Recommended Reading
Here’s a fact for you. There’s no guidebook for getting through life’s worst events. Nobody has a guide for surviving divorce.
When your marriage blows up in your face, you’ll end up seeking a lot of advice. If you’re like I was, you’ll head out onto the Internet and do a lot of searching for advice on how to handle the situation.
And since there’s seemingly millions of bloggers, lawyers, and “thought leaders” offering tons of high level, non-specific advice, you’ll encounter a lot of poorly written blog posts that offer lightweight punch lists of suggestions for what to do after the initial split. There’s just a lack of positive, helpful resources written in straightforward language for how to deal with the emotional turmoil you’ll experience in a divorce.
This book attempts to solve that problem, using the commonly accepted seven stages of dealing with grief that accompany the death of a loved one. It’s a good comparison because grieving a divorce is a lot like mourning the death of someone you loved, except in this situation, the person in question is still around, walking around and thriving, like some kind of reanimated remembrance of your marriage armed with the power to say “I don’t love you anymore.”
Shock and Denial: Dealing with the 20-ton nuclear bomb has detonated in your life and finding ways to actual accept it.
Pain and Guilt: Handling the hurt that comes in waves, washing over you at inconvenient, very public moments as well as the accompanying guilt.
Anger and Bargaining: Learning to deal with the wrath, rage, fury and bargaining that are common responses to sudden drastic changes in people’s lives.
Depression: Working through the experience that makes you feel like you’re living in a deep dark hole, a bombed out crater filled with wreckage of your past life.
The Upward Turn: Getting a handle on yourself and starting to make better choices, so a light washes over the darkness in your life.
Reconstruction and Working Through: This is the heavy lifting part of the process that involves reframing your challenges, changing your thinking around what stands between you and your goals, and reexamining the demise of your relationship.
Acceptance and Hope: Learning to take the divorce for what it actually was from an objective standpoint. You get on with whatever acceptance looks like for you and begin forging a path forward.
Life is a series of events, one beginning and ending before giving way to another. Divorce is dramatic, impactful, hurtful, and sad, but it’s also just an event. It’s a thing that happened to you. You experience it, navigate it, and move forward. The hope is that you come out the other side having learned something, because to emerge from the experience having done nothing at all is unthinkable.
It does end though, and the story you write going forward is your own.
In this book, I share my personal story with you and my discoveries about what our bodies, our “selves,” and our relationships need in order to heal from the wounds of life, especially those we sustain in childhood. I wouldn’t wish my beginnings on anyone. There was only one possible way for me to survive the brutality I endured and that was to shut myself down. Essentially, I was incapable of feeling. I was numb. Yes, my story is extreme, but it required me to leave no stone unturned to discover how to restore my humanity. I wanted to be able to really enjoy a long-term intimate sexual relationship with one person, to be able to tune into another’s emotional experience and empathize, to feel good and free in my body and spirit, to stand before groups and speak without fear, to age with vitality and grace, to look forward to adventures. I acquired all of these abilities during adulthood. As a young man embarking upon adulthood, I would have received an F in those subjects.
Single On Purpose: Redefine Everything. Find Yourself First.
The author of I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck, The Angry Therapist, now teaches you how to prioritize your relationship with yourself and live a more meaningful life, whether you’re alone, dating, or with a partner.
There’s more to life than loving someone. But being single can feel like a death sentence. Why does being alone = being lonely? And why do we stop working on ourselves when we’re in a relationship?
After a painful divorce, “The Angry Therapist” John Kim realized he had never truly been on his own. He went on a journey to rebuild his relationship with himself, going from alone and disconnected to alone and fulfilled.
Kim has gone on to help thousands of clients find their own unique way to break free of expectations and finally live their truth. With Single on Purpose, Kim takes his signature no-BS “self-help in a shot glass” approach as he shares his own singlehood story and shows readers how to own their shit, break their patterns, and find a grounded sense of self.
Spending time to cultivate your relationship with yourself shouldn’t be something you only do when you hit rock bottom, go through a major loss, or have a quarter-life crisis. All of us, at some point, need to be single—on purpose.
The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, And Body In The Healing Of Trauma
#1 New York Times bestseller
“Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society.” —Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies
A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.
“Coparenting is hard in any circumstance and when doing it with someone that has a high conflict personality, can seem impossible. The first step is to admit that you are outmatched in every way except for the ability to learn new skills related to the high conflict personality. My life did not change until I began to read and understand and start using tools like BIFF. I couldn’t help my children because I couldn’t help myself and until I learned new tools, felt hopeless. Using BIFF will give you hope that change is possible.” A.C., parent
Use BIFF to Communicate with Your Ex’s Blaming, Accusing and Taunting Texts and Emails
In divorce and co-parenting, not only do you need to deal with your own emotions, you may be faced with a daily barrage of hostile calls, texts, email, and social media blasts. How can you regain a sense of control and peace for your own sake and for the kids?
For more than a decade, the BIFF method of responding to hostile and misinforming emails, texts, and conversations has grown in use by thousands of people dealing with a difficult co-parent and with those who may have a high conflict personality, and it helps with those who don’t. This third book in the BIFF™ Conflict Communication Series is especially devoted to parents dealing with issues during, and after, separation and divorce. Complete with instructions in the four-step BIFF method, and numerous practical examples, readers will learn the intricacies of their new parenting environment.
When parents use this approach, not only do they feel good about their end of the written or verbal conversation, but it tends to influence the other parent to communicate more productively as well. While it’s simple and practical, it’s not natural for most of us because we are hooked by the emotional intensity. This book can help you reduce the conflict and regain your sanity by learning what to write and what not to write.
Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm
BIFF is a communication game changer―it works!
I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck: An Everyman’s Guide to a Meaningful Life
Unstoppable Self Confidence: How to create the indestructible, natural confidence of the 1% who achieve their goals, create success on demand and live life on their terms
by Andrew Leedham (Author)
There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re not broken and you don’t need fixing.
Here’s the bad news: 99% of people go through almost their whole lives never really feeling good about who they are, never really liking themselves and never thinking that they are enough. And as a result, they live a life that is a tiny fraction of what it could be, the life they have settled for instead of the life they dreamed of. If you are not yet living the life of your dreams, the chances are that this is you too.
Here’s the good news: You already have everything you need to be confident and successful and to live the life you want on your terms. You only need to UNLEARN all the bad programming and wrong thinking that you’ve been given to unleash the incredible power within you. This book will show you how.
After finding himself at his absolute lowest point, Andrew Leedham went on a mission to discover the secrets to creating the unstoppable self-confidence of the 1%. What he discovered shocked him. That most teaching on confidence and success was not only wrong but also highly destructive. And that with the secrets he discovered you could transform your confidence and success, PERMANENTLY and FAST.
If you’re on the fence about reading this book: This book is all about how to create the indestructible, natural confidence of the 1% who live life on their terms and achieve success in all they do. In this no-nonsense, application-specific guide, you’ll get the most powerful strategies and success principles to build the mindset and confidence that will make you unstoppable. Most importantly, how I teach this is what makes the transformation of your confidence permanent.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I get commissions for purchases made through links on this site.