Guest Author - Stephanie L Watson
When you're going through a divorce you must work through your painful feelings before you move on to a new relationship. Sometimes this means experiencing them again by talking to a friend, a therapist, or by journaling.
When you pick a friend to share your feelings with, make sure that it is a friend who will offer you an honest evaluation rather than just telling you what you want to hear. At the same time this friend should be understanding of when to talk and when to listen. Sometimes it is good to find a support group to help you through these issues rather than leaning on someone who was friends with you during your marriage. Word of caution, no matter how good of a friend you may think you have, people gossip.
Talking to a therapist is another alternative to help you work through your feelings. A therapist definitely offers unbiased and unfiltered views of your situation. He or she is also trained to determine if your feelings are a normal byproduct of your divorce or something deeper such as depression. A therapist can offer medications to help you deal with the worst of your feelings, taking the edge off so that you can face the reality of your situation. Another wonderful aspect of a therapist is that it is completely confidential and private.
Another way to get through your feelings is to write in a journal. When you journal what you write and feel is between you and your diary, no one else. You can write anything in your diary that you want to. You can pour your heart out to your journal without worrying about what it thinks. You will not get feedback but sometimes you don't want feedback, sometimes you just want to get your thoughts and feelings out.
In order to work through all of your feelings surrounding your divorce you can use one or all of these methods to work out what happened and how you're going to deal with it. The key is to actually work through feelings rather than get stuck on one thing. Eventually you have to let go. You do not want to give your ex too much head space. You do want to go over everything so that you can learn from the mistakes you made so that you will not repeat them.
Give yourself the time you need to work through all your emotions before getting tied up in romance again. To truly learn from your experiences you need time to be without a partner. The real key to life is realizing that life is a series of learning opportunities. The future it is not set in stone you can grow and learn and change. As you learn, and grow, and change you will over come and be happy again.
