Deb Stgo/Flickr
When you’ve had a stormy relationship that’s ended, one of the most tormenting aspects of its aftermath is that you can think you’re ok, you ‘re feeling stable, but then you plunge right back into confusion, disgust, and fear all over again. Chances are the more tumultuous the relationship was, the more tumultuous your response to breakup will be. Why? Because when you’re in a tumultuous relationship, your brain is in a perpetually heightened state of intensity. This could mean that when the breakup first occurred, you might have gone through periods of relief and calmness. However, now you begin to realize just how traumatized you were and still are. The trigger for that realization could be something you are aware of, or something you’re not. Your discomfort might have started right away, immediately post-breakup, or a year from now. No matter when, it won’t be denied.
You may be unable to identify what you’re feeling. One minute you are shriveling into nothing, and the next you are full of rage and shame. You feel as if you could explode. But how can you feel like nothing and be on the verge of exploding at the same time? When these reactions happen within you in close proximity to each other it’s a confusing, disorienting, daunting mess.
By “tumultuous”, I mean a relationship in which there was a lot of fighting, bickering, sniping, baiting and bullying. This chaos results in resentment, anxiety, rage, intensity, jealousy, even lust or passion. Consequently, you remain in a heightened state stimulation for an unhealthy amount of time in your relationship.
To go from a state in which your neurons are firing on all cylinders, to losing the stimulus altogether, and not knowing where to put all those thoughts and feelings still bouncing around in your head, makes the breakup of a tumultuous relationship all the more jarring, disorienting, and uncomfortable. You’re not yet used to the relative calmness of being alone.
Even when the relationship has been over long enough to recognize you’re “better off,” you may still undergo periods when you fixate on upsetting things that happened in the relationship, because they are, and likely always will be, unresolved. The discomfort of being flung back into a painful relationship you thought you had escaped, creates self-disgust, and frustration.
Being blindsided because you got “sucked in” again can make you feel even more out of control now, than when you were in the relationship. Now you are re-igniting those feelings without your ex, which can make you feel crazy. When you were in the relationship, those feelings had somewhere to be directed. Now, they no longer have an outlet. Since you recognize that the relationship was more disturbing than it was healthy, you’re acting out your trauma in a way you couldn’t during the relationship because you had been doing your best to manage the chaos of the relationship instead. Now, as a myriad of new and old feelings about your breakup surface, it can feels like you’ve lost your foundation. You swirl around, bottomless, empty, unknowable. It’s painfully disorienting. Being left unresolved contributes in profound ways to this place of confusion, chaos, frustration, and anger.
It’s hard to know what your triggers may be. Perhaps your ex is with someone new. Perhaps you’re with someone new. Or maybe it’s some unidentifiable reason. Why are you enraged at your ex 18 months later? Why are you suddenly experiencing suffocating rage at the loss all over again? The loss was “so long” ago! Here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter when the loss happened. Time is not a good indicator of where you are in your grieving process; how you feel is. When you feel like you’re going through a regressive period, that is not the time to measure your progress letting go. There is also no marker to identify when you’ll come to the end of this horrendously disorienting, regressive-like period. It’s ok that this is where you are right now. You have your reasons, whether you’re aware of what they are, or not. Also, know you’re not alone. Feeling like you’ve gone backwards after feeling better is an extremely common experience. The circumstances of the relationship, the dynamics between you, the feelings you evoked in each other, are not yet resolved for you. It’s ok that you’re not done grieving, that you’re not done processing the loss.
Your reactions, regardless of when you have them, are part of your process. That’s how to understand what you’re going through. Rather than feeling angry at yourself for falling backwards or “regressing,” try to feel compassion for the aspects of your trauma which didn’t have a way of expressing themselves until now. So, now this layer of pain of loss is coming out.
Keep in mind that while allowing your process to unfold along its natural course, it doesn’t mean your feelings won’t leak on all the wrong people in all the wrong places when not monitored. Exercise caution when find you’re descending into rage, and the urge to be destructive toward self or other. Because you are so angry at all that has remained unresolved between the two of you, it is hard to recognize when you are digging yourself into a hole and backing yourself into a corner . Even though your ex is the source of your rage, it’s still not up to your ex to make it better. You have broken up. It is not up to your ex to handle your rage, your anxiety, your frustration, your fear. The onus is on you now.
Whether you like it or not, this is your natural progression of grief. It has setbacks, and is fraught with confusion. Do your best to take care of yourself without acting in destructive ways that dig deeper into your trauma. With time, this stage will pass. With self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-compassion you will eventually find an end to your confusion. The responsibility is in first the connection between your current behavior and from where it originates, so that you can work through it. Identifying your patterns, your triggers, and your reactions helps you feel more in control. The very act of recognizing that connection empowers you and, therefore, helps you to get through your setback.
