Splitopia by Wendy Paris

Author:Wendy Paris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

COPING LIKE A CHAMPION

For some, getting divorced feels like entering the Personal Growth Olympics, competing in a sport for which you haven’t trained. Psychologist Terry Orlick, author of Embracing Your Potential, coaches Olympic athletes on the mental side of elite performance. He has said that the difference between a really good athlete and an Olympian often comes down to a person’s mental game, including how well she uses setbacks to her advantage.

A world-class player capitalizes on time laid up in bed with an injury, for example, to mentally “practice” her moves, reflect on her life, and even reexamine her goals without the distraction of daily obligations. Here are some steps we all can take:

World-Class Coping

Set mini goals for recuperation: Olympians stay in the game mentally, even when injured. They “accept responsibility for their own healing by setting daily goals for rehabilitation and improvement, by imagining themselves healing, and by persisting in doing anything that might help,” Orlick notes.

I find these sports metaphors incredibly helpful when it comes to coping with internal slaloms. After I consulted Orlick’s book, I decided to set daily goals for my own recuperation, as if I were recovering from a collision with a pine tree. I could look back at the week and ask myself, “What did I do to help with my own healing?” Then I could answer that question. I made dinner plans with a friend. (Gold medal for social support!) I went hiking during the weekend. (Gold medal for endorphin-upping activity!) I avoided coffee after 3 p.m. and turned off the phone’s ringer at bedtime. (Gold medal for sleeping through the night!) Getting enough sleep is so critical to mental clarity and calmness, one researcher I spoke to thought “Get enough sleep” should be a principle of parting.

Psycho-oncologists—therapists who help people deal with the emotional side of cancer—stress the importance of attitude even when one is facing a terminal illness. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City offers patients and their families “meaning-centered psychotherapy,” an intervention based on the work of Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning. “A principle that was highlighted by Frankl is that when all else is taken from a person, they have the ability to choose their attitude in the face of their suffering,” said Wendy Lichtenthal, a clinical psychologist with Memorial Sloan Kettering. “That attitude in and of itself, the way I respond to a situation, can be a source of meaning.”

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