Do you ever catch yourself overthinking about the good times of your relationship and skipping over the arguments, the stress, the frustrations, the uneasiness? Do you over-analyze your relationship and how it could have been or should have been?
I call this the unicorns and rainbows thinking. It’s cherry picking memories. Here’s why, when we forget to look at the entire picture we are unable to have a full view making the good memories really good. Or possibly remembering this one time something great happened early in the relationship and believing that could have been every day of your relationship isn’t fair to you.
I had a client keep overthinking one weekend get away early in his relationship. He kept replaying this memory over and over thinking this could be what his life looked like. The thing with doing this is it hurts you much more than needed. You don’t know that those 3 days for a long weekend get away is how your daily life should be. It’s a vacation where everything is new, you are focusing on each other, doing things you love. It’s not your day to day life. So picking this memory to believe this is how it will always be, isn’t fair to you or her. It gives you unrealistic expectations.
To get away from this kind of overthinking your relationship, you need to step back.
Ask yourself if that is really what happened.
Is it really what happened? Take out the story and pick apart your thoughts and question them.
When you are asking yourself what really what happened, be truthful with yourself. It’s the only way to gain the much needed perspective.
Things to ask yourself:
- Is it true?
- Is that really what happened?
- What else happened?
- Picture yourself 50,000 feet above your memory. What else are you seeing? What other things have happened?
Step back, question your thoughts and try to see the whole situation. It will help you with your pain of your breakup and learning to not over-analyze aspects of your relationship that aren’t the whole picture.