Still struggling with coparenting / mental health

[sealprincess]

I moved nearly 6 months ago, divorce has come through, DS is handling things brilliantly, & I am so relieved not to be living with my controlling emotionally abusive ex any more BUT I am still feeling so depressed, putting on weight, really have to force myself to look after myself & exercise (& often can’t find the willpower), find making decisions really hard (I think this is the aftermath of the control), find every interaction with my ex really stressful, miss DS horribly when he’s not here & dread each of the longer stretches he is away. My ex is not sticking to the 50/50 he fought for but he is not willing to change the arrangement so DS is with me more. Or not yet anyway. I still do all the mental load. I still have to resist my ex’s attempts to control me even though we are not together. I am still incredibly anxious and annoyed by his bad parenting. I just feel so frustrated to be still connected to this horrible man & DS is only in year 3 so there is a long way to go. When does it start feeling better? What can I do to feel more active in my life again? I have had some counselling which helped but can’t continue that.

Child is young and mine are teens but been no contact with mum since xmas and it helps so much, no aggressive bullying messages anymore, any comms re: dates through kids. Guess thats not an option?

You could try to treat it as a bit of a joke and laugh to yourself when you get a controlling message although I know is easy to say - when I got a nasty message it would dwell for hours.

Am sure many will disagree but for me jumping back into dating helped with confidence, and realising I was not the nasty person my ex was claiming me to be. It was fun, I obviously wanted to look better and lose weight. Sadly met someone and then got comfy and put weight back on 😁but aside from that all good.

That said, while some things she does are controlling still and doing things to get at me, some of the things could look like that but its just her way of parenting v mine and not really controlling. Now separate there is not much she can do to control and I am confident that a request for holiday is fine as she will want same back

Thanks. I can’t communicate through DS. He is 8. I also don’t want to date again for a long time.
I also have many issues with my ex’s parenting so many worries about DS which are preoccupying me a lot.

Be kind to yourself it’s still early days.
hold on to the positives; that at least you’re no longer married to this person.

The anxiety will gradually ease. You will gradually start to prioritise your own wellbeing; don’t beat yourself up.

I felt like this at first it does get better with time

Thank you.
Was there anything you did to feel better that worked @DoubtjngThomas @newyearsresolurion?