Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:15
Swell Audio Book Reading: Climbing Out From Under – A handbook for heartbreak
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Still as a teacher, even though I wrote it, it still lives as a kind of an organic workbook for me to navigate things in life that sometimes can be really hard, whether it's a personal loss or heartbreak or disappointment, the book feels like it's a living, breathing guide for me, so I thought I would take advantage of what Swell offers, which is the chance to have these little kind of moments where you can speak and read and kind of do an audiobook. I guess
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:07
When something happens in the world that's too awful for me to bear. Heartbreak announces itself when the thing I counted on as a constant no longer exists. Heartbreak moves in and takes over. I have to marry my life again with Heartbreak as my bed fellow. Hello, Heartbreak. Don't steal all the covers. Don't snore and don't ever think you're the boss of me. We're in this together
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:39
You are built for change. There is an ache that's part of being alive, especially during times of heartbreak. If we were each given an instruction manual at birth, then we'd reach for it every time we felt broken inside. Page 46 how to lift your head from the bowl of soup you left it in last night. Page 55 how to break how to breathe after the wind has been knocked out of you
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:49
It makes me think, what am I doing here in the first place? And why am I trying so hard? I feel like I'm just waiting to die. The effects of heartbreak feel permanent. I will never be the same. And while they might change who you are forever, that change can be for the better and make you more complete. Like a young girl once said when her parents got divorced and her father left, I feel like my leg has been amputated
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:07
Avoid chronic despair. Enhance wholeness lessen your suffering. Prevent emotional rigidity. Increase your capacity to love and connect. Achieve a more integrated self. Know more about yourself and self States. Feel more woven together. Improve your friendship with yourself and others. Increase self knowledge. Enable greater success in other and future relationships. Identify and come to know your unconscious negative belief systems that they don't run. The show that's one sentence experience more joy, experience greater self sense of freedom, experience more spontaneity playfulness
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:37
Part of you may feel resistance to believing that you can grow from heartbreak. Another part of you yearns to grow Fuller and more complete. Because of this pain. These competing forces are part of the energy that will move you forward when digested and understood. Friction is the basis of movement on Earth. It creates the context in which we can feel that we are moving. You may have already tried techniques to help you understand your heartbreak and cope with it better
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:11
Heartbreak, wrecks me makes me feel unfit to be on the planet, drags up the demons of shame and even terror. We tend to imagine emotions as cerebral are located in our minds, which we often equate with our brains. They are different. However, brain is the mass of matter. Mind is harder to define but can be thought of as the whole internal world. We experience thoughts, hopes, wishes, feelings, et cetera
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:52
You are one gorgeous ecosystem and the more you visualize and understand that the more you set yourself up to create the inner conditions that encourage healing from heartbreak. In order to know how to work with your emotions, you can use glitter GL I-T-R-C. Page 28 to first identify and locate them in your body. There's no need for a microscope. Your emotions are brightly colored Vying for your attention and more specifically, your acceptance of them that requires empathy towards yourself. This is from Carly
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:22
If only I hadn't been so vulnerable or needy sympathize with yourself. You poor thing. Assume all the blame. I should never have done what I did. We probe, we evaluate. We try to explain things away by looking at motives. Instead of entertaining. These phrases take time for empathy to find its language. Don't rush to find solutions to ameliorate your pain. They will bring you only shallow and temporary relief. There really are no prescriptive. Fix it quickies
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:07
It's delivering some emergency medicine to help you learn ways to work with the pain and how to avoid unintentionally or unknowingly. Making it worse. It can help transform your pain eventually. First, there are steps to learn to help you not just survive, but thrive. Hard to believe, but true, we all run the risk when we cope with pain in ways that perpetuate our present and future suffering. That so called coping can lead to rigidity and enshrouding the pain for a lifetime
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:15
Picking up this handbook and using some of its tools could be that slight shift for you that will get you unstuck and eventually take you down to the ocean of transformation. Even in the rough waters, you'll be able to come to your own emotional rescue
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:06
Some notes about this handbook. When your emotions are sweeping over you, flooding you like a tsunami. You have to lean on things that feel familiar to you. Use the glitter tool regularly, so it helps you get in into a relatively calm, non code red place. That's a great space to be in as you learn and internalize the tools in the rest of this handbook. That way, when you have your next heartbreakingly painful moment, you won't have to do any of the heavy learning
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:23
It's all about digging around the heavy object, prying with something strong underneath you and using a counterweight to shift things. Your mastery of basic mindfulness will be essential to any movement and growth, no matter how incremental the smallest steps matter so much. Right now, basic mindfulness enables you to ultimately go deep by first establishing the foundational capacity you'll need for the longterm transformation that you're after to move through heartbreak. Basic mindfulness tools help us with simple, nonjudgmental awareness. The boulders won't move
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:12
A traffic helicopter, slight tapping on the window from abugainville my own breathing. The in my ears or fill in the blank. Feel. Touch my feet on the ground, fingertips on this keyboard, sweater against my neck, the laces on my shoe too tight, a little. Itch on the side of my nose or fill in the blank. Now, after taking this inventory, use all of your senses to actively explore the world around you. One thing at a time, one sense at a time
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:51
Without judgment. Judgment causes secondary pain. Meaning judgment creates a new pain. The pain of being upset that you're upset work on just accepting. Investigate now describe it. Is the feeling hot, sticky, sharp, like an ice pick or just like ice? Is it piercing or is it like a sledgehammer? Is it tons of pressure? Or is it tapping like it's waiting for an answer? Does it twist or turn? Is it suffocating or choking? Turn towards your emotions?
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:18
But when they become more permanent and reinforced by steel and concrete, they can begin to do more harm than good. Instead, you can work with energy of self protection to set healthy boundaries rather than impenetrable walls. Your pain needs its space, but if you turn towards it and give it the focus it also needs, it will be better tolerated. Like glitter. It will reflect some of the light that's around you. Remember, light is crack in the darkness, away, forward
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:35
In order to work with the intense emotions around your heartbreak, we have to cultivate emotional intelligence and you probably have more of it than you think. But given our culture's, stigma, and shame inducing attitudes about emotions, we can benefit from learning even more. That means growing in our understanding of how emotions actually operate to strengthen your mental muscle in order to tolerate the intensity of heartbreak. It's important to work to overcome some obstacles that get in the way of that
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:10
Anger is about being out of control. Anger is toxic. Being afraid is a sign of weakness. Being afraid is not okay. Being afraid shows vulnerability. It's important to not listen to your fear. Fear can take over and rule your life if you give it any space. My anger reveals to others that I am blank. My grief reveals to others that I am blank
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:16
Making friends with your emotions. Now you're ready to delve into the rewiring of your system in order to counteract the phrases above, here is a menu of emotion welcoming thoughts. If you're welcoming a friend, you are expecting them as well, so expect these emotions. Doing that along with this tool will help make peace with those difficult emotions that make bearing heartbreak so challenging
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:57
But first, let's explore how the four F's may be at play in our life. Now write down how the four FS show up for you as you respond to the heartache you are now you're in right now. Flight, for example, I disappear into food, take substances, watch TV for days at a time. I literally travel far away from situations. Flight, fight, example. I'm going to tell him just what I think about his horrible ways
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:26
And like all emotions, when it takes over and starts running the show, fear can have the complete opposite effect. It can destroy your ability to think clearly, even for a moment. Panic and terror are cousins of fear. By understanding that they most likely reflect trauma from an earlier time, you can use their existence to remember that you have indeed survived to past trauma and you can move beyond a survival mentality into one of healing and flow. Heartbreak gives rise to fear
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:10
You can make an impact on yourself and others. Naming your losses heartbreak is inextricably linked to grief and loss and losses must be mourned. How can you release what you have lost? How can you let it go? History cannot be undone. How can you do this work so that you can live life more fully, even with loss. Inhabiting space in your life
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:25
It's empowering to slow down long enough to make conscious room for all of them. That's the only way you'll move through the heartache. They create understanding Attachment heartbreak stirs up feelings of insecurity. The rug just got pulled out from under you. It is easy to feel frightened, anxious, and angry. Right now, someone you are deeply attached to is no longer here
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:35
Maybe your chest feels tight or like something is sitting on it. Do you feel pressure anywhere else in your body? Is it dull, sharp, pinching, pulsing? Is it tight? Aching? Is it a wave? Does it undulate? Does it have peaks and valleys? Does it go away? If so, for how long? One for each of the three primary emotions of heartbreak, grief, fear, anger. Think about where you tend to experience them in your body
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:29
Cultivating compassion towards yourself, starting from the inside. When it comes to having compassion for yourself, it's an inward conversation that can first start with declarations. I am worthy, worthy. I am lovable. I am beautiful. There's never a bad time for the power of suggestion. You can't fake it till you make it compassion towards yourself implores you to face what scares you and find a fearless path towards that. Again, we say, like a mantra throughout this book
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:29
Dragon. One. Below is a checklist. Read each item and check the ones that resonate with you. The ones that you have heard said inside your head. Remember, you may not hear it as a voice. You may think it's just is true. Are these thoughts that come more frequently now because of your heartbreak? I'm a fake. I'm a freak. I'm a loser. I don't deserve to live. My life of possibilities is over. I don't deserve love
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:24
Everything will be okay. I'm safe. In this moment. I am doing what I can. I am moving through this. I am capable of deep happiness. There are positive forces supporting me now
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:42
Here's some more fertilizer for your flower. Affirmations may feel corny at first, but they plant seeds in your mind. They help grow your future thinking. The literal building blocks of the actual architecture of your future brain affirming yourself with deliberate language puts forth a pattern of intentions. These are kind and loving affirmations. Here is a start for you and you can add your own words and phrases. I'm worth the effort. I'm lovable. I am loving. This heartbreak is going to transform me
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:48
Flower and Dragon combined. This writing exercise helps tell the story of the Dragon parts and the flower parts in you. Using the senses that we identified in glitter. Write from a stream of consciousness. Don't edit. This is about flow and free form. Write about the cruel parts of you and how they manifest. Tell a story about yourself. It could be from the past, but write it in the present using all five senses. Here's an example. I am 29 years old
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:37
When you work on teasing apart. The pain you develop a different relationship to your pain than you may have had before will help you develop an acceptance and understanding of why some States of mind are so difficult to bear. And then we'll help you develop skills to do just that, bear them and get through them. In teasing apart the pain, you can slowly start to see which part of your pain belongs to the present and which part of your pain is a memory
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:46
We are capable of telling this story for the rest of our lives. Heartbreak can expose your cos. Your core organizing story. It can shine a spotlight on it. Let's go with this. Let's take your core operating story out from the shadows and bring it into the light of day where we can see what it's telling you about yourself. What's your core organizing story? Here are some examples. My mom was really into herself and didn't have the time for me
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:56
I may feel like that child and think I can't and won't survive the pain, but I will. This is why so much healing and growth happens as a result of heartbreak. It's another opportunity to question your core operating story and see if it really applies to today's time. This understanding helps you know what needs holding now, what needs holding from the past two different things
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:08
You might feel untouchable right now like someone others wouldn't want to be around or hear from. Maybe you feel that the person you lost was the only one who understood you. But that is the Dragon speaking. When creating your pillow list, it's never about quantity. There is one person who has the capacity to really just listen to you, to whom you can make a call when your head is heavy on your pillow
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:39
Add to that belief system, your general vulnerability and feelings of weakness and fragility. Oh dear. It starts making sense that you might start to pull away from people altogether without tools to keep this from happening. You may say no one wants to be around me. Everybody is excluding me. Everybody is having a good time but me. I'm missing out on everything
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:31
It's believing that a connection with another good soul, even through a screen door, is going to feel like good, soothing company when you most need it. If you lost a person who used to give you hugs, that doesn't mean you aren't worthy of hugs anymore. You can ask for hugs. It was once believed that humans only needed food and sustenance to survive. Now we know that physical touch plays a critical role in our well being
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:25
We've looked at attitudes of self protective mechanisms that can in part serve to reduce pain in the short term, but can also prolong it. We've said that denial is not the answer, so we've looked at methods to inquire within. Now we are taking acceptance one step further. There are big myths about acceptance. Belief in them serves to cause us to keep our distance. Here are some examples. If you accept something you'll give in or it will take over your life
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:02
I cannot change other people. I cannot change other people's behavior. I can't undo this loss. I cannot control another human being's life. Nor can I change or alter their destiny. I cannot change yesterday. I cannot change someone else by being passive or aggressive. I accept all things I cannot change only because I can change me. Let it rip. Let it roar. Unburden yourself because these are all sitting heavy on your heart
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:23
What do you want to learn in your life? What do you want to explore both in the world and inside of yourself? What do you want to grow? This can be literally a garden in your work in the world or something within yourself. What do you want to build? What do you want to give? What do you want to encourage? What might you want to collaborate on? With whom? What do you want to explore? How far out there will you go?
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:44
Notice the way the muscles around your eyes, cheeks, chin, mouth, and whole head feel. Notice the sensations on the inside of your mouth, letting your tongue relax behind your teeth. Three, imagine what expression might be on your face right now. Four, slowly raise the corners of your lips upwards so that you have a relaxed and gentle smile. This is kind of a half smile. Five, allow your eyes while still closed to smile too
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:34
Distraction lightning your load. Who says a three day marathon of watching Old Weeds, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, etc. Episodes is a bad thing. We're talking about first aid for a sore heart. It's important to take a break and distract yourself from your heartbreak. It'll be there when you return. Promise. Most of the tools in the handbook enable you to directly deal with your pain. This section reminds you that it's okay and even sometimes necessary to intentionally get distracted
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:21
Take a grape or raisin or any small fruit. Okay, using your mindfulness skills, observe the grape slowly. Put it in your mouth. Chew slowly with your bare awareness. Observe the subtleties texture, taste movement. Take three minutes. Intense taste can provide heat of the moment distractions. Try strong Mint candies, hot pepper. These flavor can take you on a journey toward heartburn, maybe, but away from heartbreak
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:12
Climbing out, turning toward the world. All this inside work. All this learning about how to hold and bear your painful emotions will not only help you, but can also heal the this hurting world in which you live your selfknowledge, your self compassion. These are States of being that cause a ripple of awareness and heal more than just your own broken heart. When you emerge every day, engaged in even the smallest movement toward increasing awareness and self reflection, you're contributing to a larger consciousness
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:40
Her 30 years as a clinical psychologist dealing with heartbreak gave her a front row seat to transformation. Working with other people's pain, along with her own, made this handbook possible. She wondered when she was going through a painful divorce, how can I help people when I am in so much pain? This put her on an express train back to an early, devastating death of her father when she was a very young girl. Shouldn't I crawl into a corner, close up shop?
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