Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Thanksgiving is a time for pausing and giving thanks but daily gratitude is an important part of a healthy life.

Even when you’re hurting and things don’t seem so great.

Last week was my first birthday and Monday was my first wedding anniversary without Michael. It hurt (like hell) and was hard. But my kids and grandkids and best friend and kids all went out Saturday night (photos are in an album on Facebook) and my kids just wrote lovely things in my cards and gave me wonderful gifts.

My children performed admirably, above and beyond what any parent could expect, during Michael’s illness and death. We were together as a family the whole way, supporting each other, helping each other, growing closer in the face of heartache. We all stumbled around sometimes but picked each other up.

I like to think the way I raised them had something to do with it. The birthday cards they sent me all said the same thing: “You’ve always been there for me.” It was nice that they put those words into action and are now there for me.

I know the kids may see me differently now…they’ve never seen me cry like that…they’ve never seen me get hit so hard by anything in my life. Sometimes I think they were worried about me…But it’s okay.

I took my children out of the dysfunctional worlds I lived in and we forged through life on our own…sometimes with barely any money and not a lot of anything…but each other…and that was enough.

I changed my life, kicked out the bananaheads, did my work, tended to my life and I met Michael. The most wonderful, sweetest person I’ve ever known. Michael said he loved me because I am who I say I am…and even when who I am changes, I show that face to the world. I’ve always been strong and there for the kids. They have been paying that back to me tenfold over the past year and a half.

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I’m grateful for the kind caregivers I met this year, the hospice workers and my two live-in caregivers who were the kindest men to Michael. He deserved them…I’m glad I spent a lot of time caring for Michael, being his voice and surrounding him with only others who cared and brought goodness to his life. I’m grateful I could be the champion of a man who gave so much to me.

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I’m grateful I’ve known love as I did. To be loved and cared for deeply by someone who never made me cry, who never treated me unkind, called me a name or even raised his voice at me. We had such a good relationship…There are people like that and there is love like that. Count on it. Believe it. And do your work.

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I’m thankful for all the readers who come here every day and share their experience, strength and hope with each other. I’m grateful for those who wrote privately and sent cards and gifts. One person sent me a DVD from Sweden, another 3 books in the mail, another a plant just sent from “A GPYP reader.” And people donated to Michael’s foundation and bought extra GPYP books to give to domestic violence shelters. Thank you all so much.

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I’m grateful for everyone who bought a copy of my book when it came out in May. Due to Michael’s illness, I was not able to do the book promotion I wanted to do, so I thank you all for buying it, passing it on and passing it to others. And for those still recommending it, and promoting it, buying it and giving to others, recommending it and putting a link to the booksite on other forums, thank you so very much. Thank you. It helps keep the lights on on this blog.

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As I said last year, the community here is incredible and I’m very grateful for each and every one of you for being here. Thank you especially to those who come here and do their work and heal and then stay here to reach back and pull new posters along.

Thank you all for your honesty and your sharing and your willingness to do the hard work. Know that so many others in this world are unwilling to do the hard stuff you’re doing. And their lives will reflect that. And yours will one day reflect the enormous energy you are putting into healing in its vibrance and its incredibleness.

The blog has grown so much in the past three years and I can’t answer every comment as I once did…but I read them all each and every day.
Sometimes I pull out my blackberry in some random place and read GPYP comments and I’m grateful, to those who find us when hurting, to those who help others, to those who ask questions. It makes my day.

So I am thankful to each and every person here, both those who are new and those who have been here a while.

Even in this year of unfathomable loss, I’m thankful for love and life and healing, both mine and yours.

If things are not exactly as you wish them to be this holiday season, just trust the process

and

don’t give up the day before the miracle happens.

Things will…WILL…get better.

Just hold on, hold out and keep healing and feeding your soul with goodness.

If you look at your life through the prism of gratitude for what you have and not what you don’t have, that helps your healing. Tremendously.

Peace to you all in this holiday season, Susan

Deciding Not To Decide

I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

There are three states to every relationship: IN, OUT, or WAIT
There are three ways of dealing with everything that someone in your life does: ACCEPT IT, CHANGE IT, OR LEAVE

For a relationship to work both parties have to be IN and they have to work on accepting things about their partner that they might not like.

If it (the thing they don’t like) becomes a chronic problem, they can try to change it, and they can be thinking of leaving but waiting to see if the changes are going to take effect. That is called WAIT.

If they decide I can’t accept it, I can’t (or don’t want to) change it, then you have to LEAVE.

Once one party decides they are leaving, you are in OUT. You don’t have to decide OUT, it can be decided for you. Unless you don’t believe it or don’t want to believe it, in which case you are in WAIT and chances are your partner is in OUT. And if you’re in WAIT, you are most likely also in “trying to change it” (even if it means passively waiting for contact).

There are a thousand different scenarios that can fit into IN OUT OR WAIT. ACCEPT IT CHANGE IT OR LEAVE.

And then there are the scenarios where all the data is in, you know what is going on. You can’t accept it, you can’t change it and you don’t want to leave. Or you’re not in, you’re not really out (even if you say you are) and you’re not really waiting (active contact).

On Getting Through The Holidays

New readers may not realize that the blog and the book “came to life” shortly after I started the blog when I wrote about getting past the holidays when you have a broken heart (the blog started on 11/29/06 and the “Getting Past Your
Breakup” came a couple of weeks later in response to email I had received about getting through the holidays after a breakup.)

The next year, in December, I wrote a long post about being alone at Christmas and after receiving several emails last year about surviving the holidays (which are really upon us now despite the holly jolly tree decorations being in the stores since Labor Day [or was it 4th of July?]) I re-ran it. And here it is again.

Feel free to use this post as a place to express your feelings about the holiday season.

But no matter what HOLD ON. No matter what. HOLD ON.

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This was from December 21, 2006.

“I cannot believe I’m alone on Christmas Eve.” – me (December 1987)

We had separated in February. February 10th. I was anxious and depressed and upset through most of February and March. He was being open about his relationship with a woman he worked with. In fact, he introduced our poor, confused children to her and her children less than six weeks after we’d parted.

11/18 Check-in Thread

New thread!

As always, if you had posted in the last one and it wasn’t answered, feel free to post here. We don’t want anyone to feel ignored!!

How is everyone doing?

Working Through Emotional Pain

“One of the hallmarks of emotional maturity and realistic acceptance of the limitations and vicissitudes of life is the mastery, acceptance, and tolerance of sadness, helplessness and hopelessness” ~ Therese Rando (quoting Dorpat)

One of the biggest influences on both my work and my personal working through of pain is Therese Rando. She was probably the first person I read on grief and I followed her bibliographies to discover other grief theorists. BUT one of the most profound things I learned from her was long before I turned to writing about grief as an academic. It was not just how to face grief and pain in my own life, but that I HAD to face the pain in my own life in order to work through it.

Time Does Not Heal All Wounds

I’ve heard people say, “Just give it time and it will heal.” or “Time heals all wounds.” or “The only cure for a broken heart is giving it time.”

NO

NO

NO

NO

While it does indeed take TIME to heal a broken heart, a loss, a life-changing event, the WAY the time is spent is what is important to your healing.

You can’t just sit there twiddling your thumbs and thinking that as soon as enough time passes, you’ll feel fine and dandy once again.

You won’t.

Forgiveness Redux

Don’t forgive too soon. Forgiveness is never a quick fix. It is a process. ~ Rev. Susan Cartmell

There is a saying that forgiveness is very freeing.

And it is.

But the caveat is that it is freeing ONLY when done at the right time and for the right reason.

If you’ve been hurt, you may be told by others to let go of your anger and forgive, you’ll feel so much better. The truth is that you can only forgive after you’ve worked through your anger and pain.

Mail. We Get Mail When They Were or Are A Drug Addict

I am 28 My Bf was 35. We had what I thought was a great relationship we were together for about a year and a half and prior to that we were good friends for about 2 years. At the beginning of our relationship I caught him going into the bathroom with about four other guys, I know a few of this guys did cocaine. I asked him what he was doing and he insisted he didn’t do any drugs and that they just sometimes all took a piss together. I never believed that and after that I was always suspicious of these particular friends. I always got along great with his other friends, his work friends his family but I didn’t not like it when he would hang out with these particular guys. For the first year or so they hardly came around. and when they did They used to come to his house and do drugs in the bathroom and I would make sure my bf wasn’t doing anything, He would never tell those guys to go home or not to do that stuff. Most of our fights were caused because of these particular friends that did drugs. about 2 months ago we finally had a big blow out over these drug friends and he said I was trying to tell him who he could and couldn’t see and that I shouldn’t make him choose, which I didn’t I just asked that he tell them not to bring cocaine around. he said that’s not fair to him. He said that I degraded him by accusing him of doing drugs and that his friends know he didn’t do that stuff. But one friend said to him before since when don’t u do it. There have been other situations where a drug dealer called him at like four in the morning and said he didn’t know who it was.

Mail. We Get Mail on OCD and Long Distance and Choosing

Hi Susan,

You may answer this on the blog…

I have just started getting to know someone new from a dating site, and we are thinking about making plans to meet if things continue to go well. (He lives far away but has been wanting to relocate to my area.) We are both around 50. I definitely have had codependency issues in the past, but getting better. He seems very nice, very thoughtful, and “different” — not in bad ways, but in slightly puzzling ways. I’m having trouble sorting out what’s what. For instance, under the circumstances, it might be a big red flag that he’s never been married at his age, but then again, it might not…

It’s very early days, but we seem compatible in so many ways, and I’d like to see where this is going to go. The thing is, he told me very early on that he has OCD and generalized anxiety disorder. He said these were undiagnosed in his young adulthood, then for some years after his diagnosis in his 30s he resisted medication because he thought it was a “weakness,” or a “crutch,” or something like that, and now he says the symptoms are under control because he’s been taking medication for about the last five years. He seems to be, in general, almost painfully honest and sincere, as well as courteous and kind. He wanted me to know about the OCD/GAD so there wouldn’t be any “unpleasant surprises” later… Apparently most women run the other way as soon as he tells them. Do they know something I don’t know?

He seems so sweet, but I need to know what I might be getting into. I could only find one quick mention of OCD on your site, and the info on the internet is massive and hard to wade through. I’m enjoying him so much thus far, and I don’t want to assume that this is gonna necessarily turn out to be a dysfunctional mess like the bipolar/borderline/whatever bananahead that brought me to your site in the first place (it sure isn’t starting out like that one did!), but I don’t want to just waltz on in to a potential train wreck, either. I love myself and I love my life! Everybody has problems and nobody will be perfect, but realistically, what am I looking at here?

Thank you so much for your time. I’ve already learned more from you than I can even realize at this point.

Thanks for writing.

There are a lot of challenges here. The first is the distance and if he was in process of relocating to where you live or thought about it prior to meeting you or now thinks its a good idea. I would beware of anyone who is long-distance but dangles the idea of moving to where you are. Both because it might give you something to hope for and second because it could be kind of creepy or maybe just dependent in a non-creepy kind of way .

11/8 Check-in Thread

New thread! (I know I’m late but I’ve been a bit busy)

As always, if you had posted in the last one and it wasn’t answered, feel free to post here. We don’t want anyone to feel ignored!!

How is everyone doing?

Shoulda-Coulda-Woulda Redux

In response to comments:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

When I was moving along, nicely, through my recovery I was working at things about 7 years and then I had a series of losses that rocked me. I felt as if someone had pulled the plug on my life. My job was laying off, my adoptive mother, whom I had spent 7 years trying to work on a relationship with, was dying. I had been looking for my birth family and was getting close when I realized I needed to stop because I could not handle the emotional turmoil in my adoptive family with finding my birth family. Then my adoptive mother died and 5 months later my dog who was a healthy and happy animal who had protected me and my children after my separation, died suddenly. Then I resumed my search for my brother and found out that he had died a few years earlier.

I was living in a different state from my therapist so I found a new one who was an excellent grief therapist. He was very familiar with grief having lost his first wife suddenly at a young age. We talked about a lot of things. Seeing him, combined with doing grief groups as outlined in the Grief Recovery Handbook, helped me enormously. But one conversation in particular struck me.

It was a day I was full of regret. I thought about my mother’s last day and the nurse had come in to give her some morphine. Within the hour she died. I was convinced, for months, that it was that last shot of morphine that killed her.

My dog had suffered a premature death because, I was convinced, I had made the wrong medical choices for him even though I had made the ones that I was convinced would save his life. He had a bad, unpredictable reaction to the treatment I had agreed to, and died sooner than expected.

When I did search for my birth family after my adoptive mother had died, I found that my brother Edward, who was the whole reason for my search, had died a few years later I was upset that I hadn’t looked for them earlier. I had to get “emotionally ready” and in doing so I lost my only chance of seeing my brother again. It was all my fault.

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

The Person Who Left Me Doesn’t Miss Me

I hear it all the time, “I want him or her to miss me.” or “I want to know I mattered.” or “How could he or she just go on like that as if I wasn’t there?”

We’ve talked time and time again on here and in the book about this holding onto the opinion of the ex.

Let’s break this down, shall we?

Either ex-bananahead left you or was such a bananahead that you left.

This event says, “There’s something wrong with us. It can’t be fixed.’

Someone broke up with someone. And they broke up because it wasn’t working or wasn’t enough to avoid temptation of other people, places or things. Or it was just not a fun time. One person gets a clue. Any number of good reasons. Any number of stupid reasons. People break up for many, many reasons. And sometimes none of them make any sense.

Sometimes one person is frustrated and upset in the relationship and decided to break it off to show their partner what life is life without them. This person breaks up, not with the expectation of moving on, but with expectations that their partner will have a D-BOM moment, of a complete turnaround, of an “oh shit what have I lost?” minute.

Predicting the Future by the Past

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

As the GPYP book is tag lined, the breakup of my first marriage was the best thing that ever happened to me. In that marriage I was focused on my misery and hated every second of my life. I hated my husband for almost 4 years before we broke up. But my fear of abandonment, and my secret thought that I was really the failure and at fault for the failure of my marriage, kept me hanging on or in there.

I wasn’t a dutiful wife trying to “make it work.” I wasn’t staying for the children. I wasn’t convinced we would turn it around. I wasn’t dutiful, I didn’t believe the children were benefiting from our being married and I knew we would never ever turn it around.

Breaking NC: Danger!

Sometimes (okay a lot of times) when I read about an ex attempting to get one of the good readers of GPYP to break NC, this phrase comes to mind. Like every time.

The Horror That Can Be Reconcilliation

On GPYP we don’t discuss reconcilliation attempts. We just don’t. Everything GPYP teaches comes from my personal and professional life and academic research. Maybe there are therapists somewhere that have a high rate of reconcilliations that work out, but I have not personally experienced that. Couple dynamics can be changed and recharted through couples counseling but it’s an intense (and usually long) process.

I know couples who have successfully gone through counseling who are married and/or have children and lots at stake and two committed people. I’m not talking about couples counseling in this post, I’m talking about a breakup and then attempts at reconcilliation. Rarely have I seen that work out and never with people who haven’t been together or married a long, long time.

The only exception to that rule is what I call the “event defining” break…a drunken episode and then the couple go to AA and/or Al-anon and work their programs and come back together….or the death of a child…where I have seen more than one couple go to their separate corners, unable to share the pain, and eventually come back together later in the grieving process. But besides these two “event defining” breakups, I haven’t seen many reconcilliations that work out or any apart from these situations (except for one couple who, while broken up, found meditation and yoga together and now are all Zen about everything on the planet).

Professionally I haven’t seen it and I haven’t heard about it from many other therapists. I don’t study it and there may be entire bodies of work that I’m missing, but my professional experience and my personal experience is that they don’t work.

And sometimes just trying reconcilliation, if you have certain histories, can be a trauma.

Grief and Depression Posts

http://gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/grief-self-pity-and-depression-2/

http://gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/are-you-depressed-2/

http://gettingpastyourpast.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/grief-ends-bank-on-it-believe-in-it/

Transmogrification When They Break NC

Calvin & HObbes copyright Bill Watterson

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So many people struggle with the random, out of the blue contact from the ex and let their heads whirl around no matter how much or how little they’ve said. So many people ask the same question over and over again: “I’ve been NC. This person [the EX] called/wrote/contacted me out of the blue. I was doing well. Now I’m not. What should I do?”

Everyone says the same thing: It is “I was resolute in my NC and then THEY broke contact. Now I am all aflutter. What do I do now?” Then they put the random message along with the ex and the view of the relationship in the transmogrifier in their head and turn the message into something they need to respond to.

Step away from the transmogrifier. it’s an illusion. An ex is an ex for a reason. Stay no contact.

10/24 Check-in Thread

New thread!

As always, if you had posted in the last one and it wasn’t answered, feel free to post here. We don’t want anyone to feel ignored!!

How is everyone doing?

Answering Mail

I try to answer email but I receive about 50 emails a week with about 25 asking for an individual answer that the sender does not want posted on the blog. I can’t really answer emails unless I can do so on the blog. If you want ME to know the background but don’t want the details posted on the blog, please include the background and then what is publishable on the blog. Sometimes I republish older posts in response to mail (esp if a theme is developing in email) but I like to do a Mail post every week. I also don’t think it’s fair to my coaching clients to answer long individual emails privately (because that is what I do for them and they pay for it).

BUT if you’ve sent me mail and said it’s okay to publish on the blog (or some version thereof) please resend with “okay to put on the blog” in the subject line. I am just way way behind as I’ve been doing a lot of writing for work and traveling and have fallen behind.

I also periodically have personal coaching slots available but I apologize that I don’t have any right now. So individual attention has to be in the form of a publishable letter right now.

Thanks for understanding everyone!

Deciding to Move On

I seem to run this every 3 months and it’s in response to an email I received today. You can sit on your hands all you want and move away from the computer etc etc but after a while, nothing is going to help if you do not actively choose to move on.

I’ve run this three times before but it’s for new readers.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. ~ Helen Keller

Who doesn’t “get over” it?

The first type is the person who refuses to acknowledge that they had a loss or refuses to do any work that they need to do on themselves. They repress all the hurt and anger and go on to repeat the same mistakes over and over again with the same type of people. They might do some emoting in the beginning but they either go on as if nothing happened or stay stuck in a surface malaise. Nothing is really bad but nothing is really good either. They are maintaining and life is not about maintaining. Life is about living.

I hear people like this on the blog. People tell them what to do to get over it and it’s clear from their subsequent posts that they are NOT LISTENING. They’re not really looking for answers. They’re just talking and talking.

You must talk about it and get it out. That’s why the blog is here and very often you can and will repeat yourself over and over again and that’s okay. It’s part of the process. You must journal and let it out but you can’t JUST talk.

You have to do the work.

You have to read the books, do the inventories, go to therapy, meetings and support groups. NOT JUST TALK. There is no utility in JUST talking. Talking is very important even if you’re talking in circles but you can’t JUST talk.

You have to do more than just talk. Just talking isn’t going to get you anywhere. Justifications and rationalizations are not going to get you anywhere. No talk talk talk and nothing else.

The next type who never get over it are those who get stuck in the emotional mud and never seem to get out of it. What they don’t realize is that although processing your feelings results in healing and cleansing, at some point you need to decide to get on with your life.