The Emotional Roller Coaster - Smoothing Things Out During Divorce

November 30, 2007 by wendy.

Dear Readers: I am posting a guest article by a colleague on a question that is shared by most people going through divorce - how to handle the often roiling emotions that occur during the divorce process. Not only can such emotions be draining, they can often be counter-productive when dealing with the soon-to-be ex-spouse, handling children, performing tasks, and making important decisions. I hope you find this article useful. Feel free to provide feedback on this or any of the other postings.

Wendy W. Spencer, CFP®, CDFA™, and Family Law Mediator

The Emotional Roller Coaster – Smoothing Things Out During Divorce

Going through a divorce can be somewhat devastating and bring up a wide range of emotions from anger to self-pity and loneliness. We usually haven’t developed very healthy ways of dealing with these feelings. Anger can many times be directed in ways that either leads us to constant conflict with our ex-spouse or feelings of depression if it is turned inward. We may tend to have anger around money issues that can become the one area we hold onto to control while going through the separation and divorce. It becomes the big source of conflict that keeps us tightly connected to our ex-spouse.

Typically there are three stages that anger shows up in. The first is the experience itself that causes the anger such as the divorce. The second is our reaction to the experience and the third is the attitude of our heart because of that experience. What we want to avoid is it going into the third state of hardening of the heart. What we do in the reaction stage is critical to preventing the hard-hearted attitude. If we work with our interpretation of the event, we are better able to reframe our thoughts and create more positive feelings.

Learn to recognize anger’s roots, which many times are expressed as our more vulnerable feelings, such as sadness from broken dreams or promises, being betrayed, or betraying one’s self. Another is the fear of the future; can I make it alone, will I have enough money to support myself, or how can I make a living? These are all common underlying feelings that need to be acknowledged and faced.

The typical unhealthy ways of dealing with anger are rage and repression. Rage develops when you allow the feelings to fester, thus creating more intense anger. With repression, you turn the feeling of anger inward and internalize it. This only makes matters worse, and many times you become numb as to what you really are feeling which leads to depression.
The more healthy ways to deal with anger are as follows:

· Redirect your anger appropriately - at the divorce, the broken dreams, the wreckage; not your ex-spouse, your children, or yourself.
· Take your negative energy and invest it into something positive; join a health spa, go to night school, or start a hobby.
· Invest in people; get involved in a support group, do volunteer work in an area of interest, find supportive friends that have mutual interests.
· Do some journal writing where you are able to get out your feelings on paper.
· Redirect your thoughts to create more positive feelings daily.

Suzanne B. Simpson is a Licensed Psychotherapist and Wellness Coach. She has a private practice in Littleton specializing in helping people going through major life transitions. She helps her client find empowerment by identifying emotional patterns that keep them stuck and unable to move on with their life.
Call for a complimentary introductory coaching session. (720) 981-0713, or visit her at www.connectcoach.com.

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