by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
How To Handle Being Ghosted in a REAL Way
Ghosting is the infuriating, confusing, and sometimes even gut-wrenching phenomenon where someone you were regularly chatting to suddenly disappears like a puff of smoke:
One minute you’re bantering away about life, love, and your latest obsession and the next?
Zip. Nothing. Nada.
They vanished with the wind and all you’re getting in return now is radio silence – like they were never there in the first place and whatever it was that happened between you was all just a dream.
It’s as if they’d been abducted by aliens or perhaps just decided to delete their entire life and start over in the Himalayas or something.
Here’s the thing, though:
Ghosting isn’t mysterious and it’s not romantic or tragic – it’s just what happens when avoidance and ego take the wheel and somebody realises that they’re not ready to face reality.
Before we get into all that let’s make an important distinction between the two main reasons people ghost:
- You’re actually a difficult or toxic person: Which means that the other person made a healthy – if abrupt – decision to cut you out to preserve their peace and wellbeing.
- The person who ghosted you is emotionally immature and was never really there for you in the first place: Instead, they were playing some kind of game, seeking validation, control, or a sense of power and when that didn’t go to plan they vanished.
This article is going to explore the second reason in depth but before we do, a quick warning:
If you’re reading this hoping to validate your own toxic behaviours or justify your own baggage, take a pause because, sometimes, we are the problem – if that’s the case, this article won’t help unless you’re ready to face that.
With that being said, let’s dig a little deeper:
Why You Got Ghosted: What We Cover in This Article
- How To Handle Being Ghosted in a REAL Way
- The Psychology of Ghosting: Ego-Hungry and Avoidance-Addicted
- Living in the Void
- Why Real Communication Terrifies Them
- Fragmentation and the Fear of Realness
- What to Do If You’ve Been Ghosted
- How to Handle Toxic People Without Ghosting
- Got Ghosted Final Thoughts: Realness or Nothing (Gimme Something Real or GTFO)
The Psychology of Ghosting: Ego-Hungry and Avoidance-Addicted
In the world of ghosting-as-avoidance, here’s what’s really going on:
The Ghoster didn’t show up in your life to build something real; they were there because they needed something from you…
Not your love, respect, or even just your ‘basic’ humanity but ego reinforcement like attention, validation, control, or a temporary hit of self-worth.
If you found yourself in this kind of situation then you were – whether you realised it or not – a mirror that was reflecting something back to them they didn’t want to see or accept about themselves, the world, and reality:
Maybe you had standards; maybe you weren’t easily impressed; maybe you were just too real for them.
Whatever the case, they couldn’t use you in the way they hoped and so, rather than face the reality of that or have a proper conversation like an adult, they disappeared.
All of this is to say that ghosting is not about you but about them and their unreal inability to tolerate discomfort, shame, or truth (almost always because of their own ego ‘stuff’ and a need to avoid facing the shadow self that the ego masks).
Living in the Void
The fact of the matter is that people who ghost like this are operating from a place of deep shame:
They may look confident, charming, and even magnetic on the surface of their lives but internally they’re fragmented and haven’t integrated their shadow.
The consequence of this is that they’re scared of vulnerability – because they don’t know how to just be real – and so they’re playing emotional games to keep that fear at bay.
These individuals are deeply trapped within the Void – the place where people go when they’re disconnected from truth, purpose, and realness.
The Void is a lonely, ego-dominated landscape and people who live in it need constant hits of validation to feel ‘alive’.
This means that they reach out to people not to connect, but to feed, and then when the feeding stops, they move on to the next source (which is why you got ghosted).
Why Real Communication Terrifies Them
Real communication is radioactive to these people because real conversation brings real reflection and real reflection brings the shadow to the surface.
If you don’t know already, the shadow is everything they’re trying to keep hidden from themselves and others like their fears, insecurities, unmet needs, and illusions.
If you say something that touches the truth – even by accident – they recoil in horror and their coping mechanisms and defensive patterns kick into gear:
If you expect emotional accountability or consistency, they panic, and when they realise they can’t control your perception of them or manipulate the narrative, they opt out.
In short, this type of ghosting is a coward’s way of avoiding their own shame.
Fragmentation and the Fear of Realness
To truly understand ghosting behaviour, you have to become aware of the fragmentation in the person doing it:
What ‘fragmentation’ essentially means is that they’re not operating from a whole or integrated sense of self and that, instead, their inner world is splintered between the image they want to present, the feelings they’re trying to avoid, and the needs they don’t know how to meet.
Rather than face all of this internal chaos, they project, manipulate, control, and – when all else fails – disappear.
They don’t want to disappear necessarily but they simply can’t tolerate the feelings that come with staying.
To justify this decision, they often tell themselves ghosting is justified and will rationalise the decision to do it:
They’ll tell themselves that you were too intense, too needy, or sinmply too whatever but reallywhat they’re saying is:
“You made me feel something real and I don’t know how to handle that so I kept running (like I always do).”
What to Do If You’ve Been Ghosted
If you’ve been ghosted, then here’s the best advice you’ll ever get:
Don’t chase under any circumstances.
This means that you don’t try to get ‘closure’ (only your ego needs that), don’t send one more text, and don’t write that email or try to analyse what you did wrong.
All of this or anything similar will only feed their ego and give them the validation they were seeking in the first place and keep the ‘game’ going.
To maintain your sanity, what you really need to do is to keep repeating the sacred mantra:
“Gimme something real or GTFO” (see Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World for more on this).
Really, they did you a favour because they revealed their level of realness and it wasn’t compatible with yours.
Let them fade, let them vanish, and – whatever you do – don’t make it about you.
Just stay on purpose and keep doing your thing without second-thought.
Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want to stay out of the Void and keep flowing with life in the realest possible way.
How to Handle Toxic People Without Ghosting
Ironically, these kind of toxic ghosters often scream about boundaries while avoiding the one thing that is healthy: clear and real communication.
If it reaches the stage where you need to step away from someone – maybe because they’re toxic, disrespectful, or just not good for your flow – then do it with integrity and say your piece and then end communication like an adult.
You don’t need to be cruel – you just need to be clear.
After that walk away.
You don’t need to block them (unless they’re harassing you or something) as in a way being blocked is just another source of ego validation for them (because it shows that you’ve been rattled in some way)… Instead, just move on with quiet strength and stay real.
Got Ghosted Final Thoughts: Realness or Nothing (Gimme Something Real or GTFO)
Ghosting hurts because it confronts us with the painful truth that some people were never truly with us to begin with but when you see it clearly, it becomes a blessing, and a gift wrapped in silence.
The truth is that people who ghost you were never ready to meet you in the real – they were orbiting your life, looking for something to plug the hole in themselves and, when that didn’t work, they fled.
Let them.
Your job is to live in truth and to show up with presence, realness, and wholeness.
This might ‘trigger’ people who are fragmented within themselves but it also attracts the real ones and they’re the only people worth building with.
Practical Steps to Deal With Being Ghosted
- Accept What Happened: Don’t dwell in denial and simply accept that if they disappeared, they disappeared. That’s on them.
- Don’t Chase: Every message, every attempt to seek closure, is fuel for their ego so starve the pattern and stay strong.
- Journal the Experience: Write down what happened. Let it out and then close the book and move on.
- Check Yourself: Make sure you weren’t behaving in a way that contributed to the situation. Be brutally honest to make sure you didn’t deserve to be ghosted in the first place (because of your own ego or toxic ‘stuff’).
- Use the Sacred Mantra: “Gimme something real or GTFO” is worth repeating and living until it becomes second nature.
- Upgrade Your Standards: Decide now that you won’t entertain people who can’t communicate in a real way.
- Stay Open: Don’t close your heart because goal is not to become cynical but wise.
- Live in Realness: Keep doing your inner work and realise that ghosters can’t touch you when you’re grounded in truth.
Real recognises real and the ghosted, once healed, become impossible to haunt.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to build a solid foundation for your life so that you don’t attract unreal people into your life then book a free coaching session with me and we’ll get you moving right away.
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