Both Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow have been quite vocal and open, especially in recent months, about their 2014 split (otherwise known as, yes, the one, the only, the conscious uncoupling). The two have a famously close relationship for ex-spouses, and Paltrow has said a few times now that Martin is “like a brother” to her, at this stage in her life. (Paltrow is now dating television producer Brad Falchuk; Martin is reportedly dating actress Annabelle Wallis.)

In a new interview with the Sunday Times, Martin acknowledged that his divorce with Paltrow is a “weird one” and that, even now, “I still wake up down a lot of days. But now I feel like I’ve been given the tools to turn it around.” He said he is now, at this point, able to approach the relationship, or the situation generally, from a less heated place. “You can come at it very aggressively and blame and blame. Or you can put yourself in the garage, so to speak. Take yourself apart and clean off the bits. Reassemble.” (It sounds like Martin is close to launching his own Goop-style lifestyle newsletter.)

He said he has been helped by the 1946 account written by Auschwitz survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, about Frankl’s time in a concentration camp. He also cited a poem by Rumi, “The Guest House,” with helping him cope. (Martin has cited both of these works previously.) “It says that even when you’re unhappy, it’s good for you,” Martin said of the poem. “It took me a year to get it. A year of depression and all that.”

Martin’s friends were apparently nervous about him as well, as “Coldplay collaborator” Phil Harvey said, “We were all worried about him—the band, his family. When someone’s really, really low and on their own a lot, as a friend, your mind goes to the worst-case scenario . . . That period didn’t last forever, but there was a time when we were all regularly checking in on him, just trying to make sure he wasn’t on his own.”

Paltrow and Martin’s divorce has still not been finalized, and we can be sure we will continue to hear new angles and takes on their unusual relationship up through Apple Martin’s memoir release in 2047.