Imagine sitting pretty at the top of the triangle, when all of a sudden your life comes crashing down at the brink of a separation.
The foundation of your needs have become challenged and you are now starting to worry about where you might sleep, how you might protect yourself and your children or how you might afford two households. You start not to sleep properly, you stop eating, start drinking more and all of a sudden your health becomes compromised too.
We know how this is how many of you feel when you come in to see us for help. Your head is in a spin, you are displaced, worried, scared and usually grieving the loss of the relationship (or at least the loss of the feeling of belonging).
The divorce journey through to resolution is a pathway that creates worry and anxiety for many people. Most don’t know how to start, when to start or what to do.
It helps, we find, to understand and work through the triangle of needs and remember that when you satisfy those basic physiological needs, then your life is likely to become pieced back together again.
1. The triangle starts with food, shelter and warmth. These are all basic physiological needs that each one of us need to survive. The first stage is to sort out and discuss those parts of your life first, so you can clearly make other decisions to follow.
2. Next, work out more advanced needs like security and stability of employment, and things to keep you safe and healthy and happy. So, now start thinking about obtaining or keeping your work and lifestyle choices.
3. Once secure and confident about that, we move into the realm of belonging- the feeling of being loved and turn to fostering our relationships with friends and family. It is at this stage that you can start to consider where you might have the feeling of love from again; that might not necessarily mean a new partner, but perhaps a friend or family member to give you support and guidance.
4. After that, there are more advanced needs such as self-esteem, confidence and self-respect then building to self-actualisation and creativity. We find that once the process of divorce has reached a sensible conclusion, this part of the triangle is easily and readily sorted out by you.
Our tip then, is to work through each stage carefully, being guided as necessary, so that you understand yourself first.
Think about whether your needs at each stage are truly met and then move to the next one logically and methodically, until you are truly able to provide for your own happiness.
In short, take the time to work through and secure the basis of foundation of the pyramid first, and the rest of your life will follow.
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Rose Cocchiaro is an out of court, outcome-focused divorce lawyer, Accredited specialist in Family law and founder of Resolve Divorce Lawyers.
Resolve Divorce lawyers promotes a unique divorce resolution process that creates better outcomes by reducing the impact of separation financially and emotionally.