12 Coping Skills You've Discovered In The Last Year That Can Sustain You For Life

Divorce is its own kind of trauma. Any new coping skills you've picked up to help you cope with COVID will also be helpful in dealing with your personal crisis. This is the start of a piece I wrote about the skills you may have discovered...

There is considerable research in psychology to suggest that after a trauma we can come back stronger than before. We can become more resilient. 

Tragedy can prompt the development of new coping skills.

This can be the case with the Coronavirus pandemic. The difficult times called for new habits in order to keep yourself, your family, and your mental health safe.

Have you developed any new and positive habits during Covid? You can decide to keep these new behaviors as you move through 2021 and beyond.

The virus didn't vanish on January 1^st, but we're edging closer, so deciding on your intentions post-pandemic will help you maintain those healthy routines.

Here are 12 examples of some coping skills you may have developed and should definitely keep doing.

1. You exercise and go outside more.

A combination of not having much to do and wanting to get out of the house yielded a huge crop of new walkers, runners, and cyclists.

Like the seesaw diet, it could be a situation where once things return to their new normal, you ditch your new habits. It doesn't have to be that way.

Keep reading here...

How To Deal With (And Get OVER) The Roughest Times In Your Life

Dealing with divorce or surely one example of getting over the roughtest time in your life. Here's my latest piece on how to do that.

Life is not a bowl of cherries…it's more like the box of chocolates Forrest Gump's mother told him about…you never know what you're going to get.

Those chocolates you'd rather not be eating, they're what drive people to therapy. When I consider the issues people often bring to therapy…coping with a loss, a personal failure, an empty nest, a divorce…it seems like some bounce back much more quickly than others. What's the magic ingredient?

A new theory of adaptability suggests that diversifying your personal portfolio is a sustainable method of boosting your resilience to the ups and downs of life.

Do you know how your investment portfolio is supposed to be diversified? You have stocks, bonds, mutual funds, property and the like, some riskier than others. While you probably won't get rich quick, you will avoid taking a hard fall that totally wipes you out. A diversified portfolio makes your financial well-being more resilient to the ups and downs of the market.

There is evidence that expanding the number of roles, relationships and experiences in your life provides a kind of personal diversification that increases emotional resilience, that ability to bounce back, along with happiness and self-esteem.

Read more here...

When It Rains, It Pours: The Ups And Downs Of Life

Accidents, death and Robin Williams can teach you to turn heartbreak into optimism and action. 

As a self-employed member of the sandwich generation, no matter what happens, I have to try to keep working. In the last five days, my son broke his foot, my mother sprained her ankle and I learned that a colleague, 10 years younger than I, was killed in a car accident. And Robin William died. Talk about a downpour.

My son is halfway across the country, almost 21, and said I didn't need to come. He has his teammates, trainers, coaches, gf and her parents. This being the first week of soccer pre-season, it's heartbreaking. I hope he will learn more about coping with adversity and grow stronger for this experience.

There's nothing to be done about my colleague who was also halfway across the country. It's heartbreaking but it reminds me that life is short and I must try even harder to use my time wisely. 

Read more here...

 

Post-Divorce Post-Infidelity Recovery Skills

In addition to coping with the post-divorce period, you may also be coping with the aftermath of infidelity and affairs in your relationship. Speed up your recovery from infidelity using self-care, resilience and optimism.

See my post on YourTango.

Happy listening with I'm Better Than I Used To Be, Tim McGraw

You Gotta Have Heart Post-Divorce

There's no magic to running far or climbing Everest. Endurance is mental strength. It's all about heart.  Bear Grylls, Adventurer

When you suffer a loss, it’s really difficult to see that you’re going to feel better.  It may not be tomorrow, or next week, and it may not even be next month, but at some point, if you keep going, you will feel better.  You will get to the top of the mountain if you have the heart.  In fact, if you really notice how you feel on a regular basis, you’ll notice that some minute, or hours, you actually feel better right now.

Normal mood fluctuates.  No one feels great every minute or terrible every minute.  So even when you’re down and out, your kid does something funny, you watch a funny scene in a movie, you have a good run or swim or conversation…these things make us feel good, and better than we did the moment before they happened.  You’re not on the summit, but there’s progress and you can start to take heart that you’re making it.  You have to notice those good moments.

In the beginning, those good feelings don’t last quite long enough to feel representative of a real cure.  Those good moments don’t seem to add up to a day.  Maybe they don’t even add up to an hour.  But noticing the good feelings and putting them together in a string of happy moments can start to add up to a solid amount of time if you have the heart for it.  One day you notice you had a good morning.  Soon, it’s a good day.  After awhile, you’re having good days, then weeks.  You are almost at the peak.

I’m suggesting that you make a point to notice:

• the moments that feel better
• the things that make you feel better
• the progress you’re making
• the increasing amount of good times

All you really need is heart.

You gotta have hope, musn’t sit around and mope

You’ve Gotta Have Heart, Damn Yankees

The Post-Divorce Quest: Birdwatching

If you’re considering a post-divorce hobby, birdwatching may not come immediately to mind.  But we’re not talking about just watching birds, we’re talking about having a big year, i.e., a year in which you see more bird species than anybody else.  In the world.

As the author, Mark Obmascik, told the interviewer, it was a great escape.  “I walk into a woods and my regular life just fades away.”  All of which totally makes me want to read his book, The big year, and learn about his quest.  Stories of others successfully mastering an experience are so helpful, like How to sleep alone and Eat, pray, love.

When you want to do something new, whether it’s writing a book or starting a new post-divorce life, learning how others were able to do it is a great way to begin your quest.  Talking with people who’ve done it, which is basically what support groups are all about, is fantastic.  Being a bookworm myself, reading about it is just as good for me.  Not surprisingly, when I decided to start a coaching practice post-divorce as one quest, Therapist as life coach was a great book for me.  Movies work too.

It’s time to decide on your quest if you haven’t already, and then get some almost-free advice.

Going up the country, Canned Heat

Post-Divorce Myths

There are myths about everything:  depression, marriage, divorce.  But I couldn’t find many post-divorce myths.  So yours truly is going to attempt to right this wrong.

Myths I did find:

Blended families are all like the Brady bunch

Your new partner should love your kids like their own

Step-parents should be equal disciplinarians

Love conquers all problems you and your new mate may experience with the kids

We’ll all get along better now that we’re divorced

My additional myths:

No blended family is like the Brady bunch

Your new partner will not love your kids like their own

Step-parents should not be equal disciplinarians

Love will not conquer all problems you and your new mate may experience with the kids

We will not all get along better now that we’re divorced

My point:

Every family and situation is unique.  Of course all blended families are not like the Brady bunch.  Hell, most non-blended families are not like the Brady bunch.  Some partners will not love your kids anywhere near the way they love their own, but some will.  Some of you will get along a whole lot better after the divorce.  Why?

In addition to demographics like age of kids, age of parents, financial and employment situations, and the like, there are other things that make a difference.  Social support, good stress management strategies, forgiveness, gratitude and a lot of other qualities are going to affect your outcomes.  So try to focus on the things you can change, and have the wisdom to know the things you can’t change.  Final myth: you will be miserable forever.  Truth:  divorce won’t kill you, but it will make you stronger. 

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.  George Orwell

The Post-Divorce Marathon

Instead of focusing on all the things I can't control, I am enjoying the moments in front of me. The marathon is going to be an amazing journey and I get the chance to write the ending.

Shalane Flanagan, Marathoner

Call it grit, perseverance or resilience. Post-divorce, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time to bounce back from the stress and changes. There are some things that help:

*Chose your goals. It may be running 26 miles, changing jobs, getting out more or learning to play the violin. Whatever your goals, make sure they’re attainable and challenging, and that you can feel passionate about them.

*Balance past, present and future orientation. Learn from the past but don’t dwell on the mile you could have finished faster. Savor your present successes; notice how good they feel and how well you’re doing. Look toward the future, striving to make needed changes and attain goals. Don’t spend too much time anyplace but the present.

*Call in the pacers. Friends and family help us work toward goals and enjoy the present. They can help us find the tools we need to get where we’re going and support us to the finish line. Learn from those who were successful and ask for what you need.

*Dedicate yourself. You don’t finish a marathon by chance. You have to be committed to running through pain and continuing when the ultimate goal just a faint memory. It’s the same post-divorce. Be committed to yourself and your future. Even when it gets tough, keep your eye on the finish line.

I’m not saying you have to run 26 miles. I’m simply suggesting you look toward writing your own happy ending.

The Distance. Cake

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Sometimes it seems like things are never going to get better post-divorce. I started reading memoirs as a way of trying to understand how some people are able to move on in life, while others get stuck. The scientist in me knows that one case does not a finding make, but the creative in me believes that one can learn so much from a single example. I’m so encouraged by people who are able to overcome the extremes of suffering and loss. I loved An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination¸ Elizabeth McCracken’s brilliant memoir of loss and recovery. Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking, is another example.

What can you do? If you can’t see the light:

Read a memoir.
Read a novel (old, Anna Karenina or new, One Day).
Read self-help (old, Reinventing your Life, or new, The How of Happiness).
Confide in a close friend.
Confide in a not so close friend.
Go to a museum.
Watch a funny movie (old, Groundhog Day, new, Date Night).
Watch an action movie (old, The Terminator, new, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).
Watch a movie sadder than your life (old, Saving Private Ryan, new, The Reader).
Write a novel,a blog, a journal or your memoir.
Come up with something that fits you and leave a comment about it below.

Just don’t join the hoards of people who curl up and give up. Instead, look for that light at the end of the tunnel. If you need help, get a coach or a therapist. Or…

Contact me to attend a free 2-session teleseminar, Move Into Post-Divorce Life. Enjoy the Journey.

Post-Divorce Lesson: Pain is Inevitable, But Misery is Optional

Leave it to AA to pick up on the Buddhist approach to life. I’m taken with songs, websites and books that address the pain of separation and divorce, yet also inject a wonderful dose of humor, demonstrating that misery is, indeed, optional. Pray for You is my current fav. Despite the hope that

All your dreams never come true

surely,

I pray you pass out drunk with your best friend
And wake up with his and her tattoos

was not meant to be serious.

Another example is my ex wife’s wedding dress. After his wife of 12 years left him in pain, this entertaining blogger couldn't help but notice that a single item remained in her section of our closet, her wedding dress. And he set out to identify 101 clever and amusing uses for it.

So what I’m saying here is that perhaps we don’t have to take ourselves and our pain so seriously. After all, the research does show that trauma results in coping and resilience. So it’s not all bad. You have to have some adversity to give you the strength to handle problems that will invariably come your way. And sometimes it’s the pain that pushes you to change in positive ways.

As the Dalai Lama said:

Happiness is not something ready made.
It comes from your own actions.

So maybe creating a website or writing a song are not the ways you might move on, but perhaps journaling, working out or something else new is on your path to happiness.

For fun: Pray for You. Jaron and the Long Road to Love