Healthy Coping Skills for Divorce
Divorce is painful. You can feel overwhelmed by the new logistics of your life, the emotional pain of letting go of your partner and your marriage, and for a lot of people, helping children to cope with divorce. This is the time to work on your coping skills and make sure that you can navigate these emotional difficulties while protecting and improving your mental and physical health.
You are worth it. Your kids are worth it and they deserve to have a healthy parent. Today, we’re talking about some of these coping skills for divorce to help you with:
Coping with divorce
Handling divorce emotionally vs healing trauma of divorce
Handling the emotions of divorce in a healthy way so you can be fully present and in control of your own life
First Thing’s First – What Are Coping Skills?
Coping skills, or coping mechanisms, are cognitive or behavioral techniques to navigate our emotions and cope with daily stresses or situations we are going through. When you are going through a divorce, an often turbulent emotional time, you need to rely more on your coping skills to get you through that tough time.
Coping Skills vs Handling Trauma of Divorce
Let’s get one thing straight here: No one is suggesting that developing healthy coping mechanisms will be all you need to do to handle divorce emotionally and physically. As evidenced by writer Marie Casey’s rant on the topic, a lot of people feel pressure by society to self-help your way through the trauma of divorce. Casey reminds us that we can’t “positive think” our way out of trauma, “My beef isn’t with coping skills. It’s with the idea that coping skills can replace doing the dirty work of processing trauma.”
As Casey reminds us, ignoring the trauma is a devastating mistake. Take the time for that very real work of processing the trauma of your divorce. In fact, you need not discredit any of the multi-faceted approaches to handling divorce emotionally or otherwise. They all work in partnership. How you balance each can make all the difference in your healing:
Therapy to navigate, manage, heal the trauma of divorce.
Self-care to navigate the physical stresses of divorce.
And lastly, healthy coping mechanisms to help navigate the emotional stress of divorce.
Related Reading – Five Tips to Recover from Divorce
Healthy Coping Skills vs Unhealthy Coping Skills
Some things like alcohol dependence and drug use are clear negative coping skills, but any coping mechanism can turn ugly when you overuse or abuse it. The key here is to self-regulate and be self-aware enough to know when a coping mechanism is taking over your life. Here are a few examples of how healthy coping skills can go wrong:
Keeping Coping Mechanisms in Check
Therapy – This is a healthy way to process trauma, but can work negatively if you get with an unqualified therapist or if your relationship with your therapist is unproductive. Work to find the right person for you that’s a good balance of knowledge, qualification, and feels like a safe space for you.
Managing stress with a hobby – Hobbies are a great way to cope but keep them in check. Obsessions are mere distractions. A therapist can help you to develop hobbies that work to relieve your stress without becoming obsessions that you cannot control. For example, a new weight loss kick could turn obsessive if you are in a lot of emotional pain. Balance is key. Get help from professionals to make sure your methods are healthy for you and well-balanced for healing emotionally and physically.
Learning a new skill or working on your career – Focusing on yourself and your future is a great way to work on healing, but don’t bury yourself in work to the exclusion of your health.
Drinking Alcohol – Having a drink now and then to destress can help you to feel better, but be careful of drinking too much, too often, and as a way to handle divorce emotionally. This is a slippery slope for you while you’re in so much pain and especially if you have a family history of alcohol dependence.
Socializing – There’s a fine line between leaning on your social relationships for support, and finding unhealthy ones to pass through your pain.
Healthy Coping Skills – Handle Divorce Emotionally and Physically
We spoke with divorcee and writer Rachel Hope about her experiences in coping with divorce. She made some great points about coping skills for divorce in her article How to Cope with Divorce. Hope’s work leading a support group, along with her own experiences navigating the often emotional turbulent waters of divorce gives her perspective for writing about what it’s like to go through divorce, emotionally. We asked Hope about how she got through, and how she’s helping others to cope with divorce.
Hope told us that “Healing is a process, in fact because of my experiences during my divorce, I've come to look at it as an ongoing process without a destination. I become more and more healed over time, but those experiences and trauma have become part of who I am and will never be completely gone. Meanwhile, whether you're in the thick of it, or years down the road, you've got to cope and keep managing your life, your family, your job, no matter how you're feeling emotionally.”
Related reading – Dealing With Anger After Divorce
Healthy Coping Skills for Your Body
Take walks or practice yoga. This can help you to clear your head but it also helps your body to feel better, keep your muscles limber, and supports a healthy heart.
Get the sleep you need! This helps every aspect of your health and, if you don’t sleep, your health can truly suffer!
Do all the physical self-care things your body needs. Hygiene. Eating well. Dental and eye care. All those things you’re tempted to put off, don’t. You only get one body!
Healthy Coping Skills for Your Mind
See a therapist and possibly your doctor. They can help direct you to the mental health care you may need to navigate this trauma.
Find your people. Everyone needs a supportive network of people to help them when times get tough. There’s no reason to try and be a mental health superhero – we all need someone to lean on!
Practice self-expression. Write, draw, paint, sing, dance…whatever helps you to let off steam and express what you’re feeling in a healthy and creative way.
Healthy Coping Skills for Your Spirit
Go someplace new. This can help you stir up curiosity about the world and separate yourself (for a bit) from the places that remind you of your ex-partner.
Learn to meditate for a transcendent and meaningful experience.
Listen to music therapy. Instrumental and calming music can help you feel more relaxed, yet energized.
Get in touch with nature. Nature has a way of healing the spirit and those deep down hurting places in your soul. It may feel awkward, at first, but sit with nature and allow your inner spirit to speak.
Your Takeaway Today
Though handling the emotions of divorce can be overwhelming, you can feel more confident that you are doing everything you can to heal yourself and take control of your life. You do this by being patient with yourself and by working on developing your healthy coping skills for divorce and by addressing the trauma of divorce so you can heal. Thanks for reading today and take care of yourself. The pain of this will, indeed, get better.
Christina M Ward