The Taconic Counseling Group

Maria Alba-Fisch, Ph.D.

A Program for Recovering from Divorce

This treatment program is designed specifically for you if you are recently divorced and want help with the turbulence that comes with reorganizing your life after divorce. If you did not choose the divorce, you may be stunned by the shock of surprise, feelings of betrayal, experience of rejection and the enormous confusion that comes from trying to figure out both what happened and how to create your own life. If you did initiate the divorce, you may be surprised to face a great deal of emotional turmoil in the year or two after divorce. Whatever your starting point, you face major changes in your life, substantial loss, and many decisions about how to create a new life that works well for you and, if there are children, for your children. Having to do all this when you are still recovering from the actual experience of divorce is challenging for anyone. When there are children, you also carry the responsibility for helping them with whatever their feelings and changes they have to face.

In the midst of this turmoil, it is hard for you to know where to begin, what to sort out, what direction to take. Your decisions need to be sound and provide a direction that offers an enduring organization for your new life and, if you have children, for the lives of your children. You will have settled certain elements in your divorce agreement, but living with them and making them work well is emotionally very demanding.

Below are a number of steps necessary to take in recovering from divorce. Each person begins this program at a different point, and a specific plan is designed with you, tailored to what you need, want, and what is timely for you. The initial consultation is two hours, giving you adequate time to inform the therapist of your own specific situation, and enabling the therapist to develop a personal plan for your needs. Wherever you begin, this program is designed to help you 'get there'.

1.                 Understanding and processing the shock of divorce whether you chose it or not.

2.                 Caring for yourself and caring for your children.

3.                 Defining the worst parts of NOW: How to address and reduce the worst in the present? Determine what needs immediate attention and what can wait. Identify your fears for the future.

4.                 Mourning the losses and healing injured feelings.

5.                 figuring out what to do with the anger.

6.                 Reclaiming pieces of your "self", pieces that were put aside or lost during marriage.

7.                 Re-structuring your new life.

8.                 Re-structuring your children's lives and your relationship with your ex-spouse.

9.                 Helping your children with their feelings and the changes they face and will face.

10.            Developing a new place as an unmarried person: new friendships, old friendships, dating.