Sebastian76 Posted July 30, 2011 Posted July 30, 2011 Ever made it a daily compulsive routine to check your exes facebook, twitter profile? Let me tell you, I have been there! I blocked my ex to avoid sitting in front row to her new single life, torturing myself and killing my self esteem in the process. It unfortunately didn’t work out that simple. Instead I’d just be checking her friends profiles, friends of friends, I even wrote a programming script to keep track of whom she added as friends as the days, weeks, months went by! It was totally insane but I just couldn’t help myself. I realize now that it was a way for me to feel a connection to her, despite how pathetic it was. Clearly it wasn’t good for me nor did it do me any favors in getting my life back on track. Rather, I was utterly stuck in the past and a relationship long gone down the drain. So a few days ago, I tried something new and have had an epiphany ever since. I began writing daily updates, stating days of NC, amount of e-stalking, how it made me feel in that moment and also just what bothered me with myself and my miserable days. After writing ‘the bad’ for that very first keeping diary, I realized how ridiculous it looked and how this was literally just me punishing myself for absolutely no good reason. Looking at those three lines of depressing notes, I decided to try and take responsibility for my own happiness and change the overall outcome of that day. I would try create some good experiences and see if I could balance the negatives a bit. So I did and instead of the daily status just containing “the bad” it ended up looking like this: ################### 24. july. 9days NC. The bad: Fb stalked 3 times – big sessions checking everyone there was to check. Felt like **** every time and wasted 1-2 hours of my day at the same time. Got jealous so my stomach churned on person X,Y, Z and felt like just going miserable to bed. 2 hours on LS, can’t pull myself together to go fishing, clean my appartment, work out, get dressed, call anybody. The good: Played guitar for 2 hours straight, and came up with new riffs and songs. Worked out: Felt better instantly Went to the movies with a friend Q and had a great laugh Set up a date for the next day with a cute girl I’d met Made plans with my friend to go on a guys trip to Spain the next weekend. ################### The day turned out a whole lot better than if I’d gone to bed defeated, as you can see. The interesting thing is that it was all ‘me’ who made it worthwhile and it was all me who made it suck to begin with. Didn’t rely on breadcrumbs from anybody or luck working my way to turn things around. The next day I was deadly close to checking her profile again and begin the daily stalking madness. But I fought it off for the first time in months. I saw her profile pic in a mutual friend’s friend list and wrote down how crappola just that little thing made me feel. ‘The bad’ list was shorter than the day before and ‘the good’ list was better than the day before. The third day I still felt the urge to get my daily ex fix, but managed to fight it off again and I felt better than I’d done in a long time. I wrote a list of things I wanted to achieve that day, big and small, and just started to get to work. I have realized that it really does speed up recovery significantly doing things I like, even though I don’t feel like it at the time. I’m mind blown how effective this journal keeping of obsessive actions and their effects’ is. It really drives home the message of how pointless it is and at the same time motivates you to make real changes. Writing down the positives works the same way. You have it on paper, just how great you felt doing the right things. Now it’s a daily ambition to stay clean. I just can’t bear the failure of having to put in another relapse in my little ‘coping doc’, so I don’t do it. Instead I make it a point to have some positive things to put into the document. SO, if you’re finding yourself stuck in the past obsessing on the internet and wasting your life and be depressed, try this out and see if it can help get your life back. Please let me know if it works for you. For me it really did, yay! Best of luck // Sebastian
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