5 Super Effective Ways To Stop Stalking Your Ex on Social Media Because It’s Really Bad For You
Did you know that stalking your ex on social media is the number one thing that will prevent you from getting over them?
Why? Because going ‘no contact ‘is the thing that we need to do to move on. Stalking does not lead to ‘no contact’.
In the old days, when we broke up with someone, life went on. Maybe we ran into them occasionally and we tried to get info from their friends about their new lives but, really, we had no idea what their lives post-us was like.
This lack of information helped us move on, to get over the pain and find new love again.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen anymore. When we break up, social media is something that we use, and use often, to check up on our exes.
We look online to see if they look happy. To see if they look like they are having fun without us. To see if they are with someone new. We just want a little taste of this person who we once loved.
But this is not ok. It only prevents us from moving forward.
To that end, here are 5 very effective ways to stop stalking your ex on social media so that you can actually recover from this break up and move on to find new love again!
#1 – Block them.
This is the most important and most obvious way to stop yourself from stalking your ex on social media.
I always advise my clients to cut off all communication with their ex. This means blocking their contact information and any connection they have on social media.
Why? Because every contact you have with an ex takes you back to day one of your healing process. Getting over a break up is a matter of time and the longer you aren’t in contact with them, the better it is.
But it’s hard to understand this when you are freshly broken up with and you want to do anything to ease the pain. Therefore, the desire to stalk them is almost irresistible.
And most of us have a difficult time resisting temptation.
So, I would encourage you to block your ex everywhere. To unfollow them on Insta, unfriend them on Facebook and do whatever you have to do to disconnect on TikTok and Twitter.
I know it’s hard to do – most of my clients just can’t, at least not right away. But, if you can dig deep and find the strength to cut them off, know that you are one big step closer to getting over the break up and moving on!
#2 – Limit your time online.
Do you look at your phone first thing when you get out of bed in the morning? Do you scroll during coffee? And then again when you are on the train? And then again at lunch, before you go to the gym, as you have a glass of wine at night, maybe even into the wee hours, not getting the sleep you need?
You are not alone. As we all know, most people are online for a significant part of the day.
I would encourage you, if you want to stop stalking your ex on social media, to stop being on your phone so much.
The first step to doing this is to stop picking up your phone first thing in the morning. When you do, you set off a dopamine rush in your brain, getting it primed for wanting more during the day. And so you will be on your phone constantly, feeding that need.
Instead of rolling over and picking up your phone, get out of bed and do something else.
Another way to limit time on your phone is to schedule other things to do instead.
Perhaps you get a good book to read on the train. Have lunch with a friend. Spend more time at the gym. Whatever you need to do to keep you away from your phone, focused on other things, not stalking your ex.
#3 – Find other topics to dig into.
If you can’t limit time on your phone, I would encourage you to find other topics than your ex to dig into. Other things that can release that dopamine without needing to get it from stalking your ex.
What interests you? Celebrity life? Reality TV? Cooking? Gardening? Search for interesting posts about these topics instead of your ex.
Even better, find something to dig into that you have never dug into before.
I know that, during a break up, I dug into traveling. I spent hours online looking at places I wanted to travel and figuring out how to get there. It was incredibly diverting and kept my mind off my ex.
Even better, my scrolling led me to trips to Peru, the Grand Canyon, Mexico, and beyond. I can promise you that those trips helped me get past my ex in a big way.
Of course, if you are on your phone it might be hard not to toggle away and look at what your ex is up to but, with the more diverting topic, hopefully that won’t be something you even think of doing.
#4 – Recognize how you feel when you see things.
I have a client who just can’t stop stalking her ex on social media. She spends hours each day, trying to trace his steps, to see what he has been doing, to gather every piece of information that she can about him.
She can’t help herself and it is making her miserable.
Why? Because every time she finds out something about him or sees a picture of him, it makes her feel pain.
She feels the pain of loss, of being left behind, of not being good enough, of being so pathetic that she is even stalking.
She stalks because she believes that it will help her ease her pain but it actually makes it worse.
I have an ex who I unfriended 6 years ago when we broke up. I almost never think of him. A few weeks back, a friend forwarded a photo of him and his new girlfriend, figuring that it wouldn’t bother me anymore.
Well, it did. The pain that I felt seeing that photo, even after 6 years and me being newly engaged, was horrible. I spent most of the day thinking about him and everything that went wrong in the relationship. It was not good.
So, how do you feel when you find some information about your ex on social media?
I am guessing not very good!
#5- Get yourself some digital help.
Sometimes we just have to fight technology with technology.
We so want to be able to control our behaviors but our phones and their apps are incredibly addicting. Staying away from them can be as hard as giving up ice cream or beer.
The easiest way to stay away from ice cream and beer is to not have access to them. So too, if you can’t stay away from it, not having access to your phone is key to doing so.
There are some apps that you can get, such as Bark and Freedom, that will help you block your apps for a period of time so that you don’t get lured by the call of your phone to stalk.
You can also get a phone safe where you can store your phone so it’s not easy to reach. Many of them have timers. You set how long you want your phone to be inaccessible and until the alarm goes off, you won’t be able to open the safe.
Again, we are super addicted to our phones and, ironically, as a result, technology is advancing that will help us break that addiction.
Find something that works for you because stalking your ex on social media is only holding you back from the happiness that you desire.
I hope that you now have a sense of what you can do to stop stalking your ex on social media.
I know that you are in an incredibly amount of pain right now and that the idea of not being able to see your ex is more than you can bear.
But I am also guessing that the pain that you feel when you see them might even be worse.
So, block your ex wherever you need to. Limit your time online but, if you can’t do that, find other topics that interest you. Fill your days with things to do that will keep your phone in your pocket. Use technology to help keep you from doing this thing that is only holding you back.
Most importantly, try to take stock of how seeing them on social media makes you feel. I am guessing you feel nothing but pain, maybe even worse pain than the break-up pain.
Hopefully, if you recognize that stalking only makes you feel worse, you will ultimately stop doing so!
I know this seems hard, but you can do it!
I know you can…
