Lies, Breakups, and Letting Go: Trash That Sweater Post-Breakup

Addicted to Love and Lies with Psychologist and Author, Dr. Courtney Warren

Join Dr. John in this episode of the Evolved Caveman podcast as he chats with Dr. Courtney Warren, an author & board-certified clinical psychologist. They dive deep into the addictive nature of love, self-deception, and the complexities of breakups. Dr. Warren shares insights from her new book, “Letting Go of Your Ex,” and her earlier work, “Lies We Tell Ourselves.” They discuss practical CBT tools to handle obsessive thoughts post-breakup, the importance of radical acceptance, and the pervasive self-deception in romantic relationships. Whether you’re in, out, or flying solo, this episode offers valuable perspectives on navigating the emotional rollercoaster that is love and relationships.

Time Stamps:

01:15 Exploring Breakups and Self-Deception

03:27 The Addictive Nature of Love

06:08 Jealousy and Relationship Dynamics

12:08 Managing Breakups and Moving On

23:05 Cognitive Behavioral Tools for Healing

32:37 The Paradox of Change

34:27 The Role of Pain in Change

36:51 Micro Changes for Big Results

38:39 Exploring Self-Deception

40:37 The Power of Honesty with Yourself

51:47 Understanding Shame

57:11 The Importance of Relationships in Self-Discovery

Questions Discussed:

How to survive a tough breakup?

What are the differences when you break it off vs. being on the receiving end of the break up?

How is love addictive?

Why do some lovers get addicted to their ex while others don’t ?

How does this relate to obsessive or stalking behavior?

What can family and friends do to help a loved one who is addicted to an ex?

To listen to this juicy episode on Podomatic (where this brilliant podcast is housed!), click here.

To watch the video, click below.

The transcript is included below if you’d rather read it.

Lies, Breakups, and Letting Go: Trash That Sweater Post-Breakup with Dr. Cortney Warren – Transcript

Dr. John Schinnerer: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, this is Dr. John, back with the latest episode of the Evolved Caveman podcast, and it is my extreme pleasure to have with me today Dr. Courtney Warren, who is a board certified clinical psychologist and adjunct clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. At the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV.

And when I first read that, I thought it was the Dr. Kvorkian School of Medicine, which is a really short series of classes. It’s do an assessment, and then we euthanize the patient. But that was not the case. Sorry, I’m interrupting myself. Having won numerous professional awards for her research, Courtney is an expert on addictions, self deception, romantic relationships, among other things.

And her newest work was what caught my eye. It’s a self help book that explores breakups through an addictive framework called Letting Go of Your Ex: CBT skills to heal the pain of a breakup and [00:01:00] overcome love addiction. And she has an earlier book that also interests me called Lies We Tell Ourselves, The Psychology of Self Deception.

Courtney, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Cortney Warren: John, it’s just a pleasure.

Dr. John Schinnerer: And how are you today?

Dr. Cortney Warren: I am wonderful and just so thankful to be able to talk with you about breakups and about addiction and self deception because I think they are really topics that are relevant to every single human out there in the world.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Absolutely. Because I think we’re always, most of us, the vast majority of us are either looking to get in a relationship, or getting out of a relationship.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It’s one of those realities as a human that you’re going to have to grapple with through the course of your life, how to be close, how to be intimate, how to navigate yourself and other people through your interpersonal interactions.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. And even if it’s not romantic, it’s still friendships or. Working relationships, right? Those are all [00:02:00] relationships that we’re either getting into or in, or we’re getting out of. So tell me, how did you get to the point? Sorry to interrupt. How did you get to the point of working on this book, letting go of your ex?

Dr. Cortney Warren: Many years ago, I gave a TEDx talk on self deception. Because really at the core of the human journey, I think is a need to understand ourselves, know thyself, which means we have to tackle how honest we are with ourselves. And in that talk, I used myself in romantic relationships as an example of how we lie to ourselves because we really do.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And where we’re most vulnerable. We are most likely to deceive ourselves. And in my case, that had a lot to do with early dating experiences. And it shocked me after giving this talk that I was inundated with questions about romantic relationships and breakups. How do you get through them? Why do I hurt so much?

Dr. Cortney Warren: I don’t know what to do. I’m [00:03:00] crawling out of my skin. I can’t stop thinking about this person. Did you get better? Did you actually figure out how to have a successful romantic relationship with someone? And so this latest book was actually many years in the making of listening to people talking to me about their struggles with breakups, their struggles in relationships, and really trying to frame from a research perspective, but in a really palatable way.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Why love is addictive and how that translates into our struggles, both when we’re in love with someone and in a relationship or going through a breakup where we still really feel addicted to our mate.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, one of the things I think of about my divorce and my marriage is I believe what I wanted to believe.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I was deceiving myself into thinking that this person was someone different than who they actually were, given that they were showing me who they actually were and are. [00:04:00] So it’s fascinating to me.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It is such a profound period where, particularly when you fall in love with someone, you will believe they are who you think they are.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And oftentimes, if you’re feeling the euphoria of falling in love, you paint this really rosy, overly flowery picture of who they are, that over time, will obviously start cracking and dissolving and sometimes exploding in your face. And as that happens, it can be an incredibly difficult process of understanding where your deception is, understanding how you got there, and then really seeing if you can actually see who your partner is too.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And are they somebody that you really value and still want to work to choose to be or if you’re at a position where you’re saying, I made up who you are and this is actually really not healthy for me. [00:05:00] I am going to have to move on.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So I had an assumption last time we spoke that You were divorced and this book was based on a divorce and you said, Oh no, I’m happily married.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: How does your husband feel about the book?

Dr. Cortney Warren: He loved it. And actually he didn’t read it until it was in the proofing stages. And I really wasn’t sure what he would think of it because he’s very supportive of my work. He knows how much I love psychology and he’s really a fan. But like all of us. He had also been through plenty of breakups before he and I met and early in our relationship.

Dr. Cortney Warren: We really struggled with power dynamics. I think romantic relationships are really the breeding ground of where our struggles will emerge. And so I also struggled. And still do in some ways, but it’s a much easier struggle now after lots of practice and lots of CBT skills applied to myself and [00:06:00] a much better understanding of why I struggle and where I struggle.

Dr. Cortney Warren: But he loved it. He was very pleased.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: The reason I brought up the question is because it brings up this interesting point in my mind that I’ve talked to a lot of people about jealousy of your partner’s relational past.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Or sexual past,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: right? Which to me is, and I’ve experienced this myself, but it makes no logical sense, right?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: That you’re jealous about something that happened before you even knew this person.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Absolutely. And it is a tendency that we have because oftentimes when we fall for someone, when we’re dating someone, when we care, or actually even when we don’t care, which is a much more complicated conversation, I’ll put to the side.

Dr. Cortney Warren: We are still comparing ourselves to some theoretical ideal relationship and some theoretical ideal that we think our partner may have had with someone else. And it’s that experience, I think, that makes people really jealous [00:07:00] of situations and times in a partner’s life. Where you weren’t even a part of it yet, perhaps.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And it doesn’t make any logical sense, but it still can preoccupy us because we want to be the best. We want to be the only, we want to be the most important. We want to be the best in bed, the best looking, the most desirable. And oftentimes there’s this. Comparative aspect in our own minds to pass people that we’ve never met and our new mate may not want anything to do with even right.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And so I think humans do that very often.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: When it brings up to paraphrase Antonio Damasio, that idea that we are not thinking beings that feel we are feeling beings that think so feeling is primary. It’s more powerful. It’s faster because I, and I bring this up because I deal with a lot of men that want to believe or are self diluted or self.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: deceiving into thinking that they are 95, 100 percent rational, [00:08:00] analytical problem solvers. And it’s no, you’re not. So when we think about love and I, this is one of the things that fascinated me about your book is I don’t think most of us think of love as addictive. So talk a little bit about that idea.

Dr. Cortney Warren: When we think about addiction, the first thing that comes to mind for most humans is drugs and alcohol, right? And more recently, people might think about internet use or gambling or gaming, but I think you’re absolutely right. Very few people think of love as a naturally addictive process or experience.

Dr. Cortney Warren: The idea of love as an addiction is not actually a new one in psychological literature, but I think it’s getting a massive resurgence of attention because of the neurobiological research that’s emerging on romantic love, literally stimulating the pleasure center of the brain. And from an evolutionary perspective, when you [00:09:00] think about love, Really, the goal is for you to procreate, to find a mate, want to touch them, want to be with them, want to this life that you build with this person biologically long enough so that you’ll have sex.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Have babies and ensure that the child and the mother survive long enough so that your species and your family line will continue. And so there really is this large body of research that’s emerging to suggest that we are designed to become addicted to our mate. It is actually a biological imperative that you become obsessed enough, addicted enough that you will Be with them, stay with them, love them through the tough times long enough that they will survive if you have children.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And so I think when you think about the core characteristics of addiction, of any addiction, [00:10:00] It’s this obsessive preoccupation with something that you can’t stop using, you can’t stop doing, you can’t stop ingesting, even when it has negative consequences to your life because you crave it, you develop tolerance for it, you are obsessed with being a drug user.

Dr. Cortney Warren: really obsessed with it. It becomes the center of your world. And when it comes to falling in love, what I really want people to know is that it doesn’t have to be a problematic addiction. So usually we use the term addiction as something inherently negative. I think that falling in love is probably one of the most naturally euphoric experiences you could ever have as a human and it’s magical and you should probably enjoy it if you have the experience of it in your life because It can be really wonderful when it becomes problematic is when you feel addicted to someone who really isn’t healthy for you or [00:11:00] who doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you or creates a dynamic that’s really harmful for you or them or both of you.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And that’s when I talk about love as an addictive process, I get into The added characteristics of it causing conflict and impairment in your quality of life or daily functioning. So when we talk about love, it’s this many faceted approach. It’s love is meant to be addictive. You’re meant to become addicted to your mate, and that isn’t inherently a problem unless You find yourself in these churning situations where you’re having symptoms, you’re craving them, you’re thinking about them, it isn’t healthy for you, or you’ve broken up and you’re checking your phone a hundred times a day, or you’re looking for them on social media, or you’re ruminating about that last fight that you had that led to the final straw that you just can’t understand, and you can’t accept, and you can’t somehow figure out how to do it differently, or you want to [00:12:00] change them.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It’s those symptoms that make the addictive nature of love problematic.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Thank you for that explanation. One of the the thoughts that I had while you were talking is one of the Hallmarks I will look at for addictive behavior is how is this negatively impacting your relationships, which there’s a parallel to what you’re talking about in the sense I’ve talked to a lot of people who are in a toxic relationship and let’s say at some level addicted to that relationship and their friends slowly over time have just said, they’ve spoken up and then they’ve just backed off and they’ve just said, I can’t support you in this relationship.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: You’re getting used or abused or whatever it is. And so it’s an interesting parallel there also of How much is this impacting your friendships?

Dr. Cortney Warren: Absolutely. Because I think it’s hard

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: to listen to friends when we’re in the throes of that love addiction.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Friends, work, attention, focus. Being in a toxic relationship that is addictive, where [00:13:00] you feel addicted to this person, you can’t.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Get them out of your mind. You can’t stop going back even when you rationally know it isn’t healthy for you and your friends are coming to you, listening to the same repeated sob stories about how much your relationship sucks. And at some point as the friend, you’re saying, why are you staying? I don’t understand.

Dr. Cortney Warren: You’re this wonderful human. You’re brilliant. You’re beautiful. You’re handsome. You’re accomplished. I don’t get it. This person is not good for you. That can be so taxing on your relationships, as you’re pointing out, because as a loved one, you’re looking at this going, how do you not see this? And how are you not changing your choices?

Dr. Cortney Warren: Because you know better at some level, but you don’t seem to move on. You don’t seem to be able to let go. And that part of framing love as an addictive process, I think, is very important. helpful for people because oftentimes even [00:14:00] the person in the relationship is saying those things to themselves.

Dr. Cortney Warren: They’re saying, why can’t I stop thinking about them? Why am I staying? I know they’re not good for me. I don’t understand why I can’t seem to change myself. Given that I rationally understand this isn’t good for me yet. My entire being, my body is driven to be with what is wrong with me. And as that happens, Clinically, that’s when I see the self esteem tank, the identity shift, where people will come to me and say, I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And that is probably for me, one of the most damaging clinically relevant signs of people going through a breakup where I would say you would benefit from some extra help because it sounds

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: sorry. No, go

Dr. Cortney Warren: ahead.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It sounds to me like [00:15:00] there’s that parallel between love and heroin and, so I also want to turn to, so how do we, or what are some of the best ways to deal with a breakup?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Because one of the things that, if you’re dealing with heroin or alcohol or nicotine or, weed or whatever it is, opiates, you want to limit. Or completely cut off access. And so one of the parallels in my mind is ditch the social media, unfollow the person on social media. Cause every time you watch them or look at them on social media, it’s like a knife to the heart.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Absolutely. I have a visual in the book just to figure, to help people frame how I think about love is addictive and much like your example with heroin or cocaine or whatever your drug of choice is when you’re addicted to something. it will consume your life. And so if you’re really trying to move on after a bad breakup, cutting off contact is essential because [00:16:00] it is essentially saying, I’m going to stop using my drug.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And in the general addictions literature, we often talk about AA program and any sort of 12 step programs will focus on trying to stop using your drug. Cutting off contact. And I think that includes a whole host of things when it comes to romantic relationships, like not calling them, not texting them, not trying to run into them at the grocery store, but also as you’re pointing out how you manage your symptoms in your own mind.

Dr. Cortney Warren: So learning how to stop the rumination and obsessive thinking, learning how to turn off social media, perhaps Unfriending your ex, at least for now, because if you think of them as your drug of choice, the more you go back, the harder it’s going to be for you to manage your symptoms and move forward.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So what about, I remember I had this [00:17:00] client, I thought this was brilliant.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: This, he had a relationship in college, the girl gave him a nice sweater. And, one of the things I was telling him is you got to get rid of all the swag, so to speak, right? Like the sweater, the teddy bear, whatever’s given to you, whatever has their scent in particular is a big deal because smell is so powerful.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And so he took the sweater and gave it to a homeless guy. On his, the way on his walk between his apartment and school, and he’s and my ex goes past that homeless guy every day. So I’m hoping that she sees it. Oh, I’ve never heard of that one.

Dr. Cortney Warren: We get so creative because we so don’t want to cut this off, right?

Dr. Cortney Warren: It is so hard to let go of a relationship, particularly the one where you were really in love with the person, where you built a life together, where perhaps you had children together. It’s not just the loss of the person. It’s the loss of the dream [00:18:00] and the fantasy that you’ve created based a lot on self deception of what it means about who you are.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And your example is so profound with, I hope she sees it because so often I’ll hear people say I posted a picture of myself on a date on Instagram, because. I know they’re going to see it and that’s going to make them so upset. And it’s okay, this is not cutting off contact.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I include things like getting rid of old emails, getting rid of the text messages, because so often when you’re in deep pain, you will go back. You will fixate and fantasize about the wonderful times together. You look through old pictures. You’ll want to go to a party where you think they might be. And you’ll claim.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Deceptively to yourself. Oh no I’m not really doing this to try to be close to them. I am doing this, cause I’m really letting go of this sweater and you as they’re, loving mental health professional [00:19:00] is looking at this going, no, you’re hoping to get the text message that they saw a homeless person wearing the gift that you gave them.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And when it’s really bad, meaning that people are really struggling. They’ll do things like, stay in bed all day wearing the old t shirt with the toothbrush that was left at their house, right? A year and a half later, that’s still gross, but they can’t let go of this connection.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And it sounds like we’re getting into this area of, obviously obsession is here, but even some compulsion, like stalking behavior. Like I’ve, I know stories of, a Dorsey that was dating a guy and she broke up with him. And a couple of weeks later, he showed up in her backyard.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And so I think if you’re the guy, you can be like, Oh yeah, this is it’s a rom com, and I’m being romantic and I’m trying to win her back. And she’s I’m calling the police.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Absolutely. When we’re really emotionally triggered, as you [00:20:00] brought up with the, we’re emotional people first, it’s such an uncomfortable experience for so many people.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It’s so uncomfortable for us to be incredibly angry or incredibly sad or incredibly anxious that. In those triggering moments, we’re very likely to act impulsively, meaning we’re not thinking about what we’re doing. We’re not thinking about the consequences. We have some goal in mind Oh, if I go to their house now and bring flowers or go in the backyard and just see what they’re doing, this is going to be a good thing because it’s going to.

Dr. Cortney Warren: In the very short term, give you some symptom relief. It’s actually going to make you feel better to get information about your ex, even if it’s something you don’t want to see, because it’s contact. It makes you feel closer at some level. You’re also very likely to act with the impulsivity compulsively over time.

Dr. Cortney Warren: So one thing we see in almost any addictive [00:21:00] behavior is that you start out being impulsive like that. I’m feeling upset. I’m just going to go to their house. I’m feeling upset. I’m going to check my phone. Feeling upset. I’m going to check my social media. But over time, those impulsive moments turn compulsive, meaning they become more repetitive and habitual.

Dr. Cortney Warren: So instead of having an upset emotion and then going to do something to try to unconsciously relieve your emotional state, you will start to become ritualized. So you wake up in the morning and you check your phone, you check your social media every day or you ritually now start to go past their house and see if their car is there.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And that’s when the compulsivity often kicks in over time. Neither one of them are going to help you move on.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And so for the listeners, Courtney, would you agree that the obsessiveness is more thinking, the compulsiveness is more behavior or acting? I [00:22:00] just want to make that clear for the listeners.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Cortney Warren: No question. I just figured that

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: out yesterday.

Dr. Cortney Warren: We all have from a basic cognitive behavioral framework. We really think about symptoms from actions, the behaviors, the cognitions the thoughts that are running through your head, also the ways of thinking that you tend to engage in and then emotions, right?

Dr. Cortney Warren: The feelings. And so each of those will interact in very complicated ways. When you think something oh my gosh, they’re out with somebody else. They must like them or I have to do something. You’re going to emotionally feel strongly, probably, and you’re going to want to impulsively or compulsively act.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And they can go in other directions. You could have a feeling and then you realize that. Oh my gosh, I’m acting without thinking. And then later the thinking kicks in and you go what on earth am I doing? This is not a good choice.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. And I would argue that some of those emotions themselves can become addictive.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: If we repetitively [00:23:00] revisit them over and over, I think we can get attached to our own victimhood. We can get attached to our own misery. So let’s go back to some of the CBT tools to. deal with the breakup? Because you mentioned rumination and obsessive thinking.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Give

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: a, because I’m very tool driven.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I love tools. So give the listeners some examples of tools that might help with those.

Dr. Cortney Warren: One of the first things that I will teach people as a tool to use for rumination, because it is one of the hallmark signs of a breakup and end of. Of an addictive behavior in general, and of depression and of anxiety.

Dr. Cortney Warren: So if you’re going through a breakup and you cannot turn off your mind or in a toxic relationship, and you cannot stop thinking about your partner, they’re not great for you. I often encourage people to start with some thought stopping techniques where literally when they notice they’re thinking about their ex or their relationship or their [00:24:00] breakup.

Dr. Cortney Warren: You picture a big red stop sign or a flashing neon light right in front of your face that says stop. No, not right now. Because you have to get empowered enough so that you feel some control, some self efficacy over what’s going on in your head.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So can I interject there, ma’am? Yes, please. Because I think one of the thought stopping techniques I used to tell people, which I do, but then I joke about, is, you can slam your hand down on the chair or the desk and yell stop.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And then I say, but don’t do that when anyone else is around because you’re going to look crazy. But the extension of that is you can yell stop in your own head and the extension of that, even to your stop sign, which I love is, I think that we have to be ready with another positive thought to insert in its place.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: We consciously redirect our mind to like me laying on a hammock in Hawaii with a pina colada in a book.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Absolutely. What is your happy image? [00:25:00] What is the relaxed image? So oftentimes, as you’re saying, there are so many thought stopping techniques and getting sensory can be really helpful, as you’re saying.

Dr. Cortney Warren: So slamming something, yelling being angry sometimes in your car, if you really need to scream, go In a private place in your garage, in your car, yell, stop. I’m so angry. I don’t like this. It can feel really good to get some of that energy out and activate your whole body. Eventually, the goal also is to be able to calm your emotional state down.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And I try over time, this takes some practice to do a mindfulness activity coupled with the thought stopping. So as you are able to stop some of your thinking, now you’re going to insert calm, calm, and is a word I use, but it could be whatever uses word is useful for you, where you’re trying to use a [00:26:00] mantra or some version of a really Present moment sensory experiential positive for you that notices the thinking notices the rumination and eventually just lets it almost swim by your mind without sticking to you without affecting you as if you’re an observer, a non judgmental observer of this stream of ruminative thoughts that you see, and you say, I just notice you and instead of Getting activated by you.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I’m just going to see that you’re there and I’m going to focus on taking deep breaths and going to a much better calm spot in my own mind that makes me feel connected to the present in a positive way.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, I love that. The other one I love in this situation is radical acceptance, where you know, you realize that you can’t change the past, you’re staying stuck in anger, hurt, grieving over the past.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And then we insert some. [00:27:00] Mantras, let’s say of something like the present moment is fine, even if it’s painful as hell, or I can handle this or breathe. And I think mantras become really important during a breakup

Dr. Cortney Warren: and

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: something to bring you back to the present moment continually, because you’re always going to the past or your mind is trying to take you to the past.

Dr. Cortney Warren: You can even put post its all over your house.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I love post its. I’m

Dr. Cortney Warren: okay. I can get through this. know, radical acceptance is really the first cognitive step towards actually challenging your often distorted and very unhelpful thinking. I have distorted thinking? Yeah. I wish none of us did, but we all do.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Because that. That really takes a lot more practice and actually in the second chunk of my book, it’s really all on helping people learn how to challenge disordered thinking. The first step is really to radically accept where you [00:28:00] are. And if you can say to yourself, I am in this situation with a current partner or with my ex, I don’t like it.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It hurts. I’m struggling, but this is how it is today. Today. We’re broken up today. Something about our relationship is not working and I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring, but today this is the truth. And so I’m going to have to make my choices based on that reality. It actually is an incredibly empowering place to be in something that I highly encourage people

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: to practice.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So give us an example of some of the. Thought distortions in this environment, in this arena.

Dr. Cortney Warren: We want to believe everything we think. We want to believe that our thoughts are truth, with a capital T, and the reality is that much of our thinking is highly distorted in some pretty characteristic ways.[00:29:00]

Dr. Cortney Warren: When people are going through a breakup, some of the most common distorted things they say to themselves are these. I’m never gonna get over them. I’m never gonna find anyone as great as they were. No one’s gonna want me. My life is over. If they loved me enough, our relationship would work. I can change them or they’ll change.

Dr. Cortney Warren: If you notice any of those thoughts going through your mind, I can tell you right now that they’re not accurate and they’re not Because if you believe things like that, and if you think things like that, it is going to spiral your emotion in a really unhelpful way and make you want to act out in ways that ultimately you’re probably going to regret.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And those are all examples, it seems to me, of all or nothing [00:30:00] thinking, black or white thinking, and overgeneralization. And so anytime, I’m always telling clients, anytime you hear the word never or always, check that thought, because I don’t know of any situation in which that is true. I, math, two plus two is always four.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So I suppose

Dr. Cortney Warren: humans are gray. We are so gray. So yeah, all or nothing thinking is rampant in us. Denial. They didn’t mean it. They love me so much that their behavior actually, they didn’t mean to see that to me.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I guess there’s magical thinking in there too, of I can change them. I

Dr. Cortney Warren: can change them.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Always a dangerous

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: attitude to have in a relationship.

Dr. Cortney Warren: No question. Let

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: me change it from always.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Yes. Projecting into the future. Emotional reasoning where you believe that because you’re feeling something, it’s clearly your partner’s fault. It couldn’t possibly be that they’re struggling some unfinished business baggage inside of you.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Because you feel something it’s true. [00:31:00]

Dr. Cortney Warren: Because you feel something it’s accurate.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: That’s dangerous.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Very dangerous very dangerous. There’s so much distorted thinking that we bring to breakups and that we bring to romantic relationships, and that includes what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about our partner, and what we believe about love itself.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And so as you start, this is where this gets much harder for people. This is where we have to really dig deep. As you start to learn tools to manage your symptoms in the present moment, which you can absolutely learn. You can learn thought stopping, mindfulness, rumination time, where I encourage people to actually spend time and schedule time to feel their feelings and react and have all of it, the whole temper tantrum, and then.

Dr. Cortney Warren: When it’s done, it’s over. You’re done until your next rumination time. You can learn these skills. You can learn [00:32:00] to practice radical acceptance. You can learn impulsivity control. But as you start to explore your,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: sorry, can I interrupt there? I absolutely agree with you. Those are all learnable skills.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: There’s a bunch of learnable skills that we should all know and practice. And I believe the foundation of that. Or the step one of that is to believe, to consciously choose to believe that change is possible. Because when we’re depressed, when we’re broken up we’re like, Oh, that’s not going to work for me.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Or, Oh, yeah, no, I tried that didn’t work. Or that works for other people. And if your attitude is that change is impossible, guess what? It’s not going to be possible.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Change is an ongoing active process. If you want to change, you can, because you have 100 percent control over your choices, but it is going to take an active approach to your life.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And so [00:33:00] there is really a dialectic about change that we could talk about when it comes to honesty, that on the one hand, You can be desperate for something to be different because you’re in so much pain. And on the other hand, the more pain you’re in, oftentimes, the less you want to do. And so it’s this process of accepting yourself exactly as you are and always striving for more.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And always It’s a

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: paradox.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It really is. It really is. It’s this yin yang. They seem like polar opposites, but they actually work together.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. And that’s a big one that pair. And I think just to understand that we’re large enough to contain multitudes, I think to quote Whitman, that we’re large enough to contain these paradoxes and that we are largely paradoxical.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Very much. Very much.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Like the one that you just, it’s a huge one. I need to radically accept who I am right now, and this is where I am right now, [00:34:00] and I need to wholeheartedly believe that change is possible, and in fact, inevitable.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And in fact, that I’m responsible for it if I want my life

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: to be different.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Wait, I thought you were going to change me.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I wish. So many of us wish. Did you ever get that?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Did you

Dr. Cortney Warren: ever get that? Yes. Aren’t you going to do this? Oh my goodness. Aren’t you going to fix me? If we had a magic wand change is so hard. One thing that I often tell people about therapy and about research on outcomes of therapy is that one of the biggest predictors of therapeutic change.

Dr. Cortney Warren: is misery. You are more likely to do something differently when you’re in so much pain and you’re so uncomfortable that you can’t afford to stay the same anymore. That’s that rock bottom moment. And sometimes we have to get there before we’ll do anything differently. Going [00:35:00] back to your example in the beginning of your friend, where you’re seeing the train wreck, you see the horrible relationship that they’re in.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And. They are just not ready to change yet and it is painful to watch, but until someone gets to the place where they say, I can’t stand it anymore. They may be in more of a pre contemplation phase of life where they are not willing to do anything differently. And if you’re in that position, this really truly from the bottom of my heart with all respect.

Dr. Cortney Warren: The only thing I can really do with you as a psychologist is to help you get happier with exactly the life you’re living.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: No, I agree. And it’s funny cause you’re pulling addiction language again into, a number of other areas, including relationship, right? Rock bottom.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And I

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: agree. I’ll tell clients that have, severe social anxiety [00:36:00] that they, nothing changes.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And then they bump up against Oh my gosh, I’m turning 21 or 24. And my parents are kicking me out of the house. And I’m like, yeah, sometimes it takes a bigger fear for you to overcome. A smaller fear.

Dr. Cortney Warren: No question. Those moments in life where you look at yourself and you say, I can’t do this anymore.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It took me a long time to get here. For some of us, it takes way longer when we look back and we think, What? What? Seriously? Was that what I was doing? But when you get there, and you hit a point where you are actually ready to do something differently, and that is the crux of change. And it actually isn’t one big thing.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Even if the one big event triggered you to be ready, change doesn’t happen for most people overnight. Change happens through the thousands of seemingly small shifts that you make over the course of [00:37:00] every day, over weeks and months and years, that eventually exponentially lead you into a different place in life.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I love the idea of getting 1 percent better each day. It’s the tiny changes, it’s the micro changes that if we can just keep accumulating and adding those up and getting those under our belt, pretty soon you’re headed in a completely different direction. And even if it’s, I like that metaphor of, the oil tanker in the ocean changing its course two to 2%.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And that after, a couple of weeks at sea, you’re going to have a completely different destination. Yes. But it’s not a huge change.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It doesn’t seem like a huge change, but that is where your power is. Your greatest power lies there. And when you, going back to the breakup situation, when you make those daily steps to empower yourself, to heal yourself, to let them go, to diminish your contact over time, it will get easier.

Dr. Cortney Warren: [00:38:00] easier. You will practice, you will have the tools and then when you do have contact again, which for most people in a breakup does happen. So your ex calls you or you see a picture of them from a mutual friend or somebody mentions their name, you very likely will have some trigger. You will have some, ah, but now you’re actually in a much better place because you’ve already developed your skills.

Dr. Cortney Warren: You’ve already developed tool chest that you now can use to get back on track again.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Thank you very much for that. And thank you for the discussion about breakups, cheerful topic. But I also want to get to the other book that you wrote and the, this topic of self deception, because I think. We are so self deluded, we are so unaware, and we think we’re aware, and we think we’re honest with ourselves.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Tell me a little bit about your work in self deception.

Dr. Cortney Warren: [00:39:00] I became fascinated with self deception in graduate school because when I started learning of some of the primary theories of psychotherapeutic practice, which started with Freud and psychoanalysis for anyone who’s interested in therapy and moved into the humanistic traditions and existential traditions, CBT, DBT, multiculturalism.

Dr. Cortney Warren: One of the most glaring things to me was. That the more you are honest with yourself, the more power you have to shift your life. And that the degree to which you can admit the truth to yourself is the degree to which you will craft a life that is fulfilling for you. And so no matter what,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: would you repeat that again?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yes. That’s very important.

Dr. Cortney Warren: The degree to which you can be honest with yourself is the degree to which you will craft [00:40:00] a meaningful life for you. Because only you know the life you want to live and need to live. And that journey is one that no one else can hand you. I can’t tell you the life that you need to live.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I can help you figure it out. I can help you manage symptoms. I can help you explore your early childhood learning. What about a medium? Could

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: they tell me?

Dr. Cortney Warren: I guess that depends on what you think of the paranormal. I’m

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: sorry to interrupt.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Yeah, but I think that It is profound. And even your example of the breakup situation, I would say to your friend in that characteristic situation where you’re with someone and you are staying, there is something that you are not being honest with yourself about.

Dr. Cortney Warren: That if you were honest, you now have a [00:41:00] choice. Are you going to do something with this information and what is it? And the more you can explore yourself, know yourself, understand your emotional reactions, where they’re coming from, your early childhood learning patterns, the things that are often unconscious to us because we don’t really spend time exploring them.

Dr. Cortney Warren: The more in your adult life you will comfortably stand strong. In a graceful, loving position and say, this is who I am. And this is what I need to do to have no regret at the end of my life so that I lived the life I needed to live. Let me ask you a

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: question. Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. What percentage of our mind would you say is conscious and what percentage is subconscious or unconscious?

Dr. Cortney Warren: Oh, gosh, that the percentage. I know. And I know there’s no

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: act. There’s no This is more professional [00:42:00] guesstimate,

Dr. Cortney Warren: right? There’s no way really to measure it accurately, which is so difficult. Cognitive theorists and researchers would say that the large majority of our mental activity is unconscious.

Dr. Cortney Warren: What we’re actually aware of that we’re thinking and feeling is minute compared to all of the activity that’s going on in our brains that we don’t even think about that we just do. A large percent and going back really to even early psychology and early philosophy, which is really where a lot of psychology comes from.

Dr. Cortney Warren: This idea that you really sleepwalk through life if you’re not trying to understand yourself.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. You’re an automaton.

Dr. Cortney Warren: You really are you and Socrates back to the Greeks back to the key philosophers and unexamined life is not worth living That it is our responsibility as a human being [00:43:00] to explore who we are and what is We are going to do with ourselves because it is the core aspect of being human that separates us from animals.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I think it’s the only heroic journey left. We’ve explored space, we’ve explored all the land on earth, we’ve explored the oceans. Where we, where most of us have not explored is our internal landscapes.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It takes so much deliberate effort

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: and it takes some courage to

Dr. Cortney Warren: a lot of courage because you’re going to inherently have to confront some very painful things about yourself, about your background, about your family of origin, about your cultural context that when made conscious requires more work from you.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And that is really the crux of self deception from a psychological perspective is that self deception serves a function. [00:44:00] It protects us from information that we don’t want to see. So in some ways. We’re unaware of what’s going on in our minds because there’s too much information. We as humans couldn’t possibly be aware of everything that’s going on in our thinking.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Our senses alone take

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: in way more information than we can consciously process,

Dr. Cortney Warren: right? We can’t. It’s it. We would. Our brain would blow up. I think. Yeah. We would be the machine. Or have a psychotic

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: break. Yeah.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It’s too much, but we also unintentionally lie to ourselves when we are confronted with information that would hurt us.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And so in those areas, I would say you want to make the unconscious conscious. You want to explore yourself enough so that when you’re in an argument with your romantic partner, you can actually say to yourself, what does my [00:45:00] reaction to this situation say about me? What baggage am I bringing to this relationship that really has nothing to do with my partner, but has a lot to do with what I learned about love or what I learned about myself or what I think is true of family relationships and dynamics.

Dr. Cortney Warren: In general, and it’s very difficult to do that with our romantic partners, but it’s probably, I would argue the most important thing for you to do with your romantic partners, because it is the mechanism through which you can say, I am over here. You are over there. I need to understand myself and take responsibility for who I am and how I act and how I think.

Dr. Cortney Warren: While I. Ideally, listen to you, try to understand you, try to love you through the things I don’t like about you, such that we still choose to be [00:46:00] together and go through this dance of life that is very messy, where we are vulnerable and show all the yuckiness to each other and love each other through it.

Dr. Cortney Warren: is the biggest gift of long term relationships from my perspective.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. Beautifully put. But if you don’t know

Dr. Cortney Warren: yourself. You can’t possibly do that, and neither can your partner. And so that is an ongoing journey where each person has to take enough responsibility for themselves to start exploring first within and then trying to express that to them in a way that’s respectful and workable.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And then respond in a way that is ideally non defensive. And supportive that takes a little bit of practice by

Dr. Cortney Warren: definition, the defensiveness is deception. Yeah, it’s denied. And

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It’s you’re absolutely right. We bring so much into a relationship. That’s from our childhood from past relationships [00:47:00] and most of us I would say are aware of very little of it let me may I ask you a private a personal question?

Dr. Cortney Warren: Yes.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So in your marriage What are there any behaviors in yourself that you see where you’re like? I would like to change this or I’m struggling to change this or I’m confused where this is coming from

Dr. Cortney Warren: Definitely. And certainly earlier in my dating experiences when I was younger, it was blatantly obvious to me that I had a

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: given for all of us, right?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I don’t know how, no one gets into a relationship initially and they’re like healed.

Dr. Cortney Warren: One thing that I struggle with still is that I learned from an early age that if I made a mistake. I was going to get in trouble. And so one thing that I realized I do in my romantic relationships often is [00:48:00] that if I mess something up or if I say something that’s mean or if I just didn’t do what I said I was going to do in some way, even if it wasn’t intentional, I will try to rationalize why.

Dr. Cortney Warren: So my husband could say to me, Court you didn’t do this. You said you were going to do. And I will say. Oh this came up or I was working. I lost track of time. So and so needed something for my child, was having a tantrum. I had to figure it out. And what’s really hard for me to do in those moments is to say, you’re right.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I didn’t, I’m sorry. So

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: may I ask you what is the rationalization intended to protect you from? What emotion is that intended to protect you from?

Dr. Cortney Warren: Shame. embarrassment, deeper core beliefs that I have to work on, which I somewhat [00:49:00] alluded to earlier, but we didn’t get there, that if I’m not perfect, somehow I’m going to be rejected or in trouble.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. That is hugely important and hits home for me as well. I completely identify with that dynamic. And I think I totally lost my train of thought.

Dr. Cortney Warren: That’s okay. Because you go ahead if you remember it. One of the really important things about thinking patterns that I do want to be sure your listeners hear me say is that there are all of these surface level patterns that we might have.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Like me saying, Oh, I didn’t do it because, which is rationalization. It’s trying to give a reason to excuse why my behavior was less than ideal. Underneath all of our surface level in the moment, self deceptive tendencies, are these core beliefs. [00:50:00] That we start developing very early in life about ourselves, about other people and about the world around us.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And when you are deceiving yourself, when you are lying to yourself and you are struggling to shift it, there is a very high likelihood that it’s because that Automatic thought deception is touching on a deeper core belief that if acknowledged would really hurt. Like for me, growing up in a divorced family where I felt very responsible for my parents choices, and it was a very volatile household prior to their divorce.

Dr. Cortney Warren: The idea of something going wrong was traumatic and terrifying. So I had to keep the peace. So the idea then of me as an adult, not consciously because consciously it’s not that big of a deal if I make a mistake. And I rationally know that [00:51:00] I’m certainly not perfect. And I do a lot of things that aren’t ideal, but emotionally, Acknowledging that just by saying you’re right, I didn’t do it was touching on a much deeper, much more profound hurt that was driving my deception.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And I say that because It isn’t enough to just understand the deception in the moment. You have to be willing to dig deeper and ask yourself where it’s coming from. What did you learn that is driving this pattern, because it’s usually a pattern, of deception? Intimacy and closeness in your relationships.

Dr. Cortney Warren: That’s scary for you.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. At this point in my life, every time I have an outsized emotional reaction, where the emotion is bigger than the situation really warrants, if I’m honest, I’ll begin looking at my past like childhood. So let me ask you this [00:52:00] with how do you identify shame in yourself?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Because I think that’s a really tricky question to answer.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Like you just said. I always pay attention to my emotional reactions because I think oftentimes we are unaware of our cognitions, of our thinking patterns, unless we are given an emotionally reactive situation where you can pause long enough to unpack what is actually going through your mind.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And as I start to go through the layers of my thinking, it becomes obvious to me pretty quickly If I am feeling badly about a situation, which is more guilt, or if I think this situation means I am a bad person, I am worthless, I am [00:53:00] unlovable, and if it’s touching on any of that. It’s shame.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And so is it mostly cognitive that allows you to identify?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Cause that’s been my experience.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Yes. Which is interesting to me, right? Most emotions

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I would say are embodied. I’m picking up through physiological cues, shame. I could say I feel depressed. I feel like shit about myself. And maybe I’m angry. Maybe I’m shutting down. There are some things like that, but the only way to differentiate that from like anger or sadness or something else is via the thoughts in my head of, she’d be better off without me, or I’m no good at this relationship thing.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: They all have to do with disconnection and worthiness or unworthiness.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Absolutely. They have to do with you being a, an unworthy, unlovable, bad human at your core. Something is fundamentally wrong with you. So

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: let me ask you this. Do you know of any positive, because for every other emotion, I can make an argument as to why they exist and the positive benefit of it.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: cannot come up with that for [00:54:00] shame.

Dr. Cortney Warren: I think shame is a much higher level emotion, complicated emotion, right? When you were talking about anger or fear the very basic primal emotions. And one of the reasons that cognition might be so important to shame, I don’t know the research on this, so I’d have to look if it’s been written about, but is that.

Dr. Cortney Warren: It actually does take a higher order thinking process to conclude that something you did means you don’t deserve to live. I would bet that shame is not particularly prevalent in the animal kingdom, generally. Yeah, makes sense. I also think that shame behaviorally for some people is obvious when they want to shrink into a ball in the fetal position or shrink away as if you want to disappear, that Guilt can make you want to disappear to or embarrassment, but shame is one of those [00:55:00] experiences where people will describe not only the I’m unlovable, I’m bad, but the, I almost want to not exist.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And if there’s a behavioral manifestation of that for you in some way, that might be a sign of shame.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It almost, there’s a similarity there physically or maybe. Perhaps physiologically between shame and anguish where, you are on your knees on the floor sobbing typically, because you’ve lost a loved one, for example.

Dr. Cortney Warren: But it doesn’t have necessarily the personal component, right? You could lose a loved one and you don’t feel a. as if it’s a personal attack on your value as a human.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Absolutely. So thank you for those answers. That was fantastic. Because I think we really need more awareness and more ability to identify shame.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Because if you had asked me five years ago, do you ever experience shame? I would have been like, No, but I was. It was just really infrequently, right? It was minutes at a time. I don’t know, maybe once a [00:56:00] quarter, for example. It just wasn’t that often.

Dr. Cortney Warren: How did you begin the journey of seeing it?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It was when I was stonewalling with my fiancee, Jory, in arguments, like I would go 15 minutes in an emotional argument, I would begin to get flooded, I’d start to get angry, then I would shut down, thinking, I want to protect her, I don’t want to say anything in anger that’s going to hurt her feelings, which is true.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: simultaneously true is that I’m stonewalling and withdrawing from the argument psychologically and verbally, which panics her.

Dr. Cortney Warren: And

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: so we were trying to look at that avoidant anxious trap, anxious avoidant trap, and trying to figure ways out of it. So I kept going back to Disagreements. There was a couple disagreements where we kept revisiting either solo or together.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And I think it’s a really important skill to cultivate, to maybe go for a walk with your loved one and revisit some of these arguments. So you can look at how much of this really had to do with us. How much is about a past relationship? How much is [00:57:00] about my childhood? And let me look at what are the triggers that are stacking here that make me feel overwhelmed and at times lead to shame?

Dr. Cortney Warren: I think that’s very well put. And the beauty again of having a romantic relationship where you can work out your stuff because we are all going to have reactions and have tendencies. And really you, we learn as humans through experiences. We don’t learn usually by reading or by having someone tell us what to do.

Dr. Cortney Warren: We learn by experiencing it and then. Shifting as we practice something different,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: well, and a lot of times these relationship wounds can only be healed in a relationship. So I think a lot of times like in therapy, for example, we’re single and we’re trying to heal relationship wounds, which to some extent can be done, but it can’t really be done until the rubber hits the road.

Dr. Cortney Warren: You need somebody to push back against you to figure out who you are. [00:58:00]

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And ideally, again, someone to look at some of these issues with curiosity, with objectivity, and learn how to respond non defensively so that you can have calm, objective conversations after the fact to really pick apart and tease apart the dynamics in some of these arguments so you can truly change the dynamics.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Definitely. And it takes practice.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Oh yeah. It takes practice. It takes a strong will too and a strong stomach.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Yes it does.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: But I also think it’s one of the most important things we can do in this lifetime.

Dr. Cortney Warren: No question. It is the greatest benefit of interpersonal interactions. And I think we are social beings.

Dr. Cortney Warren: We are driven to have romantic relationships. We are driven to figure out how to be close to other humans. We live in communities. We have children, we have parents, we have extended families. That is true. [00:59:00] Potentially your greatest outlet for understanding who you are, because whether you love someone, hate them have no reaction at all, it’s all essentially a stimulus.

Dr. Cortney Warren: The world is a stimulus for us. And the more we can see it as such and use it. As a mirror, the better you will be at figuring out how you want to live your life. Huh.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I just had the thought that maybe we’re not the tabula rasa. Maybe the world is the tabula rasa upon which we write our experience in our story.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Absolutely. I think of it that way. Yes.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So Courtney, I, unfortunately our time is up. I have greatly enjoyed this conversation. You’re amazing. Where can people get ahold of you or find out more if they would like to?

Dr. Cortney Warren: DrCourtney. com is my website. I also have an Instagram account and any kind of LinkedIn if it’s a professional contact as well.

Dr. Cortney Warren: You are more than [01:00:00] welcome to follow me or send an email if you have any questions. I do a ton of research still and a lot of research consulting, but I also really care about bringing solid psychological material to the public. So I actively write blogs for psychology today, and for big media outlets really to try to bring this material that we talk about in a more academic circle down to all of us who need it to help ourselves because that’s really where it belongs.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Psychology is the study of human nature. It is meant to inform our lived experiences.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And thank you so much for those efforts. I have the same mission, it’s to make the complicated accessible because there’s a bunch of great tools in the academic literature, right? But no one’s going to see them.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So to spread them in a way that others can understand them and make use of them, to me, it doesn’t get any more valuable.

Dr. Cortney Warren: Agreed.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So the books again are Letting Go of Your Ex, CBT [01:01:00] Skills to Heal the Pain of a Breakup and Overcome Love Addiction, and Lies We Tell Ourselves, The Psychology of Self Deception.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Courtney, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been an absolute privilege.

Dr. Cortney Warren: John, it was lovely. Thank you for such an interesting discussion.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: My pleasure. And that is it for this episode of the Evolved Caveman Podcast. If you liked this episode, please feel free to like, rate, review, and share with all your friends.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: If you didn’t like it, you don’t have to do a damn thing. Thanks so much. Until next time.