Symptoms of grief from missing your ex
Those who’ve been following my page know that I’ve been through a lot of tough times in my life. From being addicted to methamphetamine, my parents divorce, being bullied, being homeless, eating disorders, pretty much you name it – I’ve been there. But nothing I’ve been through equates to a fraction of the pain from grieving a loved one. The worse form of grief I’ve been through was missing my ex who I was with for 8 years. If you’re suffering from missing your ex, I hope this article helps your recovery.
I remember feeling a constant void of all emotion, it wasn’t sadness but far worse. With sadness I could at least have crying as a outlet for my suffering, but with this void of emotion there was nothing that would give me any relief as I couldn’t even cry most of the time. The only relief I found was giving myself a false hope or clinging to a false hope that others would give me, the false hope was a certainty that I would get her back when in reality getting her back was uncertain. The idea of never getting her back was something I couldn’t deal with, it was like a eternal doom – something I believed to my core that I could never be ok with.
Then there were the frequent nightmares. Pretty much every night I would dream about my ex and they were never good dreams. I would have dreams that she hated me and didn’t want anything to do with me, I would be chasing her as she was pushing me away. Or even worse, I would have dreams that we got back together and it was like we were never apart. I felt ecstasy before I would wake up to my empty room realizing it was just a dream and getting hit with a wave of incomprehensible depression and fear.
When I was awake I was in a constant state of obsession. I spent most hours of the day obsessing about getting her back and bouncing between facing a doom that I never will or giving myself a false hope that I definitely would. When I would converse with friends on the topic I would hope there would be one thing they could say that would give me relief, but nothing anyone said seemed to help longer then 10 minutes.
I was afraid of letting her go, I felt that the only chance I had to get her back was to hold on as tight as I could. If I let her go, then how would I be willing to do whatever it takes to have a relationship with her again in the future?
Recovering from the grief of missing your ex
I went through this horrific experience for a long time, I didn’t start truly healing until 2-3 years after the relationship ended. It took me that long to be willing to heal, to want to let go of the person. After 2 years of suffering I hit a emotional bottom where I would rather never see the person again then go through another day of this emotional disturbance caused by holding on.
Once I became willing to heal, it still took time to heal, but I noticed myself getting better with each passing month which gave me hope and relief.
The main thing I practiced was snapping myself out of obsessive thoughts by focusing on being of service to others or furthering myself in any kind of way. I also learned to avoid my trauma triggers – people, places, and things that would remind me of my ex and trigger the obsession. I found some relief in ancient sayings and would repeat them to myself. I used sayings like the serenity prayer and “if you love someone let them go, if they come back to you then they’re yours,” to snap myself out of obsessive thought patterns.
I made this article to reach out to anyone who’s going through grieving an ex to let them know that they’re not alone. I thought the pain would never go away and now I have no emotions towards that person whatsoever, granted, it’s been 5 years but 5 years is a lot shorter then the forever I thought it would take to heal.
If you’re suffering from grief of missing your ex, or from grief in general, feel free to reach out to me
Philip – 2147349667
Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/CGKid219/
Here’s a video summary of this article on missing your ex. Subscribe for future video content:
Philip Markoff (Associate of Science) is an online influencer and thought leader on addiction education; he is known as his alias “CG Kid” who’s obtained a large audience primarily on YouTube as a vlogger and journalist. His current sobriety date from polysubstance chemical dependency is June 9th, 2013.