The first three tips I've shared on healing from abandonment have all been difficult to do. Taking a long, hard look at your relationship with brutal honesty helps you realize the truth of what your relationship was, instead of you continuing to only see what you wanted to see. This is hard because you have to be willing to face the truth, and sometimes that leads you to feeling worse (though only temporarily). Stopping all communication with the person who abandoned you is hard because that person has probably been your best friend and the person with whom you used to communicate the most. It was probably habit to call that person when something exciting or bad happened during your day. And you probably want to tell that person how you feel now that he's left. It's hard to break habits and to lose a best friend on top of losing a spouse. Finally, making the conscious decision to face the abandonment and move on from it is difficult because you have to be completely focused on this choice every moment of every day and willingly stop yourself from falling into the pit of despair. This one probably takes the most amount of willpower.
But I have good news: Tip 4 is much easier to do. In fact, now that those first three tips have been completed, the rest of the tips are easier, too. Tip 4 is to get your emotions out by writing them down.
Psychologists stress the numerous benefits of journaling. The University of Rochester's Medical Center states that journaling can help you "manage anxiety, reduce stress, cope with depression, [. . . and] control your symptoms and improve your mood." The University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and Public Health quotes Dr. Shilagh Mirgain, PhD: "Through therapeutic journaling we use the written word to express the full range of emotions we may have related to difficult or traumatic life events. In doing so, we can help create a great sense of well-being." From my experience, I agree that writing down your thoughts and feelings can be extremely therapeutic.
(For more information on the benefits of journaling, visit https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentID=4552&ContentTypeID=1
Writing this blog has been the most therapeutic thing I have done to help me heal from my husband leaving me for another woman. When I started this blog, I wasn't sure what I was hoping to accomplish or if I'd even keep up with it. All I knew was that I had to get all these emotions and thoughts out of me somehow; they were all buzzing around inside my head, driving me crazy. I tried keeping a journal, but I didn't have much motivation to write in it. I struggled with the fact that no one would ever see it but me, and I also felt like I had to hide it so my nine-year-old wouldn't find it. So to me, it felt like even though I was trying to do something therapeutic by expressing myself in writing, I was still keeping it all a secret.
That's why I decided to start a blog. Not only do I get all the psychological benefits from writing out my feelings, but I also feel like once I click on that "publish post" button, I am sending all these feelings out into the world and away from me. It's an amazing sense of release.
An unexpected benefit of this blog is the opportunity to connect with other people who are facing a similar situation. A few days after I began this blog, when I only had three or four posts written, a reader reached out to me via email to tell me that she thought I was brave for putting it all out here like this. Now, I don't know about being brave, but just knowing that the sharing of my experience gave someone else a little hope made me feel appreciated. And for all of us who have been cheated on and abandoned, that is a feeling we don't experience very often and haven't experienced much recently. It also made me feel vindicated, like someone else understood what I'm going through, and that my decision to share my story through this blog was worthwhile. I am hopeful that I will continue to heal through this process of writing and sharing.
Now, I'm not saying that you should all start a blog. Not everyone is comfortable with sharing their most intimate thoughts and feelings on the internet for the entire world to see, no matter how anonymously you do so. But I am suggesting that you try writing those thoughts and feelings down. A blog was the right medium for me to accomplish this therapeutic written expression. Maybe a journal will work for you. Or maybe it will be a series of index cards with lessons learned and positive quotes that you can hide throughout your house, office, and car so that you have reminders of your ability to heal everywhere you look.
Try a few different ways of writing out your feelings. Find one way that seems to work for you. Give it a solid try - not just one day, or a few journal entries, but at least two solid weeks. I honestly look forward to finding time to write a new blog post. Because I'm a working single mom, I don't have time every day, but I wish I did. Writing it all down and getting it all out of my head has really helped me heal more than anything else has. And I hope that you can find the same hope and relief through journaling that this blog gives me.
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