Divorce | My Divorce Recovery

Our Intention to Create Group Wisdom in Collaborative Practice: Let’s Brainstorm this Idea Together!

As I sat in a recent five-day workshop on how to design and lead a transformational workshop, I had a “Eureka!” moment.

My intention in attending the workshop was to develop transformational workshops for people who were recovering from divorce or facing transitions in their lives. As I was participating in the exercises, an insight dawned on me:

Collaborative practice is transformational work. Read More →

The Warm and Hospitable People of China

When Jeff and I accepted the invitation to visit China, we knew we were going to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience. As we described in our previous blog, our pre-trip planning had been fascinating. Even so, we could never have imagined how amazing the trip would actually be!

Jeff and I stepped off the plane in Wuhan and were immediately met with incredible hospitality. Our greeters, Lily and Finny, were warm, kind and lovely—truly soulful people. Lily is a graduate student and Finny did much of the organization for Oriental Insight, the group that invited us to China. Read More →

A Letter from China: International Collaboration with Mental Health and Divorce Professionals

Dear Colleagues:

We’re sending this blog from Wuhan, China, where we are enjoying a few days of sightseeing and absorbing Chinese hospitality, history and culture from our wonderful colleagues and their graduate students.

Jeff is the current president of The Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy,(SAP) Division 29 of the American Psychological Association (APA). The division has been working on increasing its international presence, and in 2016, SAP formalized an affiliation with Oriental Insight—a similar organization in China Normal University School of Psychology which was founded by Professor Jiang Guangrong, a leading psychologist at Central China. Professor Jiang is one of the leaders in the field of Counseling Psychotherapy and Mental Health on the Chinese mainland. Jeff and I were invited by Oriental Insight to present a 3-day workshop to Chinese mental health professionals on family conflict and divorce. We anticipated and planned for this opportunity since last August and arrived here with great excitement two days ago. Read More →

There Is a Person Behind Every Label: Watch Out for the Diagnosis Trap

In any context, a mental health diagnosis is a serious, meaningful term that should not be taken lightly, and should only be made by a mental health professional who has personally assessed the client and is trained to diagnose the condition at hand. Although diagnoses are often casually offered colloquially as labels, careful assessment and expertise are truly required in order to make an official diagnosis. Read More →

Prepare and Plan to Ensure that Children’s Special Events are Truly Special

Children’s special events deserve to be memorable and positive. Whether it’s a graduation, confirmation, bar or bat mitzvah, recital or play, children benefit from divorced parents who plan ahead to ensure that the event—and the memory of the event—will not be spoiled by parental conflict.

Parents need to know themselves: trigger points, strengths, vulnerabilities, etc. With this knowledge, they can realistically plan for the event and avoid potential minefields. Doing so ensures that the child will not experience discomfort, witness distress, or have to navigate being “in the middle.” Read More →

Forging a Divorce Narrative for Your Young Adult Children

We’ve written before about the power of rewriting your divorce narrative for yourself, but in this article we discuss how to frame the issue for your children.

Developmentally, young adult children are busy exploring their lives, their work, and their love relationships—and are quite independent and operating very much outside of the realm of their family of origin. Notwithstanding, they are often devastated by the news that their parents are getting a divorce. Read More →

Taking Care of Yourself During Divorce

Often in divorce we feel that we’re very depleted—as if our emotional bank accounts are overdrawn.

Self-care in general is a relatively new concept in divorce, and it’s usually one of the last things that people pay attention to. It’s understandable, when you consider all of the changes that occur during the process. Read More →

Rewriting Your Divorce Story

For many people, the story of their divorce is a story of trauma and tragedy, often described as the worst thing that has ever happened in their lives. For those who wish to move on with their lives in a constructive way, it is often useful to rewrite and recast their divorce story.

In many instances, rewriting involves the retelling of a story in which a person may have found him or herself to be a victim, and reframing the story in a way that they can see themselves on their own journey of growth—a hero’s journey. Read More →

Broad-Spectrum Parenting

Most of us are familiar with the concept of “fight or flight”—when attacked, many forms of life will choose either to fight the enemy or to flee from the dangerous situation. This concept can also be applied to co-parenting relationships during which parents often engage in hostile or defensive communication.

Fight might take the form of criticism or blame, and then counter-criticism or counter-blame. For example, if one parent says, “You were late picking up the children yesterday,” the other might retort, “Yeah, well, you didn’t give me proper notice of your vacation plans with the children.” Flight often manifests in a spouse not responding to emails, calls, and texts—basically, withdrawing and avoiding the conflict. Read More →

The First Day of School: It’s About Your Children, Of Course

Making the transition from long, unstructured days in the summer to the rules and expected behavior of the school environment can sometimes be very anxiety provoking for kids. It’s really critical that divorced parents are mindful of that anxiety, and what the kids are going through during this transition. Here are a few tips to consider:

Don’t contribute more to the children’s anxiety by fighting over where the children are going to sleep the night before the first day of school, or even being rigid about the calendar prior to the beginning of school. What’s important for the children is that there be support from their parents and no conflict. Read More →