How to Get Over Someone Fast (Psychology Tricks)

Man, let's just cut to the chase. Getting over someone is the absolute worst. It feels like a unique and special kind of torture designed just for you, right? Whether you're nursing a broken heart after a five-year relationship that ended over a text in some Brooklyn coffee shop, or you're reeling from a situationship that never quite materialized despite all those late-night drives through the Hollywood Hills, the pain is just... visceral. It’s all-consuming. It tricks your brain into believing, with every fiber of your being, that you'll never feel okay again. You’ll scroll through TikTok and see all these “get over your ex fast!” videos and just want to throw your phone across the room. Because it doesn’t feel fast. It feels endless.

But here is a small secret that psychology does not always shout from the roofs: disgust is not a sentence of life imprisonment. It is a wound. A really, very deep, for sure. And, like any serious wound, it needs specific and intentional care to cure correctly, but maybe even a little faster than if you just let it be infected. Now, when I say "fast", I have to be real with you. It’s a relative term. It's not about erasing the memory of someone in 24 hours that's not healthy or even possible, and anyone who tells you that is selling something. It's about accelerating the natural healing process. It’s about moving through those awful stages of grief with some kind of intention instead of just getting stuck in them for months on end, you know? It’s about reclaiming your sense of self on your own darn timeline.

This isn't about magical thinking or manifesting them away.
It is about applying some psychological principles proven to one of the most universal pains of life. So get a coffee, or perhaps a glass of water, because you probably don't have enough hydroo and let's dive into real, brave and really effective ways to overcome someone forever.

The psychology of the whole mess: why it hurts so much

First things first, you gotta understand your enemy. And I don’t mean your ex. I mean the feeling itself. Heartbreak isn't just in your head; it's a full-body experience that’s honestly kind of rude. Neuroscience shows that the brain processes the emotional pain from a breakup in a scarily similar way to physical pain. I’m not kidding. The same freaking regions light up on an fMRI scan when you experience that gut-wrenching social rejection as when you, say, slam your finger in a car door. Your body is literally telling you, "This is a threat. This is a threat to your survival." It’s going into full-on panic mode.

This is evolutionary, of all things. For our ancient ancestors, being ostracized from the tribe or your small group was basically a death sentence. We are hardwired for connection. It’s in our DNA. So when a primary attachment figure a romantic partner with which you may have seen a future is suddenly torn, it triggers this primary and primitive alarm system. This explains the crazy anxiety, the obsessive mind that you cannot shake, the literal physical ache that you're feeling right inside the middle of the chest. You are going thru a shape of withdrawal, not unlike a drug addict. Seriously.

When you are in love, your brain is basically a pharmacy that is flooding all welfare chemicals: dopamine (this feeling of reward), oxytocin (the hormone of the binding hug) and serotonin (which keeps your mood stable). The breakup suddenly cuts off the supply. Cold turkey. Your brain, craving its fix, starts screaming at you to go back to the source to call them, to stalk their Instagram for the hundredth time today, to maybe even drive by their apartment in Chicago's Wrigleyville just to see if their lights are on. It’s not you being crazy; it’s your biology working against you. This is the addiction model of love, and it's the biggest reason why going "no contact" is the absolute, non-negotiable, first and most important step to getting over someone fast. You can't quit drinking if you're still taking little shots every night. You just can’t.

The Non-Negotiable Foundation: The "No Contact" Rule (And I Mean It)

This is the cornerstone. You cannot, I repeat, cannot, heal while you are still picking at the scab. It’s impossible. No contact means exactly that. No exceptions for their birthday. No exceptions because you “left a sweater there.” Nope.

• No texting. Not even a "hey." Not a meme. Not a "saw this and thought of you." Nothing.

• No calling. Let it go to voicemail. Delete their number if you have to. Seriously, just do it.

• No social media stalking. This is the hardest one for, like, everyone. You have to mute, unfollow, or even block them. Yes, it feels dramatic and petty. Do it anyway. It’s not for them, it’s for you. Seeing them post a picture at a concert in Austin with a new group of friends, or some vague quote that might be about you, will set your recovery back weeks. It’s just not worth it.

• No asking mutual friends for "updates." This is a sneaky one. You tell your friends, politely but firmly, "Listen, I love you, but I don't want to hear anything about them. If they’re dating someone new, if they got a new job, I don’t want to know. Please." A good friend will respect this.

Why it works (The Psychology): Every single time you contact them or secretly check their profile, you get a tiny, little hit of dopamine a small reward that reinforces the whole addictive cycle. You're also preventing your brain from actually acclimating to their absence. It’s like your brain keeps thinking they’re just in the other room. No contact forces your nervous system to recognize the new reality. It’s like a detox. The first few days are hell, I won’t lie. But after a week, it gets a tiny bit easier. Then a tiny bit more.

Real-World USA Example: Let’s talk about Sarah. Sarah lives in Seattle, works in technology. She and the groom broke the engagement two months ago. It was messy. She's miserable but can't stop this compulsive checking. She’s checking his Venmo to see if he's paying for dinners with other women (why is Venmo public anyway?!). She’s analyzing his Spotify to see if he made a "breakup playlist." This constant digital breadcrumb trail is like pouring alcohol on an open wound every single hour. She’s not healing; she’s just constantly re-injuring herself, keeping the wound wide open. The day she finally commits to a full 30 days of no contact deleting his number, archiving old chats, muting his socials, the whole nine yards is the day her healing truly, actually begins. It’s the first day of the rest of her life, cliché as that sounds.

Rewire Your Brain: The Practice of Cognitive Defusion (Fancy Term, Simple Idea)

Your mind after a breakup is a brutal, mean place. It’s like a broken record player of pain. It bombards you with the same painful thoughts on a loop: "I'll never find anyone else." "It was all my fault." "They were the one." "Look at them moving on already; they never cared." It’s exhausting. Psychology offers a powerful trick from something called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to deal with this. It’s called cognitive defusion. It sounds complicated, but it is not.

The goal is not to interrupt thoughts this is literally impossible. If I tell you not to think of a pink elephant, what's is in your mind? A pink elephant. Right? The goal is to change your relationship with the thoughts. Instead of seeing them as absolute, devastating truths, you learn to see them as just... words. Just sentences passing through your mind. They don’t have to define you.

How to actually do it:

• Label the thought. When the thought arises, "I am demovable," take a break for half a second and say, "Ah, I'm having the thought that I am unpleasant." See the difference? Creates distance. It's not "I'm unpleasant," it's "I'm thinking I'm unpleasant."

• Sing it. This is my favorite. Sing this terrible thought in the song of "Happy Birthday" or Barney's music ("I love you, you love me ..."). I know it looks ridiculous. This is the point! He completely steals the thought of his power and reveals his absurdity. You cannot take a serious thought when you are sung to a nursery rhyme.

• Thank your mind. Thank your mind. It sounds totally strange, but it works. When the thought comes, say, "Thank you, mind, for this super useful thinking about me dying alone. Thank you you try to protect me from the future hurt, but I don't need it now." It takes the fight out of it. You’re not battling yourself anymore.

Real-World USA Example: Meet Mark. Mark is a lawyer in Miami. His girlfriend of three years left him, said she needed to "find herself." His mind constantly loops the greatest hits: "You work too much; you drove her away. You're a failure at relationships. You’re married to your job." It’s killing his confidence. He starts practicing defusion. One morning, while he’s running on the path at South Beach, the thought arises, loud and clear: "You're a failure." Instead of sinking into it and having his whole run ruined, he just says to himself, "There's the 'you're a failure' story again. Hello, story. I see you." He doesn't fight it. He doesn't argue with it. He just feels its presence and lets it pass by like a cloud. Over the time, the thought starts to lose its emotional charge. It becomes background noise instead of a central, defining truth that runs his life.

Become the Author of Your Story: Rewrite Your Narrative

We are all storytelling machines. It’s how we make sense of the world. After a breakup, we inevitably create a story about the relationship. And often, it's a tragedy where we're either the victim ("They did this to me!") or the villain ("I ruined everything!"). To get over someone fast, you need to consciously take the pen away from your emotional brain and edit that story yourself.

Psychology research is super clear on this: simply writing about a traumatic event can significantly improve health and well-being. But not just any kind of angsty journaling specific, structured writing.

The Exercise (Grab a notebook for this one):

1. Write the "Sour" Story: First, I want you to write down everything that was wrong with the relationship, the person, and the breakup. And I mean everything. Be petty. Be brutally honest. This is for your eyes only. Did they always leave their dirty socks all over your Atlanta apartment? Write it down. Did they never, ever remember your best friend's name, even after two years? Write it down. Were they emotionally unavailable whenever you really needed them? Jot it down. List all the annoyances, all the red flag you ignored, every moment harmful, every time you felt small. This is not to create hatred or bitterness; It is to balance the scale. Your brain, on the withdrawal, is just highlighting the perfect, beautiful and sunny moments. You must force it to remember the reality. Keep this list on your phone. Read it when you feel the urge to romanticize the past and text them.

2. Find the Silver Linings (This is called Post-Traumatic Growth): Now, after you’ve gotten the sour out, it’s time to write a new story. This is the most important part. How did this relationship help you grow? What have you learned about your needs, your boundaries, your not negotiable? You may have learned that you are much stronger and more resilient than you have ever thought to be possible. You may have discovered a love for hiking because of them, and this is a hobby that you will keep for yourself, by your own joy. Fits the end of the relationship not as a catastrophic failure, but as a necessary step that has approached the right person who is really his future, wiser and more amazing future.

Real-World USA Example: Chloe, a fifth grade teacher in Denver, was absolutely devastated when her long -term boyfriend deceived her. Her story was entirely, "I wasn't enough. I wasn't pretty enough, fun enough, something." She was drowning in it. She finally did this narrative exercise. Her "sour" list was long. This included his constant and subtle criticism of his teacher career ("you could make a lot more money in corporate training"), your lack of reliability and the feeling that she ignored for months. Writing everything was painful but cathartic. Then she worked in her story "Silver Lining". It became: "This relationship taught me never to ignore my intuition again. It taught me that I need a partner who respects my passion for teaching, not someone who tries to diminish him. He freed me to find someone who really values ​​me to whom I am." It actively reformulated the story of a loss and inadequacy for a liberation and self -discovery.

Reclaim Your Identity: The "Self-Expansion" Model

Here’s a cool psychological theory. A great relationship involves what researchers call "self-expansion"—your partner introduces you to new ideas, activities, friends, and ways of being. They literally expand your sense of self. When they leave, it seems that a part of you is missing. That excavated feeling? That’s because a source of your self-expansion is gone. Did you lose your identity in the relationship? Maybe you were "Mark's boyfriend" or "Jessica's fiancé" for so long, you forgot who you were before you ever even met them.

The fastest way to counter this is to generate self-expansion on your own. You have to become your own source of growth.

How to do it:

• Revisit old passions. Did you play guitar in a college band back in Ohio? Pick it back up. Blow the dust off the case. Did you love painting before you met them? Go to a Michaels, buy a canvas and some cheap acrylics, and just make a mess. It doesn’t have to be good.

• Try something utterly new. This is critical. Sign up for something you've never done before that your ex had zero part in. This creates brand new neural pathways and memories that are 100% yours. There’s no trace of them here. Take a pottery class in Portland, learn how to sail on San Diego Bay, volunteer at an animal shelter in Nashville, train for a 5K in Boston with a Couch-to-5K app.

• Curate your own life. This is a powerful one. Make a playlist of music they hated but you secretly love. Decorate your apartment exactly how you want, whether it’s that weird poster they thought was ugly or a plant in that corner they said got no light. Cook the spicy food they couldn't handle. These are small acts of reclaiming your space and your preferences. They add up.

Real-World USA Example: After his divorce, David in Phoenix realized his entire social life had revolved around his wife's friends and family. All your weekend calendar was built around your plans. He felt isolated, empty and as if he no longer knew who he was. He knew he had to do something. He forced himself to join a local walking group he found at Meetup. The first walk was strange. He made small talk, felt a bit out of place. But he kept going. He started having brunch with the group after hikes, then attending trivia nights at a local brewery. He wasn't just making new friends; he was actively building a new identity. He was becoming "David, the hiker," "David, the trivia guy," not "David, the divorced guy." The new experiences and new social connections diluted the old memories, making them less potent and less central to his identity.

Master Your Environment: Situational Control is Key

Your environment is filled with invisible landmines. Triggers are everywhere: that little Italian restaurant where you had your first date in Philadelphia, the scent of their cologne on a stranger on the subway, the Netflix show you binge-watched together every Sunday. Psychology tells us that willpower is a limited resource. It gets used up. Do not trust it to take it during the day. Instead, use situational control to facilitate desired behavior (without thinking about them). You engineer your surroundings for success.

• Purge the physical reminders (but be strategic): Box up the photos, the love letters, the concert tickets, the hoodie they left at your place. You don't have to throw it all away forever (that can cause a panic response), but get it out of your immediate sight. Give the box to a trusted friend to hold for six months. Tell them not to give it back to you before then.

• Change your scenery: Rearrange your furniture. Paint a wall a new, bold color you love. It signals to your brain that a new chapter has literally begun. The old room is gone.

• Create new routines: If you always got coffee together on Saturday mornings, that time is now a danger zone. Make a firm plan to be somewhere else at that exact time. Go to a gym class, visit a museum, have breakfast with your sister. Do not leave a void where the old habit used to live. Nature abhors a vacuum, just like a sad brain.

The Body-Brain Connection: You Gotta Move

You cannot heal a psychological wound with thoughts alone. You have to involve your body. Anxiety and grief don’t just live in your mind; they live in your nervous system, they live in your shoulders, they live in your gut.

• Exercise is non-negotiable: It is the most potent, readily available medicine for a broken heart. It’s a miracle drug. It burns off the stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that are flooding your system and it releases endorphins, your body's natural painkillers and mood elevators. You don't have to train for a marathon. A 30-minute quick walk through your neighborhood in Houston with a podcast, a free Youtube yoga class in your living room, a weightlifting session at the Tudo Academy Account. Just move.

• Prioritize Sleep (I know, it's hard):Your emotional resilience is completely filmed when you are deprived of sleep. Everything seems a thousand times worse at 3 am. Create a strict sleep routine. Put your phone in another room an hour before bed. Read a boring book. Your brain processes and archives emotions during sleep; Give the chance to do your job correctly.

• Mindfulness and Breathing:When a wave of mourning hits you in the middle of work, you can't always run. This is where the breath of the box comes in. It's simple: inspire slowly on the nose for 4 counts, secure breathing for 4 counts, slowly expire through the mouth by 4 counts, hold the exhalation for 4 counts. Repeat. This physically activates his parasympathetic nervous system, the "rest and digest" system, telling his body that the "threat" is over and is safe to calm down. It’s a brake pedal for your anxiety.

The Social Safeguard: Leaning In (And Knowing What to Avoid)

Isolation is like jet fuel for heartbreak. You need your tribe, but you need to use them wisely. Not all help is helpful.

• Designate a "Breakup Buddy": Choose one or two truly empathetic, solid friends. Have a conversation. Tell them, "I need your help. I need to vent for like 15 minutes without any advice, can you just listen and say 'that sucks'?" This contains the rumination to a specific, limited time and place instead of letting it leak into every single conversation you have all day long.

Beware of "Co-Rumination":There is a big difference between venting and circulating the same drain with your friends. If your conversations are repeating the same painful points repeatedly, without any movement or perspective forward, you will be co-ruminating. This really increases depression and anxiety. It is like mutually safe misery. Set a timer. I wandered for 15 minutes and then consciously change anything a movie, a stupid thing that happened at work, anything.

• Seek Professional Support:Look for professional support: If you feel really stuck, unable to work, not eat, not sleep or sink into a deep and dark depression, there is no shame in seeing a therapist. In fact, it's the fastest and most intelligent thing you can do. A therapist provides tools, perspective, and a neutral space that a friend simply cannot. Platforms like BetterHelp and Talkspace make it accessible and pretty easy for anyone, anywhere in the USA.

The Final Word on "Fast"

Look, healing just isn't linear. Anyone who tells you it is is lying. You will have amazing days when you feel at the top of the world and have a bad day when a song will reach the radio in your car in Kansas City and you will have to stop and cry. All good. This is human. This is normal. "Fast" does not mean jumping the pain. It means going through it with purpose. This means using these psychological tricks as tools to navigate the maze rather than just hit the same walls for months or even years.

You loved it, you lost and hurt like hell. But this pain is actually evidence of its incredible ability to connect, and this ability is its greatest strength. That means you are alive. This means that you are able to feel deep feeling. Now, the most important relationship of your life awaits: what you have with yourself. Invest in it. Be kind about it. Nourish it. And trust me, on the other side of this pain is a version of you that is wiser, stronger, more interesting and more ready for a love that does not end, does not hurt and does not require you to get lost. You’ve got this.