Divorce Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Divorce, anxiety and panic attacks are close bedfellows-there’s no getting around that. You’re launched on unpredictable, emotional roller coaster ride. Your soon be ex’s reactive trance has stripped all compassion leaving you with a racing heart, waking in the night, sweaty palms, foggy thinking, nausea- feeling like you’re under attack,questioning your mental health, fear that you’re losing your mind? Check, check and check.
Welcome to the tarpit of anxiety. Nobody gets out unscathed. Treatment and information are abundant but “how the hell can I get myself calm and settled enough to even access it?”
Examples you ask?
“Hey Jaynie, Come on over, pull up a chair, how are you doing?” ( WTF, is my soon to be ex-partner’s best friend really asking me to casually sit down with a bunch of old friends to chat, after my partner has just blown up mine and my family’s lives?)
Looking at my bank account I realize that I haven’t paid certain bills that my ex normally covered, how am I going to do this? Can I afford it?
Am I going to be alone during the holidays and while we’re at it, forever more? What should I say when talking to my ex’s parents? Do I need to even talk to them?
Geez, I’m dang near having a panic attack just writing and remembering the multitude of panic stricken challenges with divorce.
Any life change as big as divorce is bound to throw your system off, but I was blindsided by fear and the immensity of anxiety and panic attacks. My friends were surprised at my reactions as previously, I had seldom dealt with anxiety, and yet after my divorce I became the poster child for insecurity, fear and low self esteem.
Divorce is one of the most stressful times in a person’s life for many reasons. Unpredictability is certainly among the top.
As tragic as a partner’s death may be, you know that friends will gather and support you, you know what the life insurance policy is and you know that you’re not going to run into them with their new partner when out to dinner. The loss of a relationship with divorce is tragic AND you may keep being rejected, or humiliated and/or continue to manage the fear around requests for the financial reductions in the divorce decree, not to mention all of the unknowns when children are involved. The unpredictability takes our nervous systems to defcon 2, leaving us to wrestle with a 4 million year old nervous system that can dump massive cortisol in our systems, compromising our higher selves, compromising our executive thinking.
Moments like when I blew my top when I realized money had been withdrawn from our account. When I had to pull over and vomit on my way to the attorney’s office. When I froze and couldn’t answer basic questions about my dead water heater. Really, I panicked over responding about a water heater? Yeah, anxiety when going through a divorce can be debilitating.
How do you get your system back on line when anxiety is clobbering you? NAB it for starters!
(Yep! You know how we therapists love acronyms!)
Notice your physical reaction.
Notice that your heartbeat has increased, notice your sweaty palms, your tearfulness. Leave the judgement behind and simply notice what is happening in your body.
2. Accept that this is happening.
Your body is responding in a very healthy manner to a situation that is threatening your way of living. You are supposed to be anxious. Trying to fight this primal system is a fool’s errand (just try holding your breath and see who wins). Accept that your body is trying to keep you safe. Remember, acceptance does not mean agreement.
3. Focus on your Breath.
Breathe, breathe, breathe. The longest nerve in our body is attached to our brain stem and connects to our lungs, our throat, our complete digestive system. This is what clenches our jaw, races our heart, etc. Deep breaths with an elongated out breath activates the parasympathetic system, which is our natural relaxation response. If we can train ourselves to work consistently with the longer breaths, we have a better shot at walking with the anxiety. Using NAB (Notice, Accept, Breathe) we can teach ourselves to respond and not react to the anxiety.
If we can NAB divorce anxiety then we are more likely to avoid the abundant panic-filled landmines of divorce. Noticing your body’s response, accepting it and then breathing into it creates space to ask the anxiety “what’s going on? What are you afraid of?”
Staying with the breath allows the executive solution seeking part of our brain to respond. You might choose to journal to dispose and or understand the fear (temporary but effective,) you might choose to wait to hit send until the morning (a really good idea), you might choose to speak with kindness instead of snark (three years from now you’ll be grateful you took the less seductive path, integrity feels pretty good and the benefits to the working relationship with your ex-spouse will be multiple).
The point is utilizing NAB offers choices.
Going through a divorce, often means that my brain will magnify ordinary choices into cataclysmic events. Once I noticed that I was obsessing over what to wear to the attorney's office or my heart racing over “Does that person from work think I’ve been crying? Waking in the night, “ am I going to be alone forever?” I can notice my body’s reaction, accept that it is in reactive mode and breathe. If done enough, it may be possible to befriend the anxiety, to “right size the worry” and then address the concerns. It offers a path to create a new “back to normal.” A path where I can learn to trust myself and redefine my new normal.
Utilizing NAB won’t make anxiety go away, but it no longer needs to kneecap us. Through practice we can get our better selves in the driver's seat and put anxiety in the trunk, somedays in the back seat, somedays riding shotgun. NAB gives us a solid shot when divorcing to make better decisions with grace and integrity during one of the most challenging times where decisions have big consequences.
Finally, I think it is worthy of note to differentiate between anxiety and stress. Of course, going through a divorce is immensely stressful. AND there are times where stress, even anger, is helpful. It may force us to find our voice and say no to bull#* that we may have been minimized and tolerated in the past. I know it worked for me!!! Stress around money might force us to ask for that raise or get into therapy that we’ve always been meaning to try. Has it motivated you for big change? It can increase our self awareness and motivate us for change for the better, as long as we are accessing our executive brains. Integrating Noticing, Accepting and Breathing (NAB) opens the door to the sacred pause and choices emerge.
Oh and when it came to the story of “ Hey Jaynie, Come on over, pull up a chair, how are you doing?”, after noticing my body’s panic response, accepting that the anxiety was visiting and then taking three deep breaths, I checked in with the anxiety, it told me, “It is too soon for you to be in this environment. It is asking too much of yourself.” Another breath, I graciously leave. The anxiety reduces. It knows I am listening. It knows that I can be trusted to respond to the anxiety and not react. The knowing that NAB creates space and choices provides predictability. I learn to trust myself more, so over time the anxiety no longer needs to be at that high level. It knows that I am growing a response instead of react muscle. The anxiety accepts its back seat position, relinquishing the driver’s wheel. Yeah, it is still there, and with NAB I can drive, I can recover. Which then begs the question, what will I discover???
If you want more concrete tools for how to reduce the anxiety and fear, download our free pdf “Tips for Calming Your Nervous System and Addressing Fear” here.
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