Ep #44: Healing The Pain Of Divorce | Becoming You Again Podcast
Pain is inevitable as we live this human life. There is no getting out of or getting around feeling pain, especially when it comes to divorce and the end of that relationship. But what I've learned after years of coaching is that even though pain is inevitable when we go through challenging circumstances, suffering is optional. In today's episode I'm talking about the difference between clean healing pain and optional, unnecessary dirty pain, what this can look like in your own life through examples that I use. I'll teach you how to clean up all the muck, dirt and grime of overwhelming dirty pain so that you can move through the clean pain and finally move on with your life after divorce. What you'll learn in today's episode:
The difference between pain and suffering and why one is inevitable and the other is optional.
What clean pain sounds like in our heads and what emotions it can show up as.
What dirty pain sounds like in our heads and what emotions it can show up as.
How to clean off the much of dirty pain and move on step closer to healing after divorce.
How honoring your clean pain can be cleansing.
The one step that will change everything for you when it comes to being able to move forward in your life.
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List to the full episode:
How often do you get to the end of your day exhausted and overwhelmed because of your life after divorce? Do you know what to do to stop feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted? Has the advice of your friends, family and other divorced acquaintances failed you and you don't know where to turn? Then I have the best news ever because I know exactly how to get your out of overwhelm and how to help you stop feeling exhausted so you can show up in your life excited for the day instead of dreading what's to come. The best place for you to start is to schedule some time to talk to me so I can show you what's really going on and how I can help. Click here to schedule your free discovery session with me.
Featured on this episode:
Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.
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.
Want to know first hand how Karin can help you with your specific problems and create an even better life than when you were married? Click here to schedule a free consult.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome back to Becoming You Again. I’m your host Karin Nelson. I’m a certified divorce confidence coach and this is the podcast where I teach you how to reconnect with yourself, create emotional resiliency and live a truly independent life, so you can have an even better life than when you were married.
Hello my fellow podcast listeners. I’m so happy to be back with you today talking about all things divorce. I want to thank all of you who have been listening since the beginning. The podcast is growing, which I absolutely love because that means that I can help so many more women who are struggling with divorce. And I want to ask those of you who are listening and liking what you’re hearing to please go and rate and review the podcast on whatever app you like to use. You can even do it right now while you’re listening on your phone. The more ratings and reviews the podcast gets, the more the algorithm picks it up and puts it in front of more people, right, and suggests it to more people and more women like you and me who need this help in their lives will be able to have access to this podcast that they might not even know is here. Alright so thank you for doing that.
I’ve been thinking about this topic that I’m talking about today a lot, because I have many women come to me and ask, how do I get over all this pain from my divorce. It’s so heavy and it’s so hard and I just want to stop feeling so terrible all the time. And so I wanted to talk with you today about how you can better heal from the pain of your divorce.
Pain is inevitable as we live this human life. There is no getting out of or getting around feeling pain. But what I’ve learned is that not all types of pain are the same. I’m going to talk more about that today.
I want to start off by telling you a story of the Two Arrows. A man who is in a lot of pain and suffering because of life experiences he is having goes to Buddha and he asks him how he can stop feeling all the pain and suffering from everything that he been going through. Buddha says imagine you’re walking through the forest and someone shoots you with an arrow. You feel the pain of the arrow and it hurts very bad. You take the arrow out and you do your best to heal and feel calm and peaceful again. And then suddenly a second arrow is shot and hits you at the same place the first arrow hit. Buddha asks the man, “Do you think the second arrow will be more painful than the first?” The man says, “Yes, the second arrow will hurt even more than the first. The pain will be unbearable.” Buddha says, “You see we can’t control the pain of the first arrow. This is life’s experiences, like losing loved ones, growing old, getting sick, going through a divorce. We have to bear this pain and move through it. However the second arrow is our reaction to the first arrow. Things like judging ourselves and judging others, criticizing ourselves and criticizing others, becoming angry, becoming frustrated and carrying around hate. We have no control over the first arrow, but the second arrow is optional.” Buddha said to the man, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
So I tell you this story because I really want to illustrate to you how pain and suffering are different. Right? Just like in that story we have the pain of circumstances that come into our lives like divorce. Divorce hurts. The end of a relationship after many years together or even a little time together, it doesn’t even matter the amount of time, it matters how we were feeling and thinking about that relationship. And that pain hurts. But there is so much more suffering that we pile on top of that pain and that hurt, that grief that keeps a stuck and it is all optional and I’m going to talk about it today and give you examples so that you know exactly what it looks like.
Because everyone of us who is going through a divorce or who has gone through a divorce knows how painful it is. There is no getting out of that pain. Right? There is no getting out of the pain of an end of a relationship, or the loss of what was, or the grief that we feel deeply and profoundly. That is what I’m going to be calling clean pain. However we often will create suffering for ourselves that is unnecessary by using our mind to punish us over and over and over again. This is what I’m going to refer to as dirty pain and it includes blaming others, shaming yourself, spinning in what would have been, feeling hate and anger and holding onto judgement. Things like that.
Clean pain is necessary and clean pain is inevitable. Dirty pain is optional.
So let’s talk about each one and I’ll give you some examples so you can see how these are showing up for you in your life.
Clean pain is felt when we go through difficult, challenging circumstances like a divorce, like the loss of a loved one, like losing a job or getting a cancer diagnosis. Clean pain hurts. It 100% hurts. Right? It hurts deeply. But this pain is related to the actual facts of what is going; of what is happening.
For example when you go through a divorce you feel deep sadness, disappointment, hurt, grief. All of those things. These are all emotions that are normal when we go through the end of a relationship. The loss of what was. These emotions are actually necessary and when we allow them to be with us, to be present inside of us and when we process through them they will actually move through us so that we can move forward when we’re ready.