Coffee Chats w/ Dr. D

Hello, Cadre. Sorry for being a minute late. I just got out of a therapy session with a really amazing client. All my clients are great, so I'm really blessed to be a therapist that has wonderful people to work with that choose me to work with. But today I want to talk about how to get closure from a relationship that's ended. And this can be. I'm looking for my shoes, y'all. This can be a relationship based on romantic feelings. It can be a friendship. I don't know if this would always apply to family relationships, because it seems like family dynamics, you know, don't ever go away.

Hello, everyone. That's coming in. But when it comes to a romantic relationship and a friendship that ends, you know, we leave that relationship, and especially if that person left us. So if we felt abandoned in this relationship and all of a sudden, it just dissolved, and we felt like we had no control. We didn't get a chance to say what we wanted to say, and it's just gone. We might have this sense of, I need closure. And you might wonder, well, how do I get that? You know, how do I get closure if that person blocks me?

They blocked me on social media. They blocked me from email. I can't reach out to them. If I do, they're going to feel a certain way, and I don't want to make things worse, but I still need this closure. And so there are a couple of questions that I want you to think about before you decide, you know, how to do that. The first question I want you to ask yourself, well, why do you want it? Why do you want closure? Is it because you want to, you know, express yourself? Is there something that you wanted to tell that person that you didn't get a chance to say?

Is it because you continue to experience abandonment and you've never had closure in any other relationship, and so you just really want to reach out to this last person that left you and just figure out what's going on. Is there something wrong with me? You want answers about yourself. Maybe you just need explanation of why things happen the way that they did and the timing that they did. Maybe you just need to vent. Maybe you need to express yourself and say what you did wrong and have a chance to apologize.

But I want you to consider, why do you want closure? The next thing I want you to do is consider, do you actually have to have a conversation to get closure? Do you have to talk to that person face to face? Or can you send them a text? Or can you send them an email? Right? Or dm them, you know, send them a message through social media just to have that last say. But that goes back to, why do you want this so bad? You know, sometimes we get into this mode of, I want to tell you how I feel because you need to know how you hurt me.

But if you think about when you do that, there's another side to that coin. So I like to talk about flipping the coin. One side is I need you to know that you hurt me and how you hurt me because I don't want you to do that to anybody else. But I also want you to know how bad this affected me because you need to know you hurt me. But if you flip the coin, that person can hear that message from you and they may accept it. They may say, you know what? You're right, I did do that. But here's the other thing.

They can accept that they did you wrong, but that doesn't mean that because you brought it to their attention that they're going to change, they have the option of deciding for themselves if that's a behavior that they felt that was appropriate, that they felt justified in doing, or they might see, you know, when you bring that to their attention, that they need to change. Tell me if any of this is resonating with you guys. If you've been on either side, like, you've been the person that abandoned a friendship or a relationship, and a person reached out to you for closure and how that felt for you, but also, if you've been the person that you're always seeking closure from ending relationships, the next thing I want you to do is consider what questions do you want to ask that you might already have the answers to?

And that could be based on that person's behavior. A lot of times we have questions we want to ask verbally, like, why did you cheat on me? Why did you ignore my phone calls? But if you've had some time from when that relationship ended and you've had some time to think about that and reflect on all the things that happen, and you start to see some patterns, you probably will find the answer in those patterns. Looking at their past behavior, looking at your own past behaviors, where you may not necessarily need to have a conversation because the conversation was already had.

The conversation was had with their nonverbal communication. Again, conversation. Communication is not just verbal. We have to look at, the majority of things are happening with nonverbal behavior. Okay, so consider what questions do you want to ask that person, and do you already have the answer? And then the last thing I want you to think about is when is a good time to reach out. So if you feel like, yes, I do need to reach out to this person, I do need to tell them how I feel, or I do need to ask them these questions, well, when's the right time to do that?

Now, this relationship ended yesterday. Today may not be the best time to reach out to them if it's only been a week. You know, depends on how that week went. You know, consider how are you feeling? Are your emotions still really high where you can be easily triggered or you can easily trigger that person because maybe they left you because you hurt them, they just didn't tell you. Maybe you crossed their boundaries and they've had enough, and they decided, I can't take this anymore and I got to go, and I'm not going to tell you why.

So consider how much time should you allow before you reach out to that person? And also consider the way you should reach out to them. Do you need to have a phone call? Do you need to meet in person? Do you need to meet at their house? You know, the location is also important when you're trying to get closure. Do you need to meet where there's another party present that might kind of, you know, help with maintaining safety in that conversation? Do you need to just write something down just to express how you feel and not send it to them?

That's also an option. Sometimes we just need to express ourselves, but that doesn't mean we need to express ourselves to another person. Sometimes we just need to let it out, say what we need to say, and we can write it down. We can do an audio journal. You know, sometimes it helps to just, you know, even do a video recording because you can see yourself talking, right? So it kind of feels like you kind of like this live stream right now. I'm talking to you guys, but I don't see you. I just see myself.

So that could be another way of expressing what you need to say in order to get closure. But consider, do you need to have a response? That's what we're looking for. Do we need a response in order to have closure? So I hope that's helpful. If you guys have any suggestions of your own, please drop them in the chat. And also, I would also love to know where you guys are from when you're joining. So if you want to put that down, like, what city and state or what country are you from? It's always interesting to me that people joining from across the country, around the world joining in to listen so I appreciate you guys for showing up today.

And for those of you watching the replay, please drop in the chat where you're listening from. But I hope you guys have a wonderful day. And don't forget your coffee or your tea, like me. Bye.