J9 - Thanks for the post-D perspective. Yeh, I think I am similar to you in that regard. Just won't feel comfortable until D is either in process or done. I understand your buddy's take on post-D dating and how women won't take you seriously. I don't plan on investing too much anyways, but we'll see how the scene is when I am ready. Not sure what's out there right now but I am a bit curious.
Nicole - W doesn't know that I am seriously considering filing. I will look at what are the options and see if we can do it in a way that is quick and clean and less costly. I don't know how she'll react to it, but she had brought up D once just after BD, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. Not sure if she'll initiate it - if she does, even better so that she owns that decision. But, I honestly don't care if she does it or I do it, I am going by what I believe is going to work for me.
About depression, yeh, I have basically been in and out of that type of state for a very long time. I've had many traumatic events in my life since early childhood and I always figured out how to survive since I was 5 years old. Unfortunately, that encoded within me a very particular way to react to adversity and I didn't even recognize that my reactions were destructive for me personally. I minimized myself as much as possible, put my needs and wants aside for everyone else, tried to always play peace-maker, always sought validation from the outside, never believed I was worthy, and so on.
I never even recognized that I was depressed. I had developed the reaction that I was always a survivor and that I could just survive traumatic events by myself. I was also ashamed to ask for help and thought it was weak behavior.
BD brought that into perspective. I recognized that what I had gone through in life was truly traumatic and I had to seek help for it. It wasn't something I could just overcome through sheer will.
So, I started IC, which started helping me ask hard questions and started to unpack all my behaviors and reactions rooted in the trauma, and finding ways to practice actions to overcome them. I am not out of the woods yet, but I am so much more self-aware and I listen to my emotions and thoughts a lot more closely to understand what I am feeling and then maybe why I am feeling it. I process it and then not let it affect how I am reacting to things. Simple example is if I see that I am feeling annoyed at something my kids are doing, I pay attention to that feeling and see if I am actually annoyed at the kids or I am feeling tired, annoyed, upset about something else and just projecting it to what the kids are doing. That allows me to take a step back and self-reflect. Once I recognize that what the kids are doing is not actually annoying, but something else that happened in the day is affecting my mood, I relax and let it go.
Some other things that have helped me greatly is taking accountability for my life and my actions. I always blamed external things for why my life was crappy or why I wasn't getting ahead in life. And yes, there are external events I had no control over and I could just stay in a victim mindset, or recognize that I was a victim of it, but I can make different choices.
My IC told me a couplea things that really helped me. She said that when you're a kid, you have no control and are recipients of whatever is going around you and other adults. So, you should forgive yourself for that time of your life because you had no control. Even in adolescence, you had little control, and so forgive yourself. But, when you reached adulthood and were out in the world, you achieved that control and now can make decisions to positively impact your life. So, now you have to take accountability and stop blaming external events. You can view external stuff as constraints, but what can you do about it in relation to your goals and life.
Once I took that accountability on and started to forgive myself, it was a huge turning point.
The question that I ask myself now is - Not why is this happening to me but, what did I do to allow this to happen to me?
This shift in thinking has totally changed how i look at things. I am no longer a passive recipient of life, but I have agency and I can exercise it and not let people walk over my boundaries.
One other piece that really helped me with my goals and thinking was this article by Benjamin Hardy called 'Willpower doesn't work'. Google it. Very powerful article - he wrote a book about it and it is well researched. Changed the way I look at my goals and decisions.
So I attacked my depression head on and I asked for help. I put in the work for myself. I took responsibility for myself and held myself accountable - instead of me beating myself over and over again for my failures (which I did in the beginning of this process as that was my natural reaction), I slowly started feeling empowered. And with every decision I made I felt that power and control come back in a very positive way.
So, I stopped wallowing in my self-pity and victimhood and realized that I had a lot of power to change my circumstances and meet my goals. And that is precisely what I am doing now. I have my setbacks, but instead of giving up and feeling depressed about it, I let myself feel the failure and disappointment, and then I start planning how I am going to bounce back.
Last week, I had a huge emotional breakdown and I relapsed into smoking. I justified in my head as I am just going to have cheat week. But now I am in the second cheat week and I know that the addict is rearing it's ugly head back. So, I have planned to quit after tomorrow and restart the clock on the quit. The change now is that I believe in myself as I have done it before, but I am also determined to not a small failure control everything and ruin all my progress. I am just mentally stronger now and I know that I have it within me to succeed.
You will read this in the article I mentioned, but one thing stood out to me and I have it on my wall - a quote from Michael Jordan. He was asked how he could be so on top of his game for so many years and train hard.
He said - "I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do and why. But, after that, once I made the decision, I never thought about it again."
I read that every day and know that I am ready for that mindset.
