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Read ‘Brain Lock’ by Dr Jeffrey Schwartz & Beverly Beyette
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Stop talking about the specific RJ triggers that bother you
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Find as many people as you can who have recovered from RJ and ask them what helped them the most to get well
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Stop asking your partner for further information about what did or did not happen in their romantic or sexual past
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Start writing a holistic recovery plan
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Actively support other RJ sufferers on RJ groups even if it’s only to say ‘I get how you feel’ or ‘PM me if you need an ear’
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Consider your use of stimulants like caffeine
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Tell your partner you are working a recovery programme and at times you may appear withdrawn . Ask them not to ‘dig you out’ when this happens
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Practice The Antidote Technique EVERY time you have an RJ thought
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Consider medication- get medical advice
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Consider starting a daily mindfulness/ meditation practice but get some good guidance. There are a lot of myths and unhelpful assumptions about this
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Read-up on Attachment Theory and work out your own, and your partner’s, attachment style. Look at how this fits with, and possibly feeds, your RJ.
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Find a hobby that occupies your mind, even when you are not actively engaged in it.
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Consider therapy but find a specialist, ideally in RJ, but failing that, one who specialises in OCD
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Exercise daily and prepare a short routine that you can do when triggered
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Start to learn to see the RJ triggers as just that and imagine that you had another form of OCD that would feel clearly irrational to you. Every time an RJ thought emerges, instead of engaging with those thought imagine, the other form of OCD instead and see how meaningless the actual ‘content’ of the RJ is ( the videos on ‘Transferring Triggers Technique’ and ‘RJ Shock Therapy’ go into more depth on this).
17.Start the free YouTube ‘lockdown’ daily recovery programme
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Look at how you breath. If your breath is habitually shallow, this may be exacerbating anxiety. Learn some techniques to gradually deepen your breathing. Even if your breathing is not generally shallow, learn some breathing techniques that you can use in ‘emergency’ situations.
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Have a conversation with your partner telling them you are now working an RJ recovery plan which involves not acting on triggers. Tell them that if you appear silent, moody or withdrawn it may be because you are wrestling with this. At these moments they may be worried about you or even try to ‘dig you out’. Tell them that, at such times, it is not helpful to share your thoughts with them, and ask for their quiet co-operation.
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Do some active work on self -esteem. There are loads of free videos on YT. It’s covered in the free RJ lockdown programme as well.
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Use the ‘Movie Editor’ technique to quickly get rid of mental movies.
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When struggling, or even as a daily practice, write gratitude lists.
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Consider joining a 12-Step Recovery fellowship. Codependents Anonymous (CoDa) is usually the most appropriate one for RJ, but have a watch of my videos on this first, as some prior knowledge of how it works can make a huge difference to what you can gain from the groups.
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Be selective about what you expose yourself to. Instead of TV consider watching personal development videos on YouTube or elsewhere. Be mindful in how you use RJ Facebook groups. While they can be life-saving, too much exposure to people’s RJ ‘war stories’ can set you back.
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Find a recovery buddy and engage in daily mutual support.
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Consider looking into philosophy and similar approaches like Eckhart Tolle and Buddhism (especially around equanimity). Some people find Alan Watts helpful though I haven’t personally read any of his work.
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Make use of the various RJ resources online, especially on FB and YouTube. Different RJ channels vary in their approach, so take a broad sweep and see what you can gain from each of them. Most are kosher but a few aren’t. Just be wary of any that offer easy or swift cures. (Sadly, recovery from RJ is neither easy nor swift, though, if you put in the work and get the right help it is possible to make a major shift in six months to a year. As they say in AA ‘Half measures avail us nothing’).
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If you live in any part of the UK you can access the NHS’s IAPT service. This stands for ‘Improving Access to Psychological Therapies’. This means that anyone wanting help with depression or anxiety can get tiered treatment without a GP referral and without being assessed by mental health services. As RJ is a form of OCD and OCD is an anxiety disorder, you can access free Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for your RJ. They will not be familiar with RJ as such so see the video I did aimed at therapists and ask your clinician to watch it.
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Google and read the NICE guidelines for the treatment of OCD. NICE is the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence
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Learn to reduce the habitual levels of tension in your body with progressive relaxation techniques, sauna, massage or whatever works best for you. OCD is essentially an anxiety disorder. If your body is relaxed it’s harder for your mind to be in high alert mode which occurs in RJ.
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Make your partner aware of the free online support forum for partners.
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Remember you are more likely to A/ get triggered and B/ act on the trigger in an unhelpful way, if you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. Remember the acronym HALT. Try and prevent these states from arising and when they do, remedy them immediately. Many a needless argument has been prevented by just taking yourself off to bed, for example.
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Remind yourself of the fable of the two hungry wolves and keep asking yourself “Which Wolf am I feeding right now?” If you are not familiar with this story see my most recent video
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If in doubt, try and think in the way someone without RJ would think (but don’t ruminate).
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Create as many opportunities as possible for humour and laughter. If you can start to joke about your RJ that is a real sign of progress
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Examine any tendencies you might have towards narcissism or codependency
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Based on the work of Zackary Stockhill, RJers put their partners on a pedestal. Reflect on whether you do this and consider how you can start to gently alter your perception of them to something more realistic and healthy
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Notice your ‘meta-cognition’- in other words, the thoughts you have in response to the RJ ones. When you notice you have been entertaining RJ thoughts, what do you say to yourself. Imagine you are helping an infant learn to walk and think about what you would say to them when they inevitably fall over. Treat yourself with the same gently, patient encouragement and persistence
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When your anxiety levels have been reduced, consider doing the values, beliefs and attitudes mapping exercise (there is a video on this in the free ‘lockdown’ RJ recovery programme on YouTube. I also have some more thoughts on this which I hope to put into a video soon
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Look into how your physical health might be affecting your mood. Allergies, food intolerances, vitamin or mineral deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, even muscular-skeletal problems could all be background factors that drag you down. If you are low physically or mentally, it will be harder to fight off your RJ. Review your diet and maybe get some medical advice on those niggling issues you were hoping would just go away. Maybe ask for blood tests or just make a trip to an osteopath or chiropractor to get your back ache or your postural imbalances corrected
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Most people with RJ are romantic, sentimental and nostalgic and imbue reality with a false veneer of exaggerated meaningfulness. Explore whether you do this, and try and get a sense of how this contributes to your RJ
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When you can, expose yourself to things that give you a true sense of perspective and relevance. For example, get up into the mountains, contemplate the vastness of the night sky, take a walk around an old cemetery. There is also an exercise you can do which involves plotting your family tree, but no need to include names and details, just start with a dot representing you at the bottom of a piece of paper and work upwards with lines and dots to parents then grandparents, great grandparents and so on, so eventually, you see your existence as one tiny dot in an ever-increasing sea of human genes and spent lifetimes. The object is not to diminish your self-esteem but to view your RJ as the meaningless and irrelevant series of mental chunterings that it truly is. Where will the thoughts that feel so all-important now be in 100 years’ time?
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