Are YOU suffering from divorce stress syndrome?

As regular readers of my blog know I am currently going through a divorce after 21 years and I have been quite surprised how harrowing I have found it despite all my positive psychology and NLP Training.

Here’s an interesting article in The Daily Mail  and a new idea I had walking my dogs today …….

“Panic attacks. Insomnia. Crippling back pain.  Scientists now believe break-ups take a worrying toll on our health”

Opening a bottle of wine, Rachel Boyd settled  down on the sofa beside her husband Paul, ready to spend a relaxing Sunday  evening in front of the television.

When he turned to her and announced he had  something to say, she wondered what it could be. News about work? Plans for an  evening out?

‘We’d just come back from a romantic  weekend away and we’d had a lovely time, so I had no reason to suspect  anything was wrong,’ says Rachel. ‘But then Paul said he’d met another woman in  a nightclub on a trip away nine months earlier, and that he was leaving  me.’

That night in September 2010, while her  company director husband ‘slept like a baby’ beside her, Rachel, now 53, lay  wide-awake in a state of shock.

For 24 hours after that exchange on the sofa,  she didn’t sleep at all. She survived the first day on autopilot, unable to  comprehend that life as she knew it had been pulled from under her like a flimsy  rug.

But by the time she had driven the 20-minute  journey home from her job as a slimming consultant, her body was no longer able  to support the extreme emotional stress she was suffering.

I had to stop the car about five times. I was  suffering constant flashbacks to the moment my husband told me he was leaving  me. My chest felt tight as if I was going to suffocate — it was as if I was  going through post-traumatic stress.’

For the next month, Rachel, from Tunbridge  Wells, Kent, who married Paul in 1979 and has four children with him,  experienced terrifying panic attacks.

Her throat felt so constricted she was unable  to eat solid foods, and she lost a stone-and-half in weight. Her lips were  parched from continual hyperventilation and she had to sleep upright: if she lay  down, she felt she could not breathe enough air into her lungs.

Rachel is just one of countless women to  experience how debilitating the physical effects of a break up can be.

Actress Demi Moore, 49, has suffered  seriously deteriorating health since her marriage to Ashton Kutcher hit the  rocks last November. Her weight apparently fell to a worrying six-and-a-half  stone, and she is now reported to be in rehab.

Meanwhile, Loose Women presenter Andrea  McLean, 42, recently suffered a panic attack minutes before she was due to  appear live on television. She collapsed backstage, crying uncontrollably, as  she struggled with the emotional aftermath of the collapse of her second  marriage to builder Steve Toms after two years.

Researchers at Michigan State University, in  the U.S. followed people over a 15-year period and this month revealed that  those who divorced experienced a more rapid decline in their health than those  who remained married. ”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2101711/Divorce-stress-syndrome-Panic-attacks-Insomnia-Crippling-pain-How-break-ups-worrying-toll-health.html#ixzz2PE2Cnesp Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

I was walking my dogs today and the idea of creating a local, informal group called “The Unsinkables” came to me where parents going through a divorce could come every week to feel heard, supported and also empowered emotionally. It wouldn’t be a place to just moan, whinge and complain as that just keeps you trapped in the cycle of being a victim – I was pondering a place where parents could make new friends, encourage each other and create a new vision for their lives – putting the welfare of themselves as the primary positive role model for their kids at the heart of the healing process……

What do you think?