Are You Undergoing a Divorce?

by Atticus Atlas | Mar 24, 2025 | Reflection

Health warning:
Notes below are from principles underlying this institute. They are not to be seen as a substitute for professional help nor are they engraved on tablets of stone. They are signposts that with luck and effort can help you look within yourself to see if they help you, even if you reject them.

Impudent, isn’t it! Someone trying to tell you how you should think! But if you ask for help, you’re partly responsible. Giving advice on big matters is a bit like telling someone about eternity. There is so much that isn’t known by Mr Wiseacre. Broad brush-strokes, categories, can be got right; the specific ways that you feel, and what you should do, and think, varies from case to case. The ‘Weight’ or importance that you assign to different points – when the language used overlaps or is identical – may be different. All such talk au fond comes from a shared humanity; and that is fine within limits.

Health warning: Notes below are from principles underlying this institute. They are not to be seen as a substitute for professional help nor are they engraved on tablets of stone. They are signposts that with luck and effort can help you look within yourself to see if they help you, even if you reject them.

What to do and what to think:

1) No one else can know exactly what you are going through at the moment. You are your own most understanding patient.

2) Sometimes wisdom is enshrined in some saw or maxim that hasn’t floated to the top of your consciousness. It is unusual to have, as below. a list pertinent to your situation. Why not practice a spot of self-brainwashing and repeat the following proverbs or axioms as mantras to yourself. It may be on a regular basis. They are a repository of the wisdom of the ages. They are all too easily overlooked through familiarity – like the idea of Reflection itself. You should really hoist them in, perhaps repeating them slowly, rather than skim over them:

‘Time and the hour run through the roughest day.’

‘I’ll live to fight another day.’

‘Whatever will be, will be; the future is not mine to see.’

‘When one door closes, another opens.’

‘I am a creature of the stars; I should be gentle with myself.’

‘Count my (many) blessings!’

‘Step by step: Rome wasn’t built in a day!’

‘There very well may be a light at the end of my tunnel!’

‘There is a silver lining to my cloud, even if I can’t see it.’

‘It is no good crying over spilled milk.’

‘I should Keep calm and carry on!’

‘Worse things happen at sea – and land!’

‘We live in hope!’

THE FOLLOWING APPROACH IS RELEVANT AT ALMOST EVERY CROSSROADS OR DECISION FACED….

…..(a) One thing at a time; (b) Consideration of the problem; (c) Decision; (d) Action.

3) You cannot now deal completely with all that confronts you. The objective at the moment is not to eradicate the problem at one fell swoop but to drive it down, to minimise it.

4) We have to look within ourselves to find an inner strength that must be there – don’t dissipate your energy bemoaning the fact or facts of the situation or what might have been.

5) Dealing emotionally and intellectually with an issue are two different challenges, if twinned. Your thought processes and critical abilities can be a solvent on downbeat emotions as well as signposting the best course of action. When reflecting about the challenge:

a. Focus your mind on exactly what is best to do in the circumstances.

b. Thinking sensibly can help damp down darker emotions.

c. Aforethought is most likely to induce the wisest actions that make you feel calmer.

You WILL survive this period. Much can daunt you at a contemplation of the journey ahead so try not to do that or, if you must, in the least over-emotional way possible.

If you cannot do anything about a problem, it is a fact, so there is nothing to be gained by wallowing.

Look hard for what is positive in the present bind; there will be something. Your own answer might surprise you.

Military manuals can tell us how Generals fought campaigns but there isn’t a separate faculty within us, a ‘military gene’. Common sense, and heeding the inner prompting of instinct, produces answers that can be weighed in reflection with care.

How can you know that this is not the best-disguised best thing that can happen to you? Sure, it does not look like it at the moment but how will your life story seem when looking back at it from the future? And then, …can you know what the future has in store, let alone the even more huge problems that may lurk round the corner if nothing occurs to upset what was the present applecart, the alternative future that you will never experience unless in the unlikely scenario of a multiverse? Life may really open up for you after you have surmounted what is in the immediate future.

The best lessons in life – and you are learning right now – are usually digested at the cost of suffering. If, in one sense, we have lost, we gained much by what has now been lost. If it is all easy, we don’t learn – even if on an intellectual level we can think that we understand better.

We all know that a proverbial glass can been seen as half full or half empty. Reflection is an aid to positive thinking – which is to be distinguished from purblind optimism. There are ‘positives’ as well as negatives in almost anything we contemplate and Reflection as a habit, and the common sense in looking for the silver lining in a cloud and working it up so that it becomes more in the forefront of our thinking, can have beneficial knock-on effects.

Depth of understanding, even a new perspective on the reasons for our being on this earth, can be of inestimable value in your future; perhaps the present situation is a stepping stone along that way.
We can look to some greater Guide than ourselves on which to lean but it is also satisfactory and salutary if we find in ourselves the resources to deal with the problem. We already know within ourselves what is the right course to take even if identifying it may be far from easy.

Sometimes one needs to reach out to an empathetic soul and/or be given the best advice whether or not from someone permanent in your life as sometimes strangers may offer the best guidance. An understanding heart is worth more than a coronet and…there is very much to be said for good sense.

Reflection helps teach you to think carefully for yourself and helps you reflect on advice from others. Thinking about what to do helps take you away from being unduly absorbed in your painful feelings. The most rounded perspective augurs the best course of action; you may reflect on what it is.

Where do you – and those you care for – want to be when the dust has settled?

You are far from alone in facing a divorce. Please take comfort in that. ‘Courage, mon brave!’

If the above suggestions do not resonate enough with you, hang in there and keep looking.