Power of Belief in getting over a break-up? I'll try it.

Thank you Mr. Sutton and to everyone else for your encouragement on a previous blog post, I do appreciate it. As you know, my 7 year relationship has recently ended so I have been googling information related to “getting over a breakup” and “getting over someone” and I stumbled across this site.  http://www.2knowmyself.com/How_to_get_over_anyone

I discovered that there was a book entitled “How to get over anyone in a few days”.  I also read a little bit of the information on this page and immediately noticed the very large number of views this site has received. Next, a weird thing occurred.  I suddenly noticed a positive change in my state of mind. I started to instantly feel better just knowing that there were obviously millions of other individuals having the same kinds of issues and searching for content related to the same situation.

While my X was able to move on quickly and replace his thoughts of me with a new woman he met, I’ve been having major struggles. I would keep on thinking of him and all the memories.  I wouldn’t let go. The sudden nature of the breakup paralyzed me. I had absolutely no expectation that this would happen.

As I searched the site of “How To Get Over Anyone in a few days” I began to feel a deeper sense of tranquility and my thought process was exactly like this, “If others can move on and get over someone, maybe I can make it through this too.” What I did, was I started to believe that I could do it. My thought process shifted and I temporarily started to feel differently. I felt noticeably better for the rest of my work-day.  It is important to recognize what, exactly, causes your thinking to change and, as a result, your feelings and behaviors. Once you do that, you can implement that same strategy (pattern of thinking) in your next emotional battle or even for that “bad habit” you have ingrained.

The other day I was at a local bookstore skimming through a book entitled, “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg.  I came across a couple paragraphs that seemed to concur with my experience of feeling better after thinking a certain way.

“In 2005 a group of scientists affiliated with UC Berkley, Brown University and the National Institutes of Health began asking Alcoholics anonymous about all kinds of religious and spiritual topics. Then they looked at the data to see if there was any correlation between religious belief and how long people stayed sober. Alcoholics who believed that some power had entered their lives were more likely to make it through stressful periods with their sobriety intact. It wasn’t God that mattered the researchers found out.  It was belief itself that made the difference.”

“Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill spilled over to other parts of their lives until they started believing they could change. Belief was the ingredient that made a reworked habit loop into a permanent behavior.  You don’t have to believe in God but you do need the capacity to believe that things will get better.  Alcoholics Anonymous trains people in how to believe in something until they believe in themselves. It lets people practice believing that things will eventually get better, until things actually do.”

Although these are very simple “no-brainer” thoughts, not often are they considered as paramount to the healing process of a breakup or to any other habit or bad situation. This wasn’t the direction my mind had been going all along. I was expressing my feelings to anyone who would listen, I was writing my thoughts down. Since I’m not gregarious and therefore don’t have a robust social life, I would call my 2 female friends whom I’m sure were quite annoyed with my grieving. I wasn’t exercising, I wasn’t eating and I was indulging in the painful feelings associated with the breakup. Also, I couldn’t wait to go to work each day to escape.  Never was I telling myself “I believe I can cope. I believe I can get over him.” I never thought of “believing” as a skill.  I never thought that simply by believing can I let go of him.