How can you help someone move on? She sees her ex around the holidays. They have been divorced 30 years and she still feels his indiscretions like it was yesterday. She is in a mediocre long term relationship now and it bothers her to no end to see the ex and his happy family. She is already in therapy/on meds for depression and anxiety but it doesn't seem to help. Thanks.
Some people like to be miserable. Is she one of those people? She has to want to move on otherwise she never will.
I don't think there is anything you can do to help her.
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Some people like to be miserable. Is she one of those people? She has to want to move on otherwise she never will.
I don't think there is anything you can do to help her.
I have to agree with the others that this is something that you, as a friend, are going to have to let both she and therapy handle.
Some people go to therapy very deeply hurt, but they are willing to do the work as it comes. Admitting where we, ourselves, played a role in our own unhappiness is very hard and humbling, but it allows us to acknowledge our mistakes, move on, and make better choices.
If it were my friend, I would be wondering what's behind both her choice to maintain the 'mediocre' status of her marriage (because that's something she can address constructively in the here and now) and her inability to let go of the past. Did she get therapy between being married to her ex and getting remarried? Sometimes, we repeat mistakes-- or make different mistakes-- if we don't have a chance to look at our past in a reflective way.
Only your friend can help herself. Maybe she needs a different counselor. Maybe she isn't ready, yet, to change things. Some people can go to counseling, hear what the counselor is saying, but not be ready to address deeper issues. Some people are afraid of doing this, afraid to disturb the status quo in their own lives. I don't know if this is what's holding your friend back, but after 30 years, one would hope that she'd moved on enough not to care any more.
Is she the kind of person who is always judging her life against the lives of others? Until one is emotionally secure and comfortable with themselves, this tendency to use others as a yardstick can undermine happiness.
Here's the hard truth, J., and I am sorry to say it-- until your friend really wants to be healed, until she is willing to forgive him and let it go, until she is willing to address the problems in her life in the present, past hurts will continue to be a burden for her. Therapy can be a long, long journey. Some people are in therapy for years before they really feel released from past pain. And some people cling to that pain and use it as an excuse for not living their life fully. I don't know where your friend stands in this regard, but please know, it is not your responsibility to help her do this. I say this as both someone who was once very troubled and burdened by the past, and as someone who has tried to help a few people who weren't ready to let go yet. Being a victim of the past was a part of their identity they weren't ready to give up at the time. It's a tremendous drain on a friendship and people cannot do the deeper, harder work until they are ready to, period. So, you can be a friend to her, but know that this responsibility doesn't fall on you-- this is something you can stand by her through, but nothing that you can fix. You sound like a very caring friend-- I hope your friend can move forward happily sooner than later. And I really agreed with others responses-- if it's a seasonal thing, that's one thing, but if she's focused on it a lot, that's a whole other thing indeed.
30 yrs? In therapy and has meds? No. There is no way to help her.
She is what's known as a Help Rejecting Complainer.
At least that's my opinion. It's her personality and it's a bit warped.
Personality disorders don't generally respond to treatment, I'm very sorry to say. The world will be a better place if they ever find a treatment for it.
Usually people like her go to therapists just to tell their side of the story over and over again, not to get help. They really do feel things deeply. Even small slights that normal people would just ignore, they hold on to and want revenge for. It makes it tough to keep relationships.
Please don't get caught in her loop. You need to set up boundaries. You need to protect yourself and you family, emotionally. You see most people consider physical safety, but never consider being wounded emotionally to be bad enough to stop. It is a very legitimate concern. Get the book, Boundaries. You can not make this person happy. You can not fix her.
I would start with Not setting this up to fail every year. Find another way to entertain, without throwing them together.
Good luck.
1) Meds can take up to a couple months to work
2) During times of high stress (holidays count) one may need to tweak their med regimen (usually by adding short term instant action, along with long term stabilizers).
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My grand parents were (happily!) married for over 60 years.
Many kids
Many more grand kids
Amaaaaaaazing people, in a really rambunctious, successful, awesome family.
Why this trip down R.'s family tree?
They were both divorced for several years when they met, then married each other.
BOTH of them would go into periods where they were still FURIOUS with their exes for various things.
It wasn't all the time, or even necessarily frequently, but they'd both been hurt badly. And that cropped up from time to time. Either in anger or sadness.
Almost no one knew that, of course.
We didn't, as kids.
Not until we were grown.
Some hurts stay with you.
Even when they don't rule you.
Those closest to us, get to see that.
Meaning:
Even if she's 99.99% over it.
Even if her meds are stellar.
The will be times when she's sad or angry.
She's not with the right therapist, obviously. She needs intensive talk therapy and she needs to be drop dead serious about it. Depression and anxiety can be addressed with medication as a tool, but that's only part of it. The main part of therapy has to be talk therapy and learning coping skills. A medication is not a coping skill. It's a tool.
I would also say that the divorce is probably not the original source of her depression and anxiety. It's probably just her scapegoat. She has probably built up her former husband and marriage in her head to the point that it was a wonderful pairing and they were both so amazingly happy and it was the best time of her life... until the divorce. Happy happy happy and then sudden misery for 30 years? No. It had to have been going on much longer than 30 years.
So I would suggest she gets a new therapist... a psychiatrist that performs frequent talk therapy. But your friend has to be willing to do the work. This is a LIFETIME of depression and anxiety, and it stems out from before her marriage ended. I would guess before her marriage even started.
She needs to do something with her life that really matters. She should probably volunteer somewhere, and get out of her own head.
Other than suggesting joining clubs or volunteering -- doing something interesting and meaningful with her life -- there probably isn't much you can do. Some people just like to obsess on the negative.
Like Nervy Girl said, you can't fix her.
Are you possibly referring to my friend, Shirley?
I, too, have a friend who is still grieving her divorce about 25 years ago...
Let therapy handle it.
No one but the therapist has got the degree to qualify to handle her problem.
If she wants to wallow in self pity there's not much anyone can do until she's good and ready to quit it.
She's got to wake up to the fact that life is moving on without her - her not letting it go is holding her back from enjoying life - and life is too short for holding a grudge.
She may never see the light.
You might have to move on with out her if you get tired of hearing her litany over and over again.
Just because she's stuck doesn't mean anyone else around her should be stuck with her obsession too.
She obviously needs to let go. She's been carrying this baggage around for far too long and if therapy and meds haven't helped her I honestly don't know what else we can offer. Bad things happen in life, horrible things happen all the time. She needs to assess her life for what it IS not what happened or what could be but what she enjoys about her own life.
She is the only one that can help herself.
Sure, she is on meds.
But, that is not HER... helping herself.
That is a physiological/medical help, the meds.
Not an attitudinal shift, in her.
So that is the difference.
And meds, don't provide "coping skills" to the person.
Coping skills, are taught, then learned. Then, acted upon. Hopefully.
Again, it is an attitudinal shift and perspective shift.
There is only one person that can help her and that is herself. She will never move on until she makes a decision to over come her divorce. No amount of meds,therapy will help her, until SHE decides to move on.
The problem is in her THINKING. When she changings her way of thinking then she will be set free from that divorce. It's nice for you to be concern for your friend, but For your sake please don't spend your time helping her. You will only be spinning your wheels. There comes a time in our lives that we have to be responsible for our emotions and our own happiness.
She has to let go and move on, but unfortunately is seems she is already in therapy (that would have been my advice). Has she been seeing the same therapist the whole time? Maybe she needs someone else? All you can do is be there for her and love her as best you can. I am sure the fact that her current relationship is only so so is part of her pain, so maybe you could help her come up with ways to connect better with her current lover, or help her see she needs to move on if her heart is not really in it.
I fully understand how that pain can hold on, sometimes a thought, a picture, a word, will bring back the memories of my husbands betrayals and that pain can feel just as fresh as it did back then, but I have had to learn ways to address that when it happens, to feel what I need to feel, and then let it go and move on. I am thankful my husband understands this and lets me feel what I need to when I need to and does his best to be there for me until I let it go once again.
One of the hardest things to do after being hurt is to FORGIVE that person for the harm. That doesn't mean one forgets, but it can certainly help one move past. Forgiveness doesn't lessen the wrong, but it will help psychologically to heal one's self.
She needs to set aside that baggage and not allow it to control her feelings. 30 years is much too long to harbor anger, which causes depression.
I have personal experience with being victimized by a devastating situation years ago, it was a criminal act, and through the process of getting past, I had to forgive that person in order to not let it consume my every being. And yes, I had therapy, but was able to find many positives with circumstances surrounding what I went through. It made me a much stronger person and was able to realize that incident was not going to control me.
Looking back now, it is as vivid as when it happened, but I no longer harbor the anger. Of course, I don't ever have to see that individual so that helps, whereas your friend apparently does see her ex.
She needs to realize she is "allowing" these feelings to linger, and have control over her. Her therapist should help her understand that.
30 years? No she is in a pattern of wallowing in misery. What a waste of her time!
If she has been in therapy all of these years and never been to alanon , she should give it a try. Even if she does not drink, she could learn to let go of this slight. It should never have taken over her life like this.
