Are you ready to take responsibility and have control over how much drama your divorce story will contain?
You have choices and your choices are mirrored within your intentions. What is your goal or intention? Could it be revenge, destruction, peace, freedom or a clean slate to begin over?
Even if you aren’t clear about your feelings or intention, your conscious or unconscious intention is what’s driving your divorce bus; you have the choice to drive away from drama during your divorce. Here are five simply implementable tips to reduce the drama!
1. Drop the hot potato: Don’t engage, sometimes easier said than done; but step away from the email, text or voicemail.
- Act vs. Reaction will keep you drama free.
- Your loved your ‘soon-to-be’ once and you know which buttons to press and press really hard to get a reaction, they know yours too.
- When the hot potato gets tossed at you, drop it! Don’t toss it back. (Hot potato could be an aggressive word, action or deed but like what we are told in a fire situation, stop, drop and roll)
- Take a moment and stop
- Drop the exchange for a time
- Roll within a drama free response.
2. Document, document, And Document: Don’t engage instantaneously but write it down.
Be aware of the negative pull to engage and answer emails, text, and calls and continue contact. What you need during your divorce is documentation. ..Facts and documents to back up facts.
Here’s the critical benefit of writing it down!! It triggers communication between both sides of your brain, engaging the logical side along with the emotional side brings in clarity, calms the “fight or flight response” to take correct action.
3. Do the opposite: This is an insight from a very savvy, well educated and family law-divorce attorney.
If the other party is in a hurry, slow down, if they are causing delay move ahead… You’ll get great information from your soon to be ex and use it wisely. Remembering if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
4. Dangle your feet: Each morning when you wake up, sit for a moment and dangle your feet on the side of your bed.
Looking down at your tootsies, simple say “Thank You”. Staying and remaining in gratitude will create a reservoir of emotional resilience. Even through the darkest moments there is something to be grateful for. Dig deep and find that one speck of light and hold onto it as you move through the day. Emotional resilience is the foundation to moving through with less drama.
5. Deep breathing! Under stress we as humans tend to hold our breath. Be mindful of your breath.
Pause frequently during the day and deep breath. This simple act of conscious breathing is sending oxygen rich blood through out your body while grounding you to mother earth. Inhale love… exhale stress. You can say that mentally out loud. It is a powerful de-stressor.
Self love and self-awareness brings in harmony for all as you move through this very difficult, life-changing event. Remembering you have a choice within this situation is empowering and critical.
I liked what you said about dropping hot potatoes in divorce. It seems like there are so many things in a divorce that can hit a nerve. Learning to drop issues seems like a great way to prevent conflict. You’re right, sometimes all it takes to come up with a better response to issues is by taking a moment to stop and really think about the best response to a situation. This seems like a great practice that will help make my divorce less contentious. Thanks for the tips!