8 Tips for managing strong emotions when you get divorce

8 Tips for managing strong emotions when you get divorce

In this article I give you 8 tips to help you manage strong negative emotions you may be feeling when you separate and divorce so that you feel more able to focus on the things that need to be sorted out for yourself and children. 

These 8 tips have worked for hundreds of my clients over 25 years working as a solicitor, mediator and divorce coach.

If your separation has come as a surprise you may be feeling numb, angry, shocked and bewildered.

On the other hand, if you decided to bring the relationship to an end you may well be feeling a sense of guilt and responsibility about impact your decision is having on your former partner and children. 

None of these can be avoided or nor should they be suppressed, only ‘managed’ and processed by you, but how?

Far too often, early in the separation, I see couples eager to go to court hoping to ‘get some justice’ only to find that the more they invest in the conflict and the longer it goes on for (court proceedings can take 1-2 years to conclude) the greater the emotional and financial price they end up paying, often for decades.

“Anger can be like drinking poison and expecting someone else to suffer”

If you are feeling angry and hurt please take a moment to reflect on whether you want these emotions to drive your decisions and define your actions or whether you would prefer make decisions which are right for you and your children in the long term, despite the difficult circumstances you face at the moment.

This takes courage and commitment.

My hope for you is that by understanding a little more about these emotions, their impact on you and by getting the right professional support, at the right time from Divorce Coaches and mediators you will find a way of managing them.

This way you are more likely to make the right decisions when you divorce and hopefully, when you look back, you can feel proud that, at a very difficult time in your life, you did the right thing for yourselves and your children.

So here are my 8 tips to help you manage your emotions which I write about in detail in chapter 1 of the Divorce Manual and intend to blog about over the coming weeks and months.

8 Tips to manage strong emotions

TIP 1. When you are ‘triggered’, seek to understand what has happened and why you feel the way you do 

TIP 2. Shift the focus of your thinking from yourself onto ‘the parent relationship’ and sorting our child arrangements for the benefit of your children 

TIP 3. Do not try to suppress your emotions but find a safe and secure way of expressing them.  

TIP 4. Be open to accepting and acknowledging some responsibility (not fault or blame) for your part in the separation. 

TIP 5. Do not try to manage alone with these emotions. Seek support

TIP 6. Beware who you confide in and their motives 

TIP 7. Focus on the future and what you want for the future for yourself and your children 

TIP 8. Take your time 

If you are able to do these things, working with the Mediator (and perhaps a Coach) and co-operating with your former partner in a positive and constructive way, despite how you may be feeling, I am very hopeful for you.

Please do not forget that I write much more chapter 1 of the Divorce Manual about how to manage these kinds of emotions and communicate in a way that will enable you and your former partner to work together during the divorce and separation process, when you need to, especially important now with the new no-fault divorce process.