May 31, 2024 • 44 mins
Going 'no contact' after a breakup or relationship breakdown is promoted as one of the best ways to move on from an ex. But why is that the case, and what is the psychology? Is it always that easy?
In today's episode we break down the psychology of going 'no contact': why it works, the science, when it's necessary and how to stay committed, even when it feels impossible. Listen now!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
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 as we of
course break down the Psychology of our twenties. Now, before
we get into it, I have a really, really cool announcement.
We have just launched our first ever line of notebooks,
(00:49):
the perfect companion to the podcast. If you want to
take notes while you listen to this episode, if you
want to journal about what you're discovering about yourself, what
you're learning, these notebooks are perfect. They were done in
collaboration with an incredible Bristol based illustrator called Rosy Pink.
If you follow me on Instagram, you will know that
(01:09):
I have been a fan of her work for many,
many years, and we finally got the opportunity to collaborate
and to create something that we really truly love. You
guys are always asking me for ways that you can
support the podcast. I want to keep this completely free,
but if you do feel cold to do so, and
if you are in need of a notebook, which you
(01:31):
can never have too many of, please see the link
in the episode description or on our Shopify account. I'm
so excited for this. It's like super high quality. Of course,
we weren't going to make something terrible that you're going
to spend your good old fashioned money on. So have
a look see if they poke your interests. They're gorgeous,
(01:51):
they are well made, and they were made with love.
So now let's get into the episode. One of the
inevitable aspects of this decade I think of simply being
human is that there will come a time when we
consciously and deliberately need to separate and move on from
somebody that we once loved, whether that is a friend
(02:14):
or an ex, somebody else in our lives, a family member,
for example. I think it is one of those really
sad universal truths of kind of humanity. Not all relationships
are meant to last, not all of them can kind
of withstand the test of time, and in order for
us to really truly move on, sometimes we do need
(02:37):
a total break from that person to fully heal and
to finally process what we experienced. Relationships they break, they
fall apart, and I think whilst we may have imagined
that this person would have been in our life forever,
maybe we always knew it was going to end this way.
The conclusion of a relationship is a really mess and
(03:00):
confusing time, and sometimes the only way forward, the only
way to stop getting drawn back in, to stop compulsively
checking on them, to allow your self closure, is to
go no contact. No contact. This method of separating ourselves
and cutting off all kind of communication with somebody post breakup,
(03:25):
post argument, post conflict. It's really seen a rise in
popularity and arise in supporters, and I want to talk
about it today. What exactly is no contact? What are
the rules, how does it actually work, why is it
so effective, why is it necessary? And how can we
actually stay committed to ow I guess commitment to seeing
(03:50):
this person fade from our lives and fade from our future.
It's a really sad and scary reality that you know
there might come a time where this person just can't
be the person that we want them to be, and
we do need to let ourselves and let them move on.
So this is kind of your ultimate guide to no contact,
how it works, why it works, and how you can
(04:13):
implement it now. I will say some people don't necessarily
agree with me when I say that no contact is
the answer. In fact, I think I would have previously
disagreed with myself. You know, if you had asked me
two years ago whether you could stay in touch with
an ex or repair a severely broken bond with a friend,
(04:35):
I would have said yes. I would have said that
that is the mature thing to do, that it showed growth.
I even did an episode with my ex boyfriend a
few years back. It sounds insane, it's still up if
you want to go and find it, but we essentially
discussed how we were still friends, how we were so
mature for maintaining the relationship, surprise, surprise, we no longer are,
(04:59):
and I think no contact was the way that that
inevitably came to an end. Different things obviously work for
different people, but I think with relationships, and with ex's
in particular, one of the reasons that we stay in
touch that we don't go no contact is because we
aren't actually completely ready to move on. Even if we
(05:21):
think that we are. This person is kind of always
there they're always ready to come back into our lives.
We are always ready to let them back in our
lives because they remain an option to us. But I
think when we allow these people who we know should
not be, you know that they are not going to
create a fulfilling future for us. That they just aren't
(05:44):
right for us. They've caused us pain. When we allow
them to stay in our lives, they take up valuable mental, social,
physical space. I think the same goes for friendships that
have turned sour when we keep giving people second chances,
when we that they will change when we let them
overstep boundaries. Eventually we do have to make a tough decision,
(06:05):
and hopefully a permanent one, to no longer allow them
access to us. I don't think that it's an easy
or a light decision to come by. I don't think
that Personally. I'm somebody who could sit here and say,
if you have any kind of conflict or disagreement with somebody,
cut them out. They're not good for you, because that
is quite an unhealthy and unsustainable thing to do. But
(06:29):
I think personally, the more that I've matured and grown,
the more that I've understood that, especially in the aftermath
of a really intense, serious breakup. One of the only
ways to find closure is to see this person exit
your life permanently and for you to be committed to
that decision. The more that I've kind of realized that
(06:51):
no contact when it's possible, when there are no kids
or pets involved, or you're not working together, whatever it is,
no contact is the best option. And a lot of
the psychology kind of proves it as well. And it
doesn't just prove that it's maybe just good for you
on an emotional level, but it also proves that it
(07:12):
actually lessens the time that it's going to take for
you to move on and to be open to new
people entering your lives, whether that is platonically or romantically.
So let's talk about it today. Let's get into it.
(07:32):
For those of us who are unfamiliar with this method,
no contact is essentially what it sounds like. It involves
cutting off all communication with somebody following some kind of
breakdown in the relationship. Normally that is a breakup. Something
has occurred that has made you realize that the relationship
is beyond repair. It could even be months years after
(07:56):
the breakup where you've just realized that you are not
at the point of recovery that you need to be
because you keep letting this person back in, because you
are maintaining some kind of communication with them that is
not letting you heal. So no contact is this kind
of realization that we have that there needs to be
(08:17):
a final and very much resolute separation from this person. Now,
when I say cutting off all contact, we are not
just talking about, you know, avoiding running into them or
blocking their number, their social media, their email. We are
also talking about something that is not often included, which
is preventing yourself from following up with mutual friends. I
(08:41):
think we often tend to focus on specifically the communication
between just us and this one other person, and when
we limit that, we are going no contact. But the
purpose of this method is to essentially allow somebody else
to fade from your life in the most efficient way possible,
to put up that strong boundary. And when we keep
(09:02):
asking people around us if they've heard anything, if they
know what's going on in that other person's life, you
know whether they're dating anybody, whether they're sad or they
miss us touching base with our mutual friends about their
existence and their wellbeing and their whereabouts. I think that
really defeats the purpose. It can also really undo so
much of the effort that we've already put into detach. Right,
(09:25):
you know, we've done all the other things correctly. We
don't have any direct contact with this person, but that
indirect contact still counts. It still activates all those old memories,
It still keeps the memory of this person very much
active and present in your life. That doesn't mean that you,
(09:47):
of course have to remove anybody that has any connection
to this person, otherwise you risk falling into temptation. More
so than I think, we need to be conscious of
the ways that we are replacing the direct contact that
we crave with this with our ex, with our old friend,
were replacing that direct contact with secondary contact, and it's
(10:07):
still fulfilling that main function and purpose, which is that
we feel connected to them in some way. It is
such a crucial element that I think we often forget.
Myself included at times. I remember going like no contact
with an X maybe three years back, but I remained
very much attached, and I really clung onto the friendships
(10:30):
that I had with his housemates and the friends that
we had made together, and I eventually really realized that
I was using a lot of our interactions to speak
about him rather than actually focus on the other person
and the friendship that we had built independent of my ex.
One thing that I think we know about no contact
(10:53):
is that it requires a whole lot of commitment. It
is not for the fainthearted. Somebody actually said it to
me this way the other day. No contact involves treating
this other person as if they've died. That is how
intense it can be and the level of discipline that
it can take. You kind of have to imagine that
(11:14):
even if you wanted to reach out, you couldn't. And
I also think that this way of seeing things that
there is absolutely no possibility of communicating going forward helps
us justify our grief as well. It stops us from
feeling a lot of disenfranchised grief that we shouldn't be feeling, sad,
that we should be over it by now that this
(11:36):
isn't a big deal. When we treat it like no,
this person is forever out of my life, we are
allowed to really feel the pain that I think we
should be feeling at the end of any relationship. The
level though of discipline and control that that takes and
knowing how finite that decision will probably be is what
keeps a lot of us from ever thinking that we
(11:59):
could do it, from trying every other possible solution, trying
to be friends before we finally get to that point
where we know that there is no other option. I
also think that it's super normal sometimes to go back
and forth right to unblock their number and then block
it again, to really fight the urge to reach out,
(12:20):
and then slip up and have to reinstitute that war
between you two human relationships, especially ones that are so
deep and passionate and emotional that they would require this
amount of drastic action. They're complicated, and they contain a
lot of contradictory emotions anger one minute, nostalgia the next,
(12:42):
grief one day, enjoy and gratitude tomorrow. So it can
be very hard to stay strong. It can be very
hard to be committed to this decision, because how you're
feeling about the situation right now might not be how
you're feeling about it tomorrow when you miss this person
(13:03):
beyond belief, beyond anything that you have felt. But personally,
I do think that this period of no contact is
almost necessary to completely heal in men. It provides us
with the emotional, mental, social, and importantly the physical space
to a actually process our experience with them, be good
(13:25):
and the bad, and b come to terms with the
reality that this person is no longer going to be
part of our life in the same way, and that
is what it's going to be going forward. That is
something that we cannot change if we have decided that
we cannot be in a relationship with this person, if
they've decided it for us. Part of that future, that
(13:47):
future path that we are now on is you know,
a path towards never speaking again. And I think no
contact gets us comfortable with that reality a lot. Here's
kind of how I like to see it and how
I've justified it actually to myself in the past. The
end of a relationship is always going to hurt. The
(14:10):
pain of detaching from someone is going to be intense,
no matter which way you square it. But that pain
can exist for a longer period of time, for a
year or more at like fifty percent intensity, or it
can exist at one hundred percent intensity but only for
(14:31):
a couple of months. It really depends on whether you
are ready to heal or endure the separation over a
longer timeline, or whether you are ready to bite the
bullet and yes, experience the intensity of all of that grief,
all of that rage, all of that recovery at once,
(14:54):
rather than keeping yourself still kind of attached to them
just because it makes it feel easier in the moment.
So my other argument for no contact is that it
also stops us from sliding back into the relationship during
that very vulnerable period where we do just genuinely want somebody,
And when that's somebody is somebody that we are already
(15:17):
familiar with and that we already know and that we
know is available, it's so much easier to backside. No
contact is basically you saying no, this is an absolute decision,
And I think it's a lot harder for you to
turn around and be like, no, just kidding, I change
my mind, because you can't really justify that to your
(15:38):
past version of yourself. You can't justify that to your
current version of yourself, who knows in the back of
their mind that there was a reason that we decided
to be this drastic about our efforts. So the final
reason I think that no contact is powerful is because
it lets us provide ourselves with closure, rather than waiting
(16:01):
on somebody else to do it for us. It lets
us essentially take matters into our own hands. If this
person is still stringing you along, you know, hitting you
up every now and again, if you're still waiting for
a message or relying on them when you know that
you can't. No contact gives you the power to close
(16:22):
that chapter for yourself. It is such a decisive and
strong way of saying I'm done. I'm over this, like
this is done, and I have made that decision for
both of us. I am putting all of the memories,
our bond, our love that is now in the past,
and my future is just kind of me, myself and
(16:42):
I and I'm going to move forward without you beside me.
I think it's also especially powerful for breaking really painful
and toxic cycles of like distancing ourselves for a couple
of weeks and then going back because no contact is
quite permanent, right, it's really enough is enough, that's it.
I'm doing what is best for me. It is a
(17:04):
hard boundary rather than like a soft permission slip of
like maybe if you like text me at two am,
this could be a thing. It's like no, you can't
even text me. This is not even a remote possibility.
So why does this work? So many people, including myself obviously,
(17:26):
are such huge proponents of this method for really detaching
and finally ending things. There has to be some evidence
for it. There has to be more than just anecdotal
evidence that this is effective and efficient. Of course, I
had to find the science for you, guys. Couldn't just
give you empty advice without the psychology. So to understand this,
(17:49):
we really need to comprehend the psychology and the biology
of attachment. And it starts with how we initially fell
in love with this person. So when we begin to
get close to someone, especially intimately, whether that is emotional,
physical intimacy, even in intellectual intimacy, our brain releases oxytocin.
(18:10):
This is known as the love or the bonding hormone,
and the function of this hormone is to promote trust,
to promote safety, security, and it's really crucial. It is
like the biological building block for asserting and creating and
constructing relationships. So it's kind of what binds a lot
(18:32):
of us together. The other thing to know about oxytocin
is that it is often released in tandem in parallel
to other hormones and neurotransmitters that we associate with pleasure
and happiness and love. I'm talking about dopamine and serotonin,
of course, the two famous ones. There have been some studies,
(18:52):
including one published in twenty seventeen, that suggest that the
chemical reaction produced by this cocktail of hormones and chemicals
and neurotransmitters that is associated with falling in love is
a lot similar to the same chemical process that occurs
when we become addicted to a substance. It's thrilling, it's exhilarating.
(19:15):
It you know, consumes our rational brain and it gets
us hooked. Not only is oxytocin just a really nice
hormone to experience, not only does it make us feel
really good, it is also habit forming because it is
such a pleasurable experience. When the release of oxytosin is
(19:36):
paired with some event or stimuli or a person like
an ex boyfriend, an ex girlfriend, an ex partner, we
begin to associate this person with all of those amazing
feelings that we are chasing, and so when we want
to hit of that same great feeling, we seek them out.
They kind of become like our drug dealer. All of
(19:57):
this is what contributes to the density of the early
stages of a relationship, but also like the comfort and
the warmth of love. Now, when things start to turn sour,
it is not like that love fades overnight. What we
start to see is I think a general gradual decline,
(20:18):
but also an unstable association between all of those nice
feelings and that person, but also a new set of feelings,
feelings of sadness, feelings of worry, feelings of longing, despair, unfulfillment,
and so we don't really know whether this next interaction
we have with them is going to produce the feelings
(20:38):
that we want to be having, which is the feelings
of love, or the feelings that make us distressed and
feeling rejected and uncomfortable. Despite that, it might not be
all bad, right, It's just that there is this the
bad experiences begin to outweigh the positive ones. That's often
what leads to a breakup. But it doesn't mean that
(20:59):
they're isn't still like a baseline of feeling, there is
obviously going to be like a maintaining level of positive
neurological and biological reactions going about below the surface, even
if they are not the majority, there is still some
part of us that remains attached and bonded to this person,
even if things, you know, start to become shaky, because
(21:21):
we have that history. So when we break up, when
we realize that this person is not for us, or
when they break up with us, perhaps out of the blue,
perhaps we didn't want it to occur. On a conscious level,
we kind of know that things have obviously changed. Like
we were present for this experience, we are feeling distressed,
(21:42):
but our neurotransmitters don't know that. Our dopamine receptors don't
know that, and so it's not like the tap is
suddenly turned off for our brain. It's not like the
moment we've broken up with somebody or the moment a
relationship has ended, our brain goes, all right, let's just
shuttle that down and get them back to normal. What
(22:05):
is happening is that there is still this urge and
this craving and this desire for the kind of positive,
happy chemicals and hormones that this person was previously eliciting.
But there is no longer a catalyst for those reactions
because this person is no longer in your life. That
is part of why breakups are so painful, because the
(22:27):
urge to stay connected to this person is still being
triggered by our craving and our desire for all these
good experiences. And it's also still being triggered because we
have probably formed a whole series of habits and behaviors
around seeking love out from this individual. That's really why
in the weeks, in the early months after a breakup,
(22:49):
after the end of a relationship, it's especially hard because
we are essentially rewiring our brain to not need them anymore.
Here's the though. Anytime you reach out, you get that
spike again. When you see them out in public, you
are immediately transported back into how great it felt, and
(23:10):
so you are getting just enough to maintain those previous
neural pathways that were kind of formed in like the
era of your love story. Those connections are still maintained
by those small text messages that you sometimes get when
you sleep with each other, like every now and again,
(23:32):
when you still get that you know, Instagram DM from them,
and you like, your attention is immediately grabbed and you're
immediately feeling like loved and wanted again. All of that,
all of those kind of small moments in which we
are yet to completely break off contact with somebody where
they are still in our lives. That is keeping us
(23:54):
hooked on them. It is what we call unpredictable reward.
We don't know and we're going to get it. But
by keeping those communication and contact channels and pathways open,
we still expect that we're going to get something from
that person, that there could come a time when they
will light us up again, when we will get their affection,
(24:16):
when they will want to speak to us, and so
all of that emotion, all of that connection and attachment,
although on a rational and very self aware level, we
know the relationship is over, by continuing to put ourselves
in situations where that person is still in our life,
even in a small capacity, we are not letting our
(24:37):
brain recover. And so no contact is really the solution
here because it firstly stops temptation, but it also acts
as a complete detox. It's very much a cold Turkey move.
I like this concept of a detox a lot when
explaining this, because that is essentially what is happening. This
(25:00):
process of going no contact is a process of removing
something from your mind, from your life, from your body
that you no longer want present. It is this purifying,
cleansing process of really detoxing your life of this person
and hopefully coming out cleaner, coming out better, coming out happier.
(25:25):
You're physically removing this person from your life right by
removing opportunities for them to stay in touch with you
and for you to stay in touch with them. But
you're also essentially getting used to the fact that you
can feel good, and you can feel happy, and you
can have intimate, loving feelings without them. It also stops
(25:48):
the yo yoing, the back and forth that keeps you
hung up. It stops the confusion, and it lets the
cycle break. Like I just said, it means that when
previously you were seeking out all of those positive feelings
and emotions and reactions from this person, no contact means
that you have no other option but to find these
(26:10):
necessities somewhere else, hopefully in yourself first, but then eventually
in other people, maybe eventually in a better partner making
space like that, getting clear on the fact that holding
onto this person is not what is best for you,
I think really allows you to let peace into your
(26:33):
life and to get control back over that situation and
back over the kind of reactions and emotional reactions in
particular that you can't stop yourself from having. You can't
stop yourself from wanting this person. You can't undo the past,
but you can control how you react to those circumstances
(26:55):
and how much access this person continues to have and
how much access you give yourself to them. So I think,
at the end of the day, like the main reason
why no contact work is no contact works is because
it breaks the neurological cycle of attachment. But it also
stops you from being confused. It rids you of the
(27:16):
temptation of going back to this person who you cannot
be with for whatever reason, and it lets you be
kind of undistracted and undeterred. It doesn't mean that you
just continually elongate the detachment and the breakup process just
because it is easier to do it slower, but it
means that it lasts longer and that eventually there will
(27:39):
come a time where you do have to accept that
your relationship is not what it once was and it
is time to move on. So that is essentially my
reasoning for why this is such an effective method. But
how do we do it successfully? How do we stay
strong and committed despite all of the things in us,
(28:01):
all of the mental compulsions to reach out, all of
the desires to have this person back in our lives
in some capacity. Well, we are going to talk about
all of that and more after this shortbreak. So I
(28:22):
think I've given you my most compelling argument for why
you should go no contact, especially with an X, and
some of the reasons and the science and the psychology
that tells us why it works. But I think just
saying it doesn't make it easy. A few years ago,
I was seeing this person pretty casually for like four months,
but they had a really significant emotional impact on me,
(28:45):
I think just because of the timing and everything that
I was going through. And they were also just not
somebody that I should have had in my life. They
were not a kind person, and I eventually realized that
it was a pretty terrible situation. I needed to cut
him off. But the number of times I blocked and
deleted his number and then would unblock him or would
(29:07):
reply to his messages on Instagram wherever, you would have
thought that nothing had changed. And it took me, I
think two to three whole months to really finally quit
that situation. And to really go cold turkey. So that
is just one of the situations where I've really applied
this rule, obviously not very well. But I do have
(29:28):
some advice that I've learned from my failures. I guess
not my failures. I have some advice that I've learned
from my missteps and from my learning experience. So here
are five I think of my best tips and principles
for successful no contact. Firstly, try just twenty one days
(29:51):
of no contact first straight after a breakup, before going
all in. I think this gives us an adjustment period
to really refin and what we want going forward, and
just taking that three weeks to get an immediate distance
to really process our emotions. I think it's also important
because it gives us space before we do something impulsive
(30:12):
that will regret. Sometimes, you know, when we're in that
highly emotional and volatile state, sometimes you know, we don't
always do what is right. Sometimes we are not able
to put in the boundaries that we know what we
are going to need later on. Sometimes it is messy
and confusing, and we get back together with them and
then we break up with them again. Giving yourself that
three weeks of distance straight after an incredibly emotionally intense situation.
(30:38):
Lets you get clear and for practical reasons, right like,
it's only three weeks. You guys can come back together
and have a conversation. You might have like items or
things to give back, ground rules to apply, but you've
still given yourself like a bit of a head start,
and you can still see that you know you can
live without them. You did that three weeks, you can
(31:00):
do another three weeks. You have breathing room and you
have yeah, I guess practice and skill to see that
this is important and to see that you can live
on your own and you can live without that connection. Secondly,
treat no contact as a challenge and when you are
really struggling, as we all do, just go for one
(31:22):
more hour, go for one more minute, even when it's
really hard. I think that saying goes it's something like
you can do you can do anything for thirty seconds
when that temptation to reach out to them is really overpowering,
just focus on the thirty seconds in front of you,
and then the next thirty and then the next thirty
(31:42):
before like the craving and the urge dissipates. The other
piece of advice I have that's related to this is
to download a sobriety app. Now, I know this sounds
so strange, but there are apps out there that track
your progress when it comes to quitting alcohol, quitting drugs,
quitting substances. We can also use that for people. It
(32:06):
keeps you focused on the time you have already put
into removing yourself. It keeps you focused on the progress
that you are making that you don't want to undo
in a moment of weakness, and it really I think
makes it feel more like a challenge than a chore.
Eventually as well, speaking from experience, it's something that you
(32:29):
just don't even check, you don't even care. And I
think that moment when you're like, oh, I'm not looking
at the minutes that we spent a part ticking by,
I'm not looking at the hours we haven't spoken, you know,
floating into the ether, I don't care anymore, That is
when you know that you've healed. I know that right now,
(32:49):
the possibility of that reality, the possibility of no longer
even caring about what that person is doing or who
they're with, you know, no longer being able to hear
from that or touch them. Right now, that reality seems
really devastating, but I think with time that sting will lessen.
That doesn't necessarily mean that this process will be linear.
(33:12):
I think for anybody who has been through a breakup,
been through a friendship breakup, or a family estrangement, process
is not linear. Each day it's not promised that it's
going to be better than the last. I think that's
a fact of life, is that grief does not know
any timeline but its own. However, I want you to
(33:33):
remember that it is totally normal for that to be
the case. It is totally normal to have a few
weeks where you feel amazing and you feel great, and
then just a day of just despair and grief and tears,
even when you've been doing so well. So this brings
me to my next tip. Don't be afraid of memory
flare ups and don't let them undo your progress. Just
(33:57):
because you're still thinking about them off going no contact
doesn't mean you are failing, and it definitely doesn't mean
it's not working. Just because you find yourself fantasizing or
daydreaming about the past doesn't mean that you should revisit it.
I want you to remember that. I think we all
(34:18):
know that feeling of having like an eerily weird dream
about an X and thinking that there is some deeper meaning.
But there isn't. This. This is just your brain processing
information and processing important memories. So there's a concept that
I like to bring up when people talk to me
about this. You know, I had someone actually message me
(34:40):
the other day and she was like, you know, it's
been eight months since I've gone no contact, and I've
just randomly in the last couple of weeks, I cannot
stop reliving things. I cannot stop thinking about her. So
this is a phenomenon known as mind pops, and it's
super strange. Essentially, what happens is that you'll be going
(35:02):
about your day, you're feeling amazing, and then this random
memory or image will suddenly pop into your head for
no specific reason, almost like a flashback. Now, there was
an article written about this almost ten oh my gosh,
twelve years ago. I was written in twenty twelve, so
it was written by Scientific America. And the reason that
(35:23):
this happens is not because you know it's a sign
that somebody else is thinking about you. It's not because
your brain knows something that you don't, or that it's
fate or destiny. It's actually just a part of our
brain kind of cleaning out the filing cabinet. It's part
of our brain just filtering through our semantic or autobiographical
(35:45):
memories as it needs to do. You know, our brains
are constantly working and going, and they're shooting energy and
impulses across millions of neural connections. Sometimes it's you know
these connections. Sometimes these electrical impulses are going to accidentally
take the wrong road and they're going to revisit something unexpected.
(36:07):
That is normal. It's also a lot more common around
like significant dates. So if it's a birthday or Valentine's
Day or a former anniversary. It's also all the more
common in what we know as the anniversary effect, so
our recollection of painful or hard memories, our sense of longing,
(36:27):
it does typically increase around significant dates and significant moments.
I think this is especially the case, like around Christmas
is one that people talk to me about, or around birthdays,
where you're like, oh, last year I was with this
person and I felt really really loved, and this year
I'm not, and it just brings back a lot of
(36:49):
the pain. I don't want you to see that as
a reason that you are failing. I don't want you
to think that that means you're losing progress. It is
actually a souper's super super normal part of this journey,
I really promise you. So my fourth tip is to
share with your friends, share your commitment to go no
(37:10):
contact or to maintain your no contact with people around
you who you trust and who you no care about you,
because they will help you stay accountable. This is kind
of a rule of thumb. If you wouldn't tell your
friends about something, So if you wouldn't tell them that you've,
you know, chekily replied to somebody's story, or that you
(37:31):
know emailed them, or that you had an accidental run
in with them, Like, if you wouldn't tell them that,
it's probably not the thing that you should be doing.
It is probably the wrong decision. So when you do
have those urges to reach out, because we will have
them text and talk to your friends instead. So I
had a friend who actually changed my name in her
(37:54):
phone to her ex's name when she wanted to text him,
and she would like message me all the things that
she would want to say, like I'm so upset that
you hurt me. You've really let me down, but I
want to give you another chance. She would send that
to me, and I would like reply as him and
be super rational, and I would say what I knew
she needed to hear, not what she wanted to hear.
But what if I imagine what he would say that
(38:16):
would convince her that that was a bad decision. And
it worked. It sounds super bizarre, but it worked. Community,
I think, is also just a valuable antidote to the
general loneliness we may experience when we are so used
to talking to our ex It is a compulsion, it
is a habit. It can feel like a whole has
been left in our life. Who are we going to
(38:38):
share our everyday thoughts with? Who are we going to,
you know, share our successes and our failures with. Who's
going to celebrate us? Who is going to care about
that small thing that you know, we saw on the
bus or that happened at work. Your friends will tell
them they want to hear from you. That is a
way of making your relationship as strong as the one
(38:58):
that you shared with this other person. Communication and vulnerability
and letting them help you. Finally, my final tip for
making no contact work, make the fortress impenetrable, leave no
passage unblocked. There is no way for them to get in.
Because if you leave a secret door open that only
(39:22):
you know about, you are giving yourself the option to
reach back out. You are creating also the false promise
that if they wanted to get in touch with you,
they could, And that is not the commitment that we
are looking for. That is not being in one hundred
percent Instagram, Facebook, email, text, Cut them all off, and
(39:45):
if they do somehow find a way to reach out
to you have something prepared to say. So I'm going
to quote this article by the coach Matthew Hussey because
I love what he had to say about this in
a recent article. When somebody reaches back out, I think
that is the time that it is the hardest because
it's like they're right there. It's like putting a bowl
(40:05):
of candy in front of a kid and saying, don't
touch it, even though that's all they want to do.
That is all you want to do right now. The
thing you most want in the world is to hear
from that person, because hearing from them is going to
reignite so much that you actually did enjoy and that
you are nostalgic about when it comes to your relationship.
(40:25):
So it is very much like reopening an old wound,
and then I think it just sets. It's just like
a domino effect. Once you reply to one message being
like yeah, hey, how are you, instead of just ignoring it,
or instead of being like, hi, actually, I'm not looking
to have any further communication with you. If you don't
(40:49):
do that immediately, it's snowballs. It might just be a
few messages, it might last an entire day. It might
be the rekindling of a relationship that you are already
know was not meant to be. So have something planned
that you are going to say in response to those situations.
(41:09):
Find something a specific affirmation or a mantra or whatever,
some kind of motivation that's going to, you know, keep
you focused on why this is important, why you wanted
to do this in the first place. Maybe it is,
you know, I don't want to have contact with this
person because I know that by doing that I will
(41:29):
leave space for somebody better to come into my life.
Maybe it is you know, eventually this relationship is going
to have to fade. I would rather it starts now
than in three months. Six months a year. Whatever it
is that is keeping you motivated, stay on it, stay focused.
I'm sending you so much a love and strength because
(41:50):
I know this is really hard. This person probably meant
so much to you. They probably were somebody that you
really cared about. And nobody goes in to the start
of a relationship with anybody, romantic, platonic, anything, imagining the ending,
and so when we do find ourselves there, it just
seems that any way to cope is something that we
(42:11):
have to try. And I do think that this is
one of the better ways. This is one of the healthier,
most sustainable ways of finding peace, finding closure, taking your
life back for yourself. So there is not that cloud
lingering over your head of what if or what next?
Or is there a future for us? You have closed
(42:33):
that door for good, for good. You're not opening it again.
As hard as that might be. It will get easier,
I promise you, it will get easier, and you will
find somebody better, and you will find somebody who you
never have to consider this possibility with. So thank you
so much for listening to today's episode. I really do
(42:55):
hope that you enjoyed, and I'm sure that if you've
listened this far, you're probably really going through it right now,
so I really really empathize with you, and I sympathize
for you. It is tough. Do not let yourself feel
any differently, and I'm sending lots of love. It's going
to be okay. Make sure that if you enjoyed this episode,
(43:15):
or if there's somebody who you know might relate to this,
send it to them, send them a link and might
be able to help them out. Make sure that you
leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify wherever
you are listening right now, and that you are following
along so that you never miss a new episode. And
as I mentioned at the start, we do have our
new series of notebooks live now on the website. Make
(43:39):
sure you check it out, make sure you get your
hands on it. If you're looking for a place to
write your deepest, darkest secrets, I think that might just
be it. That might just be where you can do it.
Until next time, thank you for listening, Be kind, be
gentle with yourself, and we will talk soon.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
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 as we of
course break down the Psychology of our twenties. Now, before
we get into it, I have a really, really cool announcement.
We have just launched our first ever line of notebooks,
(00:49):
the perfect companion to the podcast. If you want to
take notes while you listen to this episode, if you
want to journal about what you're discovering about yourself, what
you're learning, these notebooks are perfect. They were done in
collaboration with an incredible Bristol based illustrator called Rosy Pink.
If you follow me on Instagram, you will know that
(01:09):
I have been a fan of her work for many,
many years, and we finally got the opportunity to collaborate
and to create something that we really truly love. You
guys are always asking me for ways that you can
support the podcast. I want to keep this completely free,
but if you do feel cold to do so, and
if you are in need of a notebook, which you
(01:31):
can never have too many of, please see the link
in the episode description or on our Shopify account. I'm
so excited for this. It's like super high quality. Of course,
we weren't going to make something terrible that you're going
to spend your good old fashioned money on. So have
a look see if they poke your interests. They're gorgeous,
(01:51):
they are well made, and they were made with love.
So now let's get into the episode. One of the
inevitable aspects of this decade I think of simply being
human is that there will come a time when we
consciously and deliberately need to separate and move on from
somebody that we once loved, whether that is a friend
(02:14):
or an ex, somebody else in our lives, a family member,
for example. I think it is one of those really
sad universal truths of kind of humanity. Not all relationships
are meant to last, not all of them can kind
of withstand the test of time, and in order for
us to really truly move on, sometimes we do need
(02:37):
a total break from that person to fully heal and
to finally process what we experienced. Relationships they break, they
fall apart, and I think whilst we may have imagined
that this person would have been in our life forever,
maybe we always knew it was going to end this way.
The conclusion of a relationship is a really mess and
(03:00):
confusing time, and sometimes the only way forward, the only
way to stop getting drawn back in, to stop compulsively
checking on them, to allow your self closure, is to
go no contact. No contact. This method of separating ourselves
and cutting off all kind of communication with somebody post breakup,
(03:25):
post argument, post conflict. It's really seen a rise in
popularity and arise in supporters, and I want to talk
about it today. What exactly is no contact? What are
the rules, how does it actually work, why is it
so effective, why is it necessary? And how can we
actually stay committed to ow I guess commitment to seeing
(03:50):
this person fade from our lives and fade from our future.
It's a really sad and scary reality that you know
there might come a time where this person just can't
be the person that we want them to be, and
we do need to let ourselves and let them move on.
So this is kind of your ultimate guide to no contact,
how it works, why it works, and how you can
(04:13):
implement it now. I will say some people don't necessarily
agree with me when I say that no contact is
the answer. In fact, I think I would have previously
disagreed with myself. You know, if you had asked me
two years ago whether you could stay in touch with
an ex or repair a severely broken bond with a friend,
(04:35):
I would have said yes. I would have said that
that is the mature thing to do, that it showed growth.
I even did an episode with my ex boyfriend a
few years back. It sounds insane, it's still up if
you want to go and find it, but we essentially
discussed how we were still friends, how we were so
mature for maintaining the relationship, surprise, surprise, we no longer are,
(04:59):
and I think no contact was the way that that
inevitably came to an end. Different things obviously work for
different people, but I think with relationships, and with ex's
in particular, one of the reasons that we stay in
touch that we don't go no contact is because we
aren't actually completely ready to move on. Even if we
(05:21):
think that we are. This person is kind of always
there they're always ready to come back into our lives.
We are always ready to let them back in our
lives because they remain an option to us. But I
think when we allow these people who we know should
not be, you know that they are not going to
create a fulfilling future for us. That they just aren't
(05:44):
right for us. They've caused us pain. When we allow
them to stay in our lives, they take up valuable mental, social,
physical space. I think the same goes for friendships that
have turned sour when we keep giving people second chances,
when we that they will change when we let them
overstep boundaries. Eventually we do have to make a tough decision,
(06:05):
and hopefully a permanent one, to no longer allow them
access to us. I don't think that it's an easy
or a light decision to come by. I don't think
that Personally. I'm somebody who could sit here and say,
if you have any kind of conflict or disagreement with somebody,
cut them out. They're not good for you, because that
is quite an unhealthy and unsustainable thing to do. But
(06:29):
I think personally, the more that I've matured and grown,
the more that I've understood that, especially in the aftermath
of a really intense, serious breakup. One of the only
ways to find closure is to see this person exit
your life permanently and for you to be committed to
that decision. The more that I've kind of realized that
(06:51):
no contact when it's possible, when there are no kids
or pets involved, or you're not working together, whatever it is,
no contact is the best option. And a lot of
the psychology kind of proves it as well. And it
doesn't just prove that it's maybe just good for you
on an emotional level, but it also proves that it
(07:12):
actually lessens the time that it's going to take for
you to move on and to be open to new
people entering your lives, whether that is platonically or romantically.
So let's talk about it today. Let's get into it.
(07:32):
For those of us who are unfamiliar with this method,
no contact is essentially what it sounds like. It involves
cutting off all communication with somebody following some kind of
breakdown in the relationship. Normally that is a breakup. Something
has occurred that has made you realize that the relationship
is beyond repair. It could even be months years after
(07:56):
the breakup where you've just realized that you are not
at the point of recovery that you need to be
because you keep letting this person back in, because you
are maintaining some kind of communication with them that is
not letting you heal. So no contact is this kind
of realization that we have that there needs to be
(08:17):
a final and very much resolute separation from this person. Now,
when I say cutting off all contact, we are not
just talking about, you know, avoiding running into them or
blocking their number, their social media, their email. We are
also talking about something that is not often included, which
is preventing yourself from following up with mutual friends. I
(08:41):
think we often tend to focus on specifically the communication
between just us and this one other person, and when
we limit that, we are going no contact. But the
purpose of this method is to essentially allow somebody else
to fade from your life in the most efficient way possible,
to put up that strong boundary. And when we keep
(09:02):
asking people around us if they've heard anything, if they
know what's going on in that other person's life, you
know whether they're dating anybody, whether they're sad or they
miss us touching base with our mutual friends about their
existence and their wellbeing and their whereabouts. I think that
really defeats the purpose. It can also really undo so
much of the effort that we've already put into detach. Right,
(09:25):
you know, we've done all the other things correctly. We
don't have any direct contact with this person, but that
indirect contact still counts. It still activates all those old memories,
It still keeps the memory of this person very much
active and present in your life. That doesn't mean that you,
(09:47):
of course have to remove anybody that has any connection
to this person, otherwise you risk falling into temptation. More
so than I think, we need to be conscious of
the ways that we are replacing the direct contact that
we crave with this with our ex, with our old friend,
were replacing that direct contact with secondary contact, and it's
(10:07):
still fulfilling that main function and purpose, which is that
we feel connected to them in some way. It is
such a crucial element that I think we often forget.
Myself included at times. I remember going like no contact
with an X maybe three years back, but I remained
very much attached, and I really clung onto the friendships
(10:30):
that I had with his housemates and the friends that
we had made together, and I eventually really realized that
I was using a lot of our interactions to speak
about him rather than actually focus on the other person
and the friendship that we had built independent of my ex.
One thing that I think we know about no contact
(10:53):
is that it requires a whole lot of commitment. It
is not for the fainthearted. Somebody actually said it to
me this way the other day. No contact involves treating
this other person as if they've died. That is how
intense it can be and the level of discipline that
it can take. You kind of have to imagine that
(11:14):
even if you wanted to reach out, you couldn't. And
I also think that this way of seeing things that
there is absolutely no possibility of communicating going forward helps
us justify our grief as well. It stops us from
feeling a lot of disenfranchised grief that we shouldn't be feeling, sad,
that we should be over it by now that this
(11:36):
isn't a big deal. When we treat it like no,
this person is forever out of my life, we are
allowed to really feel the pain that I think we
should be feeling at the end of any relationship. The
level though of discipline and control that that takes and
knowing how finite that decision will probably be is what
keeps a lot of us from ever thinking that we
(11:59):
could do it, from trying every other possible solution, trying
to be friends before we finally get to that point
where we know that there is no other option. I
also think that it's super normal sometimes to go back
and forth right to unblock their number and then block
it again, to really fight the urge to reach out,
(12:20):
and then slip up and have to reinstitute that war
between you two human relationships, especially ones that are so
deep and passionate and emotional that they would require this
amount of drastic action. They're complicated, and they contain a
lot of contradictory emotions anger one minute, nostalgia the next,
(12:42):
grief one day, enjoy and gratitude tomorrow. So it can
be very hard to stay strong. It can be very
hard to be committed to this decision, because how you're
feeling about the situation right now might not be how
you're feeling about it tomorrow when you miss this person
(13:03):
beyond belief, beyond anything that you have felt. But personally,
I do think that this period of no contact is
almost necessary to completely heal in men. It provides us
with the emotional, mental, social, and importantly the physical space
to a actually process our experience with them, be good
(13:25):
and the bad, and b come to terms with the
reality that this person is no longer going to be
part of our life in the same way, and that
is what it's going to be going forward. That is
something that we cannot change if we have decided that
we cannot be in a relationship with this person, if
they've decided it for us. Part of that future, that
(13:47):
future path that we are now on is you know,
a path towards never speaking again. And I think no
contact gets us comfortable with that reality a lot. Here's
kind of how I like to see it and how
I've justified it actually to myself in the past. The
end of a relationship is always going to hurt. The
(14:10):
pain of detaching from someone is going to be intense,
no matter which way you square it. But that pain
can exist for a longer period of time, for a
year or more at like fifty percent intensity, or it
can exist at one hundred percent intensity but only for
(14:31):
a couple of months. It really depends on whether you
are ready to heal or endure the separation over a
longer timeline, or whether you are ready to bite the
bullet and yes, experience the intensity of all of that grief,
all of that rage, all of that recovery at once,
(14:54):
rather than keeping yourself still kind of attached to them
just because it makes it feel easier in the moment.
So my other argument for no contact is that it
also stops us from sliding back into the relationship during
that very vulnerable period where we do just genuinely want somebody,
And when that's somebody is somebody that we are already
(15:17):
familiar with and that we already know and that we
know is available, it's so much easier to backside. No
contact is basically you saying no, this is an absolute decision,
And I think it's a lot harder for you to
turn around and be like, no, just kidding, I change
my mind, because you can't really justify that to your
(15:38):
past version of yourself. You can't justify that to your
current version of yourself, who knows in the back of
their mind that there was a reason that we decided
to be this drastic about our efforts. So the final
reason I think that no contact is powerful is because
it lets us provide ourselves with closure, rather than waiting
(16:01):
on somebody else to do it for us. It lets
us essentially take matters into our own hands. If this
person is still stringing you along, you know, hitting you
up every now and again, if you're still waiting for
a message or relying on them when you know that
you can't. No contact gives you the power to close
(16:22):
that chapter for yourself. It is such a decisive and
strong way of saying I'm done. I'm over this, like
this is done, and I have made that decision for
both of us. I am putting all of the memories,
our bond, our love that is now in the past,
and my future is just kind of me, myself and
(16:42):
I and I'm going to move forward without you beside me.
I think it's also especially powerful for breaking really painful
and toxic cycles of like distancing ourselves for a couple
of weeks and then going back because no contact is
quite permanent, right, it's really enough is enough, that's it.
I'm doing what is best for me. It is a
(17:04):
hard boundary rather than like a soft permission slip of
like maybe if you like text me at two am,
this could be a thing. It's like no, you can't
even text me. This is not even a remote possibility.
So why does this work? So many people, including myself obviously,
(17:26):
are such huge proponents of this method for really detaching
and finally ending things. There has to be some evidence
for it. There has to be more than just anecdotal
evidence that this is effective and efficient. Of course, I
had to find the science for you, guys. Couldn't just
give you empty advice without the psychology. So to understand this,
(17:49):
we really need to comprehend the psychology and the biology
of attachment. And it starts with how we initially fell
in love with this person. So when we begin to
get close to someone, especially intimately, whether that is emotional,
physical intimacy, even in intellectual intimacy, our brain releases oxytocin.
(18:10):
This is known as the love or the bonding hormone,
and the function of this hormone is to promote trust,
to promote safety, security, and it's really crucial. It is
like the biological building block for asserting and creating and
constructing relationships. So it's kind of what binds a lot
(18:32):
of us together. The other thing to know about oxytocin
is that it is often released in tandem in parallel
to other hormones and neurotransmitters that we associate with pleasure
and happiness and love. I'm talking about dopamine and serotonin,
of course, the two famous ones. There have been some studies,
(18:52):
including one published in twenty seventeen, that suggest that the
chemical reaction produced by this cocktail of hormones and chemicals
and neurotransmitters that is associated with falling in love is
a lot similar to the same chemical process that occurs
when we become addicted to a substance. It's thrilling, it's exhilarating.
(19:15):
It you know, consumes our rational brain and it gets
us hooked. Not only is oxytocin just a really nice
hormone to experience, not only does it make us feel
really good, it is also habit forming because it is
such a pleasurable experience. When the release of oxytosin is
(19:36):
paired with some event or stimuli or a person like
an ex boyfriend, an ex girlfriend, an ex partner, we
begin to associate this person with all of those amazing
feelings that we are chasing, and so when we want
to hit of that same great feeling, we seek them out.
They kind of become like our drug dealer. All of
(19:57):
this is what contributes to the density of the early
stages of a relationship, but also like the comfort and
the warmth of love. Now, when things start to turn sour,
it is not like that love fades overnight. What we
start to see is I think a general gradual decline,
(20:18):
but also an unstable association between all of those nice
feelings and that person, but also a new set of feelings,
feelings of sadness, feelings of worry, feelings of longing, despair, unfulfillment,
and so we don't really know whether this next interaction
we have with them is going to produce the feelings
(20:38):
that we want to be having, which is the feelings
of love, or the feelings that make us distressed and
feeling rejected and uncomfortable. Despite that, it might not be
all bad, right, It's just that there is this the
bad experiences begin to outweigh the positive ones. That's often
what leads to a breakup. But it doesn't mean that
(20:59):
they're isn't still like a baseline of feeling, there is
obviously going to be like a maintaining level of positive
neurological and biological reactions going about below the surface, even
if they are not the majority, there is still some
part of us that remains attached and bonded to this person,
even if things, you know, start to become shaky, because
(21:21):
we have that history. So when we break up, when
we realize that this person is not for us, or
when they break up with us, perhaps out of the blue,
perhaps we didn't want it to occur. On a conscious level,
we kind of know that things have obviously changed. Like
we were present for this experience, we are feeling distressed,
(21:42):
but our neurotransmitters don't know that. Our dopamine receptors don't
know that, and so it's not like the tap is
suddenly turned off for our brain. It's not like the
moment we've broken up with somebody or the moment a
relationship has ended, our brain goes, all right, let's just
shuttle that down and get them back to normal. What
(22:05):
is happening is that there is still this urge and
this craving and this desire for the kind of positive,
happy chemicals and hormones that this person was previously eliciting.
But there is no longer a catalyst for those reactions
because this person is no longer in your life. That
is part of why breakups are so painful, because the
(22:27):
urge to stay connected to this person is still being
triggered by our craving and our desire for all these
good experiences. And it's also still being triggered because we
have probably formed a whole series of habits and behaviors
around seeking love out from this individual. That's really why
in the weeks, in the early months after a breakup,
(22:49):
after the end of a relationship, it's especially hard because
we are essentially rewiring our brain to not need them anymore.
Here's the though. Anytime you reach out, you get that
spike again. When you see them out in public, you
are immediately transported back into how great it felt, and
(23:10):
so you are getting just enough to maintain those previous
neural pathways that were kind of formed in like the
era of your love story. Those connections are still maintained
by those small text messages that you sometimes get when
you sleep with each other, like every now and again,
(23:32):
when you still get that you know, Instagram DM from them,
and you like, your attention is immediately grabbed and you're
immediately feeling like loved and wanted again. All of that,
all of those kind of small moments in which we
are yet to completely break off contact with somebody where
they are still in our lives. That is keeping us
(23:54):
hooked on them. It is what we call unpredictable reward.
We don't know and we're going to get it. But
by keeping those communication and contact channels and pathways open,
we still expect that we're going to get something from
that person, that there could come a time when they
will light us up again, when we will get their affection,
(24:16):
when they will want to speak to us, and so
all of that emotion, all of that connection and attachment,
although on a rational and very self aware level, we
know the relationship is over, by continuing to put ourselves
in situations where that person is still in our life,
even in a small capacity, we are not letting our
(24:37):
brain recover. And so no contact is really the solution
here because it firstly stops temptation, but it also acts
as a complete detox. It's very much a cold Turkey move.
I like this concept of a detox a lot when
explaining this, because that is essentially what is happening. This
(25:00):
process of going no contact is a process of removing
something from your mind, from your life, from your body
that you no longer want present. It is this purifying,
cleansing process of really detoxing your life of this person
and hopefully coming out cleaner, coming out better, coming out happier.
(25:25):
You're physically removing this person from your life right by
removing opportunities for them to stay in touch with you
and for you to stay in touch with them. But
you're also essentially getting used to the fact that you
can feel good, and you can feel happy, and you
can have intimate, loving feelings without them. It also stops
(25:48):
the yo yoing, the back and forth that keeps you
hung up. It stops the confusion, and it lets the
cycle break. Like I just said, it means that when
previously you were seeking out all of those positive feelings
and emotions and reactions from this person, no contact means
that you have no other option but to find these
(26:10):
necessities somewhere else, hopefully in yourself first, but then eventually
in other people, maybe eventually in a better partner making
space like that, getting clear on the fact that holding
onto this person is not what is best for you,
I think really allows you to let peace into your
(26:33):
life and to get control back over that situation and
back over the kind of reactions and emotional reactions in
particular that you can't stop yourself from having. You can't
stop yourself from wanting this person. You can't undo the past,
but you can control how you react to those circumstances
(26:55):
and how much access this person continues to have and
how much access you give yourself to them. So I think,
at the end of the day, like the main reason
why no contact work is no contact works is because
it breaks the neurological cycle of attachment. But it also
stops you from being confused. It rids you of the
(27:16):
temptation of going back to this person who you cannot
be with for whatever reason, and it lets you be
kind of undistracted and undeterred. It doesn't mean that you
just continually elongate the detachment and the breakup process just
because it is easier to do it slower, but it
means that it lasts longer and that eventually there will
(27:39):
come a time where you do have to accept that
your relationship is not what it once was and it
is time to move on. So that is essentially my
reasoning for why this is such an effective method. But
how do we do it successfully? How do we stay
strong and committed despite all of the things in us,
(28:01):
all of the mental compulsions to reach out, all of
the desires to have this person back in our lives
in some capacity. Well, we are going to talk about
all of that and more after this shortbreak. So I
(28:22):
think I've given you my most compelling argument for why
you should go no contact, especially with an X, and
some of the reasons and the science and the psychology
that tells us why it works. But I think just
saying it doesn't make it easy. A few years ago,
I was seeing this person pretty casually for like four months,
but they had a really significant emotional impact on me,
(28:45):
I think just because of the timing and everything that
I was going through. And they were also just not
somebody that I should have had in my life. They
were not a kind person, and I eventually realized that
it was a pretty terrible situation. I needed to cut
him off. But the number of times I blocked and
deleted his number and then would unblock him or would
(29:07):
reply to his messages on Instagram wherever, you would have
thought that nothing had changed. And it took me, I
think two to three whole months to really finally quit
that situation. And to really go cold turkey. So that
is just one of the situations where I've really applied
this rule, obviously not very well. But I do have
(29:28):
some advice that I've learned from my failures. I guess
not my failures. I have some advice that I've learned
from my missteps and from my learning experience. So here
are five I think of my best tips and principles
for successful no contact. Firstly, try just twenty one days
(29:51):
of no contact first straight after a breakup, before going
all in. I think this gives us an adjustment period
to really refin and what we want going forward, and
just taking that three weeks to get an immediate distance
to really process our emotions. I think it's also important
because it gives us space before we do something impulsive
(30:12):
that will regret. Sometimes, you know, when we're in that
highly emotional and volatile state, sometimes you know, we don't
always do what is right. Sometimes we are not able
to put in the boundaries that we know what we
are going to need later on. Sometimes it is messy
and confusing, and we get back together with them and
then we break up with them again. Giving yourself that
three weeks of distance straight after an incredibly emotionally intense situation.
(30:38):
Lets you get clear and for practical reasons, right like,
it's only three weeks. You guys can come back together
and have a conversation. You might have like items or
things to give back, ground rules to apply, but you've
still given yourself like a bit of a head start,
and you can still see that you know you can
live without them. You did that three weeks, you can
(31:00):
do another three weeks. You have breathing room and you
have yeah, I guess practice and skill to see that
this is important and to see that you can live
on your own and you can live without that connection. Secondly,
treat no contact as a challenge and when you are
really struggling, as we all do, just go for one
(31:22):
more hour, go for one more minute, even when it's
really hard. I think that saying goes it's something like
you can do you can do anything for thirty seconds
when that temptation to reach out to them is really overpowering,
just focus on the thirty seconds in front of you,
and then the next thirty and then the next thirty
(31:42):
before like the craving and the urge dissipates. The other
piece of advice I have that's related to this is
to download a sobriety app. Now, I know this sounds
so strange, but there are apps out there that track
your progress when it comes to quitting alcohol, quitting drugs,
quitting substances. We can also use that for people. It
(32:06):
keeps you focused on the time you have already put
into removing yourself. It keeps you focused on the progress
that you are making that you don't want to undo
in a moment of weakness, and it really I think
makes it feel more like a challenge than a chore.
Eventually as well, speaking from experience, it's something that you
(32:29):
just don't even check, you don't even care. And I
think that moment when you're like, oh, I'm not looking
at the minutes that we spent a part ticking by,
I'm not looking at the hours we haven't spoken, you know,
floating into the ether, I don't care anymore, That is
when you know that you've healed. I know that right now,
(32:49):
the possibility of that reality, the possibility of no longer
even caring about what that person is doing or who
they're with, you know, no longer being able to hear
from that or touch them. Right now, that reality seems
really devastating, but I think with time that sting will lessen.
That doesn't necessarily mean that this process will be linear.
(33:12):
I think for anybody who has been through a breakup,
been through a friendship breakup, or a family estrangement, process
is not linear. Each day it's not promised that it's
going to be better than the last. I think that's
a fact of life, is that grief does not know
any timeline but its own. However, I want you to
(33:33):
remember that it is totally normal for that to be
the case. It is totally normal to have a few
weeks where you feel amazing and you feel great, and
then just a day of just despair and grief and tears,
even when you've been doing so well. So this brings
me to my next tip. Don't be afraid of memory
flare ups and don't let them undo your progress. Just
(33:57):
because you're still thinking about them off going no contact
doesn't mean you are failing, and it definitely doesn't mean
it's not working. Just because you find yourself fantasizing or
daydreaming about the past doesn't mean that you should revisit it.
I want you to remember that. I think we all
(34:18):
know that feeling of having like an eerily weird dream
about an X and thinking that there is some deeper meaning.
But there isn't. This. This is just your brain processing
information and processing important memories. So there's a concept that
I like to bring up when people talk to me
about this. You know, I had someone actually message me
(34:40):
the other day and she was like, you know, it's
been eight months since I've gone no contact, and I've
just randomly in the last couple of weeks, I cannot
stop reliving things. I cannot stop thinking about her. So
this is a phenomenon known as mind pops, and it's
super strange. Essentially, what happens is that you'll be going
(35:02):
about your day, you're feeling amazing, and then this random
memory or image will suddenly pop into your head for
no specific reason, almost like a flashback. Now, there was
an article written about this almost ten oh my gosh,
twelve years ago. I was written in twenty twelve, so
it was written by Scientific America. And the reason that
(35:23):
this happens is not because you know it's a sign
that somebody else is thinking about you. It's not because
your brain knows something that you don't, or that it's
fate or destiny. It's actually just a part of our
brain kind of cleaning out the filing cabinet. It's part
of our brain just filtering through our semantic or autobiographical
(35:45):
memories as it needs to do. You know, our brains
are constantly working and going, and they're shooting energy and
impulses across millions of neural connections. Sometimes it's you know
these connections. Sometimes these electrical impulses are going to accidentally
take the wrong road and they're going to revisit something unexpected.
(36:07):
That is normal. It's also a lot more common around
like significant dates. So if it's a birthday or Valentine's
Day or a former anniversary. It's also all the more
common in what we know as the anniversary effect, so
our recollection of painful or hard memories, our sense of longing,
(36:27):
it does typically increase around significant dates and significant moments.
I think this is especially the case, like around Christmas
is one that people talk to me about, or around birthdays,
where you're like, oh, last year I was with this
person and I felt really really loved, and this year
I'm not, and it just brings back a lot of
(36:49):
the pain. I don't want you to see that as
a reason that you are failing. I don't want you
to think that that means you're losing progress. It is
actually a souper's super super normal part of this journey,
I really promise you. So my fourth tip is to
share with your friends, share your commitment to go no
(37:10):
contact or to maintain your no contact with people around
you who you trust and who you no care about you,
because they will help you stay accountable. This is kind
of a rule of thumb. If you wouldn't tell your
friends about something, So if you wouldn't tell them that you've,
you know, chekily replied to somebody's story, or that you
(37:31):
know emailed them, or that you had an accidental run
in with them, Like, if you wouldn't tell them that,
it's probably not the thing that you should be doing.
It is probably the wrong decision. So when you do
have those urges to reach out, because we will have
them text and talk to your friends instead. So I
had a friend who actually changed my name in her
(37:54):
phone to her ex's name when she wanted to text him,
and she would like message me all the things that
she would want to say, like I'm so upset that
you hurt me. You've really let me down, but I
want to give you another chance. She would send that
to me, and I would like reply as him and
be super rational, and I would say what I knew
she needed to hear, not what she wanted to hear.
But what if I imagine what he would say that
(38:16):
would convince her that that was a bad decision. And
it worked. It sounds super bizarre, but it worked. Community,
I think, is also just a valuable antidote to the
general loneliness we may experience when we are so used
to talking to our ex It is a compulsion, it
is a habit. It can feel like a whole has
been left in our life. Who are we going to
(38:38):
share our everyday thoughts with? Who are we going to,
you know, share our successes and our failures with. Who's
going to celebrate us? Who is going to care about
that small thing that you know, we saw on the
bus or that happened at work. Your friends will tell
them they want to hear from you. That is a
way of making your relationship as strong as the one
(38:58):
that you shared with this other person. Communication and vulnerability
and letting them help you. Finally, my final tip for
making no contact work, make the fortress impenetrable, leave no
passage unblocked. There is no way for them to get in.
Because if you leave a secret door open that only
(39:22):
you know about, you are giving yourself the option to
reach back out. You are creating also the false promise
that if they wanted to get in touch with you,
they could, And that is not the commitment that we
are looking for. That is not being in one hundred
percent Instagram, Facebook, email, text, Cut them all off, and
(39:45):
if they do somehow find a way to reach out
to you have something prepared to say. So I'm going
to quote this article by the coach Matthew Hussey because
I love what he had to say about this in
a recent article. When somebody reaches back out, I think
that is the time that it is the hardest because
it's like they're right there. It's like putting a bowl
(40:05):
of candy in front of a kid and saying, don't
touch it, even though that's all they want to do.
That is all you want to do right now. The
thing you most want in the world is to hear
from that person, because hearing from them is going to
reignite so much that you actually did enjoy and that
you are nostalgic about when it comes to your relationship.
(40:25):
So it is very much like reopening an old wound,
and then I think it just sets. It's just like
a domino effect. Once you reply to one message being
like yeah, hey, how are you, instead of just ignoring it,
or instead of being like, hi, actually, I'm not looking
to have any further communication with you. If you don't
(40:49):
do that immediately, it's snowballs. It might just be a
few messages, it might last an entire day. It might
be the rekindling of a relationship that you are already
know was not meant to be. So have something planned
that you are going to say in response to those situations.
(41:09):
Find something a specific affirmation or a mantra or whatever,
some kind of motivation that's going to, you know, keep
you focused on why this is important, why you wanted
to do this in the first place. Maybe it is,
you know, I don't want to have contact with this
person because I know that by doing that I will
(41:29):
leave space for somebody better to come into my life.
Maybe it is you know, eventually this relationship is going
to have to fade. I would rather it starts now
than in three months. Six months a year. Whatever it
is that is keeping you motivated, stay on it, stay focused.
I'm sending you so much a love and strength because
(41:50):
I know this is really hard. This person probably meant
so much to you. They probably were somebody that you
really cared about. And nobody goes in to the start
of a relationship with anybody, romantic, platonic, anything, imagining the ending,
and so when we do find ourselves there, it just
seems that any way to cope is something that we
(42:11):
have to try. And I do think that this is
one of the better ways. This is one of the healthier,
most sustainable ways of finding peace, finding closure, taking your
life back for yourself. So there is not that cloud
lingering over your head of what if or what next?
Or is there a future for us? You have closed
(42:33):
that door for good, for good. You're not opening it again.
As hard as that might be. It will get easier,
I promise you, it will get easier, and you will
find somebody better, and you will find somebody who you
never have to consider this possibility with. So thank you
so much for listening to today's episode. I really do
(42:55):
hope that you enjoyed, and I'm sure that if you've
listened this far, you're probably really going through it right now,
so I really really empathize with you, and I sympathize
for you. It is tough. Do not let yourself feel
any differently, and I'm sending lots of love. It's going
to be okay. Make sure that if you enjoyed this episode,
(43:15):
or if there's somebody who you know might relate to this,
send it to them, send them a link and might
be able to help them out. Make sure that you
leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify wherever
you are listening right now, and that you are following
along so that you never miss a new episode. And
as I mentioned at the start, we do have our
new series of notebooks live now on the website. Make
(43:39):
sure you check it out, make sure you get your
hands on it. If you're looking for a place to
write your deepest, darkest secrets, I think that might just
be it. That might just be where you can do it.
Until next time, thank you for listening, Be kind, be
gentle with yourself, and we will talk soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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