How To Use Psychology To Get Over Someone Fast (So You Can Be Yourself Again)

Stephanie Krist
Stephanie Krist

Want to know how to stop missing someone?

Want to know how to fall out of love?

Want to know how to stop loving someone?

If you want to fall out of love with someone you can’t have, there are a number of psychology tricks which you can use to your advantage (I cover the full set in my book “The Erase Code.” In this article, I want to share with you one such trick which involves the use of what psychologists call classical conditioning.

To begin, let’s make a comparison…

Getting over a breakup can be a lot like quitting smoking. When a person chooses to give up a habit like smoking, the initial few days is always the hardest to overcome. Fortunately it gets easier with time, patience, and practice.

One of the biggest problems with getting over a habit are the everyday circumstances and places that you associate with that habit. For instance, a smoker might strongly correlate:

  • A type of food
  • A certain time of day
  • Or a specific place etc

…with smoking, meaning when he encounters these things, having a  cigarette is the first thing that enters his mind. This naturally leads to a sense of discomfort, since smoking is no longer an option.

These types of feelings are analogous to that of someone who just went through a breakup. Lots of things right now will be causing you to remember your ex …constantly keeping your pain raw. Check out the following the video on YouTube from my program The Erase Code: How To Get Over Anyone In Less Than A Week Using Psychology. It details exactly how many different things can be in play in the pain you are feeling right now.

To Fall Out of Love, Destroy Your Associations

What we’re talking about here is called classical conditioning.

People usually make mental bonds between two experiences, associating one with the other. Certain situations or places can trigger an emotional response based on past incidents. Smokers who give up cigarettes encounter this all the time. If they’re used to having a smoke during certain breaks in their workday, they will inevitably associate those breaks with having a cigarette.

The same applies to breakups. When you relate a place with your ex (such as the local town park for example), you will find yourself thinking of them over and over again every time you pass the town park. And the problem is that the longer the relationship went on, the more of these associations (between your ex and certain things and places etc) will have been created.

How to Use Psychology to Fall Out Of Love With Them

Recognizing the symptoms of classical conditioning and learning how it works is key in finally being able to move on. Imagine your favourite movie you had as a child. Whenever you see this movie, you experience nostalgic feelings and happy memories. Now imagine watching this film over and over again for a hundred times. The pleasurable memories would diminish with each viewing, and eventually you would get sick of it.

The same can be done with past relationships. You need to rewire the existing associations you have of your ex and certain things/places etc …and place new associations in place where your ex currently is. For example, going back to our example of the town park – a good way to remove the association of your ex to the town park would be to create a new association with the town park. You could use the town park as your running track and use it to train for the local 5k or 10k in your area. Each time you go to the town park and try to beat your old record for running a 5k distance, your mind will begin to be programmed to associate the town park with running …rather than with your ex.

For each positive experience you connect to that once-painful place, the suffering declines. Your new, pleasant memories take its place and slowly you no longer make those identifications with your ex. Over time, you will begin to fall out of love as your mind sees less and less reasons to constantly think of them. It will begin to see that you are thinking less and less about them and so will interpret this to mean you have moved on.

If You Just Can’t Let Go, Here’s Why

For some people, getting over their heartbreak is much more difficult than for others. This is usually because they refuse to break their mental pattern and continue to relate everything back to the relationship that they lost. They ruminate over their ex and continue to think about and do all the things that remind them of their loved one. They don’t create those new connections that would help them be happy again. They wallow in their misery and refuse to pull themselves out of it.

Honoring and expressing your emotions is important, but you have to know the right time to let go. The more you brood over your suffering, the deeper you push it into your subconscious, making it harder to uproot when you’re finally ready to move on.

So, allow yourself to feel your pain, but move quickly to eradicate it. Resist the urge to deepen those associations that make you think of your ex, and you’ll be able to bounce back and move on much more quickly.

Everyone knows that breakups are distressing, but you shouldn’t allow yourself to get stuck in that mindset. Set your emotions free, and start making those fresh new associations as early as you can. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

John Alex Clark is a Relationship & Life Coach. He is the founder of the website Relationship Psychology.

Keep up with John Alex on Twitter and Website

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