By Cheryl Maguire

It is not uncommon for people going through divorce to worry about the following …

Child concerns: custody and how the divorce will impact the child’s emotional health.

Finances: how money will be divided and how will spousal or child support be determined.

Social life: possible changes in friendships or dating new people.

Mental health: emotional well-being and possible depression or anxiety.

Katherine Woodward Thomas, M.A., MFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist and author of Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Ever After explains that some common emotions people experience are anger, resentment, pain, and guilt.

Experts offer the following recommendations to help you heal …

Get a Handle on Your Emotions. You will need to make important rational decisions regarding your finances and, if you have children, their custody. If your emotions are influencing these decisions often that is when people become involved in expensive and contentious legal battles. Woodward Thomas says, “The first thing that you want to do is to find a way to connect with those feelings, and then even use them as fuel for positive change in some ways.”

Take Time to Heal. The first step to healing is to identify your feelings. “You should ask yourself, ‘What am I feeling?’ and then you give the feelings a name. Because the moment you give the feeling a name, you have it, it does not have you,” Woodward Thomas says.

When you identify one emotion at a time, you start to feel more in your own body. “You become capable of making rational decisions and not just knee-jerk reactive decisions that could then end up hurting you in the long run,” she says.

Find Support. Woodward Thomas recommends asking people that you trust to be supportive. She says that they should be supportive in ways that are positive. “When you’re enrolling your friends to support you, it’s not about villainizing your partner, it’s about helping you grow, and see a positive future on the other side,” she says.

If you can afford it, find a counselor who specializes in break-up recovery. This may include a conventional therapist or a counselor through your church or synagogue but find someone who can be an unbiased third party to help you do the work necessary to forgive and move on.

If you are unable to find a counselor, consider looking for an online community like Bonus Families, which offers a place for you to ask questions and get support from other members.

Focus on the Positive. Most people who break-up have experienced some sort of trauma prior to the break-up, whether it is domestic violence, drug addiction, an affair, or simply not getting along and constantly arguing. 

Woodward Thomas says that people can view their separation as an opportunity. “I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really wake up out of the trance of your old beliefs,” she says.

Cheryl Maguire holds a Master of Counseling Psychology degree. She is married and is the mother of twins and a daughter. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Parents Magazine, and many other publications. You can find her at Bluesky@CherylMaguire.