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Hello, everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our
20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode.
Today we are going to be talking about closure, what it is, what it isn't.
It is very elusive nature, whether we need it and how to find yourself closure without
needing another person's input or needing someone to have all the answers for you.
Closure I think is such an interesting concept in our 20s because there are so many storylines
that we will live out, so many relationships and situations that will not have a neat conclusion.
As much as we might want them to, not every relationship is going to finish on a good
note.
Of course, when I talk about closure, most of us do think about relationships we think about
love, we think about that period after a relationship ends where we are left with thousands
of questions.
Did they really love me?
What did I do wrong?
What do they think of me now?
Why was I not enough?
Honestly, the list is endless.
I think the need for closure is a lot like grief.
It is lost or misplaced love, a love that really lingers on.
But beyond those romantic relationships, we can also require closure at the end of platonic
relationships and friendships.
I think friendships always seem to be painted as less important by our society, something
that we just expect to follow along with us in life whilst our romantic relationships
are really the main attraction.
But I really do truly believe that they can hurt so deeply when they come to an end.
Probably because we never expect our friendships to end in that way.
We never expect to go through a friendship breakup.
Or, you know, I've heard so many stories of lifelong friendships where the other person
suddenly goes to the friend or goes completely silent or friendship breakups that are so
much worse than the heartbreak that we experience from romantic relationships.
When we are that connected with someone when we spend so much time with them, we bond
over everything we talk all the time.
Seeing those connections, whether they are platonic or romantic, seeing them crumble is
really upsetting, especially when we are left feeling very confused and unable to seek
clarity.
In those moments we want closure, we feel like it is the only thing that will help us come
to terms with these events.
But although we might want closure, do we really need it as much as we think we do?
And when we say that we are looking for closure, what exactly does that entail?
And is it maybe slightly naive for us to think that the person who caused us so much pain
and disappointment is going to be the same person who can provide us with the answers that
will let us heal?
I don't necessarily think so.
So that's really what I want to focus on in today's episode.
Do we need someone else to provide us with closure or can we provide it for ourselves?
I think that my opinion is quite obvious, but before we get into that, let's look into
some of the psychological origins of this concept of closure and make sure that our, the
foundations of our understanding are strong.
Closure essentially refers to our need to make sense of a situation and feel like it has
a solid conclusion.
In psychology, the need for closure is seen as a motivation to find an answer to an ambiguous
situation.
Because as humans, as we know, we are not particularly good at navigating uncertainty.
So this motivation to find an answer, it is enhanced by what we see as the benefits
of this.
And we need a more increased ability to predict what might happen, being able to remove
some of those fears, feeling certain of where we stand with someone.
Really it's about finding a way and finding a place for these memories.
And social psychologists in particular suggest that people tend to have a need to view
their relationships as a whole.
That they have, they are a complete story.
They have a beginning.
They have a middle and they have an end.
And when a relationship concludes, the mind seeks to fill in any gaps before moving on,
so that it can find that ending.
In other words, we need that closure to essentially finish off the story.
And when we are left without an ending either because the relationship entered quite abruptly,
we didn't see it coming.
You ended on a fight that you never resolved or there was just radio silence.
We don't know where to place that memory because it still feels like it's ongoing.
It's an active storyline.
Our minds have this open chapter and this lack of a conclusion keeps us going back and returning
again and again and again, wanting to find more answers by searching through our memories,
wanting to find a resting place for this relationship and for what it has become.
We all have as humans that individual drive for closure, but that need and that drive
differs between us.
So mainly it differs according to intensity and the intensity of our need for closure.
This depends largely on our personality.
So people with that intense need for closure, they may be used to being in control and they
prefer life to go as planned, they may feel really distressed by uncertainty and might
really challenge their sense of safety and wellbeing to not have the answers to a question.
And in the 1990s, these three psychologists actually came up with the need for closure
scale, which can be used to really categorize people based on a number of questions and determine
where we kind of all sit on this spectrum of obtaining closure.
At length, we will go to find closure at the end of a relationship or at the end of some
situation.
So those of us who really need closure often make a lot of assumptions or false judgments
or shut down as soon as a relationship is over in order to just provide ourselves with
the ending without waiting around for someone else to come in and challenge what we feel
was the reason for this relationship not working or what we feel was the reason that this
had to end.
The answers that we come up with, the conclusion that we reach, it might, you know, it might
not be entirely correct.
It might be based on a lot of false premises, but at least in our minds, the story is over.
We have a nice bookend to this relationship to this situation.
In contrast, sometimes we observe individuals who avoid closure almost as a way to continue
to suspend the relationship in space and time.
So the movie 500 days of summer, if you've seen it, and if you haven't, you really should
go and watch it.
It's quite good.
But this movie, Cult Classic, it's an excellent example of someone who does not have a high
need for closure in fact avoids closure.
So Tom, the main character, he really remains suspended in the happy memories of the relationship
and he's fixated on them almost as a way to stay connected with his ex.
Closure signifies the end.
But if you are still anticipating something more, if you are unable to rectify your feelings
for someone, even when you know it's time to move on, if you have these expectations
that you might get back together, sometimes you actually continue to deprive yourself of
closure in order to stay in the potential of the relationship.
That's because our innate need to avoid closure in some of these instances is controlled
by our desire to avoid the negative consequences that come along with that.
So for example, once you acknowledge that yes, this relationship is over, this person does
not want to talk to me, I do not want to talk to them.
Doing that fully means that you have to start processing what that means for you, the
pain that that might bring.
So we elongate the situation in order to avoid that.
There's actually another little interesting facet of this that it's kind of the fun fact
for this episode.
These types of people who don't really have that need for closure, they've done some studies
on what that really means for the rest of their personality and they found that in some
studies conducted on the correlation between the need for closure and creativity levels,
people who avoid closure are significantly more creative.
Maybe that's because of their appreciation of deeper motions or the fact that they
are more comfortable with things being uncertain.
So they're able to transfer that uncertainty and that kind of open-endedness into their
art or what they're creating.
So a little fun fact.
It's not to say that depriving ourselves of closure either unconsciously or not is
all good and has a lot of benefits.
I actually think that a lot of us do get to a point, even if you have a low need for closure
we do get to a point where we can no longer live in the past and maybe our lack of closure
is preventing us from moving on.
Or it is keeping us in a very emotionally unavailable place.
I think we commonly see this with people straight out of a long-term relationship who actually
haven't yet figured out exactly why the relationship didn't work.
Because of that they don't necessarily know what maybe needs to change but more often
than not you still have one foot stuck in that past relationship taking up emotional,
mental and psychological space that might be better devoted for something else, not
just to someone else but for something else.
And it's super frustrating.
I've talked about this a bit before but I have this weird situation chip a few years back
with someone and it was so emotionally exhausting.
It was draining.
It left me in such a bad place mentally.
I had no self-confidence.
I could barely speak to anybody and it took me so much time to recover and so much time
to find that piece and closure that I needed.
More so than when I'd ended my previous long-term relationship.
And the reason why was because of how many what-ifs were left over.
At least in my relationship we kind of had the chance to really take this connection to
its final destination if that makes sense.
Like we lived out the journey that we were meant to go on.
We had tried to make it work.
It didn't.
There was nothing left to say.
There was nothing left to do.
The end of the story was written very quickly.
But with that situation chip because the entire relationship had been so tumultuous, the
conclusion or what I thought was the conclusion was equally confusing.
Was it me?
Was it him?
Was it just circumstances?
Was it timing?
In hindsight I really can't believe I spent so much time so many months thinking about
this person but I also realized that there were some parts of that relationship that always
meant I was never going to get the answers that I needed at the end.
Or so I thought.
I think when we are in this moment of grief and ambiguity and sadness we like to believe
in the idea of a quick fix and we fixate on this premise that there is something we don't
know that can explain it all away.
And take away all these feelings.
There is some answer out there that's going to make us feel better and we place a little
hope in in someone else's ability to reach our emotional conclusions for us.
I think we obviously all need closure.
It is a human need but we don't necessarily need someone else to give it to us.
Our solution to the closure problem doesn't always lie without X or a former friend or
any explanation that they can provide us.
In fact I think you are probably the only person who is going to be able to bring that for
yourself.
Even if you don't realize it in the moment in hindsight, nothing that someone else has
said has made you feel any better.
Normally it's just that you have been able to integrate that into your idea of the relationship
and your idea of the conclusion and write that ending for yourself.
So there's a few reasons why I don't think that we should rely on other people to bring
us closure.
Firstly, their actions were in some ways the closure that you needed.
Their inability to treat you with respect or their fickleness, their inconsistency, their
cruelty even at times.
That is really the evidence that all along this person did not have the emotional maturity
to navigate an adult relationship with you.
Like a lot of the time if you are left without answers at the end of a relationship, something
has kind of not gone wrong but there is something that they could have provided you that they
could have spoken to about along the way that they chose not to.
And I think secondly, like I mentioned before, you are relying on the same person who hurt
you in the first place to heal that very wound that they created, either intentionally
or unintentionally.
I think the irony of this is best understood through metaphor.
If you fall off a ladder and you break your back, you are not going to climb back up that
same ladder with the hope that you will fall off it again and break your back back to the
way that it was before.
Do you know what I mean?
Like this person has obviously created some pain and has injured you in some way.
I don't necessarily think that they can undo that.
They might not even have the answer that you want because they don't know it themselves.
They may not even be able to articulate their actual feelings well enough to provide you
with the clarity that you need.
And there's also no guarantee that they're going to be honest with you either.
So you are relying on a faulty or an unwilling messenger for your emotional and mental sanity.
I also saw this really beautiful quote the other day that I think expresses this very well.
Life is short.
I don't think that you should wait around for apologies.
Your peace is worth more than their acknowledgement.
If you're looking for them to say sorry, if you're looking for them to not just apologize
but make some kind of amends, I don't think you're ever going to truly believe that anyways.
And I don't think it's going to undo anything that has already happened.
At least they won't be able to undo it once again.
Sadly, it's back to you.
And for me personally, this is the most important reason we shouldn't rely on others for closure
is that sometimes we use closure as a proxy for something else that we actually want.
We think that we need to reach out to them just one more time, grab a coffee with them
just once more in order to get closure.
But really, what you want to do is just see them again because you're not ready to move
on.
But you're evoking this idea of closure as an excuse.
I'm not trying to call you out.
I'm just saying from experience, I would do this.
I'd be like, oh, you know, I just have a few more questions about the end of our relationship.
But really, I didn't like.
I knew everything that I needed to know.
I just wanted to see them.
You have convinced yourself that you have good intentions when actually underneath this
urge is a true desire to reconnect.
And this pattern is keeping you stuck in the memories of the relationship.
It's making you feel like it's not quite over yet that there's more to come.
You're left kind of discussing your relationship with this person.
You're looking for answers that you know they can never give you.
And when you repeatedly go back to this person with more excuses to catch up, you are in
the closure cycle.
We are not letting the connection fade away from our memory and our brains.
So in psychology, particularly in cognitive psychology, there is this idea known as long-term
potentialization, and it has to do with how our neurons make and replace connections
and pathways in the brain.
So the more we use a connection, for example, the more we talk to someone and see them
and interact with them and bond with them, the more we use it, the stronger that neural
connection becomes.
When that relationship disappears, the neural pathways not stimulated as much by an external
presence or stimuli.
So it's used less and less until it begins to fade and be replaced inevitably by something
that is more important.
That is a natural part of the recovery process, specifically after the end of relationship.
It's the reason why we say that time heals because it quite literally does.
It heals us by letting our brain do what it does best, which is prioritized what is important
and what is not important.
And if this person is no longer part of your life, we want our brain to deprioritize the
information that it has about this individual.
When we continue to find opportunities to talk to them, to reach out, to call, see this
person, all we are doing is keeping this connection alive.
We are keeping it strong.
We are keeping that pathway and those memories present.
And we aren't letting ourselves move on the way that we should.
This neural explanation is not to claim that you shouldn't reach out if you really need
to, but I do believe that one closure conversation is probably enough.
You have a right to ask for closure, but you need to ensure that you want it for the
right reasons.
And I also don't think you should expect to leave the conversation feeling completely
sure of yourself and renewed.
Those expectations once again contribute to the closure seeking cycle because when you
go into it, thinking, I just need to hear this one thing and I'll be okay.
It's never just that one thing that you need to hear.
And so you'll keep going back, wanting more and more, waiting for the right thing to
be said when it won't be said at all.
So when going into that conversation, if you choose to have a closure chat, make sure
firstly that you have a time limit.
Do you not find yourself talking to them for six, seven, eight hours staying over, going
for a long drive?
Like don't find yourself in a situation that is reminiscent of your relationship.
You need to have your questions ready and you need to have your intentions clear.
What are you actually hoping to get out of this?
Is there actually a reason that you need to be there right now and you need to be discussing
this with them?
It's not a risk as well that this is also a controlled conversation.
This is not a time to try and get them back.
It's not a time to bring up old arguments.
This is a space for understanding and moving forward.
It's also important to acknowledge that there are a lot of situations where we are not
provided with that opportunity to talk it through with someone else, especially in some
of those situations that we spoke of before where the other person has just chosen to
break or contact they've chosen to block you, to ghost you.
This might sound controversial but as hard as that is, that is their right to do.
I usually see these situations in friendships when someone has actually just been unable
to set boundaries or communicate.
Maybe they are very conflict averse.
So something has been bothering them for a while.
They just don't know how to talk to you about it.
You remain unaware.
It's not like you've done anything wrong.
Maybe you have but you just haven't been given an opportunity to rectify the situation
or to apologise.
So this person eventually snaps.
Their only option they see in their mind is to just go completely know a contact with
you.
I know it doesn't feel fair that we are left to navigate the aftermath of this ourselves
but we cannot control what other people see as best for them.
What you can control is what you do next and I think it's your turn to do what's best
for you and to find a way to move forward and provide yourself once again with closure.
So that is what I want to discuss next.
How do we find closure without reliance on others?
How do we move on successfully?
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Providing ourselves with the emotional, psychological, mental closure that we need, doing it all by
ourselves, officially closing a chapter in this book, is not going to come without some
challenges.
I know this all too well.
I'm sure that you do as well if you're listening to this episode.
And there are so many times where we sit back and I think just wish and pray that we could
be over it by now.
We just want to be over it.
We're ready to just have moved on but sometimes we're also not willing to do the work to get
there because the path through is often, you know, the path that is hardest but I have
five tips and kind of pieces of instruction for you.
And I think following this process releases a lot of the grief and the anguish that otherwise
keeps us quite trapped in the past and quite trapped in the closure cycle.
So my tips are as follows.
We're going to talk about changing your mindset around what the end of this relationship
has brought you.
And how to not be afraid of negative emotions, certainly how not to be afraid of memory
flare ups, how to take responsibility and then finally how to release the pain that is
wanting you to go back and ask more questions and look for more answers.
And I have a specific exercise for this that I think is so important.
It has been so helpful to me in those times that I really needed closure.
So to begin, let's talk about changing your mindset.
We hear this a lot and I understand that when we hear this, we thought people talk about
mindset shifts and whatnot.
It's very easy to dismiss this and just be like, that is a, that is nonsense.
And it's a bunch of garbage.
Like, let's just skip this step.
I don't need to change my mindset.
It's just a terrible situation.
I get it.
And in many ways, it is a terrible situation.
But we're going to trust the psychology on this and the psychology says that we have control
over our cognitions and our thoughts about a situation.
And these cognitions can be changed to better suit us.
So instead of sitting there and thinking, this is the worst thing that has ever happened
to me.
This is so terrible.
I'm never going to recover from this.
I'm never going to find love again.
I'm never going to have a friend as good as her.
This is the end for me.
Replace those thoughts deliberately with ones that suit you better.
Yes, it sucks.
But this ending was a gift.
This has given me things that I wouldn't have imagined for myself.
What doors are opening because that relationship ended?
What is it teaching you about yourself?
I always say that the best beginnings are truly hidden in the endings of things.
Because it's there that the story really gets to take like so many different turns.
It's where the storyline is most open for change.
That's the point that you're at right now.
I think stop those negative thoughts and replace them with a deliberate thought.
So when you think I just want to get over this, I'm so...
This is just the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
Stop and say, this might be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
I just can't see it yet.
I just don't know what my future looks like and that is really exciting.
When you continue to interrupt those negative thoughts and replace them, that repetition
will mean that you get to a point someday where it becomes automatic.
You don't need to try and convince yourself.
You just believe it.
You just believe that maybe this happened not for a reason, but there is something that
is going to come out of this that you would have missed if that relationship had continued.
I really think that understanding that and having a more positive, not just positive,
but a different mindset towards the end of a relationship towards an equal closure,
gets us to a point where we are not scared to let ourselves move on.
This is where the next step comes in.
True closure is about facing, unfortunately, negative emotions.
Sometimes what keeps us in the memories of a relationship, what keeps us going back,
what keeps us unable to move on, is knowing that the next step after that is going to be
really painful.
Once we acknowledge that the relationship is truly over, that there is no more, that they
can provide us that it's going to make us feel better, there is no more bargaining,
that is going to naturally trigger a lot of grief.
So we engage in avoidance.
When we allow ourselves to realize that true closure is about facing these negative emotions,
there will be hard times.
When we no longer avoid the tears, we no longer avoid the fears about the future, the anxieties,
the dark emotions, but we find an outlet for that energy.
I really think that we get to a closer point of being able to live with these past experiences
and the knowledge that they didn't work out.
It is not as scary as it has to be.
I also want to reassure you that subconsciously, unconsciously thinking about this person,
having them pop into your head.
It does not mean that you are not ready to move on.
Do not confuse that with a need to reach back out to this person.
It is totally entirely normal to still have the occasional thought about them, especially
if you've been with this person for a long time or they are a friend who has been with
you for your whole life or the situation you're trying to find closure from was particularly
upsetting or traumatic or really frustrating.
It takes a while for that memory to be dulled and to feel like it has a place.
I think we all know that weird feeling where you wake up after a dream that you've had
about someone and you haven't seen them for months and suddenly there they are popping
up in your subconscious.
Or strangely you just can't stop thinking about the things that you did two summers ago.
You can't stop thinking about the situation.
These are called memory flare ups and they are totally normal, especially when we are
dreaming.
Our brain just tends to fire off a lot of random energy and that sparks all connections,
all paths, all feelings.
It doesn't say anything more than that.
It is not a secret sign to you to reach out.
It is not a secret sign that you are not ready for closure, that there is something left
to be said.
It is just likely that something in your environment has subconsciously triggered these memories
to reappear.
It could also be what we call the anniversary effect if these memories are occurring around
a significant date, maybe on Valentine's Day or their birthday or six months into a break
up.
The anniversary effect is a term used in the PTSD space that refers to the tendency for us
to start reliving past experiences and events when a significant date comes around.
It is the significance of that anniversary that cues our memories.
Don't fear it.
There is no hidden message for you in this.
You are not doing anything wrong.
You are not unprepared for closure.
Just let it come and let it go.
The fourth step is around accountability.
I think we have taken this perspective for most of this episode of someone who has wronged
me, someone who has left me, how do I find closure?
How do I move past this experience?
Sometimes though we have been the one who has done the wrong thing, even if we didn't
mean to.
It is actually that urgent and that craving for closure that we have to reach out to that
person is really just the urge to resolve the lingering guilt that we feel.
We want this other person to forgive us.
We want them to accept our apology because we weren't happy with our behaviour.
We cannot move on from this place of guilt and remorse and regret.
I think in those moments it is really important to actually examine the role you had to play
in what ended up occurring.
If you continue to ignore what is so blaringly obvious and wrong, maybe about your behaviour,
it actually doesn't help you in the future.
All it is going to do is ensure that you make that mistake again and you go through what
you were going through again with another person you care about facing the same kind of emotional
turmoil and regret and resentment even that you're feeling right now.
Really take a solid hard look at what about the situation you were responsible for.
Did you not respect their boundaries?
Did you overstep their boundaries?
Were you not really on your best behaviour?
Was there something happening in your environment that you allowed to be projected onto
them?
What was your role in creating this situation?
It's very easy to blame others especially since we like to protect ourselves with
steam and we like to feel like we are good people.
It is only natural to feel that way.
But the older you get the more you realise that that really doesn't make you a better
person.
You are just suppressing the parts of you that might actually end up hurting other people.
And this moment right now, this moment where you're looking for closure is a great time
to turn to yourself for answers.
And turn to yourself for the promise that this won't happen in the future because I'm
going to take responsibility for my role in this.
Finally, if you're looking for the closure that we have been talking about all along,
you are unable to get it.
You are searching high and low for some kind of answer or explanation for why this has
happened.
It will be time to do some further digging and further self-fogiveness.
But also forgiveness of the other person for what is essentially the pain that you're
experiencing, whether it is deliberate or accidental.
So we've talked about this exercise before but I want to speak about it again.
This is around, it's like a letter writing exercise.
And you're going to write two letters.
You are going to write a final letter to this person, apologizing, acknowledging, expressing
how hurt you feel.
But why?
You are ready to let go.
Why now is the time that you are going to move on.
I want you to write that letter and give as much detail as possible.
You are going to detail every emotion that you have felt, why it was directed towards
them, the emotions that have been directed towards yourself, every confusing thing about
this situation, everything that you are mad about, everything that you are maybe grateful
for, write it in that letter and then get rid of it.
I know this sounds super silly but do something that symbolically kind of represents that
you are like cleansing yourself of this past, kind of removing or cleansing yourself of
the guilt that you're feeling or the sadness.
Not going to promote us and obviously but like burning the letters in a controlled space
is actually really deeply moving because it does feel like quite poetic and symbolic
that you have had this pent up emotional landscape and pent up emotional state for so long
that you're finally letting yourself physically like burn it down, physically destroy some
of these emotions.
That's the first letter, the letter to them and then write the letter to yourself.
Through the self, yourself right now who is experiencing this, what do they need to hear
from you?
Is it that it's going to get better?
What do they need to hear about, what you're feeling?
Especially when we think about this in terms of reading it back in the future.
What would you want to remember about this experience that is going to teach you something
and that is going to serve as a landmark in three months, six months time for you to look
back on and say I've actually done a lot of work from here.
I'm actually feeling a lot better.
I am no longer in that intense exaggerated state of needing to see them, needing to get
an answer, needing that closure like it's water.
There's been a lot of research on these kinds of exercises.
The first thing that they're really helpful with doing is preventing you from ruminating
in your own mind over and over again about every small detail and therefore allowing
yourself to kind of be beholden to these memories.
But research has also shown that this type of writing that allows us to examine what
we've lost through a redemptive lens without blame and that focuses on your current emotional
state and focuses even sometimes on the positives.
It can be very useful in helping us to achieve closure, whereas when we simply just vent
and rant to our friends, actually what you're doing is just maintaining the cycle of feeling
like this situation, this person has control over you in some senses.
I want to say this again, the answers do not lie in someone else.
You can provide yourself with closure, whether that is through a mindset shift or kind of
a cathartic release, making some changes to how you see yourself, but also understanding
that this relationship may be had to end for a reason.
This situation had to occur.
There is something contained in this that you might not be able to see right now, but
it is really important for your journey.
I think that that really allows us to come to peace with this situation and not feel like
it has total control over who we are and who we're becoming.
I want to say this final thing, but time seriously does heal all wounds.
All grip on these memories and this experience will loosen as time goes on.
As those experiences are replaced with better ones and novel experiences as well and new
things and new relationships and new people and new things to be happy about.
I really hope that this has provided you with an overview of why maybe you don't really
need closure from someone else, why you can provide it for yourself, some of the pitfalls
of looking for closure and being desperate for it and whatever you're going through,
whether I described your situation or not, if this related to you in any way, I'm sending
you a lot of love and a lot of strength.
I know it can be incredibly difficult, but I think you're doing the right thing.
You are obviously listening to content about this and you are searching for answers that
lay beyond this other person or lay beyond these circumstances you can't control.
So I'm proud of you, congratulations.
As always, if there is someone who needs to hear this episode, please feel free to share
it with them.
Make sure you have left a five star review and that you are following us on Instagram
at that psychology podcast.
If you have an episode suggestion, if you just want to say hi, if you have feedback, if
you have any further tips for getting closure in these tough situations, I would love to
hear from you.
We will be back next week with another episode.
Until then, stay safe.
Take a
little
thing.
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