Trying to deal with anxiety and loss after relationship break up

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This topic has 2,306 replies, 63 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 1 month ago by Anonymous.

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October 29, 2018 at 7:27 am #234263

Anonymous
Inactive

Hi,

I think you are trying so hard to NOT feel the pain that when it resurfaces, it hurts that much more. For me, I used to feel so uncomfortable with the pain that any sign of it would make me feel out of control, like it was unbearable.

Sometimes what I do (when the pain is overwhelming) is sit down and tell myself ‘Okay, feel the pain. Let it wash over you and let it enter your body, your cells, your soul, Feel every inch of the pain allow it to hurt you as much as it wants’. Only then you take back the power because you are allowing the pain to do its thing. And usually after a few minutes the wave of emotion subsides because you haven’t challenged it, you haven’t pushed it away.

It is unnatural for you to NOT feel pain right now. Your mind and body needs to grieve the loss. Allow it to. And know that it is okay to feel the pain. Pushing it away all the time will only make it sneak up on you when you least suspect it… You can’t think your way out of pain.

Just a strategy that has worked for me.

xxx

October 29, 2018 at 7:45 am #234267

Kkasxo
Participant

Shelby,

What helped me during the initial period is doing exactly what my ex did. He threw himself into work, working long hours, spending time with family and friends, going out, booking weekends away etc and yes, faking it until he made it (or not made it in his case as he has popped up YET AGAIN!!!!!!). Mind you, doing all those things didn’t make me feel any better but they did help to make the days go by. And I think that’s all that it comes down to.

Somewhere at the end of that 5/6 week period where he was faking it and eventually so was I when he popped up I was genuinely shocked. I was still hurt but somewhere I’ve almost accepted things as they were and was quite adamant on moving forward? Of course the heart completely took over in the moment and we started speaking again etc etc.

I’m not a very good example at all as the back and forth still continues with me as silly as it sounds but the point is, keeping busy and distracted is your main focus and will be your main focus for the oncoming weeks/months.

Eventually, you’ll partake in a lot more outings etc because you’ll find that you’ve got nothing better to do. You may still not enjoy them as previously but you’ll find yourself doing them anyway.

Also, journaling! I found that helped a lot. It was an outlet for me and also a way in which no one got hurt. All of the anger, upset, hurt etc had I not journaled it in my own space I would’ve 100% sent to him and made the situation so much worse. Whereas getting things out of me on paper felt like I’m no longer holding them in so it was a win win for me.

October 29, 2018 at 8:57 am #234301

Shelbyville
Participant

Azu,

Thanks for that useful tip, I will definitely try it. I find that because my pain or anxiety manifest physically, my tummy is never not tense/sore/heaving. So it’s so hard to give my mind a break because the tummy is a constant reminder that I’m in pain.

I have stayed active today, walked, met friends, played with my nephew, did grocery shopping as I was off work. I feel like the past 3 days have been some of the longest I’ve experienced.

I just thought I’d be starting to see some sort of light at the end of this dark tunnel now, even though I know the severe pain only set in on Sat evening after the phonecall.

Kkasxo,

Thanks for your advice too. I will try and keep active and throw myself into work as I did in the first few weeks and hopefully time will ease the pain.

Are you finding it any easier as the days go by or is the contact with your ex helping or hurting?

October 29, 2018 at 10:48 am #234325

Brandy
Participant

Hi Shelbyville,

I hesitate to interrupt this thread because what I’m observing here is several compassionate Tiny Buddha members consistently providing loving support to one another, a truly beautiful thing to witness that confirms my gut feeling that most people really do have a strong and basic need to help others. I’m so sorry for your pain. I’m jumping in because you’ve asked more than once for more help, and you also mentioned that the pain seems to be “snowballing”. The snowballing effect is a common experience because our minds tend to cling to the negative instead of the positive. It happens to all of us. Once you realize this you’ll understand that you need to develop a strategy or skill to interrupt what’s happening in your head. If I were you, I’d pour every last ounce of energy you have into educating yourself on mindfulness. There are plenty of books on it. I recommend A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Once you educate yourself and then practice what you learn, the moment will come when you realize that you have and have always had the tools you need to feel better. Think Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. And once you’ve learned this, you can never unlearn it.

I am not a Buddist. I was raised Catholic but have never been religious. I consider myself a practical person who’s skeptical of quick fixes, but I’ve always been curious about how regular people like you and me are able to cope in the face of great tragedy, and for reasons unknown to me have always been pointed in the direction of the concept of mindfulness.

Give it a try. Once you experience as little as 30 seconds of relief from your pain, your hope for peace will be reignited and you’ll want more and more, and you can get it. It’s right at your fingertips. And seriously, I’m not some weird zealot trying to convert you to some bizarre practice. I’m an educated married working professional, a mom of 3 grown (well, almost grown) kids, and I have experienced and survived the unbearable pain associated with a breakup that you are experiencing right now.

B

October 29, 2018 at 11:10 am #234327
Valora
Participant
I’m jumping in to second what Brandy wrote. Mindfulness is invaluable when it comes to recovering from a breakup. I love Kyle Cease, too. I tend to listen to him every time I get into my head about things and he pulls me back out of it. He has a bunch of great videos on YouTube.

Also, meditation (the simple kind, where you just sit there quietly for 20 minutes and focus on your breathing, letting any thoughts that come pass right through while you refocus on your breathing) helps a ton with mindfulness. It sort of exercises your brain when it comes to focus, and this helps you to be able to refocus on the present any time your mind tries to pull you into thinking about past pain/regret or future anxieties/worries. We are usually fine in the present, so that is the best place for our minds to be… focusing on all of the good things we have in our lives right now, even the little things like the birds chirping, the pleasant rise and fall of pets’ bellies as they sleep peacefully and comfortably, the click of the keyboard when you type, the warmth when the heater kicks on when it’s really cold outside., the feeling you get when you help someone (and if that feels good, then help MORE people. That’s an easy way to bring happiness to both you and someone else!). All of these little things that add even just a little happiness to our lives… focus on those things. Meditation and mindfulness helps you keep that focus and regain it quickly when something does interrupt.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Valora.
October 29, 2018 at 12:20 pm #234351

Shelbyville
Participant

Brandy & Valora,

Thank you so much for your kind advice. I’m familiar with mindfulness and in the past even went to a workshop and am part of a mailing list. I guess I always figured mindfulness was more for ‘everyday worries’ so I haven’t applied it as such at the moment.

Meditation is something I do do each day. I try to do at least one 20min session through the 1Giant Mind app per day and I listen to Sarah Blondin on the Insight timer app at night.

I will give the mindfulness a try and see if it helps with the pain. My biggest fear is that I won’t recover from this. That the pain is what I must endure now for a long long time. X

October 29, 2018 at 1:34 pm #234379

Valora
Participant

The thing is… be patient with yourself, too. You have a reason to be in pain and you have to process that pain before you can truly let it go, and that’s okay. Just let yourself be okay with the pain for now and know that this is how you work through it. It won’t last forever and since you’re dealing with it now, it won’t pop back up later when you least expect it with the potential to screw up a future relationship (which is what happens when people push emotions down.. it creates all kinds of emotional trouble later on).

I was where you are now a while ago, feeling like I would be in pain forever and it would never end, and I can tell you, I let myself cry whenever I needed to, hurt whenever I needed to. I have a really good friend that would let me vent to her (which is what you’re doing here, basically). The grief would come on in waves where I would feel fine in the morning and then devastated and crying again at night… but as time went on, those waves became fewer, with longer periods of relief/peace in between. That will happen to you too. The mindfulness just helps bring you back to the periods of relief a little quicker, but just know that it’s okay to be sad in the meantime and that you are going to heal from this at your own pace. It’s going to be okay and you truly will feel much better after a while.

October 29, 2018 at 1:50 pm #234385

Kkasxo
Participant

Brandy & Valora,

Thank you ladies for joining in. That is some really good insight! I’m currently reading the book Shelby has recommended before, ‘I can mend your broken heart’ but I’ll give the others a try once this is done.

Shelby – you ask if the contact with my ex is helping or hurting and if I’m honest I think I have to say both. If I’m honest, my mind is done with him. Not only because of the back and forth but also because things are great until we actually get into the nitty gritty and trauma behind the original reason of our split. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive him for what he did and the way he left me. This experience has helped me in seeing and coming to terms with that but also it’s painful because my heart still very much wants him. The issue is my mind really cannot see this proceeding any further. I love him yes. Very much so. But I just can’t seem to get past the trauma of the past few months, the trauma that I will have to live with for the rest of my life and the trauma that he allowed me to go through on my own. All the feelings of betrayal, hurt come to light the moment he tries to get close to me. I just cannot let him in anymore and no matter how much I try to understand why he did things the way he did them I just cannot. I realise now that there is nothing in the world that will justify what he did.

It’s really hard..

October 29, 2018 at 4:33 pm #234409

Anonymous
Inactive

I thought I was having a great up until a few minutes ago.

I haven’t removed him or any one his family members from social media yet. I thought it would in bad taste if I did it first since I was the one that ended the relationship. He posted a disturbing video of an animation he did about he world ending (he is a videographer) and a random girl messaged saying ‘beautiful, lovely pretty’ with lots of red love hearts. I know it’s porbbalf nothing but since the breakup is so fresh I am overanlaysing and already hurting over nothing. And his father posted a family picture of all of us from a day out a few months ago with hashtags like #happytogether. It’s so silly but it makes me feel guilty. I think I’ll be off social media for a while, until I feel ready. And I might just have to unfollow them all myself.

I guess I should expect these setbacks but I was getting ahead of myself thinking I was over the worst part yesterday.

I feel sick like I want to throw up. How did others deal with this? Did you guys ‘break up’ with his family as well? Was anything said?

October 29, 2018 at 10:47 pm #234437

Shelbyville
Participant

Azu,

Social media is not your friend at the moment. It’s incredibly difficult for me at the moment as I loved his family very much and I don’t get to see them anymore either. I’m lucky my ex has no social media, nor does his family really.

However a couple of his friends and I are friends on social media. I had to mute them on my news feed. Having said that, I got rid of Facebook off my phone. Maybe the odd time I sign in at work but I don’t seek out anything that might hurt me.

The best thing to do is give up social media for a while, that way you don’t have to unfollow them digitally, you just unfollow them in life.

Your ex may still use it as a way of causing a reaction if he knows your still friends on it. Heck, I’d probably do the same if my ex was on social media! I wouldn’t worry about some random with love hearts, some people comment under other people’s content with a million emojis the whole time, they’re just those type of people.

I hope you’re ok. The only way through this is plough ahead with blinkers on I think. X

October 30, 2018 at 12:20 am #234449

Anonymous
Inactive

Shelbyville,

Thank you, I think I’m just still feeling guilty about breaking up with him. But I don’t regret my decision. Staying away from social media is probably the best idea.

Its frustrating because I want to get on with my regular life but I guess I just can’t erase the last 1.5 years. There’s always going to be baggage.

How are you doing today? Hope you are feeling better than the last couple of days.

thanks for the support even though you are struggling too.

Xx

October 30, 2018 at 1:47 am #234451

Shelbyville
Participant

Azu,

If I were you I wouldn’t feel guilty as when you think about it, it’s him who should feel guilty for not moving on with the relationship when it was clearly what you wanted. But I can understand the feelings you feel at the moment, it’s not easy.

Break-ups are never easy, I don’t think anyone gets out unscathed, regardless of who ended it.

I will help in any way I can, as I said before, it’s like we’re all in this together.

I’m suffering particularly badly again this morning with anxiety. It’s chewing my tummy up and making my hands shake a little. However, apparently the only way to get the better of anxiety is to confront it and build confidence. It told me this morning that I’ll never be okay, that maybe I’ll have to give up work and become a hollow shell, not leaving the house, doped up on medication for the rest of my life, so despite those negative thoughts, I got up and got ready and made it into work.

I still don’t feel great, but at least I’m trying, I can’t let it get the better of me, despite it’s very powerful attempts. I feel frightened, that’s how this loss affects me. The unknown, the attachment I had to my ex, it creates a huge amount of pain which I fear all the time I’m not able to cope with. So therein lies the anxiety, but hopefully I can keep going.

Tiny Buddha posters, thank you for helping me feel not so alone. It has helped more than you can imagine.

October 30, 2018 at 3:20 am #234457

Kkasxo
Participant

Shelby,

This should be a proud moment for you! You have faced up to your anxiety despite all the negative things that it was telling you! Well done 🙂

I hope the rest of your day goes smoothly!

October 30, 2018 at 3:34 am #234459

Shelbyville
Participant

Kkasxo,

I didn’t really look at it that way, but thank you. It’s easing out as the morning goes on, I’m glad I’m back at work actually! Never thought I’d hear myself saying that!

How was your weekend, how is your heart?

October 30, 2018 at 5:21 am #234469

Kkasxo
Participant

Shelby,

My heart is just as lost and tired as it was before. Seems I cant win in the situation that I am in. It appears I can’t be with him but I also struggle severely without him so no idea which way I’m going to go.

I just want to be set on one thing now as the unknown is the place which I find most tiring. I suppose its the only place where I am without a source of direction. So that needs to end. Hopefully the next few weeks clear that up for me and lead me in the direction in which I need to go.
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