Tips for an Emotionally Intelligent Divorce
Sometimes during the divorce process, couples have nuanced issues that require expertise beyond my scope. To help them, I have a team of trusted colleagues who I rely on to guide clients through financial or emotional struggles. During this blog series, I have asked members of my team to come up with some important tips to help divorcing couples during the process.
Roberta A. Moore is the second speaker in this new series. She offers tips on navigating divorce in an emotionally intelligent way.
“Divorce is a very difficult time for couples who originally had high expectations of being together for a lifetime. If both people mutually decide to unravel their relationship, I find that it is easier for both parties to navigate the un-coupling in an emotionally intelligent way. In nearly two decades of working with couples, I find this is rarely the case. Usually one partner wants the divorce and the other does not. When this occurs, they are no longer in a mutually reciprocal dynamic but actually in a one-up, one-down state that quickly becomes more about power and control than about relationship.
If this describes you, what can you do to stop the battle and restore your inner peace? Holding in or suppressing negative feelings is harmful at best and it is often better to find some release. These three emotional intelligence skills can help you cope in as non-reactive a way as possible.
- Self-regard: it is important to continue to take up for yourself, respect yourself, and feel good about yourself even if you feel rejected or ashamed. Make a list of your accomplishments in the relationship, or things you learned by being in the relationship, or happy times that you had together. You will never lose these as no one can ever take these memories/learnings away from you.
- Flexibility: it is important to develop resiliency, hardiness and an ability to roll with life’s punches. Use imagination, curiosity and creativity to imagine a new chapter unfolding in your life: visualize how this chapter can be better than the last one based on what you’ve learned and discovered about yourself.
- Independence: it is important to build your inner wisdom and recognize you can learn to listen to your own inner voice without needing a lot of reassurance from your partner. Make a list of attributes you know “for sure” that you have and can rely on in the months ahead.
Doing these exercises will help you find your new “North Star” and give you a sense of meaning and purpose during a difficult time. When we can find meaning in suffering, we usually feel less stressed and more resilient, and better able to face what happens to us in our lives.”
Roberta A.
Moore
The EQ-i Coach and Conscious Choices Corporation
Roberta is a licensed psychotherapist and executive coach with nearly four decades experience in professional services, Roberta Moore is the founder of EQ-i Coach and author of Emotion at Work: Unleashing the Secret Power of Emotional Intelligence . Certified in Emotional Intelligence through Multi-Health Systems, Inc., and member of the invitation only Forbes Council of Coaches, Moore utilizes her extensive background as an accomplished business executive and licensed therapist to help executives, business teams, and sales teams achieve workplace and personal success.
You can contact Roberta at 314-499-1110 or check out her websites below: