Hung up on someone you shouldn't be? Here's how to get over them.

Getting over someone post-breakup is tricky. There are the memories. The reminders. The huge glaring gap on the other side of the bed as you binge Netflix alone. (There is also the fact of bingeing Netflix on a Saturday night in the first place.)

But getting over someone who you know isn’t good for you is even more difficult. Because they are definitely not helping. They are calling. And manipulating. And sweet talking. And trying to turn all your not-so-good memories into excuses that are understandable and from a place of love.

Here are five tips to help you get over someone you really shouldn’t be hooked on.

Make the decision

First off, you’ve realised it. And that is the biggest, more crucial step.

No longer is it just your friends and your mother and your brother telling you the person you’re dating is a douche. Finally, you’ve come to see it, too.

It doesn’t make it any easier. It just means you’ll stop making excuses for their behaviour and, now, every time they let you down it will be one additional nail in the relationship’s coffin… You’ve got the hardest part out of the way.

Block them on social media

Do this right away. Don’t hesitate. Don’t look back. Don’t let your friends stalk them for you and report back.

Instagram is a rabbit hole of time and emotion, even when you’re in the very best of mindsets. When you’re heartbroken, and you’re desperately looking for a sign they are heartbroken too, social media is a cruel, cruel world of endless scroll and torment.

Listen: When everyone says “I can’t believe you’re not taken”. Post continues below.

No, you will not find any solace in their photographs of night clubs and days on the beach.

No, you will not find any comfort in the captions to these photographs, where the hashtags are too happy and the emojis too smiley.

No, you will not find any vindication by secretly stalking every new person you see tagged in their photos.

Social media doesn’t have the answers. More importantly, your goal is to reach a place where you don’t care about their nights out or their use of emojis or the girl photographed sitting on their knee. Deleting them off social media is the first step to this end-game of not giving a f**k.

Write down the reasons

"Remember the reasons, remember the reasons," a good friend once told me when I was collapsed on her balcony in tears over an ex. Remember the reasons that person is not good for you.

Even if you can balance these reasons out with a hundred reasons they are right for you. Just, for the moment, focus on the negative. Even write a list of all the ways they treated you that were hurtful or the things they did that drove you crazy. All of a sudden, the choice you are making becomes easier.

And, by happy accident, writing down all the reasons they are wrong for you also goes some way in creating a list of the traits you do want in a partner.

Yes, telling someone who's heartbroken that 'it's a learning experience' is likely to induce violence. But by 'remembering the reasons' it really does become a 'learning' experience (without us ever having to call it that). Post continues after gallery.

Throw away their things

The same way you blocked them on social media, remove them from your life.

Be ruthless here and clean our your apartment, your car, your wardrobe of the things - the books, the toiletries, the oversized T-shirts - that are theirs.

Slowly, by removing them from your physical life, they will start to fade from your mind as well.

Focus on yourself

While you're busy writing the list of all the reasons they are not the person you thought they were, and therefore not worth wasting any more time with, continue writing — but this time for yourself.

Write a list of the things you want to do, for you. Maybe it will be travelling, or kickboxing, or picking up the saxophone because you haven't played since high school and joining a jazz band might be exactly what you need right now.

This will do two things: It will remind you of the person you are without them. And it will start building new memories, and new dreams, that don't involve your once-significant other.

Finally, don't be afraid to feel it

Scream. Cry. Get angry. Call friends in the middle of the night because you can't sleep and you're scared you're going to call the very person you vowed not to call.

Be kind to yourself and don't be afraid to let it all out. It's all part of it, and we've all been there.

How do you get over your breakups?