unsolicited advice
I'm cleaning up old mail. Two years and a day ago, someone I knew was having trouble getting over a breakup. I sent
* For me, fighting my emotions hasn't ever worked. It'll take me twice as long to get over something if I keep telling myself I should be over it already.
* I've been impressed by the power of affirmations. It really bugs me that they work. It seems so New Age flaketastic. But brains are self-programming. If you tell your brain something over and over, whether that thing is 'I am awesome' or 'I suck' or 'I forgive', you will come over time to believe that thing, and believing it is more likely to make it true than not believing it is.
* I read once that typical breakup recovery time for a serious relationship is often as much as double the duration of the relationship. So if you had a really big important year-long thing, it's not weird if it takes over a year to get over it.
* You seem to already realize that different people get over stuff at different speeds. That's an important clue to get. For me, my time horizon is long, something that happened five years ago was pretty recent. For others, that is unthinkably long ago.
* Time changes. In general, it gets less dense; the biggest changes in your head probably occurred the first year of your life, and something taking you a year to get over when you are 20 might be MORE time than something taking two years to get over when you are forty.
* If you are totally sick to death of the inside of your head and need to redecorate, there are a few things you can do that can make big changes quickly.
The most obvious is drugs; the value of a focused and serious experience is not to be underestimated. Another is personal growth seminars: the Landmark Forum (est), Tony Robbins, etc. A good one is like psychological chiropractic, it can just kick out a whole lot of knots you didn't know you had. Self-help books are a weaker dose of the same thing; many are dreck (it's hard to stay in business doing seminars if you suck at it, but a crappy book can stay on shelves for years) but the good ones can really help you come to a new way of looking at the world.
If you have or can invent religious rituals, some of those can also be quite powerful agents of change. Also near-death experiences, though the only ways I know of to intentionally arrange them generally involve either extreme sports or suicide attempts.
* For me, fighting my emotions hasn't ever worked. It'll take me twice as long to get over something if I keep telling myself I should be over it already.
* I've been impressed by the power of affirmations. It really bugs me that they work. It seems so New Age flaketastic. But brains are self-programming. If you tell your brain something over and over, whether that thing is 'I am awesome' or 'I suck' or 'I forgive', you will come over time to believe that thing, and believing it is more likely to make it true than not believing it is.
* I read once that typical breakup recovery time for a serious relationship is often as much as double the duration of the relationship. So if you had a really big important year-long thing, it's not weird if it takes over a year to get over it.
* You seem to already realize that different people get over stuff at different speeds. That's an important clue to get. For me, my time horizon is long, something that happened five years ago was pretty recent. For others, that is unthinkably long ago.
* Time changes. In general, it gets less dense; the biggest changes in your head probably occurred the first year of your life, and something taking you a year to get over when you are 20 might be MORE time than something taking two years to get over when you are forty.
* If you are totally sick to death of the inside of your head and need to redecorate, there are a few things you can do that can make big changes quickly.
The most obvious is drugs; the value of a focused and serious experience is not to be underestimated. Another is personal growth seminars: the Landmark Forum (est), Tony Robbins, etc. A good one is like psychological chiropractic, it can just kick out a whole lot of knots you didn't know you had. Self-help books are a weaker dose of the same thing; many are dreck (it's hard to stay in business doing seminars if you suck at it, but a crappy book can stay on shelves for years) but the good ones can really help you come to a new way of looking at the world.
If you have or can invent religious rituals, some of those can also be quite powerful agents of change. Also near-death experiences, though the only ways I know of to intentionally arrange them generally involve either extreme sports or suicide attempts.