How much time has passed since the event in question? Obviously some life events are extremely traumatic and they might dominate our thoughts and feelings for months and years. However, most of our ruminations do not fall in this category and we should be aware that people expect us to recover within a certain time frame. For example, a general rule of thumb for breakups is that it takes one to two months for every year of a relationship to recover. If we were in a relationship for three years, we should begin to recover from the initial surge of intense ruminations about how and why the
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