Creating Cooperation out of the Chaos of Divorce

Creating Emotional Chaos

No one seeks emotional chaos, but many of us gradually and unintentionally become experts in creating it and living in it. The experience of divorce is an excellent training ground to achieve emotional chaos. To “succeed” at creating emotional chaos requires several important steps. The central skill involved is to become more and more organized around REACTING to other’s actions. Our estranged spouse or partner often provides all the triggers we need to become wholly reactive, thereby losing focus on living in alignment with our core values, choosing to act with kindness and a generosity of spirit, and demonstrating the ability to look past disappointments and near-term slights to focus instead on actively creating a living legacy that reflects our best and highest self.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of living in emotional chaos, ask yourself: Is now the time to convert chaos into kindness; conflict into compassion, and confusion into clarity of direction and purpose? Since you are the sole common denominator in your lived experiences, this post focuses on changes that are in reach to help extricate you from the pain and confusion of emotional chaos.

Moving From Emotional Chaos to Clarity

In his book, Emotional Chaos to Clarity, Paul Moffitt outlines a series of action steps that guide you from the world of chaos to the world of greater emotional clarity. Look this list over. How many of these steps can you honestly say you regularly practice? How ready are you to take a step toward greater emotional stability and feeling greater control over your life? Can you pick one or three and begin to weave them into your daily routine? Are you prepared to seek out a therapist or coach to help you develop these skills if you need help to develop them in your life?

Clarity emerges when:

• You remain mindful of your core relationship values and remind yourself daily to model them

• You recognize that life always involves pleasant and unpleasant experiences, so you don’t over-react to the darker times that invariably arise

• You stay attuned to the forks in the road, consistently turning in the direction of thoughts, words, and actions that ease pain and suffering and turn away from those that magnify hurt, deepen anger, or solidify resentments

• You recognize that when your outer world is especially challenging, you can cultivate practices that nourish and protect your inner world and your core and authentic self

• You commit to speak the truth, express what is helpful, and communicate with neutrality or care, even when you are angry or outraged, or exit the situation if you can, so as to avoid further fanning the flames of conflict

• You have developed a set of self-caring, self-nourishing, or self-soothing practices you regularly use when you feel swamped, overwhelmed, disappointed, or betrayed by your current circumstances

A Four-Step Menu for Creating Cooperation in the Midst of Chaos

So far, we’ve identified how you can care for yourself to avoid swimming in the sea of emotional chaos. Let’s now turn to how to craft cooperation with your estranged spouse/partner in the midst of a divorce. In my experience, cooperation occurs when we remember that “life” operates in open systems. That means you are not an island. You co-exist and interact with others - your spouse, the attorneys, the court, your child(ren), your family and friends, work, and more.

Cooperation depends on maintaining this “open” mindset even when ever fiber in your being pulls you to shut down and withdraw from the process, to stop negotiating, and to impose demands that are most likely to result in a hardening of positions, a rapid escalation of costs, and the prolonging of personal misery and lack of control.

In my work with couples in conflict or with one member of a couple who are in the divorce process, I have found four steps that help to maintain an attitude of cooperation. These steps are drawn from what our body’s cells already know how to do. After all, cells don’t exist alone, but are master cooperators. You can be, too. Remember that cooperation occurs at each cell’s boundary (or outer membrane). In short, the space where your unique self meets the outer world.

• You can learn to release what is inside you that may have once been necessary but no longer is helpful. This includes a range of forgiveness practices that can be tough but oh so liberating and empowering.

• You can seek to receive - to take in - from your helpful friends and or other external supports what you need, because you are not an island and shouldn’t exist in isolation from helpful external resources.

• You can maintain strong boundaries that keep out and fend off what would be hurtful or toxic if you “took it in…again!” Learning to say “thanks, but no thanks,” or “I get it, but that is no longer my responsibility,” are examples of this skill.

• You can safely store away inside yourself what is unique and precious about you. In brief, you don’t casually give yourself away - your kindness, availability, generosity, time, and energy to a degree that leaves you emotionally spent and physically empty.

Cooperation may seem like a fairytale at this point. I assure you, it is not. Cooperation and self-care are not mutually exclusive. Getting through a high conflict divorce goes better when we bring an open mind, a cooperative attitude, and a commitment to consistent self-care.

Be well…