Part one of this three-part blog post detailed why we fall in love, part two examined what happens in the aftermath of love lost, and the phases we all experience during a breakup. This final installment will detail the path to recovery, specifically: the stages of healing, how to cope while you’re recovering, and healing through the twelve steps of Exaholics.
The Stages of Healing
For most Exaholics, the hardest part of the healing process is just getting to the first step: admitting that your attachment to your Ex is unhealthy and needs to end.
It can take a very long time to come to grips with the reality that a relationship is over. Remember, this is how your brain works, and how you were built to bond, even if you know it’s over, you still don’t feel like it’s over. Your limbic brain is a wild creature and not subordinate to the will of your neocortex; it maintains your attachment to your Ex even when you don’t want it to. But even worse, because its hunger for reunion is so strong, it can trick your neocortex into believing that you should get back together with your Ex.
Precontemplation
This is the stage where you are not yet aware you have a problem; in other words, you are in denial that the relationship is over. If you can’t literally reconnect with them, you might try and stay connected to them with your thoughts, fantasies, rehashing, and following their every move on Instagram. You are still having a relationship with your internalized lover in your head. When you are thinking or fantasizing about your Ex lover, you are still feeling all the same feelings: love, excitement, despair, longing, hurt, anger, and rejection. Staying in contact with them through social media or texting is basically keeping an IV drip of dopamine in your arm. This stage will feel like purgatory- a mid-range ring of hell where you are not together, but not apart emotionally. You are still emotionally connected to your Ex, whether or not you are actually speaking. You can’t bear to delete their number or block them. Being in this space is very, very painful. You are deeply attached to someone you are not able to connect with. Or, if you connect with them, you get hurt. This stage is particularly difficult if your relationship ended with little to no closure. The good news is, after weeks or months or even years of this torture a small remnant of your healthy core will pipe up to say, “What the hell are you doing?”
Contemplation
This stage is defined by ambivalence. You are aware that you are not being treated well and that your life is suffering as a result of your attachment to your Ex, but you still feel an enormously strong connection to them. You might be very angry and hurt, but you still love them. It’s a confusing, “I love you but I hate you” dance that pushes and pulls you one way and the other. You hate the way you feel, you hate what this is doing to your life, you hate how much power your Ex continues have over your life, and you might even hate them, but you still care about them. You want them to want you. Your self-worth is still caught up in their opinion of you, so it feels like the only way to get your self-esteem back is for them to desire you again. Many Exaholics feel the need to test the relationship before they can finally come to terms with the finality of the situation. So, they try to contact their Ex and talk “one last time” (hello breakup-sex). For Exaholics, bottoming out on your addiction to your Ex is usually subtle and ambiguous and builds over time. At this point, your neocortex begins to gain a toehold. Your rational self starts actively wrestling with your limbic brain for control of your mind and soul. Your thinking mind becomes increasingly clear about the fact that this relationship should be over and that the person you are stuck on is simply not able or willing to love you in return. You begin to understand that your emotional dependence on this person is ruining you. That maybe, just maybe, you want the relationship to be over too.
Determination
In the Determination phase of change, Exaholics feel motivated to change, and begin to plan how they will finally break free. Perhaps you will seek help from a therapist. solicit advice or look for resources (hi!). One of the most important and helpful things that an Exaholic can do at this point is connect with other people who are going through the same experience. When an Exaholic comes into contact with other people who feel the same things that they do, or even better- have begun to work the steps and heal- a major shift can happen: they can start to feel hope that they can change to. Your stages of change have already led you to this moment. The fact that you are reading this blog post is evidence that you are either in the contemplation or determination phase of recovery.
Taking Action and Coping
The path to reducing obsessions and starting to get control of your mind lies in mindfulness and learning how to be here now.
Stay in the present. Thoughts of your Ex are time travelers. They are memories of things that happened in the past or worries about things that could happen in the future. In the actual, literal, present moment, very little is actually happening. You’re breathing. That’s it. When an intrusive or triggering thought about your Ex pops into your head, simply being able to notice, “I am having a thought about something that is not happening right now,” and coming back into physical reality will help you step back and develop your metacognition (metacognition is your ability to think about what you’re thinking about). This strengthens your neocortex and helps build the ability to intentionally shift away from obsessive thoughts. Use the present moment as an anchor and steer yourself back into the present over and over and over again. Over time, your mind is freed from obsessive rumination.
Be tolerant of yourself. Just like if you broke your arm, healing is going to hurt. You have to respect your pain and allow it to guide you to do the work you need to do. You have been injured, and its okay to not be okay for a while.
Avoid social media. At no other point in history has it been easier to torture yourself by spying on your Ex. Of course, you are craving knowledge of your Ex and social media might seem like a lifeline of connection to your lost relationship. Unfortunately, each “contact” with your Ex reinforces the biological connection and every morsel of information zings you with dopamine, creating an explosion of anxiety, torment, and longing inside of you. Having new information to obsess about is simply prolonging your madness. I cannot tell you what to do, but I am going to tell you what to do: block your Ex on social media.
When your Ex is sleeping with someone new… this is a toughie. Even if you are doing okay, there is still something about knowing that your Ex is with someone new that will send you into a frenzy of emotional pain, craving and desire. In your mind’s eye you play out scenes of your life with your Ex, except your role is being played by someone who might be sexier, more fun, or more interesting. You see your Ex- the happy, sweet, fun one you first fell in love with- sharing the best parts of themselves with someone else. This all feels incredibly unfair. Being victimized by these intrusive images is incredibly traumatizing. Ruminating does not bring any value to your healing process, it only keeps you from moving forward. In order to rescue yourself from the impotent madness of this obsession, you must differentiate between what you are thinking about and what is actually happening. Shift your awareness and distract yourself by practicing mindfulness, using a mantra or making plans. You have to get unstuck from the obsession phase in order for healthy new growth to occur.
Healing Through the Twelve Steps of Exaholics
If you are ready to admit that your continued attachment to your Ex is a problem, you have arrived at the doorstep of healing.
Step One: Radical Honesty
Accept the truth: the relationship is over, it needs to be over, and it’s time to move on.
Step Two: Grieving and Reaching out for Support
In some ways, a literal death can be easier to accept and deal with than the loss of a cherished primary relationship with your partner. When you want desperately to be with someone who does not want to be with you, losing them feels like a statement of your worth. It’s personal. Once Exaholics have given up the fantasy of reunion and accepted that their lover is not returning, does not love them back, or is simply not the person they hoped they were, grief, fear, and despair close in. During this time it can be tremendously comforting and healing to connect with other people who have genuine empathy and respect for your experience. A simple Google search for “breakup support groups” or “divorce support groups” will turn up options in your area. There are also various online communities available to you, including forums through http://www.exaholics.com (and the Instagram @onceuponatimeonhinge). Find your people, and let them be there for you now.
Step Three: Renewing Faith in Other people
This third step feels good. It feels good to reconnect with people, and it feels good to be validated and understood. You know you can’t connect with your Ex, but you still need connection. Your need for secure attachment is basic and primary, and it doesn’t go away just because you don’t have anyone to attach to. When you connect with a community, you begin to attach to them. Your attachment-craving reunion with your Ex is soothed, somewhat, by nurturing human contact with others. Your attachment is transferred from a dangerous place to a safe one.
Step Four: Reclaim Your Worth and Value
It might be hard to believe that you weren’t rejected by a really great person because you weren’t good enough. Or that the love you had wasn’t the most passionate and intense thing you’ll ever know, and you’re doomed to a life of isolation or settling. None of this is true, and it is important to revise your story about what happened. You shift from being the victim, or the unlovable ogre, into just another person whose relationship didn’t work out. As you develop a new story about what happened, you begin to experience an emotional shift. You begin to reclaim your self-esteem. You realize that your story is not that special or unique. Pain is pain. Loss is loss. Rejection is rejection. Just because you are going through it doesn’t mean that you are a broken person.
Step Five: Growth
Most Exaholics, around this stage, notice a marked shift in the way they feel. Some call it the “pivot point”. They begin thinking less about their Ex and more about themselves. I think a great way to work through this step is to either engage with a group who is willing to ask you hard questions, or to do some journaling and reflecting. Questions to include asking yourself during this step are:
“What were my circumstances before I got involved in this relationship?”
“What attracted me to this person?”
“Were there early red flags I chose to ignore?”
“Did I confuse passion for a healthy, secure attachment?”
“How did I handle my anxiety in this relationship?”
“Am I dependent on the good opinions of others for my own self worth?”
“Were there mistakes I made that impacted the quality of this relationship?”
The true opportunity of loss and pain is growth. The goal of step five is to begin to understand the vulnerabilities that allowed you to become so deeply addicted to an unhealthy relationship and learn from that experience.
Step Six: Ask for Feedback
Step six involves asking trusted and emotionally safe people for their feedback. Think about the people who are most familiar with both you and your Ex. Consider asking them their opinions of what they witnessed as you went through the relationship, and be open to their answers. Taking feedback non-defensively is difficult. Try to resist the impulse to meet their feedback with a “Yes, but.” Rather, breathe and listen to what they are saying about how it looked from an outsider’s perspective.
Step Seven: Build a Different Future
The sweetest revenge there is is for you is to genuinely be happy and well, and to love your life. In step seven, you figure out what makes you happy and how to get better results in your life. It’s time to start asking yourself some exciting new questions:
“Knowing what you know now, what kind of person would you like to be in the future?”
“Who do you want to be in your next relationship?”
“How will you know if your next relationship is working? How will you know if it isn’t?”
Step Eight: Action
Practice your new skills on your friends, your family and with your community of support. Accept new ways of being to feel weird and unnatural at worst. Remember- act from your values, not your feelings.
Step Nine/ Ten: Make Amends
You might feel really badly about things that you did to other people while you were out of your mind with toxic love. Remember that pain makes everyone self-focused. When you were in the depths of your Exaholism, you might not have been at your best as a friend, mom, dad, daughter, son, sister, brother, or co-worker. Make a list of people who have been harmed by your “addiction” and write your wrongs. When you are done, go back and write your own name at the top.
Step Eleven: Maintenance
When you are in step eleven, all of the things you’ve learned come together. You are active out in the world, being a new you. You are maintaining the positive changes you’ve worked so hard to develop.
Step Twelve: Help Others Heal and Grow Too
Your ability to have empathy for the reality of the pain and trauma that others are currently enduring means more than you know. Your presence in the life of someone else can represent hope that they too may someday overcome their own pain. So seek out opportunities to connect with people who are hurting. Feel free to DM me (@onceuponatimeonhinge) if you feel you are struggling, and also if you feel you are in the emotional place to help someone else and I would be more than happy to make connections that way.
You are normal, and you are not alone.
DM me on Instagram @onceuponatimeonhinge with feedback, questions, or to discuss this post further!
Once Upon a Time Dating 