What is Counseling During Divorce and Separation?

When ending any kind of relationship, it’s natural to feel grief, loss, anger, frustration, confusion, sadness, overwhelmed, and a sense that you’ll never get through it. This can be even further complicated when children are involved and you must deal with the feelings of your children along with your own. Support for the adults during the separation and divorce process can be provided in many ways including:

• Counseling may be helpful in sorting through the many decisions that need to be made. This may include decisions on how to talk with the children (if involved), or extended family and friends. This may allow the couple to achieve the dissolution of marriage in a healthy, constructive fashion.  While working with adults who are in the process of separating, guidelines can be set to ensure the divorce is achieved with minimal hospitality and emotional damage to the couple themselves and those surrounding them.  Therapy can also assist in addressing pertinent issues such as living arrangements, financial obligations, and parenting responsibilities.
• Counseling is helpful in assisting the couple in coping with the strong emotions elicited by the separation or by the divorce process. By learning to manage partners’ emotional reactivity to one another, it is possible to work together or individually towards meeting the desired goals.

Counseling Support During the Separation or Divorce of Parents

Sometimes teenagers might need extra help dealing with their parents’ separation. If the conflict between parents has been particularly intense, or is still going on, or if one of the parents has been depressed, teenagers might find it helpful to see a counselor. Counseling can assist teens with the following issues that may arise:

• Dealing with feelings of grief and loss over the change of their current family structure
• Coping with feelings of anger they may feel toward one parent over another
• Acknowledging the lifestyle change separation or divorce may bring about in their lives
• Accepting the decisions made by the adults in their lives
• Moving on and finding their “new normal”