"I Can’t Get Over My Ex...Please Help Me Move On!”

A picture of my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend pops up.

And she's never eaten a clementine again.

Way worse, it dropped directly onto my phone and liked the picture.

Yeah.

You can't send a message saying, that wasn't me, it was my clementine. What's up everyone? Welcome to the Love Life podcast with me, Matthew Hussey and Audrey Hussey. Before we get into the episode, if you haven't already, make sure to go and sign up to my private email that I am sending every single Friday. If you enjoyed my book, Love Life, if you like my writing style, and if you like free stuff from me, every Friday I send out a personal email from me talking about personal thoughts, ideas, strategies and stories that can help you in your life that I don't put anywhere else. The people that I've been sending this to have had an incredible reaction. I get tons of replies every Friday that I read personally. So if you want my personal writings every single Friday delivered straight to your inbox. Go to thethreerelationships.com and sign up now. Well, we're back with another episode. And we wanted to do an episode on a question that I got asked recently. I was asked this actually by someone in A very kind of tight inner circle coaching group that we work with every year called Club 320. For anyone who wants to join the wait list for that, joinclub320.com is the link. There are no spaces at present, but if they ever open up, you'll be on the waiting list. And the question that was asked was when an ex reaches out to you again. and you become triggered emotionally by them reaching out. How do you deal with that trigger? And I thought this is relevant to so many people who find that months or even in some cases, years later, someone can still trigger them and they want to know what to do about it, how to manage those triggers. So I thought we could talk about that today. We'll just have a great little episode.

And we'll just have a nice old time.

Nice old time. So one of the things that I try to help people with when it comes to being triggered by an ex is to change the story that they're telling themselves about that trigger.

Before we go into this, can you set the scene for me of what you mean exactly by being... And this doesn't have to be necessarily, you know, this person's question, but just what you mean by getting triggered.

Let's say you've worked really hard to try to get over someone. And you feel like you've made progress. Maybe you've taken some steps. But then they send you a text out of nowhere and all the feelings come flooding back. Or maybe you see a post of them online and immediately, maybe you're laying in bed scrolling and you see a picture of them or you see them comment on your friend's latest post.

Can I tell you a funny story? You don't even know the story. So I must have been 21 years old, and this is back in the days of Facebook, when I used to be on Facebook. And I was sitting in my apartment, scrolling through my Facebook, as you do, eating a Clementine, you know, like the peelers.

Oh, I know a Clementine.

And I'm eating this Clementine. Scrolling on Facebook and a picture of my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend pops.

Up and... And she's never eaten a Clementine again.

No, worse, way worse. I drop a segment of Clementine.

Wait, like usual suspects, like at the end of usual suspects where he realizes that Kevin Spacey is Kaiser Soze. and he drops his coffee cup and it smashes all over the floor. It was like slow motion. You're just little segment of Clementine just dropping and just bouncing off the boom, boom, boom.

I bloody wish it had done that. It dropped directly onto my phone and liked the picture.

Yeah. How does a Clementine? I can't. That's Madness.

I know.

I didn't.

How does a Clementine? I have a will.

I don't know. You don't drop. Like, if you drop something else on your phone.

It never likes a thing.

No.

And it was a Clementine, and I literally.

It.

It dropped and it liked.

What an evil little Clementine.

Yeah.

It was very upsetting because what do you do? And.

You know how you can't say... I'll tell you what you can't do. You can't send a message saying, that wasn't me, it was my Clementine. You can't say that.

No, you really can't.

You can't say, I was just casually scrolling, minding my own business, doing my own thing, and a segment of my Clementine fell out of my hand and touched the heart. On the phone.

It was a like button. It was face.

It touched your thumbs up and liked the post. You can't say that.

Yeah.

So anyway, sorry, just I thought this story would be.

I remember being in high school and by mistake calling like an ex. Like genuinely just, I don't know.

Like a butt dial.

It wasn't even a, oh, maybe it was a butt dial. I was scrolling or something and I called her and I didn't realize I'd called her, but I heard hello down the phone and it was her and my heart just sunk because I knew that out of that there would be an entire interpretation of what that meant. And, you know, it wasn't, I wasn't the one, like it's not like I ended it and now it would be seen as me coming back or something. It was like, it didn't end very well. I was kind of the. I got a little bit hurt in the situation, so I definitely wouldn't have wanted to, like, look like I cared.

Oh.

And it really, like, I knew at that point, I was like, this is now. This is a story of how, like, he called me and hung up. He's still dealing with a lot of pain.

Yeah.

So imagine that in high school as well. It's like the worst time.

That's really. That's actually really.

I suppose people should be careful eating fruits near their phone is the lesson of this story. You were the one who sidetracked us.

Well, I thought it was relevant to what we were saying. Anyway, so you were talking about getting triggered and so you were saying you see a picture of your ex and you're scrolling and you get triggered by that picture. That's what you said. I'm bringing us back.

And you get triggered. And I think for a lot of people, when they feel that, it's very deflating and demoralizing and almost a bit like it can freak people out a bit because they're like, oh, I'm still thinking about them. And when will it stop? And when will I not feel this? And it's very easy to think of how well we're doing, measure how well we're doing by the intensity of this emotion right now.

Yeah.

And whatever longing we feel, whatever pang of loneliness it makes us feel, especially if it's because we see them with someone else, the feeling of either jealousy or the feeling of simply, oh, I get that sick feeling in my stomach because I'm thinking of this person again, is really important. to not see our journey in moving on from someone as this binary thing where it's just zeros and ones.

Yeah.

And you're either over them or you're not. I think that's a really unhelpful fallacy when it comes to moving on. Like, ah, I finally moved on. I think instead it always a kind of gradient. and over time, you're doing the right things that allow you to move on. And you start to, in the same way that I've spoken about chronic pain in the book, in my new book, love life. For those of you that don't know, I shouldn't just say the book. In case people don't know, there's a new book.

The book.

The good book. I talk about chronic pain and I talk about how what I would fight for initially with chronic physical pain was five minutes where I didn't think about my pain. Because there was a time where I thought about it 24/7. And it was like it truly monopolized my entire existence was thinking about my chronic pain, which is what happens to people in a terrible breakup. Heartbreak is centralizing.

Yeah.

It's all you think about. But you look for those first five minutes where you manage to just enjoy something you're doing. Be absorbed in an activity. Have a fun moment of laughter with a friend. Or you see a movie and that movie distracts you for a time. Those moments are hard won, but when you get them, they're very beautiful because they make you realize that oh, I can make more of those. If I didn't feel this for five minutes, I can make more of those. If I didn't feel it for an hour, I can make more of those. And the thing that is quite sad sometimes about these triggers that come up is that they make us forget how much progress we've made along that gradient. They make us forget that we now, in a certain stage, we go a whole day. without thinking about a person. And at a certain point, we go a whole week without thinking about that person. At a certain point, we go three months, and we mustn't let something that has pulled our focus towards that person make us think that, oh, no, I haven't gotten over them. It's not that you haven't gotten over them. It's that getting over them is a constant gradient where you will care less and less and less and less and less and less and less and less. But that doesn't mean something can't still come and, you know, blindside you.

Yeah, I think as well, neurologically, when.

You.

When you break up with someone, you experience grief of some kind. Your brain is wired to look for that person because, you know, we're creatures of habits, right? Our brain forms patterns that are habitual and that's the patterns that we go down every day. We can drive to work without even really focusing on where we're going or what we're doing because we're so used to it. Our brain is just on this autopilot and it's the same with our emotions. And when you lose someone that you really loved, it's this feeling of your brain is literally searching for them because those neural pathways are created to drive back to this person. And it's like, where are they? They're not there. And so you go, oh my God, I wanna show them this. I can't, they're not there. Pain. And that takes a long time to rewire and to build new reference points and new moments and new people that we get drawn to. You can do it. And actually, it doesn't take as long as you think it's going to take in that moment. But it does take a little while. So I think when you take that into consideration, you just have to think about that to realize that if somebody texts you and somebody you spent a long time with and you have a lot of memories with, a lot of connection with, a lot of kind of built-in reference points with, even though you've made all that progress, when they text you, your brain is still going back there. It's going back down that path. that it's used to go down. And the end of that path is, I don't have that person anymore and I'm in pain. And that's what it's used to associating this person with, which is why the first time, you know, someone breaks your heart and then they text you, or the first time they break your heart and you see a picture of them is always the most painful. Because then if you see it multiple times, you build a new point of reference for it. It doesn't hurt in the same way every time. So we have to be really gentle with ourselves and really compassionate to ourselves. when we get triggered, because if you loved someone and they meant something to you, your body has recorded that. Your brain has recorded that as something meaningful in your life. And that's kind of. It's really annoying when it doesn't work out, but it's also very beautiful. It gives us our ability to love and to pair bond with people.

When we feel that pain and it's connected to that person and that situation, and it is. There is this just pavlovian sense of now I see their name on my phone and it brings me this. rush of pain.

Always change their name, by the way.

Yeah, change their name to something empowering or, like, never again. Or just saying never again, you know?

I love how I go, like, low frequency. You go, like, high.

I went a bit more involved.

I'm like, change it to, like, douchebag, something like that.

Now you can change it to, like, you know, done. Someone I knew changed it to done. You know, someone put never again. Someone put you deserve better.

Oh, that's good.

You know, these are great ways to take away that Pavlovian conditioning that's associated with their name, the letters that form their name.

Yeah.

The concept. Because right now their name is a concept to you. And that concept is pain and loss and heartbreak and you know, maybe not feeling worthy. But actually we can even go one step further than that, which is right now when we feel that pain, it's a reminder of something difficult. But we do actually have the power to shift that. This is what I said to the person in our coaching group, and I was speaking to her personal situation. when I said this, so this was tailored to her, but there's truth in this for everyone. I said, I know that this X and all of the pain that this person caused you is a huge part of the reason, maybe the reason, why you have been through these coaching programs. and I've worked with this person now for several years, and I have watched her transform in that time. I've watched her create new standards for herself. I've watched her create new boundaries that she would never have had in her past. I have seen this person develop and blossom and all of that. None of that was born out of a happy place. All of that progress in her life and her own development came from her being hurt by this person and then her saying, I need to do something in my life. And that was what meant that her and I crossed paths and we got to work together and she's now done all of this amazing self-growth none of that would have happened. without the pain that this person caused her. And so I reminded her that whenever he fires off a stray text, which in her case was only happening once or twice a year, but she was saying, like, even when this happens, how do I deal with the negative trigger and what it does to me emotionally? And I said, well, what a wonderful opportunity when this person's name pops up to remind yourself of everything that you have in your life right now, everything you have done, everything you have achieved, all the ways you have grown, that would never have happened if this person hadn't hurt you. And that actually this text is just it has a direct link, direct thread to something amazing. To all of the things that hurt you then that led to all of these amazing things today. It's all part of the same story that has led to the growth that you're proud of.

So you're saying replace a negative trigger with a positive one.

Yeah, you can.

As in a negative thought with a positive yeah.

Like you don't even have to eliminate the trigger. Mm-. If you can turn the trigger into a trigger for all of these positive associations.

Yeah.

Because of course you can block that person. And I would argue that you should if that person won't listen to you, your requests to stop contacting you. You know, of course you can unfollow them on social media and make sure their stuff doesn't come up. And you should do all of that. You don't go out and stand in the thunder and lightning and cold just for the sake of it to play life on hard mode for yourself. If you have a nice warm house to go into, you should do that.

Yeah. Right.

Change their name to dung beetle.

Dung beetle. Okay. So not douchebag. We've evolved to dung beetle.

I'm still working on it.

Okay. Is this what you've been doing the whole time I've been talking? I'm just waiting for my moment. But there are some things that we don't have the power to eliminate as triggers. There are some things that will continue to be present because it's just life. We can't anticipate everything. But we can massively change the meaning of a trigger by actually connecting with all of the truths about what has come from that, what we're proud of, what parts of yourself wouldn't exist without the pain that this trigger is representative of. if you took away this trigger, you'd be taking away the entire thing.

Yeah, I know.

The whole story that led up to it, that led to your growth.

That's such a human way of thinking, I think, because, like, I'm really, I really like that you said that, because I think we do that with everything. We do it with comparison, don't we? Where we say, like, I wish I was like this person. I wish I had their life. I wish I had their body, I wish I had the whatever. And you don't take into consideration the fact that if you want that thing, you have to have all of it. If you want that person's life, you have to have everything that comes with that life and everything that comes with the way they are wired in order to have built that life. And like you, you never take that full picture into consideration. We think that we can pick and choose the best of things and the worst of things, but that's not real life. And I think when you come to that realization, that's also quite empowering because you realize that everything is interconnected.

You can't choose your growth without having the thing that was the catalyst for it.

Yeah. And I think that is so true. You know, when, when I look at, you know, my life and so many other peoples that I know who I've spoken to, you know, so much of the pain that they've gone through in their lives, whether it's heartbreak, whether it's you know, other pain in their life, just whatever it is, you know, in that most moments you go, oh my God, I just, I just like, I can't believe this has happened to me. I'll never recover from this. This is awful. And then you do look back on those things, whether it's five or ten years later, and you say, I'm so glad that happened. I think that is the case with pretty much everything in life, because as long as you can embrace it, lean into it, and learn from it, you actually always come out more peaceful, more conscious, and just a better equipped version of you. And it doesn't mean it doesn't leave scars, hence the triggers.

By the way, you don't even need to wait until the time where you have the treasure from that hard thing in order to actually look at that trigger with a sense of gratitude. and positivity. I write in the book for everyone who has the book, you'll know there's a chapter called Surviving a Breakup. And in...

The book Love Life.

The book Love Life.

Not the book. My book.

In Love Life, I talk about, I say a few years ago, I found myself in one of the most difficult chapters of my life. I was going through multiple losses all at the same time. any one of which had the potential to knock me on my ass on its own, but instead all landed together like a tsunami in my life. My life at the time seemed to be a cockpit where every button around me was negative, but they all triggered some version of the same thought. Now, this was my trigger at the time. This was like a thought that I used to think that really triggered A lot of catastrophic thinking and pain. The thought was this: I wish this hadn't happened to me. I can't take how hard this is. Around that time, I called my boxing trainer, Martin Snow, and expressed this sentiment to him. He didn't miss a beat. In his perfect gravelly voice, thick with Brooklyn from another era, he said, it has to be this hard. If it wasn't, there would be nothing heroic about getting through it. You have to go through this or you won't be able to show other people how to get back on their feet later on when they need it. People are going to need the version of you who gets through this. Keep going, kid. We've got fucking work to do. And I remember at the time That became this new idea, this new thought that got attached to the trigger. So anytime I thought to myself, I wish this hadn't happened to me. I can't take how hard this is, I would suddenly have Martin in my head saying, It has to be this hard. because if it wasn't this hard, you wouldn't develop the strength and the ability to get through it that everyone else is going to need from you later on.

Yeah.

You know, in my case, that was a really a powerful idea because I was like, oh, I am out there helping people. And if this was easy, what would I be able to help people? How would that help other people? If I came back from an easy thing and said, Hey, let me tell you how I got through this easy thing, there would be no value in that. But there's something about going to hell and back and surviving and living to tell the tale that meant I thought, oh my God, I have so much to give from that place. And I hadn't even got through it yet. For me, I then started to think, Oh, weirdly, the harder this is, the better.

The stronger I'll be in the future.

Like, the harder this is, the more I'm gonna have to dig deep for the hero, and the more I'm gonna be able to give at the end of it.

That's such a you way of thinking, which I love.

Well, it worked for me. That's the point. When we change these things, they don't have to work for anyone else.

No, but I think the principle, the model, will work forever.

The model will work for everyone. The thought, no one needs to connect with the thing that Martin said to me. I mean, you might be listening to this going, oh my God, that was exactly what I needed to hear right now. But that doesn't have to be the thought that changes your trigger. The point is that when you have a negative trigger, it feels like negative triggers are always bad. But actually, you can use them to your advantage. by leveraging all of the good that either has already come from that thing that you're taking for granted when you get frustrated or upset by this trigger. So if you had a breakup three years ago and you get re-triggered and it makes you miss that person or it makes you hurt, go make a list of everything you've done in these three years that you would never have done if that breakup hadn't happened. Go connect with every way you've grown that you wouldn't have grown had that breakup never happened. And if you're not at that stage, if you're at the point of a breakup where all the growth is ahead of you, not behind you, then when the trigger comes up, when you get upset, find a way to connect. to what is going to come from this. Because what's going to come from this is amazing and profound and beautiful. And if you can connect with that, then all of a sudden, like me in that situation, I started thinking the worst part about this is how hard it is. That was how I started. And I grew to the point because of Martin, where I thought the best thing about this is how hard it is. Like that's actually where the treasure is, is in how hard this is. And that changed it for me.

There's also something else that I think is really, really practical and useful.

That.

You actually said once and it has always stuck with me. And I use it actually, I would say I use it at least monthly when I'm struggling with something. is don't follow your thoughts. So a lot of the time when it comes to our exes, we ruminate and we're not actually doing productive thinking and healing. It's just rumination. They text. We go, oh, my God, look how, you know, great they look together. And this. I'm so alone and this sucks. And, like, I'm a piece of. and actually, I could have held on to this person had I not been such a piece of f***ing s*** excuse my language, but this is what we think, right? And I'm worthless, I'm never going to meet anybody, oh my God. And we go into this very negative, like rumination of the negative emotion, and that's not really productive, that's not a different way of thinking about it, it's not a new way of thinking about it that's helping you. And you once said, you know, something that's really, really good to do is to just, before it happens, and this requires a level of consciousness and awareness, of your own thinking. If you can do it, it's very powerful. Before you're even kind of held captive by that thought, you stop yourself and you go, I'm not going there. I'm not following that thought. I'm scrolling past. I'm thinking about something else. I'm gonna text a friend telling them I love them. I'm gonna, I don't know, go for a walk. I'm gonna call my mom. I'm gonna do whatever, just something. Pet my dog. I don't care. anything that means that I don't go down this very, very kind of familiar and quite frankly, you know, painful way of thinking that I'm addicted to because I'm so used to thinking in that way. And in the beginning, you don't do it because it's really, really hard to do. So you struggle. And then, you know, you might do it one time out of 50, and then you might do it two times out of 50. And then before you know it, it's five times out of 50. And that's quite significant. And then you can do it 10 times out of 50. Oh, my God. suddenly you're literally doing it 20% of the time. And the more strict you are with yourself, the more regimented you are with this, the more you're actually able to stop yourself from thinking that way and actually just creating enough space between the thought and the reaction that you can catch it and not indulge it unnecessarily. And I think that's a very, very useful and very practical thing for anyone who is in that place right now and who feels himself getting triggered by something, it can kind of be anything as well. It doesn't actually have to be your ex. It can be anything in life. Just not following the thought.

You know, if the question that you wanted to write to us was, how do I get over my ex? I can't seem to get over my ex. I think there are three answers that have come out of today's episode for that. The first is to not actually tell yourself a catastrophic story about how you can't get over your ex just because you've been triggered in the moment. That actually, if you look at it, I bet you despite this moment where you've been triggered, you have made massive progress. You go much longer periods of time without thinking about them than you used to. And there are many new aspects of your life, many new stories in your life that have started to take the place that your ex once occupied. That someone came back into your head, or you saw a picture of them, or they texted you and you got triggered. does not change any of that. So just because you're missing them is suddenly at level nine in this hour, it doesn't mean you should forget all the times where it was a three in the three months before that. It doesn't mean you're not over your ex because there's no binary nature to this where you're suddenly over them. It's all a gradient and you're making progress all the time. So celebrate the progress. Don't create a story of I'm still not over them. I must be doing something wrong. The second is when the trigger happens, remind yourself that you can actually turn that trigger into something very positive if you decide to connect to all of the good that has come from the pain that that person has caused you, from the relationship that wasn't from that heartbreak, there is much treasure, many flowers that have bloomed as a result of that pain. Connect with that. And by the way, if you're earlier in the process, connect with all of the things that are going to happen as a result of this pain. And you can choose that, by the way, you can literally choose. I'm going to make all of these wonderful things happen in my life from this pain and Know that they were things, decisions you never would have made, things you never would have done if you weren't in that pain. So change the trigger, which doesn't mean it doesn't have to not hurt. I'm not even saying it doesn't have to not hurt. I'm saying you can literally take the hurt that it makes you feel and let the hurt be a reminder of all of the amazing things. that have come from this or will come from this. And that ironically will actually start to lessen the hurt that that trigger makes you feel because it will have a different color to it. And the last thing that you said, Audrey, was don't follow the thought. You don't have to go where the thought is trying to take you. You can say, no, I'm not going to go there with you. Before we go, I wanted to let everyone know there are only 35 spaces left on our retreat program this September from the 9th to the 15th in Florida. It's going to be an amazing time. We normally have more spaces by this point. We don't this year. I think with the new book coming out, a lot of people have found out about the retreat that didn't know about it before, and there's been a lot of demand. So if you do want to come and join us, we are down to the last few places now. Don't sleep on it. I don't want you to miss it. There's only so much space in the room. So go to mHretreat.com to go and find out more. And I hope to see you there in Florida. And also, I should tell you we have a brand new free guide out called Spark and Connect and you will find it@whattosaynext.com this is a brand new free guide where we give you nine different ways to spark up a conversation with someone You see out there, you know, you're in your coffee shop, you see someone you like, you want to know how to connect with them, how to say something instead of doing nothing. And you're sick and tired of having to rely just on dating apps to meet people. You want to actually be able to spark up a conversation, a connection with someone anywhere, anytime. This is for women, this is for guys, this will help everybody. So check it out, whattosaynext.com is the link for that new free guide. And thank you, as always, for checking out the Love Life Podcast. We will see you in the next one. Be well and love life.