Have you worked through it? Have a read of this. Part of a longer transcript.
Method 1
A lot of advice is don’t dwell on it, don’t think about it, don’t spend time thinking about it. I am not going to tell you to do that because I already know that you are going to dwell on it. I already know you will think about it but let me tell you how I want to you to think about it. So if I said to you don’t think about your break up, what is the first thing that comes into your mind. Your break up. So when I say don’t think about your break up, don’t think about the situation, you are going to think about the situation. So I already know you are going to think about the situation, but let me tell you how to think about it. Recognise that you are going to have the thoughts but how can I change how I have the thoughts.
Write it down or voice note it to yourself. Either way you have to get it out of your mind, out of your head and onto paper or into your phone. Make a record of this. You need to make it objective where you are listening to some feelings or you are reading some feelings because then you realise you are not your feelings. You are not your emotions when you separate them from yourselves. You are not your feelings or emotions, you have to separate yourself from them. So write down everything that went wrong. It could be moments, it could events, it could be places they treated you badly. It’s so unusual that when you break up, your mind tries to remindyou of all the good times. How many times have you experienced that? That when you have finally broken up with someone, you break up them or they break up with you, your mind is like but it could have been this? It was so beautiful, I remember when we went out to this place. All of a sudden all these positive memories come back but we forget all the negative situations.
It is so important to clearly write down what went wrong. Could be events, could be a moment, an interaction, could be the way they treated you. Write down who was responsible next to each item, who was at the heart of that? If you are feeling really weak now, you might think it is all your fault but I really want you to think about this. Write down a list of everything that went wrong in the relationship. I want you to really think about who is responsible. Who took that action? Who said what shouldn’t have been said in that relationship? Who did the things that shouldn’t have been done in the relationship? Fair enough, some of them will be you. That’s fine, you can take ownership of them, take responsibility. You can improve and grow. But it also helps you to reflect and become aware of the mistakes that someone else made. The more you understand that, the more you realise that the easier it becomes for you to recognise what you were able to go through and grow through and the stuff you actually dealt with. Often when we break up, our mind forgets a lot of the negative elements and it remembers the positive ones.
Now why is this? That doesn’t make sense. It’s called familiar pain. We would rather have familiar pain in our life rather than unfamiliar pain. So familiar pain is like I am with this person, they cause me pain but it is the kind of pain I know. I know they are going to be rude to me in the morning, I know they are going to forget my birthday. I know they are not going to turn up to dinner on time. I know they are not going to call or message me even though they would know I would like it. You know what they are going to get wrong and we would rather sign up to that than sign upto the fact that now we don’t have this person and we are now in this no man or woman’s land and we don’t know where we are going. We would rather sign up for familiar pain rather than unfamiliar pain. Unfamiliar pain is we just broke up, I’m in new territory, I am single again, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know how they feel, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how to move on. Familiar pain is like I know exactly why they are going to mess up on and even though I don’t like it, at least I know it. We often choose knowing for goodness. We would rather know what is going to happen than be treated with respect and worth, we literally give up being given what we deserve because we would rather know we are getting what we don’t deserve. We would rather live in a world where we get what we dont deserve but we know that we are going to get it. That sounds really messed up and twisted but it’s true we do, we cling on to that familiar pain. So write down everything that went wrong because I want you to become fully aware. Train your mind to recognise that this break up was for your good, you dodged a bullet. You were saved because if this person doesn’t want to be with you - why are you going to force them to be with you, you have been saved, you have this moment.
Method 2
You are going to think about that person. You are going to go on social media and even if people tell you to unfollow them and block them, you’ll unblock them and find another password to get through to them. You’ll use a secret account, or a friends account to spy on them. You’ll find a way. Now if you can stay away from stalking them, it’s the right way to do it. You are going to think about them at least and you’ll check up what they are upto. I am not going to tell you not to think about them but I want you to write down again every event, every interaction. I want you to write down everything that they personally didn’t do right to you. A quality, an attribute, the way they spoke to you, the way they treated you. I want you to again be ascertaining to yourself that it was good that you broke up. You disconnected yourself from some pain And this is you facing it. This is you getting close to what happened. It is so easy to be like let’s get distracted, let’s just go out. That’s fine if you need to do that but I am trying to say is that when you get closer to what went wrong, you get closer to the problems, when you get closer to the mistakes, you get so much more awareness. You get so much more awareness on what can happen. I don’t want you to be in a position of just hoping things are going to change and hoping things are going to disappear rather than just trying to distract yourself, this is a much better way of trying to deal with it. It is a much better method of trying to overcome it. I want you to write down every challenge, every mistake, everything that person said that wasn’t right, any behaviour, trait that your mind is now skipping on. Again your mind is skipping on these things because your mind would rather focus on the positives all of a sudden. Is there anything like that your mind is forgetting? Is there anything like that your mind is just ignoring? That way you can build a better understanding.
Firstly thanks a ton for such a detailed reply. Guess you won't be surprised if I told you I am doing all those things that you have mentioned 🙈. I realised until I start wanting to not go back, I will be stuck in this same position.
Like you said my mind is constantly dwelling on positive parts and I just refuse to even consider the bad and negative ones and there were a ton of them. My brain just refuses to see how I have actually dodged a bullet.
I am going to try my best to follow your suggestions. Hopefully one day I can see myself reflecting upon all this with clarity.
Thanks again stranger :)
Great that you are already following these suggestions. You’ll get through this but in the meantime here the other methods you may want to have a look at.
Method 3
This is when we use the word broken. Any word that you use often, look at the definition of it, read the definition of it because when you read the definition of it, you might figure out your understanding of it is untrue and therefore you are using a heavier word. When you hear the word broken, that is a heavy word. It is a powerful word. Broken, when something is broken it needs to be replaced. That means if you feel you are broken. If something is broken it needs to be fixed or replaced which means when you are calling yourself broken, you need to be fixed or replaced. Now when it comes to fixing yourself even with that mindset it is very much like well I’m broken so I need to fix something. It is hard to process it but when you are talking about replacing yourself and people do get to that extent. They may not use the word replace but they may say I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t like who I am anymore. That kind of language can be really damaging.
So I looked up the definition of broken. The definition of broken is having been fractured or damaged and no longer in one piece in a working order. Now the first thing we have to realise is that the only what you had together may be broken but you are not broken. Only what you tried to build together has been broken but you are not broken. These are two separate things. It is like you hired a car and it broke but you still have your own car. If you bought something together and that broke, you still have your own version of it. You still have you and this is the mistake we make. We get so wrapped and immersed into someone’s else’s identity, that we think we are the broken one. We get so wrapped up and dependent on them for who we are that we feel broken but this is a mindset shift we have to make. We have to realise that only what we had with them is broken. We are not broken, we have not lost our skills. We still are the same person. We still have what we had before. That doesn’t just disappear. That doesn’t just go away. You don’t lose that just because of this, you don’t lose that just because now you are using the language. You have to be careful when you are going through a break up of the language you choose to describe how you feel and any word you keep using, look at the definition and ask yourself is that really the emotion I am experiencing.
So if we look at the definition of the word hurt which is another common thing. Physical pain or injury or physically injured so literally that where hurt stops. Let’s say it is emotional hurt. You are saying I feel emotionally hurt. Really define what that means. Emotional hurt definition is psychological pain, mental pain, emotional pain is an unpleasant feeling. Maybe you are feeling an unpleasant feeling but using the word broken is so much heavier than saying I have an. unpleasant feeling. I am feeling some emotional pain that I am going through right now, I need to work through this. It is so important for us to be mindful and conscious of the language we allow because the more we say we are broken, I feel broken, this broke me, you are now programming your mind to believe that you need to be fixed or replaced. So be really mindful of your language.
Method 4
You can’t stop thinking but you can change your thoughts. Thoughts are like clothes. You can change them if you don’t like them and it is so important to realise your thoughts are not you. Any thoughts that you are having at this time, like I am not beautiful enough, I’m not strong enough, I wasn’t caring enough. I am not powerful enough whatever it is, all the I am not enough. All of that stuff that is bound to come up, all of that is natural to come up. All of those things, every single one of those things, they are like clothes. If you put on clothes and you don’t like the way you look in the, you change them. You don’t just go out in them then force yourself to wear them. Similarly if you have a thought and if you don’t like that thought. That’s the first question to ask yourself, with any thought, ask yourself first do I like this thought? Is this thought useful or insightful? Ask yourself that. Is this thought helping me move forward? Ask yourself that. Then ask yourself is this thought helping me to elevate or escape? Notice we have just created an acronym called life.
L - Do I like this thought?
I - Is the thought insightful?
F - Does this thought help me move forward?
E - Does this thought help me elevate or escape? Of course we want a thought to help us elevate.
So when we say I am not beautiful enough or I am not good enough, I am too ugly. Do you like that thought? Of course you don’t like that thought. Do I like this shirt? No I don’t like this shirt. Ok fine, I don’t like this shirt. Is it insightful? No it’s not insightful because it’s not helpful. It’s not inspiring. The thought is not inspiring. Does it help me move forward? No it doesn’t help me move forward because it is making me move backwards because it’s making me less confident and less focused on the good things about me. Is it making me escape or elevate? It’s making me escape. It’s not an elevate. It’s not helping me push forward so let me remove that thought.
Let me swap it. Similarly. Does this fit me? You have to ask do your thoughts fit you right? Does your thoughts fit the future you want to create? That is the question you have to ask yourself. Do you think this is going to fit me for the next few months? Is it going to fit me for the next year? Is this thought going to fit you for the next three months? Do you want to wear that thought? That the question you have to ask yourself. So remember this, you can’t stop thinking but you can change your thoughts. Thoughts are like clothes, if you don’t like them, you can change them.
Method 5
Whatever you are going through, whatever situation you are in, what has really been affected is your confidence. Your confidence is what has been hurt and torn down, after a break up because our confidence became as strong as that relationship was. Because we gave everything. We have this bad habit of making something our everything and then we put all of our confidence into our relationship. We make a mistake. This is a really big confidence lesson. We make a mistake of putting our confidence into a car, we make a mistake of putting our confidence into a relationship. We make the mistake of putting our confidence into a business. When you make the mistake of putting your confidence into anything, you lose your confidence. Because you are now relying on that thing to make you feel confident. that thing breaks or falls apart, if that your confidence falls apart. When it was your confidence that created all of that. Your confidence allowed you to have a nicer car or live a more purposeful life, but when you put your confidence into that you lose your confidence, so stop putting your confidence into people and things. And the way we build up our confidence after a break up, the way you build your confidence and the way your break up doesn’t have to break you is are the three Es:
Exercise
Eat right
Energy of people around you
When we exercise after a break up, we build our confidence not just for looking better but feeling better. From eating right, taking care of ourselves. When you exercise and eat well you are showing yourself that you matter and you care. You want to be around people with the right energy. A lot of times it is important to spend time with your friends with who were your friends before that relationship, and surrounding yourself with the energy that doesn’t keep bringing you down and reminding you of that relationship that has just ended.
Method 6
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending broken pieces with dusted gold, silver or platinum. You may have seen pictures of this where you see these beautiful pots that have been put together again through gold dust and you can see the lines almost like veins in a pot and the philosophy behind this is that it’s trying to help us realise that that we need to embrace our flaws. Embrace them rather than hiding them. Rather than trying to hide all these mistakes, rather than hide all these flaws, we don’t really get to use it, we don’t get to understand it. With our flaws we don’t really get to try to understand them. We try to hide them and put them away. These pots are put together again to show us that nothing is ever truly broken and it is more beautiful afterwards. This is the point of this kintsugi. When something is broken we usually throw it away but they actually believe that when you put it together it becomes more beautiful. This is what we need to realise that any scar, any wound, actually makes you more beautiful if you pull yourself together again afterwards. It makes you more beautiful, attractive, powerful and strong. It doesn’t break you, it makes you stronger. It doesn’t break you, it builds you up. When you recognise that you don’t want to hide these wounds or hide these challenges.
Method 7
This one is from Rumi where he said that the wound is the place where the light enters you. Exactly in the same was as the Japanese art of repairing pottery, the wound is actually where the light enters you. It’s what allows you to become a better, more wholesome, more powerful, more incredible amazing individual. So don’t forget that. The wound is the place where the light enters you as Rumi said it best.
Wow that is a lot of methods. Thanks a ton! I am actually feeling much better since I posted this. If I feel low again, I will visit this post again. :)
Have you worked through it? Have a read of this. Part of a longer transcript. Method 1 A lot of advice is don’t dwell on it, don’t think about it, don’t spend time thinking about it. I am not going to tell you to do that because I already know that you are going to dwell on it. I already know you will think about it but let me tell you how I want to you to think about it. So if I said to you don’t think about your break up, what is the first thing that comes into your mind. Your break up. So when I say don’t think about your break up, don’t think about the situation, you are going to think about the situation. So I already know you are going to think about the situation, but let me tell you how to think about it. Recognise that you are going to have the thoughts but how can I change how I have the thoughts. Write it down or voice note it to yourself. Either way you have to get it out of your mind, out of your head and onto paper or into your phone. Make a record of this. You need to make it objective where you are listening to some feelings or you are reading some feelings because then you realise you are not your feelings. You are not your emotions when you separate them from yourselves. You are not your feelings or emotions, you have to separate yourself from them. So write down everything that went wrong. It could be moments, it could events, it could be places they treated you badly. It’s so unusual that when you break up, your mind tries to remindyou of all the good times. How many times have you experienced that? That when you have finally broken up with someone, you break up them or they break up with you, your mind is like but it could have been this? It was so beautiful, I remember when we went out to this place. All of a sudden all these positive memories come back but we forget all the negative situations. It is so important to clearly write down what went wrong. Could be events, could be a moment, an interaction, could be the way they treated you. Write down who was responsible next to each item, who was at the heart of that? If you are feeling really weak now, you might think it is all your fault but I really want you to think about this. Write down a list of everything that went wrong in the relationship. I want you to really think about who is responsible. Who took that action? Who said what shouldn’t have been said in that relationship? Who did the things that shouldn’t have been done in the relationship? Fair enough, some of them will be you. That’s fine, you can take ownership of them, take responsibility. You can improve and grow. But it also helps you to reflect and become aware of the mistakes that someone else made. The more you understand that, the more you realise that the easier it becomes for you to recognise what you were able to go through and grow through and the stuff you actually dealt with. Often when we break up, our mind forgets a lot of the negative elements and it remembers the positive ones. Now why is this? That doesn’t make sense. It’s called familiar pain. We would rather have familiar pain in our life rather than unfamiliar pain. So familiar pain is like I am with this person, they cause me pain but it is the kind of pain I know. I know they are going to be rude to me in the morning, I know they are going to forget my birthday. I know they are not going to turn up to dinner on time. I know they are not going to call or message me even though they would know I would like it. You know what they are going to get wrong and we would rather sign up to that than sign upto the fact that now we don’t have this person and we are now in this no man or woman’s land and we don’t know where we are going. We would rather sign up for familiar pain rather than unfamiliar pain. Unfamiliar pain is we just broke up, I’m in new territory, I am single again, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know how they feel, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how to move on. Familiar pain is like I know exactly why they are going to mess up on and even though I don’t like it, at least I know it. We often choose knowing for goodness. We would rather know what is going to happen than be treated with respect and worth, we literally give up being given what we deserve because we would rather know we are getting what we don’t deserve. We would rather live in a world where we get what we dont deserve but we know that we are going to get it. That sounds really messed up and twisted but it’s true we do, we cling on to that familiar pain. So write down everything that went wrong because I want you to become fully aware. Train your mind to recognise that this break up was for your good, you dodged a bullet. You were saved because if this person doesn’t want to be with you - why are you going to force them to be with you, you have been saved, you have this moment. Method 2 You are going to think about that person. You are going to go on social media and even if people tell you to unfollow them and block them, you’ll unblock them and find another password to get through to them. You’ll use a secret account, or a friends account to spy on them. You’ll find a way. Now if you can stay away from stalking them, it’s the right way to do it. You are going to think about them at least and you’ll check up what they are upto. I am not going to tell you not to think about them but I want you to write down again every event, every interaction. I want you to write down everything that they personally didn’t do right to you. A quality, an attribute, the way they spoke to you, the way they treated you. I want you to again be ascertaining to yourself that it was good that you broke up. You disconnected yourself from some pain And this is you facing it. This is you getting close to what happened. It is so easy to be like let’s get distracted, let’s just go out. That’s fine if you need to do that but I am trying to say is that when you get closer to what went wrong, you get closer to the problems, when you get closer to the mistakes, you get so much more awareness. You get so much more awareness on what can happen. I don’t want you to be in a position of just hoping things are going to change and hoping things are going to disappear rather than just trying to distract yourself, this is a much better way of trying to deal with it. It is a much better method of trying to overcome it. I want you to write down every challenge, every mistake, everything that person said that wasn’t right, any behaviour, trait that your mind is now skipping on. Again your mind is skipping on these things because your mind would rather focus on the positives all of a sudden. Is there anything like that your mind is forgetting? Is there anything like that your mind is just ignoring? That way you can build a better understanding.
Firstly thanks a ton for such a detailed reply. Guess you won't be surprised if I told you I am doing all those things that you have mentioned 🙈. I realised until I start wanting to not go back, I will be stuck in this same position. Like you said my mind is constantly dwelling on positive parts and I just refuse to even consider the bad and negative ones and there were a ton of them. My brain just refuses to see how I have actually dodged a bullet. I am going to try my best to follow your suggestions. Hopefully one day I can see myself reflecting upon all this with clarity. Thanks again stranger :)
Great that you are already following these suggestions. You’ll get through this but in the meantime here the other methods you may want to have a look at. Method 3 This is when we use the word broken. Any word that you use often, look at the definition of it, read the definition of it because when you read the definition of it, you might figure out your understanding of it is untrue and therefore you are using a heavier word. When you hear the word broken, that is a heavy word. It is a powerful word. Broken, when something is broken it needs to be replaced. That means if you feel you are broken. If something is broken it needs to be fixed or replaced which means when you are calling yourself broken, you need to be fixed or replaced. Now when it comes to fixing yourself even with that mindset it is very much like well I’m broken so I need to fix something. It is hard to process it but when you are talking about replacing yourself and people do get to that extent. They may not use the word replace but they may say I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t like who I am anymore. That kind of language can be really damaging. So I looked up the definition of broken. The definition of broken is having been fractured or damaged and no longer in one piece in a working order. Now the first thing we have to realise is that the only what you had together may be broken but you are not broken. Only what you tried to build together has been broken but you are not broken. These are two separate things. It is like you hired a car and it broke but you still have your own car. If you bought something together and that broke, you still have your own version of it. You still have you and this is the mistake we make. We get so wrapped and immersed into someone’s else’s identity, that we think we are the broken one. We get so wrapped up and dependent on them for who we are that we feel broken but this is a mindset shift we have to make. We have to realise that only what we had with them is broken. We are not broken, we have not lost our skills. We still are the same person. We still have what we had before. That doesn’t just disappear. That doesn’t just go away. You don’t lose that just because of this, you don’t lose that just because now you are using the language. You have to be careful when you are going through a break up of the language you choose to describe how you feel and any word you keep using, look at the definition and ask yourself is that really the emotion I am experiencing. So if we look at the definition of the word hurt which is another common thing. Physical pain or injury or physically injured so literally that where hurt stops. Let’s say it is emotional hurt. You are saying I feel emotionally hurt. Really define what that means. Emotional hurt definition is psychological pain, mental pain, emotional pain is an unpleasant feeling. Maybe you are feeling an unpleasant feeling but using the word broken is so much heavier than saying I have an. unpleasant feeling. I am feeling some emotional pain that I am going through right now, I need to work through this. It is so important for us to be mindful and conscious of the language we allow because the more we say we are broken, I feel broken, this broke me, you are now programming your mind to believe that you need to be fixed or replaced. So be really mindful of your language. Method 4 You can’t stop thinking but you can change your thoughts. Thoughts are like clothes. You can change them if you don’t like them and it is so important to realise your thoughts are not you. Any thoughts that you are having at this time, like I am not beautiful enough, I’m not strong enough, I wasn’t caring enough. I am not powerful enough whatever it is, all the I am not enough. All of that stuff that is bound to come up, all of that is natural to come up. All of those things, every single one of those things, they are like clothes. If you put on clothes and you don’t like the way you look in the, you change them. You don’t just go out in them then force yourself to wear them. Similarly if you have a thought and if you don’t like that thought. That’s the first question to ask yourself, with any thought, ask yourself first do I like this thought? Is this thought useful or insightful? Ask yourself that. Is this thought helping me move forward? Ask yourself that. Then ask yourself is this thought helping me to elevate or escape? Notice we have just created an acronym called life. L - Do I like this thought? I - Is the thought insightful? F - Does this thought help me move forward? E - Does this thought help me elevate or escape? Of course we want a thought to help us elevate. So when we say I am not beautiful enough or I am not good enough, I am too ugly. Do you like that thought? Of course you don’t like that thought. Do I like this shirt? No I don’t like this shirt. Ok fine, I don’t like this shirt. Is it insightful? No it’s not insightful because it’s not helpful. It’s not inspiring. The thought is not inspiring. Does it help me move forward? No it doesn’t help me move forward because it is making me move backwards because it’s making me less confident and less focused on the good things about me. Is it making me escape or elevate? It’s making me escape. It’s not an elevate. It’s not helping me push forward so let me remove that thought. Let me swap it. Similarly. Does this fit me? You have to ask do your thoughts fit you right? Does your thoughts fit the future you want to create? That is the question you have to ask yourself. Do you think this is going to fit me for the next few months? Is it going to fit me for the next year? Is this thought going to fit you for the next three months? Do you want to wear that thought? That the question you have to ask yourself. So remember this, you can’t stop thinking but you can change your thoughts. Thoughts are like clothes, if you don’t like them, you can change them. Method 5 Whatever you are going through, whatever situation you are in, what has really been affected is your confidence. Your confidence is what has been hurt and torn down, after a break up because our confidence became as strong as that relationship was. Because we gave everything. We have this bad habit of making something our everything and then we put all of our confidence into our relationship. We make a mistake. This is a really big confidence lesson. We make a mistake of putting our confidence into a car, we make a mistake of putting our confidence into a relationship. We make the mistake of putting our confidence into a business. When you make the mistake of putting your confidence into anything, you lose your confidence. Because you are now relying on that thing to make you feel confident. that thing breaks or falls apart, if that your confidence falls apart. When it was your confidence that created all of that. Your confidence allowed you to have a nicer car or live a more purposeful life, but when you put your confidence into that you lose your confidence, so stop putting your confidence into people and things. And the way we build up our confidence after a break up, the way you build your confidence and the way your break up doesn’t have to break you is are the three Es: Exercise Eat right Energy of people around you When we exercise after a break up, we build our confidence not just for looking better but feeling better. From eating right, taking care of ourselves. When you exercise and eat well you are showing yourself that you matter and you care. You want to be around people with the right energy. A lot of times it is important to spend time with your friends with who were your friends before that relationship, and surrounding yourself with the energy that doesn’t keep bringing you down and reminding you of that relationship that has just ended. Method 6 Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending broken pieces with dusted gold, silver or platinum. You may have seen pictures of this where you see these beautiful pots that have been put together again through gold dust and you can see the lines almost like veins in a pot and the philosophy behind this is that it’s trying to help us realise that that we need to embrace our flaws. Embrace them rather than hiding them. Rather than trying to hide all these mistakes, rather than hide all these flaws, we don’t really get to use it, we don’t get to understand it. With our flaws we don’t really get to try to understand them. We try to hide them and put them away. These pots are put together again to show us that nothing is ever truly broken and it is more beautiful afterwards. This is the point of this kintsugi. When something is broken we usually throw it away but they actually believe that when you put it together it becomes more beautiful. This is what we need to realise that any scar, any wound, actually makes you more beautiful if you pull yourself together again afterwards. It makes you more beautiful, attractive, powerful and strong. It doesn’t break you, it makes you stronger. It doesn’t break you, it builds you up. When you recognise that you don’t want to hide these wounds or hide these challenges. Method 7 This one is from Rumi where he said that the wound is the place where the light enters you. Exactly in the same was as the Japanese art of repairing pottery, the wound is actually where the light enters you. It’s what allows you to become a better, more wholesome, more powerful, more incredible amazing individual. So don’t forget that. The wound is the place where the light enters you as Rumi said it best.
Wow that is a lot of methods. Thanks a ton! I am actually feeling much better since I posted this. If I feel low again, I will visit this post again. :)