1. Accept Your Anger

Allow yourself to feel anger. An attempt to suppress all emotion will only encourage your anger to flare up at inappropriate moments. The key is to control your anger, not eliminate it. Get together with friends without your children and vent in a safe environment, or talk to your therapist. Expressing your anger in safe, manageable ways allows you to maintain self-control at critical moments.

2. Exercise

Exercise is not only a great stress-reliever, it will help you skirt depression and other negative feelings. Getting your kids to join in with you will help them with the same emotions while giving you a new activity to share together. Do whatever you like best, don’t force yourself to do activities that you don’t enjoy.

3. Move Away From Your Ex

Having your ex around creates confusion for all involved. While it is tempting to try to be an adult about the situation and allow them to stay with you until they can find another place, it isn’t healthy for you emotionally to have them around. If the problem is a financial one, see if one of you can’t arrange to stay with family until separate living spaces can be established.

4. Ignore Outbursts from Your Ex

You may be controlling your anger perfectly, but your ex may not be. Don’t allow their outbursts to encourage the same kind of behaviour from you. If your ex starts behaving in an unseemly fashion, leave the room or hang up the phone with a stern but businesslike notice that you are doing so because their behaviour is not acceptable.

5. Treat Interactions As Business Transactions

Interactions between you and your ex at this time are just that – business transactions. You are dissolving a formal partnership and redistributing the assets. Allowing yourself to adopt the colder language of business will make the process easier and discourage bad behaviour.