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mollifyher -> RE: Need immediate HELP!! Psychologist counslers please read (1/6/2014 8:10:32 PM)
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So essentially what you've done has been to create an addiction, and that's likely the best way to think about it. A person can become addicted to anything, and addictions are not necessarily negative as discussed in William Glassar's book "Positive Addiction." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Glasser)
So consider your situation one of withdrawal rather than "need" in the sense that deprivation results in death. The real question is what structures did you have to support yourself before this addiction, and whether those are strong enough to return to or if they have been damaged or destroyed in this situation. Either way, a trauma can be defined as a situation that overwhelms a person's ability to cope, and that sounds like the situation here.
I'll add couple of knee jerk coping strategies below, but I would suggest finding an actual counselor to speak with you in person about this.
1. Reinforcement scheduling - It's likely the situation was created by pairing reinforcement and positive stimuli with your experiences inside the relationship. You can potentially create your own kind of counter-reinforcement schedules if you can find something to reward yourself with, or something you believe is constructive or creative.
2. Find help from other social connectedness / friends / family who you can be around -- or possibly develop more. -- One way in which we develop a sense of self is in the co-created person we become when relating to others. (You can hear my gestalt leanings coming out at the moment.) If you have anyone else who you can be with who will provide you with expectations of your reactions or behavior then these will help you solidify your sense of self. I say "expectations" here but I am NOT talking about this in the D/s sense, which is probably how you got in the situation in the first place. :P I'm referring more to a parent, brother, sister, cousin, old friend from college who knows you or knows who you were and will expect you to think about and react to the world in certain ways. I'm not suggesting adopting their view of you, but even a criticizing parent may give you some picture of yourself to struggle against, and provide an anchor of greater self-exploration or self-creation at this point. (Or, more likely, self re-creation).
3. There's also the option of dissociative strategies. These could be positive or negative, so I list them last. One negative example would be turning to substances as an escape. One positive example would be keeping yourself extremely busy so yo don't have time to think about it ... and that's actually even more helpful when paired with #1 or with some goal or sets of goals you can complete which will make you feel good about yourself / accomplished.
We can put all 3 of these together if you wanted to go volunteer to do some charity work for something you like. It could be rewarding to play with dogs at the shelter, or give you a sense of yourself in the eyes of others if you're reading to old folks ... and if you had enough of those kinds of things you could be distracted enough ...
Obviously, though, distraction is only a temporary coping strategy ... again, may I suggest an actual in-person therapist.
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