Are you ready to regain control of your emotional life after divorce? Listen in on this throwback episode of Becoming You Again, as you learn invaluable tools and insights needed to emotionally detach from your ex in a healthy way. Learn how taking responsibility for your own emotions enables you to change your feelings, even when external circumstances seem out of control.
I'm revisiting one of my most impactful episodes, discussing strategies for managing the emotional ups and downs that come with divorce, while sharing examples of how to find peace amidst chaos. Discover the importance of taking ownership of your emotions and how acknowledging and processing negative feelings can lead to healing and growth. Don't miss this opportunity to empower yourself and start transforming your emotional life post-divorce.
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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it show up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
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Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.
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Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.
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Full Episode Transcript:
I'm Karin Nelson and you're listening to Becoming You Again, episode number 116. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. My friends, i am so glad that you're here. How is everything going? Everything is going pretty great for me. All right, let's be real. Not everything is great. My computer literally just died and I lost some important things, because sometimes I make mistakes and I don't back everything up on my computer. Okay, let's be very real about being human in this moment. So my computer died and that has sucked. I lost a really great podcast episode that I was really excited to release to you guys in a couple of weeks, and I lost a few other things. But you know what Life goes on. It's okay. We make do with what we've got and we just accept that we are humans and we are make mistakes, and I'm saying this so much more for myself than I am saying it for you to learn from, because I have really had to step into this role of accepting that I'm not perfect, accepting that I'm going to make mistakes, and not making it mean that I'm stupid or that I'm a bad person or that there's something wrong with me, because none of that is true and I can still make mistakes. And if any of that helps you in anything that you're going through right now, you're welcome. I definitely know that I have used all of that advice and all of those words telling myself over and over and over in my brain over these past last couple of weeks. A lot Outside of that, i am doing pretty good And I think if we can go back to this idea of remembering that there's going to be 50-50 in all things and remembering that it's okay, we're going to make it through, that to me brings a little bit more peace of mind and understanding and acceptance into my life. Alright, so that wasn't quite how I wanted to start this podcast, but that's just where things went, so that's okay. But today is going to be our very first throwback episode to an episode that came out at the very beginning of the podcast, and the reason why I'm doing this is because I was going through my podcast library after I lost that amazing podcast that I was very excited to release to you guys, and I was just kind of taking a look at topics that I have covered, things that I have talked about, concepts that I have worked through in the podcast, and I realized one of my very first episodes was about emotional detachment from your ex, and I really listened to the episode and I was like this is such a good episode. And then I was looking through some other statistics on my podcast and you know the highest ranked episodes and realized that that episode is one of the most downloaded episodes that I have put out. And so I was like maybe I should just do a throwback to this so that anybody who is new, who hasn't gone back and listened to any of the older episodes, can still get the information in this episode and hear it, and then anyone who's already listened to it maybe it can be a really good refresh because, i promise you, this episode is so valuable. This episode, in my opinion, offers some of the most useful tools to anyone who is going through a divorce, because it's going to help with the emotional highs and the emotional lows that we all know we go through when we go through a divorce. Right, you are going to be learning some new concepts that will help you emotionally detach from your ex and from your divorce in a healthy way, in a way where you don't have to have the world or your ex change for you so that you can feel better, so that you can understand what you're going through And you also don't have to disconnect from yourself and disassociate and stop feeling what you're feeling to be able to make it through your day, to be able to make it through your life. So I really hope that you can listen to this episode with new ears. If you've already heard it Or if this is your first time, i really hope that you will let things sink in and start to implement the things that I talk about in this episode to help you through your emotional journey as you go through your divorce. All right, so, without further ado, here is the throwback episode to the very early days of the podcast, but, as I said, i still think a very highly valuable and useful one to help you emotionally detach from your ex. Enjoy. Today I'm going to be talking about emotional detachment after a divorce. Many people come to me struggling with the emotional roller coaster that they're on during and after their divorce. It's very common to feel really like your life is on a roller coaster because the the highs are so high and the lows are so low, and it's always up and down, or at least that's what it feels like when you're going through a divorce, and often for months and months after the divorce. And they find that what they've been doing to emotionally detach is to just try and cope with their divorce. And this often happens by blaming their feelings on everything that's happening outside of them or by avoiding any and all negative emotion because it's just too heavy or too hard or too exhausting. Oftentimes I hear I'm just so tired of feeling all of the emotions that I just want them all to go away. We think it's going to be impossible to emotionally detach after divorce, but this is only because we haven't learned to take responsibility for our own emotional life. This usually happens for two main reasons. The first reason is because most of the time we think that we are feeling a negative feeling like sad, lonely, angry, frustrated. I mean really just insert any other negative emotion that you can think of right, and we think it's happening because of something outside of us. We're giving all of the power and all the blame to all the things outside of us that we have no control over. So we'll say things like my divorce made me so sad and bitter, or my ex makes me so frustrated, or COVID is causing me so much anxiety. Right, it's not just things in our divorce that make us feel like our emotions are because of outside things. It's literally so much of our life we base off of how we feel because of what's happening outside of us. When we attribute what we're feeling to things out of our control, it leaves us feeling powerless to change those feelings because unless everything outside of us changes, we kind of lose hope that we'll ever be able to feel better. And the second reason that you haven't been able to emotionally detach from your divorce is because you think that these emotions hurt, really, really bad. That feels so true, often, right, the sadness, the depression, the loneliness, the frustration, the anger, the hate. It can feel so all consuming And in fact it feels so bad that we believe that it's too big, too raw, too heavy and just overwhelmingly exhausting. We just don't think that we can handle them. We have all of this evidence that it's been too hard so far, right, and so we don't want to feel them anymore. What we want to do is get rid of them, because we just want to feel better, and this shows up in so many different ways. But it can look like finding something to help distract us from painful emotions. Sometimes we'll overeat, or maybe we'll binge watch Netflix for hours and hours on end, or maybe we'll play video games, or maybe even we'll go to the gym a lot over exercise Anything that is going to help distract us in the moment, to maybe make us feel a little bit better. It could also look like jumping into a new relationship, so that you're distracted by the excitement and the thrill of meeting new people, hoping they'll make you happy and hoping they'll feel the void you feel inside. Or it can even look like becoming apathetic and disconnecting from as many people in your life as possible, because then you can't be hurt right, if you're not close enough to anyone, they can't hurt you, but the problem with this one is that you also often disconnect from yourself as well. So in today's podcast episode, i'm going to teach you some new concepts that will help you emotionally detach from your divorce in a healthy way, and you don't have to have the world to change for you, and you don't have to disconnect from yourself or your life or even check out of your life to be able to do it. So the first thing that you need to do is you need to stop attributing your feelings to things outside of you. So another way of saying this is stop telling yourself that you're feeling something because of something else. Right, you're feeling something because you're thinking something. Let me break it down. We all have situations in our lives that happen. Circumstances, right, they're all around us, going on all around us, and for the most part, we can't control those situations, those circumstances. We give those situations a meaning And once we give it meaning, that is what creates a feeling inside of our body. The meaning comes from how we're thinking. It comes from so many different aspects of our lives. It comes from how we were raised, what our parents taught us, maybe something that we saw or read or have seen in a TV show or in a movie or grew up with. That we've just kind of adopted to be true. Maybe it came from our culture or society around us. There are so many things that inform us, to help us give meaning to things and the thoughts that we're thinking about. Every situation is what causes us to feel something inside of our body. It causes those Sensations that we are labeling as feelings. Whatever we're feeling is going to drive us to act or not act in certain ways, and those actions Ultimately create our life experience. So let me give you a new example. Let's say you're having a conversation with your ex about Thanksgiving and He has the kids for the day and he says We're going to my parents and we won't be back until 8 pm, so I'm gonna need them for two extra hours. And you become very angry, but you don't want to yell in front of your kids because they're on the speakerphone, and so you quickly end the conversation and you just say I'm gonna talk to you about this later And then you hang up. So this is what you do you go on social media to your divorce groups And you post about what just happened and you're just saying I have to vent about this. And you talk about it and you're Seathing inside and you just want validation that you're right and he's wrong. You're so sick of him making you so angry that you wish you too could just work things out and co-parent in a way where you get along. You then go to the cupboard and you grab some Oreos to take the edge off the anger for a moment, and then you continue to spin about it in your head the rest of the day, thinking about how he's wrong. He's doing wrong. He never should have asked for the extra hours. You're gonna be missing your kids terribly on Thanksgiving, and how could he possibly Even disrespect you in the way that he should ask for two extra hours? right, we all can relate to a story like this. So in this scenario, you are attributing your anger to what your ex said. Now I just want to break the news to you here. This sucks for you because it means that you need him to change in order for you to feel better. It means that he needs to stop saying things and asking for requests and telling you that he's gonna bring the kids home Two hours late, and he needs to stop doing all of the things that are not meeting your expectation of who you think he should be. Now we know that's not likely going to happen. You lived with him for however many years you were married, and Did he ever change to meet your expectations? My guess is probably not. So we can just probably Guess that he's still not going to meet that expectation. But here's the really great news for you We don't need him to change in order for you to feel better. When you give away your Responsibility of your emotional life to things outside of you, what it also does is it makes you a victim of an emotion Because you think that you can't control it. But it's just not true. You are always in charge of your emotions. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't feel these things. Of course, feel whatever you're feeling, but take ownership of them. Lynn Robbins was teaching a principle on this and he said this No one makes us mad. Others don't make us angry. There is no force involved. Becoming angry is a conscious choice, a decision. Therefore, we can make the choice not to become angry. We choose. So again, i don't want you to hear me wrong here. I'm not saying don't get angry. I'm not saying don't feel negative emotion. Of course, feel those. That is part of the human experience. It's a beautiful thing to feel any and all emotion and to allow those to be there. What I am saying is stop giving the responsibility of You feeling that way to something outside of you, to someone else, to a circumstance in your life. Take ownership of your own emotions, because that will give you all of your power back. So let me go back to this example and kind of explain it in a different way. So your ex says we're going to my parents and won't be back until 8 pm, so I'm going to need them for two extra hours. And you think he shouldn't be asking for two extra hours? I can't believe he's doing this. It's my holiday with the kids too. He always does this. He's trying to walk all over me. I wish he would just follow the plan and stop asking me for extra time. I always have to bend over backwards and give him what he wants. Those are all of the thoughts rolling in your head, and probably more right. And then you feel angry and you feel frustrated and you feel powerless. And then you get off the phone quickly and you have lots of thoughts about how he's the worst, how he always does this. And then you go get support and validation from other divorced people and you continue to tell the story and feel angry and you try to cope with the anger with the orios to try and make yourself feel better. And the experience is that you continue to feel angry even after the conversation has ended, and it continues on throughout your day, maybe even weeks at a time. Right, do you see how? you are the creator of the angry feeling, not your ex, you by what you're thinking. If you want to get to the place of being able to emotionally detach from your divorce, then you have to be willing to take responsibility for everything that you're feeling. Once you do that, you'll be able to intentionally choose how you want to feel and what kind of life you want to create. But this can only happen as you become aware that you are the creator of your feelings. Awareness is where change begins. Awareness is the opening of your life that lets light in. Accepting full responsibility for your emotional life is how you emotionally detach from your divorce. It's how you can stop feeling emotionally controlled by your ex, by your divorce, by all of the situations and circumstances outside of you. Awareness is the first step to being able to bring about healing and change inside of you. So you can start today by acknowledging when you notice a negative emotion and that you are the creator of it. It might sound scary or difficult or you don't really want to believe that you are in charge of your emotions, but I promise you that if you will be willing to just take ownership and responsibility for it, you will start to notice that things don't feel as heavy, and you can start really easy just by accepting responsibility for your own emotional life, by saying I'm feeling this way because of what I'm thinking. It's a simple beginning that will open you up to feeling empowered in your own life. Now the second thing that you need to do is to be willing to feel and process through the negative emotions. In episode two, i talk about your emotional life and why it's so important for you to allow yourself to feel all of the emotions, not just the positive ones, and this definitely goes hand in hand with that concept. The more willing you are to process through your emotions, the less scary they become when they show up. Right, because the worst thing that can happen to you is you feel a negative emotion. When you feel an emotion, you have two things that are going on simultaneously You have the thoughts that are happening in your head and you have the sensations that are going on in your body. No one ever really teaches us how to process through and allow negative emotions to be present. We don't really have to be taught how to allow positive emotions right. That's pretty easy. Because they feel so good. We don't really ever want to push those ones away. When they're there, we enjoy them. But when the negative emotions present themselves, we're taught to change them quickly. Because negative emotions are bad, we're taught to act out on them by releasing the emotion in some way, whether it's by throwing, hitting, punching even crying is a release of the emotion and not an actual processing of the emotion Or we're taught to pretend that everything is just fine and push the emotions down and hope that they'll just go away. But none of these methods are effective in allowing us to really process and move through the emotion. So the problem then becomes that when we're confronted with something challenging in our life where we have lots of thoughts that are creating excessive negative emotions, we feel overwhelmed because we don't know what to do. But here's the key When you're feeling a negative emotion, you need to get out of your head, away from all the spinning thoughts. You take a deep breath, you slow everything down and you start to look inward to your body and figure out what's happening inside your body. What sensations do you feel? Where do you feel them? What's actually going on inside of you? Not inside your head, not the thoughts that are spinning, but inside your body. Once you practice this and learn to do it effectively, your negative emotions won't be such a problem anymore. You'll be able to allow them to be a part of your life and really know that nothing has gone wrong when they show up. When you can combine these two concepts that I talked about today and apply them in your life, you will be able to easily emotionally detach from your divorce and begin to live a life that is intentional after divorce. This is what I want for all of you, so I hope that you will go throughout this next week or this next month and really practice these two concepts taking ownership over your own emotions and figuring out what they feel like in your body. Hi, friend, i'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to KarinNelsonCoachingcom. That's wwwKARINNELSONCoachingcom. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.