One concept at the basis of all forms of healing throughout the world is talk therapy. By talking about the past, you are able to remember your pain, rather than feeling you are still being hurt.
But talking after divorce is not always easy. Shame about failure in the relationship keeps some of us from talking through our feelings, and processing them, in order to move on.
Don’t let it stop you. To start the process of opening up, take these three very important first steps:
Step 1: Link your feelings in present time with those in your past. If you are feeling hurt that you were rejected, then recall when you were rejected in the past.
Step 2: Relive the incident. After first recalling an incident, you then imagine that you are back at the time experiencing what happened.
Step 3: Enrich the incident. While reliving the incident, give yourself the benefit of resources that you now have, that you did not have then. Imagine that you can share your feelings with a loving parent, friend, or angel — and perhaps eventually, a licensed counselor — and process your hurt.
Instead of feeling hurt that you were rejected, link this hurt to the hurt you felt in the past by recalling just what happened to make you feel rejected. Then relive the incident by imagining that you are in the past, experiencing the same rejection.
This time, take the time to enrich the experience. As you relive the event, you can stop it at any moment and explore all of the deeper facets of your experience that you may have missed in the past. At any moment, you can choose to process a particular feeling more deeply, and to attempt to find forgiveness, greater understanding, gratitude, and trust.
Reliving an event is just like watching a video. At any moment, you can put the video on pause; recall a particular circumstance, thereby “freeze frame” your experience and then heal the pain by exploring your emotions.
The more you recall your pain, the less of a grip it will have on you in present time.
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Other MVL Articles on Divorce
3 Steps for Mending a Broken Heart
Divorced? Honor the 90-10 Principle
After Divorce, Single Doesn’t Mean Lonely
Single Parents and Jealous Children
Can You Ever Forgive Him? Yes, and Here’s How
Date Again, But Don’t Sleep Around
Forty Years of No-Fault Divorce
Fighting a Divorce Online: A Cautionary Tale
Divorced? Don’t Hurt Your Chances for Finding Love Again
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Is John Gray’s book specifically for those who are divorced
and looking to move on from grief to love.
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