Mindful Meditation

I'm curious if other members have found great benefit from mindfulness meditation, as I have? If so, I would greatly love to hear their stories and some of the meditations they may use as part of their meditation practice. I will share my, very positive, experience and the techniques I have used. For those unfamiliar, here are a couple good overviews of mindfulness meditation:

I started mindfulness meditation in October 2013. I had gone through yet another distancer-pursuer cycle (I'm the pursuer) with my PoA (Person of Addiction) and she had gone full no contact with me. I was filled with anxiety, I couldn't sleep. Nearly every waking moment was spent thinking of her, obsessing, strategizing. I couldn't focus on ANYTHING but her. My life, outside thoughts of her, largely ground to a halt.

Friends began to avoid me because she was all I would talk about. I spent about 2 weeks like that before a friend recommended mindfulness meditation to me. I had long viewed meditation as kind of silly, new age fluff but I was desperate, so I tried it. My friend gave me some tips to get started and recommended a couple websites and books to learn some techniques that allowed me to ease into it and see if it was for me.

The first week was kind of frustrating, because I had unrealistic expectations and an unclear vision of what the benefits would be or the way in which they would manifest themselves in my life. Everyone has a different experience, but mine were not atypical at all. The first benefit I saw was that my sleep improved.

This happened about a week into my practice. Previously, I had much difficulty calming my mind to go to sleep. When I did fall asleep, I would wake 2 - 4 hours later with my mind racing to thoughts of her and how to "fix" things. Now, I was falling asleep much faster and sleeping through the night more often than not. This continued to improve through the next two weeks until I was falling asleep easily most nights and almost always sleeping at least 6 - 8  hours, which is my norm.

By the end of my third week, I found that my ability to focus on things other than my PoA had improved greatly, but it was very gradual... so gradual that I hadn't really noticed it happening. I became far less inclined to brood for hours on end thinking of her and ways to get her back. I became able to, at least for periods of time, focus on other things. I was absolutely still obsessing over her, but that obsession was gradually losing its power to rule my every waking moment.

By the end of my 6th week, I had begun to notice that I would regularly get these "flashes of clarity" where I would see troublesome situations, including my relationship with her, in some new and often surprising perspective. These didn't happen during meditation, they would just kind of pop into my head here and there as I considered a problem or situation, or I would awake with one after a night of restful sleep.

I started building time into my decision making, where possible, to allow for these moments of clarity to emerge. Not always possible to do, but I found great benefit from doing this in those situations where I could do it. I found that my first, gut reaction, decision typically changed greatly if I allowed this time. As I have seen mentioned on this forum more than a few times, I was learning to think differently... "building new grooves in the brain" as I saw someone call it :-) I didn't realize this is what was happening, but it very clearly was happening.

At this point, I had seen more than enough benefit that I was thoroughly convinced of the effectiveness and dedicated myself to making mindfulness meditation a part of my daily routine. Since about the 3rd week, I have done it at least once a day, at least 6 days a week. I typically do twice a day and only rarely miss a day.

Flash ahead to early February 2014... my PoA broke NC and contacted me. I was overjoyed to hear from her. We talked and resumed our relationship. As is typical, the first week was great. By the 2nd, she had begun distancing. The cycle was repeating.

I saw things differently this time. I clearly saw the pattern, where before all I could see was my own pain at the distancing. I started researching the pattern. It didn't take long at all to find hundreds of articles on love addict/love avoidant and the distancer-pursuer cycle.

This was enormously eye opening. I changed my behavior. I stopped pursuing. She responded by distancing even further (I suspect that distancers somehow want the pursuer to chase). Finally, she broke out her favorite tool, the silent treatment. Previously, I would have pleaded with her to talk to me, asked again and again what was wrong. This time I simply sent a polite note telling her to take whatever time she needed and that I would talk to her when she felt ready. I never said another word until she came back a week later.

I spent that time, and the following few weeks continuing to research and read. I increased my time spent in daily meditation to help overcome the anxiety I still felt over her distancing techniques. It seemed that each day I awoke with some new perspective on the situation. I was slowly becoming able to see the whole forest of dysfunction instead of focusing on just the one or two trees of pain, loneliness, and abandonment. I definitely credit mindfulness meditation for giving me this new found insight.

About a week ago, I made the decision to end our relationship. I wanted to tell her in person so I awaited the opportunity to do that. We talked very little while I waited and when we did, it was just small talk, casual topics. On Monday (two days ago) we were supposed to meet, but, as had become typical, something came up and she blew me off by text. I sent her a text telling her we were over and a very brief followup email that provided links to articles about love addicts/love avoidants and the distancer-pursuer cycle. I told her in that email that I was a love addict and thought she was love avoidant and that we were unhealthy for each other. I ended with a statement that I had to focus all my time and energy on healing myself.

I have been two days full NC at this point. The only communications I have had with her in 8 days are the text and email mentioned above telling her we were over. I still think of her often, but the duration of those thoughts tends to be fairly short. Before meditation, I would have sat and thought for hours on end in full blown obsessive brooding mode. Now, the thoughts come and I let them come. I imagine myself sitting in front of a flowing stream and those thoughts of her as leaves floating by on top of the flowing water. They pass by, I acknowledge that they are there without judgement, and then they move along. If I find myself getting pulled into the cycle of brooding or obsessive thinking again, I take a 2 or 3 minute break and do a calming meditation to center myself.

Thus far, this is working very, very well for me. I credit the meditation with not only allowing me to finally see the cycle clearly and break it, but also to find peace with my decision to end things and most of all, peace with my own thoughts.