Jun. 8, 2011
?I can?t get him out of my head.?
?I hate that my ex-husband has moved on and is with someone else.?
?What?s wrong with me??
?Why wasn?t I good enough??
?My kids better never call her mom!?
?
Are you over-analyzing the demise of your marriage? Are you incessantly thinking about what your ex-husband is or is not doing? Are you trying to control his behavior just because you have kids together but are no longer married? Are you caught in the loop of obsessively thinking about our ex-husband?s life post divorce? Obsessive thinking is nothing more than an endless loop of negativity that will keep you trapped in your past and prevent you from moving forward.
As human beings, none of us are immune to this erroneous tape recording.? As ex-wives we get sucked into the loop even more because the end of a marriage amplifies our own insecurities, fears, and doubts.? Nine years ago I got sucked in.? My ex-husband?s second affair ended our nine-teen year marriage and helped create an endless loop of negativity inside my head.
I blamed him. I made him completely responsible for the end of our marriage. I complained about him to anyone who would listen. And God forbid the Other Woman ever set eyes on my daughters. For nearly a year during and post divorce my normally secure self turned into an obsessive thinking harpie. I created a TNT worthy drama that played 24/7 in my mind.
Along the way, I learned that I was allowing my ex-husband and the other woman space in my head, rent free! The ATTENTION that I gave them is what caused me to take my own trip down the rabbit hole. The obsessive thinking took its toll on me ? I couldn?t sleep, I had a hard time focusing at work, and the only thoughts blaring through my head were about them.
It was time to take my own advice and Change the Channel. Thoughts become things and the last thing I wanted was for my obsessive thinking to manifest itself sideways ? into some reality that would snowball down hill and eventually become an avalanche of destruction.? As my awareness for my own obsessive thinking reached the point of ?Enough Already,? I dug into
my personal development tool box for a constructive way to put an end to having The Ex-Husband and The Other Woman camp out in my mind.
1.? ?Awareness of my thoughts and thought patterns.? Observing my thoughts without labeling them good or bad was the first step.? Watching them float in and out of my mind during quiet meditation or during my yoga practice without attaching emotions to them helped me say ?good-bye? to them.
2.? ?I questioned the thoughts I was attaching myself to.? Anytime I thought ?I?m not good enough,? or ?what?s wrong with me?? I?d stop myself and ask ?Is this useful??? As much as I wanted to believe that kind of thinking and get my posse of girlfriends behind me in self-righteous solidarity, the truth is, it wasn?t useful or helpful.
3.? ?Accepting what is and what happened allowed me to move from being stuck to unstuck. The endless loop that played the same incessantly insane rant inside my head exhausted me.? I discovered I was stuck in my past.? If I wanted to enjoy my present and my now then I needed to find the first train out of ruminating about my past because ?the past is a foreign country?they do things differently there.?
Obsessive thinking keeps you stuck and emotionally crippled. It keeps you from enjoying the present moment. It harms your relationships with kids and any potential new love interest.? When you?re focused on the negativity, you create more of it.? I know the more I focused my thoughts and energies on The Ex-Husband, what he did became worse?and the worse it became, the more I stewed.? The more I stewed, the less I slept.? The less I slept, the crankier I became?and so on and so on?until I stopped the madness by tuning into another brain wave frequency.
If you find yourself obsessing over your ex-husband, change the channel.? Evict him from your head.? And while you think you?re thinking about him and how he?s moved on, what?s really going on is that you?ve given center stage to all your fears, uncertainties and doubts.? Instead of focusing on what you don?t have (or never had), focus on what you DO HAVE. Turn your time and energy to more positive thoughts and actions. Concentrate on healing and becoming whole.
A brand new life awaits you!
Peggy Nolan is happily remarried ever after to Richard, who just happened to be her first boyfriend in high school. After 25 years, they reconnected when Richard ?found? Peggy on Classmates.com. Peggy is the founder of www.thestepmomstoolbox.com and wildly popular BlogTalk radio show. You can connect with Peggy at The Stepmom?s Toolbox, on twitter.com/toolboxgirl or you can read her love letters at www.serendipitysmiles.com
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