The marriage is over and it’s time to move on. You don’t need a therapist anymore, you need a lawyer, right? Wrong. You need both. Divorces are painful at best and can be emotionally and financially devastating for years at worst. Working through the issues during the legal process through divorce therapy can save you both, and the children if you have any, deeper wounds and money.

Divorce Brings Out the Worst

Pain, especially emotional pain, sends you back to childhood wounds. You have already been transported back to your childhood many times during the course of the marriage. How many times have you thought:

S/he treated you just like Mom or Dad did?
S/he reminded you of one of your parents?
S/he’s treated you like a 5-year old?
You feel like a 5-year old?
That’s what Mom/Dad used to do?

Your unresolved feelings of rejection, abandonment and not being good enough are right there on the surface. When you were a kid you may have grabbed your toys and gone home to sulk or cry. Now the stakes are much larger and the “toys” are worth a great deal more.

Fear and Anger Shrink Your Perspective

When your reptilian brain is activated you are literally unable to see the long-term consequences of your actions. The reptilian brain is the part of you that wants to either defend yourself in any way possible or leave as fast as you can. Your ability to see possibilities is reduced to the immediate, not to 5 years down the road. In divorce this involves actions such as:

Blaming, shaming and name calling
Putting the children in the middle of your problems
Spending literally tens of thousands if not more than 100 thousand dollars on lawyers to get even

The emotional wounds you deliver to each other will carry over to any future relationships. Although there is always therapy available post-divorce, you will need less therapy and have more money left after legalities are over if you work together to settle your differences.

Divorce Therapy Has a Different Perspective than Marriage Therapy

There are times people just should not stay together. When it’s time to legally end the marriage, the relationship will remain if there are children. Without children, the possibilities of not having a continuing relationship are there, but you will always carry the past with you. The question is whether the past will hold you back.

Divorce counseling is geared to assisting you work through the pain of your personal feelings as well as those between each other. In addition, it will help you look to the future rather than being stuck in the past. Hopefully each of you will be able to attain healing.

 

 

Divorce Therapy – Divorce Therapy

 

Two-Home Families: A Family System’s Approach to Divorce Therapy

divorce therapy

“””Dr. Brenda Dozier has been my number one choice for the referral of my most challenging couples and families. I am so glad she has taken the time to share her wit and wisdom through Two-Home Families.””-Peggy Thornton, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist

Price:

 

Working with Divorcing Spouses: How to Help Clients Navigate the Emotional and Legal Minefield

divorce therapy

A guide to expanding any psychotherapy practice, this book provides therapists with essential information for helping clients manage the process of divorce with minimal damage to their kids, themselves, and their finances. The author is a prominent d

List Price: $ 35.00

Price: $ 35.00

 

Divorce Therapy

divorce therapy

Examine a wide variety of divorce therapy approaches with this seminal book. Divorce Therapy is one of the first books to present a comprehensive approach to divorce therapy. Based on a foundation of theory and research about divorce, this landmark v

List Price: $ 34.95

Price: $ 34.92

 

Workshop lets divorcing couples ask, 'Is mediation right for us?'

Filed under: divorce therapy

By Staff reports For a couple contemplating separation or divorce, mediation can provide a viable alternative to costly litigation, the Marblehead Counseling Center note. This approach allows the couple, rather than the court, to decide what is best …
Read more on Wicked Local

 

Apartment Therapy Couple Splitting Up: The New York Post

Filed under: divorce therapy

In an essay about divorced men as decorators (an idea pulled from the Times) he writes: Not that ANY of you would ever need any help like this, BUT it is a fact that a fast growing segment of the interior design and furniture buying population is made …
Read more on Huffington Post

 

Don't Put Your Nanny In The Middle

Filed under: divorce therapy

If a divorce is looming, a couple may look to the nanny for advice and support because she (or he) has probably witnessed a lot of the troubles firsthand. However, if a nanny begins to feel like the "nanny in the middle," she may choose to move on.
Read more on Huffington Post