Welcome to Just Break Up, the podcast about love, heartbreak, and all the relationship advice you don't want to hear.

My name is Sierra de Mulder.

And I'm Sam Blackwell.

And today we're going to answer a letter from somebody who's feeling echoes of self-doubt from a toxic relationship.

But before we begin, we just want to give you our Surgeon General's warning, which is that Sierra and I are not licensed mental health practitioners.

No, we are not.

We are definitely not.

We are not professionals.

We are not trained in any of this.

So please take our advice as you see fit.

We're only here to offer our humble and sleep-deprived musings to hopefully shed some understanding and maybe some laughs about

the incredibly rewarding but mostly confusing experience that is love.

But first, it's Monday.

So we're going to do a quick check-in topic.

And today's check-in topic is inspired by an article I read on NPR about what seeking revenge does to our brains.

And it's super interesting because basically there are neuroscientists.

I'm sure there's a better title for that.

But there's studies going on about how revenge lights up your brain's reward center

in a way that mirrors substance addiction.

So when we imagine or plan revenge or when we're like, when we're thinking about the injustice of things

and thinking about what people like deserve,

people who've wronged us,

...