If you are facing a divorce or separation, there are some challenges and some opportunities coming. At this point, if you have recently ‘given notice’ to your partner, received notice from your partner, or have mutually come to a decision to be apart, you are dealing with a variety of emotions which may vary depending on your situation.

Emotional times can feel like the high seas: sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes nauseating, and sometimes exhilarating. Which of the following emotions can you identify with?

Anger	Relief
Grief/loss	Sadness
Fear/anxiety	Determination or resolve
Helplessness	Accepting what is
Guilt	Integrity
Remorse/regret	Poignancy

Add your own versions to the list. Then consider what you see. If you picked items from both lists, you have a lot of company. Most people who are breaking up experience a jumble of emotions.

How do you deal with the emotional highs and lows during divorce - relationship break up advice.

So one question is, “How do we deal with those emotions?” It’s a bit like taking a swim in the ocean. You wade through the breakers, dive and surface, and then return to shore. Here are some guidelines.

Be present to your feelings.

Sometimes we want to flee unpleasant emotions, or cling to pleasant emotions. Just be aware of them and notice them.

• Ah, I’m angry.
• Oh, I feel relieved this is over.
• Ooh, I’m scared about what will happen.
• Awareness, in its most helpful form, is without judgment—it just notices.

When you make a statement to yourself about what you’re noticing, you acknowledge what’s true for you in that moment. Be aware and notice what you’re feeling, and then acknowledge it to yourself.

Allowing

The next step is allowing. This is a tricky step because you may get caught in wanting to flee or to cling. However, allowing is a step that involves swimming around in the feeling, exploring, like a scuba diver, what shows up. Memories, thoughts about the future, plans, hopes, concerns, questions, speculations, revelations, flashbacks, and physical feelings, along with all sorts of other things, can show up. If you are willing to look at and listen to what shows up, you can work with emotions and learn from them, rather than drown in them.

Emotions are information

Emotions can provide guidance. As you swim around, without fleeing or grabbing on, you can see patterns and possibilities. Things float to the top that might be important. You may begin to notice something about yourself and your situation you hadn’t noticed before.

Allowing is a profound and useful step for the following reasons

• You can become familiar with the categories of emotions and how they affect you.
• You develop compassion for yourself (and therefore others).
• You get insight into your experience.
• Allowing helps you develop a familiarity with the emotional realm while also helping you become less attached to any given feeling.

This process frees you up

The dive has to occur in order to explore the ocean of feeling. You can become adept at swimming around and exploring; but, as humans, not fish, we need to come up for air. By practicing the step of allowing, you learn to move from the underworld of emotional attachment to the surface where you can ride the feelings without being caught in an undertow. If you seem to get caught and unable to surface, it might be important to seek out someone who is familiar with surfing to help you learn.

Having swum around, surfaced, and taken a breath, you can dive under again but eventually you’ll want to come to shore. Remember how it feels after a swim in the ocean? It’s nice to rest on the sand for a while. It feels good to lie in the sun and just be still.

What does accepting feel like?

This is what accepting feels like—just being still in the experience, feeling the warmth and the sand beneath you. What are you accepting? You are accepting that you have feelings, that you are who you are, that life is happening the way it is, that you get to be present to it and that you have something to learn from it. Accepting is the outcome of having been aware, acknowledging, and allowing. It’s a rest on the shore after you have done some exploring. You earned it. You deserve it. Take comfort in it.

In the breaking up of a relationship, the emotions you feel can seem overwhelming. The opportunity is in learning how to work with emotions. The processes of awareness, acknowledging, allowing, and accepting will help you deal with your feelings not just at this time, but also for the rest of your life.

And there is a rest of your life coming, even if, right now, you can’t imagine how it will look. So learn how to dive, surf, and swim. Then take a rest.