How to Successfully Do “No-Contact” & End the Confusion and Uncertainty of Holding On
There’s nothing more painful than the limbo phase of being broken up with your ex.
You linger around trying to be “friends,” keeping alive the hope that you might get back together.
But if we’re truly honest with ourselves, going “No-Contact” is the healthier decision - but doing it feels impossible.
I don’t fault you. Completely detaching when you’re feeling vulnerable probably feels like the scariest thing you could do.
You might have tried “No-Contact” already, but found yourself back in touch, and maybe even in an ambiguous relationship with your ex, only to repeat the same patterns that lead to breaking up again.
I’m sharing with you the 3 Reasons Why “No-Contact” is so Incredibly Difficult. But more importantly, I’ll tell you How to Make It Possible so you can move on from the confusion and uncertainty of holding on.
1. “If I have one more conversation, I’ll find closure”
Most people would jump on the occasion to have an honest conversation with their ex so they can find some closure.
But dialoguing with them only provides a temporary sense of relief.
What’s more likely is getting into another argument and opening yourself up to more misunderstandings and emotional hurt.
The want to have “one more conversation” is the mind wanting answers so that you don’t have to confront the uncomfortable emotions that come with loss.
Even if you consume every book and podcast about relationships, consult all your friends about the situation, and have “one more conversation” with your ex, you still have to tend to your emotions and address your grief - without your ex.
🔥 The reason why we stay in contact is because most people do not know how to process their emotions and grieve their relationship. This experience is so uncomfortable, we avoid it at all cost by hanging on to the relationship.
“One more conversation” is the false hope that our ex will rescue us from this reality.
2. Interaction with your ex can instantly relieve your emotional discomfort
Because most of us can’t face the emotional discomfort that comes with a breakup, we hold on to a connection to our ex - even if we know it’s not what we want. The below study demonstrates why we feel so compelled to do that:
“When rat pups are separated from their mothers, a number of physiological reactions occur: their activity levels goes down, their heart rate goes down, and so does their growth hormone level.
In Hofer’s studies, he gradually replaced each maternal attribute with an artificial substitute: He first warmed the pups with a heating pad, then fed them so their stomachs would be full, and later patted them with a brush, imitating their mother’s licking action.
He found that each intervention healed one aspect of their separation distress. Feeding the pups helped maintain their heart rate at a normal level, warming them helped keep their activity intact, and brushing them helped raise their growth hormone secretion.
But only one intervention alleviated all the symptoms at once, and that was the reunion with their mother.
For humans, the situation is very similar. When we break up with someone, our attachment system goes into overdrive, and just like the rat pups, we can think of nothing but getting back together with out loved one. The fact that one person can take away all our discomfort in a split second makes it very hard to resist temptation to see him or her again.
Just being in the same room is enough to entirely relieve the anxiety in a way that no other single friend or family member can.”
- From the book, Attached by Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller
I have compassion for anyone who wants to reach out to their ex when they’re having a tough time. It’s a biological urge that we can’t resist.
However, it is possible to detach from your ex.
🔑 The key is having sources of secure attachments with other people (that are not romantic) that can replace the emotional safety you felt with your ex.
Continue reading below and I explain what that looks like…
3. “If I let go, they will move on without me and I’ll be alone.”
The core issue with letting go of your ex is the deep fear of abandonment and having to be alone.
Your ex being with someone else is the final stab in the heart, the recognition that there’s no hope of getting back together. You’re confronted with the stark reality of having to live life without them.
You try to prevent this reality by staying in connection so that they don’t move on without you.
All humans have this fear of abandonment built into our bodies.
Abandonment is our first fear. It is a primal fear - a fear universal to the human experience. As infants we lay screaming in our cribs, terrified that when our mothers left the room they were never coming back.
Abandonment is a fear that we will be left alone forever with no one to protect us, to see to our most urgent needs.
For the infant, maintaining attachment to its primary caretaker is necessary for its survival. Any threat or disruption to that relationship arouses this primal fear, a fear that is embedded in the hardware of our brains, a fear we carry into adulthood.
- From the book, The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson
And so again, I have a lot of compassion around the difficulty of letting go and facing the reality of living our lives alone. However, my belief is that being fully emotionally separated is a necessary step in the Journey of recovery.
🔥 If you’re wanting to truly grow from the experience of breakups and be secure and confident with yourself again, you have to face your fears of abandonment.
The ironic thing is, you can overcome the fear of being alone by being in a community where you can grieve the loss of your relationship and move forward together.
This is the path to creating secure attachments with other people and experiencing the emotional safety that’s needed to truly let go and move on.
By this point, I’m sure you can see that in order to do “No-Contact” and fully recover from your breakup, you need tools to help you address your uncomfortable emotions and a community that you can safely attach to so that you can heal from this experience.
I’ve designed a program that offers you exactly that - a complete recovery path that walks you through the simple steps of “No-Contact”, all the way to feeling fully secure and confident in yourself - and your next relationship.
