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Engagement anxiety and engagement depression: 5 causes brides need to consider

3/3/2014

 

Nearly every bride I work with asks me:  "Where is all this stress, depression, anxiety and worry coming from?"

"I thought this was going to be the happiest time of my life!

But I'm upset and even sad much of the time.  

​(I know I want to marry my fiance, so it's not cold feet.) 

What gives?"  (Or, more often, "WTF?")
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Sarah from Australia had 7 video sessions to help with her emotional state. Here she is: happy and calm on her wedding day
I’ve worked intimately with brides since 2002, and I’ve identified 5 typical sources.

1. You are planning the most expensive and elaborate party of your life…with 2 Moms

If you and your fiancé were planning your wedding in a vacuum, just the 2 of you, it would be a piece of cake:  You know what you like, you work together, you can deal with your budget.  But that’s not what's going on here.  Most brides have not one but 2 Moms inserting their strong opinions.  So decisions become a delicate diplomatic dance.   It’s tedious and exhausting, belaboring every detail.  

Solution:  You and your fiancé define for yourselves 3 non-negotiables each for your wedding – 3 things each you are unwilling to compromise on.  Make sure you get those things, done perfectly, and then be willing to be influenced on the rest.  Especially if parents are paying.

2.  You leave that "party" -- a.k.a. your wedding -- a very changed woman. 

You go home with a husband with the power to make life-and-death decisions for you, a new branch on your family tree, and (possibly) a new last name.  Your wedding is NOT just a party.  

Solution:  Everything about your wedding feels overwrought and bigger than it should be because, well, it is.  For example, the stress you feel when you can’t find the right bridesmaids dress isn’t totally about the design and color of the dress.  Psychologically, you’re also working through how you’re going to “fit” all these important women into your new, unknown, married life with you.  Be aware of the deeper levels always going on. (Read also: Why it may be healthy to obsess about your wedding.)

3. You're mourning -- yes, mourning.

You're coming face-to-face with the end of your single life and identity as a single woman; the end of your primary family identity being “daughter”; and the end of the simpler dating days of boyfriend and girlfriend.  Each of these endings can cause emotional turmoil as brides process their feelings about these major identity changes.  

Solution:  Give yourself time and space to just feel.  Reflect.  Journal.  Acknowledge the passing of time, the change in identity, the growing up that is going on.  Mourning is background music playing in your mind right now.  Let it become foreground music occasionally to work through it.

Bride S.C. from Australia, who worked through her engagement anxiety and engagement depression with me, here on her very happy wedding day.

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Louis CK on what it means to be emotionally engaged

9/23/2013

1 Comment

 
Great clip on the power, beauty, and joy of letting your sadness in, byLouis CK on Conan:
I started to get that sad feeling and reached for my phone, but I thought 'don't' — just be sad, let it hit you like a truck," he explains. "I pulled over and I just cried like a bitch, it was beautiful. Sadness is poetic."

We can sometimes be so afraid of feeling sad that we miss out on the full range of human emotions:
Because we don't want to feel that first bit of sad, we push it away with phones or with food, and you never feel completely sad or completely happy.  You just feel kind of satisfied....
This is exactly the kind of thing I tell the brides I work with.  In his own coarse way, Louis CK is describing what it means to be Emotionally Engaged.  

"Don't stand in the way of sadness," he says.  

To that, I'd add: because that's how you get to the joy.  

Go to 1:55 for rant on the beauty of sadness.

Need a little help "going there" emotionally?  Contact me for a free 15-minute video consultation.

Allison Moir-Smith
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"I was grateful to feel sad, and then I met it with true, profound happiness." Louis CK on Conan. Go to 1:55 for the benefits of sadness rant.
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The Stories of 7 Brides

9/16/2013

2 Comments

 
7 of the brides I worked with got married. 

 I thought it would be interesting for you to hear a little about the issues we worked on.
  • K., who didn't feel emotionally close enough to her fiance  
  • M., who had to negotiate a new relationship with her controlling father
  • F., who was reluctant to move out of her own condo and into her fiance's house
  • I., who was anxious about getting "financially naked" with her fiance
  • A., who was grieving the loss of a close relative ...while planning a wedding
  • R., who really had a hard time letting go of her single identity and the end of her single life
  • C., who was fearful about how marriage might impact her career goals

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Photo courtesy HomeandWeddings on Etsy
These brides contacted me because they felt anxious and alone in their struggles.

Anxious and alone because the world expected them to be only "brides" -- only excited, only happy, only thinking about dresses and shoes and aisle runners.  

These pressures and expectations didn't match their own inner emotional experiences, which were rich, deep, and lifechanging.  In our work together, each of these brides could be their complex, "unbridely" selves, as they made sense of the very real changes their impending marriages caused them to face.

I'm happy to say that, across the board, without exception, all 7 brides successfully worked through their issues. Each and every bride has reported back to me about the happiness and joy they felt on their wedding days.  Most couldn't believe they had traveled such a distance, emotionally, from where we first started.  At the beginning of our work, they couldn't envision a happy wedding day, they were so wrapped up in their angst and pain.  

And yet, as one bride just told me during her FREE post-wedding download session:  

"Our wedding was phenomenal. The whole thing. Emotionally, I was calmer than I expected to be -- nothing was going to get me down --  and I was surprised at how choked up I got saying my vows.  It was amazing and so satisfying to see all the million tiny details that I worked so hard on, sweated over, and fought for, come to life.  It was perfect."

If you see yourself in any of these 7 brides, or if you are feeling anxious and alone, pressured to be a "perfect bride" and not your complete, complex self, contact me for a free 15-minute Skype consultation.  For these 7 brides, working with me -- having a place in their lives to be "unbridely" -- allowed them to be real, delve deep, grow, learn and come out the other side happy and ready to be married.  

If you'd like that too, please, be in touch.

Click here for your free 15-minute video consultation

Allison Moir-Smith
2 Comments

When the Wedding Dress Doesn't Feel Quite Right

8/5/2013

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So glad I didn't just recycle my unread stack of Sunday NY Times because I came across this gem:  "Say No to the Dress," by Joanna Hershon, and her tale of having the ultimate aspirational wedding dress:
Picture ...the 7th floor at Bergdort Goodman. Picture the Bridal Specialist...clutching her clipboard.  Picture several Russian seamstresses with pins in their mouths...Picture the Mother -- mine -- and me: young, happy, tense.  I'm in the Dress.  

It was lovely and elegant and expensive....

I was rightfully grateful to have a mother who not only could afford to take me wedding-dress shopping at Bergdorf Goodman but who actually loved every minute of it. I wanted to make her happy.
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But the bride herself was drawn to another style of dress altogether: 
My eyes had wandered toward something more bohemian, less voluminous, but in terms of big purchases, in terms of fashion, I listened to my mother
Yet during the many subsequent fittings, the lovely, elegant and expensive dress just didn't feel right:
This dress, which cost about as much money as I'd made in the last year [as a writer] had flattered my waist and -- at least temporarily -- made me feel like dancing.  

But I couldn't see it anymore.
Between the initial purchase of the dress, when she was financially dependent on her parents as an actress and writer, and the final fitting 2 weeks before the wedding, her she sold her novel, for a lot of money.  That changed things, among them her feelings about herself AND her wedding dress:
I took off the dress that we'd chosen -- my mother and I -- when my life had looked one way. 
She tried on another dress -- "a 1930s fantasy -- silky, backless":
I felt the silk fall over my body like a sheet of cool water, I realized my life looked another way now.  I also realized that the dress was a perfect fit.

"Wow," my mother said. 
Even her Mom knew the second dress was the right dress and didn't put up a fuss with the switch.  Because the second dress more accurately reflected and represented who her daughter was and was becoming.

Have you had an experience like this during your engagement, when something you ordered or committed to at the beginning of your engagement didn't feel right as your wedding date approached?  

Did it feel off because something about you has changed in the intervening months? What was changed in you? What changed in your relationship to yourself or others?

I'd love to hear your experiences -- please share below.

Contact me for your free 15-minute consultation: click here!

Allison Moir-Smith
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Have You Entered The "Bridging" Stage?

6/11/2013

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Wedding season is upon us:  some June brides have already made that walk down the aisle, many others are preparing.  

When a bride I've worked with gets married, I celebrate their wedding days via a note on my Facebook page.  So if you want to see the many warm wishes in the weeks and months to come, please "like" Emotionally Engaged on Facebook.

What all the brides who have just married or who are preparing to marry in the next 6 weeks are doing is crossing the bridge into their new identities as married women.   
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In the Bridging stage, your new life as a married woman begins to take shape in your mind, your heart, and in your life. (With thanks to Claude Monet for his beautiful bridge at Giverney, pictured above.)
I discuss this transition from the Ending stage of being engaged to the Bridging stage at length in my book, but in a nutshell, here's what happens:

Many brides-to-be describe their transitions out of the Ending stage and into the Bridging stage like a fog finally lifting.  

For the early months of their engagement, they walked around consumed by feelings of loss and disorientation as they let go of old ways of being.  They felt that the confusion would never end.

They've been afraid that they'd be in a down, depressed funk on their wedding day, and that they'd never feel happy or excited about getting married, even though, deep down, they trusted that that was what they wanted to do.  

As the wedding approaches for these brides-to-be, however, joyful anticipation beings to creep back in.

Once you enter the Bridging stage, you will have made the internal psychological adjustments necessary to begin your new life as a married woman.  

During this stage, women who've struggled with the loss of identity as a single woman or their single-minded focus on their careers, find themselves embracing how their fiances enrich their lives.

Brides-to-be who've had difficulty letting go of their dependence on their parents discover that they can be close with their families even as they put their fiances first.

Women who mourn the end of the days as boyfriend and girlfriend begin to see the richness and depth that come with making a lifelong commitment.

In short, the confusion that accompanied all the many endings brides-to-be have faced is replaced with greater clarity, curiosity, and hope.  Your focus turns to the future.

Entering the Bridging stage doesn't, however, mean that all the gray clouds will have permanently lifted. But you'll likely find that when difficult emotions do arise, you'll no longer stay stuck in a downward spiral. Instead, you'll embrace the emotions and feel them fully, and then they will quickly move on. On the whole, your positive feelings about your future with your fiance will consistently outweigh your grief about the ending of your single life.

Bridging, then, is a time when the balance shifts, when your new life as a married woman begins to take shape in your mind, in your heart, in your life.  After all the hard work you will have done to end earlier chapters of your life, you'll begin to realize that it all had a purpose.

How far away is your wedding?  

Is it in less than 6 weeks?  If so, have you entered the Bridging stage?

Or is your wedding more than 6 weeks away?  If so, then you're probably still more connecting to the Endings.

I'd love to hear more about where you are in your engagement, and you can learn more about the 3 stages of being engaged in my book, Emotionally Engaged: A Bride's Guide to Surviving the "Happiest" Time of Her Life.

Contact me for your free 15-minute video consultation today

Allison Moir-Smith
0 Comments

Brainiac Brides: The Challenge You Face

5/23/2013

 
I work with a lot of super-smart brides -- academics, lawyers, scientists, doctors -- highly intellectual women who have spent years developing their abilities to think through problems.

Their analytical skills have gotten them very far in life.

The problem is: the decision to get married is made primarily with the heart. With feelings instead of thoughts.

These brilliant women are trying to think their way to answers. They examine their situations from every possible angle.  Make endless pro-and-con lists.  Do detailed cost-benefit analysis.

And still: they don't know if their decision to marry this guy is right.

Because what they need to be doing is also feeling their way to the answers.

For many super smart brides, trusting their feelings in the big decision-making process is an undeveloped skill set.  It can be challenging.  Even scary and disorienting, relying on feelings for such an important decision.

They contact me because they are flummoxed.  What usually gets them through hard decisions isn't working with this getting-married thing.

I'm so glad when they begin to work with me.  First, I ask them to share all the thinking that preceded their contacting me. Some even email me their pro-con lists, so I'm fully informed of the complexity of their situations.

Then we get to work at getting to the underlying FEELINGS about the relationship and the marriage.  Together, we work to turn down the volume on the intellect and turn up the volume on the emotion.  They don't stop thinking, but they do start to connect and trust their feelings.

This doesn't necessarily happen right away, so  I was surprised and happy to get this email right after a first session with a bride:
You were extremely helpful to my thought process today and helping me quell the anxiety I have been feeling.  I feel much less stressed and happy about moving forward.  :-)  

It was helpful and reassuring to hear that other women lawyers can get trapped in thought processes like mine.  

Are you over-thinking? Contact me for your free 15-minute video consultation

I've worked with many highly intellectual, thinking brides, and if you're trying to "think" your way through a "feeling" decision, I can help you too.  Contact me for a free 15-minute Skype consultation today, and let's see what we can do together.
Allison Moir-Smith
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The decision to get married isn't completely intellectual, and this can be tough for highly analytical brides.  I can help. Contact me for a free 15-minute video consultation today
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Learn strategies on how to calm the over-analytical mind in the Happy Bride's Secret Toolkit video series

"Love My Marriage, Hated My Engagement": Emotionally Engaged in xoJane.com

1/4/2013

2 Comments

 
You have got to read this piece by Anna Latimer!  She really tells it like it is:
I was recently engaged for 14 months. During that time, I learned a secret they never tell you on StyleMePretty: engagements fucking suck. They’re also joyful and fun, but there’s a lot more suck involved than you’d expect.
Direct, right?

But she's struck a chord on the xojane.com website: a phenomenal 179 comments posted in less than 24 hours....and counting.

And that's because she writes -- straightforwardly and hilariously -- about the emotional work of being engaged:
Engagement is a time of monumental transition. You’re redefining your relationship not just with your fiancé, but also with your family, your friends, yourself, your personal space, your dreams and ambitions -- everything. 

Whoever can face such profound change without at least a twinge of anxiety and grief, please tell me what drug you’re on, because I want some. 
I'm delighted that my book offered Anna some comfort and context during her engagement.  But even happier to have her in blowing the lid off the myth and stereotype that engagements are only easy, happy, wedding-planning times.

She gets the message through -- loud and clear -- that there is much important emotional work to do during your engagement, too.

The title of the piece?  "I Love My Marriage, But Hated My Engagement."
Allison Moir-Smith

Hating your engagement?Contact me for a free 15-minute consultation

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