Another piece of gold that my sister helped me see.

When you think of something, it creates a feeling. Action can then follow, or indeed thoughts plus associated actions further strengthen feelings.

Is it as simple as changing your thought if you don’t like the feeling? I’ve found this to be true. Not easy, but true. Especially if you do it repetitively. It could just be that you take your mind off something, or that you proactively choose different thoughts and actions.

With a lot of help, I’ve applied it to the most traumatic experience of my life – the breakdown of my 20 year marriage with the love of my life. My wife’s feels changed for me, but mine hadn’t changed for her. That left me with a lot of pain and triggers as we continued to live together whilst we sorted our new lives.

By reframing how I saw her (into a friend), thinking about what I want, plus aligning to my core values, my feelings changed. My sadness stopped, my need to be with her softened and my fear of being alone evaporated.

In this example, it’s more complex as there are stages of ‘getting over someone’ and as I write this I am in the early stages. There is also the possibility that I had begun this process months ago as I felt something wasn’t right in our marriage. However, there is no doubt that as I changed my thoughts and actions, my feelings followed.