I honestly cannot win with my thoughts

I would try to stop thinking/explaining so much and get down in my body.
Land the nerveussystem and work on getting into secure attatchment.

How to start:
Do the watertank exercise twice a day for about 15-20 min. You can do the exercise every where.
Get your best secure friend over with a regulated nerveussystem to do some of the touch exercises with you after the watertank exercise.

Do the "coming into secure exercise" every day.

And some of the other exercises in the selfregulating thread and in the ap and desorganised thread.

Find a therapist educated in the work by Diane Poole Heller. Maybe her office can guide you to a therapist in your area.

Build up resources. What do you like to do ? Contact a new church or tell your ex to stay away every other Sunday.

Take a spa day, paint, write, find some old magasine and make a vision board with things you like

Go to the playground and play like if you were a little girl. If you have got friends with children stay and play with them. Show them some of the things you used to play when you were a little girl.

Go around with bare feet.

Ect.
You could also help girlschouts and maybe even become a girlschouts leader ect.

I did not tell you to stop completely. The "feeling/thinking thing" does not help the ambivalent so much. Ap's are experts in feeling, right ?! It can keep you stuck and sometimes overwhelmed.
Our brain is devided into 3 parts and it sounds like you could use some help to work with the autopilot/the ans/nerveussystem.

Some therapists gives this training in groups, so that you can support each other and meet outside the therapy session to train the touching exercise and others exercises together.
Healing in groups can be a powerfull thing.

How can we do better, when we do not know better ?!

There are soooo many people/therapists all around the world, who doesent  know how to do the nerveussystem system/ attatchment/ se work.

Thanks...I was in an amazing class in the fall where we learned about the brain mechanics and also went into attachment.  It was weird....I was the only anxious one in the bunch.  Our teacher handed out a double sided page of feeling words organized under different labels.  Ididn’t understand it,..because I could rattle of feelings very easily...however...the other girls could talk readily about aches, pains, subtle changes in their body...and I could not.  It was eye opening.

I have...I have several groups I belong to and 1 group that I am the moderator for and I have decided to keep Facebook for now. 

Ah yeah, that complicates things, if you're still in a mode where you believe it's doing you more good than harm.

Your addiction is an addiction I am very familiar with. I used to social media stalk my exes (or people I was dating). Your situation reminds me of someone saying they are a smoker and smoking is making them sick, in fact they feel sick every time they smoke, asking what can they do about this other than stopping smoking because they aren't going to quit. We could suggest things that might help you to smoke a bit less, like working on the reasons you smoke in the first place, getting more physical activity or filling your time with other things that will keep you busy and distract you so that you think about smoking less. But I could also tell you exactly how I quit smoking (spoiler alert: it involves changing your thinking to the point where you convince yourself to stop buying cigarettes, you're never going to quit with a pack in your pocket), although it sounds like maybe you don't even want to hear things like that yet? Or did you just mean you don't need people saying "just stop looking!" as though it were easy or you hadn't thought of that?



YES. This is quite common, you aren't alone. Some therapists suggest couples never add each other on social media.


I like anne12 's suggestion to try things to get out of your head and into your body. This could take many forms. Music, working out, being in nature...

Another thing that I've personally found helpful, although it might sound a bit strange, is imagining that my fears are true. Instead of fighting with my fears, embracing and facing them. For example, I'd ask myself what if he really is spending 24 hours a day either on a date with a girl or chatting to a girl on Messenger? What if he is such a Facebook Casanova that he hired a call centre in India to send flirty texts with kissy face emojis to women for him while he sleeps? What if he barely works because he spends so much time dating and chatting? Will I really die if that is true? Will I really believe it says something about my worth? And just feeling whatever feelings come up, even if painful, and realizing I will actually be ok and in fact I've survived worse.

I don't know if I'm explaining this well but the technique is something I find helpful with anxieties in general.

I get where you are both coming from and acknowledge my self inflicted pain.....I truly think this goes deeper.  It obviously does because Bs presence or absence on social media in itself should not be triggering....it is the swirling thoughts and stories I associate to his presence and absense that are the triggering factor.  It also seems that more stress=more checking=more thoughts and more stories.  Being stressed also means being more regressed and less capable and so again....more stories.  Right now I noticed b has not been on IM for a while and that thought...he is with someone came into my head...but...because I have more capacity at the moment...the thought just floated by and did not impact me.  There is definite growth that I am seeing in me....I just tend to post here when things get bad and the thoughts do impact me and bloom.  I found it so interesting that I have basically trapped myself in a no win situation....On IM...talking to a girl, off IM..with a girl.  These thoughts did not start on their own so I am trying to figure out where they started and finally address the root so I can be free that way.  I honestly tried to give in to the stories at one point....but remembering that stories=less capacity=more regressed....I could not....that is where “hope” comes in.  It is hard to describe for someone who doesn’t have AP tendencies....but it is as if you cannot hit rock bottom...you can get awfully close...you can get so angry, sad, depressed to the point that you don’t feel anything but pain.....but...then your hope speaks of second chances, silver linings...it looks for glints of something positive in the darkness.  I honestly love hope..but hope isn’t any more based on reality then the original thoughts and stories are.  Hope simply says “don’t give in, don’t give up...see, here...did you see this, read this, remember this”.  It would be fantastic to fully give into hope...she is so positive and...hopeful......but....i can’t do that either.....the moment I am brimming with hope...giddy, happy, joyous....then the other side of the coin comes in and says...”be careful....did you not notice this, see this, read this”...so it is this tiring back and forth....can’t be fully in pain, can’t be fully in hope.  So..that was a very long winded way to say....I am blocked by my own AP tendencies from doing what you are recommending.  In truth...knowing this isn’t the root...it really is time to go back and address the real root.  I would love to get to a point where my emotions, thoughts are not tied to anything that B is or is not doing...I would like to be able to simply say...ok and leave it there, without a myriad of thoughts and stories, dread and hope...just not there yet.  Still working on my side of the fence.  🙂

You’re right....telling someone just to stop looking or get out of their head is not going to work when they have a deeply rooted practice of getting into their head. So whenever I get in my head, instead of trying to squash thoughts (nearly impossible for me) I try to change the thought instead. Next time you are triggered that he’s not online so he’s with a girl....imangine him NOT with a girl. Imagine him working out or watching TV or doing his taxes or something else. And when he online, imagine him reading some article that one of his buddies posted or scrolling his newsfeed. Still not a healthy practice but a little easier to quell the anxiety a bit until you can work through your issues in letting him go completely.