Why Is A Divorce Coach Or Facilitator A Good Idea?

Often a divorce is so painful that the participants just want to get through it as fast as possible, thinking that will minimize the cost and pain. They therefore sweep their strongest feelings under the rug and think that will assure a minimum of conflict. I've had collaborative participants assure me that a) they never lose their cool b) that they never fight with their spouse and c) that I won't have to worry about them pushing each other's buttons. Not surprisingly, the suppressed feelings surfaced after a few meetings and greatly threatened the process. Ignoring your feelings and the ramifications of how you communicate usual results in your repeating unproductive patterns of interaction with your spouse.



A professional trained in communication, skilled in detecting how you and your spouse interact and experienced in recognizing the emotional ruts and traps you may be in, can lift you out of the muck of repeating the same behaviors and place you and your spouse into new and more productive patterns. My Father was trained as a car mechanic in the Marines when he was 16 years old. By the time he passed away, cars had become so complicated, that despite his background and training there was little that he could do under a car hood. Despite our familiarity with our relationships, few of us have the training, skills, and experience to effectively monkey around under the hoods of our complex relationships. If you're such an expert on your feelings and relationship, then why are you getting a divorce? If we're smart enough to know we need a mechanic to fix our cars shouldn't we be smart enough to know we can benefit from an astute person, with the smarts and dedication to earn an advanced degree, and who has spent many hours being trained to use special techniques in the very areas that are holding us back from moving forward?



Ironically, by thinking that if I just buckle down and ignore my feelings, not react when my spouse pushes my buttons, the result is that you are likely to get sidetracked by the same feelings that kept your marriage from succeeding. We don't want your divorce to just be a repeat of your marriage. We want to minimize the bad patterns from the marriage, be able to focus on the tasks that need our energy and attention in the collaborative process, and learn new behaviors to serve you down the road when you interact with your spouse. Therefore, employing a mental health professional on your collaborative divorce team, despite the additional expense, often ends up being the key ingredient to a faster and cheaper divorce and one that results in a deeper peace and a transformation of yourself and your relationship.