Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 132. Why You Need to be Using Gratitude to Navigate Divorce-Related Trauma and Resentment

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132. Why You Need to be Using Gratitude to Navigate Divorce-Related Trauma and Resentment · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi love, it is the first week of summer and producer Joy and I are both out of office, but we want to rerun for you two of our favorite episodes from season two.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: The first one you're going to hear me talk about how gratitude will help you overcome resentment, and this is so essential at this part of your journey, because the more you stay stuck in resentment, the more you are attracting negative experiences to you.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: You will also hear me talk about how I used homeopathy to treat my herpes outbreak and, just in general, how you can improve your life using gratitude.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Hi love, it's a new year, happy new year.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I am so thrilled to be kicking off this new year with you and I have so much to tell you.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk today about gratitude because I mean, it's so well-timed.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: At this time of year, everyone's kind of talking about their word for the year and all of the tools and things to really capitalize on this fresh energy, and gratitude is one of those right, but it's a funny topic because many people try to work with gratitude and struggle with it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: So we're going to unpack all of that, which I'm thrilled about, but first let's talk about the intention that I'm bringing for this year, in this season two of Dear Divorced Diary, so exciting.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: So in this year, my intention is to go full out on the pod and in my life, because what I have observed in this last year of us being together besides the fact that I'm insanely grateful for your time that we spend together, that you allow me into your life what I've observed is that there is this certain piece of myself that still hides a little here, right, that gets afraid that if I say all the things, you will not stay or somebody around town will hear it and I will feel mortified or, you know, fill in the blanks.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So just know that I see that in me, and starting now is when I really commit to myself and to you to go full out.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I really commit to myself and to you to go full out.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: So, in that vein, what I want you to know is how I spent my New Year holiday and this year I spent it in my pajamas, in my bed, while my husband was playing Nintendo, which I love.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It's actually one of my favorite pastimes.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: We sit around and he plays Nintendo while I I don't know daydream.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: But I was with my new homeopathy book, because this last month I have really dug into homeopathy to really learn more about the power that is in nature to heal our mind bodies.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And with a herpes breakout and PSs, I used the homeopathy to treat the herpes breakout, so I'll link that what I used to treat it.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Right, I used apple cider vinegar topically and roostox and natmer primarily as the treatment.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And it was so interesting because, as I felt it coming on leading up to new year's, I have not had a breakout in so long.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I don't have a prescription.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I haven't had a prescription.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: That was two OBGYNs ago.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I don't even know where I was living at the time, right.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: But now here I am and with my new OBGYN, who PS, is a mom at my kid's school and I was thinking to myself I'm going to call her and I'm going to say I'm having a breakout and I'm going to ask for a prescription.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: That's mortifying, and then, the more I thought about it and I was like my goal is really to support myself and honor my body and to like be with these things rather than trying to run from them anymore.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: And so, as this whole thing evolved over the week, I was like these are the things I've got to start talking about, because it's not okay that we're so ashamed about them, right?
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: It's not okay that we live in the shadows about some of this stuff.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And so this is me standing true to that.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Whatever awkward moment this may or may not cause me at the grocery store next week, it's what ups, because this is how we love each other.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Well, this is how I love you.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Well, and this is how I love me.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Well, by shining a light on the stuff that causes us so much anxiety.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And I know how much of a stigma there is around STDs, because I you know when my clients get these types of diagnoses, I know how panicked they are, and so let's work together and let's shift it.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So yay for homeopathy and yay for us being together and thank you for loving me well.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Through this next level of transformation, let's dig in to the gratitude piece.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: So gratitude is all the rage in the world of healing and it's so important because we understand that from the vibrational place of gratitude we can attract all the things that we want.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And by attract all the things we want, I mean happiness and amazing friendships and great partners and great jobs and amazing, well-behaved children.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: You name it right Happy people attract happy, good things into their lives.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Now I have spent more of my life I feel like unhappy than happy, so this is something that I've been living into over the last decade or two in a very intentional way, but I've had bouts of depression and resentment even in these last handful of years where I had to really work hard to be grateful.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Now, when I was going through my divorce one of the things I know I've mentioned before I was in Al-Anon and I was working the steps with a sponsor and had a gratitude list always taped to my mirror, because that was one of the like in the bathroom, because it was super accessible and it was always a nudge for me to do it, and I do recall this is going to sound strange, but I recall at the time that actually gratitude came fairly easy to me.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Then I think that at the time I was in such a space of feeling free.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: That gratitude was easier, even though there were so many pains, like I was hurting about so many things.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Ps, post-divorce is where I picked up the herpes in that whole, like you know what I mean.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But gratitude came easier for me in the immediate kind of days and months post-divorce.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's been actually after that where I've gone through bouts where it was harder, where I knew its importance, both from the mental health perspective and from a manifestation perspective, and there were seasons where I just couldn't harness it.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Now, what's interesting, as I've become a trauma-informed EMDR therapist, I have learned that there are times where trauma is activated that you are not going to force that activated trauma out of the way.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: You cannot mindset yourself out of trauma.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that gratitude is just a mindset, because it's not, but it certainly is.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: It's not only a mindset, right, it's a.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It's an entire vibrational experience, it's a way of being.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: But sometimes you'll hear people talk about positivity.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: There's even this new dialogue about toxic positivity, right, being too optimistic and too positive and too Pollyanna, and I get all that.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: But there are many people who have tried and maybe you relate to this, maybe you don't.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: There are many people who have tried, genuinely tried to feel and be and acknowledge their gratitude and it doesn't feel accessible to them.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I had one client say to me really recently, when I was explaining to her that trauma creates structural changes in the brain, that EMDR and many other modalities right, emdr is not the only way to heal trauma, but EMDR is the way that I am most proficient in only way to heal trauma, but EMDR is the way that I am most proficient in.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Emdr helps heal those structural changes in the brain so that the brain becomes back to being a more fluid flowing system.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Right, because trauma creates these little walls that we can see in an MRI, where it starts to keep secrets from us about the pain so that we can keep going without having to carry the awareness of all that pain every day, day in and day out.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: So it keeps these little secrets, but it's got all this information walled off and so when you've got enough walls thrown up in there, it gets harder and harder to feel.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And when you get triggered a whole lot and your amygdala is on fire, it gets harder and harder to bring water to that fire.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Right, gratitude is water to the fire, but there is a certain tipping point in a traumatized state where the amygdala is too on fire, the brain is too walled off and it is hard to penetrate, and I know you relate to those moments and you may not be there anymore, but I just want you to know that if you've tried things like journaling or gratitude or exercise or tapping or whatever it is right and and you felt like I am not seeing results here, I want you to know that there is a reason for that and whether it's that you need some additional kind of water brought to the fire, which I would call stabilization right, you need to get a little more stable before you can go there or you need a different technique to help process those traumas, just know that there is every reason to believe that you can heal those traumas and I'm going to throw out a little teaser here.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: We've got some really exciting things coming this year on the pod in the way of membership and being able to stand in your personal power and heal those traumas.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: This is the year where I teach you everything I know, down to the nitty-gritty, like all the things that all of my clients who pay $250 an hour currently to learn the right I'm going to give it all to you because I want to put all that power in your hands.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So for those of you that have tried gratitude and felt like it's just not moving the needle for me, what am I doing wrong, love?
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: You're not doing anything wrong.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: That's just how hurting you are.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That's just how much love you need poured on your brain.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: I keep saying amygdala.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Have I explained what the amygdala is?
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: It's that little almond-shaped part in your limbic system, in your emotional processing system.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I'm like pointing at the back of the right side of my head right now Wish you could see me.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: It's like lower right, it's like part of the lizard brain where we feel the most primal emotions.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: And so when you're in a recent post-divorce situation, maybe you were like me where you felt initially free, but then there are these triggers that just take us out.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: So some things that can help move the needle, so that gratitude does become accessible to you, are definitely EMDR therapy, journaling, but like extensive and consistent journaling.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Yoga can help move the needle, because when you're doing yoga not necessarily like vinyasa, but it's not like yoga for fitness necessarily, but like yoga for being intentional about connecting the mind with the body is what can really help stabilize the system so that those traumas can process through.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Believe it or not, so much of what I have been talking about lately about essential oils, things, supplements like Cardio Plus, and homeopathy.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I have this book, this homeopathic book that I was reading with my herpes breakout, and it's so thick it's the thickest book I've ever owned in my life it like puts all of my grad school textbooks to shame, and the more I read about homeopathy, the more I'm, like floored that they don't teach this in grad school to therapists, because the whole root of homeopathy, which is ancient wisdom about nature and natural medicine, is that there is a remedy for everything in the mind-body and that our mind, body and spirit are linked together, and that's how homeopathy is intended to work.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Very many of the symptoms that we experience physically that we want to treat with medicine, you can look up the emotional counterpart to it in the homeopathic book and find, oh, you know, I have problems with digestion, that's highly related to anxiety or rheumatism, or, you know, it's so, so interesting.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: And so there are many homeopathic treatments that help stabilize the emotional effects of trauma, so that then you can release them.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Imagine if trauma healing didn't have to A be so hard or B.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: You didn't have to sit on a wait list for a really expensive therapist to do it.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: So I want you to hear this episode as a call to action of empowerment around.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Do not abandon things like gratitude because they're not working, for you.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Know that.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: What that means is you need a more strategic approach and if you call on many of these tools that I'm talking about, you're going to see amazing results.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And one of the things to know about gratitude when you're first starting and it feels hard still, is that if you take a more general approach to gratitude like by general, I mean, I am really grateful for oxygen and coffee and sunshine, and I was about to say Christmas trees, but Christmas trees are actually not general enough, right?
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Because with Christmas, that links back to holidays, which links back to family.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Dissolve it, right, which links back to ga-ga-ga.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So the more general you can be I am grateful for the color blue, right the more general you can be I am grateful for the color blue right.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: The more general you can be, the easier it will be at first, because the more specific you get, the more resistance it activates.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: If you've ever heard of law of attraction or followed anything by Abraham Hicks Esther talks about this a lot that the more general you can be with your gratitude, the easier it will be to not get triggered and to not feel shut down and to really be able to get some momentum going in that good, positive feeling space.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Some other great gratitude tips and tricks are sometimes you have to do gratitude subtraction right.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Like, let's say, you really are feeling cramped in your new living space and you're like this sucks, it's not fair.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: He's over there with this and I'm over here with that and feeling really frustrated with your current living arrangements.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: But then you think about but what if I had none right?
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And this is I think this is a mental habit I've relied heavily on over the years when I felt dissatisfied with certain things in my life.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Is well, at least I'm not in Ukraine kind of thing right?
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Like, at least I have running water and heat and a roof and relative safety, and I'm so grateful for that.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: So, and that's not to activate guilt about having things that other people don't have, it's just these are some of the tools we use to really be able to connect with the feeling of gratitude.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Now, even if you've done gratitude subtraction and even if you've gone really general, like I'm so grateful for the color blue or that the ocean exists, and you still can't feel grateful like girlfriend, I get it, that's okay, that's okay and just know that you probably have some really activated trauma going on and or are feeling really, really disconnected from your personal power, feeling really kind of helpless, hopeless, disempowered, and we need to change all that right.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I want so badly for you to be able to shed that, because I know how deeply powerful you are and I know how much you are capable of and I know you want to feel gratitude so badly.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: So in the show notes I'm going to link a couple of the homeopathic treatments that I'm loving currently for emotional pain, couple of the homeopathic treatments that I'm loving currently for emotional pain, and if you haven't done the post-divorce roadmap journaling bit, I really want to encourage you to do that.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: The thing about that journaling and consistently showing up to do it or any like.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: If you, let's say, you bought yourself a journal for New Year's because you were like I'm going to recommit to healing this year, great, like whatever it is that you're committed to doing, just show up consistently.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: The reason those things work is because things like journaling are connecting pieces of yourself with your true self, right?
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So so much of the pain that we're feeling is because things like trauma, things like kind of chronically feeling disempowered, have caused us to forget, to be disconnected from our true internal source of power, both spiritually and just psychologically.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: There are parts of you, love, that are unaffected by this divorce.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: There are parts of you that are unaffected by the traumas you've experienced.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: There are parts of you that are so resonant and so true, your soul and your true yourself-hood, right, they're in their love and they are intact and they are whole and they are well and they are just waiting for you to reconnect those pieces, the wounded parts, with the whole parts.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: And so when you journal consistently, when you yoga consistently, when you meditate, or when you gratitude, or when you, you know, sit with your friends and just cry, or when you go to therapy, or when you do EMT or whatever the things are EFT tapping, you're connecting up those wounded parts with the parts that are true and well.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: And so the more we can connect those parts and the more we can love on those wounded parts, the stronger you will feel, the more unstoppable you will become, the more those results will just build one on top of the other, and if you need any help with this, just reach out and I will point you in the direction.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: But I know you're on the right track and if you've already been doing a gratitude practice, you already know the power that it has for you.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: There are so many tools out there at this time of year around manifesting and goal setting, and I love all that because this season is about renewal and it is about hope, and I'm really excited to lean into this new year with you.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach, dawn.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: You can find more at mycoachdawncom.