My choice in reading this book by Nolen-Hoeksema was a great idea. Basically, it has pinpointed what has been my problem for over five years now: rumination and negative thought spirals. (I used to label it as OCD, and for a while it was on a very-OCD level, but "rumination" is really what was at the heart of it.) I knew a lot of this already, but it helped a lot to read a book entirely devoted to the subject. The fact that I found most interesting is that rumination seems to be most prevalent in younger society. Older generations (those born before the 1960s) don't seem to understand the point of it. Why think about your problems over and over again incessantly? Why not just do what you can and leave it at that? I have met many elderly people who have survived all kinds of traumas and heartaches in their lives, yet still seem so positive and happy in the moment. This lack of negative thinking, I believe, is why.
So the combination of reading this book and reading a post that 25 made on MTS' thread about not focusing so much on your S hit me in a flash today. I finally and truly realized that the more that I kept thinking about my W and all the pain that my sitch was causing me, the more I would keep holding onto that pain. I realized that I was tired of living that kind of life. The same goes for anything else that goes wrong, really -- if something bothers me, I have the right not to think about it. I'll just do the best I can, then move on. Right now, I want to focus on being happy and fulfilled all by myself.
As for GAL-ing, it's slow-going, but I'm getting there. I'm becoming very accustomed to keeping myself busy. I've been reading books, watching movies and listening to music checked out from the library, exercising, and most importantly, writing. I wrote 1000 words a day for three days straight, which is good progress. I plan to do another 1000 tonight. I have been putting elements of my own life into my fiction -- I'm writing a fictional story about a man who is struggling with his wife's infidelity. Rather than keeping me mired, it's strangely cathartic to put all this in a fictional setting. And it makes for great inspiration, too.
I have not had a huge desire to connect with other people for months because of the pain of my sitch, but now that I'm cleaning up my thought processes, I'm enjoying being more social now. I'm actually trying to positively communicate with the people that I help at my bank (I'm a teller). All of these changes are being made a little bit at a time, but the important thing is that they ARE BEING MADE.
I feel like I've changed so much in the last three months, and I know that I'll keep on changing for the best as time goes on. What's weird is that I never would have changed in this fashion had my W and I kept going on the way we had, but I guess that's what big, crappy events invariably do to people: make them stronger, better, and wiser. We'll see how it plays out.
