Do you recognise any of these signs of stress and anxiety?

Every time your phone pings, you take a sharp intake of breath - it might be your ex or their solicitor.
Your email flashes with a new message, and your heart seems to be beating twice as fast suddenly.
Whenever your ex mentions certain triggers, the red mist descends, and you lose your temper.

Communication with your ex during your separation or divorce can be stressful, anxiety-inducing, anger-provoking. It can take over your waking hours, and interrupt your sleeping ones too.

The physical response you get to these triggers is instinctive. Your emotional brain has perceived a potential threat, and you go straight into a fight, flight, freeze response. Your brain sends messages to your body to pump cortisol and adrenalin around your system. Your heart rate rises. You are on high alert.

That’s great if an articulated lorry is speeding towards you – it enables you move quickly out of the way, without needing to think or weigh up your options. Once the threat has passed, your body stops pumping the stress hormones and returns to normal.

But in the middle of a divorce, this response to perceived threat isn’t so useful. The threat is constantly there, and you end up feeling anxious every day, your body is always on high alert, and it’s difficult to relax. Your body produces more and more cortisol, and you might experience physical effects like IBS (as I did), headaches, trouble sleeping and general anxiety.

Here are 7 tips to keep calm when you receive communication from your ex:

Breathe

As soon as you feel your stress response rising, pause. Take a deep breath.

Your breath is always with you. It’s a free resource. And it’s powerful. Try this:

Breathe in and count to 5 in your head
Hold for 2
Breathe out and count to 7 in your head
Repeat x 3-5

Notice how your heart rate slows down. Getting oxygen to your brain helps to soothe the stress response and enables your logical brain to come back online. Not only this, you can’t count and think at the same time, so it interrupts your thoughts.

Stop. Breathe. Think. Respond.

Now that you’re feeling a little calmer, pause again. Take a moment to think before you press send on that angry response or let rip with a sarcastic retort.

If you find this difficult to remember, write it out on post it notes, and stick them up where you can see them - on your bathroom mirror, on the fridge, in your purse - wherever you need it. This will help cement the mantra in your mind.

Know what you can and can’t control

Put simply, you can control anything that is within your power – your own words, actions, behaviours, assumptions, responses and choices.

You can’t control their behaviour, words, actions, responses. And when you try to, you end up feeling frustrated when they simply don’t do what you want.

When you focus on what you CAN control, you stay in your zone of power.

Remember you always have choice

You can always choose whether, how and when you respond to any communication. Unless a message requires a truly urgent response, you don’t have to respond right now.

You can choose to leave 24 hours between receiving a message and replying, giving yourself time to process and think it all through.

You can choose not to respond to personal attacks.

You can choose when you read messages, and you can choose to turn your notifications off should you wish to.

Sleep on it

When you sleep, your brain assimilates and processes all that has happened during the day. If you receive an email, or message that triggers an emotional response, sleep on it whenever possible. Write an initial response if you feel angry but DO NOT send it. File the email and come back to it in the morning.

Be calm and consistent in your replies

When you come back to the message, try this process:

Put a line through all personal attacks that do not require a response
Highlight any questions that need an answer
Draft your answer to those questions only

Use your imagination to help you

Before you open any message, or go to any meeting, imagine you are wearing a Teflon coat. This coat is shiny and has very sloping shoulders. Personal attacks simply slide off it; they can’t stick.

If it feels like your ex takes up a lot of space in your head, change how you see them in your mind’s eye. If they are big, dark and loud in your mind, shrink them, make them smaller, lighter and quieter. Move them further away. Make their voice in your mind sound silly – like Donald Duck or Mickie Mouse. Put clown shoes on them in your mind, or imagine they look and behave like Kevin the Teenager.

This will help to diminish the power they have in your mind.