admin Freedom of choice is available to us all. Grant it there will be life circumstances for which you have no choice. But when healing from a divorce, you are in charge of your choices. I think as women we sometimes forget we DO have choices.
I can think of a handful of divorced women I personally know who have chosen to remain broken about their divorce. They have elected to stay ‘stuck’. This manifests itself in a variety of different manners; for some it may be they have sworn off the other sex completely. For others, they may still complain about the injustice of their divorce. Another way is that they may still be wrapped up in knowing what the Ex is still up to. They have made the decision to remain miserable.
So what do you do if you find you can’t get unstuck?
First of all, recovering emotionally from a divorce is a process. There are different stages everyone goes through; the difference may be how quickly one woman may go through a particular phase. For most people anger, shock, resentments or emotional pain may top the list. This can also be mixed with a feeling of ‘wasted years’; since typically the years leading up to the divorce may not have cheerful.
Some women fall into victim role. The attitude of ‘how could he do this to me’ settles in. Family and friends will be there for support; and sometimes they may be unconsciously validating the ‘poor me’ which can keep you stuck. Don’t get me wrong; it is wonderful to have people comfort you and you NEED THAT for a period of time.
It is when you want to stay in that warm comforting feeling and fear takes hold so that you can’t move forward is where I often see women get stuck. The purpose of the comfort from loved ones is to validate YOU, gather inner strength and move forward with your life.
If you find yourself in that spot of being stuck; you need to start asking yourself what do you fear? It could be finances, thoughts of living alone, getting a new job, not wanting to get hurt again… the list can be endless. AND there is usually more than one fear.
I would suggest that you select one fear and determine a path for moving forward. You may find you need to solicit advise from friends who have walked the path. An example is a stay at home mom now having to face going back into the workplace.
Talk with other women who have done this transition before; ask a friend to assist in building a resume. Make a list of actionable items that you can execute on and then begin executing.
My experience has been that once you start taking action on fear you are removing the power from fear. The reason is that you’ll realize it’s not this big hairy monster ready to devour you. You’ll find that if you develop an action plan of small steps and begin to work the steps; overtime you’ll discover that you’re walking through the fear.