Dumped? Ghosted? How to move forward

Everything is Perception

Are you choosing thoughts and perceptions that are hurting you? Or helping you? Are they moving you closer to your heart’s desires, or father away?

Do negative experiences in dating take you out? Are you hung up on that guy it didn’t work out with? Are you feeling overwhelmed, defeated, and frustrated? Is your mind feeling more like a minefield?

You’re not alone, read on.

Because of the power of neuroplasticity, you can, in fact, reframe your world and rewire your brain so that you are more objective. You have the power to see things as they are so that you can respond thoughtfully, deliberately, and effectively to everything you experience. — Elizabeth Thornton

We all have habits of thought. Agreements we have made with ourselves. Human beings are meaning making machines: we make meanings out of everything. Events happen. They are neutral. Then our mind creates a story around it, giving it meaning. We make the event mean something about ourselves. Not only that, we also have a tendency to automatically, and even subconsciously, choose negative meanings. These are often associated with beliefs created in childhood. When we were very little, we were doing our best to understand a very confusing world. With limited knowledge, and usually little to zero control or autonomy, we made decisions about what events meant. The decisions become beliefs about the world, and get solidified into our subconscious, only to resurface in our adult life as a critical inner voice.

Some women share with us that they feel hopeless about their dating lives, and finding their one, and yet at the same time, they have negative thoughts and judgements around enlisting help or getting coaching.

“What’s so wrong with me that I need help with this? Why can’t I be like ____ or ____ who just have it so easy?”

Thoughts like this come from our ego, which is designed to keep you safe from perceived dangers. With limited resources (emotional, psychological) as a child, putting yourself out there and then being rejected can be too much to bear — so we make an agreement with ourselves to never put ourselves out there.

As an adult, you have WAY more resources to deal with rejection than you did as a child. If this belief is left unconfronted, then you will be a prisoner to a past reality that is no longer true.

I’d like to offer a reframe on requesting and accepting help. What if…instead of it being so bad… instead you could be proud of yourself? You are brave. You are smart to enlist help. You are courageous to be doing the deep work. You are strong for choosing to face all this. You are on the right path.

How to Deal with the Pain of Rejection

The Manfunnel Vault helps us to smooth out and choose meanings that will help us move forward. Within our culture, we have a term called “Nexting,” which means quickly moving onto Mr. Next.

“Nexting” is not about being flippant or shallow.

It’s about boldy moving forward and not being taken out by the guys that didn’t stick. Not making it mean so many bad things about yourself. Future you, the one with the guy who really was chosen from a great place, the guy who really wanted to be with you, on your terms, is going to feel so happy about the ones that didn’t stick.

Sometimes things just don’t work out between two people and it doesn’t mean that anyone has to be made “wrong” or bad, or stupid.

I can’t reiterate enough that a man and his good qualities are meaningless to us unless he wants what you want, on your timeline, and with you. And him “not wanting it with you” doesn’t need to mean anything bad about you at all. You are a lovable, bright, beautiful woman. You are determined, and strong, and fun.

If you can’t move past a certain guy, being ghosted, or rejected in general, and you find you have a lot of heavy and dark thoughts around it… it may be less about the guy than you think..

Rumination is when you can’t stop thinking about a guy, what could have been, should have been if only things were different. You find yourself playing past events in your head and wishing you had done things differently. It can be accompanied by feelings of regret, guilt, and shame, along with harsh self judgements. I’d like to invite the idea that it isn’t always so much about this guy, as it could be a bit of an emotional addiction to these terrible feelings. I say this with so much love. This was one of the most honest places I had to look in my own journey of personal growth. This is something I discuss and explore further with my private clients. I realized one day that it wasn’t about the guy, it wasn’t about the weight, it wasn’t about my bank account — these were simply external “stories” and things to “point to” that my internal, deep shame was attaching itself to. The shame voice was so strong it controlled my inner narrative around how I perceived events. Events and circumstances became weaponized in my head as I used it to create really mean meanings about myself, or others. A guy not calling me back and ghosting would ignite a terrible list in my head about everything that was wrong with me.

When we perceive we made a mistake in dating or relationships, to review and think about it a few times makes sense. This is productive. Within an objective context, it is brave to look at what happened, to acknowledge and take personal responsibility for your contribution. Possible mistakes in dating could be things like assumed exclusivity, or over investing your heart before knowing for sure this man wanted the relationship you want, etc..

The purpose of personal responsibility is to take one good look, learn (learn not self harm) and move on.

I feel like the reason this feels so bad for some of us is that we are going through our perceived mistakes, and what could have/would have/should have been over and over in our heads and placing unjust amounts of blame on ourselves.

We can look at these things and feel bad once. If you continue to revisit it over and over it’s like scraping at a scar, it can not heal..

When you notice your thoughts probing to rumination, I need you to get in the driver’s seat, rise above it, give yourself a self hug and firmly move your attention elsewhere.

Action Step:

Invest time in your success by gathering resources that will help support you in relating to your thoughts and emotions. I use this as a pattern to interrupt and train my brain to go elsewhere (let’s leverage neuroplasticity, shall we ladies?).

“A person with a growth mindset believes that he or she can get smarter, better, or more skilled at something through sustained effort — which is exactly what neuroplasticity tells us.” — Courtney E. Ackerman, MSc.,Positive Psychology

Examples:

• On your phone, create a note that includes quotes that inspire you, mantras that move you, and links to youtube videos that ground you, and helpful articles like this one of rumination. That way, you always have it with you!
• Invest in audiobooks that uplight you like Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
• Invest in books to soothe your psyche, and empower your mind.

One of my absolute favorite books, which I recommend to all my private clients is The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book), by Don Miguel Ruiz. The following is a passage from his book that I find particularity powerful:

“The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind. Without question, whatever is in that Book of Law, is our truth. We base all of our judgments according to the Book of Law, even if these judgments go against our own inner nature. Even moral laws like the Ten Commandments are programmed into our mind in the process of domestication. One by one, all these agreements go into the Book of Law, and these agreements rule our dream.

There is something in our minds that judges everybody and everything, including the weather, the dog, the cat — everything. The inner Judge uses what is in our Book of Law to judge everything we do and don’t do, everything we think and don’t think, and everything we feel and don’t feel. Everything lives under the tyranny of this Judge. Every time we do something that goes against the Book of Law, the Judge says we are guilty, we need to be punished, we should be ashamed. This happens many times a day, day after day, for all the years of our lives.

There is another part of us that receives the judgments, and this part is called the Victim. The Victim carries the blame, the guilt, and the shame. It is the part of us that says, “Poor me, I’m not good enough, I’m not intelligent enough, I’m not attractive enough, I’m not worthy of love, poor me.” The big Judge agrees and says, “Yes, you are not good enough.” And this is all based on a belief system that we never chose to believe. These beliefs are so strong, that even years later when we are exposed to new concepts and try to make our own decisions, we find that these beliefs still control our lives.

Whatever goes against the Book of Law will make you feel a funny sensation in your solar plexus, and it’s called fear. Breaking the rules in the Book of Law opens your emotional wounds, and your reaction is to create emotional poison. Because everything that is in the Book of Law has to be true, anything that challenges what you believe is going to make you feel unsafe. Even if the Book of Law is wrong, it makes you feel safe.

That is why we need a great deal of courage to challenge our own beliefs. Because even if we know we didn’t choose all these beliefs, it is also true that we agreed to all of them. The agreement is so strong that even if we understand the concept of it not being true, we feel the blame, the guilt, and the shame that occur if we go against these rules.

Just as the government has a book of laws that rule the society’s dream, our belief system is the Book of Laws that rules our personal dream. All these laws exist in our mind, we believe them, and the Judge inside us bases everything on these rules. The Judge decrees, and the Victim suffers the guilt and punishment. But who says there is justice in this dream? True justice is paying only once for each mistake. True injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.

How many times do we pay for one mistake? The answer is thousands of times. The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justice exists, then that was enough; we don’t need to do it again. But every time we remember, we judge ourselves again, we are guilty again, and we punish ourselves again, and again, and again. If we have a wife or husband he or she also reminds us of the mistake, so we can judge ourselves again, punish ourselves again, and find ourselves guilty again. Is this fair?” – Don Miguel Ruiz

Sometimes our mind is a minefield, and love, dating and relationships are the quickest things to set us off. Often these mines are hidden and in your blindspots. One of the most self-loving things you can do for yourself is to get a guide, you don’t have to go at it alone.

🖤 We love you and are rooting for you