Over many years I've had a change in my thinking processes from high emotional reaction to logic explainations. This one I share with you because it has been one of the building blocks to how I cope.
Lets take the anniversary to a marriage break up being a week before xmas. That week years ago was terrible, drowning in grief your xmas was wrecked. If you are anniversary sensitive you could easily not only remember the date but also inadvertently kick start the grieving process all over again..and ruin another xmas, and another..."this day 10 years ago he left me"
An anniversary in realistic terms is a point in time when the earth is at the same point rotating around our sun, nothing more.
A friend of mine has OCD and is adament he takes his medication bang on the minute after 9am. In fact he stands ready, watching the clock until 9am on the dot!. Its odd to me because if such paranoia on time was so important he was actually a full hour out of whack during the daylight saving months. See the problem with obsession with time?
Some people harbour anniversaries so much it effects their mental health. A friend of mine has a diary of her daily life. Nightly she reads what happened the year before on that day. She was so tired one night she missed reading her diary. The next night she decided to catch up and realised she had missed the anniversary of her divorce. Her divorce had been 5 years earlier. She plunged into sadness for a day. A day wasted? The miss had triggered her depression. I asked her why the day was so important "its the day I got divorced" I asked her to retrieve the divorce papers...the actual date was a month before the anniversary, she locked her mind on the day she received notification in the mail. Once informed of that she realised how irrelevant her rituals of day recognition actually was, that such over emphasis on anniversaries is counter productive and can work against your recovery. A trigger.
Anniversaries are great, if they are ones to celebrate not mourn. Replace the grieving dates with a ritual of a memory like flowers on a gravesite or a few minutes reflecting on a bad day in the past but keep it in perspective and enjoy the rest of the day.
After all, its only where the earth is in its orbit...nothing more...and life is short.
But guys, dont forget your wedding anniversary what ever you do.
Tony WK
