Learning to “Get Along” for the Best Interest of the Child
Experts agree that nurturing, supportive parenting that provides firm but fair limits assists children in becoming healthy, well-functioning adults. However, a seven year study by Dallas’s Timberlawn Psychiatric Institute found the one factor that was the most important in helping children become healthy, happy adults, was the quality of the relationship between their parents. This one factor was more important than giving kids hugs, providing good discipline, and building their self esteem, or any other aspect of what is traditionally considered ‘good parenting.’ In light of these and other similar findings, our concern for the ‘best interest of the child’ in marital dissolution cases rests with helping parents communicate and work together after the divorce.
Children Do NOT Just “Get Over It”
Many of us used to assume, and some still do, that children will ‘get over’ their parents’ divorce after an initial period of adjustment . The Timberlawn study, as well as landmark studies by Judith Wallerstein and others, found that divorce not only hurts both parents and children, but that children suffer long term consequences including emotional difficulties, poor school or job performance, and difficulty achieving intimacy in their own relationships as adults. Wallerstein reports that one third of the children experienced moderate to severe depression five years after the divorce. Fifteen years after the divorce, many of those children were still experiencing the consequences of their parent’s break-up as they began love relationships and marriages of their own. Every child in her study feared repeating a failure to maintain a loving relationship in adulthood, all feared betrayal and rejection, and all remained very vulnerable to loss.
Continual Battles Worse than Divorce
What these and other studies have also found is, that while divorce hurts children, living with parents who continually wage embittered battles is even worse. Research shows that the children who suffer most are those whose parents divorce, and then carry on the battle for years through legal challenges, arguments, or refusal to cooperate with orders regarding visitation, custody, and child support. As Wallerstein points out, the courts have often believed that awarding joint custody would force parents to put aside their anger and cooperate for the sake of the children. However, often, the opposite occurs. The children become either the weapons or the trophies in their parents power struggle, or the unintended victims of their rage. Moreover, the chaos and emotional (and sometimes financial) strain that the divorce process puts on parents often makes it difficult for them to provide the security and availability for their children, further leaving the child’s emotional and physical needs unmet.
Does Counseling Help?
How can attorneys, mediators, and judges, then, assist a couple in repairing their relationship in order to either stay together and create a fulfilling relationship for both, or, at least, to communicate and work together after a divorce for the best interest of their children? Legal professionals often refer or order parents to marriage counseling, but many times, little seems to change. The same dynamics of conflict and discord continue throughout the legal process and long after agreements and orders are made. Successful marriage counseling teaches the couple practical skills to effectively move beyond the power struggle in their relationship and to heal the causes of that power struggle.
Negotiation and Contracts is Basically More of the Same
Many counselors are taught to use negotiation skills and contracts to help resolve conflicts. While these methods sometimes help, their benefit is often short-term. Using contracts and negotiation tends to civilize the power struggle for a period of time — until those very contracts become another expression of the basic power struggle. Focusing on ‘tit for tat’, or on the content of the issues (money, children, sex, etc.) is at best a band-aid, and at worst, in contractual form, fuel for the fire. Therapy in which each partner tells their story to the therapist with the therapist acting as a kind of mediator also tends to have short term benefits. Long after a couple leaves a courtroom or a therapist’s office, they continue to interact with each other and their children. Court orders, contracts, or agreements, in or outside of therapy, set parameters for the power struggle, but do not give couples the tools to move through and beyond it. Learning those skills is an important key to the parents’ ‘best interest’ and especially, to that of their children.
Learn Skills that Help You Step Out of the Power Struggle
Over the past 20 years, I have learned that teaching couples concrete, practical, skills that help them use frustration and conflict as an opportunity for growth and healing for both partners, instead of a weapon for more wounding, results in long-term improvement in the relationship. Instead of the tools remaining in the hands of the therapist, they are taught to and practiced by the couple. In this way, couples can move from automatically reacting to each other in ways that are hurtful or hostile, to intentional, safe, and healing communication and behavior.
How to Get Over Relationship Heartbreak – Consciously
Getting over relationship heartbreak is really hard. It’s even harder for us to talk about the traumatic feelings that comes with the ending of a relationship. If you have ever suffered the pain of heartbreak, or are going through a break up right now, then you know how hard it is to get through one day – because breaking up with someone — rips us open – there’s really no other way to say it. This unresolved pain can affect your ability to move forward with your life. It can also affect your ability to feel confident about the possibility of finding love ever again.
Heartbreak, especially after a bad-break up is one of the most traumatic experiences anyone can live through. It’s a death of sorts. That of the relationship and hope for the future, loss of your partner, loss of the identity of how you saw yourself. It could also mean the loss of your home, community, social standing your personal belongs. And to make it worse, you might also lose contact with your children or step-children.
So how do we get over it? I have a plan to help you fully process the inner turmoil and transform the emotional pain that comes with heartbreak, move beyond the trauma, so you can feel good about you and your ability to find love again.
My plan will not only help you feel better, but also grow and change your energy in the process. I have laid out the steps in my “Getting Over Relationship Heartbreak – Consciously” All- New Coaching Program.
It’s sad but true when we’re brokenhearted if we move to fast in a effort to make the pain go away faster, we not only sacrifice our health, but also run the risk of attracting the same situation again. Or better yet, someone worse.
Why is this? Because the beliefs, feelings, behavior patterns, and decisions that made you in that relationship remains unchanged. Therefore you will continue to attract similar things.
You can expect to:
1. Move through the denial: Denial comes in the form of shock or euphoria depending on your situation. Moving through denial means grounding your experience in real life.
2. Help you move through your anger. Anger is necessary to name and process, but wait . . . you don’t want to live there.
3. Help you dissolve and defuse toxic emotional energy. Time to cry. This is what we’re usually running from- the pain.
4. Relentlessly help you uncover your relationship patterns. Get clear about where you went wrong so you don’t repeat it.
5. Acceptance – You know you’re going to be okay. You come to terms with the end of the relationship and a new reality.
6. Embrace your new beginning . . . you’re free to make new choices in life and in . . . love.
*NOTE: Sometimes we may also need to sit on the pity pot for a while. This is a bonus option which you’re only allowed to do for 15 minutes a day for 15 days.
Here’s what you’ll get:
- (4) 30 minute coaching sessions with Paula
- Handouts and materials (including meditations)
- Session conducted by Skype/phone and can be recorded for you to keep.
- Unlimited text or email support
All for only $197