Five Ways to Recover From Divorce and Create a Healthy New Beginning

According to the Wall Street Journal, it takes two years to recover emotionally from divorce. It’s not surprising; not only is it inherently emotionally draining, but a divorce involves a lot of lifestyle changes that create additional stress. One of the most important steps in recovering from a divorce is to be patient with yourself and to accept the fact that it’s going to take a while to fully recover. Today we’re going to highlight five steps to speed the recovery process.

1. Educate yourself. For women especially, divorce can be a financial drain. If you’re really floundering, taking a class on finance can give you the tools to get back on track. Need more income? Taking classes to prepare for a new career is not only useful, it’s fun.
2. Reconnect with your kids. If you and the kids embark on new projects, you can create some positive energy and some positive memories. A new project can be something as simple as making popcorn and watching a movie together. Kids need reassurance that they still have a caring family even after a divorce, and you may need that reassurance too.
3. Pay attention to the stories you’re telling yourself. If you’re obsessed with how rotten your spouse was—even if he or she was rotten—you’re wasting a lot of emotional energy on something that’s not going to help you rebuild your life. If you’re coming up with devious plans to humiliate your ex, that’s not going to do much to help you either. And if you’re telling yourself your life is now hopeless, that makes it hard to be positive. There are probably some very positive aspects of your new situation, and it’s these positive aspects you should try to dwell on.
4. Find support. This is a good time to seek the assistance of a counselor. Divorce brings up feelings that can be difficult to deal with, and you want to make sure that you’re not letting negative feelings have a negative effect on your life. It would be a shame to sabotage future romantic relationships, for instance, because of unresolved feelings triggered by your divorce.
5. Don’t rush the process. Divorce is very difficult to recover from, and you should be patient with yourself as you go through the grieving process. Divorce is also a great opportunity, a chance to reinvent your life. Trying to see the new opportunities and possibilities that divorce creates and taking advantage of them will help to transform your life in positive ways. You may someday look back on your divorce as the beginning of an exciting new life.

If you’d like to learn more about the process of creating a healthy New Beginning for yourself and your family, New Beginnings Family Law love to talk. Please contact us today!