Early stages of divorce can involve denial and avoidance. While these help dull the pain in the short term, they also delay the solution. The nagging pain continues, somewhat dulled. While time will help, it won't really go away without moving through the grief process.
When you are already suffering pain, you're hoping for pain relief. So I looked for a divorce recovery program to help. Well, there are two sides to every coin. It helps you confront the pain, which is ironically painful in itself. Working & talking with others in divorce paradoxically both helped and hurt. It brought suppressed pain to the surface to be challenged & dealt with.
Lessons learned:
- Divorce recovery is usually attempted when the divorce is complete. But during a long divorce your denial and suppression mechanisms break down, so I attempted divorce recovery during the divorce. This adds an extra aggravation that some suggested solutions can't work, because the divorce process is incomplete, you are stuck with some negative aspects.
- You will experience additional pain in order to move on. It will open old wounds for copious application of salt.
- You will meet people worse off, this can be depressing.
- You will be able to help others, this will be therapeutic to both the recipient & yourself.
- You will be amazed at just how much bigger the problem is than you ever thought.
- You will want to put it all behind you and never look back. Put the pain behind, but try to contribute - to others in pain, to protesting injustice, to moving the system forward. This will give purpose to your pain.
- The system seems broke beyond repair, it will remain so if you don't challenge it. Inaction against a broken system is tacit approval and the main reason the system remains broken.
Best wishes in your recovery, we must help each other.
2 comments:
It is depressing being around depressed people. Maybe try to balance getting support from other people getting divorced (or already through the process) with the ones that are lucky enough to be in a better (happier) place. Maybe that will shine some positive light on your situation.
Right you are, this post was concentrating on recovery groups. I still recommend them because they have their place and are helpful.
Besides the flip side is non-depressed people grow tired of divorcee's venting.
The keyword certainly is "BALANCE".
There are many ways of combatting depression that should be used in addition to a recovery group. I'll make some suggestions in a future post.
Readers are free to make suggestions now before that post...
Post a Comment