Turn Difficult Transitions Into Powerful Growth Opportunities

(gentle music) Headspace Studio. Hi, welcome to Radio Headspace in Monday morning. I'm your guest host for the week, Dr. Latifa Watford. I'm a mother of five, a wife of 24 years, and I've been a practicing psychiatrist for almost 20 years now. So something I've noticed over the years is that a lot of problems my patients have are related to large life transitions. These are fairly universal things, like breakups, having kids, and when your parents start aging. So I've experienced a lot of this, and I'd like to talk to you about what I've learned in my professional practice and throughout life. I think one of the hardest transitions anyone can go through is a breakup. Like many others, I have experienced breakup, and I've found that to be one of the hardest transitions anyone can go through. It doesn't matter what age you are or where you're from or who broke up with who, it's just a really tough situation for everyone involved. Breakups tend to be difficult, not only because there are transition and as I said, change is hard, but also a breakup is an ending. You have shared friends, shared experiences, shared likes and dislikes. So when you break up, it's almost like you have to separate from those things. In my practice, most consistently, what I see is people feel like there's a timeframe. For example, "I broke up six months ago. I should be over this, but I'm not." The important thing to remember is there's no timeframe on breaking up. Just like there's no timeframe on grieving. You have to allow yourself to go through the emotions and all the changes at your own pace so that you can come out on the other side, healthier and stronger. So I'm human, and I've experienced breakup many times. There's one particular breakup that was really difficult for me to deal with. In this situation, I had a best friend. I had been friends with this person since I was in the 10th grade, so way back in high school. And this breakup happened when I was well into my 30s, and all of a sudden, our relationship started changing. We didn't do the things that we used to do together. There seemed to be a little more distance between us, until one day, she told me that we could no longer be friends. It was almost like I was sucker-punched in my stomach. The wind was literally knocked out of me, and I had no idea what I had done or what had happened. And I remember trying to take it all in and figure out, you know, why this has happened, and what I could do to fix it. Over time, I realized that that breakup really had nothing to do with me, and I had to allow that breakup to happen. I gave her the space and the distance that she said she needed. I turned to my other...