Divorce Hurts Because You’re Human: Self Help Tips

Ending a job can be a very emotional act. Sometimes you can walk out of the door with a box full of belongings and a head full of memories.  And a good relationship with your former employer.

Sometimes you run screaming out of the building because you can’t take any more.  You’re past caring about the fact that you’re burning any bridges you still had with your obnoxious soon-to-be ex.

Similar comments can be made of divorce only on a much larger scale, even without the issue of children. Nobody can pretend that divorce is always going to be about positive “conscious uncoupling”.  However, there are some ways you can take care of yourself through the process.

Here, K J Smith Solicitors share their tips on how you can help yourself when going through a divorce.

Make A Self-Care Tracker

When you are stressed and preoccupied, it’s easy to forget basic self-care necessities. Eating healthily, drinking plenty of water, taking exercise and getting enough sleep, are all important. Making a tracker will give a visible record of how you are doing in this regard.  Plus it will show you if improvement is needed.

If you take medication, then you may wish to invest in a pill box.  This allows you to set up your medication for each day so you can immediately see whether or not you have taken it.

Hold Off Making Any Drastic Changes To Yourself And/Or Your Lifestyle

Some changes are impossible to reverse.  Some can be reversed but only by spending a lot of money (and in some cases enduring a lot of pain). Decisions about them should only be taken when you’re cool, calm and collected, not when you’re in the sort of emotional state common to divorce situations.

Express Your Feelings But Do It Offline

Sometimes we all need to vent our frustrations and sometimes social media can be a reasonable place to do this. Divorce situations, however, are generally ones in which any venting is best done offline.

Do you really want a future employer stumbling onto photos of you out on the rampage pretending to be a teenager again?

And mutual friends – would you want them to feel that they have to pick a side because it’s impossible to be friends with both of you?

Do you really want a social media platform cheerfully bringing up “This time X years ago, you were doing this, do you remember and want to share?” Posts, when old wounds were finally starting to close and heal?

Set Yourself A New Goal

The easiest way to break a bad habit is to replace it with a good one, or at least a non-harmful one. Similar comments apply to moving on from a relationship.

You can sit and wallow in misery.  Or you can set yourself a new target and give yourself a positive goal for which to aim. This can be a great way to fill in any voids left in your life by people with whom you’ve lost contact because of your divorce and/or by activities in which you no longer engage, perhaps for the same reason or perhaps for financial reasons.

Just remember not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, in other words, hopefully there will be good parts to your life you want to preserve. Don’t rush to move on from them just to “make a fresh start”.

Author Bio

K J Smith Solicitors are specialists in family law.  They are experienced in all matters relating to divorce, civil partnerships, cohabitation disputes and collaborative law.

Photo by Jasmine Wallace Carter from Pexels.