Recently I launched a course where I am working with a group of individuals who are either going through a divorce battle or are post-battle. We are working on understanding our emotions through divorce and learning how to manage our emotions by managing our thoughts.

Once we started to identify our most prevalent emotions, I could see a lot of consensus between participants. They have expressed that their most frequent emotions are worry, frustration, and victimhood.

These particular feelings I have learned, are indulgent emotions. Unlike other feelings, these feeling do not drive any action. In fact, they tend to drive inaction. We know that our feelings are generated by our thoughts about a circumstance. Indulgent emotions arise from habitual thoughts like:

• This is so unfair.
• I have no idea how to manage this.
• He shouldn’t be allowed to behave this way.
• No one will believe me.
• The family court system is broken

The resultant emotions are: victimhood, confusion, worry and doubt.

When you are feeling these emotions, are you able to take the action to help you succeed in your divorce battle such as documenting or disengaging from your ex? Are you able to present as your best self to a judge? Are you able show up as the best parent you can be to your kids?

These emotions don’t serve us during our divorce battle or even in the aftermath because they do not promote us to take action to solve problems or live our best life. They let us just indulge in inaction and they provide an excuse for not taking action. My ex ruined my life and now I have nothing.

I am a big proponent of allowing our emotions to be present so that we can process them, BUT indulgent emotions are an exception to this rule. We need to deliberately think thoughts that fuel feelings like commitment and confidence. This takes practice because are brains are so programmed to think the thoughts it always has. These thoughts have become beliefs and many of my clients are glued to beliefs that just do not serve them.Some examples of more serving thoughts might be:

• I can do hard things.
• Everything is exactly as it should be.
• My lawyer has my back.
• Worry serves no purpose.
• What others think of me is about them, not me.
• I learn by doing.
• There is always a solution.

So much of what we think is subconscious. A Life Coach will help you get more in touch with your thoughts and the feelings they are generating. This will enable you to deliberately decide if you want to stay in those emotions or if you want to work on moving forward.