Can’t Stop Thinking About Someone? Use This Psychology Hack to Break the Cycle
Getting over someone is hard — because, from the perspective of natural selection, it’s supposed to be. But there’s a trick that can speed up the process.
Can’t stop stalking their social media profile? Keep peeking at their old messages? And when your phone makes that little sound indicating you’ve got a new text, does your brain immediately suggest it might be them — even if you know it’s not?
If so: Don’t punish yourself. This is natural. We’ve all been here.
…But that doesn’t mean it’s desirable. So how do you break the cycle?
By understanding this one key principle of human psychology:
You cannot subtract.
You cannot “remove” a thought or “stop” a habit; you can only replace it with a new one.
Because of this, the fastest way to get over someone is to acquire a new addiction.
Sounds sketchy? Not necessarily.
Not all addictions are equally unhealthy. I am not, for example, advocating taking up substance use. Avoid chemical addictions — especially during this time.
But the truth is, you need something to give you the routine dopamine hits you used to get from this person. And if you can get that, you will retrain your brain to seek joy elsewhere — and finally be able to “give up the ghost.”
What healthy replacement addictions can you turn to?
In order to displace someone you’ve been addicted to, as far as your neurocircuitry is concerned, you will need an addiction that ideally provides two things:
- Positive rewards in response to your behavior
- Some social element
Your brain is wired for different types of addiction, and a relationship is a social addiction. It’s easiest to replace one addiction with another of the same type.
So… a rebound?
While this totally does satisfy the replacement criteria, it’s generally a bad idea. Why? It often leads to more mess and instability in the long run, because you are replacing a single source with another single source.
The better solution: a multiple-source social addiction.
What does this look like?
Here are just a few ideas: join a local sports club (I have a friend who has used pickleball). Join a gaming group — tabletop, boardgame, or videogame. Get on a new social media platform. Yes, you read that right: take up a new social media addiction BUT one where you create, instead of consume.
Get on Reddit and answer questions. Watch the upvotes pour in and feel the dopamine hit alongside the satisfaction of knowing you provided value to someone’s life.
Get on tiktok and make funny videos. Join a new Facebook group and contribute to the conversation. Start a book club. Get a group of buddies together to hit the gym and work towards new fitness goals. If you don’t like humans, commit to volunteering at the local animal shelter: animals are social contact too.
You get the formula: combine social stimulus with behavior-based rewards.
You may be thinking at this point: “Some of these are starting to not sound like addictions at all…”
When it comes to non-substance-based addictions, it’s all about proportion. Much of the same circuitry involved in loving relationships is also involved in unhealthy, “addictive” ones. You can trigger your social reward circuits to light up with healthy social stimulus.
And giving yourself that stimulus is one of the fastest ways to get your brain to disengage from the unhealthy stimulus — the person you currently can’t stop thinking about.