Bringing buddhist principles to divorce counselling Pt.1

Divorcing Well; Bringing Buddhist Pract ice to Divorce Counseling
Prend, Ashley Davis
4012 words
1 May 2008
Psychotherapy Networker
n/a
Volume 32; Issue 3; ISSN: 1535573X
English
Copyright (c) 2008 Psychotherapy Networker. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Divorcing Well Bringing Buddhist Pract ice to Divorce Counseling

By Ashley Davis Prend

Divorcing well? Divorcing peacefully? Is such a thing even possible? Let's face it, divorce often generates mutual recrimination and fury, which can lead to ugly, expensive court battles, particularly when children are involved. During a divorce, both partners can become their own evil twins, more intent on inflicting punishment on each other than on ending their tattered marriage.

As counselors and family therapists, we want to spare our clients all this pain by preserving and improving their marriages. But when the marriage obviously can't be saved, many therapists focus on helping the partners achieve what's widely called a "good divorce": a split as humane, rational, and nondamaging as possible.

Increasingly, therapists recognize that even after a marriage ends, most couples continue to be linked together. While the death of a marriage is undoubtedly painful, it doesn't have to be pathological. If handled well, it can even become a rich opportunity for emotional and spiritual growth.

Yet, to a couple neck deep in the kind of reciprocal fury that only two people who once loved each other deeply can feel, the idea that their divorce could be an opportunity for transformation is as crazy as it is undesirable.

Is there any way to stop the antagonism? Beyond helping these self-declared enemies shed their feelings of anger and vengeance, is it possible to encourage them to be more openhearted and kindly toward each other? I've drawn six ­simple, uncomplicated steps from Buddhist ­philosophy to help hostile spouses cultivate a spirit of nonviolence, generosity, and compassion toward their ex-partners. Counterintuitive as it seems, practicing these steps can help people find the kind of inner wisdom and peace that acts as an antidote to their self-destructive and aggressive impulses.

Inherent in this approach is an expectation for people to connect with their higher nature--what Buddhists call their "Buddha-nature"--even when they're in pain. Using Buddhism as the backdrop for understanding the loss and transformation embedded in divorce, the process helps clients move past their knee-jerk emotions to a more enlightened place.

The six steps are:

1. Accept the Way Things Are

2. Choose the Road Less Traveled

3. See the Big Picture

4. Listen to Silence

5. Give Generously

6. Strive for Enlightenment

Taken together, they constitute a method that can create subtle internal shifts and powerful behavioral changes. While it's preferable for both partners to embark on them simultaneously, it isn't a prerequisite for doing divorce well. The client need not embrace Buddhism to benefit from this approach either.

Divorcing well doesn't mean that there'll be no conflict, pain, or challenging situations. It simply means that the divorcing couple, or one member of the couple, chooses to use the process for personal and spiritual growth, thereby launching them both on a healthier trajectory.

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I first met Ryan and Beth when they came in for marital therapy, shortly after their 10-year-old son had died of bone cancer. Understandably, they were devastated by their loss which, as is often the case, had exacerbated preexisting tensions in their marriage.

Ryan, a prominent doctor, spent many hours at work, and Beth had always complained that he was away from home too much, didn't help enough around the house or with the kids, was too tired to have sex, and didn't pay enough attention to her. Feeling overworked and underappreciated, Ryan retreated from what he perceived as Beth's harassment, responding with evasions, sullen silence, and even more distance.

Not surprisingly, they got little support from each other while mourning the loss of their son. Over several months, I helped them process their grief, but I couldn't do much to help them turn toward each other in their pain. When we ended our work together, I sensed a veil of bitterness still hanging between them. So, several years later, when Ryan returned alone for treatment and told me that Beth had asked for a divorce and full custody of their daughter, Hilary, I wasn't surprised.

Step 1: Accept the Way Things Are. What did surprise me was Ryan's adamant resistance to the divorce. He was fighting the legal process and feeling betrayed and belligerent. I think part of this was because, on some level, he had been satisfied with an emotionally distant, but stable and dependable, marriage. More than this, he feared change. Like many of us, he found it difficult to let go of old patterns, even if they'd brought him little happiness.

Ryan was active in a liberal Protestant church and found that the language and rituals of his faith were sustaining to him and yet . . . he was clearly open to learning from other spiritual paths. A central tenet of Buddhist teaching that immediately spoke to him was the Eastern perspective on change: the truth that nothing is permanent is not only understood and accepted by Buddhists, but actively embraced. Whether accepting or resisting it, change will continue to occur, and, therefore, they feel that rejecting this fundamental truth brings nothing but suffering. Conversely, accepting the inevitability of change brings peace and wisdom.

This is easier said than done, however, mainly because every change, especially a divorce, is, in essence, a little death, and human beings predictably react to death--and to endings--with anger and depression. The five stages of grief in response to death and dying first articulated by Elizabeth Ku¬bler-Ross--shock, anger, bargaining, de- pression, and acceptance--I believe apply to the divorce process. Anger is typically the most noticeable response to the grief generated by divorce.

Ryan felt betrayed by Beth's decision to leave the marriage, and angered by her aggressive steps against him. One day, he came into my office in a rage, and yelled, "She had the locks changed so I can't get into the house. Can you believe it?! I feel like breaking the door down. She had no right to change the locks without my consent."

I noticed that Ryan's breathing was shallow and his face was reddening. "Let's stop right now," I said. "I want you to tell me how your body is feeling. Just tune in for a minute, scan your body, and tell me what you notice."

He looked a bit confused but obliged and responded, "My chest feels tight."

"What about your breathing?" I prompted.

"Uhhhh, short . . . tense."

"Anything else?"

"My throat feels tight, too . . . and I'm hot. Is it hot in here?"

I then asked him to focus on his breath, following and counting each breath until his breathing was slower and steadier. Although it may seem odd to start a breathing exercise with a client who's obviously upset, I knew it would help calm him down.

I believe that deep, focused, slow breathing is one of therapy's greatest underused tools. Specialists working with panic-disordered or phobic individuals know how powerful deep breath work can be for calming the central nervous system.

Ryan isn't an angry person in general, and after he vented and used the breath to calm down, I explained to him that usually anger is an easier emotion to tolerate than pain, but that in reality, anger is a mask to cover the deeper emotions of grief and despair.

I pointed out that one thing that was so frustrating for Ryan regarding the changed locks was that he wasn't in control of the situation. When I asked him when he'd felt that way before, I knew the question would lead him back to his son's death, and that mourning the death of his marriage was retriggering his grief for his child.

Life as Ryan had known it was over. Accepting this ending, this profound and irrevocable change in his life, was the key psychological task facing him. I suggested that he start to integrate into his days a physical practice of letting go and accepting reality, no matter how painful. One way of doing this is a simple breathing technique of internally chanting a word on the in-breath and another on the out-breath. I asked Ryan to inhale the word let and exhale the word go.

He found that doing the chant when he felt mounting tension helped calm him down. Such a simple technique hardly seems powerful or grandiose enough to help people do something as monumental as accept change. Yet it releases the tight physical grasp we keep on ourselves--on our desires and expectations for the way we think things should be--and helps our minds and bodies flow with life's natural rhythms.

After a few weeks of conscious breathing whenever something seemed out of control and upsetting, Ryan found that his feelings of rage at Beth and sense of betrayal began to abate.

Step 2: Choose the Road Less Traveled. Once clients begin to feel themselves accepting reality as it unfolds, they need to choose how to accept it. One option is to accept what's happened with bitterness, animosity, and a determination to punish the ex-spouse. The road less traveled, however, is a commitment to cooperation, a decision by spouses to put the children's needs above their own, and a desire to maintain a healthy relationship with each other.

While Ryan had decided to take the road less traveled, he found that staying on it was the challenge. At first, things progressed smoothly. After attending a court-mandated "Kids First" seminar required in most states for divorcing couples, he seemed enthusiastic about trying out what he'd learned: that couples shouldn't insult their ex, fight in front of the children, or use the children as pawns