The First Pillar of Compassionate DivorceTM: Self Reflection
Are you considering a mediation-based resolution to your divorce or separation, in which neither you nor your spouse or partner step foot into a courtroom? Do you believe that having a psychologist or counselor involved in your divorce or separation might help you sort out issues between you or with your children that could get in the way of reaching resolution?
If so, Compassionate Divorce™ may be a good option for you.
The three pillars of Compassionate Divorce™ are:
1) Self-Reflection
2) Respectful Communication
3) Achieving Positive Outcomes
This post expands on the first pillar of Compassionate Divorce™, Self-reflection. The second and third pillars will be addressed in our two subsequent posts.
SELF-REFLECTION
"When I point the finger at you, three fingers are pointing back at me"
I googled this expression and learned that it's attributed to the Navajo people. This post will focus on this first pillar as the initial step of Compassionate Divorce™, because it's hard to achieve the second and third steps without first tackling the step of self-reflection.
All divorces have one thing in common: GRIEF. You will certainly experience other things, such as relief, anger, anxiety and depression, but the bottom line is that you are losing a relationship with your partner and your children in its past and current form. You are losing a family with a history that is now changing in a fundamental and permanent way. If you have children together, you are facing the inevitable loss of time with your children.
Going through a divorce can also be "triggering" for many people. In other words, you may experience feelings or events that are reminiscent of past stressful or traumatic events, in the marriage or from times prior to the marriage. This could compound the intensity of your feelings and thoughts, making it challenging to understand which of your experiences may have roots in the past. This is important, because it could help you clarify your reactions that are directly related to current events.
Self-reflection involves gaining awareness and tracking your grief, the thoughts and feelings that accompany it, and the actions you take that are fueled by these thoughts and feelings. Here are things you can do to facilitate self-reflection and make it easier for yourself to subsequently take the second and third steps of Compassionate Divorce™.
1) Take care of your body. Sleep and appetite are often the first functions to be impacted. Too little or too much of either are extremely common. Many readers may be familiar with the divorce diet, which is not a medically recommended strategy to lose weight. During this time when your mind may be spinning non-stop, give it a break, or at least some competition, by engaging in activities that focus on your body, such as exercise or meditation. Don't hesitate to ask your doctor for advice or help.
Don't overdo it with the substances you typically use to make you feel better. We all have "anchors", which are behaviors that can calm us down and make us feel more grounded during times that feel tumultuous and stressful due to uncertainty about what is going to happen next. Relying on anchors that offer some immediate relief may prevent you from finding other anchors that could offer more long-term relief, such as friendships, exercise, meditation, and therapy. Listening to familiar music can also be a helpful anchor.
2) Stay connected. The end a romantic relationship does not change our need for deep connection with others. In fact, the vulnerability that such a loss can create makes those connections all the more important. Friends and family members are crucial in providing the additional support that's needed during this time of vulnerability.
3) Exercise. You don't have to run a marathon or do anything heroic to benefit from a walk around the block or a drive to a local park. Fresh air is therapeutic, and moving your body can also provide some competition for the air waves in your mind that are consumed by thoughts about the divorce. Another benefit is that by taking the full focus off your repetitive thoughts about the separation and your spouse/partner while engaging in physical activity can sometimes help you come up with new and alternative ways of thinking about things. This can lead to considering new and alternative actions in moving forward with the separation.
4) Meditation/Stillness: Taking a few minutes once or twice per day to sit in silence can be very challenging, especially with children around, and even more so during the pandemic. The strategy of even taking 10-15 minutes to sit in stillness has several benefits, including: just setting aside time that is for you only; an opportunity to see how difficult it is to slow down the train of ongoing thoughts about troubling issues; and, giving your nervous system a break.
Calm and Balance are two popular apps that fit this bill, but there are many others. Those of you struggling with the impact of Covid-19 may find some benefit from Covid Coach, an app developed by the National Center for PTSD that includes many useful tools for managing stress and mood.
Meditation experts say that taking three full breaths causes a change in a person's metabolism. You may want to check out any number of apps that you can purchase on your phone that provide spoken guidance for meditations of various lengths; these can provide just enough structure to make the experience more accessible to you.
5) Get therapy. As much as friends and family can be helpful, having a psychologist or counselor in your corner can provide a different kind of support, in that this person can focus on you in an objective manner and help you take care of yourself during this challenging time. Compassionate Divorce™ maintains a resource list of individual providers in the community whom we can refer you to. Support groups with other folks dealing with divorce or separation can also be a more cost-efficient, yet very helpful way of receiving support. Dene Carroll's Women's Divorce Group: Rising Strong After Divorce, and pace.group are both excellent resources for support groups.
Whether you're currently contemplating divorce or separation, or you have already begun taking steps toward either, you are likely experiencing a wide range of emotions at a level of intensity that is unmatched by other life events. Your tendency may be to suppress these feelings, perhaps because you are afraid of the impact that expressing your feelings will have on your children.
Therapy can be extremely helpful, because it provides you an arena in which you can let these feelings out, so that they are less likely to come out when interacting with your children or partner. You may fear that expressing your feelings will cause the dam to break, and you won't be able to stop. Therapy can offer you the opportunity to practice letting your feelings out; if you can do this in a safe setting, you may find out that it's not as scary as you think.
