How to Know If You Have Healed After a Divorce

You can heal after a divorce if you are true to yourself about the emotions you are feeling.

The emotional wounds created by a divorce can sometimes take years to heal. And, it's easy to cover up the pain of divorce by placing a "band-aid" over it. Yet, when someone comes along and rubs the wound, you are reminded of the pain that is still there. Time can help the healing process after a divorce, but you must be honest with yourself about how you truly feel.

Instructions

1. Reflect on the divorce process to see if you still get angry, sad or depressed about it. If you experience any of these emotions you have not completely healed.

2. Evaluate your emotions. If you are bitter and not able to forgive your ex-spouse or possibly yourself, it is an indication that the wound still hurts. As long as the wound hurts, you are not healed.

3. Evaluate your social life. If you have isolated yourself from others, rather than go out and enjoy life, you are not healed.

4. Share your feelings with friends, or join a divorce support group. If you cry when talking with others about it, you are not healed. The tears are coming from a deep place that still remembers and feels a lot of the hurt and pain that was caused by the separation.

5. Evaluate how you feel when you see your ex-spouse. If being around your ex-spouse doesn't bring up negative emotions, it is a sign of healing.

6. Consider the thoughts you have about members of the opposite sex. If you are bitter toward the entire gender because of your divorce, it is a sign that you are not healed. If, as a result of your divorce, you take the attitude that "all men are worthless" or "all women are users," you are not healed.

7. Evaluate how you treat your dates. If everything your date says and does reminds you of your ex-spouse, you have not healed from your divorce. Because of your hurt, you are projecting old feelings on someone new in your life.

8. Ask yourself if you are ready to love again. If you feel that you are, or that you can, it is a sign of healing. If you feel that your heart can never love again, it is a sign that you are still hurt from the divorce. A healed heart is open to love.

Tips & Warnings

• When you are healed, you will be able to reflect on the divorce without it negatively impacting you.

References

• The Positive Way: Rebuilding After Divorce
• Woman's Divorce: Healing the Wounds of Divorce
• Troubled With: Healing the Wounds of Divorce
• 4 Therapy: Seven Steps to Your New Life After That Divorce

Resources

• Divorce Care
• 4 Therapy: Divorce