Divorce?! Is this really happening?
When you get married you swear it won’t happen to you. And then life happens and you end up going through something you never prepared for.
Ending your relationship can affect every part of your life
You feel hurt, angry, sad, guilty, and scared about the future. You’re not sure exactly how you got here, but you know it hurts. You want to stop life and get off the ride, or somehow go back in time to when things were happy and life was great. But you can’t.
It can seem like nobody understands what you’re going through. Friends try their best to support you, but it isn’t enough. Or you don’t have anyone any more – all of your friends are picking sides and they’re not choosing you.
You have no idea how to deal with this pain. And rebuilding your life seems out of reach.
Divorce dumps your entire life upside down. Even in those rare cases where you are still friendly with your ex you have to somehow separate your lives and figure out what you are actually about on your own.
It’s hard to imagine anything good coming from this pain. You look around and think you’ve missed your chance. You fear that you will never find another partner to share your life with.
The pain gives us a chance to get better…really!
According to research, divorce is the second most stressful event an individual can go through (and marital separation is the third). Depending on how you handle this, it can cripple you and keep you stuck, or be an agent of change for the better.
You see – change almost always comes from painful times in our life. People rarely change and grow in easy times. So it makes sense that intense pain can promote intense personal growth and change. You can use the pain for your benefit.
Can you imagine being able to say you’re happily divorced? This is what happens if you use the pain to become the best version of you possible. A person who looks back on this time and says, “That was really hard, but I’m so much better because of it.”
I’m not going to tell you that “everything happens for a reason” and this isn’t about convincing you that divorce doesn’t suck. I don’t believe either of those things, and I think it’s insulting to say either of these things to someone going through a painful time like this.
I do believe that you can grow into an amazing person who pursues meaning and passion in their life. A person who learned lessons from pain and used them to grow stronger.
It takes work but it is so worth it.
How do you get past a divorce?
The first part of the process is learning to deal with the pain you have. It’s normal and natural to feel sad, hurt, scared, stressed, worried, angry and numb when going through a divorce. The goal is to move through that pain so that it doesn’t hold you back from your life. And to make sure you aren’t making the pain worse than it needs to be.
Next, you need to take inventory of your life as it is and as you want it to be. I’m not talking about external things like what you own and where you live. I’m talking about who you want to be at your core – the qualities you want to live out every day.
Once you know what you want life to be about and you don’t have the emotional pain holding you back you can get to work creating the life you want. This is also challenging and you will need some skills to handle hardship along the way.
Learning and applying those skills while you relentlessly go after the life you want can turn you into an amazing person who can honestly say they are “happily divorced.”
Some people need help on this journey and that is where I come in. As a therapist I spend my days helping people deal with emotional pain, identify what matters to them and how to move forward. I have a set of skills and a perspective that can make the path easier. Sometimes even having someone to support you on your journey makes the path easier to walk.
Why would you trust me to help you through this?
Unlike some therapists, I can also say that I get it. I went through a painful divorce myself many years ago. And I now call myself happily divorced because I followed this path. I learned valuable lessons about myself and how to live life that I now use every day. Every person is different, so I won’t tell you “I know what you’re feeling” – but you will know that I have been through my own version of this journey as I help you with yours.
If you’d like some help getting past this painful part of your life, contact me to set up a free consultation.