Your First 5 Steps To Emotionally Protect Yourself During Divorce

Whether you’re considering divorce, or have already begun the process, it’s common for difficult feelings to surface. Divorce is an emotional time in life. However, when unmanaged emotions — from unchecked fear and anxiety to out of control anger and guilt — are allowed to rule you, it can hinder your ability to make informed, clear-headed decisions. The good news? Your divorce will be less overwhelming when you develop and execute a plan to protect yourself emotionally.

Take action with these steps. 

Learn how to compartmentalize. Divorce is an overwhelming experience, so it’s crucial that you learn how to contain your emotions and “shelve” them when you need to focus on practical matters. For instance, don’t fall into the trap of using up your lawyer’s time to vent about how sad and angry you are. Make an appointment with a therapist for working through these emotions so you are better able to stay focused on legal matters with your attorney. Being selective about when and where to express your emotions appropriately will keep you from entangling those who really can’t help you, especially your children, who should not be burdened by your woes.

Understand how your marriage is changing. Your roiling emotions may be partly due to cognitive dissonance: the inability to grasp that the life that you had is not the life you are currently living. Yes, it’s painful that your soon-to-be-ex is acting like, well, a soon-to-be-ex, but that’s the reality of divorce. Your relationship is morphing from a romantic to a business partnership centered on dividing assets and co-parenting children. Once you begin to accept this uncomfortable truth, you can prepare yourself emotionally for more changes to come.

Share your emotions wisely. There’s a fine line between leaning on friends for emotional support and venting 24/7 to anyone who will listen. Talking too much about your feelings may not only not lift your spirits – it may actually make you feel more victimized. Also, friends and relatives may project their own fears and experiences onto you, compounding your distress. The best shoulder to cry on belongs to a therapist: a mental health professional who will give you the tools to process your feelings effectively and gain coping skills.

Stay off your spouse’s social media. Are you compulsively checking your spouse’s social media feeds for “clues” about their post-split life and/or dating status? You may think you “need” this information for your legal case but you don’t.  Scrolling will just make you obsess over your spouse – why aren’t they miserable without me? – and distract from tedious but necessary, pressing matters such as gathering financial statements and preparing legal documents.

Anticipate major life changes. Check in with yourself now: are you experiencing denial, anger, bargaining, or depression? If so, you’re normal as you are cycling through the stages of grief, on the way to the final stage, acceptance. Going through divorce means grieving the loss of your intact family, social station, and possibly your home and financial well-being. Getting clear on what you are actually grappling with will help you understand why you’re feeling the way you are.

A final note: obsessing about your problems, and what your ex is doing that drives you crazy, will make things seem even worse than they are. Your best way forward is to keep your focus on what you can do to protect yourself; following these steps will get you headed in the right direction.

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