'I want to manifest my ex back', 'how do I know if he's thinking about me?', 'is it possible to communicate with them telepathically?' 'is she feeling my energy?' 'Is that billboard showing his name a sign that we're meant to be together?'
Let me tell you a personal story. When I was leaving journalism and wanting to go into comms and marketing, I had a job interview as a Communications Manager at University of Arts London. When I tell you I was desperate for that job because it was my get out of jail card for a higher salary and no more night shifts, and a manager who told me to quit because there's no space to promote me (he ate those words right up when I did quit), I meant it. I was thinking night and day about a job that wasn't even the best for me. While waiting for the response, I was seeing University of Arts London merch and ads EVERYWHERE. Tote bags in random areas away from the campus, billboards, algorithmic ads, everything.
Because of this, despite being very anxious, I thought I had it in the bag. I was still anxiously waiting, putting this job on a pedestal, only to follow up a few times and get rejected. They liked me a lot, but I didn't have the operational experience they needed.
I was crushed because I thought I saw the signs and stopped trusting myself. Later on, as I became a hypnotherapist, I realised those signs were just my reticular activating system showing me evidence of what I was obsessing over.
You'd also know if a sign is meant for you and not your RAS blinking like crazy if you feel a sense of calm, surrender and detachment. You'll be fine regardless, and you already feel the feeling you're supposed to feel regardless of the outcome.
Now, when it comes to manifesting a specific person, yes, it technically can be done, but that doesn't mean it should be done. There are extremes of people using dark magic to manipulate situations to their favour, but that's not what I'm going to talk about because they're in a league of their own.
The 2am Doom-Scroll and the Rose Quartz That Won't Save You
What I want to address is the everyday person, doom-scrolling at 2am, watching a reel about the 369 method, scripting love letters to someone who left them on read, or buying a rose quartz crystal because someone on TikTok told them it would bring their ex back by Friday.
Before we even get to whether it works, I want to ask you something more important: which part of you is doing the manifesting?
Because there is a world of difference between manifesting from abundance, genuine trust, self-worth, the quiet knowing that you are whole regardless of the outcome, and manifesting from scarcity. From the part of you that is terrified of being alone. The part that has decided this one specific person is the proof that you are loveable. The part that is, if we are being honest, not really manifesting love at all. It is manifesting validation.
David Hawkins mapped out an emotional frequency scale, and the emotions sitting at the bottom, shame, guilt, fear, grief, desire in its most anxious form, are the very emotions that drive most specific person manifestation. Not because people are broken, but because they are human and hurting. You cannot call in love from fear. You cannot attract security from desperation. The internal state you are manifesting from is the thing that shapes what comes back to you.
This is where Islam and psychology are, quietly, saying the same thing.
What Islam Actually Says About This
In Islam, the concept of qadr, divine decree, is one of the six pillars of faith. But I do not believe qadr means you are a passive passenger in a fixed, unchangeable story.
I believe decree can be changed. The Prophet ﷺ said that du'a can change qadr. That genuine turning towards Allah can shift what was written. And if you zoom out into quantum physics and the science of parallel realities, I do not think that contradicts Islam at all. I think they are pointing at the same thing from different angles.
Quantum physics tells us that multiple realities exist simultaneously, and that the one you collapse into is shaped by your internal state and frequency. Islam tells us that Allah is as His servant thinks of Him, and that He does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves. These are not opposing ideas. They are the same truth wearing different language.
But here is what the manifestation world rarely talks about honestly. There are two very different types of manifesting.
The first is forced manifestation. The 2am scripting, the obsessive visualising, the desperate attempt to will one specific person into your life. This comes from the lower self, what Islamic tradition calls the nafs in its most unregulated state, driven by fear, ego and lack. Manifestation from this place does not land. Or if it does, it does not stick, because you have called something in from a wound rather than from wholeness.
The second is surrendered manifestation. This is what happens when you have done the inner work, healed the attachment, and arrived at genuine trust. You still want what you want, but you are no longer desperate for it. You are operating from your higher self, the part that knows your worth and is genuinely open to what is in highest alignment, even if that looks different to what you planned.
And this is where it gets beautiful. When you manifest from your higher self, the outcome is always one of two things. It is that, or something better. Not as a consolation prize, but because a higher version of you is operating from a higher timeline, and that timeline does not settle. It only upgrades.
The question is never whether that reality is available to you. The question is which version of yourself is doing the reaching.
Which Part of You Is Actually Manifesting?
You are anchoring your nervous system to one outcome, one human being, one validation. Your RAS goes into overdrive, just like mine did with that UAL job. You start seeing their name everywhere, reading into every grey tick, every Instagram story view, every 11:11. None of that is a sign. That is your brain in survival mode, looking for evidence to support the story it has already decided to believe.
The cruel irony is that the more you grip, the more you repel. Not because of some cosmic law of attraction, but because desperation is a frequency other humans can feel. It closes you off, makes you smaller, and puts another person in the position of your God. No human being was ever built to carry that weight.
Look at where you are on the emotional scale when you think about this person. Are you in love, trust, hope, gratitude? Or longing, anxiety, fear, obsession? You cannot transmit scarcity and receive abundance. It does not work that way.
The Mirror They're Holding Up to You
When clients come to me wanting to manifest a specific person, I never start with the specific person. I start with them.
Because the real question is never "how do I get them back." It is: what does this person represent to you? What wound in you decided that they, specifically, are the one who gets to make you feel whole? What part of you is so hungry that it has put another human being in the position of your missing piece?
This is what we call a mirror situation. The people we become most attached to, most unable to let go of, are often reflecting something back at us. A longing we have not yet met in ourselves. A version of ourselves we are afraid we will never become. A feeling we have been chasing since long before we ever met them.
When my clients understand the archetype this person represents, what they symbolise, what they activate, what they are asking them to heal, everything shifts. We are no longer chasing a person. We are reclaiming a part of ourselves.
What Actually Happens in the Work
We heal the attachment. We heal the scarcity underneath it. We move up the emotional scale, out of fear and desperate longing, and into something that actually has gravity: self-worth, surrender, genuine openness.
This is not a quick fix. It is not a 369 method or a scripting challenge. It is real inner work that asks you to be honest about which part of yourself has been doing the longing. The wounded part. The part that never felt chosen. The part that decided love has to be hard-won to be real.
When we heal that, something remarkable happens across everything, not just the love life. Clients come in with their eyes fixed on one person and leave with their eyes fixed on themselves, in the best possible way. Grounded. Clear. More themselves than they have been in years.
And almost every single time, they either get the person or they get someone better. Not because I focused on the specific person, but because we filled the hole that person was being asked to fill. A person who feels whole attracts from a completely different frequency.
The Most Attractive Version of You Has Nothing to Prove
In Islam, we have du'a. We have tawakkul. The understanding that you can want something, ask for it sincerely, do what is in your power, and then release it. That release is not weakness. It is the entire point. It is the difference between a prayer and a demand.
You do not manifest a specific person by scripting their name 369 times. You do it, if it is even meant to happen, by becoming so rooted in your own worth and so surrendered to the outcome that the outcome almost becomes secondary. That is tawakkul. That is husn al-dhann. That is also the most attractive version of you that has ever existed.
The clients who come out the other side of this work are not the same people who walked in desperate for a text back. They are clearer, calmer, more themselves. And whether the specific person comes back or not, they no longer need them to.
That is the real manifestation. The billboard was never the sign. You were.