Obsessive thinking is marked by an ongoing stream of negative thoughts that carry on even when you are trying not to have them. These thoughts seem to have a life of their own. When people are bound up in obsessive thinking after an affair, they are only able to put thoughts or images of the affair out their head for a short time.
In some instances, they are unable to put these thoughts or images out of their mind at all. In this case, I am not using the term “obsessive thinking” in a clinical sense. That would denote someone whose thinking is so unmanageable that the person would be diagnosed with an obsessive or compulsive disorder. In this case, I am using the term the way a layman might.
If you are obsessively preoccupied with an abstract thought, I recommend that you put the 3-step program for overcoming negative thinking that you just learned to work for you. You have to focus on continually keeping records of your thoughts, challenging the believability of them and replacing them with self-affirming statements.
In the case of obsessive thinking, you must engage in this process more rigorously than with other kinds of negative thinking. Each time you have a negative thought, counter it as much as you can. Each time it creeps into your mind, replace it with a self-affirmation.
In this way, over time, you are likely to reduce the impact it has on your life and eventually eliminate it altogether.
If you are plagued with visual images of the affair, such as disturbing movies or slide shows that run in your mind, then you are dealing with a slightly different monster. As human beings, we often run movies or slide shows in our minds to bring back a pleasant memory or to anticipate a future event. Here, I am referring to those disturbing images that are specifically related to the affair or its aftermath. This horror show also can be overcome, but it requires a different exercise than the one we just did.
It is important to note that these kinds of obsessions are not uncommon for people who go through an experience like what you are going through. After all, you are traumatized by an experience you never expected to happen.
In many cases, the injured person in an affair will imagine aspects of the affair and then play these images over and over in their heads until they tend to harden into a rigid pattern. The same images occur again and again the same way, without end.
The problem with consistent, incessant negative fantasies of this nature is that on an emotional level they operate as if they are real. You respond to them emotionally, the same way you would if it were actually happening.
You know that they aren’t real; you might even try to talk yourself out of responding to them. Nonetheless, they remain, continuing to haunt you and causing you serious psychological distress.
Even in the event that they do reflect some form of reality (for example if your partner has told you the details of the affair and you personally know the paramour), these images are still creations of your mind and, hence, not actually real. Images of this nature should be treated the same way you treat images that are completely fictional: simply as images.
If you want to be free from the distress these images are causing you, the first thing you need to do is to be sure that you are ready to give up your haunting fantasies. It may sound ridiculous to say, but one of the reasons that you likely haven’t given up these fantasies already is because they justify your pain in some way. You hold on to them because they show you that you are right to feel as hurt as you do.
You must be willing to let go of these obsessions, and allow yourself to feel your feelings. Holding on to negative thinking as a means to justify your pain isn’t very valuable. Your pain is justified by itself. Clinging to negative thinking only serves to keep you in pain.
Once you check in with yourself to make sure you are ready to give up the fantasy, use the following visualization techniques to help unlock the rigid pattern that the fantasy has developed and overcome the pain it is causing you.
Changing Your vision:
A visualization for overcoming obsessive Images
Find a time in your day when you will have about a half an hour to complete the following activity. Then locate a quiet, secluded spot where you can relaxed without interruption, and try the following visualization exercises.
- Take a few deep breaths, and close your eyes.
- Slowly calm yourself, and allow your mind to unfold and relax.
- Allow yourself to unwind. You can use the breathing exercise I described before.
- When you are ready, bring the fantasy with which you have been struggling to mind. Take the time to visualize it completely. This could be painful, but facing that pain is your first step to freeing yourself from it. Take the time to imagine every detail. Put each of the elements of the fantasy in place just the way you have been carrying them around with you all this time.
- Once you have the image strongly in your mind, I want you to experiment with it in a number of ways:
- First, see if you can take the whole scenario that you have imagined and play it backward. Imagine that you can hit a rewind button just like you do on your DVD player and run the entire fantasy in reverse.
- How is that for you?
- Does it change your perspective on the fantasy?
- If it made any change, even a small one, repeat this exercise five times, with a break between each repetition.
- Do each repetition faster and faster until it becomes a blur.
- Now look at each of the images in the fantasy. See if you can take these various objects and actually change the size and physical space they occupy. Change their shape. Manipulate and move them around in the fantasy.
- Once you have done this for a little while, take the entire scene and turn it upside down. If there is a room in the fantasy, imagine that the floor of the room is where the ceiling should be. Imagine that all the people in the fantasy are suspended from the ceiling or perhaps standing on their heads.
- If there are auditory elements to your fantasy, or if the fantasy is auditory in nature, try and manipulate the sounds that you hear. Speed up the voices, and then slow them down.
- Change their pitch and tenor. Change the voices into Donald Duck or Minnie Mouse voices. Make them very loud and then very soft. Play this audio feed backward if you can, as though it were a record being played in reverse.
- Once you have done this, see if there are other ways that you can imagine to manipulate and change the way your obsessive image operates.
- When you are satisfied that you have manipulated the fantasy enough, slowly bring yourself back to the present moment.
- Open your eyes, and take some deep breaths.
- Look around the room, and reacquaint yourself with the here and now.
- First, see if you can take the whole scenario that you have imagined and play it backward. Imagine that you can hit a rewind button just like you do on your DVD player and run the entire fantasy in reverse.
This exercise is designed to help you in several ways. First, it helps you realize that it is your brain which generates these obsessive thoughts. You can take charge of your brain if you want, although at times we all forget that fact. Secondly, it helps you break the rigid pattern your mind has been using to maintain your bad feelings. Once this happens the bad feelings themselves more easily evaporate.
Your mind is your territory. You are in charge of your mind when you take charge of it. The images that have been plaguing you aren’t real. To respond to them as if they are real isn’t necessary.
By manipulating the images or thoughts the way we did above, you will be breaking the pattern your unconscious mind is using to haunt you. In effect, you are putting yourself back in charge of your mind.
NOTE: If you find yourself engaging in specific behaviors in order to reduce your distress; for example, if you are compulsively washing clothes or the furniture, showering more frequently than you are comfortable with, or asking your partner to stay in certain rooms or on certain pieces of furniture, then you are probably engaging in some form of compulsive behavior. Again, keep in mind that I am not using the word “compulsive” here in its diagnostic sense.
If you find yourself compulsively doing things you don’t want to do, you can try waiting a few weeks, or even a month, because the behaviors might disappear on their own. If they don’t, you probably need to seek professional help. Even if you have diagnosable compulsions, if they came on suddenly due to the trauma of the affair, they are most likely treatable. But you will probably need the help of a therapist to accomplish this.