The Emotional Hangover After Situationships

Welcome back! It's time for this month's blog, a perfect time to enjoy with your morning coffee and delve into some self-awareness for the month.

This month I want to talk about something that I see more and more of, both online, in dating culture, and honestly, sitting across from people in my sessions.

Situationships.

And more specifically… the emotional hangover that comes after them.

Because what I’m noticing is that situationships seem to leave people carrying a very specific type of pain;

One that’s confusing.

One that people often invalidate.

And one that can leave people deeply emotionally dysregulated long after the “relationship” ends.

And I say “relationship” loosely because that’s often part of the problem.

It was never fully defined.

Never fully clear.

Never fully secure.

But it was enough.

Enough attention.

Enough intimacy.

Enough connection.

Enough hope.

Enough to create attachment (when you were being pursued)

And I think that’s why situationships hit people differently.

Because you’re not just grieving a person, you’re grieving the potential, the fantasy, the almost.

You’re grieving what could have been.

And when there’s no clear ending, no clear commitment, and no real closure… the nervous system struggles to process it.

It keeps searching for certainty.

Mixed Signals Are Still Signals

One thing I’ve really noticed in modern dating culture is how normalised emotional ambiguity has become.

People are:

“seeing where things go.”

“keeping things casual.”

“not wanting labels.”

“just vibing.”

And while that can absolutely work for some people, for many others what it actually creates is emotional confusion.

Because humans aren’t wired for inconsistency very well.

Especially if someone already has attachment wounds, abandonment wounds, or struggles with self-worth.

Situationships often create this cycle where someone gives you just enough to stay emotionally invested:

• enough affection

• enough chemistry

• enough intimacy

• enough reassurance

But never enough consistency to feel emotionally safe.

And that combination is incredibly addictive to the nervous system.

The Emotional Addiction To Uncertainty

This is the part people don’t talk about enough.

Inconsistency creates dopamine.

The unpredictability of:

“Will they text?”

“Do they like me?”

“Where is this going?”

“Why are they pulling away?”

keeps the nervous system hyper-focused on the connection.

And what often gets mistaken for deep love or intense chemistry is actually emotional activation.

Anxiety.

Hypervigilance.

Attachment.

Hope.

And unfortunately, the body can become addicted to that cycle.

Especially when the connection mirrors familiar emotional inconsistency from earlier life experiences.

The Hardest Part Is What It Makes You Question About Yourself

What I see hurting people the most after situationships isn’t always heartbreak.

It’s self-doubt.

It’s:

“Was I not enough?”

“Did I imagine the connection?”

“Why wasn’t I chosen?”

“Why did they act like that if they didn’t want something real?”

And people spiral trying to make sense of mixed signals.

But the truth is:

Clarity and consistency is emotional safety.

And confusion is often the closure.

Stop Romanticising Ambiguity

One thing I really want people to start understanding is this:

Ambiguity is not intimacy.

Someone having access to your body, your time, your energy, your emotions, while still remaining emotionally unavailable, is not depth.

It’s emotional convenience.

And I think social media and modern dating culture have normalised emotionally unavailable dynamics to the point where people think anxiety is chemistry and inconsistency is attraction.

But real intimacy?

Real connection?

Real emotional safety?

Feels clear.

Not confusing.

The Real Work

The real healing after situationships isn’t just “moving on.”

It’s understanding:

• why you tolerated uncertainty

• why inconsistency felt familiar

• why breadcrumbs felt emotionally significant

• why clarity felt “too much to ask for”

And this is where self-worth, boundaries, attachment patterns, and nervous system healing all come into play.

Because often the hardest part isn’t letting go of the person.

It’s letting go of the hope that eventually they’d become who you needed them to be.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve experienced the emotional hangover after a situationship, I want you to know this:

You’re not dramatic.

You’re not “too much.”

And you’re not crazy for struggling to process something that never had a clear shape to begin with.

Your nervous system attached to inconsistency and possibility.

But healing comes when you stop chasing clarity from emotionally unclear people… and start giving it to yourself.

And sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is stop trying to decode mixed signals and simply decide:

“I no longer want relationships that make me question myself.”

And honestly.....That’s where everything starts changing.

If this blog really struck a chord and you'd like to to work with me 1:1 or be added to the waitlist for my online course "Authentically You" send me a DM.

Phoebe X

The Missing Piece in Healing: Forgiveness

Welcome to another blog from A Centred Mind, lets jump straight in shall we...

When people begin their healing journey, they often turn to therapy, coaching, or other support systems to help them regulate emotions, rebuild relationships, and understand themselves more deeply.

All of this is incredibly valuable and very much part of the work I do.

But there is one piece that is almost always overlooked.

Forgiveness.

And not just as a concept, but as a practice.

In my experience, forgiveness is one of the most powerful and transformative tools in healing… yet it’s rarely explored deeply enough in traditional therapeutic spaces.

Why Forgiveness Is So Difficult

When I introduce forgiveness work to clients, it’s often met with resistance.

Apprehension.

Denial.

Even refusal.

Because when someone has experienced pain, betrayal, trauma, or loss — the idea of forgiving can feel like:

• letting someone “get away with it”

• invalidating your own experience

• or abandoning justice altogether

But this is where forgiveness is misunderstood.

Forgiveness Is Not What You Think

Let’s be clear:

Forgiveness is not forgetting.It is not excusing behaviour.It is not removing accountability.

Forgiveness is not about them.

It’s about you.

Because when you hold onto resentment, anger, betrayal, or pain - your body doesn’t forget.

Every time you revisit that memory, your nervous system responds as if it’s happening again.

Your body releases stress hormones.

Your system activates.

You relive the experience.

And over time, that emotional holding becomes physical.

The Cost of Not Letting Go

Think about someone or something you haven’t forgiven.

Notice what comes up.

Resentment.

Anger.

Pain.

Tension in your body.

Now imagine carrying that - not for days, but for years.

This is where we begin to see the real cost of unforgiveness.

As explored in The Body Keeps the Score, unresolved emotional pain doesn’t just stay in the mind, it lives in the body.

It shapes our health.

Our nervous system.

Our relationships.

And often, the person who hurt you isn’t even aware you’re still carrying it.

But you are.

And it’s costing you more than it’s costing them.

Two Types of Forgiveness

1. Inner Forgiveness

This is the first layer, and the most important.

Inner forgiveness is about letting go internally so your body and mind can stop reliving the pain.

It’s not about the other person.

It’s about:

• your health

• your nervous system

• your emotional freedom

This is where healing begins.

2. Outer Forgiveness

This is the external expression of forgiveness.

And this is where things get misunderstood.

Forgiving someone does not mean:

• reconnecting

• removing boundaries

• or allowing repeated behaviour

You can forgive someone…and still choose distance.and still set firm boundaries.and still say: that was not okay.

Forgiveness & Boundaries Can Coexist

One of the most important things I teach is this:

You can forgive and still protect yourself.

Forgiveness is letting go of the emotional hold.

Boundaries are how you honour yourself moving forward.

This might look like:

• limiting contact

• ending relationships

• setting clear expectations

• requiring behavioural change

Forgiveness doesn’t remove accountability.

It removes your attachment to the pain.

The Misuse of “Sorry”

In many relationships, especially families and couples, we see another layer:

People say “sorry”…but don’t change.

And over time, apologies lose meaning.

True repair requires:

• accountability

• behavioural change

• consistency

Forgiveness doesn’t mean tolerating repeated harm.

The Freedom on the Other Side

For those who have done forgiveness work, the shift is undeniable.

It is:

• liberating

• grounding

• empowering

• deeply healing

A sense of emotional freedom that’s hard to fully describe.

But it doesn’t happen overnight.

Forgiveness is a process.

It takes time.

It takes awareness.

It takes willingness.

Final Thoughts

Forgiveness is often the missing piece in healing.

And for many people, it becomes the final step that allows them to truly move forward.

From my own experience, and from working with so many others, forgiveness is no longer the last resort.

It’s the first place I now go when healing calls.

Because I understand this:

Holding on doesn’t protect you.It keeps you stuck.

Letting go doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.

It means you matter more.

If you’d like support with this work, you can reach out for one-on-one sessions, or join the waitlist for my upcoming course Authentically You where we explore these processes in depth.

Expression of Interest

Intimacy, Vulnerability, and Letting Yourself Be Seen

Deep intimacy requires honesty, and honesty requires you to stop hiding parts of yourself.For many, that feels uncomfortable. Even unsafe.

But if you’re ready to build connection from a place of truth rather than protection, this is where it begins.

Intimacy and vulnerability

For some people, just hearing those two words together is enough to make them want to run in the opposite direction. The idea of being truly seen by another person — of someone witnessing your real inner world, your truth, your fears, your history — can feel incredibly exposing.

Yet the reality is that when you spend enough time with someone in a relationship, eventually the real version of you will emerge. The question becomes: how comfortable are you with being seen, and how much were you masking or performing to win them over?

A lot of the work I do with clients begins with helping them build a strong sense of inner truth and self. That foundation comes from developing self-trust, self-awareness, self-respect and certainty. When these things grow and strengthen, something interesting happens. The vulnerable parts of ourselves become less terrifying to reveal.

Instead of feeling like exposure or torment, vulnerability can actually become freeing.

When you know who you are, intimacy becomes much easier to experience.

Into-you-I-see-me

The first time I heard intimacy described as “into-you-I-see-me,” something landed.

Because intimacy isn’t just about physical exposure.

Yes, being seen physically can feel vulnerable, even confronting.

But emotional intimacy is a different level entirely.

Because it asks you to reveal what you usually hide.

And that’s where most people pull back.

But to go one layer deeper, this concept signifies that by being with another, we see reflections of our own soul, truths, but also;

The shadow parts.

The imperfect parts.

The parts you may have been shamed for.

In relationship work, I often talk about the concept of our interpersonal relationships acting as mirrors, reflecting back aspects of ourselves we haven't fully accepted yet.

And that can be uncomfortable, it can be where we lash out, deflect, ignore and blame others to avoid feeling the shame that once came with owning that part of us.

Why vulnerability feels so scary

Many of us are deeply afraid of being fully known.

We worry that if someone truly sees our past, our wounds, or our mistakes, they might reject us. So instead we hide parts of our story, soften the truth, or avoid opening up altogether.

I remember experiencing this while navigating one of the biggest betrayals to date..

During this time I had become newly single and started dating and feeling completely conflicted about sharing what I was going through. My life felt like it was falling apart internally, yet the thought of revealing that vulnerability to someone I was seeing felt impossible.

Looking back now, I can see that my avoidance of sharing parts of my life was to avoid being perceived as broken. I didn’t want someone else witnessing the parts of me that felt fragile, and I didn't want to be perceived to be oversharing either (as that has been shamed numerous times throughout my life too)

However,  trauma caused by relationships, needs to be healed through relationships 

And real connection is built through sharing parts of ourselves, however trust also needs to be present.

Learning to embrace all parts of yourself

What changed over time wasn’t just the relationships around me — it was the relationship I had with myself.

Through a long process of self-reflection, healing and growth, I developed a much deeper sense of self-trust and self-awareness. I learned to embrace all parts of:

who I am

who I was and,

who I am still becoming.

And the journey is ongoing.

None of us are finished evolving.

But the more we learn to accept our full humanity , the messy parts, the wounded parts, the parts we once wanted to hide — the easier it becomes to let others see us too.

Because the truth is simple: every single person comes with a story.

Every person has experienced challenges, pain, mistakes and growth.

No one arrives in a relationship perfectly polished and untouched by life.

The right people can hold your truth

When we struggle to embrace our so-called “broken” parts, intimacy becomes incredibly difficult.

But when we begin to accept ourselves, truly accept ourselves - something shifts.

If someone cannot accept the parts of your story that shaped you, then quite simply, they are not your person.

And while it can feel terrifying to open up, something powerful happens when you do.

When you allow yourself to be seen as the imperfect, evolving human being you are, the right people will meet you there. They will hold space for your past, your present, and the parts of you still unfolding.

Vulnerability starts within

When I work 1:1 with clients, one of the main goals is to create a metaphoric safety net around the therapeutic relationship, with trust, choice, and a trauma informed lens, allowing my clients to acknowledge their own mistakes, take accountability, or sit honestly with their emotions, as vulnerability always begins internally.

It starts with learning to sit with yourself honestly, to accept your story, and to recognise your own humanity.

When that internal acceptance grows, intimacy with others becomes possible in a much deeper and more meaningful way.

Because ultimately, when you can truly see and accept yourself - the right people will be able to see and accept you too.

Much Love 

Phoebe