I often hear the question: “How long does it take to survive a divorce?” or another option “it’s been a year / two / three, but I can’t come to my senses … it’s not normal”.
I am opposed to “driving” the mourning time into someone’s time frame. The creation of such norms gives an additional reason for pathologization and labels “something is wrong with me.” In this case, the shortcut will work in both directions: if you come to your senses quickly enough, 1-2 months, and, conversely, if you go years away.
Let’s see why we suffer?
When you break off a significant relationship, you can mourn many valuable things:
- our usual way of life;
- dreams of a joint future;
- the self-image that was embodied in these relationships;
- connection with life values that were realized thanks to them;
- a sense of security and stability;
- and much more.
And if the break in relations is something that we did not choose, then the suffering is aggravated by the violation of important ideas about life: justice, respect, trust, and so on. This can be very traumatic.
Someone is more stable and resourceful in the moment. And then the damage from what happened will not be so global. And it will take a little time to recover.
And for some, the scale of “destruction” can be really great. And the damage done will be compensated for over the years. Something new is being built pebble by pebble.
Where to begin? It is necessary to understand and assess the scale of disasters, as after a natural cataclysm.
What’s destroyed? What has resisted? For example, trust collapsed, but self-esteem persisted, and so on. At first, it may seem that absolutely everything is destroyed. But we must take a magnifying glass and look for what has survived.
And then the most important thing: you need to understand how to restore the rest. And here, just, the help of a psychologist in charge of scaffolding, assistance in the selection of the necessary materials and quality control of construction work can be useful.
I don’t think that you cannot do without the help of a psychologist in such a situation! This is one of the options, there are others.
The most important thing is to determine what kind of support and what resources you need on your journey to recovery. And what can be done now to make it a little bit better.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones!
