Reddit reviews The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love

I’ve been on this sub for nearly a year now. You can see my post history if you like. Anyway... I am not saying this with any certainty of course, but as your anonymous internet friend, I urge you to prepare yourself for a future revelation of an undisclosed relationship. Whether it turns out to be technical infidelity or not. It won’t really matter.

Your situation sounds incredibly similar to mine. Especially the irrational anger and defensiveness in counseling.

Check out Susan Anderson’s book about abandonment. It really helped me a lot.

And I’m sorry. 😔

The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love https://www.amazon.com/dp/0425273539/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_K8zSDb4JDXJ2K

Oof, it's hard, isn't it?

We had 16 great years together, but now she wants to spread her love all over town and I'm not going along with it. She told me recently that she made a mistake in saying "yes" long ago. Not when we got married, but three years before that when we were dating, trying an open relationship, and I gave her an ultimatum of "Micah or me-- your pick." She now says the last 13 years were a mistake. It's shattered me.

I have found A LOT of strength in Susan Anderson's The Journey from Abandonment to Healing. I'm not all the way through the book, but so far it's been immense. You gotta do the exercises, they're soooo helpful. And the theory of the book, ekeru, is, to me, incredibly beautiful, inspiring, and gives me strength.

I doubt you're no longer cute. You just gotta work on loving yourself and finding that cute that's already inside you. If you have a problem with what's on the outside, then when you find the inside cute, I have a feeling the outside will follow along.

Love yourself. Work on yourself. Reclaim your self. That's the hardest part (and I'm right there with you), and when you can finally sit in a room by yourself and be perfectly content, you'll know you did the work and you're stronger than you were even 16 years ago.

Go you, homie.

I'm sorry to hear you're feeling this way. Lord knows, most of us have been in your shoes. I found help in reading books. Seemed like a stupid suggestion from a friend, but there are alot of self-help books out there. One in particular really seemed to resonate with me, and i recovered faster because of it. I'll hotlink it below but it or another one like it might be worth a read. You can get cheap used editions usually too.

Amazon

Here you go:

The NUMBER ONE thing that helped my BPD tendencies was meditation, which I did as part of getting sober. It allowed me to find a pause between the emotion and my reaction. I still FEEL the same shit I used to - but I do not feel controlled by it any longer.

My favorite meditation teacher is Tara Brach. She posts all of her meditations online and on her podcast. Her book 'Radical Acceptance' was a life changer for me.

I also use a lot of binaural beats meditations (you can find these on Spotify or YouTube, I use the Profound Meditation Program by iAwake Technologies).

I have immensely enjoyed Sam Harris' book Waking Up which is about developing a spiritual practice without religion. He has an excellent podcast but it is expressly NOT about mental health, I just think he has a lot of great perspective to share.

Susan Elliot - Getting Past Your Breakup - this book looks like a cheesy self help book but it was awesome. Really really wonderful exercises. I also got her workbook.

Susan Anderson - Journey from Abandonment to Healing - this book was the first one I read, it was very helpful in understanding the science of what is happening in rejection and abandonment. This was useful because it allowed me to see my reactions were very, very normal.

Vicki Stark - Runaway Husbands - very specific book about men who walk out without warning. This helped me identify warning signs and feel less alone.

Lessons From The End of a Marriage - this blog is from Lisa Arends. Her story is hard to read. But this is the best divorce blog I've ever read! Such wonderful advice here.

Glennon Doyle Melton - First the Pain, then The Rising - I watched this every single day for a month. For a while, it was the only fucking thing that got me out of bed.

Overcomer podcast - hosted by a woman I met in one of the support groups, just lots of great insight on abandonment recovery.

Attached - great book on attachment theory

DBT Workbook - this is a GREAT resource on how to build distress tolerance and skills to face a lot of BPD type issues. DBT was a therapy style designed for BPD.

Edit to add: Forgot the best one!

Pema Chodron - When Things Fall Apart - Pema is a buddhist nun and I absolutely love her. She became buddhist when her husband left her. This book is incredible. So much wisdom! I always carry my Pocket Pema with me, literally Pema is THE BEST! She also has a lot of recorded talks that I find so calming to listen to.

Written by an ACON:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HJBMDXK

Fluffy but useful:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TZE87S4
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0425273539

Implementation details:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0753806703

Together, the above have helped me establish that a lot of my behaviour and painful experiences until the recent past were essentially the fight-or-flight system being triggered by stimuli related to fear conditioning. The painful memories are indelible, but the cortex can train the amygdala to "hold-your-fire" enough of the time that life can be enjoyable and rewarding, even though there will still be times when the cortex is too tired/weak to keep things under total control - but even then, it's possible to "just sit with the pain" and accept it, rather than try to avoid it and cause more problems. Good luck!

I can relate. Took me so long though to get out of that funk. And there is this book which helped me a lot: https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Abandonment-Healing-Surviving-Recovering/dp/0425273539/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485086376&sr=8-1&keywords=susan+anderson+journey