How to stop thinking about the exBPD

[RippedTorn]

When I taught divorce recovery for 7 years, we helped people stop thinking 24/7 about their ex and ruminating and feeling so upset. Feelings are the result of thoughts. If you think about something that is negative like your breakup with your BPD, you are likely to become sad. If you think about your child's baseball game last night where his team won, you are likely to have happy feelings.
The reality is we cannot control what thoughts come into our mind but we can control how long they stay there. So the prescription is "change the channel". That means have a number of positive thoughts you can shift too anytime thoughts of your BPD person comes into your mind. These thoughts should not be about him or her - for example: well of course she is sick so I should forgive her. NO. They need to be about totally different subjects - other people who are positive, other things you are doing, plans you have, etc. For me, I have a short list of new channels I go to when my uncontrollable brain wanders to thinking about my exBPD. I switch to thinking about the various things I plan to do to fix up my house, preparing for meetings I have at work during the week, calls and texts from loving people in my life and prayers to God about my future. You can make up a positive list of your own channels. It may not work as well as you like right away but within a matter of days if you stick with it, you will find yourself thinking about the BPD person less and spending less time thinking about him or her. Give it a try. Don't get stuck dwelling on the unchangable past and the unchangable BPD.

[rfriesen]

Excellent post, RippedTorn.

It may not work as well as you like right away but within a matter of days if you stick with it, you will find yourself thinking about the BPD person less and spending less time thinking about him or her.

This is one of the hardest lessons -- patience and a willingness to try something new, to practise a response different from ruminating and the same old patterns. With time and distance, it becomes so much clearer that the effort put in to shifting your focus and moving on pays off in peace, joy, contentment. But when you're still in the midst of the confusion and pain, it can feel worse to begin detaching. Important to trust yourself and to trust that it's worth the time and effort of focusing on your own life and needs!