Not Sure Where This Is Going

[Niall11]

Agree 100%. I struggled mightily. However, I did resolve pretty early on to try and DB as hard as I could. I think that resolve helped me to get through my mistakes. We have a saying around here when someone makes a mistake in DBing. "Don't dwell on it. Just learn and move forward. Get back up on the DB horse!" Or something similar. The point is that once you initiate an R talk, you can't "uninitiate" it. It is water under the bridge, just resolve to do better from this point forward.

I also eventually got detachment down pretty good. By time I took the focus off of her, had GAL in full swing, stop reacting emotionally to the things she was saying and doing, and began to embrace my future life with or without her, the turnaround happened quickly. And again, that was unusual, because it usually take a lot longer. We've had some success stories, but they all take a strict adherence to DBing principles and techniques. One guy (hoosjim) whose W was still engaging with OM, and he started to apply sandi's rules and follow sandi's advice and his W turned around quickly after that. The quickest path to R, if it is possible at all, is to adhere to the principles as closely as possible.

I've tried very hard to avoid the big mistakes and to follow Sandi's rules. Some are pretty easy. Some, like seeming happy when I'm not, very difficult. All of the progress came when I was doing DB principles well, all of the major setbacks when I lost my cool and gave voice to the hurt within. Which is profound, the deepest I've ever felt.

I'm less satisfied with how I'm doing with the affirmative DB: 180s, GAL, detachment. I'm probably a tough grader but there's definite room for improvement. Especially detachment, though that may be helped along by progress on GAL.