Moving On Part 2

This episode details what worked well for me in helping me move on from my abusive marriage. 

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Transcript

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Hey my friends. A few months after I left my abusive marriage, I was trying really hard to move on with my life. I had finally moved out of my grandma's spare room, and I was starting a new job and just really trying to move forward with my life except that all the details of my marriage were like looping through my head all day long. Sometimes I would have like, imaginary arguments in my head justifying my decision to leave. So I was physically out and physically in a much different place. Mentally, I was kind of stuck there. And I want to talk about how I got unstuck from that, because it isn't a good place to stay stuck. The first and probably most important thing, or important part of getting unstuck was processing the trauma of it all. A lot of the time, if you are like having looping thoughts, it can indicate unresolved trauma that needs to be processed. I did that through EMDR therapy. There are a lot of different modalities and ways of doing it, but it is very important to see a licensed professional after leaving a toxic orabusive relationship. I don't think I can stress that enough. I think it is so so important. In fact, I think it is so important, I will not even take a coaching client if they have not seen a therapist for their trauma. Because to me, it would be unethical to try to coach someone into the what's next phase of their life, while ignoring that trauma piece. Because you can't move forward if you have not processed and shut down that trauma. It is really important my friends to take care of that. It's really obvious when someone hasn't properly processed their trauma, because they can't stop talking about it, talking about the thing. I remember, I went to this one meetup at a bar, and this couple that were there had in the last year left the Mormon cult. And like, I relate to that specific trauma, and I understand it, and I sympathize with it really well, because I've done that too. But it was like all they talked about. So as much sympathy as I have for that, you know, it's really irritating to go out to a bar to hang out and blow off some steam and have a good time, and then someone you barely just met starts trauma dumping all over you. It's really not cool and really inappropriate. It's really important to process it with a professional both for your own well being, and so you don't walk around trauma dumping all over people. Now, processing it isn't the end all be all, but it is a very important part. The next piece is really making the decision not to focus on it anymore. Because at some point, it's almost like you have a habit of thinking about it. So you have to make the conscious effort to put your focus elsewhere. I always encourage abuse survivors to take up a new hobby or learn a new skill. Part of that is to help build confidence, but part of it is to give yourself something else to focus on. To mentally be in a different place. One of the challenges I had first coming outwas relating to people. I was totally like that guy in the bar. Because when you are still in that traumatized place, you do want to talk about it. It seems dumb to talk about getting your nails done when there is like serious shit swirling around in your brain. But that was one of the things I had to learn to do was find other things to talk about. To actively decide that not everyone needed to know that I was divorced or had to hear anything about it. I had to realize that it wasn't the most important thing about my life. It seems so big, like such a big event, that it was easy to attach so much importance to it. I had to make the conscious decision to be like, You know what? I don't want this to be my defining thing. I want to be more than this divorce. I don't want to be defined by this. It can be nice to think about what you want for your future and start making plans for that. The caveat for that though is to be mindful of how thinking about the future affects you. So as someone with an anxiety disorder, sometimes I'm okay to think about the future, but sometimes if I try to think about the two distant future, it spurs like a lot of anxiety. Because there are so many unknown factors. So if you're like me, and you skew that way, it can be helpful to just dial back the timeline of the future that you think about. Like think about what could be fun to do this weekend, instead of where do I see myself in five years? I try to think of things that I want to try, that I've never tried, and try to plan for that. There's a lot of freedom that you have outside of these relationships, and it can be really fun to try to explore some of that freedom and focus on that instead of focusing on the past and the what ifs and if onlys. One of the reasons I like fiction books so much is that when I'm in the middle of a novel, it gives me something fun to think about, even when I'm not actively reading it. I think about food a lot. Actually, I bet a lot of us do. I feel like I'm always thinking about what I want to cook this week or what food I want to try. New relationships can be a great focus, and that doesn't have to be a romantic relationship. It can be new friendships. A lot of times in those toxic relationships your friends circle shrinks because they didn't like you to have friends. So it can be a new thing to focus on is going out and meeting new people and finding new friends. It doesn't have to be, you know, a new romantic relationship. But just for a full disclosure, I did find that a rebound relationship was really helpful, not something I look back on with any fondness, but it was definitely useful. These days, I hardly ever think about my previous marriage. The only time I think about it is when I'm thinking about what would be helpful to talk about on the podcast, or if I have some sort of emotional trigger happen, and I'm like, Where the fuck did that come from? Honestly, those come more from my childhood than from my marriage, like I hardly ever think about it. Even in those instances where I do think about it, it doesn't cause me any distress, because it is just not important to me anymore. Like, there's so many more important things living in my brain right now, not even all of them pleasant. Like I have different problems to think about now. Now I think a lot about my hip pain and like, when I'm going to do something, I try to think about, like, how would an elderly person do this? That's where I'm at right now, and that is just so much more important than anything the past could hold. And that's really what I want to share with you here, that you are so much more and your life is so much bigger than that relationship. It doesn't have to remain your focus. There are so many interesting things out in the world to do and think about and talk about. Moving on means letting yourself embrace that. You have to allow yourself to let go of the thing, even though it feels so significant. It doesn't have to be. You can make it smaller in your mind. A lot of moving on is just shifting focus, and that's a choice that we make. A choice that starts out a little difficult to implement, but eventually becomes second nature. So that's what I have for you this week, my friends. Till next time, well.