Podcast: I Got a Pain Purohit To Answer Your Break up Questions

Our expert answers common break up questions: from managing the ex’s thoughts to how to make the pain go away.

From Break-Up Gali to Move On Nagar, How I Dealt With It 

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Podcast Editor: Deepthi Ramdas

Isn’t it funny how anyone dealing with a breakup manages to get all sorts of random advice — from friends, strangers, memes, you name it. Often the advice is simply conflicting. Of course, it’s not like you NEED the advice — you are so much smarter than that (wink)! That is until you find yourself utterly lost in a whirlpool of thoughts. Which if unresolved, can end up hurting you more than you realise.

And that’s when you know you need a good ‘Pain Purohit’ — someone who will empathise with your pain and not judge you for the way you are processing your feelings.

I got one such Pain Purohit for the Episode 2 of our relationship series.

Avani Parekh is a trained counsellor who started Love Doctor, a platform to get answers to all your questions about relationships. It was later acquired by Sheroes.in. Avani now works for Facebook in Singapore.

Why I picked Avani was because she is empathetic, smart, funny and very rational when it comes to giving advice. I myself took some advice from her which I shall not disclose here!

The questions, meanwhile, that I posed to her were sent to me by listeners and interviewees. While some came simply through DMs.

I began by asking Avani, who has dealt with countless queries on relationships in her role as a counsellor what she feels is the most common concern that heartbroken people feel. The “anguish over feeling forgotten” was her reply.

Well, it’s true. Nobody likes to be forgotten, and to be forgotten by someone who we once thought was our world can sometimes affect our self esteem as well. But is that healthy? That, among a few other questions are answered by Avani quite succinctly here.

How much should we connect our self esteem with a breakup?

Connecting your self esteem to another person is dangerous in itself. That means your self esteem is not yours anymore. It is dependent on another person’s thoughts and feelings and actions and words.

Lesson learnt, WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT YOURSELF should not be dependent on what other people think about you!

But what happens when the thoughts of an ex are like constipation and don’t go away that easily?

What do I do If I can’t stop thinking about my ex?

As with anything that sticks in the mind, don’t resist the thought. Let the thought come to you and then ask it, “What are you here to teach me?” And then send the image of your ex-love and gratitude. Send them love, and then send yourself double the amount of love.

Why do exes suck so much?

(Laughs) That’s because exes know how to hurt us... And they know how to love us as well. But they aren’t willing to give us what we want from them.. And that knowledge is really painful.

“Exes live rent free in our heads. They get valuable real estate in our lives and we don’t even want them there!”

When is the pain going to go away?

It might never go away. But pain is an interesting thing. There are so many beautiful things that emerge from pain too — learnings, lessons, understandings, depths, compassion, empathy. You may always think of somebody and it might always hurt a little. Over time, the sting will get lesser and lesser. But a loss is a loss.

Can you truly be friends?

You can, but you need to do the effort of moving through the breakup first.

You have to give it time, for you both to meet as new people. And then build something that makes sense in that space and time.

After all, as Avani points out, as humans we tend to put people in boxes. So why not make peace with the fact that we probably “put them in the wrong box” earlier and can explore other paradigms of bonding that are beyond the binary of friendships and romantic relationships!

(This is Episode 2 of How I Dealt With It, a brand new series about relationships. But till the next episode, a jaadu ki jhappi to anyone going through this!)