The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I have been on a roller coaster yet wonderful at times emotional journey. I am a researcher. I read what ever I can get my hands on and become, at times, too obsessive with trying to gather as much information as possible. So, in my quest to try and understand, heal from and deal with my broken heart from this divorce, I ordered several books. I got 6 from the Alanon book store and have been enjoying and learning with those. I also got about a dozen on working through the emotions of divorce, healing from it and how to move forward with life. Like I said, I research and gather as much as I can.
One book that I was reading last night at work talked about feeling the pain of a broken heart and something I read really hit home to me. While it is not Alanon, I wanted to share my coming to terms with all of this that I gained.
This centered on living in the present. The author suggests that when a realtionship is over, we must recognize that it is over. Our ex partner is no longer responsible for our pain. The injury has occured, but now it is up to us and not them to make things better. While they have have caused the hurt, we are now responsible for healing our feelings. It is we who are responsible for healing our broken heart. When we recognize that we are no longer depend on our partners love, they also no longer have the power to hurt our feelings. We can not be hurt by them in the present, therefore we are free to release the past hurt we are carrying around with us. If the ex partner continues to do things that annoy us, they are not breaking our heart because that already happened. We have already been through the worst possible, so looking at the annoyances as less than what we went through before makes the injury smaller and easier to move forward from.
The idea of living in present time and recognizing that the hurt I am trying to release has already occured and is in the past, was a profound thing for me. I have been working hard on my Alanon steps, but this spoke to me in a way that really came home. My hurt has already occured and I survived it. Now, I have the right to move forward with my life. "Yes, I was deprived of love, rejected and abandoned, but now I am free to find it elsewhere. Yes, I am in pain, but the pain is no longer being inflicted on me." Those sentences spoke so much to me. It happened, I made it through and I have the right to make myself happy now in the life I am living.
I have been trying to move foward and feeling happier daily, yet at the same time, I had this deep ache in my chest that never seemed to go away. Today, I feel like a binding has been removed from my heart and I am so excited to see what my HP will bring to my life. I feel more open to the possibilities and more ready to rejoin the world than I have felt in a long time.
I now know that I will survive this and I am going to start living in the present.
-- Edited by cinders on Friday 4th of January 2013 09:58:29 AM
Cinders, I am also a 'researcher' I always have been. I too can immerse myself in a topic. I should have been a doctor or some other well paid job. I am currently researching Al-anon. I wonder if this is a common trait in partners of A's. Anyway, I really liked your share. I have never thought of it that way. I, too was abandoned, rejected and deprived of love by my ex A and I have held him accountable for too long. I dont want to blame him anymore, it does no good. So your post is something I will think about further as I like the idea of the hurt being in the past and I made it so now is about healing. I suppose its about letting go which is a hard thing to do.
Wow. Even though I'm not going through a divorce, I will be passing this on to some friends who are. This is a great mindset, and seems very compatible with AlAnon. As my old math teacher would say, it's really the same thing only different!
Ken
I definitely ached for a long long time after I left the ex A. I think it can take quite a while. For a number of years there was not a day I didn't think about him. Now I rarely do and I have absolutely no desire to know what he is doing. As he is a substance abuser I know what it is, using drugs, lying, covering up and causing chaos. Is there a need to go and reinvestigate this anymore.
I think bibliotherapy can be a great deal. At the same time we can learn much from watching how other people handle these situations. When I left the ex A I was able to be on this board with a number of other people in the same boat. I didn't compare and judge. I just watched and encouraged them to gain strength and grieve. Grieving does not happen overnight. On so many levels I still grieve that I had no boundaries, no ability to protect myself for most of my life. Of course I have boundaries these days and guard them fiercely but that is not something that is just a normal reaction for me. Often I have to work on boundaries at least once a week.
I think it is tremendously brave to face full on what has happened in our lives, what part we had and how we can grow from there. For me I did indeed have therapy and I read vorcaciously but I also gained a lot from being around people who were in a similar position. I do not think living in the present does not involve grieving and so much of my work in al anon is about learning in so many ways to bring the past into the present rather than live in the past. When I can learn how I got to have a relationship with an alcoholic/addict (and he was not the first!) I can stop myself from doing it again. Until I could really look hard at where I fit into the pieces nothing changed for me except different people played the same role over and over.
