Life hack #3: The No Contact Method (the holy grail of break up survival)
Life hack #3: The No Contact Method (the holy grail of break up survival)
[00:00:00] The most important piece of advice I'm going to give you about this whole break up journey is called the no contact method. I have spent months and years of my past selves trying to decipher the reason for a break up or analyze it to death or, or hold on just because I thought if I just didn't let them go, then that meant it really wasn't over.
And one day we'd get back together. No, I'm telling you, I have studied psychology in school. I've also been in psychology of real life when I'm basically getting broken up with or whatever, dumped throughout my life. And the most effective strategy that you can have, especially if you're the "dumpee" in this situation, meaning you were the one that were left, is the no contact method.
There's two specific outcomes that some people do the no contact method for. One of them is in the hopes of actually getting their ex back. But the other one is to actually heal and move on. And the good news is it's the same method, the [00:01:00] same process for both goals. So I don't actually recommend doing the no contact method specifically for the goal of getting your ex back because I don't think that's very healing to try and wait them out and like, you know, see if enough of them missing you brings them back.
I think that there's, there's some reason that people might try that. Sure. But if you are going to need to heal and get past the pain and the traumatic experience of the break up, you need to focus with that as your goal. And then if they do happen to come back, then that's something you can address as it happens.
Because there's psychology underneath the no contact method, which is basically don't talk to them. Don't text them. Don't say happy birthday to them. Don't text them because you saw a meme that you like. Don't go to their social media. Don't check up on them. Don't look at what they're posting. Don't go near it.
When you look under the hood, and I'm saying that metaphorically, of a break up and a brain addiction to a substance when a person is going through [00:02:00] withdrawal, they're very similar experiences. When you're in a sudden break up, it's almost as if you're getting weaned off, without your permission, a drug or a substance or something that you were addicted to.
Maybe it's that person or how you felt with that person. And you're suddenly being told to go no contact. And that's really hard, but just like you can't get over a cigarette addiction by only smoking, you know, one or two cigarettes a day. And the equivalent of no contact it's like, oh, if I text them once or twice a week, no, no, no, you need to go cold turkey.
You need to separate the addiction from the withdrawal symptoms so that you have freedom from it because when you are going through withdrawal of a drug, you will feel similar experiences. You might even get flu like symptoms. There's a sense of panic. There's a sense of urgency to go and get in contact.
What if you just drive by their house? What if you just call from an unknown number? Maybe if you hear their voice. That is like an addict behavior, right? That's someone who needs a fix, in this case it's like a [00:03:00] dopamine fix, in their brain or something, that they're trying to get from their ex.
And I get it. It's super, super hard, but the only way to actually separate and break an addiction is to not engage with the substance or in this case, the person. You need to go cold turkey and that is equivalent to what they call the no contact method. So there's some real strategies behind the no contact method and some really good, um, people who give advice on YouTube and other podcasts.
And I am going to put some links because you know what? I can't recreate the wheel here. There are people who do such a fantastic job of explaining, you know, the whole philosophy and psychology behind no contact that I'm going to put their links on my webpage for you to find, because I genuinely want you to get the best information out there, even if it's not from me.
But back to the whole philosophy is this is how you heal. If you want to know the raw, honest truth of how do you heal with a break up? I promise you it's not by driving by their house once a week to get your fix. It's by no contact. [00:04:00] It's by separating yourself and deciding that you need to let that person and their contact go.
Even if one day that changes and you decide to have a conversation with them down the road, that's something you can decide when you're in a more healed state. But if you are sensing urgency or, you know, a panic feeling and you just need to get your hit of someone and that's why you want to reach out because you just, you'd want to hear their voice or whatever.
Think about how embarrassing it is to you and your soul when you do reach out and they leave you hanging. There's lots of people who are fresh off a break up who think if I could only just talk to my ex, they'd understand. And then they go to great, you know, lengths to go do that. And then they walk away feeling even more rejected, even humiliated.
And then you have to deal with those feelings on top of the break up. So, I won't lie, sometimes I break the no contact method out of, you know, weakness, let's call it. Um, and then I have to learn my lesson and, uh, and I go back to no contact usually. So, we're not perfect, but the point of no contact is that [00:05:00] just like an alcoholic can go, you know, you know, they keep a count of how many days they're alcohol free.
So do you do that in no contact method. So you would basically start a count. There's certain apps on your phone that are counts and it'll be, it'll be 3 days since you had contact with so and so. And then a week later it's 10 days since you've had contact with so and so. And it's like a way of watching and monitoring your progress so that you feel stronger and more committed to no contact.
So I know how hard it is for me when I'm seeing like 20 days no contact and then I, you know, I, I have a moment of weakness and I send them a message or I text them something stupid and then I have to reset the clock back to no contact to be zero. I mean, it's not a great feeling, but just like when an alcoholic has a chip in his pocket that says, you know, a thousand days drink free.
That person probably carries that around so that they don't have even one slip up, right? You don't want to lose that progress. So another part of the no contact method that works for me is keeping a log of your wins in no contact. So every [00:06:00] single day in your phone or a piece of paper, you write down the date and you write down the things that you did that aided in your no contact.
Maybe one of those things is that you went and you know, deleted all of the photos on your phone or put them in an archive of your ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend. Yeah. Great. Put that onto the no contact wins list, which is what I'm describing. And if you, you know, thought about texting them, you know, because your favorite restaurant just went out of business and you wanted to let them know, but then you stopped yourself because you realized that that would actually be setting your progress back up healing.
And at times your energy being pushed on someone who's actually dumped you could potentially backfire and make them like think, oh that person's so annoying. Right? So you don't want that either. So then you would write down, you know, didn't text them when this happened and that you put that under your list of no contact wins.
So this is a method that you can cling to. You can study it up and down. There's lots of good advice out there on how to stick to no contact, how to do no contact. Even if you have [00:07:00] children with somebody, um, there's lots of ways to kind of limit something like an interaction with someone to basically the nuts and bolts, right?
Of just the topics you need to talk about. So there is adaptions to other ways. So please go to the website TorontoUnicorn.com
I will say that they have looked in a brain scan in psychology. Like they've looked at brain scan of people with a traumatic break up and people who are getting off like substance issues. And it's a similar experience. There's withdrawal, there's withdrawal symptoms. There's, you know, even just physiological symptoms, like you sweat, you cry.
Guess what? Eventually you get over it. Eventually you move past those symptoms, but not if you hang on to the thing that you're addicted to, even in small amounts. If you keep, you know, hanging on and using a little bit of contact here and a little bit of social media snooping there, you might not actually get rid of those symptoms.
They might just prolong and it might prolong your whole healing journey. So stop wasting your own time and get on the no contact method, because even if you do want your ex back, this is [00:08:00] also the way to do it.
