Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 65. From Comparing Myself to Breakthrough: Navigating Feeling Stuck in Your Divorce Healing

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65. From Comparing Myself to Breakthrough: Navigating Feeling Stuck in Your Divorce Healing · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, this is Dawn and you're listening to Dear Divorce Diary with my coach, dawn, where we explore the post-divorce life and you, the woman who lives it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We cover everything from trauma during and after divorce to feeling like a stranger in your own life and the new frontier of life as a single woman.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Cozy in for the conversations you've been longing to have about this new life.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, today I want to relieve you of the burden of feeling like it's not working and you're doing it wrong, because there is an answer to why you feel like you're working so hard in certain spaces and not making progress, and this is the sign, this is your sign, that we're going to get to the bottom of that and help you shift it.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, because, first of all, I want to normalize for you that in every journey, especially a journey of hard things, which is where you are we experience plateaus, right Spaces where it feels like we've stalled out or we've hit a wall or we're on a freaking hamster wheel like running, running, running and getting nowhere.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: And so today is the day we talk about how to know if you're in the right spot, doing the right things and you just need to keep going, or if there's some little detail or big detail that's being overlooked, that needs to be tweaked so that you can start getting more momentum, more traction, to feel like it's working, you're making progress, you're headed in the direction you want to.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Right, because, whether you chose this divorce or you got blindsided with it, I know that you want to build a life you're in love with and I know that when we stall out or when we feel like it's not working or we hit a plateau or we're on a hamster wheel, what happens is it activates all the freaking issues that we struggle with.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Right, because it reinforces the negative belief that there's something wrong with you.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: That the people said it will work.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: They said it gets better with time.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: They said just do journaling, just do EFT tapping, just get a therapist, just get all the things.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Even I say right, just do the things and it will work.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And even so, you're still experiencing periods of unmanageable anxiety or unmanageable insomnia or unmanageable resentment or obsessive thoughts about your ex, or you just can't quite get your heart to heal enough to like exhale.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And so if you relate with, you're doing the things, but it feels like it's you're not enough or like you're struggling to trust what the people say.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: The experts say right, I paid this attorney all this money and they still didn't advocate for me.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I still had to do my own footwork, I still had to make sure.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Xyz and a legal system that I don't understand.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Right, the financial people, the industry of divorce, where the experts tell you to just do the things and just spend the money and just do what we say and then boom, your life will be magical.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: And you know, some days it doesn't feel magical Like.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: This is your episode.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: This is your episode.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's first like diagnose why, why you're in a plateau or on a hamster wheel, okay.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: So first things first, I want us to look at why.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I want to acknowledge that in the beginning, when everything is on fire, when you have so many issues that need to be stabilized or zhuzhed or love poured on them, right, a lot of things are going to feel helpful fast, right?
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: So in the beginning, when there's just so many problems, basic healing tools are gonna go a long way Prioritizing sleep, prioritizing nutrition, having someone come over and help you fold a load of laundry or watch the kids for a couple of hours, one journaling session, one therapy session these things are going to feel good in the beginning, because you're so overextended, you're in so much pain that even little chunks of relief are like that's what I needed.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: This feels so good, like one massage would feel so good right.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: One night out with your girlfriends would feel so good.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: So know that it's normal that in the beginning, when you start taking steps to heal and rebuild your life, that a lot of tools and a lot of supportive strategies are gonna work for you.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And then the further you get, it's like you're not gonna feel like you're getting the same bang for your buck, and that's definitely not a sign that you're doing it wrong.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: It's actually a sign that you made so much progress that now you need a next level tool, you need a next level strategy to go up a level or five levels, right.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And so it's very normal to kind of graduate from certain self-care tools, certain healing modalities, and to say, ah, there's something about my life, my lived experience, my symptoms, my needs, my family's needs, that has some nuance to it.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: What do I mean about nuance?
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I mean those little details that set one thing apart from another, that those little details matter to me.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Breaking through to the next level, okay.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: So what I often see with folks is either, for instance, when people say, oh, emdr doesn't work for me, that's very interesting, right.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: If EMDR isn't working for someone, it usually means that they're not stable enough for that level of trauma processing yet, meaning their nervous system is not yet grounded enough to tolerate the intensity of EMDR.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So it's not that EMDR doesn't work right.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: In all of my years of doing EMDR I've had two cases both men where it was not the effective tool for the person and they weren't able or willing to take the steps that it would take for it to become an effective tool right.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: But it's the rare, rare, rare circumstance that the tool doesn't work.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: It's usually that the tool and the person aren't the right fit at the time.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: So EMDR is a fairly advanced level tool, so someone at the very beginning of a journey might not be quite ready for it, or someone who's done some EMDR and then it's stopped working or they stopped making progress.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: What it means is actually it's probably time to dig in, to even juice your details, where we start looking at internal family systems work or parts work, where we start to deal with more intricate details of your story and the painful experiences you've gone through to unlock deeper levels of healing.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: So what I hope you're hearing me say is that when you feel like you're at a plateau, it's time to look at do I need to go back to the basics to get more stable, or do I need a more advanced tool, maybe with a more advanced practitioner or healer, to break through to the next level?
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Let's also talk about that.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Sometimes there's this third scenario that sometimes you are doing it all right.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: I would say that this is probably the more rare circumstance, but sometimes it's the truth that you are taking good care of yourself, you're using self-care tools, you're doing it consistently, you have a solid foundation, you have good healers in place and you just need to give it more time to unfold.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And I relate to this because patience patience man is tough, sometimes right, we want to feel better now because this is hard, and so we have these three instances of we need to get more stable.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Nope, everything.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: All the puzzle pieces are in the right spot.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I just need to be more patient or it's time for a more advanced tool.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: So how do we know which thing it is right?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: How do we know when it's time to go back to basics or to go to an advanced tool.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Well, let's start with the basics, right?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Are you getting at least seven hours of sleep a night?
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Are you hydrating?
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Are you eating some nutritious, healthy foods it doesn't have to be all nutritious, healthy foods right?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Are you?
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Is your body getting the nourishment it needs?
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Are you using some tools to regulate your nervous system?
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Meaning, are you being intentional about how you're breathing?
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Are you being intentional about using a tool when you get triggered?
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Do you have a support system that's helping you during the season of your life?
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Do you have someone who you can call yes, obviously, when you're having a meltdown, but to bring you some dinner, to watch the kids for an hour or to come to court with you?
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Because sometimes, whether or not we have a support system in place is what dictates whether or not we can tolerate the higher level processing.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Right, like, people who don't have a rich support system have a harder time participating in EMDR because it's so intense that it can be a little destabilizing.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: And when we feel destabilized, what do we need?
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: We need people to come behind us and to hold us up and to support us and love us.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Well, right, so let me dig into some examples from my life where I hit healing plateaus and then I knew I needed to go look for the next thing.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so when I was going through divorce, in the first couple of years afterwards, I was using a lot of tools and modalities.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I was going to individual therapy, I was part of a women's group, I did a lot of Alenon meetings and brought a lot of Alenon literature.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: I was journaling.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Now, mind you, I was single and I didn't have children, right, so keep this in mind and I opened my own business.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: So my schedule was more my own right, but I was doing yoga and I was getting massages and I was doing personal development workshops where I would go for like a weekend where you go do all the things with all the people and team building and crying and all right, I was really in it and so I was getting better so much faster and it was super exciting and it was awesome.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And then my husband and I got together.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Of course, there were a bunch of really screwed up relationships in there, so I'm kind of glossing over to some high points, right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But as a result of doing all that work, my husband and I got together.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Our daughter was born.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I had a lot of health problems, a lot of health problems that were really dangerous, and so at that time in my life I was like, okay, I'm still having health problems, pregnancy really took a toll on my body and I am experiencing a lot of nervous system dysregulation and a lot of anxiety and a lot of insomnia still, and so I said, aha, some things are missing.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't mean that all that work that I did early on didn't work, but it meant that I needed a deeper solution.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: So I worked with some functional medicine practitioners to make sure that my body was getting what it needed in order to heal emotionally, mentally and physically.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: And then in there is where I became EMDR trained and got my own EMDR therapist and I've had a few over the years EMDR therapists that I've worked with and so when I found EMDR and functional medicine right, those things worked really, really well for a good chunk of time.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: And then, after I got more stable from a nervous system standpoint, my body was more healthy, my mind was more stable.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: I would say, after having done a good chunk of EMDR, I would say it's so much quieter in my mind than it ever was.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: It was such a good feeling right.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And clinically, what's happening when the mind gets quieter is we've addressed a lot of underlying trauma and ended up with way more self-acceptance, right.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So the mind isn't working as hard to try to solve problems and defend and protect and be on that hamster wheel.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: And so I would still journal and I would still do yoga and I would still go for walks and all the things.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: But I said, okay, I'm still having some health problems.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Right, I'm the healthiest I've ever been, but I'm still having some health problems and I still have this thread of rage inside of me that I can't figure out how to unhook.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And so, even though I'm a therapist and I use all these tools, right.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So see how, when we have these experiences, it's really easy to say I'm not good enough, there's something wrong with me, this isn't working right.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: It's really tempting to go to those places of shame and negative beliefs about self.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: But rather than do that right, I just tend to say like, okay, there's got to be another tool, because I believe that anything is freaking possible and I believe that when we seek to rise, that the universe or God right meets us there and says, yes, I'm gonna support you in rising, and so I just knew that there must be some other set of tools that was gonna come to me.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: So I've spent a lot of time the last couple of years in chiropractic care, really because that also really strengthens the nervous system and helps us work through.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Because when we have subluxations that's like a big word to say misalignment in our, in our structural anatomy, in our skeletal system.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: That typically comes from either a physical trauma, a blow, or mental and emotional trauma.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: So chiropractors know this.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Chiropractors know that the reason we come to their offices is because we have mental and emotional issues and it shows up in misaligned spines.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: And so I've spent a lot of time in chiropractic care.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: That's helped a good deal.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: But then what happened?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Big plot twist, in December and January of just this past year, I found homeopathy, and homeopathy is an energy medicine that I have absolutely fallen in love with and dove headfirst into.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: You can anticipate some podcast episodes coming up soon to do with homeopathy and my healing journey there, especially mentally and emotionally, going all the way back to all the issues of abandonment in childhood and then in marriage and post-divorce and relationship struggles and all the things right.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: So homeopathy has helped heal all of those things.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: But in hiring a homeopath and in reading all the books and understanding again the nuance of energy systems in my body and in this healing modality, I've gotten that much better.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: And now that threat of rage is gone.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Now I can still have a hot temper, but it's like not old anymore.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It's like now I get angry when it's appropriate to get angry in real time, about real events, and the health issues that were left on the table are all fading.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: And so when you feel like there's something wrong with you because there's, you should have been better by now I want you to notice that here I am, 13 years post-divorce.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I and I think that I genetically and predisposed to, I think genetically I am more susceptible to trauma, let's put it that way, and so it is of note to me that it has taken 13 years.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: But hear me love right, you're not alone.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So I don't want the reason I share all this with you, the reason I'm so passionate about this, is because I don't want you to spend 13 years feeling like it's not working and you're on a hamster wheel.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I want you to get to the healing spaces as fast as you want to get to and the mind, body heals in layers and it's not all gonna come at once and it's not gonna all come with one healer or one set of tools, right.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: So I want you to hear that if you feel kind of stuck, that it's okay to find a new healer and to move on, that I've not stayed with the same therapist all these years.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: That when you reach a plateau, it's usually a sign that it's time to find a different healer with a different set of tools in their toolkit, for you to learn those and internalize and integrate those new messages.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And we're not we are not static or the same person from one day to next.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: We're dynamic.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: We're constantly shifting and morphing and that's the design, right.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And so what I thought and what I believed and what I needed 10 years ago was not the same as now.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And what a time to be alive that so many of these healing modalities like EFT and EMDR are so mainstream these days.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Lumiopathy is still a little like lesser known, probably a lot lesser known, and is a lot less accepted, but that's even coming and changing right.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: So I want you to hear that it's just time to shake it up, right, shake it up, try a different tool.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Let's also talk about the role of nuance in helping you shift through a layer.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: What I mean by nuance is you can.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: You can say like, oh, what color was it?
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: It was green, well, but there are a lot of shades of green dawn.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Right, there's Kelly green and forest green and lime green, and you know there's different shades of green.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Right, there's mint green and I don't know.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: And so when there are shades that are similar but are still different, it's a nuanced difference between shades of green.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: But when we're talking about healing things, oftentimes the breakthroughs come from acknowledging that little nuanced piece.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm actually this is like a funny thing to be passionate about nuance, right, and we haven't really talked about it on the podcast.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Before I talk about it without calling it what it is right, but like, for instance, in the episode where I talked about why gratitude doesn't come easy for everyone, why it doesn't quote-unquote work for everyone, we got into the nuances of why gratitude doesn't work for everyone, right?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: If you haven't caught that episode, definitely go check it out.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: But I Am like it's one of my superpowers nuance, right.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I can read a micro expression on someone's face.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I can perceive an energy shift, a tone of voice, a body language thing it's.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: If you're in my inner circle, it's one of the things that you just have to love about me, or else it's hard to tolerate being near me, because those Little energy shifts I'm so aware of them that when you tell me your story, I know exactly which nuanced spot needs to be pressed.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things to dig into with people, because so often when we're feeling blocked or stuck, it's because it's time for a new tool based on some nuance of your life and your story and your circumstances, and you just need help finding that.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Now, here's the role you play.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: In staying stuck is so much of what we talk about?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: To do with people.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Pleasing and wanting to be a part of and belong with a group of people Leads us to cover up the things that are uniquely ours, the nuances about our Lives and way of experiencing ourselves that matter so much.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Now, if I'm trying to people please, or I'm trying to fit in, I'm probably denying or avoiding nuance things that are my story and Anywhere that, I am trying to hide something or cover something or suppress something or deny something, or I feel ashamed for you to know it.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: That's probably exactly where we need to look the things that actually Cause you to feel separate or different than the woman's story next to yours is exactly the thing we need to Peel back the layers of and dig into, and so I want you to notice All the places that you'd rather not look right now, and I want you to start looking at those places and spaces and saying to yourself Mmm Don mentioned, there's some nuance of this place or space that's gonna lead to my next breakthrough, and if I keep trying to cover it up or hide it or avoid it, then, yeah, I'm not gonna have a breakthrough as easily, right, and so this is your next tool for exploring what your next level shift rise is gonna look like.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Right for you to start, hmm, doing a little journaling about that thing you'd rather nobody know about, or that little detail you've been avoiding telling your therapist, or hiding from your girlfriend, or hoping we'll just go go away on its own right, and it could be something health-wise.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: It could be something mentally or emotionally.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: You know, some of the some of the biggest struggles I had in a post-divorce world were actually health related, right, like, especially with my sexual history, and I have some history of sexually transmitted diseases, and so that health history was some of the hardest stuff for me to tackle in a post-divorce world and dating and getting remarried and all of that right, and so Me being able to face that and work on it and have self-acceptance with it provided a layer of healing, and so that came.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: It was like a mind and body issue, right, and so I just want you to know that any of the places that you're tempted to hide are the most magical spaces.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Love, where I want you to learn to love yourself around those things, and that only comes with practice bringing it into the light, shining that light on it, loving it.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Let somebody else love you well, through it right and find that special key in that lock to unhook it.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that I love about homeopathy that I'm really starting to understand in energy healing in general this is also true for EMDR and so many forms of healing is that you know when someone, when you tell your story and you tell the scariest parts of your story, and someone says you make sense, you make sense and I see you and I get you and I've had a similar experience and that is true, what you're saying rings so true and there's a moment in time where you feel so seen and so heard that the only thing you can do is kind of exhale and be like, oh, that feels so much better.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: That's a form of energy matching energy.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It's energy speaking to the stuck energy in your body and saying stuck energy, I see you.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And when we feel seen and heard, that blocked energy starts to flow.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: This is what EMDR and EFT and immersive journaling and homeopathy do.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Now, depending on how much nuance is needed, how many micro details are necessary, the better matched remedy whether it's in homeopathy or in an EMDR approach the more precise.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: This is what I'm trying to say.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: The more precise the energy signature of the solution, the more precise the match between the solution and the person.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: The deeper the exhale, the deeper the exhale.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: So so often, when we're getting to the little holdout pieces of our traumas and our healing, where there's little pockets of hidden distress and shame and lack of acceptance, when we feel energetically completely seen and heard, it unblocks and that's what homeopathy did for me is my homeopath helped pick the perfectly matched remedy that my mind, body was able to feel acknowledged and it felt safe enough then to let go of it, and that is what I wish for you from this episode Love that you hear that the perfectly matched remedy or solution is out there for you.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: You are not alone, you are not that terminally unique that healing just doesn't work for you.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: You are not that damaged or broken.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: That integration, that wholeness, is not available to you.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: That's all a bunch of BS, right, but you have to be willing to look in the hard little cracks and crevices and you have to be willing to try new things, which means getting uncomfortable.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Right, and don't think that just because I'm a therapist, I'm immune to that nervous energy that comes with calling a new healer.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I have had my share of nervous first therapy sessions or nervous first sessions with a healer.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I experienced that when I started going to a new chiropractor this year like feeling nervous, like here's this person who has this level of expertise, who's going to be able to see into me in a way that I can't right now, and that's nerve wracking, it's vulnerability, and so, right, this is me just wanting to really hold space for you to take that next step, or to look at where you need to go back to basics of sleep, nutrition, hydration, support system to be able to take your next leap forward, right?
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: You're not crazy.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: If you're plateauing, it's for a reason, and I want you to let me love you well through this spot.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: And if you want to, please feel free to DM me and tell me your story.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: I'd love to help you find the little nuance, detail that needs to be pressed on for you to be able to take a step forward.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I've done this before where some listeners have sent me their story and I'm like, ah, you needed an episode on blah blah, blah, right, and then it has created an episode to really push on that very specific spot.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: So, hey, if you want extra help and support in this way, send me your story.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: I'll find that little nuance and then we'll tackle it right.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, I love you so much.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Peace, dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: You can find more at MyCoachDawncom.