HOW I FINALLY ACCEPTED AND MOVED ON

For those of you who can’t seem to shake the aftermath of an unwanted breakup, I understand. I was there, in a very bad way. Literally traumatized, in such a way that therapy, hypnosis, journaling, NLP, and even psychedelics couldn’t seem to help me. The trauma from the breakup not only compromised my motivation and function on a minute-by-minute basis but seemed to cast an ugly shadow over my entire recollection of the prior year (even the good parts). My life had been reduced to nothing but constant anxiety; in my mind the only story that mattered was the dead relationship, playing on loop, over and over again. For nearly a year, I couldn’t break out of this pattern. As good as my life appeared on paper, none of the good stuff seemed to remotely matter and it felt like the relationship had completely broken my brain and eliminated my ability to derive any satisfaction from anything. I just wanted the thoughts to go away. I wanted the endless loop to end.

Like many desperate people, completely out of moves that I could take to “get them back,” I turned to Neville Goddard and the Law of Assumption. I consumed all the videos. Read the books. Went through all the Reddit success stories. Tried literally every single technique. None of it helped, not one bit (to be honest, I didn’t completely buy into it either—circumstances DO matter; don’t believe me, try to resurrect someone who’s dead).

The silver lining was that through the LOA Reddit I found the Joseph Murphy Reddit, which in turn got me very interested in not only the subconscious mind, but also in subliminals, NLP, and a host of other topics related to changing one’s subconscious beliefs. I stopped consuming all LOA content and instead became obsessed with the prospect of rewiring my mind.

I decided that I would try to rewire my brain through a combination of verbal and written affirmations and subliminals. For me, the gating issue was not being able to detach from the relationship, and so my affirmations and self-talk was completely geared towards that goal.

I did that for about two weeks. And there were certain days where I felt like I was in this complete flow state and moving towards my goal, though in retrospect, I think I was simply doing a good job of suppressing (this became evident when all the pent-up emotions bubbled up). Then, towards the end of that two-week period, I decided to give a certain “medicine therapy” a try. I read everything I could about it and it was administered in a safe, clinical setting. Unfortunately, for whatever reason the medicine didn’t hit. Worse, thinking that the medicine would allow me to safely re-expose myself to my triggers (pictures, social media, painful memories), I retraumatized myself.

For the next few days I spiraled, relentlessly stalking their social media and obsessively analyzing every moment of the relationship—blaming myself for what had happened. I continued to attempt the detachment affirmations, but they felt untrue. In fact, when I would be saying or writing them, I could literally feel the internal resistance to the message. After three straight days of this, I fell asleep crying.

The next morning, I awoke in a somber mood, not only because of the situation itself but because I feared that my mind would start its loops all over. I was bracing myself for another day of torture.

And that’s when the first breakthrough happened.

I surrendered.

I went in and had a conversation with my subconscious mind/inner child, whatever you want to call it. I went into every single fear that it had—allowing myself to fully process the emotions—and validated it, literally saying “you’re right, you were right all along.” And through that I did something that I had refused to do this entire time—ACCEPT THAT THE RELATIONSHIP WAS OVER. This was my biggest fear—that they didn’t care and that they weren’t ever going to contact me again. I finally accepted that it was over, and that it had been over for a very, very long time. I accepted that there wasn’t any hope. I accepted that they didn’t want me; that they had moved on; and that, realistically, they were likely already with someone else. This wasn’t just acceptance at a logical level either. This was deep emotional acceptance. This was going into all those feelings of fear and abandonment and all of those images that haunted me and validating not only what I was feeling, but why I was feeling that way.

And after finally accepting that it was over and comforting my inner child, I felt a giant sense of relief. It was like the DVD player that was playing the ruminations on repeat finally turned off and popped the DVD out.

I wish I could tell you that acceptance is the magic bullet and after that you’re completely healed. I did hope that at the time, but unfortunately acceptance alone was not the silver bullet. But, in my opinion, it is the first step, a prerequisite to healing, if you will (in retrospect—and with due respect to the LOA superfans—I view all of that LOA stuff as simply the denial and/or bargaining phases of grief. If you want to be the person “manifesting your person for years,” cool, do you. But I didn’t love that journey for me).

I felt that massive sense of relief for about two days, while continuing to affirm that I accepted that the relationship was over (ironic, I know). In the process, I also learned that I couldn’t lie to my subconscious. I couldn’t tell my subconscious that I was happy about accepting that the relationship was over, or that letting go was easy, when it clearly wasn’t. So, I literally repeated variations of “I may not like it, but I accept that it’s over.” Those types of statements weren’t met with any kind of resistance and at least hammered home the fact that the relationship was over and that I (begrudgingly) accepted it (don’t worry, begrudging acceptance can quickly progress to true acceptance).

Over the next week, while I was mostly feeling better, I did catch myself falling into either “analysis” or “hope” thought patterns. These weren’t the same as previous ruminations, which were completely intrusive and almost always guilt-ridden. But I was still finding myself having a lot of internal conversations about the relationship, analyzing situations and potential alternatives (what I could have done differently), and leading me to places where I thought there may be hope. And unfortunately, occasionally these thought patterns would also inadvertently lead me to triggering places that would rattle my nervous system.

One morning, about a week in, as I had started doing almost daily, I decided to start my day with a long walk. The walk started in “analysis mode” (if we’re being specific, the question I had for myself was: “were they just the stuffed animal that my inner child lost”). I was also beating myself up for seemingly taking a step backwards from the relief I had felt the week prior. And at that very moment of beating myself up, I kind of paused. I realized that I was in fact getting better, but that healing in this case wasn’t a single event or a straight line. No, my healing pattern in this case was actually following the same type of healing pattern that I had experienced when I had had a really bad sinus infection (which lasted six weeks). With that infection, while the first week and a half was the most intense period, there were two other periods that were relevant to this journey. The first, was a long tail of feeling lethargic and not quite right, not being able to shake the damn thing. And the second, was where I felt like I was mostly healed and “back to normal” only to have certain symptoms return.

While my healing process here was certainly longer than the sinus infection, it actually did seem to be following a strikingly similar pattern. And that made me realize that I was probably now in the period where the symptoms would seem to go away only return, albeit weaker and shorter duration. And what that actually meant was that I was getting better. That I was closer to the end of my journey than to the beginning or even middle.

And that thought immediately bridged me to another thought.

The sinus infection I had—while long lasting and unpleasant—didn’t define me. And neither did this relationship or even this moment of walking and analyzing it. I literally said to myself “I am not the present moment,” and “I am not this relationship.” Writing this, I realize that this sounds pathetically obvious. And if you only think about it in abstract, logical terms, it may not be very helpful. I happened to encounter this thought around the same time as I was reading the chapter on internal “databases” of personal qualities in Steve Andreas’ book Transforming Your Self. So this realization transitioned me away from further analysis about the relationship and instead to looking into my database of memories to support what I thought really defined me (as being someone confident, optimistic, curious, determined, and energetic).

Being able to zoom out from the present moment and visualize how small it really was within the scope of my life’s timeline (including “future pacing”) further helped put things in perspective. And summoning memories of those “durable” qualities focused my mind on much more productive thoughts, which almost instantly led to better feeling states.

I was already feeling much better, but later in the day, I had another set of epiphanies.

The first was that I reviewed my entire relationship history and realized that I never, ever had any regrets about bailing on a relationship too early. I only ever got myself into trouble in situations where I desperately held on. And I realized that I had been completely misinterpreting my amygdala’s response. When I initially felt the response, I thought that the intense signals were cues to “do more.” No, this was my body telling me that there was danger and that I needed to retreat. Now for the record, I do NOT believe that running away at the first sign of danger is the solution to all of life’s problems or even to relationship problems. If that was the case, you’d probably never do anything that carried any type of risk. And in the context of relationships, in a perfect world, you would be completely secure, which means that you could be warm, loving, and vulnerable while also being unattached to the outcome (i.e., not doing something to get something back). But let’s face it, the reason you’re probably reading this is that in at least one instance, a relationship made you feel insecure and helpless. So what I’m saying is that when you feel that intense warning signal from your nervous system, it may make sense to retreat just for a bit to calm your nervous system and ensure that you’re not doing things out of emotion/desperation. When you most want to react, oftentimes the best course is to not do anything at all.

The second epiphany I had—and this one may be controversial but helped me nonetheless—was that it wasn’t enough for me to not actively engage in thoughts or actions related to pursuit, but that I needed to actively promote staying away. You may have to accept that as wonderful as your ex is, and as much as the breakup may have been your fault, they still might be dangerous to your nervous system. I am not casting aspersions on your ex, or mine, for that matter. Mine was the sweetest, most attentive human for a very long time, constantly showering me with praise, always wanting to be with me. And how did I reward this love and affection? I rejected them. I ignored them. I breadcrumbed them. Then, they changed and became less attentive to me. My point is, that like a peanut (pick your allergy, really), they may be perfectly fine, yet still dangerous to you. That realization really helped me. Truth is, the set of circumstances did make them dangerous to me, where even thinking of them in a certain way could send me spiraling. So any time a thought about them would pop up, I would repeat to myself authoritatively “they are dangerous, stay the f*** away!” This was easily accepted by my subconscious mind because it understood just how dangerous they were to my nervous system.

And with all that, it all just dissipated. And I moved on. And I was finally able to find satisfaction in life again.

Main takeaways:

• Law of Assumption – LOA prolonged my misery. For me, it was nothing more than a coping mechanism and the denial/bargaining stage of grief. The videos and Reddit posts would occasionally bring me some quick relief in the form of hope sprinkles, but over the long term just caused my issues to persist. By taking actions such as watching videos, reading posts, applying techniques, I was trying to gain some sense of control, when in reality, I had none. Let’s be real here: you CANNOT control other people with your mind. They DO have free will. Devoting your mental energy to try to change another person is a complete waste of your very limited bandwidth. Use that same energy to change your inner state instead.
• Acceptance – If there’s only one thing I could highlight from this entire post, it would be this. The faster you can get to the acceptance stage of grief, the faster you will heal. I don’t mean logical acceptance either—I had logically accepted that it was over for months and still felt like s***. I mean complete emotional acceptance. Cry it out if you need to, I sure did. But in the end, accept that it’s over. Accept that they no longer care about you. Accept that it sucks and that it’s not what you wanted. Accept all the bad stuff. Accept all the feelings you were desperately trying to suppress. Accept that you have no hope (even if you do technically have “a chance”). Everything will fall in place once you have FULLY accepted that it’s over.
• Letting Go / Detachment – Before I reached acceptance, I tried to affirm for detaching while still actively hoping that one day they would magically reappear in my life. I had contrary goals, basically. I imagine this is why I’ve been able to get over death so much more easily than a relationship—because death, as painful as it is, brings absolute finality. But what I realized is that you literally can’t “let go” if you are still gripping so tightly to that hope. Detachment only happens when you let go of the balloon and realize that it’s never coming back. Mourn if you need to. But accept that it’s gone for good. Release your grip on the hope and you will detach.
• Inner Child / Subconscious – Understand this, your subconscious mind is a toddler with unlimited energy and superpowers. You will never defeat it with your conscious mind. It doesn’t sleep, it doesn’t get tired. Your conscious mind does. Moreover, your subconscious mind can hit you with all sorts of spells, from intense emotions to vivid images, to infinite what-ifs, to ruminations. Do not fight it. Do not go against it. Comfort it, validate it, and work with it. I believe in subliminals, state-focused affirmations, self-talk, self-hypnosis, etc. But I don’t believe those things will work well if you’re going against much stronger and deeper pre-existing beliefs. Now I’ve learned to communicate with my subconscious mind. But understand, it won’t respond with words, but instead with emotions, images, or feelings of resistance. I pay very, very close attention. Then I target my affirmations and subliminals in a manner which is (i) true to my subconscious, yet still (ii) constructive and moving me forward. (I also realized that my person was akin to my inner-child’s lost stuffed animal—only special because I said it was special)
• Control Issues – I discovered that a lot of my thoughts and actions were bound to ways in which I would subconsciously try to have a sense of control over the situation (and the world at large). The ruminations, the revisions, the regrets, the what-ifs, the inner conversations with my person. Flipping scenarios over and over and over again. Analyzing every single detail and angle. Re-reading old texts, desperately searching for clues and easter eggs. Looking at pictures. I realized that all of these were just attempts at control. Towards the end, I realized that I tried to find a feeling of control through one of three categories: (i) analysis, (ii) hope, and (iii) (social media) stalking. Once I realized that all of this just was rooted in a need for control, it made directing my thoughts easier. Whenever I’d have a thought about them or the situation, I would label it as one of those three categories and then I would affirm out loud “I accept that it’s over” (or some variation thereof). Also, if giving up social media stalking is too painful (this can be OCD for some), then at least give yourself just one or two windows a day to peek. Oh, and one weird trick I found if you are going to do this—look at your screen through some heavy filter that makes the images much harder to make out (there are NLP techniques that have you do this same thing mentally). I personally used a blue light filter on the strongest setting. Killing the vividness of their social media profiles significantly reduced my response to them.
• Healing isn’t a Straight Line – Relate what you’re going through to the longest, most frustrating illness you’ve had (fortunately for me, the sinus infection was probably my worse). Doing so will hopefully prevent you from beating yourself up if you feel like you’ve taken a step backwards. Realize that the step backwards doesn’t mean that you’re not healing, you probably are in fact. It’s normal, it’s expected. Feel good that you’re generally getting better, even if today may feel worse than the previous day or week.
• You are NOT this Moment – Similarly to how the illness doesn’t define you, neither does this present moment. You are not the present moment. You are not the relationship or the breakup. Think about who you actually are. Look at your full life’s catalog. Find the vivid memories that support your durable qualities.
• Kill Hope – Hope can be a wonderful thing. It can also be sinister. It can really prevent you from moving on. Which prevents you from accepting and releasing. Release all hope that you will ever hear from them again. By the way, releasing hope does not in any way preclude them from contacting you. This is purely for your own sanity. If anything, releasing hope may (very marginally) increase your odds. Releasing hope does not impact how they think about you. But it is essential to your own mental journey. Please, prioritize your mental health over “manifesting a text from them.” That text is not worth weeks, months, or years of agony.
• Command yourself to Stay Away – This last one doesn’t apply to all circumstances. But it can be beneficial, especially if you’re still easily triggered. Face it, while they may not be “dangerous” per se, they may have been “dangerous” to your psyche—even if that’s purely due to your own warped interpretations (been there—easily triggered by the most innocuous comments). Be honest with yourself. If this is the case for you, the best advice that you might be able to give to yourself is “they are dangerous to me, stay the f*** away.” My person was a kind person. Guess what, they were still dangerous to me because I had given them the power to hurt me.

I know what you’re going through, and I empathize. I loved my person. They are an amazing, truly one-of-a-kind person; like no one I’ve ever met. They loved me and I rejected them repeatedly. Then, they repaid me in kind. It broke me. Karma’s a b****.

On a final note, this is not my advice to you, even if I often use the word “you.” This is solely what worked for me. Take from it what you will, even if that’s nothing at all. If this post helps at least one person, I’m happy I wrote it.