You felt it in your gut. You saw who he was. And you stayed anyway...then spent the aftermath asking yourself why. Here's the real psychology behind why we override our own intuition, and how to learn to trust yourself again. You knew. That's the part that haunts you the most, isn't it? Not that he showed you who he was, but that somewhere, underneath everything, you already knew. You felt it in your body before you had words for it. The pit in your stomach when he pulled awa

It almost feels taboo, doesn't it… to grieve someone who is still alive. To admit to the pain of grief when you're expected to just "move on." But that's the thing about grieving the living, it almost feels impossible to let go when maybe… just maybe things could be different. And that maybe is not weakness. That maybe is your attachment system doing exactly what it was built to do, hold on to the people it has bonded with, scan for possibility, resist the finality of loss.

By Julia Hartman, LCSW | juliahartmancoaching.com If you’ve ever found yourself replaying the relationship, wondering what you did wrong, convinced that if you had just been different, more patient, less needy, more available, less emotional... it would have worked out, this is for you. Self-blame after a breakup is one of the most common and quietly painful parts of grief. It sounds like: “I was too much. I pushed them away.” “If I hadn’t done that one thing, we’d still be t

Your Brain Isn't Keeping You Hung Up on Your Ex. It's Trying to Protect You from Feeling. If you're weeks (or lets be honest, months) out of a relationship that you know wasn't right for you, and you still find yourself replaying the best moments on a loop at 11pm... you're not weak. You're not pathetic. And you're not still in love. You're experiencing one of the most well-documented psychological phenomena in memory research. And once you understand what your brain is actua