6 Self-Care Tips When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed By Divorce

Posted on by stilllearning2b
overwhelmed

These aren’t magic elixirs that will suddenly make everything okay, but these six strategies can help you cope while divorce seems intent on bringing you down:

 

1 – Limit the Time Spent With People Who Exhaust You

It doesn’t matter if it’s your mother or your neighbor, when you’re feeling flattened by divorce, it’s okay to limit your exposure to people that you find emotionally draining. It’s okay to not answer your phone. It’s okay to come up with an excuse why you can’t make the weekly dinner this Friday. It’s okay to duck behind the couch when the doorbell rings.

Right now, you need to take care of you and if that means keeping others at arm’s length for a time, so be it.

 

2 – Say “No” to Unnecessary Obligations

Maybe you’ve always been the one to organize the neighborhood Halloween party or spearhead the new campaigns at work. Perhaps your friends are accustomed to asking you to help shuttle the children around or you are the family “go to” when discord arises.

Their expectations and your past history do not mean that you have to continue those things. This is a time to pare down, to simplify. Say “no” to those burdens that can be pushed off, ignored or delegated. You’re not helping anyone if you spread yourself so thin that you begin to disappear.

 

3 – Cut Yourself Some Slack

You are not going to operating at your normal levels of functioning right now and that. is. okay. Consider this like recovering from a major illness. You’re not going to go straight from the sick room to the starting line of a marathon. Likewise, don’t expect to leave divorce court and immediately be operating at peak capacity.

This is a perfect time to adjust your expectations. Let some things slide. Prioritize where you spend your energy. And, most importantly, forgive yourself for your mistakes and your shortcomings. You will return to your normal bad-ass self again. In the meantime, it’s okay if you’re just managing to get your ass out of bed.

 

4 – Set Yourself Up For Sleep Success

The hours between sunset and sunrise somehow manage to feel twice as long and three times as lonely when you’re struggling. You can make the nights a little more bearable by priming the pump for a calmer mind. Explore trying vigorous exercise at night to exhaust the body. Try instituting a ban on any divorce or ex-related tasks for the 2-3 hours before you retire. Make sure your bedroom feels like a comfortable space with no visible emotional reminders. Lose yourself in a story by watching, reading or listening before you retire.

If you wake up in the middle of the night and find that your nightmares have traveled with you, make an effort to interrupt your thoughts. Try an engrossing puzzle, take out your journal or even just take a bath or shower to help your mind shift gears.

 

5 – Incorporate Daily Movement

When we’re exhausted, we often think that what we need is to stop. Yet too much time in a still body makes the mind quite the active wanderer. Make a vow with yourself to move every day. Go for a walk before dinner or try some morning yoga. If you like being around people, use this as an excuse to join a team or group exercise class.

On those days when you just don’t feel like it, tell yourself you’re going to give it 5 minutes and that you have permission to stop at that point if you want. More often than not, once you begin moving, you’ll want to keep moving.

 

6 – Ask For Specific Help

People want to help. But first, they need to know that you want help and then, they need to know what sort of assistance they can offer. So tell them. I know it feels weird and maybe even shameful to admit that you can’t do it alone. Yet that’s more an internal dialog than an external truth. After all, when you offer assistance to a friend in a rough patch, are you secretly judging them or are you just happy that there is something you can do?

Ask for what you need, whether it be picking up your dry cleaning to an evening phone call to help keep the loneliness at bay. It’s amazing how freeing just a small bit of help can be when your plate is both overflowing and collapsing.

 

The way you feel right now is not the way you’ll always feel. What works for you today may no longer be appropriate tomorrow. Reevaluate your self-care strategies every 6-8 weeks and be ready to modify them as needed until that day comes when instead of feeling overwhelmed, you’re feeling energized and ready for the next step.

 

Surrender

Posted on by stilllearning2b

As Hurricane Irma made its first advances into Georgia, I took advantage of a day off school to take in a morning yoga class. The energy in the class was one of nervousness. We all – locals and Florida refugees alike – were stuck in waiting mode, wondering what was to come.

The instructor started off class telling a story about how his children had their hearts set on a kitten. And he had his heart set on maintaining a clean and orderly home. Yet, since his love for his children was greater than his love for order and cleanliness, he agreed to adopting a kitten.

At the Humane Society, the kids fell in love with one cat. And then with a second. The clean and kitten-less home was about to be invaded by the impishness and unpredictability of two young felines.

The instructor shared that his only option was to surrender, to release control over every aspect of the household and to trust in the outcome. He continued to make that the intention for the entire class with reminders for us to trust as we leaned back into balance poses and suggestions to give up the hold, and release into our hips as we folded forward.

I kept that message in mind as the winds picked up and the seven-story trees around the house began to arc to the ground, as though they themselves were attempting to practice yoga. One branch finally surrendered to the force, slamming down onto our fence.

We were lucky; that was our only damage.

Others were not so lucky. Trees are down all over the metro area and power has become the most coveted resource in town.

Natural disasters have a way of reminding us about the limitations of our control. We’re so used to shaping nature to meet our needs – we move rivers, blast through mountains and think nothing of growing gabs in the desert. We are lulled into thinking we are the architects of our domain.

Until we are reminded otherwise.

We’re good at fighting. Excellent at controlling. Experienced at directing.

But often what the situation calls for is something else entirely –

The letting go, the faith, of surrender.

 

A Much-Needed Feel Good Moment

Posted on by stilllearning2b

We were watching football at the local sports bar (go Ravens!) when the urgent Nextdoor memo came through –

“Emergency pet shelter being established [just down the street from me]. In desperate need of blankets, towels and stainless steel bowls.”

After the game, we made a quick stop at Marshall’s so that I could pick up some towels to donate. As soon as we approached the former Home Depot where the animals will be received shortly, tears filled my eyes. The line of cars donating goods kept streaming into the parking lot. The open warehouse had a huge pile of crates,  enormous mountains of blankets and stacks of bowls. All within hours of the call for help.

Yesterday, I came across stories of the shitheads who abandon their animals. Today, I was reminded that shitheadery is the rarity and that most people step up and help those who need it.

And today, that sign of how much people do care was overwhelming. And I hope that when those frightened dogs and cats arrive later this evening, they can feel safe and loved in their temporary home.

Why We Struggle to Believe Things Can Be Different

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I recently turned (gulp!) forty. Something about those milestone birthstone birthdays encourages reflection.

So I found myself thinking back to my thirtieth birthday…

Ten years ago, I awoke with the determination to learn to run a mile. My first efforts were pitiful, as I barely managed to cover a quarter of my goal. But it felt good to try, like I was giving aging the finger. My birthday gift that year was an assortment of running clothes to aid in my new goal.

Later that evening, I enjoyed a birthday dinner with my then-husband. I was completely in love and completely unaware of the duplicitous life he was leading. Ten years ago, I was finally feeling competent at my job and happy with my position teaching gifted and accelerated math.

At thirty, I reflected back on my twenties, to getting married, moving across the country and starting my career. My twenties had been a time of growth and change; and at thirty, I felt like I had arrived. I felt like I had done my evolving and that I could, with relative certainty, envision how I would be going forward.

And now at forty, I look back at the changes I’ve made over the last decade and it makes my head spin. Far from my expectations of my personal evolution slowing, my thirties were a time of incredible – and incredibly challenging – change.

That first quarter-mile run morphed into a completed marathon a few years later. That fabrication of a husband simultaneously destroyed me and resurrected me. After a few years of navigating a new system, I found myself back in an accelerated math teaching position.

My thirties were a period of destruction and rebuilding. Of losing one love and finding an even better one. Of impossible goals and painful journeys.

I hardly relate to the woman I was at thirty. She almost seems like a former friend. Her name has changed, her outlook is different and even the results of personality inventories have morphed. The changes have been so drastic and so complete, it’s difficult to comprehend.

And now at forty, I feel like I have arrived. Like my period of growth and change is over and now, with relative certainty, I can envision how I will be going forward.

Even though I can be almost guaranteed that I will feel the same way a decade from now.

In fact, research has shown that people inevitably underestimate how much they will change even into their eighties, continually expressing that now they have become truly the person they were meant to be.

It’s easy to look back and see the evolution, but it’s difficult to imagine that transformation continuing forward.

When we try to envision our futures, we rely heavily on our pasts and our present. It’s as though we’re trying to create a new painting using scraps of the old canvas. We can imagine some change, but we struggle to accept that everything could end up different than it is today.

On the one hand, it’s scary to think that we are always evolving, always becoming. That any feeling of “making it” will always be fleeting. Yet the realization is also exciting. Our futures may be unknown, but they are also unbound.

I just hope that my next decade has a little less drama than the previous one…

 

 

How Hope Works For You…And Against You

Posted on by stilllearning2b

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.”

Desmond Tutu

There was a time when hope was all I had. Everything around me was in tatters and in its destruction, all that I had believed and loved for years was called into question. I clung to hope like a drowning man clutches a life raft. I had to believe that the darkness and despair were not absolute and that there was a way out of the ruination that surrounded me.

That hope became a beacon, a guiding light. It allowed me to wake with purpose and whispered me to sleep with comforting thoughts. Hope became a reason to keep going, a motivator and an influencer. Hope shone its light on the underside of the pain, helping to illuminate the gifts hidden within.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hope says that the now is not always. Hope tells us that tomorrow can always be better and that we can overcome the obstacles in our path. Hope gives us a reason to try harder and a provides a purpose to the pain. Hope tells us it’s not over and assures us that we can rise above our challenges.

Hope takes the long view, projects the big picture. Hope takes us out of ourselves and into the greater connected world. Without hope, individuals would not survive unsurvivable odds. Without hope, humanity would not tackle insurmountable odds. And without hope, there would be no reason to try again.

Continued hope in the face of the seemingly impossible is perhaps one of mankind’s greatest traits. For without hope, no great achievement can ever be reached.

“Hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.”

Sir Francis Bacon

Perhaps the best repercussion of the way my first marriage ended is that any sort of reconciliation was completely and utterly hopeless. I had no choice but to accept that the marriage was over and that my husband was (and would remain) a virtual stranger.

Most do not have this luxury. I speak with so many people who are grasping onto hope that their partner will change. They see the potential in the person and they stay and continue to exert effort in the hope that the potential will be reached. And even when reality is saying otherwise, they are listening to their hope.

In this case, hope becomes more of a shackle than a beacon when it is applied to controlling the uncontrollable. It can be the reason people stay in abusive relationships, order invasive and fruitless medical interventions or even just believe that somehow their financial problems will resolve.

“Hope is a beautiful thing. It gives us peace and strength, and keeps us going when all seems lost. Accepting what you cannot change doesn’t mean you have given up on hope. It just means you have to focus your hope on more humanly tangible and attainable goals.”

Julie Donner Andersen

Hope on its own is based on the fiction of dreams. It works best when it is anchored in the acceptance of reality. Yet, irrational hope is at the root of so many miracles, from the irreversible brain damage that heals to the shipwreck survivor that endures weeks afloat at sea. If those people limited themselves to the facts, they would not have made it through.

Sometimes the impossible happens because somebody dared to believe that it could.

Yet one thing is certain , no matter where your hope is focused and how reality-based it is, it only works if you do. Hope without action is just a wish.