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Devil on Your Shoulder: How to Stop Negative Thinking During Divorce
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Devil on Your Shoulder: How to Stop Negative Thinking During Divorce

On Behalf of | Jan 5, 2021 | Firm News

Ending a marriage is traumatic, chaotic, and filled with horrible conflicting emotions regardless of whether you are the initiator or on the receiving end of the divorce. For the person asking for a divorce, it’s common to experience fear, relief, distance, impatience, resentment, doubt, and guilt. For the other spouse, they may feel shock, betrayal, loss of control, victimization, decreased self-esteem, insecurity, anger, a desire to “get even,” and wishes to reconcile.

Regardless of whether you decided to end the marriage or not, you are going to go through some negative thoughts during one of the emotional stages of either grief or the legal process. Your disbelief at the end of your marriage is understandable. After all, how could something that, in the beginning, was marked by such vows of lifetime commitment and hope, be reduced to nothing?

Let your mind run unattended and you will become the marching ground for all kinds of negativity, worry, anger, bitterness, and emotional seething. However, none of these are going to be helpful to you, your children, or the divorce process.

Emotional Health

The reality is that emotional health requires that your anger be processed and eventually digested, or it’ll keep recycling and resurfacing itself. Anger is a very emotional energy that will reside in our body, lives, and mind until it runs its course.

Still, anger shouldn’t necessarily be feared. It can teach you about yourself—what’s important to you, what your sensitivities are, where your boundaries lie. But to learn you have to listen to your anger. You can catch the internal signal or clue that anger is on the way. Then you can switch to a mindset of curiosity and self-investigation about what your anger is trying to say to you.

Emotional Support

The ability to know your own thoughts, to be aware at all times of what you are thinking, is one of the roads to self-enlightenment. When worry, stress, negativity, and other dreadful thoughts take over, you begin to lose your spirit. This is why you need to make a conscious decision to be aware of where your mind is taking you.

Doing this isn’t easy. Often, many people don’t even realize how negatively they are thinking. Which is why it takes practice. However, it is worth it and extremely helpful as you go through the emotional process of separation and divorce. Start finding resources to help you through this time. Talk to people about it. Attend a divorce seminar or support group. Given time you’ll begin to derive the benefits of being in control of your mind, as opposed to letting your mind take you down every dark thought.

Stay Productive

When we don’t feel good, it can be tempting to avoid everything. Maybe you just want to hide away and binge watch hours of Netflix with a bottle of wine. Or possibly you want to celebrate the end of your marriage by going on endless dates with new people. These things may be keeping you busy, but they are not necessarily helping you cope in a healthy manner.

Instead, stay busy but in a productive manner. Have specific goals in mind of what you want to achieve in this next step of your life. With goals in place, you have measurable outcomes that are more likely to keep you motivated.

Remember Time Heals All Wounds

It’s too easy to let your negative emotions rule you. By combating them head-on, the sooner you will get into the mindset of personal growth and letting go if or when the time comes. If you come across that fleeting thought of negativity and inadequacy, simply remind yourself that you are more than enough.

If you need assistance with the divorce process, call Griffith, Young & Lass today at 858-951-1526.

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