I recently ended a13 year long term relationship which was a

The way you feel now, doubting yourself, your decision and your feelings about this abusive person, are a distorted and common reaction to a very abusive and dysfunctional relationship, where you codependent;ly attached to this person, tolerating and enabling his destructive ways, while probably trying to make things work, and hoping things would be better, telling yourself he loved you justifying the pain you were undergoing.

Codependency, causes people to feel this way. Most times there are self-esteem problems, anxiety and intense fear of abandonment/rejection fueling codependency and leading people to tolerate and enable abusive relationships.

Many times abusive people alienate their victims to ensure they can control, manipulate and abuse them. Now you find yourself isolated and alone and obviously depressed since the wounding from long-term abuse does not just vanish with the end of an abusive relationship. It takes work and most times professional psychotherapeutic support for people to work on their rehabilitation and healing processes.

You have liberated yourself from him, but this attachment, destructive dependency and the wounding remain.

This is why you need to work on your healing, rehabilitation, and growth from this past experience, otherwise, you will self-sabotage again whether it happens to be with this person or other people like him.

Please, look for a professional psychotherapist with expertise in relationships, abuse and mood disorders, ideally a marriage and family therapist, with an integral/integrative psychotherapeutic approach, this is a professional who would not adjust you to their way of work, but adjust themselves to your needs, personality, and expectations. Psychotherapy will support your healing and enable you to grow and empower yourself from this painful situation.

Your social network and support system need to play an active role here. Having a couple of healthy, mature and caring persons in your life, could make the difference between you self-sabotage and healing yourself with the right support. here is where your close friend plays a role, but you also need to work on expanding this support system to empower yourself and your life. Does it make sense?

I am sorry to see this is a long-term nightmare, that you not only tolerated by enabling this person's hurting you for so long, alienating yourself from your family and reality. If you truly want to rehabilitate and rebuild a healthy, meaningful nd fulfilling life, then you need to commit to psychotherapy and to eradicate any form of dishonesty, avoidance, denial, justification and similar issues, since they fuel this addictive and destructive self-sabotaging pattern you have around this person.

Group therapy seems necessary, but if one is not available, please join a support group for codependency to complement individual psychotherapy to ensure your best progress in rehabilitation.

That's why you need psychotherapy to work on learning from how to respect and understand yourself, to how to support and protect yourself. Isolating, or staying passive will not help. You should have changed your phone number right away, and you need to reconnect with your family if what you expect is to make your healing and rehabilitation work, and not to waste any more fo your life and time around this p[erson or anybody like him.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions since I am here willing and ready to support you as much as possible, OK?

You can contact me using this direct link to my profile https://www.justanswer.com/mental-health/expert-rafael-therapist/, you could bookmark it for easy access, and just make sure you state “For Rafael only” in your request, for other experts to know you want me to reply, and I will respond in less than an hour most of the time.

Also, know that I provide confidential counseling/psychotherapeutic support via Premium Services, which is implemented via Skype or phone call, in case you feel comfortable with me and would like to discuss this in more detail or any other concern, and the best approach to work on it.

I wonder if you read my response, if it answered your question, and if there is anything else I could do to support you.

You are very welcome. Please reconnect with your brother and any healthy and caring people in your life who was pushed away; commit to therapy, and feel free to contact me for any further support.

Thank you for your trust, and bye for now,

Rafael.