Feeling like being back at zero

Yes, I've had this happen. I was friends with several of one of my ex FA's friends, and when we broke up the first time after almost a year, he simply didn't tell anyone. Which meant I ended up having to tell all of them one by one as I ran into them or chatted with them for the next couple months. It seemed insane to me, but with time and distance from the situation, it was him avoiding dealing with any of it and had nothing to do with me. I was upset in part because I was resentful to need to continue doing all emotional labor that he avoided... he should have told his own friends about it, not me. I'm still friendly and talk to many of them though years later, and I don't talk to him because we are just very different people and grew so far apart over time.

But at the time, after the breakup, I also had to enforce boundaries with him, as he wanted to instantly be best friends after the breakup and I was broken up about it.

Getting past the breakup won't be linear, especially if you have an anxious attachment style. You'll have good days and bad, reminders, steps back and forward and diagonal. The thing is, it's not all about him even though it seems that way. A lot is about you and how you feel about yourself, your own identity, whether or not you're connected enough to yourself to be emotionally processing through and mourning and understand your own feelings outside of the lens of him. Like, do you feel resentful and disrespected and angry but you can't totally connect with or access those feelings (anxious often struggle with being able to feel angry and re-direct anger towards themselves or don't feel it at all because it's too uncomfortable)? Do you feel abandonment issues triggered, but you don't know now to emotionally regulate yourself and calm your own nervous system in the face of external circumstances outside of your control (anxious usually look to others to regulate them because they had childhoods where adults dumped their feelings onto the child so they didn't learn how to self-soothe properly)?

Both of those are examples that can get triggered by avoidant partners and exes, but weren't initially caused by those avoidants... the issues go deeper. That's when exploring more about what it means to have an anxious attachment style, and even more about how those patterns differ from secure and why will help (they were defense mechanisms that worked earlier in life, but as an adult can be dysfunctional and inhibit you but it's a conscious effort to un-learn them.. not easy but doable!).

Looking more at your own style rather than ruminating over him is painful but is truly the way to feeling better in the long run. A thread I like to share early in the process is this one, which talks about how it can seem like triggered feelings are happening due to the person or situation right in front of you, but it's actually reminding you of something deeper that you're disconnected from and not about your ex. Which is a concept I found very empowering, because it means you don't need your ex to help heal.

jebkinnisonforum.com/thread/2372/overcoupling-stress-response

So take comfort in the knowledge that you're not back at zero, even if you're having a bad day today. If you were, you wouldn't be asking yourself these questions or reading and posting here