Separation & Divorce Counseling
Going through a separation or divorce is a challenging and painful experience. It impacts your life on many levels, often bringing with it a flood of emotions including sorrow, anger, fear or guilt. Separation and divorce counseling can help you grieve your losses, heal, and rebuild your life.
At the heart, the pain of separation and divorce is mourning the loss of someone you once cared for deeply and the sense of family you created together. It also calls on you to grieve and let go of the dreams and the plans you had for your future together.
Accessing support is important as you make your way through this difficult time. The support of family, friends as well as separation and divorce counseling and/or group can help you as you begin to grieve and rebuild.
How Separation and Divorce Counseling Supports You
Separation and divorce counseling offers you support with grieving, healing, and charting your next chapter. It addresses the sudden changes you are facing.
You may find yourself, grieving, facing identity shifts, wondering how to create healthy boundaries, co‑parenting or experiencing shifting moods.
The first months are the hardest months. You may find yourself feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, sad and lost. The everyday things you used to do with ease may now seem almost impossible.
If you find this is true for you, you are not alone in feeling this way. Allow yourself some grace, identify your support system and don’t go it alone. Give yourself the space you need to heal, be generous with your self-care and stay connected with others.
The first months are the hardest months. You may be feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, sad and lost.
“When our grief cannot be spoken, it falls into the shadow and re-arises in us as symptoms. So many of us are depressed, anxious, and lonely. We struggle with addictions and find ourselves moving at a breathless pace, trying to keep up with the machinery of culture.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
Separation and Divorce Counseling & Peer Support Groups
I offer both grounded and compassionate separation and divorce counseling for individuals, along with peer support groups to help you begin healing. Together we will address the challenges and painful feelings you may be experiencing such as:
- Grieving the loss of your partner, your sense of family and the loss of “the dream” of your life together
- Changes in the structure of your daily life and in your identity
- Changes in your life at home and with your family and friends
- Making legal decisions while you are grieving or angry
- Rediscovering who you are outside of the relationship you had with your ex-partner
- Creating healthy boundaries between you and your ex that fosters healing
- Suddenly becoming a single parent
- Keeping your children from being caught “in the middle”
- Learning how to co-parent and raise your children together and separately
- Finding your new normal
- Identifying new dreams for your future
- And when you are ready – dating and healthy resilient relationships in your future
I’ll walk alongside side you as you grieve and begin rebuilding your life, relationships and vision for your future. My approach is interactive and supportive, creating a compassionate space to grieve your loss and step into healing and recovery.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) and Brainspotting (BSP) to help you get unstuck
If you find you are struggling or feeling stuck in your healing process, I also offer Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) and Brainspotting (BSP).
ART is an evidenced based therapy that uses eye movements and voluntary image replacement within a protocol to work with your brain and nervous system to help bring you back into to a state of calm and regulation. Using ART, we work to reprogram how painful and distressing memories and images are stored in your brain so they no longer trigger strong physical and emotional reactions. During an ART session you are not required to share the details of your story for our work together to be effective. ART is a procedural and creative therapy often effective within 1-3 sessions. For more information on ART.
Brainspotting is a brain based somatic therapy that uses eye positions and biolateral sound to locate, process and release trauma and emotional distress. BSP is able to go deeper into the brain than talk therapy, to the unconscious mind where traumatic memories are kept. BSP helps reduce the effects of trauma, anxiety and other psychological stressors. For more information on BSP.
In the beginning, people often say they can’t see any light as they look towards their future. After working with people navigating separation and divorce for over 15 years I want to let you know the light you seek is there waiting for you. There is life after separation and divorce.
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell
I offer both counseling and a support group for separation and divorce. I am seeing clients online only at this time. If you have questions I can be reached at alison@alisonwithey.com.
