Advice for Separation

This advice is intended to help you prevent the worst. Which suggestions you adopt is up to you. Experience has shown: they help.

Basic Principle

All advice is grounded in psychological and therapeutic understanding. Depending on how long and how intense the relationship was – you have become unwell. There is no shame in being unwell; it is not your fault. But it would be a shame not to seek and accept help.

The Most Important Ground Rules

1. Recognise Your Condition

Keep in mind that you are in a psychological state of emergency. Your brain chemistry is no longer functioning “normally,” and you are reacting, acting, thinking, and feeling differently than under normal circumstances.

2. Support Your Body

Since your brain chemistry is in turmoil, give it support:

• Vitamin B (complex)
• Vitamin C
• Magnesium
• Zinc
• Calcium

3. You Are NOT Guilty

The feelings of guilt arise from two things:

1. The person with Borderline implanted them over the course of the relationship through their devaluation
2. You were abandoned – and that always generates feelings of guilt

4. Understand Their Perspective

The person with Borderline sees you as the perpetrator and themselves as the victim – caused by their distorted reality perception. Do not try to convince them otherwise. They have their truth, and for them it is real.

Avoid Contact

Important

Under no circumstances make contact with the person with Borderline, even if they told you in the past that “they were waiting for it.”

Why No Contact?

The person with Borderline feels like the victim If you make contact, you become the “evil pursuer” and they see you as a threat.

Unpredictable reactions You know the person with Borderline reacts in uncontrolled, impulsive ways. One wrong word and the situation escalates.

Legal consequences may follow Before you know it, you could be facing a restraining order, criminal charges, or a tax investigation.

Splitting is active Through their splitting mechanism, their feelings are constantly swinging back and forth. You do not know which side they are currently on.

A new partner may already be present This person is being manipulated just as you once were – and you do not know what the two of them might do.

Practical Tips

The Farewell Letter

Write a letter containing all your pain, your sadness, your anger, your helplessness, your disappointment. Seal it, but NEVER send it. Keep it or give it to a trusted confidant.

Accept the Grief

You loved the person with Borderline deeply. Accept that a part of you is currently dying – because through bonding and symbiosis, they became part of you.

Keep a Journal

Write down not only the events of the day but also your thoughts, hopes, feelings, and dreams. It will help you release tension.

Avoid Triggers

• Don’t walk where you walked with “them”
• Don’t look at photos from the past
• Remove everything from your flat that reminds you
• If possible, buy a new bed

Talk About It

If you have friends with whom it is possible and who understand – talk about it as often as you can.

No Compensation

Do not try to compensate (excessive exercise, other activities). Your subconscious is processing. Suppressed material would later emerge much more intensely and uncontrollably.

Professional Help

Don’t be afraid to seek professional help. If your car is broken, you don’t tinker with it yourself – you take it to a specialist.

• A therapist can help you
• Doctors practising holistic medicine (e.g. acupuncture) can also help
• Antidepressants can provide support (only with medical prescription)

Relaxation Methods

Even if it is difficult:

• Progressive muscle relaxation (Jacobson)
• Yoga
• Tai Chi
• Qi Gong

What You Should NOT Do

• No new relationship – Even though you yearn for love, warmth, and security. You must first go through the processing.

• No fortune tellers/card readers – You condition yourself and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

• Don’t justify yourself – Don’t try to justify yourself to others. Those who haven’t experienced it themselves can barely understand it.

The Ritual

Develop a daily ritual in which you let the relationship die:

1. Carry it out at the same time every day
2. For example: Light a candle
3. As it burns down, look into the flame
4. Tell yourself: “Just as this candle burns down, I let you die within me”
5. When extinguishing it: “Now another piece of you has died within me”

Important: Think about the relationship during this, but do not think it over.

The Plus-Minus List

When you are reasonably clear-headed again:

1. Make a Plus list (all advantages of the relationship, what you loved)
2. Make a Minus list (all disadvantages, what disturbed you)
3. Assign each point a priority from 1 to 6
4. Sum up the results of each column

You probably already know the result. Stick the list somewhere you will pass by regularly.

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