80 days post break up

[anxiety5]

I just wanted to update.

It's been a heck of a journey but I'm in the free and clear now. I broke up with her in December, but she wouldn't go away. Changed my number in early January and have since only had contact on a few brief instances by email and twice by phone (at work)

I've gone to see a counselor who specializes in PTSD/relationship trauma weekly since first week of January.

I'm doing fantastic. Developing friendships I had neglected, working out again, focused back on my career, and have done the work to heal, to dig a bit into what happened, to figure out areas I needed to work on, to release all the hurt and to let go of the past.

I just want to share a few things, and suggestions for what helped me the most. I hope it can at least help someone avoid trial and error as I did several times and get right to the root of healing.

My top suggestions if your relationship is on the edge or just ended:

1. Leave. Just get out. If possible go no contact. If not possible go temporary no contact for at least 3 weeks.

2. Go to a counselor. Get over the stigma and just go. Spill your guts, tell them everything that happened. They will help you sort it out, validate you and take all the chaos and figure out a plan to get you back to being healthy (how refreshing it was! Actual progress! Actual conflict resolution!)

3. Reach out to old friends/family members/co workers or anyone you may have alienated. Apologize. Tell them you were in a bad spot. Don't make any excuses just say you're sorry and you miss having them in your life. It will be forgotten in 2 seconds and they will be eager to have you back. DON'T talk about your relationship. They have probably heard it all before and it will exhaust them. Ask them about them. Catch up with them. Hear about their happiness or their lives and realize there is hope and start thinking about what you want. This is the time when the fog will begin clearing (2-3 weeks) and you'll start to realize how you could have ever allowed yourself to deal with such craziness.

4. If you don't have a lot of social circles to re-ignite, find them. Just do it. Join an alumni network, go to a local animal shelter and volunteer, take a class at a university, just do something. The key is totally change your routine. Allow yourself rumination time but only a few minutes a night. Write it all down but use your counselling session as your weekly time to address that stuff, not every day.

5. PRACTICE MINDFULNESS. Living in the moment. This was huge for me. I have a habit/tendency of obsessing about this person. She consumed my every thought. What was she doing? Why did this happen or that happen? Where did it go wrong? etc. Whatever you are doing any given moment. Working, petting your dog, talking to your cousin on the phone, washing your car. A lot of times we distract ourselves in efforts to avoid ruminating. The problem is, your arms or legs may be moving but the mind can still wander off into nostalgic land with your ex. STOP yourself. Pay attention to the moment. The right now. The right here. Work on that task and focus intently at your job, give 100% of your attention to that pet of yours when you get home or when he's begging you to toss him a ball. Wash your car and focus on the task, if anything think about where you want to drive this summer or some variation of whatever task you are doing. This is incredibly helpful habit to develop. And the best part, it will improve your life. When you are engaged in conversation intently and paying attention to co-workers, friends, family, you will make them appreciate you for that vs. being distant and distracted in thought. Now that you are physically separate from your ex, this is the mental separation part. It's important.

6. Take care of yourself. A sound body/sound mind. Eat well, exercise, pick up a new hobby like golf, or tennis or pick up basketball with your friends. If you are awful, even better. Laugh at yourself. Get your sense of joy and happy go lucky nature back. Laugh at yourself and learn to have fun again.

7.Continue counseling. Now only talk about her during these sessions. Outside of that time, practice mindfulness and live in the moment. If you slip up at all, write down the thought you have and get back on track. Talk about whatever you wrote down during your next session.

When I read posts here I get upset. I have been where everyone has been. I just want to snatch the person right from their home and get them away from this person. But I realize I myself could not be convinced of any of the eventual doom despite the fact the relationship was text book and so to was the eventual ending which had not come yet. Between the realization that your SO has this condition and the text book ending lives a void of denial where we convince ourselves we can overcome, change, or manage it all. Each person has to go through this in order to learn. But when you are ready to be DONE with being emotionally abused, I just want to remind you that there IS happiness on the other side.

I think of it kind of like Shawshank Redemption. In order to get to freedom Andy had to crawl through 500 yards of sewer pipe. Refusing to live in denial, facing the pain, accepting the ending, becoming aware so it doesn't happen again, healing and finding peace is a process that can seem scary. But once you are on the other side, and have swam through this proverbial sewage that's kept you trapped, you are free. And in that moment you turn around to look and you realize, you were living trapped inside a prison. And sure it was hard breaking free, but you made it. You are strong. And here is the big thing:

Once you are on the other side, THERE IS NEVER A SINGLE CHANCE you will turn around and say "I miss prison" You won't! Trust me.

Wishing you all the best.

[Blimblam]

Anxiety

Sounds like you made a lot of progress.  I think you found a check list that worked for you. Keep in mind everyone is different and people process things differently.  Especially things like ptsd it's often one of those things that it just had to be talke about over and over and over untill it has all come out like a purging of sorts. When I first came out of my rs everyone I talked to had their own personal checklist of what to do and what not to do and while their were a lot of grains of truth to what they said it was also based on how they Delt with it which wasn't always healthy. So it was more of a projections of how they made sense of reality and they were actually very critical of anything outside of that frame they created to make sense of things.

[anxiety5]

Anxiety

Sounds like you made a lot of progress.  I think you found a check list that worked for you. Keep in mind everyone is different and people process things differently.  Especially things like ptsd it's often one of those things that it just had to be talke about over and over and over untill it has all come out like a purging of sorts. When I first came out of my rs everyone I talked to had their own personal checklist of what to do and what not to do and while their were a lot of grains of truth to what they said it was also based on how they Delt with it which wasn't always healthy. So it was more of a projections of how they made sense of reality and they were actually very critical of anything outside of that frame they created to make sense of things.

Yep. I was simply sharing what worked for me. Hoping to help someone who may not know where to start, and to let those who feel helpless know, to keep their head up and keep moving forward it will get better.

EMDR is very helpful for PTSD. I had never even heard of it. Helped me tremendously.

[Blimblam]

Anxiety

Sounds like you made a lot of progress.  I think you found a check list that worked for you. Keep in mind everyone is different and people process things differently.  Especially things like ptsd it's often one of those things that it just had to be talke about over and over and over untill it has all come out like a purging of sorts. When I first came out of my rs everyone I talked to had their own personal checklist of what to do and what not to do and while their were a lot of grains of truth to what they said it was also based on how they Delt with it which wasn't always healthy. So it was more of a projections of how they made sense of reality and they were actually very critical of anything outside of that frame they created to make sense of things.

Yep. I was simply sharing what worked for me. Hoping to help someone who may not know where to start, and to let those who feel helpless know, to keep their head up and keep moving forward it will get better.

EMDR is very helpful for PTSD. I had never even heard of it. Helped me tremendously.

Cool 

Could you tell me a little about the emdr?

[anxiety5]

Anxiety

Sounds like you made a lot of progress.  I think you found a check list that worked for you. Keep in mind everyone is different and people process things differently.  Especially things like ptsd it's often one of those things that it just had to be talke about over and over and over untill it has all come out like a purging of sorts. When I first came out of my rs everyone I talked to had their own personal checklist of what to do and what not to do and while their were a lot of grains of truth to what they said it was also based on how they Delt with it which wasn't always healthy. So it was more of a projections of how they made sense of reality and they were actually very critical of anything outside of that frame they created to make sense of things.

Yep. I was simply sharing what worked for me. Hoping to help someone who may not know where to start, and to let those who feel helpless know, to keep their head up and keep moving forward it will get better.

EMDR is very helpful for PTSD. I had never even heard of it. Helped me tremendously.

Cool 

Could you tell me a little about the emdr?

Do a google search on it for specifics. It's been a preferred method of treatment for soldiers returning from the Middle East.

So what they have you do is identify the point of trauma. Exactly the moment where this person broke you. You are asked to put yourself back into that moment. What did you notice around you? Describe it all. What do you remember seeing? Where were you standing, etc.  Then you are asked to describe how you felt. Not what you thought, but how you felt. Worthless, degraded, insignificant, etc.  Whatever it felt like. They identify areas from your past where you may have felt that same way prior and are reliving the trauma in this relationship.

There is either an audible beeping (through head phones) or eye movements to follow. The brain works by accessing memories, but often times the same feelings of being distraught, etc are stored right next to where those memories are buried. (think: flash backs for soldiers when they hear or see fireworks they may be underneath a desk in a fetal position shaking)

Once you are asked to access those feelings, you kind of discuss them and essentially desensitize them. You take what you have learned in your prior therapy sessions and are asked, what would you say to that person you were in that moment, today based off what you've learned. Generally it's things like you ARE good enough. This person is disordered, NOT you. You should leave right now, get out. etc. 

You are in a way, patching these past moments. The eye movement/audible tones keep you focused in the present right now so you are basically accessing an old file, reprogramming it into a different experience based off who you are today, (stronger, more informed) and then the memory is put back into storage.

What this does is it changes the trauma. When that memory is accessed in the future, you remember it in the context of the therapy session, not back then. And you remember from a position of being strong and informed, not weak and helpless. So it basically takes the power of that moment away, it makes it insignificant. And the less significant it is, the less your brain holds onto it. Kind of like how I could tell you everything I did on 9/11 but nothing else that entire month. Everything i stored because of the significance of that day. This therapy access that day, makes it less stigmatizing and essentially takes its power away and it blends into the background of insignificance like every other day in September 2001. Therefore you are no longer stuck in reliving the trauma of the past.

It really helped me. I felt each time I went that I was letting go of a lot of "junk" Or as my therapist put it, our brains are computers that just like our own hard drives, need to be defragmented from limiting viruses that are slowing us and bogging us down.

[Pingo]

Hi Anxiety5, congrats on your progress! You sound like you are doing great! I always enjoy your posts! How many sessions of EMDR have you done? I have read great things about it in the book "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk (I just wrote a review about it yesterday in the book section).

I also like your Shawshank comparison! 

[Loosestrife]

Thanks for this Anxiety5, I found it really helpful   

[parisian]

Anx5, thanks for sharing your experiences.

I too can vouch for EMDR. I had several sessions to desensitize me to traumatic events. It is about completely 'recoding' the trauma - the sounds, smell, sight, sensations, feelings, whatever else you normally associate with the event, and shrinking it to a very tiny picture and re-associating it with feeling strong or another worthwhile emotion.

EMDR takes the trauma out of the memory until it becomes a 'meh' scenario.