How to stop obsessing about a guy(or girl)

Today I got an email from someone who wants to know how to stop obsessing about a guy who does not seem to want to have an actual relationship with her. He appears occasionally and sends mixed messages and wrecks her head. She would like to be able to get him out of her head, and move on.

Question: How do we get a person out of our mind? For example, a person that we are fixated on romantically and who is not good for us or not responding?

Angels Answer:

This is a very popular question! If we had a soul for every time we have been asked it! We apologise for the terrible joke. And of course we are delighted to assist with this question, as with all other questions!

To begin with, we would ask you who are struggling with this issue, (and not only in romantic situations, but also in other kinds of relationships) to begin by asking yourselves the question ‘What is it that I want from this person? What could this person potentially give me that would enhance my life?”

You will generally find that even in the case of abusive relationships there is some positive quality that this person has brought to your life in the past, even if it has been infrequent or only very seldom. There may be more than one positive quality. It might surprise you to ask this question. You may even find it difficult to answer. It is usually the case that this person makes you feel good about yourself or about your life in some way. We would ask you to play a little game with us now, if you do not mind humouring us. We would ask you to bring to mind an occasion, real or imagined, during which this person enhanced your life and made you feel good. You may wish to imagine the person in the room now, in front of you, as you do this exercise or you may wish to simply imagine the feeling.

Once you have accessed the good feeling (or one of the many good feelings) allow yourself to turn it up so that it is stronger. Feel it as much as you possibly can, as intensely and physically as you can. Now ask yourself a very important question. This question is crucial to the success or failure of this experiment. If you answer yes to it, we can help you. But we cannot, if you don’t. The question is simply this. ‘Am I willing to have this feeling come to me from another source? From another person, if necessary? Or even from many different sources?’

Obviously, it is not easy for you, at this point to imagine that another person could bring you this same feeling. If it were easy for you to do this, you would not obsess about the person, or pine for them. You would not have asked for our help. We do not ask that it be easy for you, at this moment. We merely ask that you be willing to allow it to happen, if together we can make it happen. And we ask that you consider the benefits of allowing this to happen. You may be worried that if you allow yourself to feel this good with somebody else you will ruin what you might have with the person that you are currently fixated on. And what if they come back to you? Or decide to fall in love with you? Then what?

If this does happen, we suggest that you will be in a better position than you are presently in. For you will be in a position to choose between the new and the old. You will not be dependent entirely on this absent person for your happiness. We are aware that this is a very easy statement to make, but that at the same time, it is not always the case that people truly want to be free of obsession and longing. Many of you are not truly comfortable unless you feel that there is a person or a desire that is beyond your reach. We cannot force you to be comfortable with letting go of longing. It is a choice that is yours and yours alone to make.

If you have made up your mind at this point that you are willing to be free to experience happiness with or without the person in question, we have good news for you. The next part is not necessarily easy, but it is within your power. The next time that you find yourself thinking of this person, simply remind yourself that your current association of the person and the good feeling that you crave is the result of a habit that you yourself have created in your own mind, in much the same way that people associate good feelings with alcohol, or drug-taking, or sweet foods or sex, or indeed the many, many other pursuits that bring pleasure. In short, you have temporarily become addicted to this person. But if you are absolutely determined to experience happiness without the addiction, then that is what can and will happen.

As we have said before and cannot re-iterate often enough, it is your choice to be free of longing for this person. If there is any doubt in your mind about letting go of them, if, for instance you would like to let go in theory, but a large part of you feels certain that this person is your soul mate and cannot be replaced, that they are destined to fall in love with you if you just hold out long enough, or if you have come up with any other reasons why you cannot or should not let go, then we cannot help you. The success or failure of your work here depends entirely on your willingness and your commitment to making it work. We can not decide for you whether it is best for you to let go, or best to hold out hope. In letting go, however it is important that you remember that you do not have to tell yourself that you will never be with this person. You simply have to want to be free to choose for yourself whether you want to be with them, or whether you want to pursue other options. It is the compulsion, the obsession that you wish to be free of, not the person themselves.

Because an obsessive thought is simply a thought that re-appears over and over again does not mean that it is a more powerful thought than one which you have occasionally. For example, the fact that you might think about chocolate more than you think about broccoli does not mean that the thought of chocolate is more powerful than the thought of broccoli. The power if a thought lies not in the thought but in the way that you respond to it. If you value mental and emotional freedom highly enough, the chances are that you have already begun to practice the art of choosing to focus on some thoughts more than you focus on other ones. For example, if you live in a country where the weather is unpleasant you have probably taught yourself to focus on aspects of your country that you do enjoy, rather than concentrating your energy on the weather, which you don’t.

Training your mind is as simple as choosing what to give your attention to and what not to. At first, it can seem very difficult to do this. And we suggest that at first, you practice by simply observing what it is that you are thinking about, rather than trying to change the thoughts. It may help you to write down your thoughts for a period of time, perhaps for a few minutes every day. In fact, for the homework for this experiment that is exactly what we would like you to do. To simply take a piece of paper and write down as many of the thoughts as you can catch, for ten minutes. After you have done this, we shall resume the lesson!