A Self-Care Guide for a Healthy Divorce
At Compassionate Divorce, our goal is to help you facilitate a healthy divorce by ensuring the process is as amicable as possible.
And each of you can help us in that process by focusing on taking good care of your physical and mental health.
But whether you decide to work with us or not, we want to offer some tools that you’ll hopefully find helpful for surviving the stress and turmoil of divorce.
In any case, everyone comes to us with a different experience.
And while it takes two people to decide to get married, it only takes one to decide to divorce.
Sometimes members of a couple will decide to divorce at or about the same time, but more often than not, divorce is initiated by the person who can’t imagine living the rest of their life with the other.
When that person delivers the message to their partner, it is not unusual for the receiver of the message to have not spent much or any time considering what life would be like without their partner.
This creates an acceptance gap, in which one member of a couple has been contemplating divorce for a long time and has had a chance to envision a future where they’re not married to their significant other.
In these situations, the person receiving the news often has to play catch-up.
It’s safe to say that, regardless of whether you initiated the divorce or were the recipient of the news, if you’re going through a divorce, you’re likely to experience increases in depression and anxiety.
And while this is inevitable for many couples during the divorce process, when it comes to self-care, there’s actually a lot you can do to ensure a healthy divorce.
So, if you’re having a tough time dealing with divorce, and you want to know what you can do to care for yourself during this incredibly stressful time, keep reading to learn more.
Self-Care Strategies to Ensure a Healthy Divorce
In this self-care guide for a healthy divorce, we offer several core self-care strategies that will support you before, during, and after your divorce.
In doing so, we will discuss how addressing the issues that create depression and anxiety is a core component of a healthy divorce.
With that in mind, here are some things you can do to address these issues:
Take Care of Your Body
Self-care is especially important during a time when it’s easy to be distracted by the issues and conflicts that arise in divorce.
Anxiety and depression are the most common responses to a divorce, and typically, the most immediate bodily functions to be impacted are sleep and diet.
In these circumstances, people either don’t eat or sleep enough, or they eat or sleep too much.
What’s more, increased stress can make you more vulnerable to getting sick, which offers all the more reason to take good care of yourself.
We recommend becoming or staying physically active, eating a healthy diet, and visiting your doctor to evaluate issues like high or low blood pressure, diabetes, and sleeping irregularities.
You might also want to consider visiting a nutritionist, as they can help you create and maintain a healthy diet.
You should also try to avoid being critical of how hard or how long you exercise, as this will take away from the benefits of the exercise.
At any rate, you want to do something that you like and do it repeatedly.
Whether it’s a walk around the block, walk-and-talk therapy with a friend, or going to the gym or a community yoga class, exercise gives you a way to stimulate your vagus nerve, which we’ll talk about next.
Regulate Your Nervous System
It’s difficult to make decisions and have productive conversations when you’re in a state of emotional agitation.
That being said, it’s important to have strategies to support yourself in maintaining mental and emotional equilibrium during the challenges of navigating your divorce.
Engaging in activities that stimulate your vagus nerve helps to strengthen this all-important organ of our parasympathetic nervous system, which, in contrast to the “fight or flight” sympathetic nervous system, helps us to calm down.
In any case, when we spend time engaging in activities we associate with calmness, like deep breathing and meditation, we can affect changes in the brain, in part, by increasing vagus nerve activity. Here are some activities that can help regulate your nervous system and stimulate your vagus nerve:
Meditation
Developing a meditation practice is an excellent way to stimulate and support your vagus nerve.
Some people do best when they can carve out a block of time at a certain time of day to meditate, which can be as simple as sitting in a chair, uninterrupted, for even a few minutes, to breathe deeply, not look at your phone, and just be quiet.
If you can’t find a regular time to meditate, consider trying to find a few minutes during your day to unplug and just sit.
You can set a timer to an amount of time that feels right to you, but even a few minutes is great.
The next time you’re in a waiting room, for instance, you can take advantage of the time to sit, close your eyes if you’d like, and take a few deep conscious breaths. It can be that simple.
There are also many apps, like Insight Timer and Balance, which provide guided meditations and can be good anchors for your meditation practice.
Deep Breathing
Deep breathing for even a few minutes can also help calm your nervous system.
An example of this is breathing in through your nose for a count of five, holding the breath for a count of five, breathing out through your mouth for a count of five, and holding the empty breath for a count of five.
You can also do the in-breaths and out-breaths without holding, if that’s easier, and if it helps to use a timer, you can set it for five or ten minutes.
Play
Believe it or not, play is another way to stimulate vagus nerve activity.
This can involve exercise, whether it be playing soccer or going for a walk, or it could entail playing a video game, doing a crossword puzzle, working on your car, or anything else that’s enjoyable to you.
Playing in a social environment also has the added benefit of engaging your mind and body by interacting socially, which we’ll address next.
Experiencing Awe & Wonder
Engaging in activities that create a sense of awe and wonder and provide a sense of purpose and meaning also helps to stimulate and strengthen the vagus nerve.
Taking walks in nature, listening to music, or going to a church service are all examples of this type of activity.
In the words of Vernon Williams, MD, a sports neurologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, “…the experience of awe is one way to get the vagus nerve humming. When we engage with something greater than ourselves and feel a sense of connection to others and the outside world, it activates the vagus nerve—which can help lower blood pressure, inhibit the stress response and reduce inflammation. It can also increase heart rate variability (a biomarker of improved health), reduce pain and improve sleep and mood.”
Develop a Support Team
If you’re not a self-starter when it comes to staying active, you should find a support structure that will increase the likelihood that you’ll move your body.
This could include finding a walking partner, hiring a trainer at the gym, or going to a yoga class.
Aside from how it may help you stay active, if you’re going through a divorce, it is incredibly important to have access to people who can be there for you.
However, some people love to give advice, or tell you how their divorce played out, but every divorce is different.
What worked for your friend or sibling might not work or be applicable to you, and you need a non-judgmental place where you can safely let out your intense feelings.
Think about who in your life will listen to you with understanding and compassion, and without passing judgment.
If you think it might help, there’s a great New York Times article about how to show up for a friend going through a divorce, and you might want to show it to them.
Get Some Therapy
We think everyone going through divorce could potentially benefit from therapy.
Because when you’re getting divorced, you’re dealing with so many changes in your life that it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed.
Still, people divorce all the time and get through it.
But here at Compassionate Divorce, we find it’s usually helpful when our clients are in therapy.
It can help to facilitate our work with you when you have another place to express feelings and thoughts that may not be helpful to express during the mediation process.
And when a therapist focuses on you, they get to know you and can help you identify healthy and unhealthy coping patterns.
If you need help finding a therapist, Jeff can use his more than four decades of experience as a psychologist in Sonoma County to offer assistance in finding a private therapist or a low-fee clinic that would be a good match for you.
When working with us, Jeff can even have a confidential conversation with your therapist that can be helpful in moving things along.
Attending a divorce support group, such as DivorceCare, can also be helpful, as being around others who are going through a divorce can really help you gain perspective.
Programs such as these have a set curriculum, so they teach coping and other skills while providing the supportive environment of other people also going through divorce.
Have a Divorce Story
Another good coping strategy is to have a story about your divorce that you can share with the outside world.
This is important, because how you present yourself to others can be a reflection of the story you tell yourself about your divorce.
If you see yourself as a victim, that is the story you’re likely to present.
If you see yourself as having the strength to get through a difficult situation, you are likely to convey this story to those around you.
But despite your pain, you will want to present a positive personality to your children, as you don’t want to burden them by causing them to worry about you or feel your pain. They are already going through enough.
If you have a consistent “public service announcement” that the two of you agree on and explain to your children, it can help reduce confusion for the children and make it easier for them and you to maintain relationships with their friends and their friends’ families.
Manage Substance Use
When you’re going through a divorce, you should be aware of and do whatever you can to manage your drug and alcohol use.
It’s important to be conscious of how you use substances to calm your nervous system because if you’ve used alcohol and/or drugs to help you cope with stress, it can be a double-edged sword.
Some people can manage their substance intake, but for others, stress can often increase your usage patterns in a way that actually increases stress.
With that in mind, joining a twelve-step program can offer a support system to help you manage your intake, while also providing the crucial benefit of offering the support of a group of people who are dealing with similar issues.
It’s also good to remember that drinking or using drugs can make you more vulnerable to saying or doing things that might feel good in the moment but can be harmful when interacting with your divorcing partner.
Having said that, we strongly recommend not interacting with your former spouse while you’re under the influence, as it generally doesn’t end well and can interfere with any trust you’re trying to build with your divorcing partner.
Final Words
In summary, if you develop a self-help plan that includes activities which amplify the health and effectiveness of your body and your nervous system, you will have a stronger base from which to operate during this stressful time.
What’s more, you’ll also be doing what you can to ensure a healthy divorce.
There are few limits to the activities that can provide you with this opportunity, and it’s most important that you choose activities that are fun and fulfilling, and that you can see yourself doing long into the future.
You also want to develop a support system, as isolation can be comforting to you, but being alone is often one of the hardest challenges for newly separated individuals.
At the same time, sharing your experiences and feelings with others, whether in therapy, a support or twelve-step group, or with friends and family who can listen to you without telling you what to do, will help you as you go through your divorce.
Finally, if the story you carry with you is focused on you being the victim and blaming the other person for your misery, you may want to consider altering that story or creating a new one, as how you describe the divorce to yourself will be reflected in how you tell your story to others.
At Compassionate Divorce, we recognize the challenges of staying healthy while engaging in arguably one of the most daunting tasks you will face in your life.
We’ll support you in developing a strategy that helps you manage your physical and mental health over the long term, while avoiding those strategies that may offer some immediate relief from your pain but are not sustainable.
Looking for a healthier and more productive divorce process?
If you’d like to learn more about the Compassionate Divorce protocol, you can read our article, Breaking Up Amicably: the Benefits of Compassionate Divorce or contact us for more information.
