Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, after a tragic loss or a traumatic breakup, we would all like to believe that there's a way to turn off the pain switch and get back to a normal life. So when well meaning friends and families say you just need to find some closure, we think maybe that's the answer. Once we achieve this mythical state of closure, we hope the pain will disappear
and the bad memories will be wiped clean. The problem, psychologists say, is the closure, at least as we understand it in popular culture, doesn't really exist. By searching for permanent closure to our emotional pain, they say, we're closing ourselves off to healthier ways of processing difficult experiences. The
concept of closure comes from gestalt psychology. Gastalt began as a way of understanding how the mind proceeds, eaves, and processes images, and one of the principles of gestalt perception is that the mind seeks closure. For example, if an image of a circle is incomplete, the mind still perceives it as a whole circle. Over time, this principle crossed
over to the processing of life experiences. If you suffered an unresolved trauma in the past, Gestalt taught then you were unable to fully move on until the issue was closed in some way. This led to therapeutic techniques like the empty chair, in which participants would imagine the source of their unfinished business, say an abuse of parent or a deceased lover, sitting in the chair and speaking to them. While empty chair therapy often provided a short term emotional release,
it didn't free the subjects from long term pain. Despite the questionable efficacy of gestalt therapy, the belief the closure is a panacea for emotional pain became deep embedded in American pop psychology. It's a favorite of the news media, where the families of murder victims or people affected by terrorist attacks are always looking for closure, and it's a cliche of daytime talk shows when a jilted lover is brought on stage to confront their lousy x so they
can finally get some closure. But we spoke with psychotherapist Ashley Davis Bush, author of Hope and Healing for Transcending Loss, and she says that unfortunately, the kind of closure peddled by pop psychology isn't really achievable, nor should it be. Bush said, Americans like happy endings were a feel good society. We like clean cut things. We want to believe there's an end to pain. In reality, it's not that the
pain ends, but it changes over time. When Bush sees clients who are grieving a lost spouse or close family member, she doesn't talk about achieving closure, which to her, is the equivalent of trying to close the door on honest, if sometimes painful emotions. Instead, she uses terms like healing and growth and helps surviving spouses learn how to live with loss or how to carry the precious memory of
the loved one with them in positive ways. Bush said, I also call it living with the love, really allowing the memories of that person to fortify you, recognizing that you're a different person because you loved them, that they're still with you in certain essential ways, and not being afraid to honor that relationship. Honoring a relationship with the deceased spouse doesn't mean that the widow or widower is stuck in the past or will be unable to form
new relationships. In fact, it's often the opposite. By not tempting to blunt or shut down their honest feelings, they remain emotionally alive. Bush has clients who, after passing through a period of intense grief, have fallen in love again and even remarried without sacrificing deep feelings of loyalty to their first spouse. But what about divorces and bad breakups? Is it still a bad idea to seek closure if you're having a hard time moving on from a painful
end to a long term relationship. Bush said, that's a different situation. I do think that closure is more relevant when you have the end of a relationship. There really are elements of closure, whether it's signing the divorce papers or moving out of the apartment you shared. There's a more specific kind of closure that we think is achievable. Yet at the same time, we are always affected by our past relationships and will carry those experiences with us.
Bush says, we still need to learn how to honor the relationship and gather wisdom from it, even if it didn't end the way that we imagined it would. The question, she says, is whether the emotional baggage we take away from the relationship will be heavy or light. One way to lighten our emotional baggage. Research has shown is to write about the breakup. Specifically, researchers asked a hundred people who had recently experienced a breakup to journal for thirty
minutes a day for three consecutive days. A portion of participants were told to write exclusively about positive aspects of the breakup and how they'd grown because of it. After the writing exercise, this group reported no increase in negative emotions and a boost of positive outcomes, including comfort, confidence, empowerment, optimism, thankfulness, and wisdom. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and
produced by Tyler Klang. For more in this and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. Or more podcasts to my heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.