Why Divorce Coaching?

By Divorce Coach, Andrea Hipps

Why Divorce Coaching?

Despite how often we witness marriages deteriorate, we have yet to instill the kind of meaningful support necessary to navigate this enormous change. When the word divorce gets uttered out loud in a family, both parties fear the financial and emotional fall out and react from that space. With fear leading the way, divorcing parties struggle instead of cope, argue instead of parent, and attack instead of moving on.

We accept this as an unfortunate normal, but we still quietly wonder:

Could it be different?

Enter the little known profession of divorce coaching. Divorce coaching is designed to change the narrative of divorce. At the heart of it, divorce coaching is a deeply targeted, time-limited support mechanism designed to help you walk mindfully through the chaos that is divorce.

A divorce coach steps in to teach you three of the most important things you need as you walk through divorce. First they teach you how to talk to yourself and how to continually draw on your better self even when tension rises. They walk you through the crush of details. They teach you how to claim your peace and how to protect it when the process gets overwhelming. They build the skills that keep you talking with your kids and finding that ever elusive high road. But more than anything, they make sure that your mindset, your self-talk, and your way of approaching this huge disruption is rooted, conscious, and aimed toward your own peace.

Second, a divorce coach teaches you how to talk to your former partner. Many of my clients are surprised to learn that there is a new language they need to learn as they divorce and as they grow their now two-address family. You can’t move straight from the tired and difficult conversation patterns of your marriage to using those same techniques in your post-divorce life. An entirely new language, posture, and perspective is necessary to avoid being triggered every time your former partner lets you or the kids down.

Finally, divorce coaches help you address your inevitable pain. In my book, The Best Worst Time of Your Life: Four Practices to Get You Through the Pain of Divorce, I outline the proactive steps you can take to manage the discomfort of divorce change. At the heart of those steps is learning how to work with the pain instead of against it and learning how to say yes to the life trajectory you didn’t expect.

You will quickly exhaust your friends and family with the stories and pain of your divorce. Your divorce coach, empowering you with these and countless other tools, shoulders it with you, redirecting you when necessary, and helping you save time and money pursuing meaningful results that create a stable future for yourself and your family.

Andrea Hipps, LBSW is a Certified Divorce Coach® who helps parents all along the divorce continuum resolve their divorce debris and create beautiful two-address families for their kids. She’s the author of the internationally bestselling book The Best Worst Time of Your Life: Four Practices to Get You Through the Pain of Divorce which outlines the four practices you need to create wholeness and healing for you and your kids before, during, and after divorce. As a regular contributor to our nation’s divorce recovery conversation, she’s been featured on NBC, ABC, FOX and the CW discussing how we can do divorce better for the sake of ourselves and our families.