Effects of Divorce

I always thought that I at least had not suffered a lot from the divorce. My daughter obviously misses her father, especially because he lives far away, but for me, I thought that I was over it altogether.

Last week, however, I suddenly came upon a deep rooted feeling of guilt I discovered in myself. When I started to recognize the sensation in my body, I started sensing it more and more often, and I see that I am feeling guilty actually quite often.

Strange how those things function. I never thought that guilt was something important to me. I am pretty laid back, I accept myself pretty much just as I am, I did quite some work on the spiritual realm, I use EFT (emotional freedom technique, http://www.emofree.com) to combat disease, pain, and emotional lack of peace. And still, there it is. Guilt.

I feel it when I put my daughter on the school bus, I feel it when I hear her talk to her Dad on the phone, I feel it when I see the dishes piled up in the sink.

What is it that makes me feel guilty so often? Me, who thought that guilt was not something which belonged to my emotional repertoire... Am I feeling disappointed about myself?

Disappointment and guilt seem to go hand in hand. When I think I should have acted differently and better, I feel that pebble in my stomach. When I put my daughter on the bus, I feel that I should not want to live in a rural area, where the school is far away and she has to travel for more than an hour per day. When I see the dirty dishes in the sink, I feel that I should be a better housewife, and that the kitchen should be neat and clean, so that my daughter gets the good example for a organized and clean household. When I talk to the friend who feels neglected, I feel that I should have been there for her when she needed me most.

Expectations lead to disappointment (Buddha)

Guilt and disappointment are somehow related. I feel that if I am not having high expectations as to my own behavior under certain circumstances, I am also less prone to be disappointed when I don't behave up to my own standards. The resulting feelings of guilt then also do not appear. Sometimes it are other people having high expectations, and even more often, we THINK that they have certain expectations (which we will never meet), and in reality they do not even think like that....

The way to get out of this Catch 22 is simple but not so easy. Especially when these hidden effects of divorce hit us, some of these believes can be very deeply rooted in our heart and head. The first step is to localize the feeling as it manifests itself in our body. As soon as we know which body sensation is pointing to the emotion of guilt and disappointment, we have to start being aware of it. After some practice, we start to realize what is happening every time we feel the sensation.

Step two: Accept ourselves as we are. I know, it sounds easy, and it is more like a road to go, instead of one step. But every journey starts with one step, so take it today. Forgive yourself the mistakes you make, promise yourself that you will learn from them. Accept that you have made mistakes in the past, mostly because you did not know back then, what you know now. Be patient with yourself, and don't judge your past.

The third step then is easy: When I forgive myself, it is so much easier to forgive others. When I stop judging myself, I also stop judging others. My relationship with the world, my family, my children, my partner and most importantly, with myself will improve tremendously by doing this.

Step four wraps it up: I am more effective in my relationships, I am more pleasant, loving, caring to all people that matter. The chance that I make big mistakes like the ones I used to feel guilty about, gets much smaller because of my new way of acting, feeling and thinking!

I have a couple of cool free resources. The first is the Magic Hats Program, it is a free video training and you can enroll here:



I have written a free e-book myself, you can get a copy here: