Ep 192: Dealing with the Pain and Suffering of Divorce | Becoming You Again Podcast

Divorce is often full of complex emotional pain and suffering during/after divorce.  Imagine transforming your experience of pain into a manageable part of life by recognizing how self-imposed suffering makes everything feel worse. In this episode you'll gain insight from Buddhist analogy, and learn to empower yourself to take control over your emotional life.

By the end of this episode you'll have a new tool to create self awareness designed to identify and reassess the narratives you're holding onto and reduce unnecessary suffering during your 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 shows 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.

Featured on this episode:

1. Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.

2. Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.

3. 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:

You're listening to Becoming you Again, episode number 192, and I'm your host, karin Nelson. 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. I hope you're all doing well, or as well as can be, depending on what you're going through.

In this episode, I want to talk about pain and suffering. Now, obviously, as human beings, we experience all different kinds of pain and suffering throughout our lives, depending on the experiences that we're having. So, as you know, if you're listening to this podcast, it's about divorce and it's about helping you get through your divorce, supporting you as you go through divorce, as you start your life after divorce, whatever stage you are in. So I will be using examples and talking about the pain and suffering, specifically about your divorce and the things that you might be struggling with. However, please take the information and the tools that you are learning in today's podcast and literally in any of the other podcasts that I have put out to help you in any area of your life that you might be struggling. Maybe your divorce is going great, maybe it's fine and you get along with your soon-to-be ex or your co-parenting great and you've kind of moved past that part of your life. But you're struggling in other areas. You can use these tools to help you no matter what you're going through, because we are all humans and we all suffer. We all have pain. We all feel things that feel negative, that feel terrible, that feel bad at times. So the point of this podcast is to help you understand that pain and negative emotion is inevitable. It's part of the human experience. Nothing has gone wrong in your life If you are feeling that way.

However, the suffering is like the added, unnecessary hurt that you can choose and get better at choosing not to feel, not to bring into whatever you are feeling and experiencing. And I'm not saying that this is like so easy to do, that you just like don't suffer, that you just like stop suffering, like I'm not saying any of these tools that I'm teaching you are just so easy to implement. It takes practice and you're never going to be perfect at it, because human beings aren't perfect beings, and, again, that's okay. But you can get better at becoming aware of where the actual pain, of what you're going through is what's necessary, what is just part of the human experience, and where that added suffering that you are creating for yourself, where you are doing that. Once you become aware of it like I sound like a broken record, probably sometimes, but once you become aware of it, that's when you can start to choose differently if you want. It's the awareness that changes everything, because with awareness you can make choices. You can make decisions. Without awareness, perhaps that suffering is coming in because it's a habitual thing that you have been doing in your life for a very long time. You may not even know that you are habitually creating an extra layer of suffering in your life, and so we want to create some awareness around where that is happening for you, so that you can step into choice decisions, recognizing it and deciding to respond instead of react. So let me kind of dive into how we know the difference between pain and suffering and how we can start to become aware of the suffering that we're creating for ourselves and then make choices moving forward to not create as much suffering, if that's what we want. Of course, you can always choose to create that suffering for yourself, like you're in control of your own life, but at least you know that you are stepping into your own power by choosing it and not blaming what you're feeling on everything outside of you. That's where our power lies is recognizing that we actually have control over our own emotional life.

Okay, as you know, when I talk about pain and suffering in this podcast, I'm talking about like the emotional pain, right, like the mental thoughts that you're creating that are creating emotional suffering for yourself, and I'm not talking about that. You're making up any kind of situation that you've got going on in your life. If you're going through a divorce, the facts are you are separating two lives that used to be one. The facts are you probably have less time with your kids. Those are facts. But it's the mental story that is being made up in your head about what all of that means for you that is creating a lot of suffering inside of you Emotional, sometimes, maybe even physical suffering. Physical, in that your body might be aching, you might be getting joint pains, you might be having inflammation, you might be having chronic pain syndromes, things like that. All of that can be tied to our emotional life and our emotional stressors. So I'm not saying that like this will cure everything for you if you're having those kinds of things, but it may help lessen it, because our emotional life definitely affects other areas of our life. So let's let's lessen some of that suffering that you might be feeling.

So Buddhists have a story that kind of explains this idea of pain versus suffering, and they say that when we experience something that is negative in our life, it's like having two arrows flying our direction. When we are physically struck by the first arrow, that's painful, right. That's going to hurt. And so if we're going to kind of use the example of what might be going on in our lives the divorce, that hurts, right. The severing of the two lives that were one and separating them into two different households and everything that goes along with that that is the first arrow. It's painful, it hurts. There's things that are going on with that that just feel crappy. There's a lot of negative emotion attached to that. However, being struck by the second arrow in this Buddhist story is even more painful and it's that second arrow that is our suffering. The Buddha explains that in life we can't control the first arrow. Most of the time we cannot control what circumstances, what experiences are going on around us, can't always control that we're going to go through a divorce. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow, the pain, the emotional suffering that you're creating. That is optional.

So if the first arrow is like your divorce or anything that goes along with the divorce, the second arrow is what you're making the first arrow mean. What are you making your divorce mean about you and your life? What are you making less time with your kids mean about you as their mom, as their parent, about what they think about you? What meaning are you giving it? And you can give it meaning that feels really shitty and hard and makes you believe that you are a victim and that your life is ruined and that you will never find happiness and that you are unlovable and unworthy and all of those things. And maybe you're choosing to do that. And if you are, just know I love you. I've been there and it's possible for you to choose differently and know that you can also choose different meaning. You can also make different meaning out of what your divorce means about you, what not being around your kids mean about you. You get to choose what the meaning is. That is the greatest thing about being human is we get to decide for ourselves what meaning we will take from things.

For example, let's say that you and two other women were sitting on a couch together and you were having a conversation and you were all either going through a divorce or divorced. And let's say that you are talking about your divorce and how terrible it is and how you wish that it wasn't happening, how bad the relationship is with your ex, how you never communicate, how you wish that things had been different, how you wish that you got to have more time with your kids, and it was very upsetting for you to even be experiencing this in your life. And then one of the other women sitting on the couch with you having this conversation was also going through a divorce. She had asked for the divorce. She was moving forward as the person that she wanted to be, meaning she was stepping into her power. She was enjoying her time with her kids when she had them and when she didn't have them. She was creating momentum toward the kind of life that she wanted. She was working on her career. She was making new friends. She was really reconnecting with herself in a way that she had never been able to do during her divorce. Although she was experiencing painful things, like she did miss when she wasn't with her kids and she felt sad about that, she was also really enjoying the life that she was creating for herself outside of her marriage and moving toward that.

And then the third person on the couch was someone who had been divorced for several years and she understood both sides because she had been through both experiences. However, she had made her divorce mean that it was one of the best things that had ever happened to her, and she wasn't even the one who asked for the divorce. She had been left, she had been cheated on, and yet the way she viewed her divorce was as the perfect storm, if you will, of her being able to reconnect with herself that she believed she would never have been able to do had she stayed in that marriage. She was happy in her life for the most part. She still felt pain, she still felt grief. In other ways, she still got angry. She still felt all of the regular human painful emotions. However, she didn't make it mean that anything had gone wrong in her life, and none of these women are doing anything wrong or bad.

The differences are the created extra layer of suffering that each one might be feeling in different ways. Now it's very clear that the first example of the woman is creating a lot of extra suffering where she feels like a victim. She feels like she is unworthy and unlovable. She's coming from a very scarcity mindset based on how much time she gets with her kids, the relationship that she has with her ex and not being able to talk with him, not being able to co-parent with him and again, I'm not saying that any of this is bad. Maybe your relationship you shouldn't be having conversations with your ex, maybe that is a very toxic relationship and you should be setting boundaries. Again, it comes down to what do you want to decide is best for you and your life side is best for you and your life. But that emotional extra suffering is optional, and the other two women have stepped more into their power of reconnecting to themselves. They may still be creating some suffering. However, they are more aware that they are in charge of what their emotional life actually looks like. So, even though they went through very similar experiences, they're all either divorced or going through a divorce, which is very similar.

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people go through a divorce. Lots and lots of people have less time with their kids, don't get certain holidays with their kids every year, don't have a good relationship with their ex. Lots of people experience this. However, we all, for the most part, make different meaning, and so you get to decide what meaning you're going to make. So let me teach you how.

So there's a really good book, if you haven't read it yet. It's called don't believe everything you think, and I talk a lot about our thoughts and how our thoughts oftentimes very much create our emotions. Now, this isn't always right, because we also know that we have a nervous system that gets very heightened very easily and habitually. We will create suffering for ourselves through our physical body, right Through how our body reacts to things. But understanding the thoughts that are creating a lot of suffering for ourselves will only lead to helping you understand and reconnect more to yourself, because you have a better understanding of what your brain is feeding you. So, if you haven't read don't believe everything you think, it's a great book, uh, but I'm going to be working through a workbook that goes along with that book and just asking a couple of questions to help you identify some of the times where you are reacting to that second arrow. Right, we're going back to the Buddha example that I used at the beginning.

We want to start identifying. That means becoming aware of identifying, looking back and analyzing what you're doing to create extra suffering on top of the pain and grief that you're already feeling. So think about the last time that you experienced something really painful during your divorce. Maybe it was yesterday, maybe it was two weeks ago, maybe it was two minutes ago, because you got a text from your ex that you were not expecting and he said a lot of terrible things or whatever. Right, but think about the last time. That's the example that I want you to go to and I want you to identify the first arrow, okay, identify what the event was that felt painful. So maybe it was the text, maybe it was something that triggered you, maybe it was not being with your kids over the weekend. Like what was it that created that initial layer of pain? The sadness of not being with your kids, the anger at that text and the words that he used? Like, what is the initial inciting, triggering event. Okay, so identify that and write it down. Initial inciting, triggering event. Okay, so identify that and write it down.

The next step is we want to become aware of what that second arrow is, and basically what that means is write down your reaction to that first arrow, to that first circumstance that happened. What were you thinking about it? What meaning were you giving it? What story was your brain telling you? Write it all down, talk about what you were feeling. Write it down, get it all out. We're going to do it without judgment, because the less judgmental you are about your thoughts, the more you have access to be able to change them, if that's what you want. So we're not going to judge yourself and say I shouldn't, I know I shouldn't be thinking this about my ex, but I do. I know I shouldn't be having these thoughts about. No, we're not doing that. We're just writing everything down to recognize where you're creating suffering in the meaning that you're making, in the story, the narrative, what, however, you want to refer to it. But whatever is happening, that's what you want to focus on. Okay, so write it all down.

And then I want you to go through and I want you to separate. This is how I like to do it with my clients. I really want you to separate the facts, underline the facts of whatever you wrote down, anything that is like I didn't see my kids for two days. That is a fact that can't be changed. Nobody could argue with. You didn't see your kids for two days. Okay, those are the facts. So go through and underline any facts that you wrote down on your piece of paper and then you're going to go through and you're going to circle. Anything else that is a narrative, a story, a second arrow that is creating a lot of suffering for yourself. Those are the things we want to focus on and become aware of. Those are the things that are of pain, of anxiety, of worry, of uncertainty, of whatever it is that you're feeling. That's the layer that we want to become aware of so that we can decide if we want to keep it, if we want to keep that narrative or not. So maybe you wrote down I didn't see my kids for two days and I was so sad and I hated being by myself.

I hated being alone. I didn't feel like I had any point to my time. I felt like my kids didn't want to talk to me the whole weekend. I would text them and I wouldn't hear back. I was very frustrated with my ex because I had asked him beforehand when he was going to pick up the kids and he didn't tell me what time he was coming. And then he just kind of showed up and it's so annoying to me that he does that and I absolutely think that he is just the worst human being and I'm so angry at myself for having put up with his shit for so long and I'm so angry at my kids for not texting me back. I wish that they just understood where I was coming from and I wish that they missed me as much as I missed them. And yada, yada, yada.

Right, we're just going to keep writing and then you're going to circle all the things in that example that I just gave. I can already pull out two examples of fact. Right, didn't see your kids for two days and they didn't text you back. Okay, actually three, because I also said something like he picked them up at a time when you didn't know he was coming. That's sort of a fact. There's a little bit of like narrative going on in there, but if we wanted to get really facty. You could say he picked them up at 3 pm and I didn't know he was coming at 3 pm. That would be a fact, right? And then everything else that was in that paragraph was narrative. It was all meaning. I don't think my kids like me. That's why they don't text me. I wish that they understood what I'm going through. I wish they understood how painful this was. I blame myself for putting up with this for so long. Anything else, right, I can't remember specifically because I was just off the cuff, off my head, I don't know. But it will be easier for you because you're going to write it down when you do this. But that is all meaning. It's all narrative, it's all the second arrow.

Now, it doesn't mean that you can't think and feel those things, right, of course you can. You can get to feel whatever you're feeling. However, you get to choose what you're thinking about it. What if it's possible that your kids still totally love you and just are bad at texting back? I have a 19 year old son who, when he's at school, I text him every single day, morning and night, and I maybe get one text a week from him, not one text a day. One text a week. Maybe you know what I don't do. I don't make it mean that he hates me. I don't make it mean that I'm a bad mom. I don't make it mean that we don't have a good relationship. I don't make it mean that we're not close or connected or that he's unhappy and that things are going wrong in his life. I don't make it mean any of that. You know what I make it mean. He's not very good at texting. That's it. I don't have to create a bunch of suffering around the fact that he doesn't text me back. And guess what? You don't either.

It does not have to mean what your brain is telling you. It must mean because it's possible that it doesn't actually mean that at all and you get to choose. You get to decide, because what your brain is telling you is not an actual fact of the situation and all it is doing is creating a lot of pain and suffering for you. That is unnecessary. It's making you believe you're a bad mom. It's making you believe that you're unworthy, that you've done something wrong, that your kids don't love you, that you're unlovable, that there is a rift in there somewhere, that they're choosing their dad over you. None of that None of that is true. And if you're going to make it up, none of that is true. And if you're going to make it up, why don't you make up something that feels a little less painful? Because, again, you get to choose. So, after you write it all down, one way to alleviate your suffering is to think what, if it's possible that, whatever that sentence was like, my kids just must hate me, and that's why they're not texting me.

Take each sentence and think about another way to think about it. How would someone else not in your situation, or someone else who's gone through a divorce, who is out of it a few years? How might they be thinking about it? And if you even want to use me as an example, how might Karen think about this in this situation? Because she's probably not thinking about it in the same way I am. So how might she think about it? And does that feel believable to me, does that feel accessible to me? And, more importantly, does it feel less painful?

That's what we're shooting for. Is like a little bit better. It doesn't have to be like oh, my kids must love me and they must think I'm the greatest human being ever and I'm a. I'm like the goddess mother who does everything perfect, like we're not shooting for that. First of all, that's not believable. Or if it is amazing, but it's definitely not believable for me to think that about my kids and what they might be thinking about me. But we're just shooting for, like, thoughts that don't feel as terrible as the ones that we've got going on in our head right now, what feels a little bit better, a little bit more believable than what my brain is telling me right now.

And write that thought down and go through your paragraph and try and do this with every single thought that is creating a lot of pain and suffering. This might be kind of hard right. Our brain has been stuck in this habitual loop of creating a lot of pain and suffering. This might be kind of hard right. Our brain has been stuck in this habitual loop of creating a narrative that feels really terrible and sometimes we are used to that discomfort. We are used to a terrible feeling narrative and we have to teach ourselves to think and feel differently and that can feel kind of uncomfortable. That can. We can feel discomfort in that and that's not a problem. So make your brain work. Don't just say I don't know, I don't know what I could think instead, I don't know what somebody else might be thinking. What if you did know what? If you just guessed and you just made it so that you couldn't be wrong? Try that. Try being kind to yourself and compassionate to yourself as you go through this exercise and see what you come up with. And then, instead of trying to use every single new thought and trying to feel better at every moment, you, just when you're feeling pain and sadness, you open up to the pain and sadness.

I have a lot of podcast episodes about how to feel negative emotion, how to be open to feeling negative emotion. Go, listen to one of those podcasts and sit in the negative emotion, invite it in, let it be there Now, listen. Notice that I did not say sit in the suffering. You can sit in the suffering, you're capable of sitting in the suffering, but it's the negative emotion, the the first arrow. That is okay. We can feel that it's not a problem to feel negative emotion. There's nothing wrong with feeling negative emotion, but it's the suffering, that second arrow, that you can change, and that's where you're going to feel a little bit better when you pick a new thought, a new story, a new narrative that you want to adopt and replace the old one with.

Now, when I say replace, what I'm really talking about is you are physically in your brain creating a new neural pathway. You have a very well-worn neural pathway of your old narrative that's creating so much suffering for you. We want to create a completely new neural pathway that is much easier for your brain to go to. This takes time. This takes practice. This takes awareness. This takes not giving up after trying it one time, thinking that thought and going oh no, I only remembered it to think that new thought one time and I must be doing it wrong. No, you're just a human and you have a habitual neural pathway. Just think of like a well-worn path in your brain that you've used over and over and over again. So it's very easy for your brain to go back to that narrative. We're creating a new path, like if you were to go hiking in the mountains and there's the really well-worn path, and then you're like I'm going to create a new path and I'm going to go this way and I there's no path there yet, but I'm going to create one. The more you walked on that new path that you were creating, the more worn it would become. That is what you're doing in your brain. With these new thoughts, you are creating a new neural pathway that, over time, and repetition and remembering and awareness and compassion and grace for yourself. When you mess up and go back to the old one, it becomes more well-worn and your brain goes to that one more often over time than it does the old one. That's what we're going for, so do this practice.

It's totally necessary for you to feel pain, because that's part of the human experience. It is not necessary for you to feel emotional suffering, and the less suffering you feel, the more you will be able to heal through your divorce and create the kind of life that you want. Moving forward, reach out to me on Instagram If you have questions about this. If you're unsure, schedule a free consult with me. Come and talk to me and I'll walk you through it. We'll do it together, if that's what you want. Check the show notes, go to my website, go to Instagram, message me any of those places you can reach out to me. We can talk. We can set up a time to talk, whatever works best for you. But I promise you, if you do this for yourself, you will start to recognize where you are creating emotional suffering that is unnecessary.

All right, my friends, I love you. You got this. I will be back next week. 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 karinnelsoncoaching dot com. That 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.