Stuck After Divorce? Why the Same Pain Haunts You

Anger, grief, a good day, and then round again. Why it happens, and the small sign that it’s beginning to shift.

“I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I feel used and abused.”

“I wasted my life on him.”

Different women but the same words.

And all experiencing the same circle. One day it’s anger. The next, grief. Then a heavy sorrow for herself. By evening, something small sends her back to the anger.

She keeps telling the story. To her sister, to a friend, to the colleague who only asked how she was. She can’t seem to stop.

She's stuck in the same pain after her divorce.

If that is you, there is nothing wrong with you.

Why you feel stuck after divorce

Think about what you gave. Many of us were raised to believe a marriage lasts seven lifetimes, so we gave everything. We ate what they wanted to eat. We put ourselves last and made sure everyone else had enough first. What pleased them pleased us. Their joys became ours, and their needs became ours, until we could no longer find our own.

That is why it’s so hard to rediscover ourselves afterwards. We have lost touch with what we need, and even with what we like.

When you have given that much, it doesn’t end when the papers are signed. You tell the story because someone needs to see what it cost you. And letting go can feel like saying it never mattered.

Free workshop, Thursday 26 November 7 pm (AEDT): What Will People Say? Why the shame of divorce hurts so much, and how to stop it from running your life. https://www.shevive.com.au/post/why-shame-after-divorce-still-finds-you-years-later

When the circle finally became visible

A woman I know well went round this circle for years. Three years after her divorce, she was telling everyone she had moved on. Then, one day, she overheard someone saying, “You have to have an end date. Could it be now?”

The words weren’t meant for her, but they offended her. Wasn’t she allowed to grieve? And yet they jolted her. She was doing the same thing, and pretending she wasn’t.

It took another year or so to find her footing. Something small can still set her off, but now she notices the spiral and stops it quickly.

Why going over it doesn’t set you free

Researchers have a name for this circle: rumination, which means “repetitively and passively focusing on symptoms of distress.” It feels like working things out. Mostly, it keeps you where you are.

Psychologist David Sbarra, who studies divorce, followed 90 people who had recently separated. He found that for those who tended to “go over it and over it and over it again,” being asked to write deeply about their feelings could intensify their distress. Eight months later, they were doing best after simply writing about their daily lives.

If you’re someone who tends to be totally in your head and go over and over what happened and why it happened, you need to get out of your head and just start thinking about how you’re going to put your life back together. - David Sbarra, PhD

He is careful to say that this isn’t running from your feelings. “It’s not avoidance,” he explains. “It is just re-engagement in life.”

This doesn’t mean you should stop speaking about your pain. Saying it somewhere safe still matters, as I wrote in my last letter. A later study from the same research group found that people who wrote about their separation as a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, had a lower heart rate eight months on. Lead author Kyle Bourassa said the structure helps people move forward “rather than simply spinning and re-experiencing the same negative emotions over and over.”

So the question isn’t whether you tell your story. It’s whether the story is going anywhere.

The first sign that she’s moving

In my work, re-engagement in life is the sign I watch for, and it often looks small. She does something just for herself, and then she feels guilty about it. That guilt doesn’t mean she has done wrong. It means she’s moving.

The woman I know well still feels it. Now she tells herself: I don’t need to explain this to anyone. I am allowed. I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me, so live.

One question to sit with this week:

What would letting this pain go mean to you?

With you,

Monica

P.S. On Thursday 26 November at 7 pm (AEDT), I’m running a free online workshop, What Will People Say?, on why the shame of divorce hurts so much and how to stop it from running your life. I would love you to join me.