Reader’s Question

I can’t stop thinking about my Ex. My (now) Ex and I lived together for 15 years. The first 10 years were great, but then I had a severe bout of depression because my brother and dad both committed suicide (in the same year). When I got depressed my Ex became cold and cruel and he ignored me. He never showed any compassion or empathy for me at all. But he was all I had left and I (unfortunately) let him stay for 5 years. I know I should have told him to leave years before I did, but I was not emotionally stable at the time. He lied constantly, cheated on me, and in some instances even told me he was doing these things, just to be mean. It was as if he did things to keep me weak and depressed. His cruel behavior towards me made me even more depressed which just made things worse.

He left 4 years ago, but I can’t stop thinking about him and how he turned on me in my time of need. I think about it every day. I have fantasies about him dying and about how I might even kill or harm him in some way. I secretly plot revenge scenarios all of the time. Of course I have never acted on any of them that would cause death or injury. But I have sent his girlfriend a couple of anonymous emails that basically said he is selfish and a user. I hate him with as much passion, if not more, than I loved him. Things will start to get better occasionally and then I will run into him somewhere. This just gets me re-obsessed with him. (I have only run into him 4 times in 4 years.) I know that by not forgiving him, this means he still has control over me, and that it’s holding me back from living my life like I should, but I can’t help it. I can’t make it stop. What can I do to stop these obsessive thoughts and the constant hatred I feel for him? I want my life back, but I want him to pay for what he did to me.

Thanks for your help.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Obsessive thoughts, mental torment, daily preoccupation, and distressed mood point to one thing — depression. I suspect that you experienced a profound depression following the death of your father and brother within one year. The severity of that depression and the lack of emotional support you received over the next several years prevented a full recovery. His lack of support may have prolonged your depression by adding additional misery to your life. At the end of the relationship, he moved out but the depression stayed.

I suspect you’ve been struggling with moderate depression for many years at this point. Chronic, moderate depression has symptoms of sleep disturbance, fatigue, loss of pleasure, social withdrawal, moodiness, obsessive thoughts, and low motivation. When you report “I can’t make it stop,” that’s a common report in depression — the inability to make the brain stop thinking negative thoughts or being unable to slow down your brain thinking speed. A common report is “I can’t get my brain to slow down”.

The second issue in your situation is Emotional Memory. When we have an emotional experience — good or bad — the brain memorizes the details of the event and the mood we experienced at that time. When we think about the event or when the memory is triggered by something or someone (your ex in this case), the brain not only remembers the details but calls up the mood as well. As you describe, you become “reobsessed”. As long as you remember those difficult years during the day, your mood will remain exactly as it was during those years. This is a situation in which the phrase “living in the past” is totally accurate. Recommendations:

• Review your symptoms for depression. Take the depression tests on this website and if you discover that you’re depressed, consider the use of an antidepressant medication and counseling/therapy. Counseling will be helpful even if medications are not needed.
• Read other questions on OCD (just click on the link for “OCD” in the list of tags in the sidebar). You’ll discover how depression is closely linked to obsessive thoughts.
• Read the Emotional Memory article. It contains strategies you can use to manage those memories and the tormenting moods they recall.
• Remind yourself that you don’t have to forgive him…but you do need to keep him as a memory and not a daily routine.
• Remember that time doesn’t heal…rethinking does. When we have traumatic experiences, healing is accomplished by eliminating the emotional component of the memory, not by forgetting the event. People who successfully recover from an event can talk about it without a change of mood.
• Having a fantasy about something is not a problem. Try to control your behavior and not live out your fantasies of revenge however.

You can fix this situation without much difficulty.