How to Heal - Talk About It

Today's tip from my top 10 tips on healing from abadonment goes nicely with Tip 4: Get It Out and Tip 5: Be Social. The benefit of Tip 4: Get It Out is that the process of written expression can help you better understand your own thoughts and feelings in a way that also lets you process them so they aren't consuming you. The benefit of Tip 5: Be Social is that renewing your social life post-abandonment distracts you so don't focus on your pain. Today's tip: Talk About It combines the previous two tips.

In order for Tip 5: Talk About It to work, you need to have at least one person in your life with whom you can discuss your experiences and emotions. This can be a counselor or someone in a support group (both of which are future tips I will be addressing in later posts), but I intend this tip to really be about someone in your personal life. Most of us have at least one family member or friend to whom we are close enough to feel comfortable talking about what happened to us.

If you haven't identified that person yet, then I urge you to do so, and to do so quickly. Here are some things to consider when choosing with whom to share your deeply emotional experiences and thoughts:

- Who is naturally nonjudgemental?

- Who always makes you feel good about yourself?

- Who have you relied on in the past and has come through for you?

- Who have you helped in the past?

- Who already didn't like your spouse and would therefore be more likely to join you in some spouse-bashing?

- Who has already seen you at your worst?

- Who do you trust the most?

- Who do you feel knows you the best?

- Who do you think would give a eulogy at your funeral if you died tomorrow?

If there is someone whose name keeps coming up as you answer these questions, then that is the person you should talk to. If this list makes you consider a few people, then that's awesome; you will have more support! You don't have to limit yourself to just one person to talk to. I have reached out to everyone whose name would come up if I answered the above questions, and I have found more support than I realized I had.

If your spouse abandoned you, then you're going through hell. There's no other way to describe it. The confusion about what went wrong, the feelings of self-doubt, and the pain of realizing that you lost your best friend (not to mention the betrayal of his affair) are enough to cripple even the strongest or most optimistic of us.

If you're riding the negativity slide, then you are driving yourself crazy. I know. I rode that ride, too. Trying my previous tips will help you get off this crazy ride. But so will talking about what happened to you. Here's what you will find when you open up and share your experience and emotions with other people:

- You will feel vindicated. When we're upset or feel that something unjust has hapepned to us, we want to know that other people agree with us. This is just part of human nature. When you talk about what happened, your most trusted friends will validate you. They will assure you that you are not to blame and remind you of all the ways you were an amazing spouse. They will tell you what a piece of crap he is and demonstrate all the reasons you deserve so much better. You will find solidarity and support, which you need to get through this.

- You will be able to process your thoughts and feelings. Psychologists agree that talking about your thoughts and feelings helps you better understand what you're going through because the verbal articulation of your ideas and emotions allows you to process them. Sometimes, you can't make sense of everything flying around in your mind because those ideas and emotions don't appear to you in any sort of coherent order. But talking about them forces you to orgnanize them, so you end up better understanding them and sometimes even prioritizing them.

- You will be reminded of the good that's still left in your life. When you are hurting, it's very easy to be pessimitic. Sometimes we get so caught up the "woe is me" trap, that we find it very difficult to find the silver lining to the storm cloud hovering over our life. I know I've felt this way. I lived under the abandoned-while-pregnant storm cloud, which showered me with thoughts like, "Pregnancy is one of the hardest things women go through and my husband won't even support me," "How am I going to explain this to my son," "Who's going to be in the delivery room with me," "How am I going to pay for all this by myself," and "How am I going to raise this baby by myself?" That's enough to drown someone in sadness and negativity. However, my friends and family members threw out a life preserver by reminding me of the positives in my life. They pointed out that he will pay child support, so I will be able to afford to care for this child (and that I make enough money to support two kids on my own, anyway). They provided me with more support than I had expected and assured me that they would all be there for me throughout the pregnancy and after when I needed them. They let me know that although I may be a single parent, I would not be raising this baby alone. They reminded me that even though this experience isn't the way pregnancy and childbirth work for most people, that I will still have the joy of having a baby, and my son will have the joy of being a big brother. They helped me realize that this baby is the only good thing that came out of my marriage.

Is it possible that I would have processed all my thoughts and feelings, understood my own psyche, and discovered the positives to my experience on my own? Maybe. But maybe not. What if I had kept it all bottled up inside and had never reached out to anyone? Where would I be? Probably still riding the negativity slide with storm clouds hovering over me. And that's not a good way to live. So get off the ride and let the clouds dissipate. Talk to your friends and family members. You will feel better, I promise.