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I have a good friend who is very insightful, and she has done it again. She has inspired this week’s post.

We hadn’t talked in a while and started discussing how we were each doing. She has Lupus –  a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs when your body’s immune system attacks your tissues and organs, and I have an ex-spouse. Now it wasn’t me that made this connection, she did. She said, “Renee, your ex is like a chronic disease you have no control over. Like a disease that flares up unexpectedly, so does your ex.”

He has recently “flared up,” as she succinctly said.

Another friend noted that ex flare-ups happen around stressful times of the year, such as birthdays and Christmas. Yeah, right again.

I especially liked the part where she said  I have no control over it, just like she has no control over when her Lupus hits.

Some people might object to this comparison because, after all, I chose to marry my ex, and it is only my perception that he is flaring up.  It’s simply a matter of opinion that something he has said or done is stressful to me. That is the difference here. It is mostly my reaction to my ex that causes me stress and pain, whereas, with my friend,  her lupus is a concrete disease that she has to deal with.

That said, she has noticed that if she modifies her diet and tries to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it helps decrease the severity of her Lupus flare-ups.  I, too, have implemented strategies that prevent severe reactions to ex flare-ups.

I have cut back on coffee (sigh) and exercise (well, not lately, but that’s my goal), and I have built my ex-flare-up response system.

My ex flare-ups come on suddenly out of nowhere. They are infrequent but severe. I don’t see them coming. They just hit.

Now, I don’t know what my friend does when a severe Lupus flare-up occurs, but I have learned what to do when an extreme ex-flare hits. Even though I don’t know when it is coming, I have lived through enough that I have had to develop a strategy.

I first dump my first knee-jerk emotional response into an email (making sure I remove his address first). I put in everything that is upsetting me at that very moment. I go for it. Then I hit SEND and send it to my dummy email account. I’m not sure how it works, but it calms me down.

Then, I give myself time. I don’t run off to my support network to scream about the latest outrage perpetrated by the ex (well, not for a few days anyway, as I guess this blog post did come out of talking, ahem, ranting to my network).

I take deep breaths, meditate, practice gratitude, and remind myself that the future never turns out the way I imagine, certainly not the worst-case scenario that I tend to gravitate towards in my thoughts.

Now, all these strategies don’t make the flare-up go away, but they do alleviate some of the symptoms, such as lack of sleep and extreme grumpiness.

These strategies also put me in the best mood to deal with my ex. Before managing myself, I would tend to fight or avoid my ex, but after time, I understand I need to collaborate with my ex.

Because fighting it just exacerbates the flare-up and avoiding it, well, that just puts me in a waiting and apprehensive state.

So, I emailed my ex and proposed we talk in person with some collaborative ground rules in place.

After a series of meetings and conversations, the flare-up has subsided. We have settled back into a good routine, and I will continue to work on strategies to decrease the frequency of ex flare-ups in the future.