Kelly Jo The Wifey new thread.

[steady]

When my wife dropped the bomb on me I got really depressed and was obsessive/compulsively thinking about the sitch to the point where I could find no happiness or interest in my life.

Just keeping busy didn't help because the sitch was on my mind no matter what I was doing. I had to find a way to proactively stop the thinking.

Some things which helped me with that:

I realized I had an unhealthy connection with my wife. ACOA issues (dependency, fear of abandonment, etc..) so I started to address those as well as bringing it up with my therapist.

I also realized my self worth is NOT connected to how my spouse feels about me, even though I had connected the two. (This is very unhealthy) I had to keep thinking that her feelings, thoughts and actions are HERS and have nothing to do with my self worth. I had to dig deep to remember who I really am - confident, strong, sensitive, intelligent, compassionate, nice, etc.. I'm a second degree black belt in jiu jitsu, I was a police officer for years - fighting bad guys, playing with guns, putting my life on the line every day for strangers: Why would I be afraid of a potential future?

I also had to stop projecting negatively. A positive outcome is has as much of a chance to come about as a negative outcome. The big difference is 'self fulfilling prophecy'. Like it's been said:

You think you are predicting your future when in actuality you are creating it.

One other thing I did was put a rubber band on my wrist. Whenever I started to think negatively about the sitch I would snap the rubber band (aversion therapy) then either think of:

1. Something unrelated to the sitch
2. Any positives in the sitch.
3. All the good qualities and characteristics I possess

The rubber band has helped alot.

Ken