Gaining Closure

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

Hi All.

I found the following on the internet and thought it looked interesting. Much but not all, of this is a direct quotation. Thanks to the author.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-flux/201104/5-ways-find-closure-the-past


5 Ways to Find Closure From the Past



1.) Take full responsibility for yourself.

It's ultimately up to you to take the necessary actions to help move you forward. Have conversations with yourself, both asking and answering your own questions in a form of a "self-dialogue". Being as honest as you can be will pay off in the long run. The pain, hurt, anger, and disappointment will diminish once you've cleared the way to a better, more realistic understanding of the situation.

• What or whom are you holding onto? Why?



• Does holding on truly make you happy, or are you hanging on to a situation the way it once was, or the way you wished it had been, instead of how it actually turned out?



• Are you using this "holding on" as an excuse to stay stuck and unresolved? In other words, is dwelling in the past taking you away from moving toward your future?



• Are you trying to avoid dealing with loss and the void that loss creates?



• If you're willing to let go, what does that really mean? What will you have to do?



• Are you afraid of not knowing what the outcome will be?



• Ultimately, what do you believe will happen to you if you let go?

2.) Grieve the loss.

Take plenty of time to do this. There is no set amount of time and no prescribed way; it's totally up to each person to find that for themselves. Don't let anyone tell you to "just get over it". However, grieving should not go on for years. That's just being stuck, still heavily invested in the past. Prolonged or incomplete grief may contribute to making poor choices in the future. The ability to trust, to be honest, and to be your self is essential for a new, healthier relationship or situation to present itself to you. "Unfinished business" must be completed and resolved before you move on.


3.) Gather your strengths.

• Focus on the positives. Make a list of your talents, gifts, and assets.



• Surround yourself with people who know you well, encourage and support you.



• Shift the emphasis to what you need, what makes you happy. Don't worry about pleasing others.



• Assess where you can make positive change in your life.



• Define and affirm what you're able to do something about now.

4.) Make a plan for the immediate future.

Determine what's most important for you moving forward. If necessary, reorder your priorities to allow you to explore different possibilities and opportunities that may present themselves to you. Try some of these on for size. It doesn't matter if they don't work out, just that you tried. The important thing is to take action in order to make things happen. If you can't find a path, make one!



5.) Create a ritual.

Believe it or not, performing a ritual is a powerful tool to help gain closure. Beyond thinking and talking, and thinking and talking some more, ritual is driven by intention and action. A "symbolic enactment" allows you to utilize your creativity and intuition in order to bypass the intellectual, logical part of your brain. For example, when a relationship is over, what do you do with all of the meaningful items and objects, such as letters, pictures, etc., that were part of the relationship? A "fire ceremony" is a way to consume the past, but any number of rituals that you personally create can provide symbolic finality and closure.


Finding closure allows you to move into your future, unencumbered and optimistic. And hopefully, you'll find that when all is said and done, you will have learned something valuable from all of the significant events and people in your life -- even if they didn't work out the way you thought they would.


I'll be back to this later on... .my eyes are sore from staring at this computer monitor for far too long and I need to prepare myself for some brutal self-honesty. 

Love Lifewriter

[Lifewriter16]

Hi All.

I found the following on the internet and thought it looked interesting. Much but not all, of this is a direct quotation. Thanks to the author.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-flux/201104/5-ways-find-closure-the-past


5 Ways to Find Closure From the Past



1.) Take full responsibility for yourself.

It's ultimately up to you to take the necessary actions to help move you forward. Have conversations with yourself, both asking and answering your own questions in a form of a "self-dialogue". Being as honest as you can be will pay off in the long run. The pain, hurt, anger, and disappointment will diminish once you've cleared the way to a better, more realistic understanding of the situation.

• What or whom are you holding onto? Why?



• Does holding on truly make you happy, or are you hanging on to a situation the way it once was, or the way you wished it had been, instead of how it actually turned out?



• Are you using this "holding on" as an excuse to stay stuck and unresolved? In other words, is dwelling in the past taking you away from moving toward your future?



• Are you trying to avoid dealing with loss and the void that loss creates?



• If you're willing to let go, what does that really mean? What will you have to do?



• Are you afraid of not knowing what the outcome will be?



• Ultimately, what do you believe will happen to you if you let go?

2.) Grieve the loss.

Take plenty of time to do this. There is no set amount of time and no prescribed way; it's totally up to each person to find that for themselves. Don't let anyone tell you to "just get over it". However, grieving should not go on for years. That's just being stuck, still heavily invested in the past. Prolonged or incomplete grief may contribute to making poor choices in the future. The ability to trust, to be honest, and to be your self is essential for a new, healthier relationship or situation to present itself to you. "Unfinished business" must be completed and resolved before you move on.


3.) Gather your strengths.

• Focus on the positives. Make a list of your talents, gifts, and assets.



• Surround yourself with people who know you well, encourage and support you.



• Shift the emphasis to what you need, what makes you happy. Don't worry about pleasing others.



• Assess where you can make positive change in your life.



• Define and affirm what you're able to do something about now.

4.) Make a plan for the immediate future.

Determine what's most important for you moving forward. If necessary, reorder your priorities to allow you to explore different possibilities and opportunities that may present themselves to you. Try some of these on for size. It doesn't matter if they don't work out, just that you tried. The important thing is to take action in order to make things happen. If you can't find a path, make one!



5.) Create a ritual.

Believe it or not, performing a ritual is a powerful tool to help gain closure. Beyond thinking and talking, and thinking and talking some more, ritual is driven by intention and action. A "symbolic enactment" allows you to utilize your creativity and intuition in order to bypass the intellectual, logical part of your brain. For example, when a relationship is over, what do you do with all of the meaningful items and objects, such as letters, pictures, etc., that were part of the relationship? A "fire ceremony" is a way to consume the past, but any number of rituals that you personally create can provide symbolic finality and closure.


Finding closure allows you to move into your future, unencumbered and optimistic. And hopefully, you'll find that when all is said and done, you will have learned something valuable from all of the significant events and people in your life -- even if they didn't work out the way you thought they would.


I'll be back to this later on... .my eyes are sore from staring at this computer monitor for far too long and I need to prepare myself for some brutal self-honesty. 

Love Lifewriter

[Lifewriter16]

What or whom are you holding onto? Why?

I have always found it difficult to let go of relationships when they end. I have always been scared of being alone. As a result, I have tended to hang onto relationships in my mind and my emotions, even when they have ended in reality. This stops me from feeling so alone. As well as holding onto my BPDxbf, I still have vestiges of feeling for the uNPDbf who preceded him and my AS ex-husband. For years, I didn't deal with the ending of a relationship at the point it ended, I couldn't access the feelings, I just moved on to the next one. I also tended to keep someone in reserve just in case my main relationship ended. After my marriage, I started grieving each and every relationship I'd had in the past, working through them gradually. Perhaps I finally felt safe enough to do that.

In addition to holding onto particular people, I still have a great deal of resentment and unforgiveness towards my mother. I blame her for most of what has happened in my life, even though many of those things are my own failure to act. I am also aware that I have placed all of the blame on her and not allocated any of it to my father. I am still failing to grieve for my childhood, especially my father's part in the outcome of it.


Does holding on truly make you happy, or are you hanging on to a situation the way it once was, or the way you wished it had been, instead of how it actually turned out?

I'm not happy at all. None of the relationships with my ex-boyfriends or my ex-husband were satisfactory enough to warrant returning to. Had they been so, they would never have ended in the first place. I am certainly hanging onto the relationships as I wish they had been or could be rather than as they actually were.

With regard to my family of origin issues, I think it's the anger that keeps me going, stopping me from feeling like the helpless, unloved child that I was. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel like things were not actually as bad as they were. Denying my father's role makes me feel that someone loved me, though in actuality he betrayed me. The denial makes me feel that somehow things were better than they were and stops me feeling that everything has been taken away from me.



Are you using this "holding on" as an excuse to stay stuck and unresolved? In other words, is dwelling in the past taking you away from moving toward your future?

Yes.


Are you trying to avoid dealing with loss and the void that loss creates?

Yes. When I am not focused upon my pain, my misery and my personal development issues, I am bored and feel I have nothing left. I feel a massive emptiness and that emptiness scares me. My life is also empty. I struggle to occupy myself. I have too much time. I don't know what I want to do with myself. I don't know how to make things better. I am really scared about doing new things and failing at them. I am scared to get a job and be found lacking. I struggle to relate to people if the focus is not on deep, emotional things. With no inner pain to focus upon, I have nothing left at all.



If you're willing to let go, what does that really mean? What will you have to do?

I'd have to stop making excuses for myself and push through the fear of relating to people, and the fear of being found to be lacking or inadequate in some way. I'd have to face the terror of letting people get close, the fear of violence, the anxiety and the full force of how I feel about myself. I'd also have to face the full shame, grief, betrayal, hopelessness, despair and helplessness I felt as a child.



Are you afraid of not knowing what the outcome will be?

I think the problem is that I think that I know what the outcome will be. It will be disasterous. I will discover that I am as bad as I think I am, that I am a failure, that people really do not like me, that men always will leave me, that all my beliefs really are true. Right now, I am failing to test my beliefs so I don't know whether or not they are right, because I can't bear for them to be right.


Ultimately, what do you believe will happen to you if you let go?

Total isolation, emptiness, despair, depression, suicidal tendencies, failure, rejection, bullying... .if I hang onto someone, even if they make me unhappy, at least I am not alone.


Scary stuff!

Lifewriter x

[Lifewriter16]

2.) Grieve the loss.

I feel I've done lots of grieving over my BPDxbf and am moving on well in that particular grieving process. When it comes to my xbf with NPD traits, I think I've grieved him but he was also an access point to buried pain around the issue of abuse and I haven't grieved that. As a result, I think I'd be vulnerable to him if we had any contact. My AS ex-husband is around most nights, so it's pretty clear I haven't let go of him and he hasn't let go of me. I am feeling that I really need to talk properly to a therapist about all these situations. I'm still waiting to hear about the NHS funding for the therapy I've been attempting to organise for over a year. I've chased it up a couple of times, but it must be stuck on a desk somewhere in a great pile of applications for funding for other needy people. Where I feel very stuck is with my parents and I suspect that the vestiges of pain associated with my BPDxbf are there because I'm failing to fully express FOO emotions. However, I anticipate that starting the domestic violence support group will be beneficial to me in all these unresolved situations. I do find that books help to stimulate the expression of denied pain and so does posting on this website. It's a long and frustrating process though. Sometimes I feel like it will never end.

Lifewriter x

[Reforming]

Hi Lifewriter,

It's takes a lot courage to answer the questions that you've asked yourself. Well done.

Letting go is hard. The silence and loneliness can feel overwhelming. And I think it's particularly hard because many of us struggle with deep feelings of shame and of worthlessness that can keep us trapped in a terrible limbo

For me foundation to healing is learning to be compassionate and kind to myself. It sounds simple but when you're fighting a lifetime of deeply ingrained behaviour it's tough. 

It means actively confronting the deep rooted part of me that makes me feel small, worthless and ashamed. It's a struggle but therapy, education and practice have helped a lot.

You're honestly is courageous and admirable. I don't know much about your current circumstances but I think that self awareness and introspection need to be balanced with compassion and kindness. It's very easy to judge ourselves harshly and that can rob us of hope and the power to change.

The NHS is really struggling right now and there's a lot of people who aren't getting the help that they need. Have you considered exploring graduate programs and working with therapists who are still training (other members have suggested this option). They may not have the experience of established therapists but it might be a good way find someone who you can work with.

Keep posting

Reforming

[Lifewriter16]

Yes, Reforming, I need to remember to be kind and compassionate towards myself rather than treating myself with hatred. It's an ingrained habit and I don't always spot that I am doing it. It's probably part of the mechanism that maintains my sense of shame.

My therapy should be literally around the corner. I'll ask the GP to chase it up this time, rather than the practice administrator. Working with a therapist who is in training could be a good back-up though.

Lifewriter x