Some of the best things I have been told or heard that have helped me.

[HappyNihilist]

These are some quotes that I collected during the worst parts after my breakup... .that I kept coming back to for inspiration and encouragement.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

-Rumi

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

-Rumi

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left, and live it properly.

-Marcus Aurelius

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

-Marcus Aurelius

Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

-Marcus Aurelius

I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.

-Epictetus

I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.

-Abraham Lincoln

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

-Robert Frost

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.

-Jacob M. Braune

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

-Carl Sagan

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When we make a change, it's so easy to interpret our unsettledness as unhappiness, and our unhappiness as the result of having made the wrong decision. Our mental and emotional states fluctuate madly when we make big changes in our lives, and some days we could tight-rope across Manhattan, and other days we are too weary to clean our teeth. This is normal. This is natural. This is change.

-Jeanette Winterson

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

-Louise Erdrich

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too.

-Anais Nin

Drink from the well of your self and begin again.

-Charles Bukowski

Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

-Voltaire

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

-Albert Camus

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

-Albert Camus

Run my dear,

From anything

That may not strengthen

Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,

From anyone likely

To put a sharp knife

Into the sacred, tender vision

Of your beautiful heart.

-Rumi

[michel71]

• We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.

So true, because we see things with our own projections.  I now realise that when I saw my ex in those early days as being kind, considerate, loving, warm, giving, etc those were MY traits!  I see that I projected those things on him!  If I really look honestly at his 'actions' I see a selfish, inconsiderate and a not terribly kind man.  This ties in with the quote I posted of Maya Angelou's.  He was showing me who he was in his actions but I didn't believe him, wanting to believe in my fantasy of who he was.  I had invested too much already to be willing to see reality.

Perfectly said

[drummerboy]

I have changed a Rumi quote that sums it up for me.

"Not until the heart is smashed to pieces can it open"

[Luckyfella]

Here are some quotes that helped me:

• We must realize that everyone is ultimately responsible for their own happiness and simultaneously that everyone exerts a powerful influence on the happiness of those around them.



• I am in charge how I feel and today I choose happiness.



• Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, power - but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy.



• The fact is, we are no longer in a position to be the caretaker and support person for our “BPD” partner – no matter how well intentioned.



• Understand that we have become the trigger for our partner’s bad feelings and bad behavior. Sure, we do not deliberately cause these feelings, but your presence is now triggering them.

[jhkbuzz]

The fact is, we are no longer in a position to be the caretaker and support person for our “BPD” partner – no matter how well intentioned. Understand that we have become the trigger for our partner’s bad feelings and bad behavior. Sure, we do not deliberately cause these feelings, but your presence is now triggering them.

That one ^ helped me let go... .

[Infared]

The fact is, we are no longer in a position to be the caretaker and support person for our “BPD” partner – no matter how well intentioned. Understand that we have become the trigger for our partner’s bad feelings and bad behavior. Sure, we do not deliberately cause these feelings, but your presence is now triggering them.

That one ^ helped me let go... .

Yes... .and it is an unwanted, twisted reality to own.  ... .but own it I do.     I cannot even have a conversation with her.   Not an option.    Others say... .why don't you talk to her.  They perceive the break up as something normal.  I do not bother to try to explain anymore... .some of my friends  think that "I" have it all wrong.  Frustrating to say the least.

[jhkbuzz]

Okay, my response is a little "outside the box," but another member recently mentioned a video called "How to deal with a breakup by Noah Elkrief (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzk3EK6-690&feature=youtu.be). Although I thought it was going to be cheesy, it's one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. After I watched it I started paying attention to my thoughts - and began realizing that my pain was coming from my thoughts, not from my breakup with my ex.  It has been very, very freeing, and has given me some topics of exploration with my T.

I'm not sure that I would have understood the message in the immediate aftermath of the b/u; but 8 months out it caused all kinds of light  bulbs to go off. 

[Luckyfella]

Okay, my response is a little "outside the box," but another member recently mentioned a video called "How to deal with a breakup by Noah Elkrief (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzk3EK6-690&feature=youtu.be). Although I thought it was going to be cheesy, it's one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. After I watched it I started paying attention to my thoughts - and began realizing that my pain was coming from my thoughts, not from my breakup with my ex.  It has been very, very freeing, and has given me some topics of exploration with my T.

I'm not sure that I would have understood the message in the immediate aftermath of the b/u; but 8 months out it caused all kinds of light  bulbs to go off. 

I watch Noah Elkrief's youtube videos all the time especially when I start recycling, ruminating and thinking about the exBPD. We just need to learn how to control our thoughts after BPD breakup or any breakup.

[jhkbuzz]

Okay, my response is a little "outside the box," but another member recently mentioned a video called "How to deal with a breakup by Noah Elkrief (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzk3EK6-690&feature=youtu.be). Although I thought it was going to be cheesy, it's one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. After I watched it I started paying attention to my thoughts - and began realizing that my pain was coming from my thoughts, not from my breakup with my ex.  It has been very, very freeing, and has given me some topics of exploration with my T.

I'm not sure that I would have understood the message in the immediate aftermath of the b/u; but 8 months out it caused all kinds of light  bulbs to go off.  

I watch Noah Elkrief's youtube videos all the time especially when I start recycling, ruminating and thinking about the exBPD. We just need to learn how to control our thoughts after BPD breakup or any breakup.

Maybe it's because I'm 8 months post b/u, but it's not so much about controlling my thoughts as it is identifying the thoughts that cause me pain. Those thoughts are my own and have nothing to do with my ex; the r/s and its aftermath simply brought them to the surface.  Thoughts about my own worthiness, for example - I think I've struggled for a long time with the fear that I'm not worthy of love. My ex didn't create that thought in me, but her exit from my life has brought it to the surface.  In a very real sense, that thought has nothing to do with her.