3 LONG-TERM COPING STRATEGIES FOR DIVORCEES

Divorce is one of the more difficult endeavors you’ll go through in your life. Feelings of anger, remorse, dread, regret and confusion are normal and valid. Allow yourself to feel these emotions when they come — but don’t allow yourself to drown in them.

Here are a few long-term coping strategies that can help make the divorce process a little bit easier on yourself.

Acknowledge your emotions

It usually takes a life-changing event to occur before we learn about coping. One of the biggest coping issues is not coping at all. Recognize and accept the emotions you’re feeling. Then, respond to them. If you are feeling angry, look up methods to calm yourself down. If you’re feeling sad, think about ways to brighten your day.

Everyone experiences divorce differently and we often go in and out of different phases of emotions. The key to positive, long-term coping is that you may need to use multiple methods. Practice acknowledging your emotions and doing something about them.

Improve your body’s health

Studies have shown time and time again that being healthier makes a person happier. Smartphone applications and wearable technology, like Fitbit, can help you establish and progress toward wellness goals. Exercising regularly comes with loads of benefits, such as:

• Enhancing your mood
• Improving your focus
• Bettering your quality of sleep
• Strengthening your immune system
• Lowering your stress
• Decreasing your health risks

Establish a regular exercise routine you can rely on during this difficult time. Don’t forget to also improve your diet with a regular vitamin and healthy meal choices. To go full circle, you’ll also need to get between seven and nine hours of uninterrupted sleep — every night, at the same time.

Practice positive mental health

Sometimes we have a habit of being hard on ourselves or on those around us when we’re feeling stressed or upset. But, taking out upset feelings on yourself or others is a negative coping method that’s more likely to lead to other issues.

A few ways you can get into the habit of acknowledging and caring for your own mental health can be by:

• Practicing meditation
• Focusing on breathing
• Writing reminders of the ways you admire yourself
• Replacing discouraging thoughts with encouraging ones

When you are upset at others, try to breath and ask yourself if the issue is really worth the rage. This may help keep you from taking your anger out on others.

The more you practice staying positive, the easier the divorce process and all of its complexities will be to handle.

Get help

Acquiring an attorney is not a coping mechanism, but it is one more thing you can do to reduce the stress you’re under.

Gaining the counsel of a lawyer throughout the divorce process will help ensure that you and your ex-spouse haven’t missed any key details, all of the proper paperwork is filed correctly and the two of you come to a fair agreement in the end.