Shifting Our Thoughts

During my recovery, I once read “Instead of asking yourself what I could have differently to make the relationship work, try asking yourself what HE could have done differently?”

Initially I wasn’t able to grasp this. I was too consumed with self doubt and blame. I felt like a complete failure and that the N was right to “get rid of me”.

Therapy and medication for anxiety and depression began to kick in and I revisited the above question.
Am I really to blame for everything? What was his responsibility in this? What could HE have done differently?

I started by writing a list of all the positive, kind, compassionate things I had done for him. Then I made a list of all the positive, kind, and compassionate things he had done for me. Guess who’s list wasn’t very long?

This helped shift my thoughts from “I wasn’t good enough. I should have done this this and this” to “ I was far TOO good for him”. I couldn’t have offered him anymore of my heart than I did.

The other thing I found helpful was looking at his past. He was jealous, abusive, controlling, and had episodes of a raging temper in his previous relationships….He indirectly admitted to these things by sharing stories with me. Yet, he told me I was the only woman that made him feel this way. This thought stuck with me for a long time until I really examined it. I concluded that if this happened before I was even in the picture, how can I be the cause of it.

My thoughts changed from “ I brought out the bad in him” to “ He was always bad. I just happened to be the one at the moment he was bad with.” It was inevitable. It is who he is and I am NOT responsible for that, no matter how much he wants to think I am.

I also examined the labels he had given me, either directly or indirectly through his emotional abuse. For instance, one being that I was insecure. Well ok, yes, I was. I was exposed to a man that frequently abandoned me, fluctuated from being sexual to withholding sex, complimented me one day and belittled or verbally abused me the next. A man that would speak of the future with me in it one day to speaking of his future - without me. He would be kind one day, and then rage at me and threaten violence if I was emotional over his poor treatment of me. He had a poor history with women, and I had caught him in lies. WHO WOULDN’T BE INSECURE??

My thoughts went from “he is acting this way because of the way I am” to “ The way I am right now is a normal response to how he is treating me.” Again shifting the focus of me being the problem back onto the real problem - HIM. If we really examine the labels they give us, whatever they may be, we can gain a lot of insight by seeing the bigger picture.

These assholes exploit our goodness, and feel entitled to use us for their own selfish purposes and then dump all the blame on us when the “relationship“ ends, leaving us in a state of complete mindf#ck and fighting for our sanity while they go on and repeat the same process with the next victim.

They have altered our thought processes so greatly that we are quick to take the blame. This keeps us stuck. We need to gain control back over our negative thoughts and replace them with REALISTIC thoughts - he is sick, he has proved this. We were never the problem. Write it down. Reread it over and over. Say it out loud. We were never the problem.

When we can master the direction of our thoughts, and can throw all of his illegitimate BS back to him, we are taking back control of our life.