Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I honestly believe that one of the biggest landmines that separated wives face during their separation is rumination filled with negative or catastrophic thinking. This is especially true of wives who very much want to reconcile, but who keep getting in their own way. Often, these wives are fully aware that they need rise above the noise and fear to be their best, most wise selves.   

Unfortunately, doing so is very difficult when you can’t get out of your own head, and when you can’t shake the fear that you’re about to lose everything. Many wives try to stop themselves from getting carried away with this type of catastrophic thinking, but their thoughts become like a merry-go-round of negativity. They keep churning round and round and therefore cloud your entire outlook. This process can negatively affect your behaviors – which in turn can also undermine your attempts to reconcile. Therefore, it’s important to find a way to stop this.

To that end, this article is going to discuss a clever hack to get you out of this cycle, and into more positive thinking that is much more conducive to reconciliation. 

Understand What This Repetitive Loop Costs You By REALLY Listening: You probably already know that the cycle you are on is bringing you down and is very unhealthy. But did you ever actually appreciate how relentless, constant, and destructive it really is? One day, when I was smack in the middle of this cycle, I was asked to keep track of all the negative thoughts and all the positive thoughts I had that day so I could figure out the percentages of each. The idea was that this would force me to see how lopsided and destructive my thinking really was. 

I gave up after a very short time because it became undeniably evident that negative thoughts were overwhelmingly dominating my mind. It wasn’t even close. I might occasionally have a stray positive thought about my sweet dog or great food, but frankly, this had become rare.

When we get caught in this cycle, our minds are so noisy that there isn’t any room for healthy, constructive thoughts that might nudge us toward what we should be doing. Instead, we’re only responding to fear, doubt, and shame. We can’t make our best decisions this way. Our negative internal self-talk will often make a bad situation worse, which only amplifies our stress level. But often, no matter what we try to do to stop, we can’t seem to do so. And then we think that there is something wrong with us – which only continues the loop.

How To Begin To Slow Down That Loop: I’m about to share a brilliant hack. But I can’t take any credit whatsoever. I recently read about Ethan Kross and his book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.

He explains the entire cycle brilliantly. When we re-examine the same worries over and over, we’re charting a familiar path in our brains. To break this cycle, we’ve got to do something extremely different to shake us out of the rut we’ve created. 

To do that, you’ll participate in “distanced self-talk,” which allows you to step a small step back so that you can be more objective. 

So how do you do this? You replace whatever personal pronoun you’re using in your self-talk. For most of us, this is “I” or “me.”

As in:

• “I can’t do anything right?”
• “Why am I so stupid?”
• “I’m about to lose my husband and my marriage.”
• “My husband doesn’t love me anymore.”

Why Does This Strategy Work?: Think about it. If you were advising your best friend instead of yourself, would your words be different? Of course they would. We have much more compassion for people other than ourselves. We’d tell our separated best friend that tomorrow is another day, that her husband is lucky to have her, and that she should never forget her own worth. But we’d never have these words for ourselves. So we must fool our brains into sort of believing that we’re talking to someone else until a new habit takes hold.

Examples of Distanced Self-Talk: So how would this look in real life?: It helps to address yourself by formal name, nickname, or term of endearment. Then, instead of using “I,” you’d say “you” or “her.”

So it would look something like – “Sweetheart, stop hating on yourself. You know that you’re doing the best that you can. Give yourself a break right now.”

Or “C’mon Susan, stop with the negativity. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring. You don’t know what will happen with your marriage. But you do know that if you continue to act with pessimism and destructiveness, you probably won’t get any closer to what you want. What would your Grandmother Anne do in this situation?”

This brings me to part two of this great strategy. Think about the person you respect the most in this world and ask what she would do. In the example above, I mentioned a grandmother, but any person (fictional, real, or otherwise) will work. The idea is just to create the necessary distance so that you can be more objective. Once this happens, you can actually brainstorm some resolutions or at least some hopeful thoughts, so you can finally – FINALLY – close down this loop.

This Works Even Better If You Can Do It In Nature: Kross suggests that nature allows us to recharge and regroup because it doesn’t take much mental bandwidth to appreciate. It doesn’t compete with our thoughts but instead can enhance them. 

So if you find yourself suffering in a cycle of negative thoughts and you can’t stop, take a walk, and talk to yourself like you are someone else. Then, ask how the person you respect most in the world would handle this issue. I suspect that you’ll come away with a new, and more positive, perspective. Keep doing this until you notice that your mind is much quieter.

And the best part is that as your mind quiets down, your behavior will reflect this calming effect and your situation should improve. That means that eventually, you’ll have a little less to worry about, and this process will become easier as a result. 

 I so wish I’d known about this hack during my own difficult separation.  It would have saved so much grief.  Although I eventually reconciled my marriage, learned to treat myself better, and healed, I wasted a lot of time first. That story is at https://isavedmymarriage.com

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