Can hypnotherapy heal a broken heart? How to get over an ex this breakup season

“Reprogramme the mind” in order to reduce the time frame of getting over an ex
Shutterstock / Dean Drobot

January has been (tastelessly) rechristened “Divorce Day” by legal eagles who swoop on a flurry of business as struggling relationships that made it through Christmas finally self-combust.

The rosy news is that there’s nothing here that can’t be fixed. “Break-ups are much harder now, largely due to the instant and uninterrupted access to the other person on social media,” says Malminder Gill, an award-winning Harley Street clinical hypnotherapist who specialises in splits. “It keeps the other person ‘alive’ and people can become addicted to ‘spying’ on their ex, such as deleting and re-adding them.”

Gill attests to using neurolinguistic programming techniques to “reprogramme the mind” in order to reduce the time frame of getting over an ex: practising “love hypnotherapy”, or “10 steps to overcoming a break-up in 10 days”. Days one to two are prescribed “me time”, which entails “changing your social plans, taking a break from work if possible and disconnecting from social media”.

Day three is set aside for “getting angry, by writing down in detail all the cons of the relationship”. Days four to five are all about facing reality. “I recommend repeating the story of your break-up aloud over and over again, at least 10 times,” says Gill.

Days six and seven require listening back to voice recordings made during your “angry” stage to encourage a change in perspective — by day eight, Gill says you should have reached a state of acceptance.

Days nine and 10 are allotted to moving on, to writing “four detailed paragraphs about what you would like in a future partner”.

Meanwhile, Project Love, a fortnightly podcast and workshop run by Selina Barker and Vicki Burtt, has the avowed intention of reimagining the preconception that we need a partner to feel loved. “You can turn on your inner romantic and give yourself that experience of feeling ‘in love’ regardless of your relationship status,” says Barker (their course, Get Ready for Love, Barker says, is intended for single women who want to find love). Burtt practices Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), a Sino-Western mix of the Chinese meridian energy system and modern talk therapy. It combines talking about a specific issue or emotion and tapping with the fingertips on key points on the body’s meridians to rebalance energy — “a technique that anyone can learn”.

Spring may seem ages away but persist: on March 16, Alain de Botton’s School of Life hosts Learning to Love, a one-day festival of “consoling lectures” and interactive games.

“When our hearts are broken — when someone we love has left us, or betrayed our relationship, or rejected our overtures in favour of those of another — it’s natural for us to pin the blame on ourselves,” says The School of Life. “Yet this is to overlook a fundamental truth of existence: the impossibility of ever truly knowing another person. The only perspective we will ever really understand is our own.”

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