Resiliency in Divorce

Resiliency in Divorce

Resilience refers to the process of adapting and fitting well in the face of trauma, adversity, threats, tragedy or even stress. It is bouncing back from challenging and difficult experiences and stresses such as relationship and family problems, workplace and financial stressors and serious health problems (Saltzman et al., 2016). Various social problems experienced by individuals, families, or groups requires some degree of resilience to overcome. The thrust of this paper is to examine the role of resilience in overcoming divorce in a family.

Recent times has witnessed an increase in divorce cases across the world, the effects of the phenomena have caused a lot of psychological, social and emotional strain on the affected families (Schaan & Vögele, 2016). Given the challenges associated with divorce incidences, there is an urgent need to address the challenges. Resilience has been taunted to contribute to coming out of the challenge.

Individuals, families, and groups require resilience to overcomes various social problems they come across. As a family, it is critical to develop resiliency to overcome challenges of life. Resiliency gives children and adults an opportunity to come to terms with the happenings of the past and move forward with the determination to regain the lost ground. At an individual level, resiliency manifests by the ability to rise above the limitations posed by stress and threats.

For the family, resilience offers the advantage of positive adaptation following highly stressful events. Members of the family need to unite to face the tragedies that comes their way (Saltzman et al., 2016). The long-term benefit of remaining resilient that members of the family usually emerge with a positive sense for themselves and the future. Vannest et al. (2019) pointed out that children with resilience are able to learn from failure, adapt to changes, face disappointment and cope with loss.

Divorce is a social problem experienced across cultures that need resilience to overcome. The impact of divorce is heavily felt not only by the couples but also by the children. The period before and after divorce requires a degree of resilience as some its effects are characterized by, change in economic status, decreased levels of happiness, and emotional problems. Schaan & Vögele (2016) observed that couples and their immediate family require resilience to face the brokenness of relationship caused by divorce. Resilience should be developed even before the divorce process ends for the involved parties to get ready to come to terms with its outcome. Saltzman et al. (2016) pointed out that developing resilience in the divorce process is useful in maintain mental health of the parents as well as ensuring that children are not emotionally drained in the process. The society’s worldview on divorce is often associated with increased anxiety among the couples. Societies, especially in the global south, have been known to pass harsh judgements in cases of divorce, a situation which creates anxiety in the lives of the involved parties. The effects of divorce in the family, if not adequately addressed, has the danger of spilling over on the life of children. For example, among other factors that have been associated with divorce on children include anger issues, low school performances, poor social skills, and impulsive behavior (Vannest et al., 2019). Therefore, parents should endeavor to take care of children’s emotional intelligence even in the case of divorce. Equally, divorce should be undertaken with a lot of civility taking into account the pain the parties are exposed to. Resilience has the advantage of ensuring that parties involved lead their lives with limited challenges associated with divorce experience.

Resilience theory can be utilized by families affected by divorce experience. the theory holds that the end of the divorce justifies the means. In other words, the most important is how the divorce experience is dealt with as opposed to its nature. Persons affected with divorce need to need to focus on overcoming the situation instead of paying greater attention to the effect it has ion their lives (Saltzman et al., 2016). Despite the fact that the theory can be used to by individuals, families, and/or groups experiencing divorce experience, overlying on it may result on suppression of divorce emotions rather than letting them go. Therefore, a balance should be struck between focusing on overcoming the divorce situation instead of paying attention to its effects. Resilience theory can be used to understand and promote resiliency associated with divorce by educating persons affected to focus on addressing the challenge rather than focusing on its nature.

Conclusion

This paper has focused on resiliency and its application on divorce. Resiliency theory is a powerful tool that can be harnessed to overcome challenges associated with divorce. The overarching consensus is that people going through divorce experience need to focus on addressing the problems brought by the experience instead on its nature. While resiliency is useful in addressing social problems, the affected people should not live in denial rather should be accorded an opportunity to speak out their challenges to get necessary assistance from relevant people.