divorce failure

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Who Can You Trust?

May 11, 2013 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | Permalink

Quotables

Divorce is the result of a betrayal of a trust.  A trust we place in another to love, support and care about us.  It’s also a trust we encourage our partner to place in us – to trust us to love them, to support them and to care about them.  Trust of this magnitude is amazing when you really think about it.  It’s an wondrous thing when two people decide to blend their lives and live together in partnership.  And when a trust like that is broken, it can be a terrible, ugly thing which causes many people to not want to trust anyone else for any reason.

“When you trust someone to be who you want them to be instead of whom they are, you get hurt.”

Karen Finn

I know it was true in my case, and I suspect it is true in yours also.  When I got divorced I realized I had trusted my ex-husband to be someone I wanted him to be instead of who he was.  Because he didn’t meet my expectations I got hurt.  I got hurt a lot because I had deceived myself for years by expecting him to be who I trusted him to be and not who he was.

“…if you don’t feel like you can trust anybody to talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone.”

Fiona Apple

With all my mis-spent trust in my marriage, I wasn’t sure if I could trust anyone as I started on my divorce journey.  I was suspicious of just about everyone and as a result, I felt really lonely.  And the more lonely I felt, the more depressed and fearful I became.

“You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.”

Anton Chekhov

One of the things I did as I was building my trust in myself again was I reached out and asked for help.  When I moved into a new home during the course of my divorce, the previous owner mentioned that the neighbors across the street wanted to meet me when I was ready.

“We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxiacally, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.

Frank Crane

One day, shortly after I was mostly settled in my new home, I screwed up my courage and walked across the street to meet the neighbors.  It was scary walking across the street.  But I did it.  And you know, the rewards have been immeasurable.

The family who lived there was generous and kind and recognized how scared I was to be facing my new life on my own.  They turned out to be my family away from my family.  I felt loved and cared for in a way that I hadn’t since I lived at home as a kid.  (I’ve lived across the country from my family since I was 18 years old)

“Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.”

Democritus

Screwing up my courage and walking across the street that spring morning was a real turning point for me in my divorce journey.  It was the first time in a long time that I had trusted myself to be able to discern if it was OK for me to trust someone.

That’s exactly what I want for you.  I want you to know that it’s OK to trust yourself, that it’s OK to trust yourself to meet new people and that you’ll know if they’re worthy of your trust.  And if they are worthy of your trust you just might find another family to support and love you like I did.

Divorce for most of us is scary and learning to trust yourself so you can trust others can take some time, but when you start down that road of trust the rewards of joy and love can be yours again.

 

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

Reread the 5 quotes in today’s article.  I used the quotes to tell a story of how I learned to trust again as I was going through my divorce.  How do these quotes apply to you?

What actions do these quotes inspire you to take?  You might need to screw up your courage like I did before you take action.  Or, the action you choose to take might come easily to you.  Whatever you’re inspired to do to test your ability to trust, trust yourself enough to know when the right time is to do it.

Do it and evaluate the results.  The thing about any new experience is that you need to evaluate the results.  Check in with yourself after you take action and see how you feel about it.  You may be pleased and feel empowered to trust more.  You may be displeased and choose to choose differently next time.  You might feel something in between these two extremes.  The key here is to be truthful with yourself and adjust so you can continue to build your trust in yourself and in others.

© 2013 Karen Finn.  All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.

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Do You REALLY Trust Yourself?

May 6, 2013 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | 1 comment

self-trust

Divorce is one of those life events that can cause you to question EVERYTHING.

At least that’s what happened for me.  Somehow my change of marital status caused me to wonder if anything about my life was what I thought it was– was any of it real?  How could I know what was real and what wasn’t?  After all, I had thought I’d be married to my ex-husband for the rest of my life and that wasn’t true so what really was true about the rest of my life?  I felt hopelessly lost.

Slowly, though, I began to understand that the only path out of a life of being hopelessly lost was to begin to trust myself again.  I needed to believe that I could trust myself and that I was the only one who would know what was and wasn’t true for me.  Knowing which path to take is different from actually walking down the path.  The walk, for me, took a while because I was walking blind-folded.

When I look back at that time in my life, I know that it took me longer to walk the path to self-trust than it might have.  I didn’t know where the path was headed or what was required of me to successfully walk it.  But I know it now.  I know the path now because of my own journey and because of the journeys I’ve been honored to watch my clients make too.

I’m going to share my knowledge with you so you will be able to walk your own path back to self-trust without a blindfold.

Before I start with the how-to’s of building self-trust, it’s important to define the term.  Self-trust is the ability to make decisions, to know that your emotions and feelings are real, and to take care of yourself.  It’s a fairly lengthy definition, isn’t it?  Basically, self-trust involves trusting yourself on EVERY level – cognitively, emotionally, logically, intuitively and physically.

I’ll bet you’re wondering, “With a concept this big, where do I start?”  You start with a decision to build your self-trust and then you roll up your sleeves and begin to work.  It won’t be (at least not for most of us) a magical process that once you make the decision you’ll automatically have a wonderful sense of self-trust, but with consistent work you’ll definitely make significant progress in a fairly short period of time.

Here are 6 steps you can use to build your self-trust:

1.  Eliminate victim mentality.  Victim mentality is living in the belief that things happen to you and you have zero impact, influence or control over what happens to you.  I’m not suggesting that you can’t be a victim.  What I’m suggesting is that you don’t want to let that be your entire story.  Yes, bad things do happen and you can choose how you move on from those things.

As an example, suppose you are divorcing because your spouse cheated on you.  You can either live the rest of your life feeling like a victim of your spouse’s choice or you can come to accept that your spouse’s choice was hurtful and you can still move on with the rest of your life regardless of what your spouse has done.

2.  Eliminate negative thoughts about yourself.  Regardless of whether or not you’re going through divorce, most of us have negative self-talk – you know, those voices in your head that are constantly criticizing you in some way.  A friend of mine calls them the shitty committee.  Learning to quiet those voices and recognize them for what they are is an incredibly powerful skill.

Most of the time, those hyper-critical voices are that way because they’re trying to protect you from something.  For years, my negative self-talk revolved around not liking myself.  It took a while for me understand what was behind those messages, but I finally realized that it was because I wasn’t trusting myself to know what was best for me.  I would often defer what I wanted to what my ex-husband wanted.  Once I came to this realization, it was much easier for me to quiet those negative thoughts and pay more attention to what I wanted.

3.  Recognize your strengths and successes.  This has a lot to do with self-esteem and knowing that you are capable because you have innate strengths and because you’ve been successful in the past.

I’ve written a previous blog post about how to do this and instead of re-writing it here, I’ll just direct you to that post: http://www.functionaldivorce.com/blog/2012/03/30/a-quick-and-simple-way-to-dump-divorce-depression/

4.  Become aware of what you’re thinking and feeling.  Now that you’ve eliminated a bunch of the stinking thinking in the first 3 steps, you’re ready to start being pro-active with building your self-trust and it all begins with paying attention to what you’re thinking and feeling (both physically and emotionally).

There are a couple of different ways to do this.  The first is to ask yourself at least 3 times during each day just what you’re thinking and feeling at that particular moment.  Once you have that answer you can then decide what if anything you want to do to improve how you’re thinking and feeling.  The second way is to journal about your thoughts and feelings.  Most people are more aware of their thoughts than their feelings.  If this is you, you might want to journal by using the phrase “I feel…” as many times as you need to so you can get everything out.

5.  Keep your word to yourself.  Believe it or not we all make promises to ourselves every day: “I won’t eat any more sweets”, “I will start a daily exercise routine today”, “As soon as I finish this report, I’ll take a break to clear my head before starting my next task.”  The thing is that despite our promises we wind up eating a fresh-baked cookie a friend brought over to share, we skip a day of exercise and soon we’ve stopped exercising all together, and we skip taking a break because we talk ourselves into believing we didn’t really need it after all.  Breaking promises we make to ourselves, sets us up to have a poor level of self-trust.

I used to be especially bad at keeping my promises to myself involving rest, relaxation and fun.  I’d usually feel guilty if I wasn’t working and pushing myself all the time and yet I’d hate myself for not taking care of me.  It was really a vicious cycle.  What I discovered by allowing myself to keep my word to myself about rest, relaxation and fun was that I had LOTS more energy for getting my work and workouts done.

6.  Learn from your mistakes.  This is the biggie when it comes to divorce.  It takes two for a marriage to not work.  (I know that might be an offensive statement to some, but it’s what I believe and if you’d like to discuss it with me, please do!  You can reach me at karen@functionaldivorce.com.)  Learning what your part in the divorce was will go a long way toward helping you build your sense of self-trust because you’ll know that you can take care of yourself.

It took me a while to recognize that I played an active part in my divorce, that I wasn’t a victim, and that there were things I could learn from my failed marriage.

Yes, this is really the master’s level of self-trust.  Being able to realize that you are going to make mistakes at times and still trust yourself because you are willing to learn from your mistakes will allow you to take appropriate risks and live a wonderful life.

Once you’ve conquered these 6 steps, you’ll be well on your way to trusting yourself again.  So, the next time something happens in your life that changes everything, your ability to trust yourself will help prevent you from feeling hopelessly lost again.  Even if you do wind up questioning EVERYTHING, you’ll be able to trust your answers because you’ve learned to trust yourself.

 

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

Make the decision that you can trust yourself even if you aren’t sure you do right now.  Making the decision is always the first step in making a change.  Learning to trust yourself is critical to having a wonderful life.  Emerson said “Self-trust is the first secret to success” and I agree completely!

Take the checklist above one step at a time.  Start at the top of the list and work your way through each step.  Some may be easier for you to do than others and you may want to re-do some steps along the way, but if you work through them in this order it will be easier for you to master each of them.

Know your limits.  This is one of those extra bonus things about trusting yourself.  As you trust yourself more you’ll know exactly when you need to ask for help and what kind of help you need.  If what you know you need is someone to help hold you accountable to doing what you need to do to build your trust, then give me a call (817-993-0561) and let’s spend some time putting together a strategy to get you on your journey to feeling better about yourself and your life.

© 2013 Karen Finn.  All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.

 

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Part 2: How to Decrease Stress when you’re going Through Divorce

April 22, 2013 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | Permalink

closet

When I was a little girl and let my dad know that I wasn’t feeling well, he’d ask how I was feeling.  If I couldn’t give him anything more than an “I don’t know” he’d pass on some advice he got from his mom.  “Go take a shower.  You’ll feel better.”  And you know what?  I did!

Over the years, I’ve learned that a shower is a great start, but I’ve realized that it takes more than that to really feel good about myself and decrease my stress.  I’ve shared my philosophy with my clients and they report that they feel more relaxed and better about themselves too.

So you’re probably wondering what exactly my philosophy is… Yes, it does start with following my grandmother’s advice to shower every day, but it goes much further than that.

How you look plays a big part in how you feel!  At the risk of sounding like Stacy and Clinton on TLC’s What Not to Wear, taking care of your appearance really does impact how you feel.  In addition to helping you feel more confident, you’ll feel calmer too.

You’ll feel best when you’ve got the whole package – clothes that are flattering, fit you well and that you feel great in, a haircut that is flattering and easy for you to style, flattering and current makeup, along with flattering and current facial hair for the guys.

Believe me, it’s worth spending a little time and a little money to update your look when you’re going through divorce.  In fact, after my divorce was final, I actually invested in working with an image consultant.  She really opened my eyes to the way I was undermining myself with my wardrobe, hairstyle and makeup.  It was after I felt confident about how I looked that I was confident and calm enough to begin dating.  My clients who have examined and adjusted their appearance after their divorce was final have also had a lot more confidence to date too.

I know that you might have read all of this and thought it seems pretty superficial, but you’ll never know the profound change feeling confident in your appearance can make until you try it.  No one I’ve worked with who has made an effort to take care of their appearance has felt it was a waste.  Everyone who’s made the effort has felt more calm and confident.  I’ll bet you will too!

 

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

Take all the clothes that are stained, torn or don’t fit you anymore out of your closet.  Removing the things that need to be either thrown out, given away or put in a bag to be worn only when you’re painting will remove the temptation to put them on.

Take all the shoes, belts, bags, and other accessories that are worn out, don’t fit or are out of style out of your closet.  If the item has more life in it, give it away.  If not, throw it out or stuff it in the bag with your other painting things.

Once you’ve removed the things that aren’t working for you from your closet, you’ll be left with only the things that work for you which (along with that shower my grandma suggested) should leave you feeling calmer and more confident every morning.

© 2013 Karen Finn.  All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.

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Part 1: How to Decrease Stress when you’re going Through Divorce

April 15, 2013 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | Permalink

As anyone who’s been through divorce knows, it’s an incredibly stressful time.  If the only stresses you had to worry about were due to divorce that would be one thing, but the real problem is that the rest of your life doesn’t stop just because you’re getting divorced.  All of your usual day-to-day stressors (work, traffic, kids’ schedules, other family demands, and the news) somehow become even larger when you’re dealing with the big D.

In this first of three articles on minimizing stress when you’re dealing with divorce, we’ll be focusing on renewing your energy.

When’s the last time you thought about where your energy comes from?  It wouldn’t surprise me if you’d never thought of it before.  After all, it’s something that most of us take for granted.  We assume we’ll have the energy to get through our day each and every day.  We just accept that some days it’s easier to get through the day than others.

The thing is, when you’re going through divorce on top of everything else it can be more difficult than usual to get through your day.  When I started consistently having trouble having enough energy to get through my day while I was going through my divorce 10 years ago, I got interested in how I could boost my energy and that led me to wondering where my energy came from.

What I learned was that our energy comes from our psychology and our physiology.   Yup, it comes from a combination of how you think and how your body responds (which ultimately means how you treat your body).  It’s just as simple and as hard as that.

Luckily, the concept is pretty easy to understand.  The more positive and calm your thoughts and the more healthy your body is the better you’ll be able to deal with stress.  Unfortunately, the concept can be pretty difficult to implement if you’ve not paid much attention to your thoughts or your general health prior to divorce becoming a reality in your life.  To help you out, I’ve got five quick tips that can give you a head start to renewing your energy even in the midst of divorce.

1.  Start your day with a positive thought.  Lots of people get out of bed dreading the day, but if you can start your day with a positive thought it will go a long way toward lessening the stress you have all day long.

Ten years ago, I was one of those people.  I felt like I was on a treadmill of needing to meet one responsibility after another with a few catastrophes thrown in for variety.  Learning to wake up with a positive thought (or two) really made a difference for me.  It helped me get past the plague of depressive thoughts about being divorced and on to better things.

2.  Schedule at least one break for yourself every day where you have ZERO responsibilities and ZERO interruptions.  The break can even be as short as 5 minutes.  The important thing is that you take it.

Ten years ago, I didn’t know what it was to have a real break.  I spent almost every waking moment either working or worrying – neither of which was very helpful to renewing my energy.  Learning to take a real break was hard for me, but by constantly trying out different things I realized that by allowing myself to have a time and space where I had zero responsibilities or interruptions that I felt tons better.  I had more energy to go back to working (and worrying).

3.  End your day with gratitude.  Allowing yourself to appreciate the good that happened during the day goes a long way toward allowing you to have restorative sleep at night.

When I was going through my divorce, I used to have terrible nightmares.  I’d dream about the worst case scenarios of all the things I had gone to sleep worrying about.  As a result of the nightmares, I got very little sleep which just made life that much harder the next day.  When I learned to change my thoughts at night from the worry to something more positive, the frequency of my nightmares decreased dramatically and I slept better.  Of course when I got better sleep, I felt more energetic the next day.

4.  Eat well and regularly.  I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “you are what you eat” before.  There’s definitely some truth to that phrase, but when you’re going through divorce it’s even more powerfully truthful.  Most people change the way they eat when they’re feeling stressed.  They’ll over eat or eat “junk food” to soothe themselves or they’ll “forget” to eat in an attempt to gain some control.  Either path leads to decreased energy.  They’re either fueling their bodies with junk or not fueling their bodies at all.

I went the control route when I was dealing with the big D.  I severely curtailed my eating and tried to live on next to nothing.  I became anorexic and let me tell you that starving yourself is not the way to increase your energy!  I felt exhausted and anxious most of the time.  Luckily, I had a trainer who literally got in my face about being anorexic and got me to start eating healthfully again.  It made a HUGE difference in my energy level and my mood.  I actually started to feel happy again.

5.  Get some exercise daily.  When you’re going through divorce, it’s really easy to believe you don’t have time for exercise because there are just so many other things needing your attention.  Exercise doesn’t have to mean a trip to the gym or the yoga studio, it can be as simple as taking a walk around the block, playing Frisbee with your kids and dog or even doing 5 jumping jacks.  Exercise is anything that gets your body moving in a way you don’t usually do. The wonderful thing is that the novelty of the movement will energize you.

I was a glutton for punishment 10 years ago.  I took everything to the extreme and would work out daily.   What I learned from that was exercise doesn’t have to be work.   It can be fun.  The point of getting some exercise daily is just to move your body and change your thoughts.  The wonderful thing I discovered about changing my thoughts was that I felt better and more energetic!

These 5 tips for renewing your energy are simple.  Hopefully, they’re simple enough that you’re ready to try one or more of them out for yourself.  I know you’ll start to notice improved energy levels and less stress once you implement at least one of these tips daily regardless of where you are in your divorce process.

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

Eating well and regularly is a challenge my clients always face, so Your Functional Divorce Assignment will focus on this tip. 

Take the following quiz to get an idea of how you might eat well and regularly.

Select one answer for each question.

1.  On average, every day I have ________ servings of caffeine (energy drinks, coffee, sodas, tea).

A.  More than 5

B.  2 – 5

C.  Less than 2

2.  I eat some protein with every meal or snack.

A.  Rarely

B.   Sometimes

C.  Usually

3.  I eat _____ meals each day.

A.  0

B.   1

C.  2-3

4.  I drink _______ glasses of water each day.

A.  0-2

B.   3-7

C.  8 or more

Ideally, C is the better answer for each of the questions.  If you’ve answered A for any of these questions you might want to consider changing things so that you can answer B instead and I’ll bet that you just might feel a bit more energetic when you do.

© 2013 Karen Finn.  All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.

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All Tangled Up?

January 27, 2013 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | Permalink

Have you ever felt all tangled up on the inside and didn’t know which direction to turn?

Or maybe you’ve felt that you’re stuck in quicksand and it’s taking all your effort to just make it through each day?

Or worse, you’ve felt that you’re wearing a choke-chain of all your responsibilities and don’t really know who you are anymore?

Don’t worry.  I’ve been there.  In fact, everyone I know who has been through divorce has been there before too.  Overwhelm can be hard to overcome and yet it’s a common part of divorce.  Knowing how to get through it or stop it all together is a critical skill to develop.  What I’m going to share with you today are some of the techniques I regularly use with myself, my family and my clients when things start to feel overwhelming.

1.       Change your story.

When I was finding my way through the aftermath of my divorce, I used to tell myself really scary stories.  They were stories of doom and I told them over and over again – like a broken recording.  I was feeling overwhelmed and the stories I told myself made things worse.  I didn’t see any way that I could ever stop the chaos I was living in.  I felt like I was performing and not really living.  I was really miserable!

But, things slowly changed when I started changing my internal story.  Instead of envisioning a life of doom and destruction, my stories became more about experiencing sadness and then more about being tired of the sadness and imagining what changes I could make.  And then, I started actually making changes – some really big changes.  I started living again instead of feeling like a prisoner of circumstances.

It can be the same for you.  Simply by changing the story you’re telling yourself, you can dramatically (even if it takes time like it did for me) change your life for the better and stop feeling overwhelmed.

2.       Take care of you first.

For those of us who have a tendency to get burned out, when we feel stressed about out divorce it can be especially easy to forget about taking care of ourselves and just focus on what needs to be done for others instead.  After all, they’re depending on us, right?

It’s easy for me to identify a new client who isn’t taking care of themselves because they have a difficult time answering questions like

  • Are you getting enough sleep?
  • Are you exercising?
  • Are you eating nutritious meals?

in the affirmative.  They’ll squirm a bit before answering or try to deflect the question with a joke or some explanation as to why they can’t sleep or exercise or eat well.

If you can’t honestly say you’re getting enough sleep, adequate exercise and eating well, you would probably benefit from taking better care of yourself.  Taking care of yourself isn’t an afterthought – something you do after you take care of the rest of your responsibilities.  Taking care of yourself is VITAL to you being able to take care of your responsibilities.  Without your physical well-being, you won’t be able to take care of anyone or anything else, so, please, make sure you’re putting you first and treating yourself well.

3.       See the lighter side and laugh.

Somehow, when things are really miserable and you’re just not sure how you’re going to deal with one more pressure, there comes a moment when you realize just how ridiculous everything is – all the pressure and stress suddenly become laughable.  I’ve found the best thing to do when I reach that point is to laugh.  I’m not talking about a simple tee-hee-hee or chuckle, I’m talking about a really deep from the gut laugh.

Laughter is a great cure for stress and overwhelm.  It causes you to loosen some muscles and tighten others.  It requires you to breathe differently and it gets some different hormones flowing through your body – the kinds that help you to feel better.

In working with my clients, I often incorporate really bad jokes to get some laughter going.  Laughing always lightens the mood and allows my clients to see things from a slightly different angle and break the strangle hold overwhelm had on them.

With overwhelm and stress being such common elements of our daily lives – not to mention divorce, these 3 simple ideas can be a great springboard for you to prevent yourself from succumbing to burn out.

Your Functional Divorce Coaching Assignment:

The next time you’re feeling stressed out, pick one of the 3 suggestions above and try it out.  After all what have you got to lose besides your stress?  I know that if you consistently take the necessary steps to help you deal with the stress of your divorce, you’ll be better able to manage it.

If you’d like more do-able ideas for decreasing the impact of stress on your life, give me a call at 817-993-0561 so we can schedule a Complimentary Consultation and together we’ll figure out a way for you to have less stress.

 

© 2013 Karen Finn.  All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.

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Just finished a great book – Raising the Kid You Love with the Ex You Hate

January 25, 2013 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce, Legal Divorce | Permalink

Raising the Kid

Edward Farber, PhD is releasing his new book Raising the Kid You Love with the Ex You Hate next week.  I was lucky enough to receive an Advance Reviewer’s Copy and I do mean lucky.

Ed’s book is full of fabulous advice about how to make the business of co-parenting work after the business of marriage has failed.  The basis of his advice about successful co-parenting hinges on these three principles:

  1. Your child needs both parents
  2. Reduce parental conflict after the separation
  3. Both parents make decisions

Parents who can agree to abide by these three principles will have a headstart in helping their children be happy, healthy adults.  To be implemented well, each parent needs to be consistently focused on them and communicate regularly with their ex to make sure they’re on the same page.  Continuing to interact with your ex after divorce may not be something you look forward to, but, as Dr Farber points out, it’s necessary to being able to raise the kid you love.

I really appreciated reading this no non-sense approach to making co-parenting work along with the real-life stories from Ed’s practice, but probably the best part of this book is the fact that he shares ideas for non-ideal co-parenting situations.  He offers suggestions for dealing with an ex who is more interested in revenge than in successfully co-parenting, for how the co-parenting arrangement will naturally need to change as your kid grows older, for dealing with an ex who has emotional, psychological or addictive disorders, and even for dealing with kids who may be embellishing the truth to get into your good graces.

This book is an ideal resource for parents who are divorced or divorcing and committed to continuing to be great parents.

You can check out the book at Raising the Kid You Love with the Ex You Hate.

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My Beliefs Get in the Way

November 26, 2012 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | Permalink

One of the ways I market my business is to attend networking events.  In early spring 2011, I attended an event where the featured speaker was a woman named Cricket Lee.  Cricket spoke about how she had spent years researching and testing to perfect pant fit for women.  She had a great story about her work and I chose to support her by ordering a pair of pants.

Now I’ll bet that just about every woman reading this has a belief similar to mine when I ordered the pants.  My belief was that there’s no way that Cricket has really standardized fits in a way that would work for me.  Finding pants that fit is almost impossible.

It took a bit longer than anticipated for the pants to arrive – a little more than a year, but I was completely OK with that because I knew that Cricket was attempting something BIG and besides the pants weren’t going to fit me any way.

When the pants did show up, I didn’t even open them.  I had a broken ankle at the time and couldn’t put them on any way.  And there was no way they were going to fit, so what did it really matter?

I left those pants in the box for months!  It was only after running into Cricket again at an event in early October that I decided I might as well face my disappointment and try on the pants.  Well, I put it off for a few more weeks and didn’t try them on until the beginning of November – before I would run into Cricket again and need to tell her they didn’t fit.

You know what?  My belief was completely WRONG!  The pants fit perfectly right out of the box.  Despite being wrinkled after sitting in the box for many months, they looked amazing.  After getting over my thrill about how great they fit and felt, I realized that my belief about what was going to happen had gotten in the way of me enjoying my new pants.  Pretty ridiculous, right?

Well, here’s the thing, in my work with people navigating the chaos and confusion of divorce, I see beliefs getting in the way all the time.  I see people who believe they deserve to hurt because they’re getting divorce and refuse to do what will help them to feel better.  I hear stories of people who believe they aren’t worthy of being loved because they’re getting divorced.  I hurt when people tell me they believe they don’t like themselves and are depressed because of their divorce.

Beliefs are personal and no one can make you believe anything you don’t want to and that’s the saddest thing of all.  On some level, everyone who tells me they deserve to hurt or that they’re not worth loving or that they are depressed and don’t like themselves wants to believe these things.

Beliefs like these get in the way of living a great life and in a way are just as ridiculous as my belief that putting on a pair of pants would be a waste of time because they’d never fit me since I was different.

Beliefs can get in the way of healing from divorce and moving on with your life.  Being willing and able to change the beliefs that get in your way is one of the key requirements to living a great life during and after your divorce.  Your Functional Divorce Assignment will give you some ideas for how you might discard one or more of the beliefs that are keeping you from having the happiness and confidence I know could be yours.

 

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

 

Identify a belief about yourself that brings you discomfort or pain. Maybe you are feeling depressed.  If you are, dig down into what you are thinking when you feel the most depressed and you’ll likely uncover a belief.  Or maybe you’re experiencing a different unhappy emotion.  If you dig down into your thoughts when you’re experiencing it you’ll likely uncover a belief.

Is this belief appropriate?  The beliefs that cause us discomfort or pain need to be examined regularly.  It’s possible that the belief you uncovered in the previous step isn’t serving you anymore.  If that’s the case, either that belief needs to be changed or your behavior needs to be changed to align with your belief.

Don’t worry if this is hard to do on your own, you can always ask for help.  For most people it is pretty difficult to identify the beliefs that get in their way.  If you’re having a hard time, relax.  The easiest way to get help working on identifying the beliefs that are getting in your way is to schedule a Complimentary Consultation with me to discuss your situation.  You can reach me by email at karen@functionaldivorce.com or by phone at 817-993-0561.

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When Will I Stop Hurting So Much?

November 19, 2012 in Emotional Divorce | Permalink

Loneliness is one of the first most painful emotions to appear when you get divorced. Even if you were lonely in your marriage, it’s just somehow different when you are living alone. (Yes, this is true even if your children are living with you.)

The ways that people express loneliness are unique to each person.  You might be like a hermit crab and withdraw into your shell, peering out at the rest of the world with a sad and dejected expression. Or maybe you avoid experiencing loneliness by being with someone, actually anyone either in person, by phone or even via social media, so you don’t have to be alone. Then again, you may experience loneliness by keeping busy – VERY busy – with work, or volunteer efforts, or with your kids and their activities. Or maybe you like the buffet approach and use a little hermit crab and keeping VERY busy with a touch of never allowing yourself to be alone.

What I want you to know is it’s natural to feel lonely when your relationship ends.

At some point you’ll start to realize the pain of loneliness can be an opportunity to rediscover the best of you and heal from the pain of your divorce.  And once you reach this point, you’ll be able to move through the worst of the pain of divorce much more quickly and not get stuck in it.

The realization that you’re experiencing the pain of loneliness is usually accompanied with the question “When will I stop hurting so much?“ Every time you ask this question, you’ve got the chance to try some other way of moving past the pain and on to some other emotion.  Even if the new emotion is discomfort, I can tell you that it’s LOTS better than being stuck in the pain and misery of loneliness.  And every single time you choose to experience a less painful emotion, you’re closer and closer to being able to say “I’ve stopped hurting so much.”

For most of us who have been through divorce, our realization of the cessation of the pain isn’t immediate.  It’s a gradual recognition of being able to enjoy things more, a desire to participate more in life again and a genuine willingness to be happy.

I wish I could tell you exactly when your pain of loneliness will stop, but the truth is I can’t and no one else can either.  But, I can tell you some of the signs that you’re getting over your loneliness and have started becoming comfortable with alone-ness and being you.  Sometimes knowing the indications that the worst is over can be incredibly comforting.

The signs you’re moving forward beyond the painful feelings of loneliness include:

  • When you stop hiding out at home
  • When you stop trying to find any other relationship to avoid being lonely
  • When you stop being connected 24×7 with Facebook, your iPhone, and the virtual realities of computer and online games
  • When you are content doing activities by yourself – going to the movies, going out to eat, etc.
  • When you stop letting feelings of loneliness control your behavior
  • When you start enjoying the new things you’re doing as part of your Functional Divorce

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

The next time you’re hit with the pain of loneliness, take a moment, recognize that the pain will ease with time and know that you have some signs you can be on the lookout for to know that you’re heading past the worst of it.

If you’d appreciate having another ear to hear your concerns and learn more about how I work with people just like you, schedule a Complimentary Consultation with me at http://www.functionaldivorce.com/compconsult.html.

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A Quick and Simple Way to Dump Divorce Depression

March 30, 2012 in Emotional Divorce | No comments

It’s rare that someone sees their divorce as a success. Most people see divorce as a failure – their personal failure. The very sad fact is that it’s not unusual for someone to interpret the failure of their marriage as their failure in life. This couldn’t be further from the truth!

As an individual, you deserve to be successful, to feel confident and be happy again. Although none of that will happen until you choose to believe that you deserve to be successful, confident and happy again.

One of the first things I explore with each and every one of my clients is their belief in themselves. Let me ask you the same question I ask them. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most wonderful sense of self-confidence and 1 representing a level of self-confidence that’s on par with where earthworms live, what’s your level of self-confidence?

Most people going through divorce report numbers below 8, sometimes well below 8. If that’s the case for you, relax, you’re not alone.

Here’s the story of one of my former clients that I’ll bet you can relate to.

Anna (this isn’t her real name) has a great sense of adventure  and is always ready to try new things. Her sense of adventure allows her to feel lots of excitement for almost any new project. Although something happened when she got divorced, instead of her usual optimism, she felt adrift and uncertain.

When we first started working together, she would enthusiastically start working on new goals and projects, but for some reason she just couldn’t keep her excitement up long enough to achieve any of them. Instead of feeling excited, she would start thinking about how hard the goal would be to achieve or that now really wasn’t the best time to start working on this particular project. Of course, then she would start to feel bad about herself. Her lack of self-confidence was causing her to get bogged down and not achieve her goals of creating a wonderful new life for herself after her divorce. She was sabotaging herself.

Our work together showed that the root cause was a lack of self-esteem and belief in her right to have a good life again, so I created a custom program for her designed to increase her confidence. She was diligent in working the program and boy did it pay off!

Even though she still has moments of doubt that creep up once in a while, she is now pursuing her dreams and enjoying her full life again. And when the occasional doubt creeps in, she simply reviews her program and gives her confidence a boost. This boost allows her to sustain her sense of adventure and excitement while she continues pursuing her goals.

Are you curious to know more about Anna’s program and if it would work for you?

Let me give you an exercise to start you on you way to a higher level of self-confidence.

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

Start by making a list of 10 things you like about yourself. If you find it difficult to come up with 10 things, ask someone close to you to tell you somethings they like about you and put these things your list.

After you’ve got your 10 things, read your list out loud to yourself with positive emotion. Now, to get the best results, read your list out loud to yourself when you first get up in the morning and just before you go to sleep at night. When you read your list in the morning, you’re setting up how you want to feel about yourself for the entire day. When you read your list before going to sleep, you’re setting up your subconscious to focus on what’s wonderful about you.

The more consistently you do this, the better you’ll feel about yourself. And before you know it, your self-esteem will regularly be at an 8 or better.

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