[JohnnyBravo]

This randomly popped up in my YouTube feed this morning, about "let go or be dragged." (It looks like there are a lot of videos about that concept, but I couldn't resist someone named The Functional Melancholic.) He puts a lot of different angles into 34 minutes, but the idea that people get stuck in the Bargaining phase struck me as the most interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAKG_LFOT1E

[Nas]

I like this take:
https://psyche.co/ideas/true-resilience-is-not-about-bouncing-back

Bold emphasis is mine:
“I find resilience talk cowardly. It makes pain tidy. It replaces responsibility with admiration. Praising endurance is easier than changing conditions…
The language we use matters. When we tell people to be resilient, we ask them to stay the same. When we talk about recovery, we invite change. One hides pain; the other honours it.…”

🎵 https://youtu.be/NRI5fDAtw5s?si=BhxwqM4tJqnuF4Po

[xyzcf]

This book is getting a lot of press:

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
Book by Belle Burden

It's as though the idea that a spouse leaves a good marriage and it is a complete surprise to the LBSer is something new...We all could have written this book, and it is uncanny, the "similarities"

Although I have not read it and I am not sure I will..I think from the little I know, it reaffirms that this happens and it truly has nothing to do with us.

Here is Oprah's interview with the author:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctXbYb8OdEk

[Nas]

https://deconstructingstigma.org/latest/language?utm_medium=email&utm_content=421122525&utm_source=hs_email
Came across this while researching something for a project and it may not resonate but I found the topic interesting -  in terms of "what's the whole story, really?"/labels don't account for individual circumstances - and it got me thinking about the ways people sometimes use terminology about themselves or others. Sometimes, unintentionally, we stop actually seeing ourselves or others clearly precisely because we think we see them clearly - I know that sounds daft. But I think our certainty about who a person is can become a blindness, and we've probably all done it - particularly in long marriages, we may get complacent and just create an emotional file: my spouse is this or that kind of person - as if people are 2D rather than humans with psychological depth that contain sides we just haven't yet seen...or haven't looked at, or haven't wanted to really see, which is a subtle difference. Reality is both objective and subjective, and sometimes to avoid discomfort, subjective (our interpretation) can take over in a way that blurs, like an emotional astigmatism.
I think there's a risk sometimes that labels can unintentionally freeze a moment in time, if that makes sense.  What we say about ourselves too - what might have been true at one time is not the whole story: "I am this thing" is different from "I'm experiencing this (present tense)" is different from "This is a pattern I'm actively working on (not passively waiting out)" is different from "I experienced something (past tense)"...


https://youtu.be/X2iHXlCShmY?si=8G3wfBY2tVkK92cj

[Nas]

Another interesting one:

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-know-what-you-really-want-and-be-free-from-mimetic-desire?utm_source=Aeon%2BNewsletter&utm_campaign=9ef158376b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_04_27_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72670444

If your basic needs are stabilized, self-inquiry is easier. Without stability it seems frivolous. But desire has always fascinated me as a luxury, and so often authentic desire isn’t examined. Mimetic desire is safe. Real desire often has a consequence of disruption. (If you can’t tell, disruption is a theme in my life lately and partly because I’ve had to recently take on some pretty difficult situations).
I never really knew how to want. I knew how to need. My wants were around survival. I want the freedom of authentic desire. One thing this made me think is that when you’ve (often subconsciously) built your life around mimetic desire, confronting your authentic desires could be very disruptive. Unsettling. Stability threatening. It requires one to tolerate uncertainty. “What do I really want?” Is a big scary question even though it seems pretty innocuous.
Anyway, food for thought that I think fits the LBS experience. What kind of life do you really want?

🎵 https://youtu.be/y25t6YqxDOw?si=hC7LFkIIO8PZKPMH

[Nas]

One more from me - this one I found while trying to help a writer create a character, but it resonated with me in several different directions.
I suppose the opposite of cycle breaking would be exactly what many of our spouses decided to do instead…

https://share.google/TCmFBTWfPuZOcK7yL

“Cycle-breaking involves ‘learning to feel emotions’ that were never safe to experience…guilt, shame and anxiety are known as ‘inhibitory emotions’. These emotions typically ensure that people behave in ways that help them fit in with their families and society. But they can also block access to other emotions, such as anger, fear, sadness and excitement. Those important, ‘core’ emotions often help human beings take actions that serve them well, such as standing up to others when angry, running from danger when afraid, or crying when sad…”

🎵 https://youtu.be/0asSzzf6HPw?si=uTi5clZSUqEJuLy0

[Nas]

https://psyche.co/ideas/jungs-archetypes-are-a-mirror-that-shows-who-and-what-we-are

Interesting article on archetypes. If I’m being honest, I’ve always kind of thought of this as an overly simplified way of understanding others that imo leads to more misunderstanding. Because it’s a label. And the one thing labels often do is stop further investigation.
When really the only good use of any of this information is to help us understand ourselves better.

I think it’s like emotions in that way, when we already believe something to be true, our emotions can very strongly trick us into feeling the exact way that makes it true and keeps it true. Similar for when we use archetypes to explain or understand other people, we can end up seeing what we need or want to see. We can make other people whatever we need to fit the stories we tell (shout out Sara Polly) until we are brave enough to examine the stories we tell.

🎵 https://youtu.be/-AUCSkHCrwY

[Nas]

Got both of these in the same newsletter, which seems by design:

https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-metaphor-of-rewiring-gets-wrong-about-neuroplasticity
(I loved this article - pulled a few key quotes that might resonate here, but it's worth a read for multiple angles...)
"The idea that the brain is ‘rewired’ to function in a healthier way may offer hope, but it oversimplifies the reality. We build new trails, but the old ones don’t necessarily disappear...
plasticity is conditional, uneven and shaped by circumstance, not wishful thinking...
varied, effortful experiences repeatedly recruit overlapping networks: attention, memory, movement, emotion...
even profound insights rarely result in lasting neural change unless reinforced by repetition and behaviour...
you can eliminate trauma responses by replacing them. But trauma alters deep, limbic structures that don’t ‘recode’ easily. They adapt, yes, but only slowly and not always completely...
The brain’s capacity for change is one of the most hopeful discoveries in modern science – but that change comes not through clever metaphors or overnight programmes. It comes through effort, repetition and time."

And then this one:
https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-become-the-person-you-want-to-be

Bottom line of both of these: it takes effort. Ongoing, active effort and ongoing, active self check-ins.

 I can't have the life I want, to think otherwise would be delusional, but I can be the kind of person I want to be. I've always had that power and, looking back, I used it even when I didn't know I was using it. We all have it.
(I won't go into how sometimes taking responsibility for our circumstances and lives and contentment involves admitting and acknowledging our shadows and deciding if they're actually shadows in the negative sense or simply a nudge toward stopping self-betrayal or following a rigid outdated self-concept, blah blah blah, that's another conversation altogether, and for the most part not a comfortable one.)

🎵  https://youtu.be/S3h-HYSJPr8?si=VG_diOM_VmfHqiOR

[Nas]

THIS ONE:
https://psyche.co/ideas/your-deepest-regrets-help-you-see-yourself-more-clearly
I truly loved.

"Regret traces to human decisions...
Thoughtful regret reveals not just what we wish had gone differently, but which unrealised possibilities still feel like ours. This is the regretting that can illuminate our values, our self-conception, and how we estimate our potentials and limits."

A lot of times people say don't bother having regrets, because you can't change the past. I don't think regret is useless. I think dwelling on regret is useless.
When we feel regret, it's a signal to deeply self-reflect - usually in a more uncomfortable way. After the traumatic fallout of a BD, a kneejerk reaction is to say "I regret my marriage." I don't think most stories I read here leave me thinking anyone should regret their marriage, even when the ending was so painful. If life was content and calm and fulfilling for decades, why regret the whole thing? If you lived according to your values and a healthy view of yourself, no regrets.

I regret my marriage. I don't dwell on it--I rarely think about it, except in the context of who I am now, because how I got here is history and data points--but I allow myself to regret it without shame. I regret it not in the sense that I shame and blame myself for any of it, but because I think about who I am, and how little I value I gave the person I was when I made the choices I made. Again, I'm talking about it now in order to share this, but I don't dwell. Dwelling is senseless. But regret can equal learning. Why do we choose what we choose, what does it say about us, how we really feel about ourselves - that can be extremely uncomfortable, almost unbearable to look at, but also can lead to breakthroughs, or growth, or just true alignment.

I pushed away feelings of regret for a long time because of that whole "you can't change what happened so why bother" idea, but I love the idea of regret as a tool for self-reflection. We've all had that twinge of regret and immediately stuffed it down, denied it, buried it as though we shouldn't be feeling it. Why not feel it, process it, find out what it says about us, and then let it go? Seems like the better option...

🎵 https://youtu.be/F9ourSxX8ao?si=5JNYcB21_Earw0io