Becoming You Again

The Skill You Need To Make Divorce Healing Possible

• Karin Nelson • Episode 252

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What if the fastest way to feel better after divorce wasn’t to push through and ignore the painful emotions, but to allow what’s already here? In this episode I’m going to be teaching you the most useful skill to make all of your divorce healing possible. 


I start by breaking down the three common ways of dealing with emotions - resisting, avoiding, reacting and explain why they keep you stuck. Then I’ll introduce the fourth option: allowance. This practical, compassionate skill teaches you to name the emotion in a single word, locate it physically, and stay present until the chemical storm passes. No fixing, no judgment.


I’ll offer simple prompts to help you as you start implementing this skill into your daily life and finish up with my own example of how I used this just the other day in my personal life. This is how you rebuild trust in yourself after divorce: by proving, moment by moment, that no feeling is too big for you to handle. You don’t need to become a robot to move forward. You need a body-level practice that makes space for the full human experience.
 
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Karin Nelson:

We're listening to Becoming You Again, episode number 252, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. As always, I am so, so happy that you're here. This week I'm just gonna jump right in because I think that this skill that I'm going to teach you how to do on today's podcast can really change the trajectory of your healing process as you are going through your divorce, like whatever stage you find yourself in. So we're just gonna jump right in. So last week I got a message from a woman who said she was going through the divorce process. And she was like, I am just so tired of the emotional roller coaster that I'm finding myself on. What can I do to push through that and move forward in my life? Because I'm just really sick of being where I'm at and I really want to move forward. So this is a really good question because as a coach, I am a hundred percent all for being able to move forward. Like this is really kind of the big difference between coaching and therapy. There's my kitty, he's saying hi. Um, in my opinion, like therapy is often going to take a look at the past, right? And try and learn from the past and figure out why things have happened to you and how they're showing up in your life now, which is amazing. Like therapy can be very useful and helpful, not saying anything bad about that. But coaching is different from that. And especially the way I coach and the way I help many of my clients, and the way uh I coach myself in my everyday life, is we take where you're at right now, and then we ask, and now what? Like, where do you want to go from here? How do you want to think? How do you want to feel? How do you want to act differently to create the results that you want in your life moving forward? So that idea of moving forward, amazing, keep it, love it, great. Yes, let's figure that out. But I want to focus on something in the message that she mentioned, and that is when she said she is so tired of the emotional roller coaster, and what can she do to push through that and move on with her life? And what I want to point out here is that a lot of the time, what we're looking for is to push through the pain or white knuckle our way through something that feels really bad so that we can stop feeling what we're feeling and move on to feeling something different, something better, typically, right? Something better than the pain that we are in right now. Which, by the way, makes sense. Nobody likes to just sit in the pain. It doesn't feel good. We don't like it, especially in a divorce when it seems like that's all we're feeling is the pain of like whatever we're going through at that particular moment. We don't want to feel that. So it makes sense that we would want to be like, how do I get out of this? I don't want to feel it anymore, right? And so we think, well, if I can just move forward in my life, if I can just put the past in the past where it belongs and just move forward, then I won't have to feel this pain anymore. And then I'm gonna be able to feel better. But here's the truth about that. There's that's Charlie. He's my little, he's my little talkie kitty. Um, the truth is that we have to feel what we're feeling. We have to. There's no getting around it. There's no getting out of feeling the pain that is going to come up during a divorce for whatever reason that you're feeling that pain. There's no getting around it. We have to feel it. There is no off-ramp for humanity where we just say, well, I'm just done feeling grief or sadness, sadness, or loneliness, or rejection, and I don't want to feel it anymore. So I'm just not going to feel it. Like I'm just going to push it down or ignore it or distract myself from it. But the problem is, is that is not how feelings work. Yes, we can ignore it. Yes, we can push it down. Yes, we can try and distract ourselves from it. But the feelings are still gonna be there when you're done distracting, when you're done ignoring, when you push it down so much and you keep piling more and more on top that it just like erupts, right? So let me do a little refresher on what feelings slash emotions, like those words are interchangeable, but what they are, okay. Um and by the way, a feeling is different than the sentence, I am feeling, right? I am feeling like I am very mad that these feelings keep coming up and I just want to get through them. That is that is a thought that you are having about the feelings that are going on inside your body. The feelings that are going on inside your body, that word is interchangeable feelings with emotions. And it's typically one word like grief, sadness, loneliness, loss, joy, happiness, right? Okay, so just wanted to get that straight, but let's do this little refresher. Feelings are chemicals that are released into our body from the brain, like we will have some kind of a thought, and then a chemical gets released and shows up inside our body through sensations and vibrations. And if we don't sit and we don't feel and we don't allow and we don't work through and release, those chemicals are going to build up and they are going to pile on top of each other. So as we go through a divorce, it's really, really normal to feel a lot of different emotions, sometimes one right after the other. And that is why so many people describe the divorce process as like you're on an emotional roller coaster. It just feels like you're going up and down and around and through and one after the other, like terrible bad feeling after another, right? And I want to remind you of something that I say a lot. I say it to my clients, I say it to myself on the regular, and I've said it on this podcast multiple times, but that is nothing has gone wrong when you feel a negative emotion, when we feel negative emotion. It is a very human thing to do. Like how human of you to feel a negative emotion. Good job. You're so human, so proud of you, right? But often when we are just bouncing between anger and grief and exasperation and frustration and loneliness and resentment and longing and sadness and shame and then neutrality and then back around again. As we go through the divorce process, all of those are very common emotions to be feeling, and so many others on top of that, right? But if we don't know what to do with all of those emotions or how to be present with them or how to allow them, we might just be like, what the actual fuck? Like, I am done. I am done feeling this emotional chaos. I am done feeling this emotional exhaustion. I want off this ride and I want off it now, right? Does that sound familiar? Because I know that's how I felt when I was going through my divorce. Because I didn't have any of these tools. I didn't have any of these tools that I am giving you now because I want you to know that it's totally possible for you to get through this with these tools to help you make this process a little bit better than what you've got going on right now. And then I also know that when somebody like me is like, well, remember, nothing has gone wrong when you feel negative emotion, and you just might be like, what is this woman talking about? Like, yes, it has. It has all gone wrong. Everything has gone wrong, right? And that's okay. I'm sure I would have said the same thing if somebody said that to me and I didn't understand very much about humanity or about my emotions or about my like emotional life in general. And the reason you're you might be saying that is because you don't have the skill that I am going to teach you in today's podcast that is going to make your divorce healing so much more possible, so much more bearable when you're on the emotional roller coaster. I'm not teaching you a skill that's going to take you off of that roller coaster and you're going to be like, finally, I never have to feel a negative emotion ever again. Like, no, sorry, I hate to break the news to you, but that is not the goal. That is not the goal. The goal is to not become a robot, to not feel any kind of negative emotion. We want the emotions, we want the whole array. Because typically what we do as humans when we feel negative emotion, and this is because society teaches us this way, right? And maybe society is like, okay, this is how it was exemplified to you in your house when you were growing up, or you learned this at church or at school or from reading or watching movies or whatever, right? Most people aren't taught actual skills on what to do with their emotions, especially the negative ones, because it's the negative ones that are scary, right? It's the negative ones that feel hard, that feel heavy. And so typically you will show up in one of these three ways, or sometimes you'll do all of them, or sometimes all three at once, right? Like, take your pick. Uh, but the first thing that you might do is resist the emotion. Like you're feeling some grief from your divorce, and you're like, nope, not today, not feeling this. I do not want to feel this right now. I do not have time for this right now. I felt this, I have felt this way for way too long. And you know what? I'm done. I'm not gonna do it anymore. And so what do we do? When we're resisting something, we tighten up. Like, this is where that white knuckling comes in, like, I'm just not gonna feel it, and I'm just gonna get through it. I'm tough. I can do this, right? We just that's I'm you can probably tell through my voice, maybe you couldn't tell, but as I was saying it that way, my my fist was clenched, white knuckles were showing, right? That's what we say when we are resisting. And our whole body goes tight. Imagine someone was trying to get into your house and they were trying to come in the front door, and you went over and you shut and you slammed the door to keep them out. What would your whole body do if you're pushing against the door? All of your muscles would tighten to resist them being able to come in your house, right? That is what happens to our body when we resist feeling our feelings, feeling our emotions. We tighten up and then we tighten up, and then we don't allow us ourselves to feel what we're feeling, and then we start to judge ourselves. Like, if we go back to that example of feeling the grief, right? Okay, I have been feeling this grief for just too long and I'm done. And I shouldn't be feeling this anymore. I've felt it enough. I should be over this by now. And so we feel the grief and we tighten up against it, and then we feel frustrated or annoyed that we are feeling grief still. So then we feel frustrated and annoyed on top of the grief that we're feeling, right? So it just piles on top of one another. So that's one way you might be resisting. You're ready for divorce, but you have no idea what comes next. You've made the hardest decision, you know you're ready to end your marriage, but now the fear kicks in. What if you make the wrong choices? How do you handle the emotional weight you're carrying around? If you are asking questions like these and you're not sure what the next best steps are for you, don't worry, I've got you. You don't have to figure it out all alone. The right support helps you make decisions that protect your future and get you unstuck. I offer a free next step session where you come and talk about what you're going through, the emotions that you're feeling, the grief you're dealing with, and the decisions that you are having trouble making. We'll talk more about what your next steps can look like moving toward a future that you want. And we'll talk about what it could look like to continue to work together. Now, don't get me wrong, this call isn't about knowing what to put in your divorce decree or which lawyer to hire. But instead, it's about learning to make decisions from your knowing and living your life from that place. And no matter what you decide by the end of the call, you will feel heard, you will feel seen, you will feel understood, and you will have clarity on your next best step moving forward. You can schedule your free call by clicking the link in the description. Another way that you might be dealing with your emotions during divorce is avoiding your emotions. And again, like you might be like, nope, not gonna feel this. But instead of resisting, you just pretend you're not feeling anything. And that could happen by ignoring it, distracting yourself, doing something else to just gloss over what's actually going on in your body, or just living your life from the neck up, which is what so many of us do. And by living your life from the neck up, I mean you're stuck in your head and in your thoughts, but you're not allowing your body or understanding what is happening in your body like at all. And ways to distract yourself from even taking a look at what's happening in your body is like online shopping or playing video games or binge eating or binge scrolling or anything to not feel. And then the last way that you might be dealing with your divorce emotional roller coaster that you got going on is to react to what you're feeling. This one I think typically comes out when we are feeling like more anger or rage, things like that. But it could be any kind of acting out. And it can look like yelling, screaming, complaining, slamming doors, throwing things, blaming other people, right? It can show up in a lot of different ways, but it it's really common to have this type of feeling your emotions, and you're not even really feeling them, you're just reacting to them, right? Show up during the divorce process because it's so easy to fall into some of these, especially like the blame game, blaming your ex for so much of what you're feeling or complaining about him and all of his faults. And don't get me wrong, I get it. Probably a lot of them are true. Probably a lot of them are valid, right? But that blame game or the acting out, the reacting to the emotions, it is such a human response. So, first of all, if you're doing any of these, if you're doing this one, if you're just doing like one of them or all of them, can we just normalize and validate how human of you to be doing that? I do these things too. Okay. I am not some perfect guru who just gets it right every time and is allowing my emotions all of the time. And I'm so perfect. I am not, that is not me. Okay. I don't expect perfection of myself, and I don't expect perfection out of you either. And you shouldn't expect that of yourself either. Okay. All I want to do with teaching you this skill that I'm gonna talk about in just a minute is to more often than not try it this way, do it this way, show up in this way to see if you feel a little bit better, a little bit lighter, a little more open, a little more free in your life, in your body, in your day-to-day. That's it. Not saying that you should never complain or you should never react or you should never distract or you should never resist. Like, of course you're going to. You're human, and that's okay. I promise you it's okay. This skill is just gonna help you feel a little bit better, like I said, a little lighter, more open, more free in your life. And the more often you can do that, like, that's amazing. Keep doing that. Okay, so the skill that I want to talk to you about today, this is our fourth option on how we show up around feelings and emotions that are gonna come up during your divorce process. And really, let's be real, you can use this literally anytime because life doesn't just stop after we have a divorce. We feel and experience all kinds of things that feel bad or scary or terrible, not just divorce. And so you can use this skill at any time, not just during your divorce, anytime for the rest of your life, and you can teach it to your kids, and it's like such a great skill. So that skill is allowance, allowing the emotion. You know what that means? It means that you get curious about what you're feeling and you just let it be. You let it be inside of you. You don't judge it, you don't judge yourself for feeling that way. But you also don't have to attach to the story that everything about the emotion is true and everything behind the emotion is true. It might be, it might not be, right? But you don't have to attach to it, you don't have to make a story about it, you don't have to do anything with it, but just allow, just sit with it and get to know what it feels like. It's like if you have a little kid who like comes crying to you and they're like, Mama, I'm so sad, and they're tapping you on the shoulder, trying to get your attention to tell you why they're sad and what they're feeling. And instead of doing one of the three things that I've already talked about, where you're resisting or you're avoiding or you're reacting, instead of those, you turn to that little child and you say, What's going on, sweetie? Tell me what you're feeling. And then you just listen. That's what allowance is. So, what does allowance actually look like in real terms? It looks like naming the emotion. You're feeling something? What am I feeling? I'm feeling really sad. Okay. That's the name. Where do you feel sadness in your body? Get out of your head and get into your body. Describe it. Where do you feel it? In physiologic terms, I feel it in my throat, I feel it in my eyes, they're wet, I feel it in my cheeks, they're hot, I feel it in my shoulder, they're tight, it's tight. Like get aware of what it feels like inside of your body. Like the whole point of being a human is to have a human experience, to feel emotions. Because it is such a huge part of the human experience. And so much of the work that I do with my clients, it is not to turn them into like the weird robot where you don't feel anything. That's not a human experience at all. That's like the exact opposite of a human experience. The work that I do is to help my clients tap into the most human side of them, which is feeling the whole array of emotions, negative and positive, and getting so good at it, or so willing, I should say, to do it, to allow the emotions. So that even when some emotions pop up that you weren't expecting, you're so used to it, you're so used to the allowance and being present with them that you're not scared to feel them. So there's no emotion that you're like, I can't feel that. That's too scary. Because you already know that you can handle it. You already know what you have to do is name it and get into your body and see where it shows up. And the more you practice, the better you get. So this happened to me the other day. I was having just like a regular workday. I was writing social media posts. I was coming up with ideas for the podcast. And I was listening to some music while I was doing this, and a song came on. And like instantly, I was triggered into some grief that I was feeling. It just like it literally came out of nowhere. I was not expecting it. I wasn't like feeling sad or whatever before. But there was so much grief that just showed up. And I started to feel so much sadness around loss in my life, loss of what my life used to be when I was married, loss of my dad, like all kinds of loss. And it just kind of showed up and it felt very overwhelming to me. And so in that moment, as I was able to get present and allow, I just said, okay, I guess I'm doing some grief today. And I sat with it and I named it. And I started to notice, all right, my throat, it is getting very tight, and it's a little bit harder for me to swallow. And I noticed that my cheeks, they had gone hot, my eyes were wet. I noticed that my chest felt constricted and my breathing was more shallow. It was a little bit harder to bring in a breath. That was what my grief was feeling like in that moment. I just got curious about it and I didn't judge it, and I wasn't like, oh, what the fuck? Like, why am I feeling this? Didn't I already grieve all of these things in the past? Yeah, I had. And it's totally human of me to be feeling some grief over these losses again. I just allowed it. And that grief stuck around for the majority of that day. And I just let it come with me. I still worked, I still made dinner, I still fed the cats, I spent time with my partner, and it didn't take over my day, it didn't incapacitate me. Definitely I had moments where I had to stop and pause and go, okay, where am I feeling this in my body? Where is it showing up? I just allowed it to be present and to come along with me. And you know what? You are allowed to do that too. Now, the more you do this, I promise you, the easier it's gonna get to be able to recognize it, to name it, and then be present and curious about it. So, my suggestion to you is to practice. You can practice this with any emotion that you're feeling. It doesn't have to be the negative ones, it can be the positive ones too. We just practice. Get curious. Get curious about that little tap on your shoulder that you might be feeling. And instead of shutting it out or turning away or running away from it or hiding or reacting to it, I just want you to ask, all right, sweetie, what's going on? Tell me what you're feeling. Okay? Try this. Let me know how it goes. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I love you so much. You are doing such great work. You are worth doing this work. I promise you. You're worth it. Thank you for being here. I will be back next week. Hi, friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelson Coaching.com. That's www.k-ar-in-n-e l-s-o-n coaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.

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Karin Nelson

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