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How can I reconcile love and hurt? · Wellbeing Solutions - Ask A Counsellor

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: How can I reconcile love and hurt?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Loss can be felt for the good parts of a person and your relationship and the wonderful memories you shared.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: However, we should also allow ourselves to feel the difficult emotions if your relationship ended in a bad way or it wasn't a good relationship.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we're allowed to feel the difficult emotions like anger, resentment, betrayal, and regret.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And any negative impacts that the other person's behaviour would have had on us will also need to be processed and grieved for in their own way.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: How a person made us feel is quite often a mixture of their behaviour and how we perceive their behaviour from our own values and life experience.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Over the period of a complex relationship, we inevitably change and adapt to the way that other presents in the relationship, both intentionally and unintentionally, and we can end up being conditioned to their presence in our lives.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So as I said, we are allowed to hold both pain and love for the same person, and the grief process should allow us to address those conflicting feelings.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I find it helpful to name and separate what those feelings are.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes I use an emotion wheel to say, right at this minute I'm feeling angry, or right at this minute I'm feeling sad or empty or lost.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then we can and then what I do, especially journaling, so I recommend journaling, is to write down your feelings, and a statement or an entry could look like I feel anger, say.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I feel angry at X because of the event or situation, what happened.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is okay, and I accept my anger, and my anger is valid.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Example, so every statement you make is worth exploring, and if you find this quite difficult to do on your own, then do it with a friend or a trusted friend or within a professional setting in counselling session.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Once you identify the strongest feelings and their cause and you express it out loud, you're releasing those emotions, and you can even do this by shouting into a pillow or you know, driving in your car with the windows rolled up, shouting to a song, or writing the lost or the person that you've split from a letter, but not sending it, you know.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Very cathartic releases.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Our ultimate goal is to be at peace with the ending.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're still allowed to feel sadness and anger, but not with judging ourselves for it.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not do that.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you need support after a complex relationship breakdown and you are in a position to seek professional help, then I would encourage you to start to look on the UK professional registers of counsellors.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so BACP and the NCPS in the UK.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: RELETE are a great organisation offering advice after a relationship breakdown, and there's lots of free resources on their website, so just Google Relate.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this has been helpful and please seek support if you are struggling to deal with complex feelings alone.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening and take care.