After Divorce: Finding Hope for You and Your Children

As a parent, you aspire to build a safe and secure family environment for your children to grow up in. You do your best to be there when they need you to share their distress and offer love, a shoulder to lean on, and a listening ear. Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy when you’re as distressed as they are after a divorce. The fact that you’re also struggling with negative emotions—sadness, grief, maybe even guilt, anger, frustration, and helplessness—can make it doubly tough to help your children during this challenging time.

While life seems bleak for you and your children after divorce, there is hope that things can get better. For that to happen, you need to stay optimistic or restore your positive outlook. This is something you can do for yourself and your children with a little help from a counselor.

Living through the Pain of Divorce

If you’re the one who is left with the children, you may still feel very alone. Without question, a divorce can be one of the most difficult challenges life may throw at you. Emotional health experts opine that the pain inflicted by divorce rivals the grief felt when a loved one dies. Divorce can be such a shock to your system that you may end up caught in your own misery.

At the same time, you pray that your children can survive the experience without much pain. While children have the resilience to adapt even in the toughest circumstances, they may also respond to divorce with anger, resentment, betrayal, withdrawal, fear, aggression, etc. Will you let these emotions waste away their life? Is there a way to rise above these feelings and continue supporting and journeying with them through this challenging time?

Attitude Matters

Divorce is an opportunity for you and your children to learn many life lessons. The roller coaster of emotions can bring distress to all of you, particularly if you have no guidance through the experience.

Intense emotions can be a source of motivation. Though it may seem like your children’s sense of security is compromised as they try to adjust to a new, unsettled world where their parents are not together anymore, it can also bring the opportunity to reinforce family love and resilience.

It is important to note that if you are spending your days mourning, your children are probably consumed with grief as well. If you constantly talk about your financial needs or lack of support from your ex-partner, your children may feel guilty, thinking they are an encumbrance that adds to your suffering. Negative speech and expressions can be contagious, causing your children to manifest the same symptoms they see in you. Though unintentional, your loneliness and pain may shroud your sensibility, making it difficult for you to see that your children are hurting too.

Making It Easy for You and Your Children

Divorce changes everything, including your hopes and expectations of the future. As a parent, you may feel uncertain about how you can provide your children the right support to get through divorce. This is a time when children need to have hope for better days. It may be an uncharted territory, but as a parent, one of the best things you can do is give them that hope as you negotiate the changes that are happening during this unsettling time.

There are various ways to help your children adjust to a new life after divorce. Your positive energy, patience, and listening ear are affirming expressions of your love, care, stability, courage, and strength despite your own pain. Staying positive can be the key to keeping you strong for your children during this transitional period. Life after divorce may not be easy for everyone, but seeing your children thriving in the new circumstances can bring you inspiration.

Finding Hope for You and Your Children

No matter how well a divorce is handled, it causes huge upheaval in the lives of the divorced couple and their children. Some parents have the skill to help their children work through the changes and losses, but some may be too consumed with their own feelings to do so.

If you belong to the latter group, this may be the time to call for outside help—perhaps a professional whom you can trust to listen to you and your children without judgment. The key is to find someone who can help you process your emotions and help your children adjust to the changes. Your search ends at Carolina Counseling Services – Southern Pines, NC, where you’ll be welcomed into a safe and caring environment to grieve and heal.

At Carolina Counseling Services – Southern Pines, NC, you and your children will benefit from an appropriate therapy plan to cope with the trauma, accept the radical changes, and rebuild a world shattered by divorce. With help from one of the independently contracted counselors, you will find reasons to hope for a positive future and hang on despite the uncertainties wrought by divorce. Just call to request an appointment.

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