Two key things to remember in working with candidates who are children of divorce are to avoid the extremes and to discern each situation individually. Communities should neither overly fear the effects of divorce on potential members nor gloss over this fact and fail to see the lasting impact it can have (despite the possibility of the person themselves being unaware of its effects). It is often the case that the repercussions of divorce do not surface until young adulthood or the beginning of more intimate relationships. Hence, younger candidates are often able to present well if these issues have not yet manifested. Nevertheless, simply being a child of divorce should not disqualify one from a vocation to the religious life. Rather, each situation should be discerned individually with an eye to the person's understanding of the effect it has had on them personally, their prior healing work, their present manner of being in close relationships, and their openness to further healing efforts should issues arise in the future.

For adult children of divorce and parental separation, having trusted resources for the healing journey is important. The burdens and wounds caused by parental separation or divorce can have a significant impact and last a lifetime. That is why I think it is good to know about and consider if the Litanies of the Heart and a Catholic approach to Internal Family Systems might be something to add to your healing tool box.

Insights from Attachment Theory for Adult Children of Divorce, is a four-part series by Life-Giving Wounds alumna Emily Rochelle which introduces the key concepts of Attachment Theory, explores the relationship between attachment security and mental health, looks at how attachment is rooted in neurobiology, and how attachment impacts one’s relationship with God.

Throughout Scripture, the images and language used to describe God frequently evoke two of the strongest attachment relationships that we can know as human beings—the relationship between a child and a parent, and the relationship between spouses.

As an interdisciplinary field, Interpersonal Neurobiology draws together insights from Biology and Psychology in the context of human relationships....I thought it could be helpful to choose a few key terms and concepts and explore how they relate to our reflection on attachment.

As we continue this series on Attachment Theory, building upon the key concepts we explored in Part One, we now turn our attention to how attachment facilitates human development and the ways secure and insecure attachment impact mental health.

Attachment—I used to think of it as a bad word, something we must avoid at all costs. I believed that attachment and feelings of dependency were signs of weakness, and I wanted to be strong. I thought Catholics needed to be detached from all things in order to serve God. I was mistaken.

If you find that you do not fit under the category of a secure attachment, know that hope abounds — attachment styles can change! Through engaging in nurturing relationships with close friends or a spouse — and especially our Lord — you can become more secure in your attachments.

To give you a picture of what [childhood emotional neglect] might look like in real life, here’s my own CEN story: My mom (your mother is usually your primary attachment figure) has had schizoaffective disorder since I was about six years old. She was too deep in her own mental and emotional roller-coaster to be a stable presence.

May God, for Whom nothing is impossible, help you to navigate all of the relationships in your life so that you may be fully alive as a person, in your relationships with others, and in your relationship with Him.

Continuing with the themes from Part Two of this series, let us look at boundaries with God in light of the extremes of avoidant independence and enmeshed dependence.

Let us keep in mind as we examine these things that the intention of Christ is always health, always unity, always love, and always truth. When we name our dysfunction for what it is and speak the truth in love, we honor the self that God gave us and in turn, the Creator of our self is delighted.

The inner critic is a very demanding, uninvited voice in your head that chastises you for being inept, bad, or deficient. It undermines your self-confidence and increases your self-doubt. ... So what can we do about our internal critic?

For adult children of divorce or separation, we often struggle with the extremes of boundaries: when our person becomes overly entangled with other persons in our family, this is unhealthy; it can be equally unhealthy to completely cut everyone out of our lives because we think this is the only way of preserving ourselves.

In addition to this invaluable spiritual support, we need to shore up strengths and acquire new skills to heighten and expand our ability to love. Understanding our temperament can help us do this. This is not a theory of fixed personality traits identifying unchanging characteristics that put people in a box. Rather, understanding temperament helps us identify our strong and weak tendencies to react in certain ways in certain situations.