Women who Love too Much Community Group
WHEN BEING IN LOVE, MEANS BEING IN PAIN... This group is to help women through the journey of realizing they can love themselves. To help realize that they are capable of having a happy, healthy, whole relationship and break the cycle of abuse and heartache from loving emotionally unavailable men.
Today is day 6 of my n/c with my ex. I was doing great after day two of not having the strong urge to want to contact him. However, last night and this morning has been grooling. Im trying to occupy my mind with other things and keep busy but my mind keeps coming back to him... The funny thing is all the reasons I have come up with to communicate with him again....its like im going crazy....help, my mind and my heart are going in different directions... I dont want to keep going down the same cycle of hurt....but I miss him so much. Someone please help with some suggestions of how to regain my sanity because this is just not logical.
Since most of us do not have local access to daily support group meetings for WWL2M this forum serves that purpose. So, spend some time reading threads and responding to a few, even if you don't have what you may feel are deep words of wisdom borne of experience, you can offer an "Amen" or words of support or a thanks for sharing. And due to our shared histories of relationships with N's you probably DO have some really valuable things to share here. WE want to hear what you have to say, so rather than waste words on his deaf ears, speak with us about recovery!
I live in a very remote area and have no access to my 12 step meetings, etc, so I participate daily in online forums as a substitute, this forum serves that same purpose, when I need someplace to turn...and just as in a real meeting there are times for me to share my story, times for me to listen and times for me to ponder what I've heard.
I offer the following thought to ponder...yes, it IS like you are going crazy but is it truly him that you miss so much? What is so wonderful and irreplaceable about him that you miss and cannot live without? Or is what you miss a fantasy you built up around him? I really don't know, these are honest questions. I just know that in my own life, I found that often what I missed was not the person but the fantasy I had built around them, or around a perceived future with them. When I honestly dissected the situation....there wasn't that much to miss. That allowed me to move on from missing to mourning.
When I was missing a thing, I lived under with the idea that it was out there and I could somehow return to it. When I accept that it's no longer available to me, I can then mourn it, and move on, accepting there is nothing to go back to, but trusting there is something to move on to.
Just keep trying to focus on you, even though it is hard...........try doing things that keep you occupied or that you enjoy....so your attention is not on him, it's on you. Good luck and hugs, it isn't easy.
Make a list of every red flag that you ignored and every time he treated you disrepectfully, you caught him in lies, cheating, etc. Every time you even think about contacting him, emailing, texting. Pull out that list and ask yourself: This is what I miss? THIS?
If you have to, put each and every red flag on a separate index card and tape them around your bedroom as a constant reminder of the pain of this relationship.
What you had (that you cant possibly miss) is a pathological relationship. What you miss, is the ability to wrap yourself up like a blanket in the illusion to go back to the time before you knew this was all illusion.
PART I
by Sandra L. Brown, M.A.
Over and over again women are puzzled by their own process in trying to recover from a pathological relationship. What is puzzling is that despite the treatment they received by him, despite the absolute mind screwing he did to her emotions, not only is the attraction still VERY INTENSE but also the POSITIVE memories still remain strong.
Woman after woman says the same thing that when it comes to remaining strong in not contacting him (what we call Starving the Vampire) she struggles to pull up (and maintain the pulled up) negative memories of him and his behavior that could help her keep strong and detached.
But why? Why are the positive memories floating around in her head freely and strongly and yet the bad memories are stuffed in a mind closet full of fuzzy cobwebs that prevent her from actively
reacting to those memories?
There are a couple of reasons of which we will discuss today only the first one. Lets think of your mind like a computer. Memories are stored much like they are stored on a computer. When there is pain and trauma, memories are stored differently then when its a positive memory. Pulling up the negative memories from your hard drive is different than pulling up a memory that is on your desk top as an icon emblem.
Traumatic memories get fragmented on their way to being stored on the hard drive. They get divided up into more than one file. In one file is the emotional feelings, another file is the sights, another file the sounds, another file the physical sensations.
But a WHOLE and complete memory is made up of ALL those files TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME what you emotionally felt, saw, heard, and physically experienced. Not just one piece of it and not just the positive memory of it. A memory is good + bad = complete.
But when things are traumatic, (or stressful) the mind seperates the whole experience into smaller bits and pieces and then stores them seperately in the mind because its less painful that way.
When women try to remind themselves why they should not be with him, they might get flashes of the bad memory but strangely, the emotional feelings are NOT attached to it. They wonder where did the feelings go? They can see the bad event but they dont feel much about what they remember.
If you are playing a movie without the sound, how do you know what the actors are passionately feeling? Its the same thing with this traumatic recall of memories. You might see the video but not hear the pain in the voices. The negative or traumatic memory is divided up into several files and you are only accessing one of the files in a place where you have stored the positive aspects of the relationship.
To complicate things further, positive memories are not stored like negative memories. They are not divided up into other files. They do not need to be they are not traumatic.
So when you remember a time when the relationship was good or cuddly or the early parts of the relationships which are notoriously honeymoonish, the whole memory comes up the emotional feelings, the visual, the auditory, the sensations. You have a WHOLE and STRONG memory with that. Of course that is WAY MORE appealing to have a memory that is not only GOOD but one in which you feel all the powerful aspects of it as well.
Now, close your eyes and pull up a negative memory can you feel the difference? You might see it but not feel it. Or hear it and not see much of it. Or feel a physical sensation of it but not the emotional piece that SHOULD go with the physical sensation. No matter what your experience is of the negative emotion, it is probably fragmented in some way.
Negative and traumatic memories are often incomplete memories they are memory fragments floating all over your computer/mind. They are small files holding tiny bits of info that have fragmented your sense of the whole complete memory. These distorted and broken memory fragments are easily lost in your mind.
If you have grown up in an abusive or alcoholic home, you were already subconsciously trained how to seperate out memories like this. If your abuse was severe enough early on, your mind just automatically does this anyway if you get scared, or someone raises their voice, or you feel fear in anyway your
brain starts breaking down the painful experience so its easier for you to cope with.
Next week we will talk about one other way your mind handles positive and negative memories and why you are flooded with positive recall and blocked from remembering and feeling those negative things hes done to you.
I hope by now with these newsletters you can see the unqiue aspects of what you have lived thru in the pathological relationship and why this is a whole different thing to heal from then other relationships. This is why regular counseling often does not work and forget about reading regular relationship books! They are NOT written for pathologically based dynamics! Imago therapy is not gonna help this. Dr. Phils books arent gonna touch this. The pathological relationship dynamics are UNIQUE and require a combination of several approaches to help you heal. If your parents were pathological as well, you have the double whammy to heal from.
Please do not live your whole life with symptoms that CAN BE treated and helped. We have made our retreats as cheap as we possibly can so that each of you can receive help and healing.
She told me to write a letter from my Higher Self (the wise one) to my Lower Self (the abandoned person that desperately desired contact). Here is the exercise and some journal entries. I always marvel at how I knew the behavior that goes along with NPD without knowing any of the terms and that is why the labels do not matter. It is the behavior that counts:
4/30/09
They say the truth will set me free. Now I know the truth but I do not fee free. Instead I am devastated, crushed, not functioning.
I wish you loved me. I wanted you to love me. I want to be loved and I do not want to be in pain. I miss you desperately and I miss having sex with you.
EXERCISE WRITE A NOTE FROM YOUR HIGHER NOTE that knows this relationship is a critical error TO YOUR LOWER SELF that wants the relationship regardless of the consequences.
LS: I want him, I want him, I want him. I miss him and I was going to make him love me.
HS: This was not the right man for you and you know it. You knew from the beginning that he was very dark and dangerous. You knew it.
LS; NO NO NO make call me. I will accept his crumbs.
HS: We have to wait this out. The pain and longing will eventually fade. It is better to wait for someone better, to wait on someone more like you; not to always be living on the edge of heartbreak. This man is a very empty vessel that seeks sex, darkness and excitement to make him feel alive.
LS: Something is better then nothing.
HS: No, you were getting further and further away from YOUR true self. You were becoming less fun, less funny, more anxious. You were spending less and less time with your friends. None of that was good for you. You craved affection and kindness and he gave you none of either.
LS: Didn’t he understand all that I was going to help him do???
HS: What you wanted him to continue using you? Is that what you wanted? To make sure he had completely used you? You should be glad you sent him away before he used you anymore then he already did.
5/18/09:
I just want to know that he misses me. Someone please heal me, please heal my mind. Do I wish I had over looked what I found?
5/19/09 Tuesday
Although it has been 1 month since I last heard from you, I can not get you off my mind. I think of you constantly but I am happy that you have not contacted me. I am so fragile, so vulnerable, and so susceptible to you. This, of course, is what you wanted. You must be SHOCKED that I have not contacted you. You thought you had me hooked, didn’t you???? Well the joke is ON YOU. I posses a strength and resolve that you did not count on. Both Bev and Haleeh told me that I am the strongest woman that they know. You don't know me, you never really knew me.
I will get thru this. I need my energy for me and not you. I have to heal me. I am damaged and broken. I can no longer live in this prison, my mind in an endless loop of anguish.
Friday, 5/27/09:
At Charis crying over a card. Today I was thinking of something I did for you. One of the many things that I did for you and realized like Debbie Ford said, I was trying to make my self indispensible to you. So integrated to your life that a) you could not live without me and b) you would realize you loved me. But it did not work. I could not keep you hooked no matter how hard I tried or what I did.
You always showed me you were untrustable.
5/28/09 – Therapy notes:
Yes, it's important to move forward and break any connections you have with anyone who does not hold your heart and soul in its highest good.
I am also very pleased that you see or understand on a deeper level that fantasy only leads to a repetition of past patterns. Whenever any of us, on any level, acknowledges red flags early on - then we must honor them.
There were three things we talked about that you might want to put your focus on - and they are:
1. Relax the 3 main areas (which allow all energy to move through thereby allowing the body to receive the greatest amount of Divine light): lower back, stomach, and hips
2. Pay close attention to the voices of your mind (these voices are most often negative, critical, and will talk you into anything and everything that is not in your best interest)
3. Go directly to your Divine source and ask if something is true or not:
For example: Is it true that I am not good enough? What do you imagine your Divine source will say?
6/24/09 Weds
I am so sad and I hope that Rebecca can help me and explain it to me. Take it in: He slept with at least 8 other women during your 8 months together. You saw the emails, you can't deny it. Why do you think he always hid his phone?
Why is it important to you to know that he suffering and he is sorry? You saw him back on line on Monday and apologizing to the girl from Argentina. An apology he never gave you. Calling her names of endearments he never called you.
His desperation is palpable but instead I only want to know that he thinks about me and than any day now I will hear from him. It is pathetic and not comprehensible that I can not get it thru my thick skull that he does not give a shit a about me.
Carrie is so sweet telling me that anyone that would break up with me is an idiot. I love my friends. He was a fool to let me catch him but it was inevitable, because he wanted to be caught, he was constantly testing me and pushing me.
Paula said to be gentle with myself because he was cute and manipulative. Paula said anyone would have fallen for him the way he came weekend after weekend after weekend.
7/6/09
Why is this man constantly on my mind? I feel like I want to go see Kat and tell her: You were wrong, he did not call, he never got in touch with me, but what is the point? Why do I want to know that he is suffering and thinking about me?
Today is the day that I would have been driving or flying home from dropping him off. I would have a summer full of nausea and pain wondering if he was going to keep in contact and who he was screwing. I really want to stop thinking about him, to disengage completely.
What do you want Kat to tell you that Rebecca has not? That he is falling down a dark tunnel. That he thinks about me? That the time he spent with you is forever branded inside of him?
This is a man that could not open his heart to you or the woman that he married and had his child.
She spent years loving him, chasing him, forgiving him and he was unable to crack open an inch of his heart and let her in. Yet you think YOU could????
A man that could walk away from you without a thought of how he may have left you and yet you continue to obsess about him endlessly and want him to be sorry.
Please help me God, please help me to disengage from the dangerous energy. Please help me to heal so that the mere thought of him is repulsive, not only because he is repulsive, but because that was a deadly relationship to my soul.
Always an angle, always exploitation.
7/8/09
Energy of desperation … I am not important unless I hear from him.
Please have compassion and mercy for that person that took that email and highlighted those things because I was so desperately seeking validation from this person. This person that was unable to validate me because he did not see me as human.
I have to know that I am important to someone, surely he loved me.
I had to be in so much pain to have abandoned myself to that level.
Validate me .. a child’s deep need to feel acknowledge and wanted.
He treated you like a doormat. He took what he wanted and left when he pleased.
His energy will consume you completely. He energetically takes over.
It is not about the who, it is about the what. What is the Universe trying to teach me or show me? What are you trying to tell me right now? I should not be afraid any more of these types of people. Emotionally I am still dependent on someone liking me? What is the emotion that was provoked?
I am attaching the energy of desperation to xn. It is NOT xn’s validation that I am seeking
it is the child that lives inside of me that needs validation.
He is just an attachment that I have formed.
The need to feel approval stems from the need to know that I am important.
I am not indispensible even if I was to him because he had detached from his heart.
Thank God those days are over. The torment, the pain, the constant intrusive thoughts. No Contact is the only way to make it out the other end.