A carefully handled divorce needn’t scar your children for life. A messy one can and will. Hypnotherapy could help.
If you’re here because you’re worried about how your divorce has affected your child, I’m truly sorry. I have also gone through the process of divorce and so have a good understanding of how hideous a process it can become. I hope that we can work together to help mitigate its effects upon your child.
I see so many adult clients whose problems began when their parents divorced. It doesn’t matter how long ago this happened or how old the client may be, if the divorce was messy and destructive the child suffered and the adult bears the scars.
I work in Reading, Oxford, London, Wallingford and Thame. In every town and city I am currently seeing child-clients whose parents have divorced or who are in the midst of the process. I am helping these children to moderate and undo the damage done.
I’ve also read extensively on the topic as a part of my Masters degree in child and adolescent psychotherapy. All of the literature agrees that divorce is a psychologically damaging event in a child’s life. I waited, to begin my own divorce, until my children were old enough so as to be minimally affected. However, I am fully aware that not everybody has the luxury of such a choice.
A messy divorce or where the children become too aware of the conflict between their parents only makes things a great deal worse.
Children depend on their parents for their sense of security. Children need their parents to be parents. Children don’t need to know their parents’ every fear, how upset they are, how much they hate their ex and why they’re in the right. Children will get to know their parents as adults, as human beings, as an inevitable part of the maturation process. They don’t need it now. It is, in fact, positively harmful.
Witnessing a parent in distress is emotionally damaging to a child
I doubt that it’s possible for parents to divorce without some strong and distressing emotions becoming visible to children. We’re none of us superhuman and such things will happen.
However, many of my child clients and plenty of the adults have been witness to weeks, months, even years of furious fights, sobbing, despair and worse.
These children are trying to cope with strong emotions of their own. Seeing their parents feeling similarly weak scares and upsets them further. What’s more, they’ll frequently close down their own feelings in order to attempt to become their parent’s carer.
This is not and should not be the role of the child. To be fully emotionally healthy parents need to be honest with themselves about their own emotions. For children to be emotionally healthy these same parents need to remember that children need and deserve to be protected from uncontrolled emotion. They do not understand what is going on, cannot help and can only suffer.
Their trust in the world will be shaken. They will commonly experience extreme anxiety as they struggle to adjust to new domestic arrangements. Younger children will wonder and fear that they may be to blame in some way. They’ll often become a whole lot clingier and their growing dependence will take a step backwards as they wonder if they’re next in line for the chop. Their whole view of the world will change and not for the better. Witnessing the rages, sobs and depression of a parent will only render things worse.
What about teenagers? Do they cope more effectively?
Young teenagers and adolescents may have a greater understanding of the world around them. They may have a more developed insight into the nature of relationships but the divorce of their parents will still have an effect. It’s my experience that adolescents respond with anger at their parents and an increased desire to seize their independence- often before they are truly ready.
Parental discipline can suffer since the parent ‘messed up’ the family and so obviously doesn’t know ‘what they’re on about’. Adolescents will often, in response to divorce, become more rebellious, resentful and distant and family relationships will suffer as a result.
How can hypnotherapy help?
Sometimes I find myself using my counselling skills to help parents and children reopen channels of communication which have closed. I’m always helping the children of divorced parents to deal with and eliminate their anxiety. On occasion I’m helping children to see that they were not to blame for their parents decisions. I help my child clients to cope with strong emotions, to regulate them more effectively and to move through their process of grieving for the family they once had but lost. When these things happen the divorce and its consequences are more easily managed.
Hypnotherapy, combined with the approaches of a child and adolescent psychotherapist, can prove a powerful combination and can help children to make sense of things, preserving their own sense of self and their ability to thrive.
If you live in or near Reading, Oxford, London, Thame or Wallingford and your child needs some help in coming to terms with your divorce then please do give me a call. I’ll be glad to help and have plenty of experience in this field. You could call me on 07786123736, email me at paul@resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk or simply use the contact form in the footer of this page. Your child can get past this and I look forward to being the one to help.
Best wishes
