What is the reason why many of you are stuck in their recovery for far too long?
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
—Andre Gide
Every day I receive many emails from people who are stuck in their healing for many months, often years even.
They tell me that after all this time they are still feeling the same pain and going through the same emotional roller-coaster as they have right after the breakup.
Why is that?
Before I tell you why this happens, let me say the following:
Everything that goes beyond six months of healing is time wasted.
After six months at the latest you should be able to:
- function normally in your daily life
- have your obsessive over-thinking under control
- bump into them without having an emotional breakdown
If you can’t do that after 6 months, then you are doing something wrong in your recovery.
However, in some cases, like relationships that broke apart after 30 years of marriage, it takes a little longer to adapt to the situation and re-wire yourself.
But the same principles of recovery apply here as well.
You have to understand that your recovery follows a particular pattern. There are seven phases you have to go through.
You can’t jump ahead and skip one, it’s not possible … but what you CAN do is accelerate every phase.
The one phase where “long-term survivors” are stuck in is the “Disengagement Phase” as I call it.
It usually goes like this:
Imagine yourself standing on a ship called “Recovery.”
It’s sailing towards the open sea, and you stand on the deck and keep looking back at the coastline.
What you see symbolizes the things you know:
- your Ex and your relationship with them
- the life you know
- the dreams of a future you had to give up
- the pain and the desperation
As you sail farther and farther away from this known place, you feel better, more like yourself.
But then suddenly, just before you lose sight of this shore, you panic and order the ship to STOP.
“Turn off the engines, pull down the sails, put out the anchor, nobody goes anywhere!”
What is happening? Why putting a hold on your recovery just when you were about to move on?
The reason is fear of the unknown.
It simply feels better to stay where you are, the place everything is so familiar.
The pain, the “missing them”, the obsessiveness …
It sucks, but at least I don’t have to face the “unknown”.
It takes a lot of courage to say good-bye and make this last step into “disengagement.”
How can I finally make that last step?
First, be sure that you’ve gone through all the recovery phases properly. As I’ve said, if you have skipped a step, you will have terrible fallbacks.
In our course, for example, we use the period of 60 days of No-Contact to move you gently through the different phases.
We utilize the obstacles that come up naturally as a way to work through them.
Only this way you can be sure that you address all the important issues that come up.
We also have a whole lesson that tackles the “Disengagement” process, with exercises and time-proven techniques to help you make that so important step.
Is that something you that will help you too?
Your friend and coach,
Eddie