Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 88. Stages of Divorce Grief: From Sorrow to Rescuing Yourself and Finding Confidence
Transcript
- 0:49Speaker 1: Hi love, welcome back to season three of Dear Divorce Diary.
- 0:54Speaker 1: I wish you could see this big smile on my face Happy New Year.
- 0:59Speaker 1: In this new year, we are coming to you with a fresh look, a fresh format and some exciting new things.
- 1:06Speaker 1: Today we are talking about stages of divorce grief, and what I want you to think about is that the old way of thinking of the stages of grief is the Elizabeth Kubler Ross right Anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance and divorce.
- 1:23Speaker 1: Grief has its own flavor of that, but to truly process through your grief, there are two stages you need to be aware of.
- 1:32Speaker 1: One is productive and one is not.
- 1:35Speaker 1: Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorceeys go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
- 1:51Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
- 1:57Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
- 2:02Speaker 1: In this episode, you will be able to get clarity around which stage of divorce grief you're in whether it's the productive stage or the non-productive stage and to be able to shift into the one that is most beneficial to you.
- 2:25Speaker 1: You will also be really clear about the one mindset that all women who build a better life after divorce and move through their stages of divorce grief the one mindset that all of those women have.
- 2:38Speaker 1: And you will join us for a new segment Getting Unstuck where a listener shares their current struggle with me and I share my fresh take on how to get unstuck from that struggle.
- 2:51Speaker 1: Let's get started.
- 2:52Speaker 1: You've heard of the stages of grief, right.
- 2:57Speaker 1: You're familiar with denial, like this isn't happening to me.
- 3:01Speaker 1: You're familiar with anger, like why the fuck is this happening to me?
- 3:05Speaker 1: You're familiar with bargaining If I do this, can maybe this, this doesn't happen to me.
- 3:12Speaker 1: You're familiar with depression, like I refuse to feel anything about the fact that this is happening to me and I'm just going to go numb, right.
- 3:21Speaker 1: And you're familiar with the concept of acceptance, which is finding some peace with the grief process.
- 3:26Speaker 1: These are the stages of grief that have been mapped out for us by some of our foremothers, primarily Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and others right around grieving.
- 3:36Speaker 1: Now, there are different flavors of those stages of grief based on the experience, right, because how we grieve when someone passes away is different than how we grieve when we've lost something else.
- 3:48Speaker 1: That is not exactly the same as death, and there are so many things that we have to let go of and grieve in life, right, stages of life, stages of development, stages with our children, jobs, you know, seasons of womanhood oh my word, can I get an amen about grieving stages of womanhood?
- 4:08Speaker 1: Like you know, the me in my 20s versus this me in more middle age.
- 4:14Speaker 1: And then someday, when we all become old ladies, right, we'll be grieving our youth in a certain way.
- 4:21Speaker 1: So there are lots of things in life that we will grieve through time.
- 4:27Speaker 1: But the essence of grief is sorrow.
- 4:30Speaker 1: Right, when we Google what is the definition of grief, the core definition is sorrow.
- 4:36Speaker 1: Sorrow, right, it's a sadness about what is no longer.
- 4:42Speaker 1: And when we think about that in the context of divorce, ooh, that takes on its own certain spiciness.
- 4:50Speaker 1: Right, because our sorrow is often about the man we knew he could be, what we saw in him that never came to pass, or a family life that we envisioned.
- 5:03Speaker 1: That was just so epic.
- 5:06Speaker 1: Right, it qualified for any romantic comedy out there.
- 5:08Speaker 1: It rivaled any romantic comedy concept.
- 5:12Speaker 1: Right, you had a vision, love for a life with this man that was so beautiful and in your experience, from your perception, he couldn't come to the table to meet you in that vision, in that fantasy, in that dream.
- 5:27Speaker 1: And that is so often not always, but so often where the sorrow is that that is what is lost.
- 5:37Speaker 1: Because I find, you know, session after session with client after client, that so often the marriage that they had and the partner that they had was not the same as their vision, but there were glimpses of that partner in that marriage that felt so good that it was worth holding on until it wasn't you know.
- 5:59Speaker 1: And so, in order to even make the decision to get a divorce, and some of you wanted this divorce well, nobody wanted a divorce, right, but some of you planned for this divorce and some of you got blindsided by divorce and I and that's two very different ways of grieving, even right, Because grief feels very different when you saw it coming versus when you didn't.
- 6:21Speaker 1: Right, I think there's a pre-stage of grief when you didn't see it coming.
- 6:22Speaker 1: That's called shock.
- 6:27Speaker 1: It's just like pure shock, where nothing kind of even registers.
- 6:31Speaker 1: It's like even before denial, it's just like WTF.
- 6:36Speaker 1: And so the stages of divorce grief often involve the unique flavor of divorce.
- 6:44Speaker 1: Grief that's separate maybe from or distinct from Elizabeth Kubler Ross's five stages are a certain panickiness.
- 6:52Speaker 1: Do you think that that is unique to women grieving?
- 6:54Speaker 1: I think that that exists to a certain extent in the old way of thinking of grief.
- 7:00Speaker 1: But I think for women in divorce there's a panic, paniciness flavor to it.
- 7:05Speaker 1: That's like I want to believe that I can do this without a partner but I get a little panicky and get afraid that I can't fully trust my capacity, that I can't fully trust God's got me, I can't fully trust my support system and I get panicky and I'm not grounded and I get afraid that I can't and that gets into the grief process.
- 7:29Speaker 1: I think for women, resentment and anger are a massive part of the grief process and I think that women in a grieving divorce process spend often way too much time in that anger stage and get stuck there.
- 7:45Speaker 1: There's definitely a divorced oppression experience as part of the grief.
- 7:50Speaker 1: That feels just kind of flat and numb, right when it's like you know what you need to do and you've cried a lot of tears and you've done a lot of panicky stuff and you've felt some anger but then all of a sudden feeling much of anything is just not super available and maybe there are pockets of time where it all feels overwhelming and it floods in, but there's just a numbness, and that's certainly a stage of divorce grief.
- 8:15Speaker 1: And so I want to speak these words to you to normalize what you're experiencing, because very often, when we walk through an experience that is unfamiliar, that we've never done before, there's a need to say, like, is what I'm feeling, is what I'm thinking, is what I'm experiencing normal?
- 8:32Speaker 1: Is it okay or am I like off the rails?
- 8:35Speaker 1: And so I want to speak some of these things to you to validate that, yeah, what you're experiencing is common.
- 8:40Speaker 1: It happens.
- 8:41Speaker 1: And for me to reassure you that you're not crazy and you're not lost and all is well.
- 8:49Speaker 1: You're in a process, right, and it sucks, but when you want something better than what you had, you have to be willing to do something different than you've ever done.
- 8:59Speaker 1: And so I think, when you're trying to get a feel for the stages of divorce grief and whether or not you're processing it normally, we also need to take a deeper look At beyond, just kind of in a passive sense, like am I progressing normally through the stages of divorce grief?
- 9:17Speaker 1: But also to take a more proactive like how can I make sure that I am moving through the stages of divorce grief in a productive way and I'm not getting stuck or hanging out too long in any particular phase, and that's the stages of divorce grief that I want to focus on here today is the productive versus nonproductive stage.
- 9:37Speaker 1: So I'm oversimplifying it, I'm acknowledging that right and I'm kind of intentionally breaking it into a binary productive or nonproductive stage.
- 9:46Speaker 1: And what I want you to think about as the framework for this productive versus not productive stages of divorce grief are am I of the mindset that I am actively rescuing myself right now or am I currently of the mindset that I still am wanting to be rescued?
- 10:10Speaker 1: That is the question I want you to ask yourself when you're thinking of which stage of divorce grief am I in and am I progressing through them?
- 10:19Speaker 1: Normally, I want you to get in the habit of actually asking yourself am I in the productive, I'm rescuing myself stage, or am I in the more passive?
- 10:30Speaker 1: I've kind of temporarily given up on rescuing myself and I am actively seeking to be rescued.
- 10:38Speaker 1: So let's break down all the ways that happens as you're processing stages of grief.
- 10:44Speaker 1: So I think very often when we're in the divorce grief process, when we're starting it right, we're like okay, I'm going to rescue myself.
- 10:52Speaker 1: I'm going to take this bull by little horns because I'm tired of what I have, I'm tired of being in this marriage in this way, I'm tired of living my life in this way.
- 11:02Speaker 1: And so I am going to make a conscious choice to create and carve out and build a better life for myself.
- 11:07Speaker 1: And so I think we start kind of guns a blazing, like, okay, I'm going to set myself up and I'm going to pull my resources in and I'm going to do this.
- 11:15Speaker 1: But then, somewhere that fumbles right, we get wobbly where that little panicky stage filters in, or we get burnt out because of all of the responsibilities and all the decision fatigue that happens with building a better life.
- 11:30Speaker 1: Because, let's be honest, building a better life means doing a lot of new shit, and new shit is exhausting at first until it becomes familiar, right, as we're building new habits and we're learning new skills.
- 11:41Speaker 1: Eventually it becomes familiar and we get stronger and eventually we're like, holy crap, look at that, I built some stuff in it, very, very cool.
- 11:51Speaker 1: But in that newness, everything feels vulnerable, everything feels unfamiliar.
- 11:55Speaker 1: And so somewhere in there we get scared and we get tired and we say, oh crap, I can't, I can't do this anymore.
- 12:05Speaker 1: And then we start to do these handful of things, wanting to get rescued.
- 12:09Speaker 1: We start whining, we start complaining, we start looping in our therapist's office about all the effed up crap he's been saying and doing and all the ways he's been triggering you and your kids have been triggering you, and your mom has been triggering you and your boss has been triggering you and all of a sudden, you're more focused on all the people who are triggering you and you're scrolling more and you're swiping in the apps, the dating apps, more right, and these are all things.
- 12:34Speaker 1: You're drinking a little more, you're shopping a little more, and these are all things you're doing in an attempt to get rescued rather than intentionally rescuing yourself.
- 12:43Speaker 1: And so then what's happened is you've stalled in your process of the stages of divorce grief, when you've slipped into wanting to be rescued more than you are actively rescuing yourself.
- 12:57Speaker 1: You've stalled and you're more kind of in the denial, kind of bargaining, depressed version right Of the grief process.
- 13:06Speaker 1: And so it's that's when you've got to make a choice.
- 13:09Speaker 1: Okay, am I, in this moment, agreeing to have more of what I've had, or am I recommitting to building a better life for myself, which is hard?
- 13:21Speaker 1: Right it is.
- 14:12Speaker 1: It's hard.
- 14:14Speaker 1: Part of why we have this fresh look this year is because we decided 20 plus thousand downloads wasn't enough.
- 14:21Speaker 1: We wanted to reach more women, and so what did that take it?
- 14:24Speaker 1: It took inviting in some folks to take a deep dive into the podcast and to tell us what we were doing well and what we weren't doing well, and that was vulnerable, it was uncomfortable.
- 14:34Speaker 1: And then there was a to-do list, a massive to-do list of things that I wasn't familiar or comfortable with, that I had to integrate into this process.
- 14:42Speaker 1: This is me just narrating for you how we're never done with growth love, and when we say we want better things, it's like praying for patients, right.
- 14:48Speaker 1: When we pray for patients, god sends us a bunch of shit that we have to then practice patience with and is hard, and so I think that this is a little bit like a reality check for you, and it's a little bit like a cheerleading like, hey, I want you to have this better life after divorce.
- 15:07Speaker 1: You can have whatever you want.
- 15:11Speaker 1: And sometimes you've just lost track of believing in yourself, and sometimes you've only lost track of believing in yourself because you're tired, you're exhausted, right, and so sometimes we just have to, like I said, recommit to and reprioritize finding this commitment to building something beautiful.
- 15:31Speaker 1: And when you get a little stuck in the grief process, when you're in those moments of feeling deep sorrow, I want to invite you to look at ways that you can get unleashed in your process.
- 15:54Speaker 1: So often when we're building something better, right, we take a cerebral approach.
- 16:01Speaker 1: Even when I'm advocating for you to journal or to go to therapy, right, we're thinking and we're strategizing and we're processing, maybe with a pen and paper, or we're moving something, moving through something in a to-do list with check boxes, right, and it's all very structural and strategic.
- 16:19Speaker 1: But, love, in this process of building a better life, sometimes the element that's missing is visceral, it's primal.
- 16:27Speaker 1: It's women who run with wolves shit.
- 16:29Speaker 1: Because in building a better life, in creating something magical in a growth phase, there's something very courageous and very embodied that has to happen, right.
- 16:41Speaker 1: So when producer Joy and I were preparing for this episode and we were kind of comparing notes of, in our lowest of low moments of grieving, what did we do and how did we get on?
- 16:51Speaker 1: Suck, right, producer Joy was in the woods screaming at the top of her lungs, literally right, went for a hike and unleashed in the woods.
- 17:00Speaker 1: That takes courage, right, takes so much courage to get out of the box and go do something so embodied, so visceral.
- 17:08Speaker 1: My version of that was in a hot yoga class where I would literally be in 90 minute heated yoga in the body, right In the breath, in the myofascial tissue, until I was collapsed, until I had nothing left in the body.
- 17:30Speaker 1: Is that makes sense, right, where sometimes the most powerful thing you can do isn't something in a journal or in a podcast, it's like it's in your body, it's in this.
- 17:46Speaker 1: So courageous, so insane, so embodied, it's stomping your feet, it's banging your chest, it's unleashed.
- 17:59Speaker 1: And so I want you to, as you're thinking about how you're feeling, about rescuing yourself versus wanting to be rescued, if you've been leaning towards the scrolling too much, shopping too much, drinking, too much spot, how unleashed have you gotten lately?
- 18:17Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about going to the dance club, hooking up, unleashed kind of thing, necessarily, right, it's more like you, with you, because one thing that I have observed, both in myself and with my clients over time, is that we are not good at relating to ourselves when we're not in a couple right, we don't know ourselves as well, we are not as comfortable with ourselves in a single-ness, typically, especially if you're an anxious or you're a mixed attachment type.
- 18:53Speaker 1: If you're an avoid an attachment type, you might have an easier time relating to yourself in single-ness.
- 18:58Speaker 1: But if you're an anxious attacher, you feel more comfortable relating to yourself in a relationship than you do singularly.
- 19:07Speaker 1: And that is not unleashed.
- 19:09Speaker 1: That's leashed, that's codependent, that's wanting to be rescued right.
- 19:15Speaker 1: And so there's this intention that has to be set to practicing getting unleashed.
- 19:21Speaker 1: That's going to feel really uncomfortable, but, boy, it's going to help shift you very quickly into a different state, into a different feeling state, into a different way of experiencing yourself.
- 19:35Speaker 1: I have no doubt that when producer Joy was in the woods screaming that she didn't necessarily feel a whole lot better the next hour, she felt a little better the next hour, but her body and her nervous system got the single signal in that moment that she was powerful, that she was strong, that she was courageous.
- 19:56Speaker 1: And when we send those types of signals, that aren't small ones.
- 19:59Speaker 1: Yes, a lot of change happens in little steps over time.
- 20:02Speaker 1: But when we send those signals to our nervous system, the roaring, the powerful signals you know when we've talked about lifting weights as being an unconventional way to moving through divorce recovery.
- 20:16Speaker 1: It's because it's got a strength to it, it's got an embodiment to it that sends such a strong message to the mind, body and the spirit that I can, that all of a sudden, in the process of sorrow, there's a strength to it that you couldn't feel before.
- 20:32Speaker 1: So this is your call to action to check out are you in the I can, I am, I will rescue myself stage of divorce grief.
- 20:43Speaker 1: Are you in the I can't?
- 20:45Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
- 20:46Speaker 1: I don't know how more panicky I want to be rescued, scrolling stage of divorce grief.
- 20:50Speaker 1: And can you do something to get unleashed today that will help you feel stronger and courageous and clearer in your processing of the sorrow of the man you thought he could be but chose not to be?
- 21:09Speaker 1: I'm getting refocused on the woman that you can be and choosing her.
- 21:20Speaker 1: Getting Unstuck is a segment of the podcast that emphasizes the community aspect of healing.
- 21:26Speaker 1: None of us ever got better in a vacuum, right?
- 21:29Speaker 1: We tend to unlock little pieces inside of us when we hear someone put words to something that we've been trying to express but couldn't quite get there, and so Getting Unstuck is where a listener gets to write into me.
- 21:44Speaker 1: You can either send me an email or you can DM me on Instagram and you can tell me a little bit about where you're stuck and I will share, completely anonymously, on the podcast, your words.
- 21:56Speaker 1: I'll give you a fake name and I will give you my fresh approach to that moment that you're experiencing.
- 22:03Speaker 1: So today's Getting Unstuck segment comes from Denise.
- 22:07Speaker 1: So Denise wrote in that she listens to us daily and that it helps her keep her head above water and that she is juggling a lot.
- 22:17Speaker 1: Right now she is juggling, working while taking care of the kids, and that feels very, very overwhelming.
- 22:22Speaker 1: And she is currently getting divorced from the same man for the second time.
- 22:26Speaker 1: And that when she goes to start writing about what she's experiencing emotionally, that the traumas feel too big and that she's experiencing too many triggers and she's too low to be able to face it.
- 22:43Speaker 1: And so, denise, huge hugs for you.
- 22:47Speaker 1: Here's what I want to say is that, specifically for people who have experienced trauma and I've recently been talking about on Instagram join me over there, my handle is at Dawn Wiggins for people who have experienced trauma and not every negative experiences trauma, right, a lot of negative experiences end up being internalized negative beliefs that keep us stuck in problematic loops, but that doesn't necessarily trauma.
- 23:13Speaker 1: Trauma affects the brain in a very specific way and there are some very specific hallmarks of trauma.
- 23:18Speaker 1: But for people who have experienced trauma and who have been kind of chronically in fight, flight, freeze, fawn in a very over-stimulated nervous system state where they are experiencing a lot of panic, a lot of flashbacks, a lot of insomnia, a lot of nightmares these are all kind of hallmarks of trauma.
- 23:38Speaker 1: What happens is that the brain map becomes accustomed to functioning in the red and that becomes our normal kind of state of being and anything less than that feels threatening or uncomfortable, meaning to move from the red to the yellow, let alone to the green.
- 23:59Speaker 1: That quiet, that stillness, that peace actually feels threatening to someone who has been experiencing a lot of trauma.
- 24:09Speaker 1: And so, while, denise, I have no doubt that there are a lot of very real responsibilities and stressors that are actual problems that need to be solved.
- 24:19Speaker 1: There needs to be enough money, there needs to be enough time, there needs to be enough supervision for the children, and that is real.
- 24:25Speaker 1: There is also an aspect to this that is an illusion, meaning there's an illusion that you need to keep going and being busy, because if you start to rest, that will feel threatening and the feelings will start to creep up and you will struggle to believe that you can tolerate that, that even if there were enough money, you would kind of manufacture.
- 24:47Speaker 1: I know that doesn't sound sexy, right, but people who have experienced a lot of trauma and are used to functioning in the red, we we, because this is how I used to function manufacture stresses, we manufacture chaos, we manufacture drama in addition to the problems that are very real.
- 25:03Speaker 1: So there's an aspect of it that's real and there's an aspect of it that's the illusion, in order to protect us from feeling peace.
- 25:13Speaker 1: So there has to be, at some point, an intention set to move from red to yellow and eventually from yellow to green.
- 25:22Speaker 1: We don't go from red to green all at once, typically, so how can we set the intention to catch ourselves when we're manufacturing the illusion of the red zone?
- 25:33Speaker 1: How can we know the difference between what is real and what is a lucid air, lucary, and how can we set the intention to move to the yellow?
- 25:41Speaker 1: Well, very often the illusion will show up in scrolling right in the, in the little places that time sucks.
- 25:51Speaker 1: Creep in right when we end up staying up later watching TV or scrolling, or anytime we're on the phone with someone and we're complaining, or we're in or we're like gossiping, right, we're in places where we're focusing on what other people are doing versus us.
- 26:11Speaker 1: Those are all those little places where I want you to notice your manufacturing chaos, where, if you're complaining or you're gossiping, or you're if you're using your therapy sessions or your girlfriends for those things, those are spots where you're actually manufacturing the drama versus intentionally moving from red to yellow.
- 26:30Speaker 1: So how can you take action in moving from one zone to the other?
- 26:38Speaker 1: It literally typically takes scheduling it so like, for instance, a lot of times I tell people to calendar eight to 12 minutes a day like stick it in your calendar and it becomes non-negotiable.
- 26:49Speaker 1: It genuinely doesn't take more than eight to 12 minutes if you're doing it intentionally and effectively.
- 26:55Speaker 1: If you can schedule eight to 12 minutes a day where you're putting on some brain calming music.
- 27:00Speaker 1: So that's either gonna be some classical music, some meditation music, some nature sounds.
- 27:06Speaker 1: You're ideally sitting with your face in the sun outside, not inside, but if it's freezing outside or you don't have the sun, fine, you can do it inside, but if you sit outside, it supercharges your eight to 12 minutes.
- 27:18Speaker 1: If you can sit with your face in the sun, it supercharges your eight to 12 minutes.
- 27:23Speaker 1: Concentrate on your breath, concentrate on your visualization.
- 27:26Speaker 1: Be writing some positive affirmations, be journaling some positive things, a gratitude list.
- 27:32Speaker 1: Be visualizing the better life you wanna build after divorce.
- 27:36Speaker 1: Be breathing deeply and regulating your nervous system.
- 27:41Speaker 1: Be cutting out pictures for a vision board, even if you never actually craft the vision board.
- 27:46Speaker 1: I don't care if you're just sitting in the sun, focusing on your breath, flipping through a magazine, picturing, cutting out pictures of the life you want to create for yourself, while thinking positive thoughts.
- 27:56Speaker 1: These are embodiment practices, love, that are intentionally not in the red.
- 28:01Speaker 1: They're not creating chaos or perpetuating drama.
- 28:04Speaker 1: They're soothing things.
- 28:06Speaker 1: See it's.
- 28:07Speaker 1: You know how?
- 28:08Speaker 1: Denise told us she listens to the podcast daily.
- 28:10Speaker 1: That's beautiful, so, but if she's sitting still listening to the podcast, while concentrating on her breath, while moving her body, while having her face in the sun, while physically feeling stillness, that's an embodiment practice.
- 28:28Speaker 1: Versus.
- 28:28Speaker 1: Think about, if you're listening to the podcast and you're busy, busy, busy and you're kind of listening to the podcast from the neck up, can you sense what I mean by listening to the podcast from the neck down embodied, versus listening to it while you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off from the neck up.
- 28:47Speaker 1: That's what I mean.
- 28:49Speaker 1: Scheduling eight to 12 minutes of being versus doing right, and that is where we get intentional of shifting from red to yellow to green.
- 29:01Speaker 1: When producer Joy was in the woods screaming in the woods, that was embodiment, right.
- 29:06Speaker 1: And so had I been there coaching her through it, I would have, after she was done screaming, I would have held her and rocked her a little bit and hummed right and that would have just kind of wrapped up that practice for her.
- 29:18Speaker 1: That would have taken that visceral, embodied response into that soothing positive, like connected with divine right, soothing peace.
- 29:27Speaker 1: So that's, denise Love, because I know you're listening, I want you to schedule some of that in that being embodiment practice, just for a handful of minutes a day.
- 29:38Speaker 1: Love, you've got this.
- 29:40Speaker 1: Oh, and join us Thursday for our second episode this week where we're gonna talk more about stages of divorce, grief, and also we're introducing a new segment, hidden Healing Gems, where I'm gonna talk to you about a product or a process that can supercharge your divorce recovery and building a better life because, love, I have road tested so many products and processes, and so I'm gonna share with you firsthand my experience with a product or a process so you know whether it's worth your time and your energy and your money to try it.
- 30:13Speaker 1: See you soon, peace.
- 30:14Speaker 1: Here's a podcast by my coach, john.
- 30:21Speaker 1: Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach, john.