How to Release Fear. Gabrielle Bernstein

Recovering From Divorce. By Jay Williams

Recovering from divorce? Here are 3 things you need to do.

Moving on from a divorce is never easy; the recovery process is always testing and time-consuming. Indeed, it can take months or, in some cases, even years before people start to feel anywhere near like they’re getting back to their best. Indeed, there’s no set time, no deadline, for recovery. It’s a gradual process punctuated by good days, bad days, days where you feel numb and days when you don’t want to get out of bed. Emotions of all kinds will come and go; your general mood will oscillate and more. In time, though, you will feel better.

Whilst you’re in the midst of recovering, however, these three things will make the process a lot easier:

1.       Learn to let things go

This will sound cliched but holding on to negative feelings – particularly those relating to your former spouse – is certain to halt the recovery process. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s a vital life skill and, trust me, once you’ve learnt how to let go, you’ll realise just how much it’s going to help you recover and move on.

There’s a famous quote, often attributed to Buddha (though this is widely disputed), that goes: “holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die” and it perfectly exemplifies why learning to let go is so important: if you don’t, you’ll be hurting no one but yourself.

2.       Be kind to yourself

We’ve all made mistakes and, sometimes, we need to spend a little bit of time thinking about them to ensure that a lesson’s learnt. All too often, though, we take this too far: chastising and beating ourselves up when, if we saw a friend or even acquaintance doing the same thing to themselves, we’d tell them that they were needlessly beating themselves up.

Yes, it’s easy to be hard on ourselves but the mistake’s already been made, and lessons have already been learned. Make a conscious effort to be kind to yourself: do things you enjoy, treat yourself to a few things you’ve always wanted and focus on your positive qualities.

3.       Embrace distraction  

It’s normal to want to hide away at home when we’re not feeling 100%. Staying away from social events and the like can seem sensible, often because we’re feeling underconfident and therefore don’t want to spend time with or even around others. Getting out and about is vital to your recovery, however, not just because it’ll help you regain your confidence, but will also result in you having less time to ruminate.

When we’re finding things difficult, time to think can be extremely detrimental. We tend to assume the worst and this can lead to feelings of hopelessness. By keeping ourselves busy, our minds are occupied making such harmful thoughts significantly less likely. What’s more, by investing time in our friends or at the gym, there are other obvious benefits too.

Author bio:

Jay Williams works for Quickie Divorce, and online business providing low-cost divorce solutions to people throughout the UK.

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