I find myself, rather frequently, commenting on Newcomer posts (especially in those first few months when people are floundering and struggling with loss of control over their life and acute grief) about the importance of exercise in promoting better mental health outcomes.

So I've decided to write this post just for general help, but also because it will allow me to lazily refer people to it - rather than typing out the same information every time.

This is information I didn't know when my wife cleaned out the house and stole my kids when I was away with work. It helped me tremendously once I understood it. I wish I'd known it at bomb drop!

The human brain is an incredibly complex, and at the same time, incredibly simple thing. Humans are different to all other species because of our highly developed frontal coretex, which is the higher thinking, reasoning, critical thinking part of our brain that allows us to analyse, predict and make informed, intellectual decisions. It is responsible for us developing into modern society, controlling the environment in which we live, and for amazing things like sending humans to the moon in rockets.

Our brain also has another part, called the amygdala. It is small, dumb and primal - and protected us millions of years ago when we were being chased by a lion. It is responsible for our fight or flight instinct. It makes you flinch when a ball is about to hit you in the face, it drops adrenaline and cortisol into your blood stream when you're at risk of being hurt, and increases your heart and respiration rate almost instantly so you can run from danger or stand and fight.

It's a short term, acute system. If you watch a gazelle being chased by a lion, it gets shocked when it realises, jumps up, and runs with incredible speed in the opposite direction to stay alive. But if you were to watch that same gazelle 10 minutes later after surviving a lion attack, it would be drinking calmly at a waterhole, or laying asleep under a tree with a normal, slow heart rate

That's how that part of our brain system is supposed to work - a sudden, huge physiological response to a threat - which disappears just as quickly as it arrived.

The problem for us humans going through a bomb drop and 2-3 year protracted and antagonistic divorce, is that reptilian part of our brain stays engaged for minutes, hours and sometimes days. Our heart rate stays up, we are full of adrenaline, and we become hyper-stimulated because we feel threatened (our normal, calm life is being uprooted).

This leads to sleep disturbance, loss of control of emotions, poor decision making, chronic stress - and bad long term mental health outcomes.

I felt like I'd been hit by a train. I couldn't sleep. I vacillated between desperately wanting to save my marriage, and wanting to set the world on fire. Unless you've been there, you can't understand the grief and uncertainty and pain associated with bomb drop and the aftermath.

My work union has a welfare and assistance arm which helps people going through difficult times in their life. I decided to reach out about two months in, and was put in touch with a counsellor who specialised in helping people in my profession (which has some unique implications with divorce).

I spoke to a counsellor who'd been helping people in my profession deal with life events (namely divorce) for forty years. He was, quite simply, a fount of knowledge.

He cited a bunch of scientific studies which had compared mental health outcomes of medicating, counselling or hard physical exercise.

Every one of those studies showed that daily, hard physical exercise was the best way to manage your mental health and to survive and thrive through an acute life event such as bomb drop and an acrimonious divorce.

Combination therapy (such as exercise paired with regular counselling) had even better outcomes, but exclusively, nothing was better than exercise. He joked I shouldn't tell many people, because if everyone learned this fact, it could very well put him out of a job.

Amongst lots of other advice and tools he provided, he wanted me to make an assurance that I would do 60 mins of hard, physical exercise every day for thirty days. The thirty day rule was because there's a lag time between input and results, so most people stick at it for a week or so, don't feel any better and give up. It takes between 3 and 4 weeks for you to start feeling better, so he wanted an assurance I'd do thirty days before giving up.

So I did. I was already quite fit at the time. I would do lots of hiking in the hills near where I live, and walked to the shops frequently, playing sport with my kids too. But walking for an hour, or meandering along on a bike wasn't what he had in mind. He insisted that it was 60 mins of HARD, physical exercise - like lifting weights at the gym, or running with heart rate >160bpm, or hiking up tall mountains carrying a 20kg pack.

So I got myself a gym membership with my brother, and we started lifting weights. It was inconvenient. He lives a long way away, so we'd meet half way (about a 30 minute drive). I'm a shift worker with irregular shifts, so sometimes I was there at 6am, and other days at 10pm. I felt physically exhausted a lot of the time, and my body ached at work as I recovered. I hit the protein shakes and downloaded a training app to my phone to track my progress.

About two weeks in, I'd had enough. It was really hard to motivate myself to exercise after a 12 hour shift. But I hung in there, because I told him I'd do thirty days, and also because I didn't want to let my brother down after dragging him into it.

After about three weeks, I started to notice some changes. Physical changes and a six pack - yes, but I mean mental health changes. I was beginning to fall asleep much more quickly (mindfulness app helped with this too). I noticed I spent less time thinking about the manipulative witch who was wreaking havoc on my family. Another few days after that, I noticed I was starting to look forward to going to the gym and started bugging my brother to do 75 minutes. A few women from work, out of the blue, said I was looking great.

At the end of the thirty days, I was hooked. My counsellor rang for a follow up, and I relayed my story. I could tell he was trying to hold back his smugness of "I told you so".

He went on to explain that hard, exhausting physical exercise is very important for shifting you brain from being controlled by the amygdala (the primal, reptilian bit which controls flight or flight) and re-engages your frontal coretex so that you start making measured, intelligent decisions and responding to interactions with your wayward/walkaway spouse without emotion driven behaviour.

This didn't fix my sitch. Exercising hard every day wasn't a quick fix for my relationship problems. My ex was still a manipulative, controlling PITA who dragged me through court and played chess with my kids and our money. IMHO though, I won the court battle and had a much better outcome on kids and finance as a result.

The most important thing though, was this exercise allowed me to regain control of my life, my thoughts, my physical health, my sleep and my confidence. It was more helpful than a counsellor, more helpful than anything I read on this forum, and got me through the hardest time of my life. I'm now on the other side with a new partner, a new house, lots of time with my kids and succeeding in my job like I have never done before. Meanwhile, my ex got dumped by her AP, kicked out of her rental and is living on someone else's lounge room floor.

So - here's the rub. If you're here for any reason, but particularly as a newbie who's landed at DB after an unexpected BD - you need to get your butt off to the gym. And you need to exercise HARD and LONG, and you can't give up under ANY circumstances for the first thirty days. Get a friend/relative to exercise with to improve your accountability.

It won't fix your crazy WS/WAS. It won't fix your relationship. But it will fix YOU, and it will switch off your reptile brain and get you sleeping, thinking carefully, and making calm, rational, intelligent decisions with the higher functioning part of your human brain.

You've got this! cool