45: Adult Children of Divorce: Healing the Effects of Your Parents' Divorce
Many adults today are living with the wounding, trauma, and effects of their parents' divorce. Divorce affects all those involved, not just the two getting divorced. In today's episode, I discuss how divorce affects people of all ages.
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I answer one question from a listener who was a child when their parents got divorced and wants to know how to heal from it. I also answer a question from an adult whose parents are getting divorced today, and the listener wants to know how to feel and process this experience.
Book Suggestions:
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix and Hellen LaKelly Hunt
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
Journal Prompts for Adult Children of Divorce:
Timestamps ⏱️
0:00 Intro
1:16 Teaching
8:37 Listener Question 1
28:58 Listener Question 2
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hey, there beautiful souls. My name is Amanda and this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I do not believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers that you seek, you just may need a little guidance along the way. Thank you for joining me for today's episode. Today we will be talking about adult children of divorce and how divorce can leave lasting wounds for not just people's parents, but also for the children who go through the divorce and how it doesn't matter what age you are. If your parents get divorced, this can have lasting effects including affecting your relationships and how you're able to relate to people today or to be in romantic partnerships, or even any type of relationship. But divorce can be so devastating for children of all ages. And it doesn't always get the acknowledgement it deserves. So many adults today are children of divorce. And oftentimes in childhood, the fullness of this wound was not acknowledged and children are left with unresolved feelings and woundings from the divorce. I'm not a child of divorce myself. But I have spoken with many people, including my own partner, who can see how their parents divorce has left lasting effects on their lives. I think when we think of divorce, we have to begin thinking of it as a loss and that it is normal to move through the five stages of grief. These are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I think that oftentimes the loss that is experienced is brushed over. And it's so important to recognize that if your parents have gotten divorced at any point in your life, because today I'll be answering a question from one listener whose parents got divorced in their childhood, and they see how it affected them today still, and someone who is an adult, but their parents are getting a divorce now, and it's still affecting them. So I think that it doesn't matter how old you are being a child of divorce means that your parents are getting a divorce at whatever age you are. And this can be so heartbreaking for children whose parents breakup, of course, it's heartbreaking, your family structure is changing, and it can feel like it's breaking, it feels broken. So what I believe is one of the main reasons this can be so devastating for children is that children often lose their sense of safety and it never gets healed. So this becomes an unconscious wound that requires us to look at it and bring self awareness and self reflection to identify and heal. But this doesn't often happen in childhood. This often happens in adult and a lot of people think of safety as physical but overlook the importance of emotional safety. emotional safety is so important. And I can see how the lack of emotional safety in my own childhood created a lot of the patterns I played out throughout my life and also created this wound within me where I felt lonely, and I felt unseen and unheard, because I did not have that emotional safety in my childhood. And this can be really devastating for children and also for adults. And it can impact the way we relate to other humans. So I think it's so important for us to learn to look at heal, layer by layer, the different effects that these childhood wounds have on us. And I think that being a child of divorce has many layers involved in it, and we'll talk about that today. But I think that it's an important wound to be acknowledged compassionately, witnessed and healed over time. I also think a big part of divorce, especially for children is that many parents have their own shame, grief and immaturity around divorce. So they are unable to assist children through this life changing process. And this also can have lasting effects on children. This only becomes more complicated when parents start dating or get remarried, or if one parent starts dating and the other one does a and or if you have two parents who do not get along after the divorce, it just has so many different layers and each child will interpret the divorce differently. So say you have siblings, each child will cope and internalize the divorce differently because each child is different. So there's no one size fits all approach to healing from divorce, and also the way your parents interact afterwards and how well your parents communicate about the divorce. All will play a major role in how this affects you moving forward and how your heart feels wills and what needs to be witnessed by you in the present moment. A book I recently started reading that I highly recommend for Children of Divorce is adult children of emotionally immature parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson, divorce is very complicated, and everyone in the family is going to be impacted by it, including the parents getting the divorce. And as I mentioned, they're often grieving their own relationship. And it can be difficult for them to create that emotional safety and that safe environment for their children at the same time, as they're grieving and moving through this new chapter they're entering as well. Although this book isn't specifically about adult children to divorce, it does do a great job of exposing the reality that most parents are unfortunately, emotionally immature. The book talks about the different ways that children will begin to compensate for this lack of emotional safety. So these coping strategies can be self reliance, creating independence, almost taking on that parent role. And these can be strengths, especially in childhood. But when they go unacknowledged, they oftentimes have negative effects on us as well, and can create difficulty for us to become intimate with people moving forward. So I think that this is a really common phenomenon. And I can see myself and my parents in this book, and I think it may be validating for anyone whose parents may not be emotionally mature. I think so many of us grew up with parents who weren't emotionally mature. I know that my parents have ebbed and flowed throughout my life, but throughout my life, they weren't always emotionally mature. And they weren't always able to hold the space for the pain I was in. And oftentimes, their own wounding, which the book talks about kept them from being able to hold space for my wound day. So it became about their emotional safety rather than my emotional safety. And this is really common for us. And it's really sad reality that many parents aren't able to hold that emotional space for their children. And I find that through the divorce process, this is a very common phenomenon. So I think this book could be really helpful for anybody who heard the title and feel like it might resonate. And so I just want to honor wherever you may be at because I think adult children of divorce can comprehend divorce and understand it on a logical and rational level. But many never went through the healing process, and they are still unconsciously impacted by the divorce. And by bringing self awareness, self love and self compassion to yourself, you can begin to connect with your feelings, and begin to see how this experience may have affected you as a child and may still be affecting you today. And I also want to mention that if your parents are going through a divorce today, and you're an adult, which is one of the questions we'll talk about, also bringing that self awareness, that self compassion to yourself now as you're navigating this. So that was a quick intro about today's episode, and we're gonna dive deeper with the questions. So let's jump on in.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 8:06
I am an adult child of divorce. And I feel like the impact of my parents divorce still plagues me. My parents got divorced when I was a kid. And it was not easy for me. I have been relatively successful professionally, but I feel like the divorce still impacts my personal life. And sometimes I feel like I have emotional baggage. I am married now without kids yet. But I still feel like I have lingering side effects from the divorce. For example, I have an overwhelming distaste for confrontation that I think originates from the tension between my parents after the divorce. I've gone to therapy, but nothing has really solved my problem. What should I do? Thank you so much for this question. I think that you have so much self awareness already. So I just want to honor that. I think that there's a lot going on in your mind. I think a lot of things are clicking for you such as how it's hard for you to be in confrontation or handle confrontation and how you think that originated from your parents divorce. That's amazing awareness. So I just want to take a moment to honor that. Because I think that self awareness is so often the first step to the healing journey. So many people don't even know they have anything to heal. It's understanding how we feel now. And what we do now and how we react now is often connected to things that happened in the past and is often connected to unresolved wounding is often connected to experiences we've had which have shaped our view of the world. And your awareness here. I just want to honor because I think that that is your first step. So you're wondering, What should I do? I think diving into your feelings and how your parents divorce affected you in different ways, is a great first step. So as I mentioned, I think the self awareness is great. So I would continue with the self awareness and continuing to bring awareness to the things you do and also to your current relationship. So oftentimes the effects of our parents were relationship and how it was on us or our caregivers will most affect our romantic partnerships. So you will see the patterns played out that either you picked up from your parents or that were coping strategies from your childhood will often be played out in your romantic partnerships. A book I recommend for diving into this would be getting the love you want. It's a book I've recommended before by Harville Hendricks so getting the love you want by Harville Hendricks. And this book is really great at explaining how to improve your romantic partnerships by diving into the wounding from childhood, I think it does it in a very comprehensive and easy to understand way. So I highly recommend this book, if you're looking for help with your romantic partnership, because you mentioned how you feel like you have emotional baggage. And you mentioned this distaste for confrontation. So my guess is this might come out mostly in your romantic partnership, especially because you said you're successful professionally. So something we talked about a lot here on the podcast would be inner child work. And I really think that this could assist you on your healing journey. Because it sounds like you have a lot of self awareness. And it sounds like you have a lot of thoughts going on in your mind. But inner child work helps us to get in touch with the feelings in the body. Because it sounds like you can logically understand how your parents divorce has affected you. But you may have not moved through the feelings that are attached to the experience of your parents divorce. And I think that connecting with the feelings can be difficult because as adults, we learn to solve problems with logic and reason. But those will not solve a childhood wound. So as I mentioned, you may logistically understand why your parents got divorced, you may understand it in an adult perspective. And that's the thing that happens when we're adults, we can often look back on our childhood and see it in a different light, we can see it from the adult perspective. And we can go Oh, my parents really shouldn't have been together, we can see that. But that does not mean that's what the child you could see. And so it's learning how to connect back with that child perspective and not judging it. Because nothing you felt as a child was wrong. All your feelings were valid, and I'm so sorry, they weren't honored. When you were a child, I'm so sorry that you likely had parents who did not communicate well about the experience you're moving through. Many times I believe that parents are very selfish throughout the divorce process, because they're experiencing heartache and the same breakup of the family as the child is and they have to care for kids. And there can be shame along with divorce, that they end up being self centered, because they have to in order to survive, but who's taking care of the child who's taking care of you during that time, oftentimes, that is missing. And they may take care of you and put food on the table and provide and do all that but who's taking care of you emotionally. Especially if a parent is unable to take care of themselves emotionally, they're unable to take care of a child's emotions. I think many parents come to the healing journey when they have kids because kids can be so triggering, because oftentimes kids will trigger in you what you have not healed. So for you, my guess is that you need to connect back with your inner child and connect back to your body. Because often times self awareness is in the head so you can logically see everything you can start to be self aware, you can start to see how certain things clicked and why you react the way you do or act the way you do or how you ended up where you are. And you can start to see your patterns. That's the first step of the healing journey. Self awareness is so important. Self awareness is a key. But also connecting back to your body and your emotional body is incredibly important too, because that's how you'll begin to move the pain, move into new patterns. It's allowing yourself to feel all the feelings you didn't feel when you were a child. All the feelings you weren't allowed to feel all the feelings you bottled up all the feelings that weren't honored or were invalidated. I think many children don't know how to handle their parents divorce. And they go from feeling safe to feeling unsafe because family is like the foundation for children. So a safe and stable home is the foundation and then from there children can begin to prosper in other ways. But if that foundation is broken, and not communicated about and not talked about and not rebuilt, is incredibly difficult for children to move through that on their own. I think it's actually impossible. Children do not have the coping strategies to move through that on their own. They need to be supported throughout the divorce process. And I think that so many aren't and then they become adults who struggle in relationships today. And then they feel shame for struggling in relationships today. Men Children of Divorce fear getting divorce, because they know how devastating it was in their own life. Many children of divorce fear marriage, fear commitment, because they fear it will end in divorce. Many children of divorce jump into marriage, that's also a coping strategy, they jump into marriage in the hope that that person will fill a void within them. But what we learned on the healing journey, and what we talked about here is that it's important for you to resource yourself, heal yourself, and learn how to love yourself and fill your own cup up. And one of the ways you can do this, as I mentioned, is the inner child work. And what I mean by that is your inner child is an unconscious part of your mind connected to your childhood self. So oftentimes, our childhood self builds beliefs around the world based off of experiences in childhood. So your inner child may have beliefs around what confrontation means, right. So for example, you gave that confrontation is difficult for you, your child self thinks something of confrontation. And so ways you can connect with your inner child or through meditation on my YouTube channel, I have a connect with your inner child meditation, you can also connect with your inner child through journaling, I'm going to include journal prompts on my website after this at NewViewAdvice.com/45. I'll include some to connect with your inner child, but it's also just taking the time to just be with yourself, and to feel the feelings and not to judge the feelings. So my guess is, if you were to take the time and create a safe space for yourself, maybe you're home alone, and you have a room, you could sit in a comfy chair, and you brought your parents divorced. So mind, my guess is a difficult feeling may come up. And many times when difficult feelings come up, we start to cope. So we'll start cleaning, we'll go to work, we'll get busy to ignore that feeling. But I invite you to create the space to be with that feeling. Is it anger? Is it sadness is it grief, because as I mentioned in the intro, I believe that divorce is a loss, it's a loss of the family structure, you had a loss of what you thought your family would look like. It's a loss, it's a death. To put it bluntly, it's a death to what your family structure was, it's over. And so we have to move through the grieving process. Just like when we break up with someone, we have to move through the grieving process, we have to grieve what that relationship was and what we thought it would be and what it meant to us. Divorce is the same. And you have to allow yourself the time to move through the grieving process. But I don't think many children were allowed that time. So it's about creating the time now. And I think that another way to do this would be when those feelings are coming up to view those feelings as if they're from a child. So you could be angry, view yourself when your parents got divorced, whatever age it was. And that's where the anger is. So instead of being like I'm angry, you could be like seven year old me is angry. It can help you create a little distance and also can help you to see that the anger is valid. Because when we view ourselves as our child's selves, it's easier for us to understand, our feelings are valid. As adults, we try to adult the world for lack of a better word. And we try to logically figure everything out. And we can see why things worked out the way they did, for example, your parents divorced. But it's important to feel all the feelings and your child's self has a lot of feelings they want to feel and by viewing yourself as this child's self with the anger, I really think it will help you to see that all the feelings you have are real. And that that seven year old, didn't deserve for their parents to get divorced, that seven year old didn't deserve everything that happened after that divorce, that seven year old deserves somebody to hold them through that time. That seven year old deserves somebody to comfort them. That seven year old deserves somebody to communicate with them about the loss they went through that seven year old deserved a space that was created for their safety, that seven year old deserve to be able to talk about it as much as they wanted. Many children of divorce felt like they couldn't talk about what was going on because it would upset their parents which creates a silence and a secrecy which then creates shame. And your child's self. whatever age you were, I was using seven as an example. But whatever age you were you deserved so much more. You really did. And that's what inner child work is honoring that is bringing awareness to how much more you deserved. And how this experience did not define you in any way. You were perfect, then you are perfect. Now, you may not do everything perfectly. But that doesn't define your worth. That doesn't define your enoughness experiences like this in our childhood, create beliefs around our worthiness and our enoughness and that leaves me into that I think exploring self forgiveness could assist you as well. Many times when we experience As trauma throughout our life difficult experiences, we take on a part of the blame, because you may know that the divorce wasn't your fault. But I invite you to explore if you really know, do you embody that the divorce wasn't your fault. Many adult children of divorce blame themselves for their parents divorce. This is very common because it is a child's way of coping with trauma. When we are children, we do not understand that things happen outside of our control. So we blame ourselves as a way to try and understand what happened and also as a way to try and control the future. If this was my fault, then I can not do what I believe I did. In order for something like this not to happen again, it is a child's way of understanding the world. So blaming yourself is a child's way of trying to understand how something so terrible could happen. We have to remember that you were a child, and that it sounds like there may have not been much communication with you about it as a child. It is not your fault. And it is certainly not your burden to bear. And self forgiveness is about releasing yourself of the past. One of my favorite quotes is an Oprah quote, and it's forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different. I think there's a lot of disbelief around forgiveness. For anyone who listens to many episodes, I talk about forgiveness a lot. Because I think that many institutions have twisted forgiveness to be something outside of us. But forgiveness is allowing yourself to let yourself off the hook for what happened in the past. And we do this by honoring ourselves, bringing compassion to ourselves, allowing ourselves to feel all the feelings that are inside of us that are waiting to be felt and witnessed because we deserve to have all our feelings. Do not let anybody convince you. Otherwise, you deserve to have all your feelings, your feelings are valid, because you have them. That's it. You're not overdramatic, you're not overly emotional, your feelings originated from somewhere. And in the moment, it may seem like you're overreacting, but that pain that is triggered is real. I honor all the hard feelings you're having. My life has been filled with hard feelings and people judging how many feelings I have. And what I have learned throughout my life is that every single emotion I've ever felt has been valid. So I just want to honor you. And I want to invite you to begin to allow yourself to explore the feelings you may be avoiding through your hard work through your avoidance of confrontation through the different ways you may be coping with your life, and inviting you to drop from the head into your heart, which will help you to look at this one layer at a time. And my guess is that after your parents got divorced, you began to feel unsafe. And this happens often when the foundation of how we are living is dissolved or shattered. And we don't know where to find even footing. The visual I'm getting is an earthquake, and there's a million different pieces on the ground, the ground is dissolved. It's between the tectonic plates and the earth is shattering. And when parents get divorced, it's finding where can you put those feet, but the earth is still moving. And it's through the healing process that you'll begin to find that even footing. And I also wanted to mention the piece you brought up about the confrontation, the distaste of confrontation, I think you are correct about where it originated from, I would invite you to honor that and trust yourself. You said I think this is where it originated from, I invite you to really own that. I believe that you know that that's where it originated from. And I invite you to honor that even if nobody else will. And I honor that I believe that and I think that's entirely valid. And I wanted to invite you to explore this confrontation deeper because it sounds like you have a lot of self awareness, but you may not know what to do with this self awareness. And my guess is a part of you believed that if you kept the peace that you would feel safe because as I mentioned, divorce triggers a safety, that emotional safety within us. Children need to feel physically safe, financially safe, emotionally safe, and all the forms of safety. And when one is lacking, children will develop different coping strategies and it sounds like yours might have been to keep the peace. That confrontation scary. I don't know how well your parents get along. Now. I don't know if they bicker I don't know if they don't talk at all. I don't know if they may get along now, but they didn't during the divorce. I think it's hard for parents to remain completely peaceful and kind to each other throughout a divorce. And even if they do a kid may pick up on inner tension. There's so many different reasons for why you may fear confrontation, but I invite you to dive deeper and here are some journal prompts I thought may help you with this. How does the idea of confrontation feel in your body? Does it feel tight? Does it feel dark? Does it feel heavy? Explore where you feel this and what It feels like in your body. When you think of confrontation, is there a memory that comes to mind? Is it a childhood memory? Or is it more recent? Allow yourself to explore this? What is your parents relationship like today? Do they see each other? Do they not? Allow yourself to explore your feelings about your parents relationship? How do you feel about your parents current relationship? I then invite you to explore what do you wish your parents relationship was like? Don't judge yourself, allow yourself to fully explore what you wish you had as a child. And even now as an adult? What do you wish your parents relationship look like? After you write about that, I invite you to read it back to yourself and see what feels to be missing in your life. Is it peace? Is it love? Is it a family, take the time to notice the themes. And then I invite you to explore how you can add these to your own life. Many times what we seek from our parents, we are able to start giving to ourselves as adults through self love. And my last piece of advice is that I invite you to explore finding a therapist or someone to talk through this experience with I think that children of divorce have suffered a huge loss as children, and it can take time to heal from this. And as I mentioned, you have a lot of self awareness, but it may be hard for you to connect with the feelings. And I think a professional could help you with this. It's so healing to talk about your feelings, and to dive deeper into yourself. And I invite you to explore that it could be therapy, or it could be working with a different kind of professional. There's lots of different coaches and different people who are there to offer support throughout your healing journey. And before I wrap up this question, I just invite you to offer yourself self compassion and kindness. What you're moving through isn't easy. And I think it's a step all in of itself that you're ready to look at this. I think that when many of us experience trauma as children or really difficult experiences as children, it can take time for us to admit there's something to look at, because it's a survival mechanism. And you and only you will know when you are ready to look at the wounds of your past. And it sounds like you are ready to look at how your parents divorce has affected you. I can tell you in my own life that I have experienced lots of trauma, and I have experienced lots of wounding from my parents come from the people I grew up with. And it is always one layer at a time. And I have learned it's not about judging ourselves. It's about allowing what needs to come up when it's ready. And I know in my own life, I have been really harsh on myself for how long it has taken me to look at certain things. But the truth is, My only regret is that I'm not kinder to myself along the way. I know that my body, my soul, my heart will show me what's next to be looked at when I am ready. And so I invite you to be kind with yourself patient with yourself as you move through this process. My guess is there are a lot of layers to unpack. So allowing yourself to look at it one layer at a time and honor yourself throughout this process in honor that this was a loss you experienced and that it deserves to be grieved, felt and held by you and your own heart. Thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you so much love and I hope something in this answer was helpful.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 28:26
I am a 25 year old man and my parents are currently going through a divorce. My guess is that they waited for me and my younger siblings to graduate from high school and leave the house before getting divorced. From what I can gather my dad left my mom and my dad is already dating someone new. My mom even though she wouldn't show it or say anything is clearly heartbroken. My family kind of brushes it under the rug and I don't feel comfortable talking about it with friends. Also, I don't know how to feel about them waiting to get divorced. It feels like my family life was a lie. How should I feel about everything? Thank you for this question. I think what you're experiencing is all too common. And I want to honor all the hard feelings you are currently navigating. I can't tell you how you should be feeling about everything only you know how you feel. But I invite you to honor and allow all the feelings that are arising rather than judging them. And I'm sure you have a lot of feelings about what you're moving through. As I mentioned, divorce is a loss and even though you are an adult it does not make what you are moving through any less difficult. I think it is a lie that if you wait till the kids are out of the house, the kids won't be affected by the divorce or it'll be easier. That is not true. It is different for every individual but it is still extremely difficult as an adult for your parents to get divorced. And I just want to honor what you're moving through. As I mentioned, divorce is difficult at any age because family is such a huge part of our lives and now your family is changing by no choice of your own and you can see the pain it's causing your mother and you probably don't know how to feel about your dad dating someone new already. it probably feels too soon, even though you're an adult, I just want to honor that because your family structure is not the same and it will never be in allowing yourself to move through the grieving process. What I advise for anyone moving through the grieving process is to offer yourself self care. It's so important to take care of yourself. The feelings of grief are heavy in real, and they come in waves. Grief can come at unexpected times throughout the day, and allowing yourself the space to feel the feelings and not trying to shove them down is an important part of the grieving process. Be gentle and kind to yourself throughout this process, you're allowed to be upset, and you're allowed to feel all your feelings. It's not just your parents going through a breakup, you're also moving through a loss and a breakup of your family. And I want to say that I think it's completely valid, how you feel like your family structure may have always been a lie. I don't know if that is true. But your feelings about feeling that way are valid, especially if nobody has communicated with you about it. How you feel is always valid, as I mentioned in the previous question, so it's okay to allow yourself to feel that way. It feels like a lie to you right now. honor that. Is there a part of you that has more to say about that, I invite you to explore that. And your healing journey with this may take time. But I think something you can focus on this time is self awareness. Because it sounds like this may be one of the first times you may be unable to shove something under the rug. And self awareness is the process of becoming aware of your thoughts, emotions and behaviors. The goal is to become conscious to why you do the things you do. And why you feel the way you feel. You're still in the process of getting in touch with yourself and your feelings. Because you asked How are you supposed to be feeling it's going to be different for everyone. How you are feeling is how you're going to be feeling there's nothing wrong with the way you're feeling. There's no certain way you're supposed to feel you and your siblings may feel differently about it. And that's okay, your experience is real and true for you. So I invite you to begin to become clear on how you're feeling. It sounds like you may not always know how you're feeling. And a great way to start connecting with how you're feeling is to ask yourself, what three emotions you're feeling throughout the day. So I invite you to do this multiple times throughout the day. But if you can only remember to do it once I think in the morning or the evening works great as well. And connecting with how you are feeling, putting words to the emotions. Because my guess is you're feeling a lot right now. So it could feel confusing. But by connecting back to yourself and becoming intentional, you will begin to identify how you're feeling, the more comfortable you can get with the discomforting feelings, the easier this process will be it will never be easy. But learning to look at and be with what arises in the present will assist you through this. And one of those is to honor our feelings and know that no feeling lasts forever. Feelings move quicker when we acknowledge them. And we allow it up and find different ways to move them. I invite you to journal it's a great way to move energy and to move your feelings you will notice that as you write, if you're angry, the anger will move, the sadness will move. But it will help you to feel your feelings if you're somebody who is not used to feeling your feelings. But really connecting with your own feelings is really going to help you through this process. It helps anybody moving through the grieving process to just allow yourself to feel your feelings. We live in a society that has taught people especially men to bottle up their feelings that it's not manly to feel their feelings that has gotten us nowhere good. It is time for everyone, men, women non binary however you identify, it's time for you to feel your feelings. And that is how we will create a safer world for people. When we bottle up our feelings and we don't look at them. That's when unsafety happens for ourselves and others. That's when we react rather than respond to life. That's when we continue to pile on more and more in life can begin to become unbearable. Our feelings are just information. They are not there to punish us. They can be incredibly uncomfortable and incredibly painful. But they are not there to punish us. They're actually there to honor us and what we've experienced and to let us know how we really feel about the life we're living in the life we've lived and how we've been treated. There is nothing wrong with your feelings. There's nothing wrong with feeling them. And so I invite you to just start exploring how you're feeling daily because it sounds like you may be feeling a lot. And I also invite you to explore how you're feeling about your dad dating someone new how you feel when you talk with your mom who you said sounds heartbroken to you. How do you feel about your parents during this time? Do you need to begin creating boundaries until you're clear on how you feel? Do you need to communicate anything with them? But first just become clear on how you're feeling. It's okay to be angry at our parents. I've talked to so many people who feel guilty about feeling any sort of negative feeling about your parents reality check. We all have bottled up feelings about our parents, no parents were perfect. And we all have to heal eventually, our relationships with our mothers our relationship with our fathers and our relationship with our caregivers, our parent could have done the best they can, I believe every parent actually does the best they can. It just may have not been everything you need it. And that's okay. But first, removing the guilt and the shame about feeling anything negative towards your parents is the first step. No parent is perfect. No one had a perfect childhood. And it's okay, let yourself off the hook. I know for so long. I felt so much shame about having negative feelings about my parents because it was always shoved in my face, you should be grateful, be grateful. Why aren't you grateful I wasn't allowed to feel anything other than grateful. And it wasn't until I was on my healing journey. And I actually was with my first therapists that we started to dive into how I can be grateful. And I can recognize how fortunate I am and how privileged I was. And I can still have things I need to heal witness and feel. And one thing is in everything. So you may have a mother who did everything for you. She may have driven you to every soccer practice, she may have cooked every meal, she may have been at every PTA meeting, but was she able to be there for you emotionally, or could have had a father who provided everything you ever could have wanted, except his emotional presence, except him actually being there, except showing love. And so allowing ourselves to explore our relationships with our parents is so important for the healing journey. And I really believe the first step is removing the guilt, that we may feel feelings towards our parents, like even now, you may be able to see that your parents shouldn't be together, but still have a lot of feelings about it. That's okay. Both can exist at the same time. The healing journey isn't simple, the human mind isn't simple. Our emotional body isn't simple. So allowing it all to be complicated. And allowing multiple truths to exist at once is so important when we're healing. So I just invite you to not judge yourself as you begin to explore how you're feeling how you feel towards your parents, how maybe you feel towards your siblings, but how you feel about your family structure. And again, I invite you to explore if there's somebody who could support you through this time. So possibly a therapist, possibly a coach, I also offer one on one sessions for anybody who is interested. I also work with people weekly to assist with the healing journey. So I just want to offer that for anyone that may assist as well. But I just want to honor this and honor that even though you're an adult, it's okay that this is extremely painful. It's very valid. It's very real. And I'm so sorry, you're moving through this. I think as I mentioned in the intro, that divorce is often brushed over, and people who had parents stay together and may not understand and they might think it's whatever 50% of adults get divorced anyway, like it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. It's an incredibly big deal. It's incredibly painful. And I'm so sorry that this is something you're moving through. So offer yourself what you need at this time. Be gentle with yourself, be kind with yourself, find things that make you feel better find ways to enjoy life as you're grieving the loss of your family structure. Maybe it's exercise, maybe it's taking a class, maybe it's creativity, but finding what you need right now and allowing yourself that will assist you throughout this. And I hope something in this answer was helpful. Thank you so much for this question.
Amanda Durocher (Outro) 38:48
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. I hope even if your parents aren't going through divorce or aren't divorced, that you were still able to find something helpful throughout this episode. I know that even though my parents are still together, talking about the wounding of parents and healing how my parents and their own relationship affected me has been such a big part of my own healing journey. I'd like to invite anyone who has a question they'd like to hear answered on a future episode to write in their question, you can email me at NewViewAdvice@gmail.com or you can submit the question form on my website at NewViewAdvice.com/question. And that reminds me that the journal prompts from this episode and the show notes will be able to be found on my website at NewViewAdvice.com/45 Thank you again for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. sending you all my love. See you next time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
