Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode, back for another topic as we dive into the psychology of our 20s.
Today we are going to be talking about such a common dilemma, I think a universal experience for people of all ages, all of us hopeless romantics out there trying so desperately to get over someone that you cannot stop thinking about.
We all know the feeling of having broken up with someone, possibly having moved on, found someone new, and yet still finding those thoughts of your ex, sneaking back into your mind at the most inconvenient time, or maybe it was a past situationship that didn't work out, and despite your best interests
and everything that you know, despite how horribly they may have made you feel, you simply cannot move on from them.
It might even be a person that you know that you can't be with, and our mind keeps going to thoughts, images, memories of these people.
There are so many examples of times when our love and our obsession remains unrequited, even after a relationship has ended.
And I think I understand that more than I would care to admit.
It feels like in those moments, your mind is almost betraying you, holding you back.
It is so difficult to find the closure that we need and move forward with our lives when our brains, when our memories seem to have a different idea.
And I think the thing that's even more difficult is that this can persist even when we know in our deepest of hearts and from a rational perspective that the relationship wasn't right for us.
This is for the best.
They did not treat us how we deserve to be treated.
So today, we are going to discuss why that is, but also what we can do about it, how to really provide yourself with the emotional and psychological closure to finally move on from that person in your past.
I know personally, so well how it feels to be stuck in the middle.
You're no longer with this person, but you're also unable to really move on.
It's kind of like emotional limbo.
You know, I had an ex who I really only dated for six months, and then I spent the better half of like a year, probably even a year and a half, unable to stop considering the what ifs, wanting to reach out, wondering how he was, still looking for ways for him to validate me and my existence and my successes.
And it was incredibly emotionally draining to the point that I remember being on holiday with my family sitting on the beach and almost begging my brain to just let me go, to let me move on, enough time had passed.
I wanted to be free of the memory of this person, and I just couldn't do it.
And then I went overseas and while I was there, I ran into one of their friends, someone who I had also I think been close to whilst we were dating.
And we spent a few hours, you know, talking about how our lives were going.
And inevitably it moved on to a discussion about my ex and what had occurred between us, what it looked like from an outside view.
And I realized that I had never really given myself psychological closure around why things had to end when they did.
The relationship was so terrible that I think my friends never had, they never asked me to justify why I'd left.
They knew it was the right decision.
I knew it was the right decision.
But that didn't mean that I didn't also need some form of answer.
And running into one of his friends provided that perspective, his perspective that I never had.
After all that time, it was like, I finally was able to reach a point where I could see the past for what it was.
I could see that relationship for what it was.
I had like one final kind of emotional breakthrough, emotional explosion, one more kind of moment of sadness.
And then it was like mental catharsis, this kind of mental catharsis I've been looking for for so long, I finally had what I needed to move on.
Literally the next day I met my boyfriend, we've been together ever since.
And I'm providing this example because I think it highlights a deeper psychological reason why we can't stop thinking about someone.
And that is because we lack the necessary emotional closure.
Closure occurs when our brains can create a structured narrative around why something ended.
And it kind of concludes a linear storyline of a relationship from beginning to end.
When we lack that closure, or a sense of completion, our brain remains unsure of whether it's time to actually close that chapter.
It doesn't really have a place to put all of those memories, so it keeps the ending open.
It wants us to keep looking for answers and reaching back into the past for clues or some final powerful understanding.
I think that is especially common when a breakup is messy, when it's unexpected, or when we never officially dated the person.
Because the conclusion of our time together is so much more open -ended.
You have a lot more unfinished business.
And there are so many more what -ifs.
What if they had told me how they really felt?
What if we had been exclusive?
What if they'd given me a chance?
Those hypotheticals are difficult to move past because unfortunately you will never find the answers.
So you kind of have to be comfortable with not having a solid conclusion.
I think this psychological need for closure can explain why some people can be in like a five -year relationship and not blink an eye at their breakup, but the end of a three -month situation kind of sends them into a spiral.
At least in the five -year relationship you gave it a go.
You let the relationship kind of reach its natural expiry date.
So it's not about how much time that you've spent together.
That is not kind of the only way to validate how you're feeling.
It's more about your search and innate need for answers in order to cope with the broader emotional and psychological pain that we are experiencing.
Just because you were not with that person for a long time, just because maybe you never had a label, doesn't mean that you need to feel guilty for not being able to stop thinking about them.
There are certain people who are also just less tolerant of the ambiguity and the confusion we often experience at the end of a relationship or when something appears over.
One study found that people who prefer order and predictability and are also quite intellectual, they struggle when they are unable to find answers to help them move on.
I think these kinds of individuals, and maybe I'm describing you right now, they are so used to being able to provide themselves with all the answers in that situation that when they cannot problem -solve or justify what they're going through, they experience a lot of additional stress.
Further studies have also shown that this closure is also a lot harder to come by if you're spending a lot of time in your own head, daydreaming, thinking about the past, and I think whilst nostalgia and feeling your emotions very deeply is a beautiful thing, it also makes you more prone not only to
a dangerous level of reminiscing, but additionally the subsequent discovery of more questions that you're never going to get the answers to.
A big misconception or a trap that I think a lot of us fall into is believing that our exes or this person that we're stuck in a mental loop over is going to be able to provide you the closure that you need.
Rarely is that the case.
I really believe that someone who has caused your pain is not going to be able to fix it.
Additionally, they may not even have the answers themselves.
They may be just as confused as you are, but they were just more motivated to kind of pull the trigger, and I think when we are in these situations, there is rarely if not ever going to be an answer that is fully satisfying.
You might feel this tendency to like reach out to them and be like, I need to talk to them one more time, we need to get coffee one more time, I need closure.
That person is not going to give you closure, so you kind of have to write the end of this story yourself, and you have to provide yourself with that conclusion.
So what I always recommend is to write this person kind of a final letter, thanking them, being honest about how you felt, and telling them why you need to move on now, why you are finally deciding to let them go.
Don't send it to them, that is crucial, do not send them this letter.
This is an exercise simply for you to provide your own brain with the end of the story and let it rest.
It also helps to kind of do a purge of all the things that remind you of them, a scrub of the camera roll, a spring clean.
I used to make a box of everything that felt significant to me about that person, everything that kind of was a reminder of them, and I would remove all of those reminders because I think sometimes out of sight really does mean out of mind.
You also need to continue to focus on all the reasons why this was the best, why this needed to happen, why this was the best thing that could happen to you, rather than all of those what -ifs and all those possibilities.
That relates to another reason why we can't stop thinking about someone from the past, and that is because of this concept called the Pollyanna Principle.
So in psychology, the Pollyanna Principle is basically a positive cognitive bias in which we tend to remember the good times more clearly than the bad, and so we fixate on them.
We romanticize the past as a way to protect ourselves from some of those negative memories that might injure our optimism or our self -esteem.
Therefore, we engage in what we call selective recall.
When we think about our ex or some unrequited love, normally all we can remember is what made them special, are the moments where you felt happy, when you had high expectations and all the other things, the unanswered messages, the lack of effort, the unhappiness, that is left out of your memory.
So I think when we are in that place, it's no wonder we can't move on because we are constantly seeing someone through these kind of rose -colored lenses despite our best intentions.
But romanticizing the past, even if it feels good in the moment to reflect, even if we know we are in some ways enjoying the pain, it elongates that moving on process.
That final point really fascinates me because there have definitely been times in the past when I've enjoyed reveling in the pain.
It made me feel human to be hurt, to experience longing and grief.
But really what I was doing was keeping myself stuck in my attachment to this other person.
They continue to have control over how I felt about myself and my life.
And in those moments where I was revisiting the past, what I was really doing was trying to prevent myself from feeling like I'd lost that person.
If I thought about them, if I remembered them, if I had them in my memory, in my mind, that meant that what we had was real and that I didn't have to move on quite yet.
Some part of that is also very neurological and biological, kind of operates beyond a level of conscious control.
There have been quite a few researchers in the past decade that have suggested that your inability to move forward from a past relationship in particular or a love interest is really due to principles of addiction.
The very same mechanisms that keep us addicted to gambling or nicotine or alcohol keep us addicted to certain people.
Relationships just naturally create a lot of bonding experiences and that really kind of emotionally cements our trust and our connection to someone.
Because when we are bonded to someone, that brings a huge flood of neurotransmitters like dopamine, oxytocin.
These are associated with that really euphoric high that accompanies a lot of the early days.
This affects the brain.
These neurotransmitters affect the brain in the same way that drugs like painkillers do, inciting almost like an emotional and a physical dependence on this feeling.
So when a relationship is over, it can feel very similar to kind of a drug withdrawal because our dopamine and the pleasure centers have become almost addicted to the sensations that this person brings.
This explains why a lot of us continue chasing that feeling.
We refuse to move on.
We want to keep texting them.
We want to keep seeing them.
Revisiting all those memories of an ex, maintaining that link to them gives us those small spikes of those addictive neurotransmitters, but in a low dosage.
So it just continues to keep us addicted, keeps us attached, unable to stop going back.
I think when you begin to understand it and think about it in that way, it really makes a lot more sense why we cannot stop thinking about these people.
It has nothing to do with, you know, your level of self -discipline.
It has nothing to do with your desire to move on or not move on.
It is our brain demanding that we do anything possible to lessen our emotional and our physical withdrawal.
There are a few other reasons I want to mention besides obviously ideas of addiction, ideas of cognitive biases, all of those.
And a major one is to do with loneliness and dissatisfaction in other areas of your life.
So when you are reminiscing over this person, that might actually be what we would call a projection or a displacement of deeper unhappiness.
It's this idea that by assigning blame for your emotional unhappiness to your ex, you don't have to really investigate what it really might be.
You can blame it all on this, you know, past relationship.
You can hyperfixate on this person as being a turning point for you.
The moment that everything turned bad or also on the flip side, believing that them being in your life will make it better.
Obviously that is not correct.
That's delusional thinking because we don't always have the rationality to understand that our emotional distress is probably coming from a much deeper place.
It's not always to do with the end of a relationship, although it might be.
Sometimes it's because it has caused so much stress and anxiety and so much change that the only thing that we can seek comfort in is previous memories of this person back at a time when we did really feel secure.
We did feel like there was a future.
If you have an anxious attachment style as well, losing someone or finding that they have left your life or feeling like they have abandoned you is also an enormous trigger or fear, as is the possibility of it happening again.
So you closely re -examine the relationship, the situation, for errors or moments where things could have gone differently.
And that is why you cannot stop thinking about them because you're using your kind of pattern of reminiscing to protect you from future failure.
But it's actually having the opposite effect of keeping you attached to someone you really shouldn't be with.
And finally, I think, and this is a conclusion that a lot of us mistakenly make and mistakenly reach, the reason we think that we can't stop thinking about someone or obsessing over them is because we are meant to be with this person.
That is something that I think a lot of us find ourselves stuck in.
We see it as some like more meaningful sign from the universe or some higher power that we shouldn't give up quite yet, that there is still a future.
That is why they are still in our minds.
It is some kind of deeper sign.
Now, I will say sometimes that is the case.
You do get back together with someone that you can't stop thinking about, but there is also absolutely no scientific reason to associate overthinking a past relationship and future compatibility or an eventual reunion.
That is unfortunately a bit of a fallacy.
And the chances are that if the relationship didn't work in the first place, there was a reason for that, a really valid important reason.
And you're forgetting those reasons.
Firstly, because of that kind of positive cognitive bias, but also because you are distracted by all the other emotions you are trying to navigate, but also that you are trying to avoid.
No one likes feeling grief or loneliness or confusion or rejection.
So we think that the easiest way to get rid of those feelings is to get back with that person or find some reason, some hidden explanation behind why this had to happen.
Those are some of the reasons why you cannot stop thinking about someone.
But also, I think it's important, obviously, to talk about how we can progress into our healing stage, how we can finally choose to move on.
What can you do to stop overthinking this past relationship or this moment in time that you shared with someone?
So we are going to, of course, talk about all of that and more after this short break.
The trick to getting over someone that you can't stop thinking about is to detach physically, mentally, socially and emotionally as much as you possibly can.
You need to symbolically kind of cut that tie, that line that is continuing to connect you to that person.
Firstly, that means providing yourself with space, not seeing this person for at least a few weeks or more if possible.
Sometimes we know that someone is bad for us, does not deserve us, does not see our value.
We know that we should cut them off.
And yet we are drawn back almost involuntarily to be around them, to seek out their comfort, their support, their company, but also their validation.
If this person in particular has made you feel like you are not deserving, now all you are going to want from them or you're going to crave from them is their praise and their affirmation that you are a valuable person.
But I think in those moments, you aren't doing yourself any favors.
And that doesn't just mean meeting up with them or seeing them physically, but also keeping yourself attached and in some ways addicted by texting or calling or sharing funny reels on TikTok or Instagram.
If you are seriously committed to moving on from this person, the hard truth is that you need to go no contact.
If you have already done this, skip about three minutes ahead because we're going to talk about it for a second, but essentially no contact.
And I think we have some idea of what that means.
It involves cutting off all communication with this person for a good period of time.
There is a genuine science and psychology that shows that this is a very effective and possibly the fastest way to truly move on.
The reason why is because no contact kind of provides almost a detox from those feel good hormones and neurotransmitters that initially bonded you to that person by removing them.
It removes the source of these chemicals.
It removes the trigger or the stimuli, and it is those chemicals that have kept you in a situation where you are seeing them through rose tinted glasses.
So by providing that detox, it allows you to more clearly see who this person actually is, why this didn't work out, perhaps why you are going to be much happier without them, because it is removing you from what are these very confusing biological feelings and keeping you in a state where you want
to reach out. No contact also has the added benefit of really showing you and I guess this other person that you are done.
It is a clear break.
So it provides that much needed conclusion to the story we were talking about before.
It provides us with the closure that a lot of us really are desperately seeking.
So I'm not going to sugar coat it.
I think that's unfair.
No contact is really difficult because you have most certainly become to rely on this person for something in your life and it's also really difficult when perhaps you share mutual friends or a friend group or whatnot.
Sometimes it is inevitable that you won't be able to avoid them, that you will have to see them, but I do think you should give it your best go.
I believe that sometimes hard things like this process of detachment, hard decisions like choosing to ensure that this person is no longer part of your life, even if you desperately want them to be, it is worth it for a better long -term outcome and I think no contact provides that outcome.
You do not want to be looking back in six months being like, wow, that was six months of healing that I could have already done.
That is six months of time, of energy that I could have not wasted on this person and I would be so much further along in my healing journey.
You're at that point right now where you can decide what the next two months, three months, six months is going to look like for you.
Do you want to continue to be attached to this individual or do you want to move towards kind of emotional freedom?
You also cannot be friends immediately right off the bat.
Some people may argue that you can never be friends.
I think obviously it's a case -by -case basis, but if you immediately try to pivot the nature of your relationship from something romantic to something platonic, it is going to be confusing because you haven't provided yourself with the time in between to really not just grieve, but acknowledge that this person may no longer
be what they once were to you.
You might continue to seek out the same forms of intimacy from them.
You might go back and try and replicate that relationship with them again.
You need space, you need time, you need distance if you are going to be this person's friend, if that is something that you want.
And a lot of the times, once we give ourselves that space, we realize that we actually don't want this person in our life anymore.
That was just us feeling bonded and connected chemically and emotionally and through our memories.
The place that we're in now does not have room for them.
And I think that is actually an incredibly common experience.
Once you give yourself time and space and distance, you realize that you actually don't even want this person in your life anymore.
If you're in that stage of instituting no contact and finding it difficult, that is understandable.
I think setting personal goals or milestones for going no contact is really, really helpful.
I used to make it a challenge for myself.
I would tell myself to just hold off one more day and then I could text them.
And then the next day I would say, okay, well, that's what's another 24 hours here.
And the grand scheme of things, you know, day by day, it's a lot easier to do that.
I knew it would get easier because it's like this invisible string that kept us, you know, connected, was slowly becoming weaker, was becoming frayed.
And with time, the more I didn't respond, the more I felt that the urge was going down.
Something else that helped me in the past was to break away from the positive reminiscing by reminding myself why the relationship with this person was not right.
To do this, I like to use these visualization techniques that relied upon a lot in different therapeutic practices.
What you're going to do is mentally project yourself into the future.
I want you to imagine yourself in five years, what are you looking like?
What are you wearing?
What's your hair looking like?
And then imagine this person standing next to you.
Imagine spending the rest of your days with them.
Imagine raising kids with this person.
Imagine celebrating every major life event with them.
Would that really have been fulfilling?
Would they have really given you the attention that you deserved on those days?
Focus on their irritating behaviors, the things that you complain about to your friends, the attention they didn't give you, the dates they didn't take you on, the love they didn't show you.
And you begin to realize that perhaps the ending of that relationship, of that connection, whatever it was, was one of the biggest blessings that you could have received.
Even if right now you are somewhat in the trenches.
Part of that is also choosing to prioritize thinking about what the end of this relationship has brought to you, rather than what it has cost you.
For example, what are the upsides from no longer having this person in your life?
Every time you miss them, think about how you now have more time for yourself.
You always get to watch what you want on TV.
You get to spend your afternoons, your evenings doing whatever you would like.
Every time you think about those fond memories, think about all those new memories that you are one day going to make with someone else, the quality time that you're going to get to have with your friends, the emotional clarity that you are going to get from this experience.
And really start to invest in parts of yourself that this person has no idea about.
Sometimes the reason we find it so difficult to emotionally detach is because we feel as if a huge part of identity or who we are or who we were in the past has become intertwined with this other person.
They might know everything about us or maybe we've shared so much information with them, so much vulnerability that now we can't imagine a future without them in it.
You really need to start investing in that new version of yourself that is untouched by this person.
That includes new hobbies, new friends, new routines, new values, new priorities.
Refresh your environment as well, buy some new artwork, find some new music to listen to, dance, fill up that schedule.
The ending of this relationship is the beginning of your next chapter.
Imagine meeting up with them in six months and being able to say, you know, I've taken that time to transform myself.
That person that you used to know, that you used to have emotional control over who was obsessed with you, they are gone.
They are completely different now.
This is the new version of me.
You know, when I went through like my first big breakup a few years back, I got really into pottery class.
I was pouring kind of all my grief and my pain into creating something special.
The next time I got really into running.
And then of course, this podcast came out of a breakup.
This was my meditation.
This was my healing space.
And I do really believe that we all need a version of this when we are trying to move on from someone by choosing to invest in yourself.
It is a profound reclaiming of the self, a reclaiming of your independence.
You are someone without this person.
You are someone without their validation.
You exist as a brilliant bright light, a brilliant, beautiful person, even if they are not there to see it.
And you get to make yourself even better.
You get to just absolutely excel and just be devoted to becoming the best version of yourself.
That is an important reminder.
I also think it is important to remember that you need to take what you need from the end of that relationship.
Whether that is a better understanding of who you are, of what you deserve, what you want in the future.
Spell out what it is that this taught you.
What are some of the benefits of having loved and maybe lost?
You definitely took something from this.
Identify it. What is it?
And then spell out what you want and need and deserve in the future.
Even if you don't really feel ready to go looking for that yet.
I think that really brings me to my next tip.
Take your time before moving on.
A lot of us have this really intense instinct or urge to find a rebound as soon as our previous relationship is over or if we've been kind of left rejected or aimless to find someone else to fill that void.
That is a short term fix.
It simply takes up the space left by the previous person and it is a distraction rather than a deeper solution.
They conducted a study on this a few years ago called Too Fast Too Soon An Empirical Investigation Into Rebound Relationships.
And what they concluded is that a lot of rebound dating is actually quite reactive and done in the residual emotions from a lost love.
Most of the people who talked about having a rebound it actually left them feeling more emotionally raw.
It left them feeling like they were thinking about their ex for longer than the average person.
And it also triggers you to keep going back to those memories because you are probably experiencing a lot of those a lot of the same things that are activating previous memory pathways.
For example you might be going to the same date locations.
You are probably in the same environment.
You are talking about the same things.
You are experiencing intimacy just with the new person and sometimes that means that this person is really almost just like a proxy a fake version of the person that we really want to be with.
I don't think it's helpful to us.
I don't think it's helpful to anyone else.
Instead you need to learn that you don't need to be afraid of your thoughts just because you are thinking about your ex doesn't mean that they were the one.
It is not a sign that you should get back together.
It's not a sign that you haven't healed either.
It's just your brain kind of short -circuiting looking for that ending.
So approach it with neutrality.
Of course you miss them.
You felt connected.
They were a part of your life.
Maybe things ended in a way that was not satisfying.
All of those statements can be true but we don't need to be emotionally invested in them.
And remember above all else time is the universal healer.
Time will pass. Although your healing won't be linear, neurologically your brain cannot be in this amount of pain forever.
Your brain cannot stay in these memories forever.
It cannot sustain that kind of emotional burden so it will exhaust itself.
Everything in life is really temporary including this feeling and I promise you that in a year's time maybe you'll be searching back through this podcast and you'll find this episode and be like whoa I no longer relate to this.
I am over this person.
I'm free. So I'm going to give you a final rapid fire list of tips to stop thinking about someone you cannot get over.
You need to read some good old self -help books and fiction books to refocus yourself in those moments where you're feeling stuck overwhelmed.
Some really good ones are What A Time To Be Alone by Chudera Egeru.
I also just read this book called Cleopatra and Frankenstein.
It honestly allowed me to like romanticize every breakup I've ever had in my 20s.
It was a really good read.
This Is How You Heal is another one all about love by Bell Hook's Essentials.
Secondly show yourself the love that you expect from others.
There has been such a huge discussion about love languages recently and I think where we go wrong is thinking that we can only express and receive our love languages whether that's words of affirmation, physical touch, acts of service from other people.
You can show yourself the love you feel you deserve from others and I think that's important to do during these times.
You can speak kindly to yourself, you can buy yourself little gifts, you can give yourself a big hug, take yourself on dates, make your bed in the morning so that your future self feels less stressed at the end of the day, show yourself the love that you have come to expect from others.
Don't suffer alone as well.
Your friends want to support you.
They want to hear about it.
Trust me, I think a problem spoken out loud is a problem halved.
Do not text this person when you are drunk.
That is the very definition of two steps forward, three steps back.
You will feel embarrassed.
You will undo your progress if you have gone no contact.
Hopefully there will be absolutely no risk of this happening but please make sure you have a guardian or like a drunk guardian.
Do not text this person no matter how much you want to and if you can go for a trip to kind of jolt yourself out of your funk and if you can't do that make a bit of a personal bucket list for places you kind of want to go on your local area or small things that you want to do alone in the next few months.
Part of moving on from someone you can't stop thinking about is recognizing that your own company is actually amazing and you can have such a good time by yourself but you're also not alone.
There will be other people, there will be future loves and not just like romantic love but new friendships, people who are going to come into your life so unexpectedly, new memories, the best day of your life is yet to come.
That is something I always like to remind myself when I'm stuck in a thought spiral about someone that I don't want to be thinking about.
So I really hope that these tips have helped you.
I really do understand and I empathize a lot with where you're at right now but speaking as someone who has been in those points of desperation where I just really wanted this person out of my mind, out of my life, out of my head, it will happen.
You will heal, time will move forward and one day you will wake up and realize that they really don't matter anymore.
They really don't matter anymore.
They were just a kind of secondary character in your main character story.
So thank you so much for listening.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you got something out of it.
As always, if there is someone who needs to hear this episode, maybe you have a friend going through something similar, please feel free to share it along and share the love.
If you enjoyed the episode as well, please feel free to give it a five -star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
I don't know where you're listening, wherever you're listening right now and hit follow if you want to see future episodes live on your page.
Thank you again for listening.
Follow us along at That Psychology Podcast as well.
If you have an episode suggestion, my inbox is open.
We are taking suggestions at the moment or if you just want to see some more behind the scenes content, video clips and whatnot, I'm rooting for you.
I promise it's going to get better.
You will get over this person.
Hopefully this has gotten you one step further to that point.
We will be back next week with another episode.
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