You are Your Own Worst Enemy Post-Divorce

In a chapter about negative self-talk, aptly entitled, The Enemy Inside, Susan Pease Gadoua talks about how to change the negative to positive self-talk. Her book, Stronger Day by Day, Reflections for Healing & Rebuilding after Divorce, provides loads of short chapters that address many of the vagaries of divorce.

Gadoua gives us a description of the problem, and then how to fix it. For example, in the enemy inside, she points out that that negative thinking in the form of regrets may be accurate, but dwelling in that house of pain serves no one. Each chapter has some combination of affirmation, journaling suggestion and meditation. The affirmation is: I will have only constructive thoughts about my marriage and myself. I know, I know. Good luck with that, right? But think of it as aspirational. The journaling suggestion is to write about what you will commit to do differently in the future. In the Planting Seeds chapter about the future, the meditation suggestion is to spend some time envisioning how your new life will feel.

I firmly believe that we each go through the post-divorce period in our own unique way and on our own schedule. I like the idea of having a book that brings together lots of different suggestions and addresses lots of issues so that you can pick and choose what you need at any given time. If you don’t know what you need at any given moment, you just read a chapter and see if you can use it. The book is all about doing, which is a really useful way to become your own best friend.

Just for grins: Me, Myself and I, Beyonce