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Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County

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(949) 266-0660

  • The Collaborative Process
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Divorce Counseling

Why Is Divorce So Stressful?

May 9, 2017 By CDSOC

by Dr. Carol R. Hughes, Ph.D., LMFT

“There are few blows to the human spirit so great as the loss of someone near and dear.” ~ John Bowlby, M.D.

The Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale indicates that divorce is the second highest stressor for humans, second only to the death of a spouse.  Why is divorce so stressful?

When we view divorce through the lens of British psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby’s attachment theory, it helps us understand the reason why divorce is so stressful.  Attachment theory states that we humans have a biological predisposition to form attachment bonds (strong emotional ties) with significant others to have a secure haven and safe base where we can thrive and return for support and comfort during times of need, stress, and crisis.

Dr. Carol Hughes
Dr. Carol Hughes

We form these attachment bonds via our relationships with other human beings who are of primary importance to us.  Indeed, Dr. Dan Siegel, Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA Medical School, states, “Relationships are the most important part of our having well-being in being human.  It’s that simple.  And it’s that important.”

From birth to death, throughout the human life cycle, attachment bonds ensure our safety, security and even survival, and these emotional ties are strong and enduring.  It is understandable then that we humans tenaciously cling to our attachment bonds, both consciously and unconsciously.  Divorce disrupts and often destroys one of the most significant and powerful attachment bonds that we adults form – the bond with our marriage partner, thus also threatening the feelings of safety, security and survival this attachment bond has ensured.  As author Pat Conroy lamented, “The greatest fury comes from the wound where love once issued forth.”

The disruption and destruction of this powerful attachment marital bond become even more significant when we view each couple member’s psychological and physical health during and post divorce.  In the least case divorce causes the disruption and restructuring of the marital attachment bond and in the severest case, it causes the severing of the marital attachment bond, resulting in the attachment needs of the couple members no longer being met.  When this happens, the couple members have lost their secure haven and safe base where they can thrive and return for support and comfort during times of need, stress, and crisis.  They become more distressed and thus vulnerable to both physical and psychological stress, while at the same time being less able to deal with the stress and distress.

Researchers have consistently found that, except when compared to those in the most unhappy marriages, separated and divorced individuals suffer higher rates of physical and mental health concerns than married people in general, and often higher rates than widowed individuals.  In contrast, researchers have found that those in the unhappiest marriages often feel a sense of relief and hopefulness that their future can be happier apart from their spouse.

“Divorce is deceptive.  Legally it is a single event, but psychologically it is a chain – sometimes a never-ending chain – of events, relocations and radically shifting relationships strung through time, a process that forever changes the lives of the people involved.” – Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, Second Chances

The impact of divorce reaches far beyond the disruption, restructuring, and rupture of the marital attachment bond.  Divorce affects relationships in every aspect of the couple’s lives – the relationships with their children, both minor and adult, with extended family members, friend and community support systems, both in the present time and into the future.  As the author Pat Conroy wrote, “Divorce has many witnesses, many victims… Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.”

We know that grief is part of dealing with the excruciating loss that overwhelms us in death’s wake.  Grief is our response to this loss.  Divorce is the death of a marriage, the death of a couple or a family living together in one residence, often the death of extended family, friend, and community gatherings, the death of hopes, plans and dreams for the future.  Grief is the invisible companion of divorce.  Whether we are the one who is leaving the marriage, or the one being left, grief will be accompanying us on the journey called divorce.

Grief will also be the travel companion of our children, both minor and adult, our extended family members, and our friend and community support systems.  This grief is inevitable.  To many it is also invisible because most of us experiencing divorce, whether it is our divorce or the divorce of our parents, do not think of what we are experiencing as grief.  We most often say that we are feeling shocked, angry, sad and powerless, all of which are feelings that arise during grief.

During separation and divorce, both members of the couple are experiencing significant losses.  Yet both are often unaware of their invisible companion called grief.

It is common that the one leaving the marriage has already endured months and even years of agony, assessing whether to leave or stay.  For the one leaving, the divorce grief process began many months ago as he or she began thinking about less contact with the children, extended family, friends and community, the loss of and even longing for the happier days of the marriage, the possible loss of the family home and financial security, and the loss of hopes, plans, and dreams.  So, the one leaving has a head start in the grief cycle of divorce.

When the one leaving says, “I want a divorce,” the one being left is immediately catapulted into the grief cycle of divorce.  Often the one being left swings topsy-turvy through feelings of shock, deep hurt, intense sadness, anger, even rage, love and longing for the spouse and grieving the same losses as the one who is leaving the marriage.  All of these feelings are part of the grief cycle of divorce.

“Some people think that it’s holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it’s letting go.” ~ Author unknown

Researchers have also found that even when adults have experienced such losses, physical and psychological disturbances, and grief, after a period of time most adults cope successfully with divorce.

How can you best ensure that you are one of the adults who successfully cope with divorce?

Acknowledge that you are experiencing an overwhelmingly stressful life event.  Assess where you are in the divorce grief cycle.  Ask for professional assistance.  Work with a team of divorce professionals who are experienced in Collaborative Divorce and Mediation and who understand your needs as you move through this major life crisis.  These divorce options are confidential, out-of-court, non-adversarial and respectful.  They offer you the opportunity to identify your goals, interests and concerns and craft agreements that are both individual and family focused.

Filed Under: Coaching, Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, Divorce and Emotions, Mental Health Tagged With: Alternative Dispute Resolution, Divorce, Divorce and Anger, Divorce and Grief, Divorce and Mental Health, Divorce and Stress, Divorce Counseling, Divorce Recovery, Dr. Carol Hughes

Why a Collaborative Pre-nup Makes Cents

April 24, 2017 By CDSOC

by Suanne I. Honey Attorney at Law, CFLS, Mediator and Collaborative Attorney

Sorry for the silly pun when this is such a serious topic. Seriously, though, pre-nuptial agreements are hot topics which give rise to many emotions.

“It paints the Devil on the wall.”

“It is anticipating failure of the marriage.”

“If he or she really loved me, this would not be necessary.”

“I am uncomfortable talking about finances.”

The list can go on and on. Sometimes emotions are an unnecessary waste of energy. Other times emotions have some benefits, even negative emotions. For example, fear in a dark alley in a dangerous neighborhood will cause you to be zealously vigilant about your surroundings which will lead you into taking appropriate steps for your safety … much like the pre-nuptial agreement itself.

Unfortunately, statistics today are not favorable for a lasting marriage. If and when there is a decision to get divorced, the person you once loved turns into the enemy. There is often a total lack of trust at the time of a divorce. There are fights over money, property, and other issues creating stress for both partners. This stress almost always filters down to the children.

Collaborative Law is a process where couples work with a team of expert professionals.

The mental-health professionals work individually with each partner to a marriage (or a potential marriage). They help curb their emotions and phrase their individual needs and wants in a positive, cooperative and logical way, allowing those needs and wants to really be heard and understood by the other partner.

The financial professional will be able to identify and sort out the financial and property issues of concern to the couple in a transparent and logical way.

The Collborative Practice attorneys will help guide their clients through the legal quagmire. This can all be done in a much less stressful, more cooperative way in the collaborative arena.

While important, none of that is the real reason that Collaborative pre-nups make the most “cents.”

The biggest reason for marriages to fail is the breakdown in communication. Having gone through a divorce in the Collaborative law process, many (if not most) participants say if they’d gone through this process before the marriage, the divorce would be much less likely.

So it makes “cents” to have your pre-nuptial agreement created in the Collaborative setting. Because of the communication skills learned by the couple during the process, it may help avoid a future divorce altogether. This saves a great deal of “cents” paid to attorneys and litigation, or future Collaborative Divorce costs.

Even if the unthinkable happens and there is a future divorce, you will come out ahead. Having learned how to conduct difficult conversations in a way that allows your spouse to hear and understand your position, even discussing issues in the divorce process that were not part of the original prenup will save many “cents.”

Most importantly, the stress level exposed to any children during your divorce will be significantly reduced. This is an outcome which is “priceless.”

Filed Under: Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, Divorce and Emotions, Divorce and Money, Financial Tagged With: Alternative Dispute Resolution, CDSOC, Divorce, Divorce Agreement, Divorce and Stress, Divorce Counseling, Financial Agreement, Marriage, Premarital Agreement, Suanne Honey

Your Brain on Divorce: How to Take Charge

June 20, 2016 By CDSOC

by Jann Glasser, Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT), Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Coach/Psychotherapist, and Collaborative Coach

During your divorce, you may find your heart pounding and your thoughts racing as if you were driving in the Indy 500. An email, text or voicemail from your attorney, accountant or spouse in your inbox may result in fear and dread as immediate reactions. This is one example of the brain on divorce; easily triggered, distraught and overwhelmed. You are trying to function while stressed, sad, and sleep deprived, reacting as if under attack.

Divorce is one of the most significant losses and stressful life events people experience. Unlike other losses, there is no bereavement leave from work, no sympathy cards, and no rituals that bring your friends and family around you to acknowledge the loss. Life goes on without skipping a beat. You are expected to go on.

Not only are you expected to go on, but you are also expected to gather all financial paperwork, other information, make time in your schedule for additional meetings, phone calls, emails, help your kids cope, and be prepared to make major parenting and financial decisions that have long term consequences. No wonder you’re exhausted and overwhelmed!

Being such a stressful process, divorce can bring someone to their knees even if they generally cope well at other times, turning a well-adjusted, reasonable person into a raving maniac. When you understand what’s going on in your body and mind under stress, it can help you have compassion for yourself and also choose effective coping strategies.

Your brain is responding to the divorce as a threat. The part of your brain that manages emotion and the fight-flight-freeze response (the limbic system or mid-brain) kicks into high gear. We commonly refer to it as “the right brain.” This part of your brain is essential to keeping you alive. It looks out for threats and is quick to react.

However, it is not helpful for planning, making decisions, and considering consequences of your actions. The part of the brain that takes control when you are upset, angry, or scared (during much of your divorce!) is responsible for your racing heart, tight chest, and flushed face. It contributes to your confusion and indecision. When your brain is preparing for a fight or to run for your life, it has shut down access to the “thinking, reasoning” part of your brain (left brain). Unfortunately, it is this part of your brain that needs to be in charge when negotiating your divorce settlement, making financial decisions, working with your co-parent, parenting, and planning for your “new normal” and future. Suzanne Segerstrom, Ph.D. of the University of Kentucky, aptly describes this part of the brain as controlling the “Pause and Plan” response.

Coping effectively during your divorce involves shifting from the “Fight or Flight” emotional “right brain” responding to threat and putting the “Pause and Plan” within in your “left brain” in charge. This part of your brain executes a plan after evaluating information and considering consequences. When you are able to do this, you increase self-control as well as your ability to manage emotions, evaluate information, make decisions, and make plans.

How can you access “Pause and Plan” when your brain is locked down in threat mode? The following options help strengthen your “big brain” and promote resilience:

  • Make sure you have the energy needed for your brain to optimally function. A healthy diet, regular exercise, and adequate sleep are essential to your body having the energy it needs.
  • Excess sugar and alcohol are not your friends now. Drowning your woes in a gallon of ice cream or a bottle of booze won’t help you cope for long..
  • Pause. Your emotional “right brain” is lightning fast. Your body and mind need time to slow down the reaction and realize your current situation, while stressful, is not life or death. Breathing slowly is a great way to use your body to send signals to your brain that you are not in mortal danger. Meditation, or daily mindfulness exercises can be a huge help here. It also gives you time to begin to think, engaging your “left brain”
  • Heighten your awareness. Observing yourself and your situation is a function of the left brain. When you pause to observe what’s going on, you activate that part of your brain. This opens up options for you to consider and the opportunity to be less reactive.
  • Seek support from others. Believe it or not, there is “good news” in how our body responds to stress. Not only does our body release adrenaline to help us jump into fight-flight action, but it also releases oxytocin (sometimes called the bonding, love, or cuddle hormone). This hormone encourages us to seek out support and physical contact from others. It also seems to help heal and regenerate heart cells! Our body and mind, in its’ infinite wisdom and complexity, is actually built to help us manage stress and heal a “broken heart.” Seeking out supportive relationships as well as receiving and giving hugs can help you calm down, pause, feel protected from attack, and as a result, be able to access your thinking brain.
  • Change your mindset. Stress itself is not the main problem that creates the negative impact on our health and well-being, but it’s how we perceive the stress that is the problem. Instead of interpreting the stress in your life, the divorce, and your reactions to it as harmful to you, you have another option. If you interpret this hard time in your life as a difficult challenge; one that you have the courage and strength to rise above, you can emerge stronger and better. You will also be less negatively impacted by the stress!
  • Practice self-compassion. Exercising this part of your brain not only can help you feel better about yourself, it can also contribute to self-control and motivation towards long-term goals. Next time you feel like getting down on yourself, try a little tenderness instead.
  • Beef up the parts of the brain you want working for you during this difficult time; don’t keep them in hibernation or overcome by volatile emotions. Emotions are faulty navigational tools when used as the primary source of decision-making.
  • Be open to new information and experiences. By definition, many aspects of your life change in response to divorce. You probably will have to take on some new roles, behaviors, and skills. You may even want to try something new.

New experiences, even those we don’t want, create opportunities for growth. Considering new perspectives, trying new things and being open to new information literally helps your brain grow. This can contribute to making better decisions, being more motivated, exerting more self control and being more compassionate. These not only are keys to well-being and resilience, but a new, improved you and a life well lived.

If you are struggling with the stress of divorce, consider this knowledge about the brain and what you can do to optimize your resilience and essential brain functions during this difficult time. You might find the outcomes of your efforts are the silver lining in the divorce cloud, and the light at the end of the tunnel.

Divorce is painful. There is no way around it. The good news is that your mindset about it has a great impact on how damaging this stressful event will be to your mind and body. Attitude is everything!

Filed Under: Coaching, Collaborative Divorce, Divorce and Emotions, Mental Health Tagged With: Divorce, Divorce and Mental Health, Divorce and Stress, Divorce Counseling, Divorce Settlement, Divorce Therapy, Fear, Jann Glasser, Make Divorce Easier, Planning, Settlement Agreement

Six Ways a Collaborative Divorce Supports Your Family Values

May 13, 2016 By CDSOC

by Bart Carey, Attorney/Mediator and Family Law Attorney
Law Office of Bart J. Carey, Mediation and Collaborative Family Law

Why do so many people behave so poorly when they separate and divorce? You know what I mean. As people choose to separate and divorce, as we get caught up in emotions and conflict, we say and do things that, in our everyday lives we’d never do or say.

Worse, this behavior is often condoned, counseled and/or supported by well-meaning family friends and even professionals. We fight for control or justification by speaking to and treating our children’s mother or father in ways we’d never condone under any other circumstance. We’d certainly never teach our children such behavior is acceptable, except they actually are learning from observing what we do.

This reality became personal for me when after a number of years as a litigator, I experienced my own divorce. I learned that divorce is not a legal process. It is a life experience.

As a life experience, I had to ask myself how I could square my own behavior with my values as a husband and father. Like many, I can’t say I was proud of everything I said and did.

A big part of the problem was the court process, which pitted parents against each other as adversaries in a win-lose fight while placing the decisions regarding their most precious treasures of their hearts in the hands of lawyers, judges and other professionals.

This experience launched me on a life and career changing journey: how to find, and offer my clients, a process that can be shaped to reflect their values:

  • A process in which spouses are supported and encouraged to work together, not against each other, to plan the family’s future while protecting their respective rights.
  • A process which allows the family to fashion a financial plan that provides for everyone’s needs yet still focuses upon the family’s goals and priorities.
  • A process which helps spouses address and manage their fears and emotions while still being able to choose to behave the way we would teach our children to behave, with respect and dignity for each individual.
  • A process that allows them to remain a family throughout and after the divorce process.
  • A process that supports and teaches co-parenting tools so they can better raise their children after transitioning to two households.
  • A process that supports parents to set a living example for their children of the values they have already worked hard to instill in them during the biggest crisis their family will likely ever face.

There is good news. Collaborative Divorce is that process. Review the information on this website for more information. The Collaborative Divorce process allows me to align my career with my personal values. You will find it a process which allows you to live up to your values.

Did I mention Collaborative Divorce can be easier on the pocketbook than a stressful, contentious litigated divorce, too?

Filed Under: Child Custody, Child Support, Coaching, Collaborative Divorce, Divorce and Emotions, Divorce and Money, Family Issues, Financial, Legal, Mediation, Tips & Resources Tagged With: Alternative Dispute Resolution, Divorce and Children, Divorce and Families, Divorce and Parenting, Divorce Counseling, Divorce Litigation, Divorce Settlement, Parenting Plan

The Role of a Collaborative Divorce Coach

May 7, 2016 By CDSOC

by Jann Glasser, LCSW, MFT

Divorce is just as much a life transition as marriage. Divorce is not about the division of property; it is about the division of lives.

Closure rarely comes with the decree of dissolution issued by the court. Closure can come more easily through Collaborative Divorce, where a team of Collaborative professionals helps you to facilitate peacemaking in a private, respectful process out of court instead of waging war in a courtroom.

Depending upon the needs of the transitioning couple, various professionals are selected to be part of the team assisting spouses in a healthy positive transition from their lives together into two separate households. One of these professionals is the Divorce Coach, a licensed mental health professional who is a specialist with clinical experience in human behavior and family systems. We help families learn new skills in conducting themselves in times of stress during the Collaborative Divorce process.

Our role as Divorce Coaches during a Collaborative Divorce is assist people through the transition process, to provide a soft landing spot for clients to deal with the range of emotions that are inherent in any marital breakup. Coaches can help you to determine what is truly important in the divorce process, for both parents and children. Coaches can also help you release the negative emotional energy that can be part of any divorce, by helping you to develop skills in open communication, self-management and creative problem-solving.

As coaches, we help our clients focus on questions about their personal ethics and conduct, rather than winning and losing. After more than 30 years in the field of professional counseling and mediation, I have learned that divorce is one of the most painful emotional experiences most people can endure in their lifetime.

As a part of your Collaborative team, a Divorce Coach will assist you in separating highly volatile emotions so they do not interfere with sound decision-making. Together, we will create goals to address each area of concern, highlighting strengths as well as identifying challenges.

One of our most important and lasting goals as coaches is helping couples who are parents create co-parenting agreements that will work by helping to focus on the real issues of the future, not past angers and disappointments. Coaches guide couples to turn their issues into mutually shared interests, as they learn new problem solving skills for conflict resolution and post-divorce parenting for the restructured “family apart.”

By choosing to embark upon the road of Collaborative Divorce, and with the assistance of a Divorce Coach to guide you along the way, my hope is that at the end of this journey, you can embrace the spirit of these words found in Genesis 13:8-9: “let there be no quarrel between us for we were once family; let us separate gently; if one goes north, may the other go south; if one goes east, may the other go west. May your house be your house; and may my house be my house, and may strife and contentions not rule our hearts.”

 

Filed Under: Coaching, Collaborative Divorce, Divorce and Emotions, Family Issues, Mediation, Mental Health, Tips & Resources Tagged With: Divorce and Families, Divorce Counseling, Divorce Recovery, Jann Glasser, Managing Emotions, Problem Solving

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