It’s time for another session of Ask Melody: The Universe often lets me know which blog post to write next by inspiring two or more readers to send me the exact same question (often with eerily similar wording!) in a short space of time. In this case, I received the exact same question twice on the same day. Yep, this is how manifesting works, people. You have to pay attention and I do. You’re welcome.

In the post Jagger Was Wrong: You Can Always Get What You Want. But You’ll Never Get What You Need, I explored the idea that as long as you desperately need something, you are putting out the vibration of “I can’t be happy until I get this thing”, which incidentally, is then exactly what the Universe keeps bringing you: experiences that don’t feel happy, because you don’t yet have this thing. Need doesn’t feel good, which is your first clue that thoughts of neediness will never get you what you want. I then went on to explain how to train yourself out of this vibration of desperation by practicing detachment and getting into a mindset that you’d like “This or something even better.” Basically, I advised that you should focus on what you REALLY want – love, for example, and leave the details of the HOW (like who to love, or how the millions of dollars will come to you) up to the Universe.

What if I can’t detach?

But what about when you’re in a situation in which it seems impossible to detach? Like when you have a deep, hopeless crush on another person and you can’t think about anything else but them? What about if you feel like if you don’t make them yours, your world will end? In this situation, the jump from “I must make them mine or I’ll die!” to “This or someone better” may actually constitute a quantum leap, in which case, we’ve got to break this baby down a little further.

We’ve all been there. None of us made it out of our teenage years without experiencing at least one major crush on the high school quarterback, head cheerleader, librarian, math geek or, in my case, George Michael (we didn’t know he was gay then. Or at least I didn’t. Don’t judge me.) We spent hours fantasizing about this person (and staring at their posters on our walls), and even though we wanted nothing more than to be with them, it was also a great source of pain. The object of our crush is generally unattainable, either because they’re simply not available (due to an age difference, famousness, social status, already being attached, or well, being caught in a rest stop toilet giving a blowjob to some dude, utterly crushing the heart of one pre-teen girl who then decided to delude herself into believing that her crush must have been framed, only to find out a few years later that no, he wasn’t framed and it was just never, EVER going to happen, squashing her now teenage heart again), or because we have decided for some reason that they are not available to us. We perceive them to be better than us, or we have some belief that makes it impossible for us to accept a scenario in which we’d actually get together.

Anatomy of a crush

What exactly is a crush? Oh yay! It’s time for another one of Melody’s Definitions!

Crush (also crushing on someone, possibly crushing hard): a feeling of deep infatuation with and/or desire for another individual that you’ve decided, for whatever reason, YOU CAN’T FREAKING HAVE, causing a series of conflicting vibrations:

1. I really, really appreciate all these wonderful qualities of this person (feels great)
2. I need this person in order to be happy/I can’t be happy without them (feels horrible)
3. I can’t have this person because (insert limiting belief here) (feels horrible)

Do you see how the scale is tipped heavily in favor of the horrible feelings? Intense desire on its own feels wonderful. When you intensely desire someone, you see only their best qualities, you see them for who they really are. In more colloquial terms: Their shit don’t stink. So, you’ve got all this raging, powerful energy being directed towards the best qualities of this person. You’ve gotten on the bus of desire and you’re driving down the road of lust, destination love, at 200 mph.

And then… you’ve got these thoughts that you can’t be happy without them, that you need them and that for whatever reason, you can’t have them. Those thoughts will build a concrete wall on that road to everlasting love, one which you will now slam into at 200 mph. Incidentally, that wall was always there, but you didn’t become aware of it until you started driving your bus so fast. Because before, you may have liked someone a bit and your bus was kind of rolling along, and when it slowly and gently bumped into the wall, it didn’t really hurt. But slamming into that wall at Mach speed is going to smart. A lot.

The strategy I outlined in the post on neediness basically comes down to aiming that intense desire at a more general target: instead of HAVING TO have this one particular girl or boy, you allow the Universe to fulfill that request with the PERFECT girl or boy, which may or may not be the object of your attention. Now, that’s a great strategy, and it will bring relief if you can implement it, but as I said, in some cases, reaching for those general thoughts may represent too big of a leap.

What if every road has a wall?

What if your belief that you can’t be happy without love and can’t find love, doesn’t just pertain to this one person (as in, “I can’t have anyone” instead of just “I can’t have her“)? In that case, pointing that bus at a more general target won’t feel much better, because no matter where you point it, you’re going to hit a copy of that damn wall. In this case, I’d advise a slightly different strategy:

1. Raise your vibration using a different subject
2. Figure out what’s at the root of that wall – what beliefs do you hold that have caused you to decide that you can’t find love
3. Tear down the damn wall
4. Move into the state of “This or someone better”

Raising your vibration using a different subject

Now, normally, this isn’t all that hard. You simply get off the subject that’s causing you all this pain and spend some quality time focusing on something that already makes you feel good. But in the case of a crush, this can seem damn near impossible. You can’t think of anything else. You’ve tried. Well, try harder. The key here is not to think of anything too specific. Let me explain: When you have a crush, you’re thinking of something very specific, with intense focus. In energetic terms, you are aiming your focus on a target with laser like accuracy. It’s like looking at something really far away through a telescope. If you want to change targets, you can’t just swing that telescope around and pinpoint another specific target. If you’ve ever tried that, you’ll know that all you see is a bunch of blurry images and when you stop, you’ll have no idea what you’re looking at. But if you back away from the telescope and find the general direction of your next target while looking at the bigger picture, you can then zero back in on a new, specific place. Changing frequencies, when you’ve locked on to a specific one, is much the same. You first have to back off a bit and look at the bigger picture – you have to get more general before you can get specific again.

So, if you want to find a different thought, a better feeling thought, a thought with a higher vibration, you’ll have to think more generally first. When you try to get off the subject of your crush, do not try to think of other attractive people that you could want. That’s not going to work. No one can compare to your crush. Don’t try to distract yourself by thinking of sports players, or memories of trips you’ve gone on, or anything else that specific. Distract yourself by doing things that require very little or no thought:

• Meditate (this actually shuts down thought. Perfect.)
• Play a video game (but not one that reminds you in any way of your crush. I’d suggest puzzle games or cartoony ones instead of Grand Theft Auto or anything else with life like characters and scenarios.)
• Normally, listening to music is a fantastic way to raise your vibration, but when you’re crushing, music often perpetuates those feelings. If you can find music that does NOT remind you of your crush, go for it. Otherwise, stay away from this medium. Ditto for movies and TV shows.
• Intense exercise. Intense physical exercise can really help to clear your mind. It gets you focused exclusively on your body, which is an amazing distraction. And it’s good for you.
• Engage in your favorite hobby – if you have a passion for something, go do that. For example, if you’re an avid rock climber, extreme mountain biker, Dungeons and Dragons player or whatever, immerse yourself in this activity. Because you’ve also built up a great deal of energy around this subject, it will be easier for you to be distracted by it without being pulled back to thoughts of your crush.

Figure out what’s at the root of your wall

Now, obviously, I cannot really help you to release your specific beliefs through a blog post (there’s a limit to my awesomeness), but I can perhaps help you to identify what might lie at the heart of your pain by naming some possibilities. Read through the following beliefs and think about each one. Do any of them resonate with you? Often just naming the belief can already bring quite a bit of relief. You may have a belief that…

• You are not good enough. You are not worthy. Everyone else is better than you.
• You are a not good enough yet. You need to change something about yourself in order to be good enough to be loved, like lose weight, get surgery, earn more money, etc. You are not lovable just the way you are right now. (This belief will cause you to always find something new that you have to change. You’ll never be done.)
• No one will ever love you, or no one can ever love you. You are not worthy of being loved. (Usually a belief formed in childhood).
• Love is painful. (This belief is prevalent in societies where arranged marriage is or was popular. It’s born of the idea that if you fall in love with someone, it’s a painful thing, because you generally can’t have them. There is an expectation that love is tied to pain.)
• If you make yourself vulnerable by loving someone, they will hurt you. So even though you want to love, you can never allow yourself to go down that road.
• You are not allowed to fall in love/to be happy. You have a responsibility to do something or be something and falling in love would interfere. (Warrior complex, protector, helper, martyr, etc.)
• If you allow yourself to become dependent on someone, they will leave you (abandonment issues).
• All beautiful men with feathery hair and gorgeous singing voices are gay.

These are just some examples, and each one would warrant an entire blog post on their own (I’m sure several of these will be featured as posts in the future). If anything on this list resonated with you, you’ve just gotten a powerful insight into why you’re blocking love from coming to you and why you’re in so much pain. Sit with this perspective for a little while before trying to shift that energy.

Tear down the damn wall

Shifting a limiting belief, in a nutshell, is basically changing your perspective on how you view that subject. So, if you’ve discovered a belief that you’re not good enough, you’ll want to work your way around to “I’m good enough.” You will not be able to do this all at once. I published a technique on how to gradually change your vibration in the post The Vibrational Ladder – How To Feel Better In 4 Simple Steps.

Move into the state of “This or someone better”

Once you have removed the wall, you’ll have a much easier time detaching from the object of your crush. At this point, I suggest that you reread the Jagger post about detachment, because it will suddenly seem a lot more doable to you.

Bottom line: Crushes suck. They do. They are filled with angst and pain and heartache and as long as we stay stuck in that beautiful/awful place, we will not get what we want. And moving out of that state of pain entails a different journey for everyone. I’ve done my best to provide a bit of clarity and at least a bit of a roadmap.

Who was your embarrassing crush (I told you mine, now it’s only fair that I get to hear about yours…)? How did you get over it? What techniques have you used to overcome this type of desperation in the past? Go on, spill it! 🙂

If you liked this post, please do me a favor and share it in any way you see fit. You know, Facebook, Twitter, Message in a bottle, handing it to random people on the street while you look at them kindly and a little bit condescendingly and say “I think you need this”. Whatever.