Keeping your cool when talking to your ex

Staying in control of your emotions as you divorce or separate

It is not easy to remain calm when you have to talk to a partner about divorce or separation. You know each other so well that you have become expert at reading each other’s body language, tone of voice and even the silences. Your responses are automatic, instant and predictable. While you are getting along this is comfortable and reassuring, it mean that you have rapport and a good understanding of each other.

When you fall out it is these same automatic responses that are irritating and inflammatory. It is as if your partner knows exactly how to press your buttons and they seem to choose to do this the minute you begin to talk to each other. Before you know where you are you have lost your cool and have started to raise your voice and fallen into a now familiar pattern of bickering and point scoring which is hurtful to you both and achieves nothing except to increase the divide between you.

The good news is that you can learn how to avoid this pattern and keep focused, calm and clear on the issues that you really want to discuss.

It is useful to use the parent/adult/child model to understand what is going on when you ‘lose it’ like this. When you are calm, reasonable and respectful you are allowing the adult in you to be in charge. It is only when both you and your partner are in this mode that you will feel heard and be in a position to find a compromise that works for all concerned. When you ‘kick off’ it is the subconscious unhappy child within you that takes control and begins to feel and communicate the emotions that you felt when you were little. Once your partner hears this he or she will automatically go into a condescending or parent mode with you, a move that serves to increase your frustration.(It may, of course, be your partner that goes into child and you into parent or you may both do both at different times).

Once it has been pointed out you can begin to recognise when you are going into either parent or child. You may even get to recognise the flash points that make you do it. Unfortunately, this does not make it much easier to keep control next time it happens. The reason for this is that the response is subconscious and it happens instantly: Several seconds before the conscious mind notices and has a choice about whether it takes charge. Imagine how difficult it is to calm a toddler down once it has launched into a full blown tantrum: It doesn’t want to listen to reason any more, the only solution is to carry it off and wait until it calms down.

As with an upset child, the solution is not confrontation but understanding and communication. The unhappy child within you can be placated in a very few one-to-one sessions of guided mindfulness. It can be shown that its behaviour is not needed and that it can relax and trust the adult to remain in charge. This allows you to stay in adult even in the most challenging of situations.

Your part in the relationship may be to go into parent mode and it may be your partner who kicks off into unreasonable tantrums. Some mindfulness sessions with a coach will allow you to approach interactions with your partner in a more adult way which will allow them to take responsibility, remain in control and stay reasonable.

When you can remain consciously in adult you change the dynamic of your relationship with your partner. They may go into child or parent but you do not meet them with the predicted response any more, you remain in adult and you give your partner the opportunity to do the same. In this happy state of affairs you can begin to work constructively together to take care of your children and other family members and divide your assets fairly. www.absolute-specialists.co.uk

www.clarewalters.co.uk

What is divorce coaching?

What is Divorce Recovery Coaching? Cheryl Dillon, American coach, explains...........

http://www.equitablemediation.com/divorce-and-emotions/divorce-coaching/

clare.walters@absolute-specialists.co.uk

The Power of The Work

Please read this blog after researching Byron Katie’s own material. Read her book ‘Loving What Is’, visit her website www.thework.com   and see her you tube videos and best of all go and see her. Noting I can put down here will match seeing the master in action.

So what is the big deal about The Work?

It is such a simple process but its effects are quite simply life-changing, reducing stress, self- doubt and conflict . It allows us to get a broader  perspective on our suffering and also to get a moment of insight into a happier approach to life. Practiced often these momentary insights expand and we find ourselves being more open, kind and happy with a stronger sense of self and our own values. This is a state of mindfulness.

How can it do that ?

Well, a momentary insight can happen at any time in the process. The first stage of The Work is to identify the thoughts that are causing a problem. This in itself is a useful process. Most of us have a little voice in our head that mutters at us creating a background negativity to our thoughts. It is often fearful, judgemental and rigid and it has probably been saying the same sort of thing to us for most of our lives. It may be reminding us that we are really not good enough, that we will be found to be a fraud or that we will fail. It may be telling us that we are unlovable, ugly, stupid or clumsy or that we must try harder, do better and strive harder.

Simply shining the spotlight on these thoughts and making them clear allows us sometimes to see that they are ungrounded, unhelpful and have caused us a lot of unnecessary grief over the years. This can be painful as we see how hard we have been on ourselves and what the thoughts have led us to do.

How do the four questions help?

Sometimes we continue to believe the thought until we reflect on it more deeply. The question ‘can you really know that is true’ or ‘if you had to answer yes or no can you absolutely know it is true’ and taking the time to reflect a little on the belief will allow us to become a little more flexible in our thinking around it.

So far this has all been an intellectual exercise,  it feels a familiar and comfortable way to work so it is one that most people will be happy to try. This is why I often use The Work in a first session with a new client while I am still building rapport and trust.

The next question can helps us to become a little more critical about the thought. It sometimes feels like it loosens our attachment to it, a bit like digging into the soil around the root of a well- established plant and cutting through some of the roots. The question asks how thinking (and believing) the thought makes us feel and behave and the knock-on effects of this. It is good to spend some time on this as there are often many secondary consequences to consider. It is important to keep the focus on the particular thought and not to expand on it or begin to justify why we have it. Sometimes we get an insight into why we have developed the thought, which is great and is something to come back to after the process is complete.

It may be that we believe we need to keep hold of the thought because it is protecting us from something, this is interesting to notice but it is not necessary to pursue this line of enquiry as it often starts to develop into a story and distracts from the power of the process.  If this appears to be happening I tend to ask what has been the cost of believing the thought. This can be a very hard hitting question but it may be one that is needed to spark a massive realisation – a major ah ha moment. I have had clients get very angry here.

So having nicely loosened the attachment to the thought it is time to ask the big question: ‘And who would you be if you were free of it?’  The wording of this question may be important and I do vary it a bit: ‘how would you feel if you were free of it’, ‘what would life look like if you were free of it’, ‘how would you act if you simply let go of that thought’ and, as Byron Katie says: ’I am not asking you to drop the thought but if you did how would you be?’  And for the very resistant ‘just for the sake of curiosity just for a moment imagine how you would be if you no longer had this thought’.

Once we have a glimpse of what it would be like to be without the thought we can expand on it by repeating the question in different forms. The more we can open into the experience of how free we are when we let go of the thought the better. The mind then starts exploring possibilities for itself. I might ask: ‘how would you be around so-and-so if you were free of the thought?’, ‘ what else would happen’ and, a question I keep repeating because it is a way in to other processes that I will want to use later: ‘how do you feel in your body, in your being, when you are free of the thought?’

Byron Katie then employs the final question: the turn-around, asking what is the opposite to the thought. This may be interpreted in several ways and each version tends to be interesting. I then ask ‘and how would you be if you believed this? How would it feel?’

What are some of the other ways that The Work helps us?

Byron Katie has provided us with an enquiry sheet which asks us to explore our judgements around something.  This is a great tool as it gives us time to really go to town and allow a stream of hugely judgemental thought to pour out on to the page. It is important that this is done without censure and without our reasoning mind intervening as this will lessen the impact of the process. As we become more familiar with The Work we can be aware of the judging aspect of ourselves and we can be sure to allow this part alone to be expressed as we write.

Where the enquiry sheet has been about somebody else it is great to use the sheet to aid the turn- around simply by exchanging the name of the object of the exercise to our own. Hence ‘Jimmy never considers me and makes allowances for my needs, he is unkind and thoughtless’ becomes ‘I never consider myself and make allowance for my needs, I am unkind and thoughtless [to myself]’ . This again can be a hard hitting exercise and often rings all too true. But it shows us that we can take back our power: we do not have to depend on someone else to provide for our needs, we can meet our own and this makes for more adult, healthy relationships.

The main message of the work is that it shows us how painful, damaging and distorting our own thoughts can be. Simply by questioning them and dropping them if they are found to be less than true we become more open, accepting and kind both to ourselves and to others. It gives us freedom and flexibility in how we react to life but most importantly it breaks the cycle of pain that many of us have become trapped within.

As Wayne Dyer said: ‘Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.’ 

Clare Walters www.absolute-specialists.co.uk