Ep #131: How to Move Forward When Life Sucks After Divorce

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Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly wanna be. My name's Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well, get ready and let's dive into today's episode.

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Welcome back to the podcast, friends. Today I wanna talk about something, how to move forward when your life just sucks after divorce. We've all been there. We've had those days when it feels like everything is just a disaster. Maybe your kids are at the other house and you are missing them so much that you don't know how you are ever gonna be able to move forward. Feeling so lonely, so isolated, so sad. Maybe you feel way too often trapped in the anger of what happened, replaying it over and over in your head. And you know that it's impacting the people around you and your kids and you don't want it to, but you just feel like you're stuck there. Maybe you're feeling awful in your body, certainly not feeling sexy or wanted or desired but really feeling unhealthy and not happy with where you are. Maybe you're feeling like you have to parent in a different way or you have to react in a different way just to balance out what's going on in the other house.

Listen, all of these things can feel like we are so trapped and helpless and not in control, and it's really hard to move forward from this place. When we feel like everything sucks, we have zero motivation to move forward. And so I wanted to talk about how to start to do that today because, if we're being honest, these moments come around quite frequently post-divorce. Listen, the whole world has gotten upended. It's a grieving process. There's a lot of emotion and there's a lot of days that it just feels like it sucks. And so I wanted to talk about that today. But before we dive in, I want you to know that if you listen to this episode and you wish that you could start to get some help to just shift this one thing that you're thinking about, whether it's missing your kids, whether it's the anger that you're feeling, whether it's feeling like you have to now parent in a way that you don't want to, whatever it is I've created a really low cost co-parenting audit.

But what it is, is it's just an opportunity for you to take a step back, look at your co-parenting, look at your life, and pick one area that you want to shift and then you and I together are going to actually do that. We're gonna create the plan to help you shift. I am gonna be there with you each step of the way for two weeks. You get Voxer support from me. It's like a walkie-talkie. You send me messages, we go back and forth, and I help you shift it in real time. So in those moments when it feels like everything sucks and you don't have the motivation, you have me there helping you. So if you want this support, like I said, it's only $297. I'm not gonna offer this forever but it's been so popular I am extending it. So it is available in the month of April when this is airing. So go to the show notes, click on the link and get your audit today, and let's get you shifting. Let's jump into the episode because I wanna talk about four steps that can start to help you shift out of how you're feeling when everything just feels like it sucks.

So if you've been around this podcast long enough, you've heard me say this a million times, but the first step is always awareness. It is always awareness. And when we wanna start shifting and making change, especially when we are trapped in this sort of everything box mode, we have to get hyper aware of who we are being. And when I say being, I mean the actions that we're taking, the thoughts that we're thinking, the beliefs that we're believing, the feelings that we're feeling, that's being. It's all encompassing and we need to begin to be really aware. So that is done through just noticing, noticing when we are having a big feeling or reaction and asking ourselves, What am I feeling? Starting to become aware of the patterns, right? Not with blame or shame but with compassion. To notice maybe you have a tendency to get really down when the kids are gone. Totally normal. We're not gonna blame or shame or say that that shouldn't be happening. Your kids are gone. You should miss them. That's normal. That's part of loving someone.

But what we want to look at is what are the patterns that I do when I'm feeling this way. Do you fall into where you binge Netflix for hours on end? Do you not get out of bed? Do you skip the walk that you had planned with your friend? Do you go out and drink way too much? Start to look at the patterns because we have to have this awareness of, "Who am I being?" Because who we are being is impacting how we are feeling and so we have to start to really notice those patterns. You can write them down. You can sort of track them. I always think that tracking is such a good idea and it's just opening up the notes in your phone and just saying, you know, this morning I was feeling this or I noticed myself thinking this or just starting to bring awareness to it. And the more that you start to shine that light on awareness, the more awareness you'll have. The second step is really, once we're sort of aware of who we're being of these patterns that we're experiencing, it's starting to take responsibility.

And again, I know you've heard me say this a ton of times but I define responsibility as the ability to respond. It's not taking ownership over other people's crap. It's not blaming yourself. But it's understanding, What is my part in this and how am I participating either to adding to what I don't want or how am I adding to what I do want? And we have to start to look at it from a very neutral place. It's like the law of cause and effect. The cause creates an effect. That effect, then you have another cause and it keeps going back and forth. When we are in a cycle where we're unhappy, it's like maybe we yelled at our kids but what happened before that was that we were feeling really angry about what was going on. We were stuck in that negative thought loop that we get into. And so when that happens, then we become really snarky, then we come really short, maybe then we lash out. So we have to start to look at it and take responsibility for our part and understand what's going on.

Maybe we ate a dozen donuts that we shouldn't have eaten and then we feel awful. That's cause and effect. Eating huge amounts of sugar, not feeling well, right? We go back and forth and it's starting to understand, okay, I was feeling really sad and I went to emotional eat. Starting to understand and seeing those patterns, again, not with blame or shame but with compassion to understand, Why is this happening? Becoming aware and starting to take more and more responsibility. Without taking responsibility for our own part in it, we are just perpetuating the cycle of being unaware, unconscious and letting everything just happen to us. And this isn't what allows us to change. So the third step, once we've accepted the responsibility, or at least part of it, and understanding how we are participating in what we are feeling right now, we have to start to dive into, What are we feeling?

Is it the anger from being really, really pissed off at everything that's happened, not wanting it to happen maybe. Maybe being angry at the other person but knowing that you are feeling consumed with that anger. Maybe it's the missing your children, that loneliness and that isolation and that sadness. Maybe it's the frustration that you feel because you have no control over what's going on in the other house. You don't agree with it and so you feel like you have to then go to the other end of the pendulum and make up for it, balance it all out, be the heavy, and you're not feeling good about that. Well, what we can't do is just ignore these feelings or suppress them or avoid them. Feelings are simply drivers. They're messengers that are bringing us information about what's going on. The feeling isn't there to hurt you although I know, with the anger and the sadness, it can feel like it is. It can feel like it's consuming and we don't want anything to do with it.

But the fact of the matter is, the emotion is a messenger there to let you know something. They're valid, your emotions are valid and they have a job. Again, they're a little messenger so they're trying to tell you something. Whether they are trying to signal to you that you need to pay attention to something, whether it is a red flag, maybe that emotion is your ally. Whatever the job is of the emotion, we have to be willing to be with it instead of trying to just ignore it or suppress it or get rid of it as quickly as possible because emotions stay in our body until they are processed. We can keep stuffing them down, we can keep acting like they're not there, but the fact of the matter is they are and they're going to keep coming back. And learning how to process our emotions is one of the greatest skills that we can give ourselves but also give our children because when we are able to process and regulate our own emotions, then we are able to help our children do this, then we are less reactive in the world, then we are showing up differently.

But it really begins with being able to process our emotions and this is where coaching comes in so much to help us learn how to do that. There are so many ways to release emotions and I know we've talked about them here on the show but awareness and acknowledging an emotion is really powerful. Just saying, "I am feeling really sad right now," and sitting down with that emotion and allowing yourself to feel it. Sometimes when these emotions are really, really big, it can feel overwhelming. One exercise that I offer my clients is the five minute rule. So if we have a big emotion like anger, maybe sadness, loneliness, and you're feeling like if you even walk towards it, you're gonna get consumed by it. It's like quicksand where you're just gonna get sucked in. So what we do is we set a timer for five minutes and you say to yourself with love and compassion, "I'm going to feel this feeling for five minutes. I can do this." And then you allow yourself to feel it.

Maybe go into the bathroom, talk it out with yourself. Maybe you need to release the anchor, scream, hit a pillow, punch something. If it's sadness, maybe you need to journal about it. Let yourself get out all of the things that you're feeling. And when that timer goes off, you stop yourself. And again, with love and compassion, put your hand on your heart and you just say to yourself, "I cannot change the past, I cannot change what has happened, but I can move forward in a different direction." And you say to yourself, "Thank you, sadness, thank you anger for what you are here to teach me." And then you move forward. Doing this over and over actually helps your body learn to trust that it can feel the emotion and move forward without being totally taken down by it. So that's just one exercise. Maybe you do something like tapping. I'm gonna have an episode soon on tapping because it is such a powerful way to help process emotion. But you can also just Google it.

There's great YouTube videos of tapping but it's using the pressure points in the body to release the emotions. Even just movement, right? If you're feeling really sucked down by the emotion saying, "Come on, emotion. We're gonna take a walk. We're gonna move this out of our body." And you sort of go with the idea that you are going to move the emotion because, again, it is emotion, energy in motion. We have to move that energy out otherwise it just is stagnant and that is when we get stuck in it. And that is when we feel like everything sucks because we are just being consumed and stuck and trapped by the emotions that we are not feeling. So once you've gotten yourself to maybe just neutral ground, we're not looking to shift the emotion from sad to happy or anger to elation. No, that's kind of unrealistic. I mean, not over time, right? But in the moment, you just wanna be with the emotion and get to a neutral place and that's when we can go to the last step and that last step is really deciding what it is that we want, moving ourselves out of that place.

This is how we grit forward motion and part of it is understanding these steps, being really aware, taking responsibility for your part, processing the emotion that you're feeling. And then you wanna step into the clarity, the vision of what you do want, who you want to be. Not who you have been being but starting to shift into who you want to be. And you have to ask yourself the question, What do I want? If I don't want this, what do I want? And I'm gonna use the example of missing your kids because this is one I hear so often. And I just wanna reiterate that it is totally normal to miss your children when they're gone and I don't know any mom or dad who's gonna be like, "Yeah, this is awesome. I love that my kids are gone." And I don't know that we want to ever feel that way. But maybe you just wanna shift to feeling okay when they're gone, feeling more balanced, feeling more calm, feeling more grounded when they're away. Maybe that's the goal that you wanna move to.

And if you ask yourself, If I just wanna feel more content or more at ease when they're away, how would you feel if you had that? What would that ease feel like? And starting to explore what it would feel like to be at ease in your home, in your body, even when your kids were away. You can start to imagine what that would look like. Maybe it would look like a little bit more of a quiet start in the morning. Maybe it would look like taking really good care of yourself, doing things that you don't always have the time to do when they're there like walking with a friend, going to yoga class, taking a class on something. Maybe it would look like cooking if you love cooking. Having friends over. Actually start to sit with this vision and feel it in all five senses. What do you see in this vision? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you feel in your body? And start to create this vision for yourself and start to sit with it because we have to actually move ourselves through all of these steps.

And it's not just one time. It's many times throughout the day, over and over. When we're really stuck in those hard crappy places, we do this over and over and over to start to move ourselves out. And again, this is where having a coach or a really dear friend or a group or a therapist that understands what you're going through to help you move through this because it can feel really hard to do it on our own. And oftentimes we want to just jump to, well, I just want to feel good. But we can't do that without the awareness of what's actually happening, without taking responsibility for our part, without processing our emotions. And then taking that step of moving towards what you do want. And the last thing I'll say on this is when we have that vision, right, of that maybe what we want it to look like when we are at ease, when our kiddos are with the other parent, or maybe not having the anger when the other person calls or on transition day when you have to see them, starting to have that vision, starting to feel what that would feel like in all five senses of your body.

And then I want you to create a mantra that will help you bring yourself to this vision. We start to connect the dots between how we wanna feel in our body and the thoughts that we're thinking so that we can bring this image forward when we are having a hard time. And that will help us bring our thoughts and our beliefs and our actions in line with what we want. A mantra might look like, "I'm a good mom creating a safe, loving home for me and my kiddos." Maybe it's, "This is a season and it won't last forever." Maybe it is, "The divorce is one chapter of my life but it is not the ending." Maybe it's a mantra that is, "I am healthy and I am whole." Whatever that mantra is, you keep that center, you start to use that to remind yourself of these four steps and how you can move yourself out when it feels like everything sucks. Once you have that mantra, once you're feeling into that, you take one action towards it. And I'm talking about baby steps here. I'm not talking about huge, giant sweeping changes, but you just take one step, right?

So it might be, "I need to release some of this anger," and you go ahead and do an anger release, punch a pillow, scream, do something. Maybe it's you're stuck in the sadness and you're aware of it. You have gone through this step but then you do one thing, one action that is gonna move you closer to being at ease or how you wanna feel. Maybe you've been yelling and you noticed it, and you take one action to shift towards not doing that. Taking a minute to yourself, taking a five minute breather, repairing with your children. That means apology, moving forward differently. There's so many things that we can do to just start to shift in the direction of what we want, to start being the version of us that we want. So even when we're not being the one that we want, maybe when we're stuck in that it-all-sucks place, how can you start to shift into moving forward? And it's by these four steps over and over and over again. My friend, I know it sounds like a lot of work. I do. And I know it's easier to just stay unconscious, to not pay attention, to try to not have to do any of this, but making that easy decision or that unconscious decision is making life harder.

Instead, what we wanna do is the hard work, the hard decisions in this moment so that we can make our life actually easier in the long run. So that we can feel more of what we want down the road. But we invest in that today by being aware, by accepting responsibility without blame or shame but with compassion, to start to process the emotions that we're feeling in real time and then starting to shift into who do you want to be and how can you start to get there. It is completely possible. I watch my clients do it every single day. I just had a Voxer from a lady who is going through one of the audits and in less than a week she has shifted one area of her life that has been driving her buzonkers for months, that she continually gets triggered, she continually shows up a way she doesn't want. In one week we have shifted that and she is feeling empowered and energized and ready to start to make more and more changes. And you can do this too. I promise you. I know you can. You are strong, you are loving and you are capable. And you can do this not only for yourself but for your kiddos, because you all deserve this. I'm here with you. I'm rooting for you. And if nobody tells you today, you are loved. I'll see you next time. Thanks for being here.

Oh, and one more thing, the legal stuff. This podcast is solely intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for any medical advice. Please consult your physician or a qualified medical professional for personalized medical advice. Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week.