Getting back inside your own head!

Do you find yourself obsessing about your ex or the relationship? Keep rehashing conversations or even arguments in your head and wondering why on earth they couldn’t see or understand things your way? Or perhaps you are constantly wondering what you did wrong or could have done differently to change the way they feel. Maybe you spend most of your time making choices and decisions based on what you think their response will be. “If he/ she see me doing this they will realise what they are missing”

It’s quite normal to spend time trying to make sense of things but when it turns into constantly obsessing about your ex then it’s not helping you. It’s only serving to keep you stuck in the past and stopping you from moving on.

It’s time to get back into your own head and focus on yourself. There may have been things that in hindsight you could have done differently, but you didn’t and there may be things that you could improve about yourself but that doesn’t mean that you are not a loveable and worthwhile person. Whatever the reason that your relationship went wrong it has happened and yes there are things that you can learn from it so that you have better relationships in the future, but first you need to refocus on yourself so that you can create the space to do and have what you want in your life.

This kind of habit can be hard to kick and you will need to be tough with yourself, especially in the beginning. But remember if you are obsessing about your ex, then you are not paying any attention to yourself and your own needs.

Here are three key steps to bringing the focus back to you.

1. Living in the now

A great way of bringing the focus back to you is to remember that the only time that really exists is NOW. The past and the future are only there in your imagination. The past has happened and what you have is a memory of your interpretation of events and the future is your imagination deciding what it thinks will happen.

When you find yourself obsessing about the past or what you think will happen in the future, bring yourself back to what is happening NOW for YOU. What are you doing right now that you can become more consciously aware of? Are you at work or out shopping, perhaps you are sitting at home in front of the TV.

Whatever it is that you are doing; practise giving it your FULL ATTENTION. You will find that with after a while you will be able to stay focused on yourself and what is going on for you much easier.

2. Do things that energise you

Think about you and who or what you enjoy. There are a host of ways that you can energise yourself. Think about the following and make a commitment to yourself to increase your activity in the areas that appeal to you the most.

• Which people energise you?
• What activities do you enjoy?
• What treats do you like?
• What would you love to learn?
• What hobbies or interests did you used to have?

Spending time doing things that energise you will help to build up your levels of happiness and self esteem and will allow you to separate yourself from getting stuck in the past. There is usually always something that you would have stopped doing or made changes to as a result of being in your last relationship. Find out what they are and start doing them again if they make you feel good about yourself.


3. Express gratitude

We all have things in our life that we are grateful for but often we forget to pay them any attention. We tend to think about and remember the bad things that happen and forget all the good things that happen every day. When you only think about the bad things it can seriously affect the way you see yourself and your behaviour. Your behaviour affects your outcome and this can keep you in a negative cycle of thought.

Start a gratitude journal and put in it all the good things that happen to you every day. The smallest things can be a boost when you take notice of them. Don’t write down anything negative, only positive thoughts about what you are grateful for. For example “I am grateful that I arrived at work safely this morning” or “I am grateful that I like the people I work with” perhaps you are grateful that you have a really good friend that you can talk to, or that you are enjoying the book you are reading.

There are lots of little things everyday that you have to be grateful for. Focus on what you do have in your life and not what you don’t. Think about the people that you know and what they bring to your life. If you find that you keep thinking about the bad things that happen then think about the good things that have come from it. What did the experience teach you?


Remember that hard times and challenges make you stronger and by bringing your focus back to yourself you will be able to take what you need from the experience and use it to create a better life and relationship for yourself in the future.

How to recognise when your relationship may be in trouble.

There are four stages that a relationship goes through when it starts to go wrong and by recognising what they are you are more able to make changes to what’s going on and be able to do something about it before it’s too late.

1. Disillusionment / discontentment

The honeymoon period is over and things start to settle down into a more regular routine, the cracks begin to show, initially they may be small things that you may not have noticed about your partner before or they could be things that you noticed but thought they didn’t really matter and now they are starting to wear you down, whichever way it starts; try and address issues now when they first begin to bother you rather than to allow them to fester and turn into something bigger that is harder to overcome. By being able to discuss issues that are bothering you, and looking for ways to improve the situation you will find that you are more likely to be able to work things through and deal with bigger differences.

2. Deterioration

This is when those cracks turn in chasms and previous discontentment’s can turn into resentment and things really start to deteriorate. Arguments and disagreements can start over nothing because underneath all the little things everything has become a mixture of unhappiness. Relationships need nurturing and working on constantly to enable people to be able to live together and stay together for any length of time. There will always be differences of opinion as you are still two individuals as well as part of a couple. If you don’t work at being part of a couple that decline in the way that you think about the other person can only get worse over time.

3. Detachment / indifference

It is inevitable that after a while you will start to become more and more detached from the other person and start to look outside of the relationship to have your needs met. This does not mean that everyone will have an affair but simply that you are likely to put your attention and emotions elsewhere, whether that is with work, friends, family or other outside activities, and indifference to the other person will settle in and you may even find that you just feel more comfortable when you are not in their company. You stop doing things together and develop other interests. Things that may have been really important to you or that you may have really enjoyed about that other person you are now indifferent to.

4. Separation.

The final stage is when for whatever reason either one of you or both of you decide that you don’t want to be in the relationship anymore and you breakup. This could be by having a trial separation or a complete break. Which ever way it is there will then follow a period of mourning / getting over the relationship. Separation can feel like hard work and feel painful, but if the relationship really wasn’t working, once you come to terms with the fact that the relationship is over, building a new and exciting life is the next step.


If you have gone through a breakup or if you are deciding at the moment whether you want to stay in a relationship, you can probably recognise the various stages above and fit your own experiences to each stage.

Whether you want to look at ways to improve your existing relationship, decide whether you want to separate or are currently getting over a breakup and feel like you need help to create some clarity and understanding, why not contact me for a free consultation, where you can discover what it is you really want

Feeling shocked at breaking up?

Following on from my previous post about the stages of breakup, when you first come out of a relationship, whether you are the one doing the dumping or the one who has been dumped, there is always a kind of shock. For some people it is huge and for others it's a brief moment of having to shake themselves off and catch their breath.

It may sound strange that if you are the person who has done the 'dumping' that you may feel shocked, at what has happened, but if you have been unhappy for any length of time and have tried to address issues within your relationship and have decided that there is no alternative other than to end things then you will probably still feel an element of shock at the fact that you have finally done something and now what?

You may want to make sudden changes to everything and feel as though you have to get organised and busy yourself to protect yourself from feeling the effects of your decision or you may find yourself overcome with emotion and can't stop crying. Perhaps you even feel numb and find yourself loosing concentration with the simplist of things.

• Try and resist making hasty decisions about big matters at the moment and wait for the dust to settle.
  
• Keeping to a routine will help you maintain some focus at a time when you are probably finding it difficult to concentrate.
• Keep plans to a minimum and stick to going places and being with people that make you feel safe. It's easy to fill your time up and then wonder what on earth you are doing somewhere.

For more information about how to get over a breakup as quickly and as painlessly as possible check out Picking up the Pieces

The 8 stages of relationship break - up

It's always difficult when you are coming out of a relationship, especially if it is one that you have been in for a long time. Whether you are the person instigating the split or not, even when you know that splitting up is the best thing for all involved; breaking up can still be a painful and emotional time. According to research there are various stages to the grieving process and these can also be applied to relationship breakup, afterall you are not only losing your connection to the other person, but you are also letting go of all your hopes and dreams of your life with that person and this is one of the main reasons that breaking up can be so very hard to do.

Photo By carbonNYC

I am going to talk more about each stage in future posts but for now here are the 8 stages of the grieving / break-up process:

• Shock
• Denial
• Numbness
• Fear / worthlessness
• Anger
• Letting Go
• Rebuilding of Self
• Understanding and acceptance

Although there is a natural progression through each stage, it is also quite natural to 'jump' back and forth between them. It is essential at each point to explore your feelings and allow yourself to go through the natural grieving process in order to come out the other side bigger and better!