How to fall out of love By Paul McKenna, Ph.D., and Hugh Willbourn, Ph.D.
When you get out of a relationship, you find yourself suddenly on your own, rattling around with a set of habits built for two. You are used to coming home to someone in the evening, to having someone to discuss things with, to having someone to go out with. And whether you go in or stay out, you keep finding reminders of your ex all over your life.
Other habits are more subtle. They are the automatic patterns of thought, the pictures we make and the things we say to ourselves every day. When even a brief relationship ends, these patterns can still be running. We don’t mean to do it. We make ourselves unhappy by accident.
One of the most powerful ways to start mending your broken heart is to change the habits of your thinking. For example, part of being heartbroken is still feeling in love with how your ex used to be. It hurts because part of you is still attached to your ex. This exercise will help that part of you release itself from those painful feelings.
1. Recall five times you felt very in love with your ex and make a list of them, so you can easily call them to mind.
2. Start to recall the first memory again, then step out of it and move the image of that event away from you so that you can see yourself in the picture. Move the image away until it is small and the emotional intensity is reduced.
3. Drain out the color so that it is black and white, then make it transparent. When you look at the event like this it will seem like it is happening to someone else and the emotional intensity will be further reduced.
4. When you’ve finished, do the same with each of the other memories.
5. Next, spend some time remembering in detail five negative experiences with your ex-partner, where you felt very definitely un-attracted to them. Think of the times when they did something that really hurt you, turned you off or offended you.
6. Now take the least appealing memory and fully return to that moment. Go back and run through it all over again. Step into the memory so that you are seeing the things you saw, hearing the things you heard and fully feeling the things you felt all over again.
7. Now turn up the color and the clarity. Make the memory as bright and clear as you can and feel the feelings getting stronger and stronger.
8. Go through each of the other four memories and step into them. Carry on until you feel you have had quite enough of them and even the idea of thinking about them is totally unattractive.
Take your time over the exercise. Some people have found that doing this just once makes them feel totally different. Other people like to do it every day. To make sure the effect sticks, do it every day for two weeks. Each repetition will strengthen the neural pathways you create, so it gets easier and quicker until the feeling becomes automatic.
From the book How to Mend Your Broken Heart by Paul McKenna, Ph.D., and Hugh Willbourn, Ph.D. Copyright (c) 2003 by Paul McKenna and Hugh Willbourn. Published by Three Rivers Press.
Other habits are more subtle. They are the automatic patterns of thought, the pictures we make and the things we say to ourselves every day. When even a brief relationship ends, these patterns can still be running. We don’t mean to do it. We make ourselves unhappy by accident.
One of the most powerful ways to start mending your broken heart is to change the habits of your thinking. For example, part of being heartbroken is still feeling in love with how your ex used to be. It hurts because part of you is still attached to your ex. This exercise will help that part of you release itself from those painful feelings.
1. Recall five times you felt very in love with your ex and make a list of them, so you can easily call them to mind.
2. Start to recall the first memory again, then step out of it and move the image of that event away from you so that you can see yourself in the picture. Move the image away until it is small and the emotional intensity is reduced.
3. Drain out the color so that it is black and white, then make it transparent. When you look at the event like this it will seem like it is happening to someone else and the emotional intensity will be further reduced.
4. When you’ve finished, do the same with each of the other memories.
5. Next, spend some time remembering in detail five negative experiences with your ex-partner, where you felt very definitely un-attracted to them. Think of the times when they did something that really hurt you, turned you off or offended you.
6. Now take the least appealing memory and fully return to that moment. Go back and run through it all over again. Step into the memory so that you are seeing the things you saw, hearing the things you heard and fully feeling the things you felt all over again.
7. Now turn up the color and the clarity. Make the memory as bright and clear as you can and feel the feelings getting stronger and stronger.
8. Go through each of the other four memories and step into them. Carry on until you feel you have had quite enough of them and even the idea of thinking about them is totally unattractive.
Take your time over the exercise. Some people have found that doing this just once makes them feel totally different. Other people like to do it every day. To make sure the effect sticks, do it every day for two weeks. Each repetition will strengthen the neural pathways you create, so it gets easier and quicker until the feeling becomes automatic.
From the book How to Mend Your Broken Heart by Paul McKenna, Ph.D., and Hugh Willbourn, Ph.D. Copyright (c) 2003 by Paul McKenna and Hugh Willbourn. Published by Three Rivers Press.