Issues We Treat | Divorce

Divorce

Ending a marriage can be crippling and have severe and lasting effects on your health, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  The relationship is commonly such a central part of life that there are a wide range of negative emotions which may include shock, numbness, grief, and anger during the loss.  Depression and anxiety can cause feelings of confusion, worthlessness and self-blame in divorce. We will help you to make sense of your feelings so you can think positively about yourself and the world again.  We treat individuals and couples considering divorce and going through divorce. We firmly believe that a neutral third party is crucial when spouses are fighting during and after divorce. We provide a safe environment with support needed to have the most productive and effective joint conversations to work through conflicts, especially when both of you may be triggered and feelings are running hot. You can rest assured that our therapists are skilled to mediate so you don’t get stuck in accusations and blame over the past. We will help you forward and focus on how to separate in the healthiest possible way. If you have children, we can also support the entire family.

Ethos family and children’s therapists are available at any time needed to help soften the negative impact of divorce. We can help you at every stage from planning to tell the children to managing post-divorce adjustment issues over the next several years. Children continue to be affected in different ways, at different ages, when family structure and roles change.  For young children, it is especially important to alleviate any feelings of anger, sadness, or abandonment through establishing loving, secure and trusting relationships with each parent. Accepting the separation can be difficult due to a lack of understanding of the situation. Children often feel that it is their fault that mom and dad got a divorce. Adolescents must work through some of these same issues, but also have unique challenges.  For example, they may feel a lack of affection and sense of belonging and act out with destructive behaviors such as sexually promiscuous activity, or drug and alcohol use.  Ethos therapists can provide an essential role for your child when a strong network of social support outside of the immediate family is needed to counter these negative feelings about themselves.

Co-parenting as an ongoing relationship can be very challenging for ex-spouses. It is important to treat each other with respect and responsibility, even if no longer married. Your child learns what they live and then live what they learn from parental role models. If your child is behaving in troubled way, it can often be helped simply by making co-parenting improvements. For example, we will assist you in establishing and maintaining visitation arrangements to meet the emotional needs of your child, and we will reinforce the importance of mutual respect being displayed to your child. We will help you in any way we can to make sure that your child is affected as little as possible by the effects of divorce.