Acknowledge the Problem, Accept the Problem, Shift Focus

When you are dealing with a breakup, a loss of a job, a death, or other massive life altering situation, it becomes difficult to not fixate on that issue. However some people tend to do a few things to get around this and some are healthy while others are not.

NOTE: There is no silver bullet to this either but this article should help a bit or at least give you another tool to work with.

Some things people do:

1. Drink excessively to drown the thoughts
2. Do drugs to drown the thoughts
3. Abuse Pharmecutical drugs such as xanex to drown the thoughts
4. Avoidance: Instantly deflecting the thought in favor of another.
5. Blame: Blame something else and not accept it as what it is
6. Denial: Say that it really isn't what it is and attempt to coast by unnoticed or unchanged

These work to an extent and people have been doing these things for a very long time. The way to get around pain like this or to forget is to not try to avoid it or blow it off. The only way to resolve a problem is by accknowedging that it is existant and needs to be dealt with.

I have been using a technique of allowing myself to fixate on the issue for around 10 seconds and then accepting it as shitty or what not and then asking myself if I can do anything about it. Once I answer with, "No, I can't change it." I then shift my focus to something else such as TV or finding something to do. Honestly, "finding something to do", is a thing in of itself. It is a task just like any other.

Write a list of the things you can do and then go about figuring out which ones you want to do and can do. Some things may cost too much, take too much time, just not fun enough, etc. and can be sorted to the bottom so that you may do the other fun stuff.

Making a list like that is best to do because in your mind it is difficult to retain those tasks as well as evaluate them. It is easier to write them down then sort them. This was a huge breakthrough for me to find out.