Posts by Dr. Karen Finn
Have A Great Online Dating Experience
Dating after divorce can be confusing. After all, it’s probably been a while since you last dated and things have CHANGED since then.
One of the biggest changes in dating over the last 10-15 years is the number of people who use online dating services. Did you know there are even websites dedicated to letting you know who the top online dating services are? These services are a BIG business and it’s OK to use them. When my clients decide to start dating, most of them use an online dating service or two. Heck I even used one to meet my 2nd (and current) husband.
Online dating, just like any other kind of dating, is terrific IF you’re aware of these three pitfalls.
The first pitfall is lack of safety. I’ve heard stories from both men and women about some positively scary situations they found themselves in when they met a date. Here are some key things you can do to be a bit safer when you date online:
When you’re using an online dating service, be careful of your identity. Don’t use your full name on your profile that’s open to the public.
Ask the other person for their number, don’t freely give yours away. It’s OK to block your number and make your first call(s) anonymously.
For heaven’s sake, DON’T give someone you’ve never met your address to come pick you up. When you’re ready to meet someone, arrange to meet them someplace public. Park someplace where there are lots of others coming and going. It’s also a good idea to let someone know someone know where you are going to be meeting your date and have them call if they haven’t heard from you in a couple of hours.
The second pitfall is looking for a spouse instead of learning to date. One of the most common things I see people do when they’re starting to date again is to focus on finding a spouse instead of focusing on dating. There’s a big difference between the two!
When you focus on finding a spouse, going out becomes a lot more serious, a lot more intense. You might even start to worry about how many dates you go on before you decide if you want to be serious with this person. Sometimes you don’t go out with more than one person at a time because you want to make sure you give the current person the benefit of the doubt.
When you’re focused on dating, the whole thing is a bit more casual. There’s less stress and pressure to impress and more emphasis on figuring out whether or not you’re enjoying yourself. Focusing on dating is a great way to learn what you do and don’t like about others and yourself when you’re around them. This knowledge will allow you to move on when it’s right for you. One important point here is that you need to be up-front with the people you’re dating to let them know where you’re coming from and so they don’t get the wrong idea about your intentions.
The third pitfall is thinking you must respond and/or date everyone who contacts you. You have no responsibility to the people who reach out to you. You don’t have to respond to everyone and you definitely don’t have to go out with all of them either. You deserve to be picky about who you spend your time on and with. Your time and how you spend it is how you create your life, so be picky about whom you spend time with!
I want you to think of dating as cultivating friends and learning about yourself. Most people aren’t ready to get into another serious relationship right after they get divorced. They need some time to rediscover themselves and figure out what they do and don’t like about other people. That means going out with other people to have fun.
Dating is supposed to be fun and using the online services can be a great way to meet some amazing people. Just be sure to avoid the pitfalls!
Your Online Dating Assignment:
Do some research. There really are a lot of sites out there to help you meet people to date. Each site has its own personality. Check out a few and decide which site or sites best fit you.
Be open to learning about yourself. The dating experience should be fun and put you and your date in new situations that will allow you both to learn about yourselves and each other. Successful dating requires that you be ready to learn stuff about yourself without the expectation that you or your date be perfect.
Are you ready to date? OK, this probably should have been the first step of the assignment, but I saved it to last so you’d be sure to see it. There’s no rule about when you’re ready to date, but generally, you want to be through the worst of the emotional part of your divorce. If you’re curious to know where you are on the continuum of being through with the emotional part of your divorce you need to check out the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale (FDAS) at http://drkarenfinn.com/work-with-me/how-long-does-it-take-to-recover-from-divorce
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and advisor helping people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. If you’re interested in taking the first step toward working with me, you can schedule an introductory private coaching session.
If you’re looking for more help on how to deal with your life now, read more articles about Life After Divorce.
Step 1 For Finding Me-Time In Your Busy Day: Set Timer For 5 Minutes
Isn’t it easy to get caught up in everything that’s going on and demanding our attention? There’s work, our family and friends, our community activities, our health, chores, TV and the internet. PLUS the divorce! It’s all clamoring for attention RIGHT NOW! Wouldn’t it be great to be able to stop the world for a moment and regroup?
Well, stopping the world for just a moment is EXACTLY what I believe you should get in the habit of doing every day. Sounds like a dream, right? OK, so no one can truly stop the world, but you can certainly stop participating in everything for just a few minutes every day. My recommendation is that you take at least 5 minutes every day for “me time”.
The benefits of regular me-time are amazing! They include a reduction in stress, the ability to think more clearly, seeing the “big picture”, and increased energy.
Here’s what you’ll need to be able to stop the world and get your own “me time”: a timer, a comfortable place to sit, and an agreement with everyone else that you are not to be disturbed for 5 minutes.
Step 1: set timer for 5 minutes. Yes, seriously! Set the timer so you can relax knowing you won’t lose track of time.
Step 2: Get comfortable where you’re sitting and close your eyes. Grab a pillow. Curl your legs up underneath you. Pull a blanket over you so you feel cozy. Do whatever you need to do to feel comfortable.
Step 3: Take a deep breath in, hold it for a second and then s-l-o-w-l-y exhale. Notice that while you are exhaling, your shoulders loosen up a bit. Keeping your eyes closed; continue your deep breathing until the timer sounds.
Step 4: Slowly open your eyes, when the timer sounds. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Let yourself re-orient to your surroundings and enjoy how relaxed you’re feeling. Now, go ahead and turn off the timer and let the world start up again.
Your Friendly Coaching Assignment:
Schedule 5 minutes of me-time in the next 24 hours. I find that most people are so used to doing what they believe has to be done for everyone else, that it can be hard to find even 5 minutes to take care of themselves. That’s why this step is so important. Decide when you have 5 minutes that you can dedicate to taking care of you and schedule it into your day.
Keep your appointment with yourself. In order for you to get the benefits of your me-time, you’ve actually got to do it. So, once you get the time scheduled, take the 5 minutes to recharge. I bet you’ll be happy you did!
Do it! The more consistently you give yourself the gift of me-time the easier you’ll find it is to handle all the twists and turns and demands for attention that pop up in your life.
If you’d like more do-able ideas for creating more me-time in your life, give me a call at 817-993-0561 so we can schedule a Complimentary Consultation and together we’ll figure out a way for you to have more me-time.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach helping people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice or schedule a private consultation with me.
A Divorce Party?
We do a lot of celebrating to commemorate important milestones in life. We celebrate births with birthdays. We celebrate completion of educational milestones with graduations. We celebrate marriages with weddings and showers and engagement parties. We even celebrate a person’s life after their gone with funerals and memorial services.
We have these celebrations to acknowledge the completion of one thing and the beginning of another. Everyone knows how to help the person who has achieved the milestone to move on to the next phase of their life because of our societal training.
But what about divorce? Divorce is an important milestone for almost half of married couples and we don’t know how to deal with it as a society. This lack of societal acknowledgement of divorce and a knowledge of how to help the person who has reached this milestone makes the transition from divorced to married all the more difficult for many people.
If we take our cues from TV and the movies, when people get divorced they need to hate each other for the rest of their lives and that the legal part of divorce will be extremely contentious and have to be heard by a jury. In reality, this is rarely the case. Sure divorce hurts – it hurts a lot, but it doesn’t have to ruin the rest of your life by having to expend all that energy and time hating your ex.
Divorce is a relatively short phase of life for most people. It’s a transition point just like a birthday, completing high school, having children and getting married. After the transition, your life is different – usually better. Because divorce is a transition just like so many others in life, why not have a divorce party?
A divorce party can be a happy or a somber occasion. Heck, it can be anything you’d like.
I know some people who commemorate their divorce with a divorce party much like a wedding shower. Their friends get together and bring gifts that will help them set up a new household for themselves.
Other people mark their divorce with a great big celebration.
You might choose to celebrate your divorce with something more low key. Getting together with some friends and talk about the good times that were and the better times that are coming.
Or maybe holding a funeral for the marriage will help you with the grief that is a natural part of divorce.
You might even choose to flush a toilet for your divorce like some people in Japan do. (I’m not kidding! – here’s a link to the article that claims people in Japan have a toilet for divorce)
There are all kinds of different ways you can welcome in the new phase of your life – being re-singled. It might be with a celebration or with a more somber acknowledgement. It might even be with a series of events for each milestone you achieve during your divorce process. Whether you choose one event or many doesn’t matter as much as what each event represents to you – which I hope is a new beginning.
Your Functional Divorce Assignment:
What phase of your transition from married to re-singled are you needing to commemorate? There are all kinds of things, big and little, that can be acknowledged during divorce – filing the initial paperwork, moving out, your first weekend without the kids, your first date. What’s going on for you that you need to mark as a new beginning?
Which of the article’s suggestions for celebrating the next phase of your life sound best to you? Choosing one of the suggestions is only the starting point. You can change things up to be exactly what you need.
Schedule your event and send out the invitations. An event isn’t really an event if you’re having it all by yourself. Invite the people who will help you move forward to the next phase of your life.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach helping people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice or schedule a private consultation with me.
The Rust Of Life And Divorce
Last week, one of my dear friends sent me a message. He sends messages just about every day to his friends to inspire and comfort. Jon’s one of those guys with a really big heart who knows how to make sure his friends really feel how much he cares for them.
This one message he sent to me last week really got me to thinking. It read, “…doubt is the rust of life. Doubt holds you landlocked in paralysis unable to move either way. The time you spent doubting is the time you are not alive. So, rid yourself of the doubt, take that step one way or another, your heart knows what is best, but take it right now.”
What an incredible message! It was like Jon had looked right at me and told me exactly what I needed to hear and what I knew I needed to share with you.
Doubt is one of the major immobilizing emotions of divorce. Uncertainty comes in all kinds of different shapes and sizes during divorce. There’s doubt about whether or not the decision to divorce is the right one, there’s doubt about how to best help the kids understand the divorce, there’s doubt about what life will be like during and after the legal proceedings and fees along with all kinds of other self-doubts.
The doubts that come with divorce are usually an indication of fear and a need to reconcile your previous way of life or doing things with the way things are or even could be in the future. It’s normal to have doubts and fears when your life changes dramatically. However, they can also become debilitating and that’s definitely something to avoid.
Instead, doubts are best used as a way to become aware that there’s something deeper to be explored and brought out to the light. One of the quickest ways I know to allow yourself to bring that something deeper up to the surface is through a thoughtful relaxation exercise. I’ll share the exercise with you in Your Functional Divorce Assignment.
Your Functional Divorce Assignment:
Sit in a comfortable chair with your feet flat on the ground. Take a deep breath in. As you exhale, start to imagine all the stress and strain from your body draining out. Draining from the top of your head, down through you neck, your torso, your legs and out through the bottom of your feet deep, deep into the ground.
Continue breathing deeply. Every time you exhale imagine more of the stress and strain in your body draining out through the bottoms of your feet deep, deep into the ground.
Enjoy the sensation of your body beginning to relax. Your neck and shoulders are loosening up. You’re sitting deeper into the chair and your entire body is relaxed as the stress and strain continue to drain out of your body.
When you’re feeling calm and relaxed, gently ask yourself about your doubt and what decision you need to make. As you remain relaxed, an answer to your question will emerge. It may or may not be the answer you were expecting, but you will have an answer that you can move forward with to dispel your doubt.
I know doing this technique on your own can be a bit challenging. So, if you’re serious about wanting to dispel your doubt and would like some help, let me know. You can reach me by email at karen@drkarenfinn.com and by phone at 817-993-0561.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach helping people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice or schedule a private consultation with me.
Wrapping Up 2012
Most of us tend to be forward thinkers. We’re always looking at what’s next. As soon as we finish one thing, we rarely take the time to savor our success before we’re off to the next task or adventure.
This time of year, most Americans are gung-ho about their New Year’s resolutions before the struggling of achieving them sets in over the next few days.
One of the best ways to build the strength and determination to achieve your New Year’s resolutions is to build your belief in yourself by spending a little time reviewing all the good things that happened in 2012 – especially those things that help you know you can achieve your resolutions.
When you’re going through divorce, it’s especially important that you take time out to savor the good things. For most people, divorce has a way of coloring things with a more negative cast. The thing is there are usually good things that happened during the past year too. It’s worth the time to find and appreciate them so your world view can be a bit rosier and happier.
When I review all the things I’ve done, accomplished, and experienced in the previous year, I’m always amazed at how much good stuff I packed into the year! It takes me a couple hours to review my calendar, my business results, photos, my facebook wall posts, and my tweets for the previous year. Besides allowing me the time to appreciate my family, friends, business associates and clients, my year-end review helps me to prepare for the coming year and set more realistic resolutions for the New Year.
Your Functional Divorce Assignment:
Make your year-end review a priority and schedule a couple of hours for it. Once a year, it’s totally worth taking this time for yourself to review where you’ve been and see where you’d like to go.
Gather together your calendar, pictures and anything else that will help you remember all the good stuff from 2012. You may be like me and want to check out your facebook wall too!
Keep your appointment with yourself. Enjoy reviewing all the wonderful things that you got to do, see, and accomplish in 2012. Use the oomph you get from this to help you set and accomplish the resolutions you’ve made for yourself.
Schedule more time if you need it. I find that sometimes people need a bit more time to get through their year-end review when they’re going through divorce. Sometimes the review can trigger some other emotions that need to be worked through. If that happens to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Allow yourself the time you need to process your thoughts and feelings and then get back to enjoying the good things.
If you’re ready for an outside perspective and ready to get the help you deserve to make 2013 your best yet, reach out to me by email at karen@functionaldivorce.com or by phone at 817-993-0561. We can schedule a Complimentary Consultation to help you put your plans in place for making 2013 your best year yet!
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and advisor helping people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. If you’re interested in taking the first step toward working with me, you can schedule an introductory private coaching session.
Flexibility: It’s About More Than Just Muscles
Life changes a lot when you separate and divorce. Things that used to be a regular part of life just aren’t anymore. And when things change in unexpected ways, we can get scared, frustrated and angry.
When clients begin working with me, they’re usually experiencing some combination of fear, frustration and anger. One of the first things we do is dive into what’s behind or at the root of these emotions. What we usually discover on our deep dive are limits that have been disregarded in some way. The limits could be behaviors, expectations, thoughts, beliefs or even habits.
The identification of your personal limits is a critical part of restructuring your life during and after divorce.
Some people are quite adept at identifying their limits – what they can and can’t do, what they think and why they think it, what they expect and why they expect it and what their habits of thought, belief, response and action are.
Others aren’t as aware of their limits. They aren’t quite sure of what their limits are or even if they want to know because they do and think what others tell them to.
And then there are people everywhere in between these two extremes.
Regardless of your starting point, I think knowing and understanding your limits is one of the key pieces to successfully navigating divorce. Your limits can help you understand what’s truly important to you as you negotiate your settlement. And knowing your limits will even allow you to ask for help and support when you need it.
Your limits will be tested, pushed, prodded, and beat against before, during, and after your separation and divorce. Who’s doing all this “exploring”? EVERYONE. Or at least it will probably feel that way. However, the chief “explorers” are usually your soon-to-be-ex and you. I’ll bet you already get how your soon-to-be-ex figures in here, but did you expect to also be one the chief “explorers”? The thing is that by virtue of going through the divorce process you’re asking yourself to completely redefine what your life is like. And anytime you or anyone else changes it’s a matter of testing and exploring previous limits.
I know all the testing, pushing, prodding, and beating against limits is at a minimum uncomfortable and at worst excruciating. However, the payoff is either an adjustment or a reaffirming of your limits along with, ideally, improved ways of communicating them to yourself and others. With your new limits you’re most often better off than you were with your old limits. Kinda like that old adage – what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
Great, right? There’s going to be some struggle and then things will be better. UGH! There’s nothing there about how to make the transition from married to divorce easier! And here’s where I’m going to tell you that the way to make things easier is to be flexible and loving while you’re exploring your limits so you can adjust and evaluate them by choice instead of by force.
By allowing yourself to be flexible as you explore your limits you’ll be much more able to understand and choose what to do with your limits and your life as you move forward through your divorce process. The flexibility will also allow you to negotiate from a more confident spot because you’ll be able to more easily see the options available to you. Developing the ability to be flexible will help you now as you’re navigating your divorce, but throughout your life.
Your Functional Divorce Assignment:
Know your limits. As you’re proceeding through your separation and divorce process take note of your limits. You’ll probably become aware of them most easily when you’re experiencing a strong emotion.
Explore your limits. Once you’ve identified a limit, ask yourself questions like “How did I develop this limit?”, “What’s the benefit of this limit?”, and “What might adjusting this limit be like?” Take note of what you discover about yourself.
Adjust your limits. Exploring limits almost always gives you new ideas of how to be, act, and think. Take advantage of your discoveries and adjust your limits in ways that make you feel wonderful!
As always, I’m here if you need some help in increasing your flexibility. You can reach my by email at karen@functionaldivorce.com and by phone at 817-993-0561.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce coach and advisor helping people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice. And if you’re interested in taking the first step toward working with me, you can schedule an introductory private coaching session.
© 2012 Karen Finn. All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.
Small, Simple Things Can Make A BIG Difference
On Wednesday last week, I had a busy day planned. I had a breakfast meeting in one part of town immediately followed by a one-on-one meeting and a luncheon in a completely different part of town. Then I needed to head back to my office for a call with my coach and to get some other tasks done before heading out for my dinner plans.
My day got even busier than expected because I didn’t do the simple things I know I need to do to be at my best.
I’ve learned that I need to eat a substantial breakfast in the morning. If I don’t, I have a hard time thinking and moving. My body just doesn’t have the energy it needs to keep all systems working – at least that’s how I think of it – unless I feed myself well in the morning.
Well, my breakfast meeting was VERY light on the breakfast part. You might expect that I would take something with me just in case I needed something more for breakfast. And you’d be right! I did take something with me – a Clif bar.
Unfortunately, that Clif bar was the small, simple thing that wound up making a BIG difference in my day.
When my breakfast meeting ended I hopped in my car and gobbled up my Clif bar and headed to my next meeting. I wasn’t feeling my best because I didn’t have anywhere near as heavy a breakfast as I usually do, but I knew I could make it through until lunch without too much stomach rumbling.
The location of my one-on-one meeting and luncheon was in downtown Fort Worth and so I drove to a parking garage and starting making the slow left-hand turns to work my way up the levels of the garage until I could find a parking spot. I passed a few up because they were next to HUGE pick-up trucks and I just didn’t think I’d be able to fit my car into them.
Then, I found a GREAT spot! It was on an end with one of those yellow cement posts on one side and a small car on the other.
So I turned on my signal and started to pull in. CRUNCH! My stomach sank. I had hit the yellow cement post.
OK, I thought, if I pull out the same way I pulled in then it wouldn’t be too bad. I put my car in reverse and slowly pressed on the gas pedal. SCREECH!
Well, that didn’t work too well, so I thought maybe if I turn my wheels slightly and pull forward again, I’ll get off of the post. GRRRRRRRRRRRR THUMP! Yeah, that didn’t work too well either.
Luckily, with that GRRRRRRRRRRRR THUMP! I was FINALLY able to reposition my car so I could pull out of the space without any more damage.
I then started making my slow left turns again until I found a GREAT BIG spot to park in.
After getting safely situated in this new spot I turned off the ignition and sat for a moment trying to understand exactly what had happened. It took a moment and then it hit me. I hadn’t taken care of myself by doing the simple things I needed to do. I skipped my regular breakfast and wasn’t at my best. Because I wasn’t at my best, I was having difficulty thinking and moving (driving in this case) and I smashed up my car. As you can probably guess, it wasn’t one of my proudest moments, but it was another reminder that sometimes small, simple things can make a BIG difference.
One of the things I hear about regularly from my clients is that it can be hard to do the things they know they need to do to take care of themselves when they’re going through divorce. The divorce is just such a monumental change in their lives that it can seemingly be easier to skimp on or simply skip the things they need to do to be at their best. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I challenge them to rethink that just a bit and make the time they need to take care of themselves.
However, they don’t tell me all the subtle and simple ways they stop taking care of themselves because sometimes they’re not aware of it themselves. So, I often probe a bit deeper to help them figure out other ways they might make small, simple changes to take better care of themselves. In this week’s Your Functional Divorce Assignment I’m going to help you do the same.
Your Little Things Make A Big Difference Assignment:
Take a moment and think about which of the following you need to be at your best: adequate sleep, exercise, proper nutrition, fun, meaningful work, relaxation, great relationships with your kids, friends and family. For most people they need all of them. We all need to take care of our bodies by getting enough sleep, enough exercise and good food to eat. We all need to let our hair down to have some fun and relax. We all need to know that what we do matters. We all need to have meaningful relationships with others. This stuff is just part of being human.
Ideally, if I were to ask you to rate each of these on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being perfect and 1 being needs a bunch of work) you’d rate each of these as a 10. But, life isn’t like that – especially when you’re working through divorce. Go ahead and rate your sleep, your exercise, your nutrition, your fun, your work, your ability to relax and your relationships on a scale of 1-10.
For the one you rated the highest, celebrate it! It can be especially difficult to take care of yourself when you’re dealing with divorce and the fact that you’re doing great in at least one of these categories is wonderful!
For the one that rated the lowest, what one small, simple thing might you do to make a BIG difference? I know it can be difficult to come up with something sometimes, but it might be something as simple as it was for me – eat a big enough breakfast to be at my best. If after a few minutes you’re still having a difficult time and you really are committed to making the small, simple changes you know you need to make to more easily navigate through your divorce, reach out to me. Schedule a Complimentary Consultation. Together I’m confident we can identify what small, simple things you might do differently to make a BIG difference in your transition from married to single.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach. I help people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice or schedule a private consultation with me.
If you’re looking for more help recovering from your divorce, read more articles about Healing After Divorce.
Watch For Tax Angles In A Divorce Agreement
This week’s post is by Wendy Knutson, CPA.
If you’re getting a divorce, you’ll have to work through a variety of financial issues governed by prevailing state law. But don’t overlook the federal income tax implications. Advance planning can be critical in the following areas:
Alimony vs. child support. Generally, payments designated as alimony in a divorce decree are deductible by the payer and taxable to the recipient. But the opposite is true for child support; the payments can’t be deducted by the payer and are tax-free to the recipient. Make sure that the decree accurately reflects your intentions.
Filing status. If you divorce before year-end, you must file your 2012 federal income tax return as an unmarried individual. Depending on your situation, you may fare better or worse as an unmarried filer. For instance, joint filers could be hurt by the “marriage penalty” if the income of the spouses are relatively equal. In that case, it may be advantageous to finalize the divorce before year-end.
Dependency exemptions. Generally, the parent who has custody of young children for most of the year is the one entitled to dependency exemptions for the children. However, a noncustodial parent may claim the exemptions if the custodial parent signs a formal waiver.
Division of property. Property transferred incident to a divorce is tax-free to the recipient. The recipient’s basis and holding period are the same as they were for the ex-spouse. If you receive property in a divorce and then sell it, you must report the realized gain or loss on your tax return.
Other special tax rules may apply to the sale of a principal residence, IRA and retirement plan benefits, and life insurance policies. In summary: Seek expert tax guidance throughout the divorce proceedings to protect your financial welfare.
Your Functional Divorce Assignment:
If you’ve got questions about taxes, give a CPA a call.
How To Stop Negative Thoughts
Last week, I had a song stuck in my head for the whole week! Just about every time I tuned into my background thoughts, there it was taunting me.
After a couple days, I’d finally had enough and I got serious about changing the radio station my subconscious was listening to. I decided to start using some of the same techniques I teach my divorcing clients when their mind gets stuck on a race track of negative thoughts.
Here are the steps for how to stop negative thoughts:
First I tried asking myself why this song was playing virtually non-stop in my head. My answers were that it is a bizarrely catchy tune and that it is pretty popular right now. So I’m hearing this song a lot right now in the real world in addition to hearing it in my head.
Being repeatedly exposed to the song isn’t the best for kicking it out of my head, so my next question was how can I limit my exposure to the song? I thought about avoiding the TV, radio, internet and my family and friends, but that didn’t turn out to be too practical. So, what I did instead was tell my family and friends that I was having a hard time turning the song off in my head. I asked that they refrain from talking about or singing it around me. After teasing me for a little bit, they realized I was serious and stopped talking about the song around me. (They sang snippets of it for a while longer, but they eventually stopped that too.)
Unfortunately, the song was still playing in my head, so I needed to employ some more techniques for stopping negative thoughts. My next step was to change my focus each and every time I caught myself hearing the song in my head. To change my focus, I chose to laugh at myself and then think about my to-do list and what I was going to do next. Now I’ll admit that most people don’t look at a to-do list and think happy thoughts, but I do. I like being active and getting things I enjoy doing done. Since my to-do list has fun things on it too, it was an easy thing to happily change my focus to.
Luckily, this helped a lot! During my waking hours, I was able to gain more control over both the volume and frequency the song was playing in my head.
But the real trouble was at night. I was waking up in the middle of the night hearing the song in my head! That’s when I knew I had to do something more and I resorted to a negative thought calming technique I’ve used for years when I’m having negative thoughts and can’t sleep. I turned on a movie that I find extremely relaxing, comforting and positive and watched it until I fell asleep. For the next two nights I went to bed with the movie playing and FINALLY I was able to break free of the song – well, mostly. I have to admit that in writing this article, the song has been taunting me, but now it’s more of a funny passing thought instead of being on constant repeat like it was last week.
So how does my story tie in with how to stop negative thoughts when you’re going through divorce? It actually outlines the first steps I’ll take my clients through to help them manage their negative thoughts. I’ll take you through it step-by-step in Your Functional Divorce Assignment.
Your Assignment To Stop Negative Thoughts:
What’s behind your negative thought? More times than not, when I ask my clients this question I hear one of two answers: anger or fear.
Deal with the underlying anger or fear. Dealing with divorce anger usually requires expressing the anger in a constructive way. Some ideas are to exercise, hit a pillow or even scream into a pillow. Often the way to deal with fear is to get more information so you can take appropriate action.
Change your focus. When negative thoughts seem to be omnipresent during your waking hours, I find that you can start to loosen their hold by acknowledging the thought and then changing your focus. You can change your focus to something positive like I did with focusing on my to-do list or you can put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it each time you catch yourself thinking the thought that you’d rather not be thinking. There are lots of different ways to change your focus and it may take some experimenting before you find what works best for you.
Prepare for a good night’s sleep. If you find that you’re waking up in the middle of the night with the thoughts or even having a hard time going to sleep because of your negative thoughts, change your bedtime routine to be especially comforting, calming, positive and relaxing. What works for me is to watch my go-to movie or else recite a prayer or mantra.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach. I help people just like you who are dealing with not only the negative thoughts of divorce, but all the other stress and pain too. You can join my anonymous newsletter list for free weekly advice.
If you’re looking for more ways to speed your divorce recovery, you’ll want to visit Healing After Divorce.
My Beliefs Get In The Way
One of the ways I market my business is to attend networking events. In early spring 2011, I attended an event where the featured speaker was a woman named Cricket Lee. Cricket spoke about how she had spent years researching and testing to perfect pant fit for women. She had a great story about her work and I chose to support her by ordering a pair of pants.
Now I’ll bet that just about every woman reading this has a belief similar to mine when I ordered the pants. My belief was that there’s no way that Cricket has really standardized fits in a way that would work for me. Finding pants that fit is almost impossible.
It took a bit longer than anticipated for the pants to arrive – a little more than a year, but I was completely OK with that because I knew that Cricket was attempting something BIG and besides the pants weren’t going to fit me any way.
When the pants did show up, I didn’t even open them. I had a broken ankle at the time and couldn’t put them on any way. And there was no way they were going to fit, so what did it really matter?
I left those pants in the box for months! It was only after running into Cricket again at an event in early October that I decided I might as well face my disappointment and try on the pants. Well, I put it off for a few more weeks and didn’t try them on until the beginning of November – before I would run into Cricket again and need to tell her they didn’t fit.
You know what? My belief was completely WRONG! The pants fit perfectly right out of the box. Despite being wrinkled after sitting in the box for many months, they looked amazing. After getting over my thrill about how great they fit and felt, I realized that my belief about what was going to happen had gotten in the way of me enjoying my new pants. Pretty ridiculous, right?
Well, here’s the thing, in my work with people navigating the chaos and confusion of divorce, I see beliefs getting in the way all the time. I see people who believe they deserve to hurt because they’re getting divorce and refuse to do what will help them to feel better. I hear stories of people who believe they aren’t worthy of being loved because they’re getting divorced. I hurt when people tell me they believe they don’t like themselves and are depressed because of their divorce.
Beliefs are personal and no one can make you believe anything you don’t want to and that’s the saddest thing of all. On some level, everyone who tells me they deserve to hurt or that they’re not worth loving or that they are depressed and don’t like themselves wants to believe these things.
Beliefs like these get in the way of living a great life and in a way are just as ridiculous as my belief that putting on a pair of pants would be a waste of time because they’d never fit me since I was different.
Beliefs can get in the way of healing from divorce and moving on with your life. Being willing and able to change the beliefs that get in your way is one of the key requirements to living a great life during and after your divorce. Your Functional Divorce Assignment will give you some ideas for how you might discard one or more of the beliefs that are keeping you from having the happiness and confidence I know could be yours.
Your Functional Divorce Assignment:
Identify a belief about yourself that brings you discomfort or pain. Maybe you are feeling depressed. If you are, dig down into what you are thinking when you feel the most depressed and you’ll likely uncover a belief. Or maybe you’re experiencing a different unhappy emotion. If you dig down into your thoughts when you’re experiencing it you’ll likely uncover a belief.
Is this belief appropriate? The beliefs that cause us discomfort or pain need to be examined regularly. It’s possible that the belief you uncovered in the previous step isn’t serving you anymore. If that’s the case, either that belief needs to be changed or your behavior needs to be changed to align with your belief.
Don’t worry if this is hard to do on your own, you can always ask for help. For most people it is pretty difficult to identify the beliefs that get in their way. If you’re having a hard time, relax. The easiest way to get help working on identifying the beliefs that are getting in your way is to schedule a Complimentary Consultation with me to discuss your situation. You can reach me by email at karen@drkarenfinn.com or by phone at 817-993-0561.
I’m Dr. Karen Finn, a divorce and personal life coach. I help people just like you who are dealing with the stress and pain of divorce. You can join my newsletter list for free weekly advice.