Coffee Chats with Dr. D ☕ Join Dr. D every week for real talk on relationships: romantic, friendship, or family. Come for the connection, stay for the reminder that you're never navigating this alone.
Dr. D opens from home sick and describes making a soothing 'medicine ball' tea, creating a relaxed and personal tone. This intro sets context before she moves into the main topic.
She frames the episode around the difficulty of letting go during life transitions and introduces a real example of an old person reappearing years later. This establishes the topic she will explore through a personal story.
Dr. D recounts discovering the person reached out, feeling confused, irritated, and curious, then deliberately deciding not to respond. She explains reaching out to a friend, observing her urges, and resisting the impulse to re-engage.
She urges viewers to be curious about their own feelings and bodily sensations when an ex reappears and recommends practical safeguards like a support list or phone reminders to avoid relapse. These strategies help maintain boundaries and protect progress.
Dr. D asks whether a late attempt to mend truly matters after you've already closed a chapter and reaffirms the importance of protecting your peace. This helps viewers assess whether re-engagement is worth their energy.
She signs off, mentions her clogged ears and tea, and tells viewers when she'll be back next week. A brief friendly ending that signals closure.
Hello everybody, it's me, Doctor D and I am actually home sick today, so if I sound a little stuffy. I am. I've been sick probably since last Thursday, so I'm trying to get some energy, but I decided to just stay home and and take a chill day, which I don't often do for myself, but it feels good to be here. And instead of coffee, because I'm not feeling good, I actually made some tea. So what I'm doing now is pouring my cup of tea that I made. I made a medicine ball, if you've heard of that from Starbucks.
It's a really easy recipe if you ever want to try it. I think it has like mint tea. It has peach tea or peach and honey tea, fresh lemon juice. So I squeeze the lemon. And then it also has honey to sweeten it up because that lemon, let me tell you, that lemon is bitter. But if you're not feeling good, it actually is great. So I'm going to pour that today while we talk. So last month, I remember that, if I remember correctly, I talked about the becoming. So like this new this new stage of life where the seasons are changing and learning how to kind of let go of things.
And that's not easy for a lot of people. It's not easy for me. I'll just be honest. It's not easy to let go. I think I'm the type of person where if someone comes into my life, I feel like they're always supposed to be there and that's just not the truth. So today I want to talk about how it feels when you've actually let go of someone and they pop back up in your life. Now tell me, has that happened to you? If that's happened to you, drop a little coffee emoji and speak wonder. I see you in there taking notes.
Thank you for joining today. I'm glad my coffee chats are working again. I had to figure it out with the Wi-Fi. But this actually recently happened to me where there was someone from the old, I'm gonna be honest, it's the old version of me. the younger girl, the younger woman who didn't know any better about relationships, who wanted connection and was just picking the wrong people. And so one of those people decided to try and find me. And I thought I did all the things to get rid of that person, to let go of that person.
So I remember deleting that person from my phone. I remember telling people I'm no longer talking to them and if I do hold me accountable for it. I remember asking my friends like if they reach out to me like to give me some help, like I don't know what to do. And so a lot of what this experience is about is actually in my TEDx talk. If you haven't seen it, check it out on YouTube. It's called three ways to stop obsessing over that text. And I share the experience of this particular person, but this person popped back up.
Okay. And let's just talk about how that feels. So for me, my first reaction, because I actually found out through a friend who was able to see that they were reached out trying to find me. And my first reaction was, why? do you want to talk to me? It's been literally years, like a decade. Why now? That was my second question. Why and why now? And I remember feeling not necessarily disgusted, but like maybe a little irritated. Like why are you trying to disturb my peace? Why are you trying to disrupt the life that I built?
And I had to make a decision because I'm a curious person. Now, if you resonate with that, let me know. I like to know the whys. That's one of my favorite questions. Why? are you here? What do you want? And I had to fight back the urge to respond. And so what did I do? what I did was part of my TEDx talk, but I reached out to a friend and I was like, girl, so and so sent me a message. I did not respond. I did not block them, but I did not give them the energy back. I just noticed it. I observed it.
I checked how I felt about it. And she asked me, well, are you going to delete the message? And part of me was like, no, because I kind of want to see what they want. I'm just curious, right? Not that I want to talk to this person, but I'm just curious, what do you want from me and why now? But I did not respond to that person. I still have not. And I don't plan to, just to let you know. I think that would be a way of me going back in time and going back to the person that I used to be. And I have to decide, I have let this person go for a particular reason.
I have to continue keeping them in that space. And so if you've ever struggled with that with someone who is trying to reenter your life when you've let them go, one, you have to check how does that feel for you? Are you in this space of emotional dysregulation where you feel agitated or maybe you do get excited? Maybe you're like, oh, I knew they were going to come back because sometimes we do like that if we're honest. Or maybe you feel like, just kind of curious like I was. what do they want?
What do they want to do? But I think I want you to start focusing on being curious about yourself in those moments because it's not about them. This is about you, right? So be curious about yourself. What do you feel? Where do you feel in your body? That's one of my favorite questions. And what do you want to do with that? Now, if I felt curious, I had to decide I'm going to reach out because I know if I engage in that behavior of curiosity, it might take me down a path that I don't want to go. So I had to stop myself before I engaged in that behavior.
And if you don't have someone to reach out to, I would say have a backup plan. And this is part of my TEDx talk as well. So develop maybe a list of people that you can reach out to or if there's a reminder that you can give yourself, Maybe putting that person's name in your phone is like, do not answer or don't talk to them or whatever it is that you need to remind yourself like this person needs to be back there. They need to stay there. Okay. Speak one. You said that's right. Protect your peace.
And you wonder if they're coming back to men to express regret. Oh, but it's never that. Yes. But here's another follow up question to that. Even if they are coming back to mend, does it matter? Does it matter now? Or have you already gotten that closure because you decided that you were closing the door on that part of your life and on that relationship? So, all right, hopefully you guys can hear me okay. I can't hear myself because my ears are clogged up, but I am going to drink this tea as soon as it calms down a little bit.
And I will see you next week, Tuesday at noon. Okay, bye.
