Onward Intel: 10 Wellness Tips for Clarity and Calm
When contemplating divorce, it’s a time filled with intense emotions, uncertainty, and difficult decision-making. It’s important to take steps that provide clarity, emotional support, and space for personal growth.
Approaching this time with self-compassion and making decisions that align with your long-term well-being is no easy task, however, we’re here to help, and it is achievable. Divorce can be a challenging and painful journey, but it can also be a path toward growth and a healthier, more fulfilling future.
Here are some suggestions that can be helpful during this period:
1. Consider Therapy and Counseling
- Individual Therapy: Speaking to a therapist can provide a safe, non-judgmental space to process feelings of sadness, guilt, fear, anger, or confusion. A therapist can help you explore your emotions, gain insight into the relationship, and clarify your decision-making process.
- Couples Therapy: If both partners are open to it, couples therapy can help improve communication, work through unresolved issues, and determine if reconciliation is possible. Therapy often helps identify areas that could be repaired, or it can confirm that separation is the healthiest choice.
- Grief Counseling: Divorce is a form of loss, and grieving the end of a relationship is natural. A grief counselor can help you process the emotional fallout, especially if the divorce is not something you initially desired.
2. Clarify Your Values and Needs
- Journaling: Journaling is an incredible tool. Writing down your thoughts, fears, and hopes for the future can help clarify whether your decision to divorce aligns with your personal needs, values, and goals.
- Identify Non-Negotiables: Take time to reflect on what is truly non-negotiable for you in a relationship. Is it trust, respect, emotional intimacy, or shared values? Understanding your must-haves can help you understand whether they are being met in the current marriage or if they’re being compromised.
3. Assess the Relationship and Your Feelings
- Reflect on Patterns: Think about the patterns in your relationship. Have there been repeated cycles of conflict, emotional withdrawal, or hurt? Do you both make efforts to improve the relationship? Reflecting on the history of the relationship helps you assess whether the issues are temporary, long-standing, or fundamentally incompatible.
- Consider the Impact: Think about how staying or leaving will impact not only you but also your children, extended family, and social circles. If you have children, it’s important to consider how the divorce might affect their well-being and how you might co-parent effectively.
4. Focus on Self-Care
- Physical Health: Stress from marital conflict can take a toll on physical health. It’s important to maintain regular exercise, healthy eating, and proper sleep during this time. This helps keep energy levels up and supports emotional balance.
- Mental Health: Practice stress-reducing activities like yoga, meditation, or mindfulness. These techniques help calm your nervous system, giving you clarity and reducing anxiety about the decision ahead.
- Hobbies and Personal Interests: Reconnect with your hobbies or try something new. Engaging in activities that bring you joy and fulfillment can help you reclaim your sense of self, especially if you’ve been feeling lost or overwhelmed by the relationship.
5. Plan for the Future
- Legal Consultation: It’s helpful to speak with a divorce lawyer to understand your legal rights and obligations. This doesn’t mean you’ve made the decision to divorce, but it can give you clarity on practical matters like finances, child custody, and division of property. Knowing your options helps reduce uncertainty, which can lessen anxiety.
- Financial Planning: Divorce can have significant financial implications. Consider meeting with a financial advisor to help you understand how your finances will be affected by a divorce. It’s important to know what your financial independence looks like and how you can move forward responsibly.
6. Create a Support System
- Trusted Friends and Family: Talking to friends or family members who you trust can provide emotional support. Be careful, though, about sharing too much with people who may have strong biases. It’s important to have people who will listen without judgment and offer empathy.
- Support Groups: Joining a divorce support group (online or in person) can provide a sense of community. Hearing others’ experiences and knowing you’re not alone in your feelings can be immensely helpful.
- Spiritual Support: If spirituality or religion is important to you, connecting with a pastor, rabbi, or spiritual counselor can provide additional support during this time. Many people find solace in faith and spiritual practices as they navigate major life transitions.
7. Honor Time and Patience
- Allow Yourself Time to Decide: Divorce is a big decision, and it’s okay if you don’t have all the answers right away. Give yourself permission to take the time you need to process your feelings and options.
- Avoid Impulsive Decisions: In moments of high emotion (like anger or frustration), you might feel like divorce is the only way forward. Give yourself a cooling-off period to reflect and ensure that the decision is made thoughtfully, not impulsively.
8. Consider the Future of Your Relationship
- Envision Life After Divorce: Think about what life might look like after divorce. What are your hopes for your future, both personally and as a family (if you have children)? What kind of emotional, physical, and financial life do you want to create for yourself?
- Co-Parenting: If children are involved, start thinking about how you want to co-parent. How will you maintain a stable environment for them? It may also be worth speaking to a therapist about co-parenting strategies, as creating a healthy post-divorce relationship with your ex can be key for your children’s well-being.
9. Build Emotional Resilience
- Develop Emotional Boundaries: During times of marital stress, emotional boundaries may become blurred. It’s essential to work on emotional self-regulation and resilience, especially when interacting with your spouse during the divorce process. Therapy can help with this.
- Empathy for Yourself and Your Partner: While it’s natural to have a lot of difficult emotions toward your partner during divorce contemplation, try to hold space for empathy, both for yourself and them. Divorce is often a mutual breakdown, even if one partner initiates it. Understanding the full scope of the situation can help you avoid making decisions out of resentment.
10. Journal Daily
- Journaling can be an incredibly helpful tool when you’re contemplating a divorce. It offers a safe space for self-reflection, emotional processing, and clarity, especially during a time when emotions and decisions can feel overwhelming. Please see our Tips for Journaling.