Hi ZC

W.O.R.M  Write One Read Many  is a software term for writing code that is run over and over again.  Your consciousness has become fixated on the WORM of the imagined future that cannot be and so you suffer. If only, could of, should of… you replay the memories in the hopes of changing the past… feeding the WORM and allowing it to embed itself deeper and deeper.

I do not mean to be harsh. However as you know (but do not know) the issue is not about your ex and to stop the pain what is required is to stop feeding the WORM. (When you do kill the WORM and look back on how you did it, that is exactly what you will have done, you will have gotten to the point where you just stop. Maybe that takes years of therapy or maybe you just decide to do it).

It is possible one of the reasons that you don’t stop is that a part of you gets of payoff in dwelling on the past. The payoff of staying stuck could be the comfort of certainty experienced by not changing and moving on.  Staying stuck, out weighing the payoff of stopping and entering into a future that is uncertain.

You mention Karma. Karma as I understand is about ones action and cause and effect. Our actions create what we experience as well as what we a capable of seeing, the choices we are capable of making. Using the idea of reincarnation as a metaphor (each breathe is a death and a rebirth) we have the possibility to change to a higher or lower level with each breath we take . Our karma influences which door we might go through during the transition between death and rebirth. A karma based on fear may view the door to the higher level as the more difficult and uncertain path and door to the lower level of consciousnesses easier, less scary. We tend in each breath to chose the same level door  however the opportunity to choose the higher level of consciousness is always present.

Again sorry if the above comes off as being harsh.