Devastating Divorce? You CAN Recover and Live Well Again

Jenn was stunned. She read the text message again, to be sure she had not misunderstood. Her husband of 13 years said, “I don’t want to be married anymore.” Her stomach knotted, she felt herself go pale. She was driving, so she pulled the car over for safety, because she couldn’t see what was in front of her. Shock, hurt, humiliation… her ears were ringing, her hands felt numb. It was as if her heart stopped. How could she love him so much and be cast aside like yesterday’s garbage? She lived to support him, comfort him, and bring joy to his life. Everything she was and had to give …well, he was spurning her heart… her value. To make matters worse, she had been through a devastating divorce once before. It couldn’t be happening again. It just couldn’t.

She didn’t WANT to start over. Jenn had invested her heart and soul to build their life together, to unite their blended family of teenagers, help them work through their anger, and feel a warm, secure place in their family. While her husband, Rick, slept for his job the next morning, she sat up and listened to teenagers who didn’t seem to get the urge to talk until it was pushing midnight.

Night after night.

It just seemed to be a fact of life with kids of this age. But it seemed to be all up to her.

With the late nights Rick was keeping, she knew this wasn’t out of the blue. She knew in her gut that the young woman with a child their family had been helping, supporting, and encouraging had become more than a charity case for him. Even though he wouldn’t admit it, this woman had become an obsession. Divorce was devastating.

And now he wanted to leave.

Jenn was devastated. Heart-broken. She had believed in their marriage, their communication, their shared commitment. She had believed they were both grateful for the other, and all they had accomplished in building their family and their future.

With her support, Rick had grown in his abilities in his job, and had received a string of awards, recognition, and promotions since they’d been married. He’d never known such success before, and expressed his awareness — told her often! —of the important role she played in his life.

What happened to that?

As days and weeks passed, she felt hollow, disillusioned, utterly flabbergasted. When she looked at

herself through Rick’s eyes, she seemed to come up short. She seemed to have no value. Nothing to contribute that mattered. This devastating divorce was gutting her.

Jenn knew she had to find a place to live. She couldn’t bear to be in this house where all the memories of their love, their work together, their battles, and their triumphs oozed from the walls and furniture. She felt suffocated by it all.

This lady needed a break.

A safe place with fresh new associations … so she spent the days while he was at work packing her belonging and the household items that meant the most to her. Then found a house to rent and moved in with her boxes and a couple of blankets.

They could sort out the division of property through their lawyers, but she needed to not wait at home like a sitting duck for him to come and go at will with that woman in tow.

Divorce was devastating. She had to be proactive … for her own survival.

Once her boxes were empty, she ordered a bed, a sofa, and a kitchen table to be delivered.

Then she sat in her new place, with her stuff all around. She cried. And sobbed.

And she wailed.

“So this is what it feels like when your heart is breaking,” she thought.

She felt her insides were tearing apart and exploding. The pain was unbearable. She knew she had to pull herself together, and see an attorney. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to do anything.

For the next week, she spent a lot of time in bed. Crying. Staring at the wall. Thinking of a thousand memories from the last 13 years. Thinking about Rick betraying her with someone else. This devastating divorce threatened to destroy her sanity, it seemed.

Not just anyone else. That young woman they had been “helping.”

Jenn may have looked idle on the outside to a bystander, but inside her head she was in utter chaos.

The pain. The rage. The betrayal.

White hot rage was so intense, she understood for the first time what it was like to want to kill somebody. She was alarmed by the intensity, and looked for ways to calm herself, and avoid contact with her husband or his “girlfriend” … shopping for groceries at a different grocery store, using different gas stations and restaurants, the best she could.

Then she saw the attorney and filed for divorce.

Her attorney could see she was struggling with more rage than she could cope with, as well as shattered self esteem. He recommended a psychotherapist he knew to be skilled in working with clients suffering from the trauma of divorce.

During her first session with the psychotherapist, the therapist spoke of her symptoms of depression and the trauma she had experienced. He gave her the name of a prominent psychiatrist who offered strikingly fast effective treatment like IV ketamine infusions… and metabolic interventions to target her symptoms with therapeutic nutritional ketosis and exercise.

Jenn was traumatized alright.

She needed all the help she could get. So she called and made an appointment.

She also had to get a job, somehow. She hadn’t worked in years, and she didn’t know if she could think well enough at this point to produce something significant enough at a job and actually get paid. But she had to try. She called her boss from years ago, to see if the department had any openings.

A New Opportunity

Not only did they have an opening, but her old boss offered her a supervisory job, which paid more and would help her get on her feet.

So even though she felt emotionally crushed, Jenn started the job, and scheduled appointments with her therapist and the psychiatrist he recommended to her. It seemed it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other — but instinctively she knew that if she didn’t push through and at least try, that she’d sink into a hole she might never escape. She couldn’t let this devastating divorce destroy her.

The psychiatrist talked about new understanding in the field of psychiatry that combined medical treatment with IV ketamine treatment and metabolic interventions to improve metabolism and brain function.

She said that those interventions could include a low carbohydrate/high good fat diet to fuel mitochondria in the cells, regular moderate exercise, psychotherapy to help her change her thinking to enhance her peace and help her heal, and ketamine treatment to enhance that change.

She assured Jenn that IV ketamine treatment had a strong reputation for promoting restoration from PTSD symptoms.

Keeping it simple, she described how providing the mitochondria with ketones, a more efficient fuel for cells, can bring balance and reduce the hyper-excitability —the hypervigilance — that trauma can create.

Overall, she explained that psychiatry was broadening its understanding about how psychiatric disorders—like neurological disorders—are related to alterations in energy processes at a cellular level. (Actually at an intracellular level–at the level of the mitochondria.) And that improving metabolism by upgrading your food choices changing can dramatically change your body, calm your brain, improve your frame of mind, and eliminate your symptoms. It’s Food as Medicine.

Getting your brain to run on diesel instead of gas can change everything.

And so they began.

Over the coming weeks and months, she noticed the brain fog, that had made it hard to think or focus, dissipated. Her mind became much sharper on running on ketones. Her thinking improved. Emotions (that had been so volatile) calmed, and she was able to respond more rationally as divorce proceedings moved forward.

Meanwhile, she was building a new life and a new sense of herself. She made new friends at work, and rediscovered her social skills by nurturing friendships she had enjoyed for years.

She found that her sessions with the psychotherapist were much more productive once she started ketamine treatment — and her psychiatrist scheduled them so she could get the maximum benefit from psychotherapy. While the ketamine infusions were discontinued after 10 infusions, the psychotherapy seemed to continue to be very helpful. She continued her relationship with her therapist for a year and a half.

Feeling like a victim had plagued her when she and Rick first separated, but now she had forgiven herself for her own shortcomings, had let go of her resentment toward Rick, and saw herself as independent, capable, and worthy.

Life was moving forward.

Her thoughts came and went, but she embraced her freedom to choose or redirect them.

To live… and love herself and others.

She had hope again, and so much to give when others she cared about struggled.

Can YOU relate to Jenn?

Has a great loss caused you to doubt yourself, your ability, and your worth? Life has its blows, and no one can avoid some of them. What you can do is to equip yourself to respond in ways that are good for you and your sense of yourself.

You can rebuild your self, your skills, and your confidence. You can have hope again.

If you suffer like Jenn did, and nothing you’ve tried has helped you move through it, call us.

We can help you get on your feet again with treatment that is truly restorative—something that addresses the pruned canopy of neurons that stress has broken away with IV ketamine infusions, or that jumpstarts your metabolism, kicks up your energy, and reduces the rapid-firing of anger and and anxiety using metabolic treatments like a ketogenic metabolic therapy.

It’s like getting your brain run on diesel instead of gas.

You can be your best self again, live well again… and enjoy your best life.

To the restoration of your best self,

Lori Calabrese, MD