Transcript
Speaker: What's up, queens?
Speaker: Welcome to the Female Dating Strategy Podcast, the meanest female-only podcast on the internet.
Speaker: I'm Ro.
Speaker: And I'm Lilith.
Speaker: And again, it's still just us.
Speaker: We're Savannah-less.
Speaker: I miss her so much.
Speaker: She's okay, though.
Speaker: She's fine.
Speaker: She's fine.
Speaker: She's just recovering.
Speaker: She's also recovering from surgery and also on a bit of a vacation.
Speaker: So it's like, treat yourself, you know, treat yourself well.
Speaker: So she's been on a break from podcast-related things for the past few weeks.
Speaker: There's so much content that we're kind of saving for when she gets back.
Speaker: We don't want to like, we want her input.
Speaker: Let me put it that way.
Speaker: There's some topics we want her input on and we're saving them for when she gets back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we're doing another handbook post, but this time I want to say actually, you know, with the subreddit being shut, we're, you know, compiling the remaining handbook posts.
Speaker: And it's sort of like a trip down memory lane for me, honestly, because early in my FDS days, this is like almost two years ago now, you know, reading these posts and like a lot of the FDS stuff I was hostile to at first actually.
Speaker: And then it sort of grew on me.
Speaker: And then I was like, Hey, actually they have a lot of good
Speaker: points.
Speaker: Me two years ago as a lip fed pigmy.
Speaker: You know, FDS actually has a lot of good points, you know?
Speaker: So this week we're reading The Breakup Survival Guide by Redbird Flies, one of the strategy coaches who was active on FDS, you know, a few years back.
Speaker: So what's great about this post is it gives practical advice of how to get over a breakup in a way that's not toxic to yourself and also help prepare you for the idea that you can move on and date someone else.
Speaker: So we're going to read through a lot of the key points and great tips that are encompassed in this post to help you get past a breakup.
Speaker: What I like about this post is how it talks about self-care in a way that is mostly to do with not buying things.
Speaker: You know how in like LibFem media, they're like, oh, self-care, get yourself some bubble bath, you know, buy some wine, do this and this.
Speaker: This post actually says the opposite.
Speaker: It says avoid the following.
Speaker: Avoid online dating.
Speaker: Avoid dating in general.
Speaker: You know, like attracts like.
Speaker: If you're broken, you'll only attract the ones who's broken.
Speaker: So heal first.
Speaker: When you feel emotionally stable, you can start dating again.
Speaker: And then it says avoid alcohol and drugs.
Speaker: And I think this is a really important point because a lot of people, you know, use alcohol and drugs as a really unhealthy coping mechanism when they're going through heartbreak.
Speaker: And I think that that actually prolongs and extends your suffering.
Speaker: I really support now, you know, sobriety.
Speaker: Basically.
Speaker: That's such a cultural thing.
Speaker: Whenever you see people going through breakups or divorces on television, you always see them drowning their stars.
Speaker: They immediately drink a bottle of wine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bottle of wine, tub of ice cream.
Speaker: I mean, I like ice cream, but there's got to be better mechanisms than that.
Speaker: Exactly right.
Speaker: She writes, not only are they unhealthy immune suppressants, they're also chemical depressants and lengthen your healing process.
Speaker: Sure, go out and have some cocktails with your girlfriends.
Speaker: Cry on your martini.
Speaker: Just don't make it a habit.
Speaker: Don't use it as a coping mechanism.
Speaker: And then, okay, here's another one that actually I felt personally attacked by when I first read this, I think.
Speaker: Pain shopping.
Speaker: Delete him from all social media.
Speaker: Delete his friends.
Speaker: Delete all your photos.
Speaker: Pain shopping will set you back in the healing process.
Speaker: Because this is something I actually used to fucking do whenever going through a breakup.
Speaker: I would like re-traumatize myself by like looking him up on social media or like looking at pictures of us together.
Speaker: And that would just, again, just prolongs your suffering, right?
Speaker: Prolongs the emotional attachment.
Speaker: And it's like, why was I doing this to myself?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: It's just causing myself unnecessary pain.
Speaker: It's so important to just reject and eliminate that sort of negativity from your mind, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also it's like a self-respect thing, right?
Speaker: Because you're not, I think, fully respecting yourself if you are continuously prioritizing a person who's deprioritized you from their life.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the one thing I'll kind of respect about my exes and specifically one ex-boyfriend is that like, I was like Facebook and Instagram friends with a bunch of his friends.
Speaker: And then like, after we broke up, like his whole crew, like completely unfriended me and shit.
Speaker: And like, okay, I respect it.
Speaker: The relationship was over.
Speaker: Yeah, because men have strong boundaries.
Speaker: Men are raised to have strong boundaries, right?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And I think that's actually a power move.
Speaker: It's like, in fact, I do that all the time in real life.
Speaker: And even on my FDS Twitter is sometimes someone will like snarkily subtweet me and then I'll unfollow them.
Speaker: I won't block them.
Speaker: I'll just sort of soft block them.
Speaker: And then they're always come up to me like, why did you unfollow me?
Speaker: And it's like, you know, it's like that is a good way of getting rid of toxic people or shit testing or just eliminating them from your life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I feel like the only guys who would still be friends with me after I broke up with a guy are guys who are trying to be the next one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is truthfully the other problem is that like, if you don't unfriend him and his friends or they don't unfriend you, unless you're like really interested in some other guy, that's part of his friend crew, which is messy.
Speaker: But, you know, we're not going to judge, I guess, on that one if he's better than the guy you were dating, but messy, but I'm great.
Speaker: Yeah, if it's an upgrade, I guess.
Speaker: But at the same time, understand that you're opening yourself up for drama the longer that you keep engaging on the internet with men, with the guy you're dating or used to date or in his friend group.
Speaker: I will say though, it would be pretty gangster if women started doing that same thing consistently.
Speaker: But women are always trying to keep the doors open.
Speaker: And I think it's just a social media clout thing.
Speaker: If you break up with a guy and your bestie doesn't unfriend him with you, I'm not sure that's your bestie.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker: Like, in fact, that's an expectation that I have is if someone, you know, really hurts me or harms me and my friend like still keeps talking to them, I don't see her as like a real friend.
Speaker: I'm like, she gets downgraded to acquaintance, basically.
Speaker: Anyways, the poster goes on to say, you know, toxic people that pick Misha Fred dropper, that low value man you talk to for ego kibbles, block him.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So the pick Misha friend, especially because your pick Misha friend is going to be the one that's going to tell you, that's going to give you extremely bad advice, first of all, about how to deal with a breakup and situation because she's in her own little pick Misha loop, but also probably won't defend you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's the worst type of friend, the kind of friend you realize once a breakup happens that they were never really your friend.
Speaker: They were just around for clout.
Speaker: Yeah, or they'll try to, especially if the reason why you're breaking up is because the man was either being like abusive or just like not treating you right, is if you try to talk to your pick me friend about, oh, he was doing this and this like horrible thing, you know, she might jump in and, well, have you thought about, you know, why he might do that?
Speaker: Maybe he's emotionally repressed or, you know, we'll try to make excuses for his behavior or anything.
Speaker: Maybe he didn't mean it like that or try to make it seem like your standards are unreasonable.
Speaker: Because again, that's the problem with pick me is they have low standards for themselves.
Speaker: They expect other women to have low standards.
Speaker: And so if you try to go through your breakup being like, I don't have to put up with this shit.
Speaker: I'm better than this.
Speaker: I'm going to raise my standards or something.
Speaker: They'll be like a crab in the bucket trying to keep you down, right?
Speaker: And I've experienced this with women who I thought were my friends, but they were actually just groupies of the man I was dating and his friends.
Speaker: Ew, that's kind of gross.
Speaker: I know that's so gross, but those women exist.
Speaker: Those are the toxic pick-me's, especially when you're breaking up.
Speaker: Don't deal with them.
Speaker: It's sad being groupies of men who aren't even famous.
Speaker: Some women just have very low self-esteem, which is sad.
Speaker: But I realized they weren't actually my friend.
Speaker: They just were my strategic political friend because of the fact that I was dealing with some guy in a crew they wanted to get with.
Speaker: I'm not in a fraternity or sorority or anything like that either, but you'll see different types of politics like that in groups like that.
Speaker: So if you are in a fraternity or sorority, if you have any type of professional group...
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's just like, even if it's like your rec center, like sports team, right?
Speaker: There's just like some women that just like want to be down with a guy so bad that they'll like, that they'll just befriend any girl they think is an in for them.
Speaker: And then you realize like later when you break up or you're no longer associated with that group, that girl's not actually your friend.
Speaker: She's actually just a groupie for that group of men.
Speaker: And she just wants to be attached to you because you're drawing their attention.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or just, you know, any woman that's like overly male identified.
Speaker: I know that like the word male identified is usually is used a little bit to refer to like all heterosexual women or women who date men in general by certain types of feminists.
Speaker: But in this case, I mean, male identified as in prioritizes men.
Speaker: And so there are women, yeah, who will throw women under the bus for male attention.
Speaker: And those are sorts of women that
Speaker: are a little bit dangerous and you need to separate themselves.
Speaker: You need to, if you are going to interact with pick me's, it needs to be when you're in a strong state.
Speaker: Don't be around pick me's when you're in a weakened state, like after a breakup, right?
Speaker: That's really what it comes down to.
Speaker: And same thing with the other point about talking to men that are low value, who give you ego kibbles.
Speaker: Those kinds of men are waiting for you to be vulnerable so that they can be the shoulder that you cry on and then will might take advantage of you when you're in an emotionally vulnerable state.
Speaker: So don't expose yourself to shady people when you're vulnerable, let's just say.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So she continues, forget about up leveling for now.
Speaker: You need to heal first.
Speaker: You can't build on a weak foundation.
Speaker: Completely agree.
Speaker: Do as much of this as you can.
Speaker: One, make a list of the lies you believed about yourself and your relationship.
Speaker: Replace each lie with the truth.
Speaker: And when a painful thought pops in your head, replace it with the truth.
Speaker: I love visualization exercises like this.
Speaker: And I know they come across cheesy when people first suggest them, but sometimes just writing things out and having like a logical process to process your pain helps you feel like you have some kind of control over it and that you have the ability to reshape your thinking.
Speaker: And I know it just, it's hard to explain to people like how your brain starts to reset when you start to see your problem in front of you, like in a tangible writing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's really important to do.
Speaker: And I think if you're really, really, really stuck, sometimes just making the old school pros and cons list, like the T-chart with the pros and cons actually does help.
Speaker: So funny story.
Speaker: I actually, I've done that with a lot of breakups that I've had.
Speaker: Like there've been a lot of times where I'm in a relationship with the guy and like I'm noticing the problems and you know, the relationship still in my mind, I consider to be mostly good.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, but he's a good guy.
Speaker: You know, he hasn't done this and this, but you know, there's these problems, right?
Speaker: So I'll actually write out a pros and cons chart if I'm thinking about breaking up with him.
Speaker: And like, I remember one guy, the guy I was dating when I was like 17 or 18 and wrote a pros and cons list.
Speaker: And like on the pro, there was like maybe four or five pros, good qualities about him.
Speaker: On the cons list, there was like 20 cons.
Speaker: And just being able to like visually see like, oh, the things that I thought were good about him, I'd really magnified or inflated in my head on the pro side.
Speaker: When you see it physically written, like there's four or five things on the pro and like 20 things on the negative side.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You know, you can't rationalize it at that point.
Speaker: It becomes crystal clear, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's hard to lie to yourself when you see the cold heart truth.
Speaker: Exactly right.
Speaker: So it might seem cheesy, but trust me, like just thinking about it isn't enough.
Speaker: You actually physically have to write it down.
Speaker: And it's so helpful.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But what she said about replace each lie with the truth.
Speaker: And when a painful thought pops in your head, replace it with the truth.
Speaker: She's basically describing kind of like cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker: This is a type of therapy where they interrupt destructive thought patterns or thought loops.
Speaker: And so this often happens.
Speaker: This is a very common problem for people to have where, you know, something bad happens.
Speaker: They're like, I'm stupid or I'm worthless or no one likes me.
Speaker: And then it just sort of becomes this really negative feedback loop.
Speaker: And when you actually take a moment to stop and be like, hey, wait, that's not true.
Speaker: Like, I'm not...
Speaker: unlikable.
Speaker: There's actually lots of people who like me or, you know, I'm not worthless.
Speaker: I do this and this good stuff for my community, you know?
Speaker: So replacing those sorts of self-destructive thoughts with like a positive thought, a true positive thought is so helpful, right?
Speaker: Number two, pray for guidance and healing.
Speaker: Pray like hell.
Speaker: If you're not spiritual, skip the praying and meditate on accepting light and healing.
Speaker: I feel like manifesting is like the secular version of praying, if that makes sense, right?
Speaker: So I'll just light a candle and like manifest good fortune, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely something in the brain that benefits from people doing some kind of meditation.
Speaker: And prayer is just a form of meditation, right?
Speaker: Buddhists have a form of meditation.
Speaker: So many of the different types of religions have some kind of meditation practice.
Speaker: I mean, it's like early human behavioral therapy, right?
Speaker: It's like clearing your thoughts.
Speaker: And this is going to sound really cheesy, like becoming one with your surroundings or the universe and realizing your own insignificance in a way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Helps you to prioritize your problems.
Speaker: It's like a lot of these things seem like they're life ending.
Speaker: And then you realize I'm just one little tiny little link in a long chain of humanity.
Speaker: And it puts your life in perspective and you realize like, oh, I can choose to not feel bad in this moment because of the fact that.
Speaker: Like it matters, but it doesn't, right?
Speaker: It doesn't ultimately matter that like the only thing that matters is here and now.
Speaker: And when you pray or you meditate, it centers yourself to be able to realize that you matter in the moments that you feel day to day matter and that you have the power to change that.
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like a lot of people, when they do that, they'd go the nihilistic route where they're like, I'm just one of eight billion people on a rock that's flying through space.
Speaker: I don't matter.
Speaker: Nothing matters.
Speaker: May as well just die.
Speaker: That kind of stuff.
Speaker: And I actually take the opposite approach.
Speaker: I'm like, wow, what are the chances that we as humans could exist in this
Speaker: extremely unlikely, you know, hostile universe, right?
Speaker: And yet we exist and we're so lucky that we get to exist and just focusing on being kind of like one with the universe, if that makes sense.
Speaker: So you're just being like, oh, I'm like, I'm just a bunch of atoms and like a million bajillion gazillion atoms, right?
Speaker: It's actually kind of poetic and beautiful in a way.
Speaker: It's like ego death, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ego death sounds scary, but it's about just taking yourself out of your own emotions and realizing that you actually, in some respects, have a choice.
Speaker: You can at least choose how to feel about a situation.
Speaker: Like obviously you can't if you're really being attacked or something and your adrenaline is rushing and you're having physical responses to stimuli.
Speaker: That's one thing.
Speaker: But also meditation helps you to, I think they've even said it actually creates chemical responses, like healing chemical responses in your brain.
Speaker: Yeah, like prayer and meditation, stuff like that, like yoga, prayer, meditation, that like your body's responses are a series of chemicals.
Speaker: And so your emotions help to actually release chemicals.
Speaker: So if you're stressed out, then you could flood your system with cortisol.
Speaker: And so something like meditation would help you like counteract that.
Speaker: Yeah, counteract your stress response so that you can lower your cortisol levels, which would make you feel better.
Speaker: So there's things like that where your mind does have an effect on the rest of your body.
Speaker: And so prayer meditation actually does help with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, because your entire body is basically a giant if this, then that machine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a great way to describe it.
Speaker: Every response that you have is like the result of a stimuli.
Speaker: And so things like, you know, having a fast paced heart or, you know, your heart is beating really fast.
Speaker: You're sweating.
Speaker: You're having that really like anxious, kind of like stressful response.
Speaker: There's like an input that's going into that, right?
Speaker: In this case, it's the heartbreak.
Speaker: And so the way that you want to create relaxed,
Speaker: mental and physical state is by having a different input, which would be, you know, in this case, like prayer, meditation, something like that.
Speaker: So then that would create a calming effect on the body, right?
Speaker: So anyways, point three, talk to your girlfriends, your empathic friends who give you comfort if you don't have close friends vent here.
Speaker: So we're meaning like the FDS subreddit.
Speaker: And so I want to say, actually, like one of the things with the FDS subreddit is in the early days, they were like savage in some ways, you know, especially savage towards men.
Speaker: But it was also a very great healing space to talk about, you know, problems with men and so on.
Speaker: It's like lately, the subreddit is low-key got taken over by like femcells.
Speaker: It's like someone would talk about her bad relationship.
Speaker: Well, stop dating men.
Speaker: You know, what are you doing dating men?
Speaker: Who are all these women wearing makeup?
Speaker: You know, they're appealing to the male gaze.
Speaker: It really started to pick up a different kind of user base and it became less and less of a safe place to vent.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: No, I totally agree.
Speaker: And this is yet another frustration that we've had with the subreddit, which is why we ultimately decided it was just unsustainable there.
Speaker: And yeah, because it's Reddit and it's really hard to control.
Speaker: And Reddit attracts sad people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I didn't want to say it, but it's kind of true.
Speaker: Like it's designed to attract like disaffected, unhappy people, which is like, I just feel not a healing place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Reddit algorithm rewards like the sad porn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the angry porn.
Speaker: And then furthermore, you can't really quarantine off that stuff in the way that we can on the website.
Speaker: So like on the website, we can actually quarantine the constant like sadness porn.
Speaker: Or categorize things.
Speaker: Or categorize things.
Speaker: And you can also put it behind badges.
Speaker: So then people, if you don't want to see it, you don't have to see it.
Speaker: So then essentially, you're helping people to don't want to just see constant sadness there on their feet all the time, but also need some place to vent.
Speaker: Put it somewhere in a safe space where they can vent.
Speaker: And also, it's not visible to the public.
Speaker: So if you're a verified member, for example.
Speaker: The other problem we had on the subreddit was when women would talk about serious issues and then they would just get a bunch of hate DMs from men.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So like you're on the subreddit, you're talking about how your boyfriend abused you.
Speaker: And then like five guys are in your DMs.
Speaker: Men are masturbating to that.
Speaker: I guarantee it.
Speaker: Men are masturbating to that.
Speaker: And they're like, you deserved it.
Speaker: Or they're arguing with you that you were the problem, etc.
Speaker: And so a lot of women complain about that.
Speaker: So the difference in the website is obviously it's just the female user base.
Speaker: And like you can vent any secure private space.
Speaker: In a private space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it doesn't have to be either on everyone else's feed if it's like really, really toxic, because obviously seeing a lot of that is very toxic, but also you don't have to dwell on it and you don't have to worry about being harassed by men.
Speaker: So that's yet another reason why we just think red is just not the place for FDS.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the next point, number four, remove as many triggers as possible.
Speaker: Change your playlist, your route home, your outfits, anything that triggers you to think of him.
Speaker: This is one actually I'm like, I have complicated feelings on this one because there's a few different strategies for dealing with these sorts of triggers, right?
Speaker: Some people do the avoidance route.
Speaker: I personally find that when I try to avoid things that trigger me, that actually makes me more kind of neurotic in a way.
Speaker: I actually find that does the opposite.
Speaker: I prefer to do the opposite, which is like a flooding or desensitization where I actually expose myself to it more, but in different contexts.
Speaker: So it doesn't have the same emotional reaction.
Speaker: So for example, there's like a song or something that I would always listen to when I was having problems with my relationship with a particular man I was dating is I'd listen to that just like doing other shit, just like gardening or just driving or looking out the window or whatever and starting to associate it with other things.
Speaker: And that way it doesn't have the same emotional reaction, but that's...
Speaker: For some women that might not work, maybe doing that, oh, now I'm just thinking of him constantly kind of thing, right?
Speaker: I would say like, yeah, don't deliberately like trigger yourself, obviously, but also be mindful that putting too much effort into avoiding the triggers can become its own sort of obsession.
Speaker: And it can actually be maybe not get you the best result depending on you.
Speaker: So that's really interesting because I've definitely I've been the person that was like, I just have to avoid the triggers.
Speaker: Again, I guess it depends on the severity of what happened and what the issue is.
Speaker: But I have learned in therapy from talking to therapists that eventually you do have to take your power back, so to speak.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like when it's really sensitive.
Speaker: Confront your fears.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You confront your fears.
Speaker: Like when it's really raw and scary, that sometimes the best way for you to heal yourself is just to get away from the stimulus or the trigger that's making you feel bad.
Speaker: But part of the healing process is like, I think exactly what Lilith is doing is like re-exposing yourself to the things that scare you or that trigger you and then re-associating it with positive things.
Speaker: And that's what I got from actual therapists.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, I got that advice from therapists.
Speaker: But again, I think maybe, you know, different people might have different ways of solving the same problem, right?
Speaker: So maybe kind of experiment, see which direction you kind of go in and then go whichever one gets you the best result.
Speaker: I mean, if you're breaking out in a cry fits every time you hear something, like it's time to just like cut it out of your life for a while, right?
Speaker: Yeah, for a while.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're not in a place where you're emotionally healed.
Speaker: Like, but I mean, it's like anything you have to get back on the horse eventually.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And so you don't want to avoid something forever that could bring you joy because of one asshole, right?
Speaker: You want to give him that kind of power to rob you of anything you might enjoy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because especially if it's like a good song, that's actually like, that gets played all the time in like clubs or, you know, something like, do you really want to go through life just having that kind of sad?
Speaker: Imagine the song comes on, you're like dancing and all of a sudden you're just like, oh, I made myself sad, right?
Speaker: It's almost good to try to associate with other things that no longer has that sad reaction, you know?
Speaker: And you can also go, you can turn sadness into like, fuck that motherfucker.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be like... You don't have to go down bad though.
Speaker: Yeah, you don't have to go down bad.
Speaker: You can just...
Speaker: You know what I mean, though?
Speaker: Like if a guy really treats you like shit, he cheats on you.
Speaker: He's emotionally toxic.
Speaker: Sometimes like at first, you're like, every time you hear this song, it reminds me of my emotionally toxic boyfriend.
Speaker: But I'm like, I feel like healing is the time where you can go to the club, throw back a bottle and be like, man, fuck him.
Speaker: And then keep dancing on different guys, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I agree.
Speaker: So number five, number five, journal.
Speaker: Journal like your life depends on it.
Speaker: Get your thoughts out and onto paper.
Speaker: It's cathartic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So for the journal thing, as for journaling, I'm a big journaler and I have both physical like notebooks as well as digital journals, stuff like Google Keep, et cetera.
Speaker: So what I found is when I read them back years later, and there's a few I've just trashed because I'm like the secondhand cringe is so insane.
Speaker: No, I do the same thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I hate so many of my old journals.
Speaker: You're like, none of this shit I was complaining about actually mattered, right?
Speaker: There's people who I've like, I was so sure that this person was a bane of my existence.
Speaker: And then I read it later and I'm like, I can't even remember their face completely.
Speaker: Like, especially like old coworkers who I was like, this person is such a toxic piece of shit.
Speaker: I hate them.
Speaker: And then I go get a different job and I'm like, oh yeah, that person didn't matter at all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They gave me I gave them so much more power than they deserve.
Speaker: So having journals helps you put in perspective later on in your life and you're looking back at it and you start to realize, like, oh, I was sweating things that didn't matter.
Speaker: That's actually so true.
Speaker: I'm glad you brought that up, actually, because I had a writing teacher, actually, at university.
Speaker: I took like a writing course from like an actual like author.
Speaker: Basically, he spent the whole class just dragging other types of writers.
Speaker: And one of the types of writers that he used to make fun of are people who write about their problems in their journal, but they actually take it seriously, like pour their heart out, all their angsty teen...
Speaker: oh my gosh, my parents just don't get me or, you know, my shitty boyfriend, you know, just like petty problems as if that's like the biggest problem ever.
Speaker: And like, they don't learn from that.
Speaker: He's like the purpose of journaling.
Speaker: He's like, you know, journal, like write about your problems, you know, that kind of stuff.
Speaker: It's like therapy, but never publish it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Unless it's like really good, but never publish that shit.
Speaker: People don't want to read it.
Speaker: It's boring.
Speaker: It makes you seem like petty, like you're making a big deal out of like petty problems.
Speaker: And yeah, it's boring and no one wants to read that.
Speaker: I feel like this is why blogs and live journal and stuff like that fell out of fashion because eventually all the trauma porn just gets like very navel gazey.
Speaker: A bit much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You just see so many of the same people with the same problems.
Speaker: You're like, maybe everyone here should form a community and like talk about it.
Speaker: So I feel like social media replaced the early internet where constant streams of consciousness coming from people on their personal live journals and blogs.
Speaker: And that's not to like talk down on people who have problems with their coworkers and so on.
Speaker: Because I get it like in the moment and I do the same thing where like I'll read journals from years ago and like cringe at like how important I thought these petty problems were and how it gives me some perspective that like, oh, now, you know, the problems that I'm facing now, you know, five, 10 years from now.
Speaker: are not going to be a big deal, right?
Speaker: It really kind of takes the pressure off.
Speaker: It really actually is kind of soothing mentally in a way to realize like, oh, all of these things that seem really stressful and really painful to me right now, that's going to be history, you know, in the past at some point, and it's not going to matter.
Speaker: So, you know, it makes it a lot easier to heal.
Speaker: Number six, exercise, do yoga.
Speaker: Yoga's poses and sequences are designed to release stagnant energy and to leave you feeling grounded and centered.
Speaker: Find a teacher that you love and go as often as possible.
Speaker: If you can or won't do yoga, find some other physical exercise that you like and do it as often as you can.
Speaker: Yes, any type of exercise is always good.
Speaker: Again, healing chemicals.
Speaker: There's so much science behind this that we can't even go into.
Speaker: But I mean, just as simple as like helping your body, helping your immune system, boosting your immune system, helping your body get rid of old cell tissue.
Speaker: Like there's just a million things that exercise does.
Speaker: Yeah, this is why being perpetually online is like not a good thing.
Speaker: Like sometimes I'll meet someone and it's like very clearly they don't like go outside and touch grass.
Speaker: Like they're just very perpetually online.
Speaker: They don't exercise or anything.
Speaker: It's like, well, maybe that's why you're so fucking depressed.
Speaker: Maybe you should go outside, you know, go for a run, go for a walk, do some weightlifting, do some yoga.
Speaker: All of these are...
Speaker: really great you know things they release endorphins it's like i read a quote somewhere i can't remember who said it but it was like you know if there was a drug that could do everything that exercise does for our body that would make like millions of dollars right it would be the most valuable drug in the world and exercise is something you can do for free you don't need to buy a drug to get those effects you can just exercise it's free
Speaker: I mean, having pets also puts it in perspective to me.
Speaker: And I think having a pet is also good because you start to realize like you have to care and feed for them and you have to put that on your mental roster to do.
Speaker: And you start to realize, oh, I need to do this for myself as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like exactly.
Speaker: So you just get the idea.
Speaker: Just even just going out, taking your dog for a walk.
Speaker: You know, that's why I think dog people are superior breed.
Speaker: No, I'm kidding.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm kidding.
Speaker: You're going to start a fight in here.
Speaker: No, we're both dog people, bro.
Speaker: So that's why we get along.
Speaker: But anyways, so no, no, but taking your dog out, you know, seeing how it makes them so happy to run around and like the, the way that dogs also will like go a little bit like crazy and destroy shit when you haven't taken them out or if they haven't been properly exercised.
Speaker: You know, I have a friend who had a husky and had a husky.
Speaker: She ended up finding a new home for the husky, actually, because she couldn't care for him properly.
Speaker: She basically got the dog because she thought he was pretty, as people tend to do, and just didn't run him.
Speaker: Huskies need a breed that need to run two, three, four hours a day minimum.
Speaker: And she just wasn't doing that.
Speaker: And so the husky kept like destroying shit, right?
Speaker: She's like, I need to get rid of this thing, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Kind of like, well, dumb bitch.
Speaker: Like, why would you get a husky and not exercise him, you know?
Speaker: Like, even the best behaved dogs need at least 30 minutes a day.
Speaker: So, yeah, you don't always have to factor that in.
Speaker: And humans are like that, too.
Speaker: If you don't exercise...
Speaker: Dogs and humans were both animals.
Speaker: You know, if you don't get exercise, you got a little bit crazy.
Speaker: You got to get physically and mentally stimulated.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Number seven, meditate.
Speaker: I'm going to list two healing and centering meditation practices you can use at the end of this list.
Speaker: Yeah, prayer and meditation, I think, are pretty much the same genre of self-care, in my opinion.
Speaker: But every time you think of him, say, cancel, cancel, or brain override oxytocin.
Speaker: So this works.
Speaker: So not necessarily this, but you almost have to give yourself a safe word of some kind or like a word that overrides any type of negative word.
Speaker: memory we have?
Speaker: Because I've had this before where I feel like everyone's had this.
Speaker: You're just lying in bed and randomly you'll think of something when you were 14 that was like massively embarrassing.
Speaker: And you're like, why is my brain making me relive this?
Speaker: So then I just think, why is my brain re-traumatizing me?
Speaker: I'll literally think of myself, I'll imagine the memory in a balloon and then pop it in my mind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's how I like, but it's, again, this is like, these are old tricks that trick your brain into not re-triggering itself.
Speaker: Like one of the things I learned about voodoo dolls is that voodoo dolls are often like thought of as like evil or whatever, but it was actually an early form of like cognitive therapy for people to do things like that.
Speaker: Where like your brain sometimes needs to like kill memories or not necessarily kill memories or like stimulus things.
Speaker: Some kind of physical stimulus to help your brain to like get over certain types of memories.
Speaker: So it's like the voodoo doll is actually a stress doll, like an early ancient stress doll.
Speaker: So like that kind of stuff really does work like visualizing, getting rid of bad memories.
Speaker: You know, ancient people.
Speaker: will just be like, oh, we're getting rid of bad spirits or we're getting rid of evil spirits.
Speaker: Or like there's even nowadays people like, oh, there's demons in you or something like that.
Speaker: And so now, you know, you don't have to think of it in terms of demons.
Speaker: I'll just be like, oh, it's my oxytocin that's tricking me into thinking that I'm still attached to this abusive person.
Speaker: And I'm not kidding.
Speaker: Like I just, whenever I have a fond memory of a toxic or abusive person from my past, I'll be like, that's just oxytocin trying to trick me into breeding pretty much usually like that.
Speaker: You know, especially if it's like a toxic or like abusive ex.
Speaker: I'm like, that feeling of love that I have for him, that's just my brain trying to trick me into making babies.
Speaker: And that's just illogical.
Speaker: And I don't want babies.
Speaker: So I'm just going to ignore that thought.
Speaker: So find a good therapist who's trained in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker: If you can't afford therapy, get the Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns and devote at least 20 minutes a day to it.
Speaker: You'll become skilled at replacing negative thoughts about yourself with positive thoughts.
Speaker: This skill is particularly useful for those who grew up in toxic households.
Speaker: I felt seen by that.
Speaker: The hardest thing in the world is in the United States, we don't have a good health care system.
Speaker: So that definitely includes things like therapy.
Speaker: So a lot of people can't afford therapy.
Speaker: Well, the beauty of cognitive behavioral therapy is that you can actually do it yourself.
Speaker: There's like little handbooks and like worksheets and stuff.
Speaker: Sometimes going to therapy is just a waste of money because they'll just give you the worksheets, like a substitute teacher who's like, oh, just do fill out this, you know, booklet or whatever.
Speaker: You know, you're doing the work yourself anyways, right?
Speaker: So why pay extra to have a professional tell you to do the work?
Speaker: It is true.
Speaker: If you can't afford therapy, there are a lot of resources online for cheaper that are helpful as well as participating in forums with like-minded women.
Speaker: A lot of people have pointed to FDS as a form of therapy because they just get validated in a lot of things of experience and explained in a way.
Speaker: maybe they haven't thought of before.
Speaker: And like I said, life sometimes is a matter of perspective and cognitive behavioral therapy helps you to gain better perspective or more healthy perspective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So number 10, find something you love and do it.
Speaker: Take classes.
Speaker: You'll learn something new and you'll meet new people who have similar interests.
Speaker: Yeah, just get off, you know, get back on the horse.
Speaker: Do something that you enjoy.
Speaker: Yeah, instead of being on the internet talking about things you hate or stalking your shitty ex or, you know, looking at pictures of unrealistic body images on Instagram making you feel shit about yourself.
Speaker: Yeah, go outside.
Speaker: Like, here's actually an underrated thing is, like, go...
Speaker: to your local community or rec center and take a cooking class or something like that.
Speaker: This is something that I took a cooking class as a couple thing before.
Speaker: First of all, it's super cute.
Speaker: Date idea actually is learning to cook something together.
Speaker: And especially if you're not very good at cooking.
Speaker: I am good at cooking, but my boyfriend at the time was not.
Speaker: And so this is a sort of way...
Speaker: Just to kind of get them to be a better sous chef, so to speak.
Speaker: Meeting other couples, meeting other people.
Speaker: It's like, you know, you can do this as a single person as well.
Speaker: And actually, I'd say it's better to do it as a single person because you'll meet more people that way.
Speaker: This could apply to any class, like any class that you're interested in.
Speaker: Just try to absorb knowledge, any kind of knowledge, wherever you can.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Number 11, do something creative.
Speaker: Even if you think you're not creative, follow.
Speaker: Find something with your hands, go on Pinterest, find crafts.
Speaker: If you always wanted to learn how to paint and crochet, so whatever, now's the time to do it.
Speaker: It keeps your mind busy and creativity can be a healing experience for your heart.
Speaker: This is why it's so important not to drop your hobbies when you're in a relationship because...
Speaker: These kinds of things are actually helping to protect you mentally and emotionally.
Speaker: Like you feel more grounded in yourself, whatever you enjoy doing.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be arts and crafts because I know some people just are not artsy.
Speaker: They like sports.
Speaker: They like some people are math leads debate, whatever it is that you do that makes you feel alive.
Speaker: Keep doing it.
Speaker: You know what I find actually, I know someone tweeted about this on and how like the way that men deal with, you know, trauma is by like, you know, going out and like harassing women and like hating women and stuff.
Speaker: Like that's how men deal with like dating trauma is by just like hating women.
Speaker: With women, I've noticed a lot of women being like, I just went through a really terrible abusive breakup.
Speaker: So I'm going to learn like crochet or I'm going to learn how to knit or
Speaker: or I'm going to learn scrapbooking or, you know, just literally any like craft.
Speaker: I'm going to do embroidery to get over my trauma.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I feel like women, I just have a much more like constructive way of dealing with trauma, or at least like, you know, these kinds of crafts are more, you know, maybe who knows, maybe if men were willing to step outside of their repressive gender stereotypes, maybe they would actually seek some, uh, you know, therapy or whatever from these things.
Speaker: Instead, they're like, I'm just going to go hate women and
Speaker: They have woodworking.
Speaker: They have like learning, you know, mechanics or whatever.
Speaker: They have man hobbies.
Speaker: And I would say sports.
Speaker: The healthier men I know just do sports.
Speaker: The unhealthy men, they have to do other coping mechanisms because they don't have any physical outlet.
Speaker: So that's where you get the drinking.
Speaker: Although, I mean, men, even men who do sports will drink and stuff like that.
Speaker: But like, and the like perpetually online.
Speaker: The perpetually online scrotes are too useless to take up fucking woodworking or sports.
Speaker: Consumerism, coumarism, drown themselves in porn.
Speaker: Like there's so many things.
Speaker: I think it's also that there's so many consumer products for men that are toxic because like that or like treat women like objects.
Speaker: So like endless amounts of porn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like with.
Speaker: FDS, we draw kind of a line between like creative hobbies versus like consumer hobbies.
Speaker: So like, yeah, media consumption, porn consumption, creating video games.
Speaker: Like if you were to design a video game, that's, I consider that a creative pursuit.
Speaker: But just like playing a video game is a lot more like passive.
Speaker: You're just kind of going along with a story that someone...
Speaker: else created you know writing is another great creative pursuit any kind of craft woodworking all of these are creative pursuits I think there's you know gardening is a great one that I that I love um it's really good for the soul honestly just working with your hands even if you're not particularly handy just pick up something anything
Speaker: So five stages of grief, learn them, understand that you'll fluctuate and go back and forth through them.
Speaker: Understand the process is beneficial to your healing.
Speaker: We could do a whole episode on that alone.
Speaker: So yeah, I mean, the five stages of grief, people are aware of what that is.
Speaker: Yeah, we could do a whole episode on that.
Speaker: I actually agree.
Speaker: And then she goes on to say like, yeah, like point three is like, yeah, dark chocolate, you know, creates pleasurable feelings and acts as an antidepressant.
Speaker: Same thing with like, yeah, taking a hot bubble bath.
Speaker: I know earlier we were like, buy our bubble bath, but like you can just take a bubble bath.
Speaker: And it's like not that much money, but it's still like important.
Speaker: But I think all the other forms of self-care, the mental care are a lot more important.
Speaker: But 14, get lots of rest, drink plenty of water, never lose sleep over man.
Speaker: Lack of sleep accelerates the aging process.
Speaker: If you have trouble sleeping, find a guided meditation on YouTube.
Speaker: There's thousands and they are free.
Speaker: I agree completely.
Speaker: I need to get like minimum eight hours of sleep or else I'm a horrible person.
Speaker: Some might say I'm already a horrible person.
Speaker: No, I'm kidding.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: but I think, yeah, get at least eight hours of sleep or else physically and mentally you won't be at your peak.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I feel like the rest of this list is along the lines of how to force yourself to do the things that make you feel good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So this is one of them.
Speaker: Like sleep is so important.
Speaker: It took me a while to realize like how different of a person I am when I don't sleep enough.
Speaker: And like, I think I was in denial for a while, like I don't need sleep.
Speaker: And then I realized like both my mental and physical health would just deteriorate.
Speaker: And my ability to deal with people was like so low.
Speaker: I didn't sleep enough.
Speaker: So yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I feel like in a hyper-capitalistic society, there's like this pressure to be the person who can like survive, like not eating, not sleeping, not like taking care of yourself.
Speaker: And like, oh, all the top performers, you know, they get four hours of sleep at night.
Speaker: They get up at five in the morning and they're working till midnight.
Speaker: This sort of toxic productivity culture kind of thing.
Speaker: I think that that's, first of all, it's a lie because the actual people who are in charge of millionaires and billionaires, they definitely get eight to nine hours of sleep a night.
Speaker: minimum because they have servants and shit to do all their other work for them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So this whole, like, you know, the way to be succeed or like be an alpha or, you know, this and that is to work crazy amounts of hours and be maximally productive and schedule every minute of your day as a lie.
Speaker: That's not how you become successful.
Speaker: Successful people aren't like that.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: That's just like my default personality.
Speaker: And it's not like I think what happens sometimes I'm dead serious.
Speaker: Like nobody really had to like coax me into it.
Speaker: But I also realized like that's not a lifestyle that that a lot of people like and that is always healthy.
Speaker: And even for people.
Speaker: people who are like that, it's not good for you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So to me, like, well, I had to maximize my health productivity.
Speaker: Like I had to change the way I thought about it instead of it just being like productivity.
Speaker: So how I tricked my brain into like pushing myself out of the toxic productivity mindset was like, I had to look at my life more holistically.
Speaker: So I still have this like optimize everything mindset, but I just look at it like, okay, how can I optimize my sleep?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: How am I getting, how am I going to make sure my sleep is the
Speaker: Well, because sleep will help you optimize other things, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I want to absolutely conquer sleep.
Speaker: I want to be the best at sleeping.
Speaker: I want to dominate sleep.
Speaker: I'm going to get a gold medal in the Sleeping Olympics.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So even if you're a person that like to be engaged all of the time, you can still be maximally engaged in your health.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like, I know we make fun of the toxic.
Speaker: I know we make fun of the productivity gurus, but like, I think some of those people, like that's just their default personality.
Speaker: They wake up every day trying to make confidence their bitch.
Speaker: And that's just the way that they are.
Speaker: It's not to make other people feel bad, but it's just the way their mind works.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's not necessarily good for them though, right?
Speaker: Even for them, like it just makes them a little crazy.
Speaker: It can be.
Speaker: It's like anything.
Speaker: It can be extreme, right?
Speaker: It's like some of the people that are like the extreme veganism, for example, like some of the people that have the extreme restrictive eating because they think everything's a toxic and everything's going to have toxins in it.
Speaker: And then they end up looking really haggard because they're not getting enough nutrients.
Speaker: Like you can definitely go to extremes with your productivity or your desire to optimize.
Speaker: I
Speaker: I'm just saying for people who are like that, it's not necessarily because they're trying to make people feel bad.
Speaker: It's just like, I get that.
Speaker: That's just some way that some people are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So number 15.
Speaker: So number 14, I guess, like I said, something that made you feel personally attacked.
Speaker: Number 15 made me feel personally attacked.
Speaker: So let's get into that.
Speaker: Number 15 is cry a lot.
Speaker: Find something to induce the tears if you have to.
Speaker: I find videos of soldiers returning from deployment surprising their children.
Speaker: Gets me every time.
Speaker: Crying is hugely cathartic.
Speaker: Okay, that made me feel really personally attacked because I do the same shit.
Speaker: Like sometimes if I'm just feeling sad about things in general, but I just want to like get it out of my system, I will like look up videos of like father really proud of his daughter or like a dog getting like adopted from a shelter or something like that.
Speaker: Or like...
Speaker: It's usually animals, actually, like animals being reunited with their owners after years of like being a stray or something like that.
Speaker: Those videos make me cry fucking buckets like nothing else in my own actual life.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so sometimes I just like I just want to cry and I just get that out of my system and it makes me feel better.
Speaker: Yeah, especially on my period.
Speaker: Like I found exercise or like exercising enough where I'm exhausted forces me to cry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I feel so good.
Speaker: And I think crying is another way your body actually gets rid of stress hormones.
Speaker: So, I mean, it's again, physical, chemical responses.
Speaker: These things are all like, you know, input in and put out.
Speaker: What did you say?
Speaker: Your body's a giant, if this, then that machine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If,
Speaker: this than that machine.
Speaker: So this is another thing like inducing yourself to cry helps you to release a lot of the stress hormones and they track that.
Speaker: So it's important, I think, especially on your period or if you're just going through something to just like physically exhaust yourself or physically stimulate yourself in some way to force yourself to cry.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker: It's a healthy response.
Speaker: You're
Speaker: And the number 16 is laugh.
Speaker: You know, it might seem like I feel like a lot of men who are trying to find flaws in FDS would look at this and be like, number 15, they say you should cry because that's good for you.
Speaker: And the number 16, they say you should laugh because that's also good for you.
Speaker: But crying and laughing are opposite emotions.
Speaker: So why would they say that?
Speaker: Therefore, FDS is wrong.
Speaker: Like, yeah, they're mental.
Speaker: I've seen like these kinds of lists for men where they're like, these two things are the opposites and therefore they are lying.
Speaker: Like, you know, so when it's like, okay, both are true, right?
Speaker: You should cry and you should laugh.
Speaker: Both of these are feelings.
Speaker: You fucking robot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have a playlist on YouTube of videos that just make me fall the fuck out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's what I do when I'm feeling bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So find funny videos, you know, hang out with your goofy friends, laugh as hard as you can as often as possible.
Speaker: She writes, uh, number 17, when you feel overcome by grief, remind yourself that it's only trigger.
Speaker: It will pass, breathe, let it go.
Speaker: This too shall pass.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It all, same thing with the journaling.
Speaker: You know, if you write about your problems, you realize, Hey, this is only temporary kind of thing.
Speaker: So 18, make a vision board and load it with pictures of the life that you want.
Speaker: Mine has a picture of my dream home, a beautiful picture of my children laughing, pictures of places I want to travel and of the car that I want to name a few.
Speaker: I have it hung over my dresser and I look at it several times a day to remind myself that where I am in life isn't permanent.
Speaker: Bigger and better things await.
Speaker: I'm too lazy to do this.
Speaker: So I have a Pinterest.
Speaker: Pinterest basically serves the same purpose.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I tried to do a vision board and then I was like, this is a lot of work.
Speaker: I got to find all the magazines and then print out all the photos.
Speaker: But Pinterest is what I do when I have vision.
Speaker: See, I'm into like scrapbooking and like laminating things.
Speaker: That's a weird hobby that I have is I like scrapbooking things and I like laminating things.
Speaker: I love making vision boards.
Speaker: This is the difference between people who are like naturally creative like that and then other people were.
Speaker: This is not, I could do this so much more efficiently in a digital version.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I'm like, I'm fine with quote unquote wasting my time as long as I enjoy it in rows.
Speaker: Just like,
Speaker: This is a waste of time and I don't enjoy wasting time.
Speaker: I will do this digitally to be more efficient.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm like, I just want the picture somewhere where I can remind myself and stimulate my brain to release endorphins and be happy.
Speaker: So I'm going to put it on a Pinterest board and then same difference.
Speaker: Same thing.
Speaker: Same result.
Speaker: Moving along.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I actually do love Pinterest as well.
Speaker: It is like a digital scrapbook in a way, but you can like add and remove things, you know, with actual scrapbook.
Speaker: It's like sometimes you'll make it.
Speaker: I made a mistake.
Speaker: But you enjoy the process.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the process of making it.
Speaker: That is the point with a scrapbook.
Speaker: I will say I did have a boy band scrapbook in junior high.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: back when like you had to buy the little teen magazines and you would just cut out the little boy band pictures and then glue it to your notebook.
Speaker: You didn't have a digital version?
Speaker: I didn't have a digital version back then.
Speaker: It takes so long for the pictures to load, so.
Speaker: Yeah, back in the dark ages when I was a child.
Speaker: Yeah, dial up.
Speaker: Yep, exactly.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: 19.
Speaker: Pamper yourself, do your nails, put sheet masks on your face, you know, do at-home facials, buy yourself something nice, take long salt baths, Epsom salt baths, replace so much mineral magnesium, which is highly beneficial to healing and releasing negative energy.
Speaker: I don't know about that claim, but I do know that magnesium is high in a lot of foods, especially leafy greens.
Speaker: So I would add if you need, and magnesium is important, especially for women.
Speaker: So take, you know, definitely get your magnesium.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Number 20, eat healthy, take supplements, avoid junk food.
Speaker: Don't use food as a coping mechanism.
Speaker: So this is where the productivity super health gurus come in, man.
Speaker: Like this is what I'm saying.
Speaker: You need those people.
Speaker: We do need those people because they're the ones that like go in and figure out exactly what types of things will help you with anything you're trying to accomplish physically or like things that make you feel better.
Speaker: But there's a lot of information out there.
Speaker: Obviously, some of it's junk science.
Speaker: But like if you start to see a lot of the same ideas repeated, it's probably OK.
Speaker: But about how different supplements will help you with different things.
Speaker: I've done something like I eat like pumpkin seeds around my period and stuff.
Speaker: And like, it just makes me feel better.
Speaker: Cause I know there's, there's probably, yeah, it's high in magnesium.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a bunch of, exactly.
Speaker: So that's something I learned on the internet, right?
Speaker: Like it's something I learned.
Speaker: That's like a physical response that I could control that before I would just feel like shit.
Speaker: And then like, I'm like, oh, I can eat pumpkin seeds and that makes me feel better.
Speaker: But that's something that people figured out, right?
Speaker: Like, yeah, I like to make pumpkin seed muffins or like a pumpkin loaf with like pumpkin seeds on top, you know,
Speaker: Like nutritionists, right, is what I'm saying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So nutritionists figure out this kind of thing for you.
Speaker: So like maybe you can even see.
Speaker: And I think that's different from like a dietician.
Speaker: One of them is like a fake title and the other one is a real title.
Speaker: But there's people that are actually certified and looking at nutrition and how nutrition can affect your mood, your health, etc.
Speaker: So don't undercount nutrition and your overall well-being.
Speaker: Again, yeah.
Speaker: the human body is a giant if this then that machine if you put in good inputs you know beneficial inputs that are nutrient dense that have lots of folate magnesium and potassium and so on like leafy greens like fruits and vegetables things that are high protein and don't underestimate protein okay like you know a lot of people think that if they want to be healthy they have to go on a vegan diet and like while you can get enough protein on a vegan diet a lot of people do struggle to get enough protein on a vegan diet
Speaker: And so eggs, for example, are like nature's multivitamin, pretty much just the yolks in the eggs and they got protein too.
Speaker: So I love eggs anyways.
Speaker: But I also, I also have a tendency to use food as a coping mechanism.
Speaker: Actually, that's one of the things that I struggle with all the time.
Speaker: Yeah, me too.
Speaker: too yeah because like comfort eating you know I used to be like overweight and so comfort eating it's really hard not to comfort eat actually it was one of the main ways that as a child here's actually the kind of fucked up thing is like my parents would do something really messed up or like abusive and then they'd take us out to like a restaurant after and so sort of like mentally conditioned me from like a young age to think of like food is like a reward for enduring hardship so yeah it's kind of fucked up
Speaker: Something I'm struggling with to this day with therapy.
Speaker: But yeah, anyways, sorry to trauma dump.
Speaker: But anyways, 21, get a vibrator.
Speaker: It'll take the edge off and will help you if you're in danger of backsliding and texting him because you need a sexual release.
Speaker: Yeah, honestly.
Speaker: If you think of texting your ex, just masturbate.
Speaker: Get some post-nut clarity.
Speaker: Yeah, post-nut clarity.
Speaker: I know Savannah still doesn't think it exists, but post-nut clarity to me is very much a thing.
Speaker: I can only speak for myself.
Speaker: Speaking for myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Number 22, make a daily ritual and a monthly ritual.
Speaker: My daily ritual is morning meditation and yoga followed by coffee.
Speaker: My monthly ritual is saging my home, writing down whatever it is I want to manifest in my life.
Speaker: I do this on the night of the new moon.
Speaker: Your rituals can be anything you want as long as it's healing and healthy.
Speaker: Again, like th is is sort of like prayer and kind of like the spiritual aspect, right?
Speaker: I like to play with crystals.
Speaker: That's actually my spiritual thing.
Speaker: I don't like believe that crystals can like literally cure diseases or anything like that.
Speaker: I just think they're really pretty and I like to touch them and play with them.
Speaker: And that just makes me happy when I look at them.
Speaker: So that's my ritual.
Speaker: Number 23, take yourself out, go to dinner, the library, shopping, coffee, whatever it is.
Speaker: At least spoil yourself.
Speaker: If you can't afford to spoil yourself, find free things to do.
Speaker: Yeah, just going for a hike, honestly.
Speaker: Hiking is such a good way to spoil yourself.
Speaker: Yeah, an outdoor picnic, a hike, whatever makes you happy.
Speaker: Number 24, remember this is only temporary and one day you'll wake up and remember why you're so sad over someone so unworthy of your energy.
Speaker: You will heal.
Speaker: You're worthy.
Speaker: You're enough.
Speaker: You're perfect just as you are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's the thing.
Speaker: All of these things help you get perspective on your life and also put enough ifs in your body that the that's are all good outputs, I think is what I've translated.
Speaker: Put all of the good inputs so you can have good outputs.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So 25, I know it stings a little bit now because the subreddit is closed, but it says keep coming to the subreddit.
Speaker: Go to the website instead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go to the website.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: Go to the website.
Speaker: Yeah, just cross that out and go to the website.
Speaker: Because the subreddit, like we said earlier... The subreddit is on Reddit, which is trash.
Speaker: And it's deteriorating in quality because of the inability to control the influx.
Speaker: It's not even about the inability to control.
Speaker: It's just the nature of Reddit and social media, honestly.
Speaker: It's not even a problem that just FDS is having.
Speaker: This is a Reddit-wide problem or just like a social media-wide problem where, you know...
Speaker: I think it's their algorithms though.
Speaker: I think it's, I mean, we don't have that on the website, but I definitely think specifically they're all into the toxic, keeping people engaged in the toxic negativity.
Speaker: Cause like their algorithm is what pushes stuff to the top, right.
Speaker: And put stuff on your feet.
Speaker: So for me, this is a problem actually specific to FDS, what I'm about to say, which is that like, you know, with FDS, we encourage women to, you know, level up and, you know, improve themselves and so on.
Speaker: And I'll be honest, I feel like not using Reddit is part of that level up journey.
Speaker: We've had this problem with FDS where like the really great women who, you know, they do level up, they, you know, improve their lives, they get financially secure, they get
Speaker: you know, a wide variety of hobbies and interests and so on, they come to Reddit less and less.
Speaker: Like they leave, they leave, like they stop using Reddit because Reddit is trash and people who have really awesome lives, like they weigh their time in a way, or they value their time in a certain way where they go, you know, Oh, my, my time is better spent doing these other things and not using Reddit.
Speaker: And so we had this problem where like the people who stuck around were the people who didn't level up.
Speaker: And these are the people who were kind of taking over the subreddit and writing content.
Speaker: And, you know, we didn't want to like diss them too much, like in the Brexit episode, because it was mainly because of Reddit misogyny and so on.
Speaker: It was part of our sort of cost benefit analysis of staying on FTS.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Was that like the benefit that it previously had just wasn't there because all the really high quality women were leaving because they leveled up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And people were noting that, right?
Speaker: They were saying, well, new FDS isn't like the original FDS.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It just got more and more negative, more and more toxic, more and more fun-cell-y.
Speaker: It's like, once again, our pitch for moving to the website and then creating content is because we want to, once again, attract those women to stay.
Speaker: The women who are actually leveling up know how to level up, value their time.
Speaker: And they appropriately value their time.
Speaker: And I think they want to help, but nothing... They don't want to be a Redditor.
Speaker: They don't have endless amounts of time to martyr themselves.
Speaker: They don't want to be a Redditor and they don't necessarily have endless amounts of times to martyr themselves.
Speaker: Because we tell women to set boundaries on their time.
Speaker: You know, women are not a public utility, right?
Speaker: We say value your time, be maximally beneficial to yourself.
Speaker: I feel like, you know, the subreddit was a great starting point and so on.
Speaker: I say was a great starting point in the early days, especially.
Speaker: But lately, you know, they'll blame the podcast for decline of the subreddit, which I find it's actually the themselves who were the cause of the decline of the subreddit because it's just not the support
Speaker: If anything, it's brain drain because we don't really post on the subreddit anymore, right?
Speaker: So all of the people, like we said, who were the brains behind the operation, as well as like the high value women, just stopped doing it.
Speaker: So we have to incentivize them to come back somehow.
Speaker: By the way, the author of this post wrote this two years ago.
Speaker: It hasn't been on FDS in 10 months, right?
Speaker: So again, like a lot of their best quality contributors, just again, they have kids.
Speaker: The woman has kids, right?
Speaker: She's got really important things to do with her time, right?
Speaker: And that's not to say that, you know, women who are active on the subreddit are have no life or that they don't have things that are important in their lives and so on.
Speaker: It's just that like, maybe they're just at the beginning of their journey.
Speaker: But anyways, back to the post.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, she talks about some breathing and meditation practices.
Speaker: And so, you know, I recommend breathing into those.
Speaker: And yeah, there's so many different techniques.
Speaker: At the very end, she says, this guide is nowhere near as comprehensive as it can be.
Speaker: Please feel free to add the techniques that helped you.
Speaker: I wish you all the peace, light, love, and speedy recovery.
Speaker: And so I'm like, no, that's nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so this would be another thing that I think we would love to put in the newsletter is different techniques from different women as far as meditation and how they clear their mind after breakup.
Speaker: These kinds of things are great group source knowledge as well as personal knowledge.
Speaker: So if we do the newsletter right, we'll be able to give these types of tips and things out.
Speaker: Curate this kind of content.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: maybe some really good products along with it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Curate this kind of content.
Speaker: So once again, a plug for FDS, the brand, check us out on the female dating strategy.com as well as our Twitter at Femme.Strat as well as our Patreon with weekly bonus content, as well as the newly unveiled war room, which we're doing twice a month on the queen tier, where we talk about a lot of problems or issues that you're having or just want to come talk to us and discuss life.
Speaker: It's a live Q&A with the hosts here.
Speaker: And, you know, we strategize as a group how to solve your problems.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So check that out on patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy.
Speaker: Also on Instagram at underscore the female dating strategy.
Speaker: Thanks for listening, queens.
Speaker: And for all you scrotes out there, we left Reddit.
Speaker: Why are you still following us?
Speaker: Why are you so obsessed with us?
Speaker: Honestly, it's gross.
Speaker: Why are you so obsessed with me?
Speaker: Anyways, okay.
Speaker: It's terrible.
Speaker: Okay, bye.
Speaker: See you next week.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: you
