The experts tell us that separating and becoming divorced is probably the most stress you will ever have in the whole of your life. They say that the pressure caused by the emotional and financial changes brought about through the legal procedure, puts your body under such extreme strain that it can often do permanent damage. Probably the greatest adjustment required is to the massive change in your lifestyle – financial; living habits; social relationships; interaction with others; self belief system. Obviously changing residential location; and changing jobs is huge and impacts heavily on the parties concerned.

The First Year is the Hardest

Our immune systems protect us fairly well and usually ward off illnesses but, in the first year of singleness its efficiency is diminished thus you could fall prey to many diseases from which you would normally be protected – shockingly, this is quite apart from the stress induced illnesses you will likely suffer from.  The longer your body remains under stress, the longer the damage will take its toll and, unfortunately, some of this intense damage might not be visible for the first year or two.

Clearly, anyone under extreme stress will suffer from emotionally induced illnesses such as headaches; high blood pressure; back aches; colitis; peptic ulcer; asthma; allergies; rheumatoid arthritis; and an extended list of illnesses all connected to your emotional health; and these will run rampant during that first year.

Some people become more accident prone and, unless you get everything under control fairly quickly, it could, in some cases, shorten your life expectancy – it will certain cause premature aging.

Change of Routine – Good or Bad = Stress

So, change of any kind – bad or good – that alters your regular routine of life on a sustained basis, is stress.

If you start a lot of new things all around the same time – say, stop smoking; start a new job; get a new boyfriend/girlfriend; get a different car – it’s all stressful.

If You Continue Reading This; You’re Already Helping Yourself

Don’t be frightened. All this is pure common sense and you probably knew about it already. It can be scary but you can do something about it and you can start right now! It shouldn’t take you forever to recover from your divorce – in fact it doesn’t have to take more than a few months if you go about it the right way.

There are those who will become traumatic and remain traumatic; and they will flounder about like beached whales irrespective of all the help that is available to them. These folk will blame everyone else for everything bad in their lives and never ‘recover’ from their divorce.

All you have to do is make up your mind if you want to be happy and enjoy a promising future or if you want to do the ‘dying swan’ act for the rest of your life.

Start Working on Your Recovery Right Now

At this precise moment, if you are presently going through divorce; then nothing in more important than working through the actual pain of it all. Everyone is different and no-one is immune to the suggestion of a quick fix but….there aren’t any – get used to that fact.

Your Doctor might write you a script for a tranquillizer – anti anxiety or anti depressant. Anyway, it’s OK in the short term just to get you through the first few weeks but are you really prepared to depend on a ‘happy pill’ every day for the rest of your life?  The Magic Muti is a quick fix – you could well develop a dependency on it and to get you off it you’ll need a substitute. Strangely, all its doing is delaying the thing you should really be doing – working through the pain.

The weirdest thing is that in only a short period of time – say three to six months – you will probably have started a new and much happier life than you’ve had in years! Why delay that pleasure?

How To Start Coping Right Now

Make your adjustments quickly. Short term stress doesn’t do you much damage. Tackle these changes in a business-like manner – make lists; think things through; be practical; use lots of common sense; don’t deal with ideals but accept the realities of the situation instead; plan and start adapting.

As far as your divorce is concerned; it really is happening; you need to get through it and get on with your life; this really is your rainy day or worst nightmare – but you will be dry again, you will have good dreams again.

Don’t be surprised if your usual group of friends suddenly doesn’t want to know you. Male or female – you are no longer safe. They regard you as public enemy number one because you’re available again. You could well go after their partner and also, in a strange way,  they envy you - just a little bit or a lot. You’ll feel like a displaced person in a foreign country. They’re being selfish and childish but…they’re also being human. Time to move on and over time develop another group who understand better.

Feeling rejected by your usual mates; discriminated against by your family; judged by your colleagues; and generally out of sync with the rest of the world; you’ll probably feel like you’re coming down with a sort of emotional flu – and you are. You’ll feel out of control, helpless and depressed.

Keep as many constants in your life as you possibly can. Maybe continue going to the same library; or keep your job or car or whatever; keep changes down to a minimum Constants are re-assuring and you need them right now. So anything you did as part of a routine pre-divorce, try to continue post-divorce.

Take control of as many things in your currently changing life as possible and control them in a responsible and sensible manner.

Now, it’s all about your mindset. Keep a positive and hopeful, upbeat mental attitude and you’ll be through the worst in almost no time at all with minimum damage.