How Empaths Can Recover After Divorce
There’s no way to go through a divorce without tearing your way through the whole spectrum of emotions. As an empath, you experience all your own emotions, plus those of others around you, which means taking on the emotional journeys of your ex, your children, and your other family members. If you’re feeling emotionally exhausted and you haven’t even signed the divorce papers yet, then you’re not alone.
Recovering from a divorce can be particularly difficult as you deal with all the anxieties associated with such a huge life transition. Not only will you feel your own pain, confusion, and anxiety, you may feel your ex’s and your children’s as well. And getting through it (but never over it) will eventually require you to learn to separate your own feelings from those of others so that you can reconnect with yourself, move forward, and eventually move on with your life.
Give Yourself Space to Feel Your Own Feelings
Finding your new normal is your first task before, during, and after your divorce. Yes, you’ll need to do it three times, but for empaths, it requires more than striking a new balance. It’s important to identify what ‘normal’ is without feeling the heavy burden of everyone else’s stress, anxieties, confusion, and sadness, which can skew everything about your experience. One of the best things you can do for yourself is to give yourself time and space to figure out exactly how you feel in the here and now and decide what that means for yourself.
While it’s important to lean on others when you need to, make sure you’re giving yourself the physical and emotional space you need at the same time. If you need to talk about something deeply complex or painfully conflicting, consider talking to a therapist, who remains emotionally unattached and can listen and hear without adding to your emotional load.
You may need to give yourself time off from your job. For empaths, a normal day at work is emotionally draining. If you can, take a paid personal day from work or see if you can work from home every once in a while. If you need to be at work, it’s important to encourage positivity in the workplace without placing too much of the emotional burden on yourself. Reducing the emotional burden you carry at work can free up the time and energy you need to re-engage at home.
Learn New Ways to Engage with Your Ex
Life after separation and divorce is difficult. You may have moments of doubt. It will be hard — really hard — and sometimes it may feel like it’s harder than the marriage was. And it may be really strange and difficult to have any kind of conversation with your ex — or to even consider them to be your ex. Interactions can range from run-of-the-mill difficult to downright distressing..
It’s important to avoid the biggest mistakes you can make during a divorce. Don’t mistake general neighborly goodwill and try to re-invite your ex back into your life and make them your go-to person, as they once were.
For empaths, particularly, limit contact with your ex. Don’t cut them out or be cruel, but give yourselves the space you need to re-define your relationship because empaths find themselves right back in the middle in only a second.
Find Ways to Heal Your Broken Heart
Being a broken-hearted empath is tough. Empaths are so good at giving love, but for being as emotionally intuitive as they are, they’re terrible at receiving it — and it only gets worse once they experience a broken heart.
You have to love yourself again.
Healing your broken heart is the prerequisite for finding love again. As an empath, you might need to learn that the hard way. But it’s worth saying now. Take care of yourself, and learn that you deserve to love yourself regardless of whether you’re able to give or receive romantic love. Remember, you can’t heal yourself by trying to give more of yourself away.
Practice Basic Self-Care
Self-care is such an important part of living life as an empath and recovering after a divorce. It sounds strange, but it’s the fundamentals that go unchecked when we go through something big: eating, sleeping, getting outside, and managing daily stress can all fall by the wayside.
Refocusing on the fundamentals is so important because it keeps a solid foundation of mental and physical health that you can rely on as things evolve. Remember how not eating or sleeping properly can make the world feel like it’s crashing down around you and that’s on a good day? The same rule applies during divorce, but times ten.
You can’t really grow your self-care practice without those fundamentals. And growing that practice is so worth it.
As an empath, you may have a difficult time recovering from any emotional event, big or small. Going through a divorce is traumatic and exhausting. But empaths also have so much to give. You’re worth the time it takes to recover. So give yourself space to heal, practice self-care, and find ways to heal your broken heart.
You got this.
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Guest Writer Bio
Beau Peters is a creative professional with a lifetime of experience in service and care. As a manager, he’s learned a slew of tricks of the trade that he enjoys sharing with others who have the same passion and dedication that he brings to his work.
