Welcome to Client Stories Series, where you can take a peek behind the curtain of dating and relationship coaching.
In this series of articles with accompanying video, I highlight the most powerful moments clients experience in coaching sessions with me. All stories are shared anonymously with complete client permission and privacy.
In this client story, you will hear about “Nancy.” I am working with Nancy to help her let go of a past relationship. We have been working on this for a few sessions, and she’s feeling much better about her breakup. She’s feeling lighter and happier.
But there’s still some sadness hanging around for her, a small part of her not being able to move on. And so during our last session, I decided to help her get completely free from her past relationship. But how does one do that? Is it so easy to set a person free from their past relationship? Actually, it is if you understand how the human mind works and how relationships are wired into it.
Watch this video and then read the article below to find out how I helped Nancy.
I will not go into specific details here. But I will tell you that in Nancy’s case, and in the case of every client who’s gone through a breakup and is working on letting go, here’s what I have found.
Relationships are held in place three ways:
- We keep thinking about the person
- The person reminds us of someone from the past, usually one of our parents, even if we don’t know it
- We believe we will never again meet someone like the person we have lost
This was true for Nancy. Although already having worked with me in a number of coaching sessions, she was not thinking about her past relationship so much. But when she thought about her ex, it still hurt a bit. And that’s what we fixed for her in this last session.
About 20 minutes into the coaching session, using various coaching techniques, I helped her see how much like her dad her ex-partner was. She had never realized this before.
She said, “You know, you hear this, that your partner is just like one of your parents, but you can’t necessarily see exactly how for yourself. I have never seen how he was just like my dad in so many important ways.”
Realizing this unhooked her immediately, because first of all, you don’t want to date your dad! And secondly, there were some very painful things that happened between her and her dad that were being duplicated in the relationship with this man, and she did not want these experiences.
But we were not done yet!
The last thing that was keeping her sad about her ex-relationship was the feeling that she would never again meet someone she liked as much.
And this is such a common feeling! After all, you meet someone, you fall in love, there are so many things you like about being with that person, it’s hard to imagine you could feel that way again with anyone. It’s hard to imagine you could have similar or even better experiences with anyone else.
But you can feel good about the possibility of meeting the right person for you and even meet that person! You can’t make it happen by somehow making yourself do it. But you can make it happen by experiencing a shift in perspective and thinking. And that’s what we did next for Nancy.
We had a conversation that unhooked her from thinking that she was never going to meet a man that was as good as her ex. After that conversation she felt much freer.
At the end of the coaching session, I asked Nancy to measure how sad she was about losing her ex, and she said not very sad at all. She told me the only remaining feeling was that she wanted him to be happy.
What will Nancy experience as a result of this session? I predict that she will feel emotionally free to start dating very soon. And that she will attract some pretty fabulous men who are an even better fit for her than her ex.
The moral of this client story is that thoughts and feelings about relationships, exes, yourself, are all changeable, if you know how to effectively change them.
And because, as you know, your life changes when you think and feel differently, once you shift your thoughts and feelings, you can begin to have very different dating and relationship experiences.
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If you want help changing your thoughts and feelings, or changing your dating or relationship experiences, work with me as your coach. Go here to find out more and register for the 30-minute Get Clarity Coaching Session.
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