it's not just this one relationship, it's everything they've ever felt and buried before.
Breakups can feel like a death because they function the same way in many of our lives, and we need more than to just bounce back for that reason: we need to mourn, yes, but we also have to make some space for all of the grief and sadness and despair that we've suppressed for so long. This part is extremely important, because if you say "I WILL SNAP OUT OF THIS" you're kind of lodging yourself under a mountain of pain and shame and yelling at yourself "MARCH, SOLDIER!"
Tell a friend you need some care. I think that's what you're asking permission to do. But also, tell yourself, every day, that you still need care. You still feel fragile and you're not going to feel hope until you fully allow some space for the despair you're feeling. I need you to get this part, if nothing else: your shame at feeling as upset as you are over this is exacerbating your pain. You're the one person who can decide that this pain is normal and stand up for it. IT makes sense, and you're allowed to express it and mourn for as long as you need to.
Along with that pain I want to strongly encourage you to exercise. That's the last thing you want to do, but it's the one thing that will dig you out of a dark emotional well without fail, even if everything else doesn't improve. Make it a priority if you're able to exercise. Listen to music and cry and walk and then run occasionally and walk again. If you already work out, give yourself a more ambitious goal. Being ambitious about exercise is a fitting distraction and it will give you hope, even if literally every other thing is shit. I am not a big fitness person as a rule but lately running has completely rewired my brain. I can't recommend this strongly enough.
I know that gratitude journals are (big sigh) just chafing, but every time I've been at my absolute lowest, and I've turned to this habit out of utter depressed desperation, it's helped me. I think focusing on tiny things and small favors and small gestures and one or two reliable people is so important, even if one of them is YOU. At night, when you feel angry and shitty, write down that you're thankful you can swallow water. I'm not even kidding. Write down that you will feel sunshine on your face tomorrow. Each little drop of thankfulness will add up. Even if you stay sad that night and the next day, tiny little baby steps toward saying "i am still alive, my life is still full of wonder" are enough. Believe in very very small bubbles of gratitude.
Write BE VULNERABLE on the wall somewhere. When you're in pain, you need reminders not to choke on it. I did this after a terrible, scary, lonely breakup when I was 31 and panicked at being alone, and it reshaped the way I behaved around other people. I made it much clearer how much connection I needed to survive. I asked and new friends sort of appeared out of the woodwork because I was very open and honest and vulnerable about my position in life. Believe in that magic as much as you can, the magic of being your IN PAIN self without expectation or guilt or apology.
After you forgive yourself (many times a day) for everything that's gone wrong, I want you to remind yourself that there is no point in your life when you pull magic and love and fun toward you quite like the dark period where you're just emerging from a terrible loss. When you start to welcome your feelings (even sadness) instead of beating them back, when you start to admit how much shame you lug around, when you're in the process of mourning a whole lifetime of shame, you become unexpectedly magnetic and big things spring to life and good things happen. This sounds absurdly optimistic and counterintuitive, but watch and see. This is one of the most fertile moments of your life so far. Remind yourself of that, even if you don't believe it. Say to yourself I INTEND TO VIEW THIS AS A FERTILE TIME, FULL OF MAGIC, IN SPITE OF MY PAIN! Intention is the first step.
Then put on your running shoes and walk out, into the sunlight, and say to yourself, "I'm still alive and anything can happen."
This is my advice for 19 year olds and 99 year olds. As long as you're alive, anything is possible. You never age out of joy and love, ever. Every single day is going to bring you new adventures and new opportunities to feel alive and beautiful and grateful, if you open your heart wide and celebrate that you're alive enough to feel sadness, to feel pain, to show yourself to the world knowing that you're just a human like any other.
Please hang in there. Buy a vegetable, cook it, eat it, go for a walk. Bring the sadness with you and feel it. You made this man into something sublime - you still own the magic that did that. You can bring it with you to someone else. Love will find you again, trust me on that. You just need to love yourself like crazy in the meantime. You're not alone. xooxoxox
This comment is really great... no notes!
My first baby steps in this direction were very simple: organise genuinely nice things for your future self. My present self was a mess of emotions and too damn hard to deal with, but my future self was a distant concept I could work out how to do right by. I could step in the role of my own PA almost. I organised calls with friends, healthy meal plans, solo dates, the occasional treat online, optimised my morning routine etc. Yes, it's basic, but every time that advance planning paid off I slowly learned to think of myself as a person who makes good decisions for themselves most of the time. Building up that trust made forgiveness easier.
This is so practical and smart! I would only add that I sometimes say to myself, "Treat yourself like you'd treat your own daughter," i.e. "Shouldn't you take a break and have a nice apple for a snack?" "Is the world closing in or are you very tired? Maybe don't think about this problem until tomorrow." "Your friends love you and just being around them might feel good for a few hours. Why not suggest a plan for the weekend?"
This also applies to big dreams and weird desires: whatever your daughter brings to you, you say, WOW THIS IS BEAUTIFUL and hang it on the wall. Treat yourself with that kind of honor and respect as much as possible. Dare to believe that you can have anything you set your mind to, the way you'd encourage your own child to do if you had one. But also, be organized and gentle for your own sake, as you so nicely put it in your post!
Thanks for sharing this great advice. xo
This is absolutely the level I was having to sort myself out on! "daughter", "inner child", "future self"...whatever image is easier to project gentle care on to.
Thank you, I’m genuinely doing ALL of this but the grief isn’t easing, 8 months later I’m more filled with rage and shame than ever and out of coping techniques. I gave myself a long vacation and spent it numb and crying. I’ll keep trying and I appreciate you sharing this though X
Do you have a therapist? Sorry meant to ask this in my other post.
I did but I parted ways last week because she suggested I could work on my angry outbursts with future partners with her. I was like I’m sat here saying I’m more desperate than ever and suffering now and you want to focus on a hypothetical new relationship? For the record I was proud of how much patience I did show my ex who was neurotic and complicated so that also felt like an unfair assessment of what I need to work on. I felt like she was out of her depth and will look for someone new.
I get it. I understand why she'd go there - as a path to encouraging you to trust yourself and protect yourself - but I also think that if your sense is that she was out of her depth, then you should absolutely trust that instinct. I had a therapist I truly did not trust or respect once, and it was pointless. It didn't matter WHY. It's a relationship. And saying no to something that doesn't work for you is good for you, period.
Also I am in LA so if anyone on this thread has therapist recommendations I would love them.
What neighborhood are you in?
I don’t have a good, uncomplicated/very specific to my circs answer to your question (I’m hoping HH does!). But I just wanted to say that what you describe is SO familiar to me, I have been there and it’s fucking HORRIBLE. And for what it’s worth, I no longer am, and I’m now able to look at the ex(es, ha!) in question and not feel rage, and look at my past self and feel forgiveness. Saying this both to say, I am so sorry that you’re in that place. It’s SO HARD. And to offer hope as ghost of Christmas future, that there will come a day where you don’t feel like this.
I hope you get some peace soon. Or at very least a night’s sleep without angry conversations in your head xo
Oh wow thank you for this! I used to be such a tenacious person I was so good at looking at the horizon and aiming for it even in the hard times. Somehow this time that eludes me.
I’m grieving the loss of us, and all the bigger dreams I’d held tightly to for so long that only a partner could make possible. It’s a comfort to hear it can pass as that seems impossible right now. Thank you for taking time to offer comfort to me xo
I think that these kinds of break-ups (where we're mad at ourselves as well as them) tend to bring up ALL OUR STUFF in a way that obliterates the horizon. But I promise you I can see it beautifully from here. And not because the perfect other partner came along and solved all my problems, but because I figured stuff out myself (with, of course, help from friends, a therapist and this newsletter!!) Good luck through this hard season. If your natural orientation is to be tenacious, I am CONFIDENT you'll get back to that xxx
THANK YOU. This really really means a lot xxx
I I understand your pain. I used to be quite good at handling emotional crisis as well until I couldn’t for some reason, and I suddenly started having panic attacks.
Exercising helped me a lot. In particular the vigorous type, the ones that get your tongue 👅 out lol 😂
Also going back to my creative self helped me and still does. Writing and drawing to make my Tarot Journals brought me back to myself, even though it brought me back to a different ‘me’ .
Pain changes you and it can change you to give you more dimensions, more depth, you see more, feel more, understand more.
I’m still sad sometimes, but I’ve learned to live with that sadness while also finding moments of joy. It might sound strange, but I’ve learned to feel both feelings at the same time, something I didn’t think was possible.
I truly believe that being creative is when we feel closest to something greater within, something divine and experience deep love and joy again that is not attached to anything external without dismissing the external either.
I guess Peace is what I was looking for.
Thank you for writing about shame and forgiveness. Keep writing about it! Its not like I (and I expect others) can read one column and say "Of course!" and completely transform.
Thank you! As someone who has had to relearn the same lessons over and over, I guess I agree. And shame is one of those terms that's so ubiquitous and can mean so many different things that it takes a while to drill down into the center of all the ways it fractures your self-esteem and compromises your happiness. But maybe I should rename Ask Polly ASK A SLOW LEARNER. Heh.
The really transformative emotional work, in my experience, requires a lot of repetition and revisiting the same core anxieties that rule you, ideally without making them all into neurotic puzzles. That's the key part that I think I also have to repeat often: This stuff is emotional. If you're stuck in an agitated state of "what's the answer? how do I get out of this? what am I doing wrong?" you're going to stay angry and ashamed. You have to move into your body and say, "I won't solve puzzles today. I'll greet the cold air and track each falling leaf. I will treat this oxygen, this aching, this longing, even this sadness as art, appreciate it, celebrate it, relish my pain, and applaud my courage."
In other words, these concepts come in as intellectual exercises (ideas on the page, in the form of words, entering your brain), but in order to make progress and feel better, you have to feel your way toward real forgiveness, acceptance, and presence in the moment. The future is set aside, and the present moment is greeted with an open heart. A lot of the time your brain is saying WAIT ARE YOU FUCKING UP? or UGH ANOTHER SHITTY MOOD, MORE ANXIETY, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? but you're training your body and heart to answer NO IT'S OKAY, I'M DOING FINE, KEEP CRAWLING, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, LITTLE FRIEND, AND I BELIEVE IN YOU.
While "ASK A SLOW LEARNER" would be a great column title... I humbly suggest "WAIT ARE YOU FUCKING UP?" might be even better.
"WAIT ARE YOU FUCKING UP? or UGH ANOTHER SHITTY MOOD, MORE ANXIETY, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?" is basically my brain all day every day. Thank you for expressing it in a way I could not.
Actually my brain says... "Wait are you fucking up, AGAIN!?!?". :-)
I like “little friend” and I also love that in Liz Gilbert’s newsletter “Letters from Love” (?) she encourages people to send in the pet names they give themselves in their own “letters from love.” It’s so much fun to call yourself “my little chickadee” or “my little slice of warm bread” or “ma chouette” (whatever that means) and inhabit that feeling.
Long time reader first time commenter!!!
I’m working thru my first major breakup post fully embracing my queerness at age 37 and it’s excruciating. I feel too old to feel this helpless! I ended it but have felt painfully ambivalent about the separation. Is this hard because breakups or hard? Is it hard because this *isn’t right*? Did I mess it up? Did she mess it up? Was it simply an incompatible dynamic? Could I have tried harder? Could I have advocated for myself differently and then would she have been less triggered and then would we be in sunshine-and-rainbows land again? Is that even a real place? The mind loops are sooo seductive and wow so hard to escape.
Attempting to practice forgiveness, though, does feel like one of the most actual useful antidotes though - forgive myself, forgive her, forgive myself for not immediately being clear or okay about it. Forgiveness is so soft and so present and so worthwhile. Oof. Deep work, pals. Thank you Heather!! “I INTEND TO VIEW THIS AS A FERTILE TIME, FULL OF MAGIC, IN SPITE OF MY PAIN!!!”
Love this. So much of this moment for you is saying to yourself, while you're in pain, even, or while you're longing for your ex, "I can be present to this feeling and be patient with it. I don't have to fix anything or solve anything. I don't have to own anyone or write them off forever. I can learn from this soft feeling of acceptance in the moment. I can live with this reality and love this day and be a person who is sometimes confused, who can't see the future clearly. I can receive this humbling moment and let it transform me into a softer, gentler, more present person."
The power of that kind of patience and non-ownership and presence is huge. Suddenly you have this strange ability to connect deeply with others, because you're not trying to get anything, you're in this welcoming, accepting position that makes everything you do easier and more beautiful. Okay that sounds super weird, but I think you already sort of get it and you're maybe even almost ENJOYING being where you are at some level?
You're never too old to feel pain, to feel helpless, to crave love. This stuff continues until you're dead! Things don't just get good and stay good. You have to show up for life every day and let it have its way with you. You're at the start of this beautiful path, though! There's so much NEW BIG GIGANTIC POWERFUL magic in the air, thanks to the fact that this might be the first real, true, big love you've experienced? I don't know! The irony of caring A LOT about a breakup, more than ever before, is that it's a sign that you're starting to understand what you're TRULY passionate about. And whether or not you GET the person/place/thing you're passionate about, whether or not you can CONTROL that force in your life, that passion is still there, in your body. You own that passion. And you can take it with you.
Enjoying how much you care is a tough thing, for people who are truly cowed by shame. But once you remove the shame and savor the CARING, the depth of it, the passion of it, it can feel more like a celebration, more like something that feeds you, more like gratitude itself.
Omg thank you for this reply I WILL CHERISH IT during this challenging yet I-know-in-my-soul generative times ahead 😭🙏🏼💛
Hiiiiiii toxic shame un-learner here. Like, it runs so deep. It’s in my DNA.
I am all about the repetition in your posts recently, especially because I can see and feel the peace and transformation of the beginnings of forgiveness in myself (I have an A+ therapist who is helping me with inner child work, parts work, sticking to somatic exercises like they’re PT, etc).
I guess along the same lines as others are asking, can you break down HOW you forgive yourself in these little bits throughout the day? Maybe explain like you’re explaining to your kid, or a grandma or something… Because I know for me, hearing “and now, forgive yourself” lands like… well I have no idea what it means really, lol. Like HOW??? What does that even mean?? (Also laughing at myself because this is such an anxious response/train of thought and sometimes we can’t explain or intellectualize things BUT if we can you’re the one who can do it ok love you bye)
I've been practicing forgiving myself throughout the day and it's been interesting what I've found. When I'm in shame, sometimes when I forgive myself or give myself compassion, I'm so desperate to feel okay that it can go too far in the other direction -- so I say, "yeah, your feelings ARE valid, everyone really DOES suck!!!" or "I forgive you for saying that weird thing, 'cause it actually wasn't weird at all, and you're perfect!!!!" This eagerness to absolve myself, I know, is the other side of the same shame coin, but it makes a part of me hesitant to forgive myself, fearing that I will only reinforce my worst behaviors and impulses.
So I've found that when I really forgive myself as I think Polly is describing, it's a kind of equanimity and almost detachment -- I guess like a parent -- just giving a feeling of relief and space, rather than justifying or fixing. My mind is so quick to then try and MAKE something of the peace I feel -- "Ok, great, now that you're all forgiven, let's work on changing that!!" And it actually takes a lot of strength and energy to hold onto that moment of presence & relief without having it go anywhere. It takes a lot of trust in myself and the universe that that feeling is worthwhile, even if my logical mind can't see how yet. I do understand how it's like an exercise, strengthening a muscle, because it somatically FEELS like I'm holding a plank or something when I try to sit in that space of open forgiveness. But, when I can, even for a moment, I've sometimes actually taken a big sigh of relief, and can feel my whole body relax.
Anyway, I don't really have a conclusion to this. I just wanted to share how this practice has been showing up for me; maybe others have had similar experiences (or totally different ones!!). I'm so thankful for this space to talk about all these subtle emotional experiences that are always on my mind!
I could have written that second paragraph, it is so similar to the work I'm doing trying to make space and care for my whole self.
Once I have an understanding of my want or need, I will sometimes ask the other person, "Would you like to hear about my feelings/wants/needs?" "Would you like to know how X came across to me?"
As mechanical as those sound, I don't know what else to do.
If I feel like my thoughts or feelings are not wanted (by the other person) and there is no obvious external signal or message from them that I should just SFTU, then I will ask if they want to hear me. I don't want to simply give in to the belief that my voice is not wanted. But I also don't want to drop my words on them either - because I really don't know if they want to hear me; so I ask.
But I do think that asking if they want to hear me is a new, weird way I am protecting myself and I don't know what to do.
I don't think asking another person if they are ready to hear you is protecting yourself in a bad way. It's actually very respectful to both parties involved.
Like all of you, I take incessant screenshots of Ask Polly posts. This was one for the ages. But I’m actually just making this comment to say that that “No, YOU’RE the wound!!” exchange on “Girls” was downright HILARIOUS. That show was so deeply good and of course we shit all over it at the time because people didn’t like the (female, privileged) creator-writer but rewatching it a decade later I bow down to how crisp and funny it was.
I probably need to read this again, later, and let it sink in, and maybe the unsettling argumentative feeling it gives me will go away. I'm a big HH fan and you're usually spot on, but there's something sticking in my craw with this post. Something about letting bad people, bad actors, off the hook for their bad acts. Because not every bad actor is a wounded person just trying to do their best and messing up. There are many people out there who do bad things, who use, manipulate and lie, and benefit from it, and feel no shame. And it seems counterproductive to tell them the answer is to tell their victims to just let it go. Yes, it is true that they may not be able to exact justice by lashing out, and maybe they need to accept that there won't be justice so they can move on. But that doesn't change the fact that something unjust happened, that wasn't necessarily the result of two people trying their best and failing. And maybe there needs to be some analysis of what the bad actor did wrong and why they fell for it, done through the lens of the other person being a bad actor. There are people out there who deserve condemnation. When we give them a pass, we are, maybe in a small way but still in a way, complicit in their future bad acts.
Maybe Molly would understand better.
This is so fabulous. Last week I vowed to forgive myself every day, and did for several days, and then slowly, unconsciously returned to my mummy state. I will be rereading this every day and practicing until I internalize that I am a fairy. A million thanks.
You’re a fairy! I love your words, a balm to my soul innumerable times.