Sometimes when we encounter painful situations, we do our best to distract ourselves to ease the pain like alcohol, gambling or another relationship. The trouble is, once that distraction is gone, we are in a worst position than before because now we have to deal with the crutch as well as the initial problem. Since most of what you wrote focus on relationship, my question is how are the other aspects of your life at the moment? Are you in a career that you are happy with? Do you have a hobby you enjoy that helps you ease the stress of everyday life? Do you have a group of friend that you can confide in that aren’t potential relationship partners?

Hi Alyssa,

I am in the exact same shoe as you. I left a toxic relationship full of lies manipulation and humiliation. He would put me down then come back to say I’m the one who THINKS he put me down. He cheated on me during his trips with other girls and come back to make me pamper him as if i’m his maid. It’s my first relationship so I didn’t know when to move on. I let that happen to me again and again and each time I cried myself out because he made it seem like it’s my job to do that and stay quiet or else I’m the one “worrying too much”. Now I feel bad because I lost a lot of weight, burnt my tear gland and causes my skin to wrinkle up around my eyes. I was happy i was out of this relationship though but the crying and losing weight has caused many other health issues like hormone imbalance, tired easily, dry eyes and skin. It’s certainly the worst thing in my life to have treated myself this way or have let others to treat myself this way. I still experience a lot of guilt whenever i see the change in myself. It’s like some post self harm feeling.I am trying to hang out and talk to people BEFORE meeting him. get back to the lifestyle i had before he appeared in my life and i found that helpful. I was becoming myself again, motivated, happy, hopeful and career focused. Sometimes i just had to pretend that the last two years never happened and emotionally I’ll feel all good again. I read in another thread here that you need to learn how to love yourself and moving away from him you have done something great to yourself already so just keep doing it. I was actually living in another country just for him and leaving that country when the relationship was over was the best thing i did to myself. I talked a lot too with my guy friends and i was very vulnerable for a rebound period but i made sure i kept distance. You’ll make it out one day, because we all did. and when that happens you will realize that all those tears and emotional pain you suffer is just not worth it at all SO the sooner you drop it, the better. Think of it as he was just some enemy of yours. So don’t let someone who wants to ruin you to affect you so much anymore 🙂 at least that’s what i’m trying to convince myself.

Hi Alyssa,

I must say I admire you conviction of making that decision, even though you know that you have to start over again. When we hit rock bottom, we either choose to stay in it because it’s a comfortable disaster, go even further down the slide or say “you know what, I’m sick of this crap” and walk. To be able to make that last choice demonstrates that you are aware of your self worth and have the courage to venture into the great unknown despite the forces set against you. The first step is the hardest to take in any change and it’s something to be proud of.

You mentioned that you tend to over analyse things and I’ve got to admit that I do quite a bit of this myself. The thing I try to remember is that though it’s rational to think things through, over analysing things usually lead to a lot of self doubt and self judgement that ends up drowning out the sound of intuition. Another reason why some people over analyse situations is to maintain a sense of control, in that we belief that if we think about it enough, we can make it work. That again, is a fallacy because there are situations that no matter what you do, it is not going to work because of factors outside of your control.

So what to do? The one thing that I find helpful in avoiding the over analysing trap is to be present and live in the moment instead of worrying the past or the future. For example, if I am writing a job application, I will allocate a time and put everything into it but once it’s done, it will be out of my mind until I get a call for an interview. A lot of what you do like drawing and writing are great ways to do this and when I find that I am “in my head” while walking or doing something else, I take a deep breath and come back into the present. It requires practice and constant vigilance at the begining but it gets easier over time.