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By Dr. Deborah Hecker  Ask anyone who has been through a divorce and they will tell you it rocks the foundation of your being, leaves you feeling lonely, flawed, undesirable, enraged, and hopeless, to name a few emotions.
During my divorce twenty-seven years ago, I was in desperate need of a roadmap to help me to better understand what went wrong – for myself as an individual as well as for my marriage. Without developing that insight I knew I would have difficulty healing and having successful relationships in the future.
I sought out professional help. At the time, I was living in a major U.S. city where there were many talented and well-trained therapists. I received assistance working through my grief reaction. However, what I also needed was someone who understood why my level of insecurity about being un-partnered was so disproportionate to the loss. Unfortunately, I was unable to find that person.
My solution was to take matters into my own hands by embarking on a journey of personal introspection and professional research. This resulted in the development of my unique divorce counseling process, which has helped countless people to move beyond their grief and to build a secure identity as a single person.
In the following section, I will share with you how people will grow and benefit from my brand of divorce counseling.
Benefits of Divorce Counseling
Healing from a divorce is a three-step process; one must grieve their loss; they must create an identity as a non-partnered person; and they need to learn a new relationship model so they will avoid previous relationship pitfalls.
- Step 1 – Move beyond grief: Where there is attachment and loss, inevitably there will be grief. As a grieving person, you will experience many different raw, sometimes conflicting, emotions including, sadness, love, hate, fear, regret, guilt, depression and anxiety. Given the pain of grief, many people will try to bypass it. Counseling will help you to confront your emotions so that you can successfully move beyond them.
- Step 2 – Develop an identity apart from one’s spouse: In order to fully understand why your marriage collapsed, you must be helped to step back in time, not to the beginning of the marriage but to early childhood when you were taught how to empathize, love, share, comfort control aggression and to otherwise form healthy relationships. Counseling will help you to see how your early childhood relationships contributed positively and negatively to your marriage. You will then be in a prime place to define the behaviors, feelings and values you want to develop and change.
- Step 3 – Learn a new model of partnership, which I call “Yours, Mine, Ours: Romantic Relationships Done Right.” Successful relationships must address both the growth of the individual as well as the growth of the relationship. This model will help you gain greater clarity of your feelings, thoughts, and needs and how to grant your partner the right to theirs.
Conclusion
Divorce counseling will help you to take ownership of the Self you relinquished in your marriage and gain the skills for new and healthy partnering. This growth will also help you to:
- Develop strong co-parenting skills.
- Become accountable for your new independence.
- Move beyond feeling victimized.
- Liberate yourself from the past.
- Turn your divorce, which you may see as a personal failure, into an opportunity for growth.
Most importantly, you will learn that you can be happy again.
About the Author...
A respected psychoanalyst, Dr. Deborah Hecker has developed a cutting-edge relationship model she calls “Yours, Mine, Ours: Romantic Partnership Done Right.” Her innovative approach assists clients in simultaneously developing their individual identities while teaching them how to successfully integrate that unique identity into their partnerships. Last Update: 7/26/2018
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