Going through a divorce is up there in the top five hardest, most emotionally demanding things to do in life. Not only are you grieving for the past that you have lost but equally for the future that you will have planned in your mind and even discussed with your now estranged partner. Often I have people say to me “I didn’t enter into marriage lightly, it was for life,” and my reply is always the same: “I don’t know anyone who entered into a marriage not thinking it was for life”. For good or bad, a divorce will mean that we are probably losing our comfort zone and our “other half”. Even if that other half is not comfortable or healthy anymore, it is still what we are accustomed to and comfortable with.
Suddenly finding ourselves alone, with half our identity, that we perhaps spent years merging into, gone, can be a horror-stricken place. We can’t go back to being the person we were before we married, especially if we got married years previously, changed, maybe even had children, but neither do we know how to go forwards. Not knowing our new identity and individuality can be terrifying. That combined with some outdated societal views that one becomes sad, bitter, or twisted after a divorce means that all we can often see is a black tunnel with no end.
Navigating your life after divorce can look like an insurmountable climb to the top of the mountain. But it doesn’t have to be, especially when working with a Divorce Life coach. Divorce life coaching can help you look at life as it is now and create a renewed perspective of yourself as well as gaining a more positive outlook on your life moving forwards.
Time Will Always Heal
There are many-layered, complex reasons why couples get divorced – from unmet expectations, poor communication, different values after children, couples growing into different people with different directions, to control, abuse, unreasonable behaviors, and infidelity. All these actions can unbalance you emotionally and cause you not to see the light or the way out. Divorce Coaches help you to face your grief, rebalance yourself emotionally, gain clarity, and eventually a healthy perspective to move forwards. Pain, turmoil, frustrations, and sadness don’t necessarily always heal over time: often people just suppress them and this results in the emotions manifesting in other ways such as in diseases and health issues. Divorce Coaches – especially those with a strong background in CBT or Compassion-Based Therapy – can help provide the support you need to process your emotions, let them go and move on to thrive in your new life and your new role.
Rediscovering Yourself
Those who do not work with a Divorce Coach during the process itself, once those final papers arrive, often find themselves at a loss with what to do with themselves, not because they have nothing to keep themselves busy with but usually because they have spent the last 18 months to two years concentrating solely on the process of divorce and neglecting the rest of their life. Divorce Life Coaches are by far the best resource not only to declutter the negative emotions of the situation but to guide you into rediscovering yourself and developing a better version of you and your life moving forwards. They assist you in learning what your true values are, in prioritising what is important to you and what will make you happy so that you go forwards spending your time productively and in a fulfilling manner.
The idea that people can’t change who they are is unfortunately one that is still prevalent in many parts of society. As long as you are willing to embrace the process, people can and do change for the better all the time and divorce often leads you to the best version of yourself if you are willing to put the work in.
A Positive Reinforcement
Going through a divorce is a time where we often seek validation for our actions. It is a lengthy, costly, and scary process and one that more than likely you will not have gone through before. This means that you will have little or no current experience to know if you are making the right or wrong choices. Often the person is relying on family or friends to guide or help and either these well-meaning people will themselves have no experience of divorce or they will have an outdated experience as divorce processes and laws evolve constantly. Sometimes you may rely on the advice of someone who has gone through the divorce process quite recently but every divorce is different and only after you have seen a few can you begin to see the trends and the patterns. A Divorce Coach will have a wide experience of the process, the practicalities and the emotions involved, and can provide the advice, the help, and the positive reinforcement both during the divorce process and for life after. This, in turn, enables you to make smart decisions when navigating life during and after divorce.
Thrive And Be Happy
More than anything, divorce life coaches help you focus on the future. They do not let you cling on to the past and dwell on things that can only bring misery and discomfort. They don’t ignore these either and try to tell you to suppress them. They declutter the past so that you can throw that misery and discomfort down the river, be free of it, feel lighter, and have the bandwidth to grow, thrive, and be happy again. A Divorce Coach supports you with plotting a future for yourself, discovering your values, and setting your priorities.
A good Divorce Coach will also help you navigate the divorce waters for your children and guide you with the best parenting tools so that your children can also thrive in their own lives after divorce. With the guidance of a Divorce Life Coach, you’ll set achievable goals for you as an individual, as a parent, and for your children so that you can push through the right direction, towards a thriving and fulfilling life.