Antonio Pascual-Leone

So actually not having the person here can be more useful.

Me getting over the relationship is no longer a shared project.

Me deciding what it means to me, it doesn't have to mean the same thing to me as it does to the other person.

We often have, you know, there's this question of, well, isn't it just better to talk to the other person?

And there was a study that kind of looked at, that's a great question, right?

An imagined dialogue versus a real dialogue.

So this was basically a study where what they were treating was suicidal adolescents who had essentially unfinished business with parents, right?

There were rifts that were very painful related to the situation.

Adolescence, suicidality.

And, you know, they could randomize and treat in two ways.

One, you could put them in family therapy where they actually have dialogues with the parent about what's going on.

Or you could put them in individual therapy and have imagined dialogues where they imagine that the parent is alive, is living somewhere else, but they're imagining a dialogue here.

So this is really interesting.

It answers that question because you actually get different outcomes, different kinds of outcomes.

So if what you're looking for is relationship resolution, if what you're looking for is to improve the relationship, have a better relationship, then having a real dialogue with a real person is going to be more effective.

That's where you'll see the change in the quality of the relationship.

not necessarily in the degree to which they've worked through their own unfinished business, right?

So you can repair the relationship and still not feel entirely resolved.

On the other hand, if you had people imagine a dialogue,

Emotional processing, I'll call it, is better if the dialogue is imaginary.