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341. Still Angry at Your Ex? It’s Not About Him Anymore | Divorce & Resentment · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Let me set up the stage.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was having a conversation with one of the women we work with who really grapples with resentment.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: She struggles so much with resentment, right?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: And she experiences it in her day-to-day life as it having to do with her ex.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like because he just and she's done so many great techniques, like gray rock and sort of, you know, referring to them in the third person, like, you know, just all these things to like emotionally distance from the from how much she's triggered by them so that um it doesn't affect her kiddos.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: But this resentment that she has with him is still very alive and well, and it ties back to her childhood, right?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: She has not forgiven her parents for certain things that her ex does, and it just is so alive.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: I recently recommended a new remedy that very specifically targets resentment.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden, on the weekend, she sent me this reel.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, This is me, right?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, love.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: 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.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorcee.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_04: Who is it?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_04: eight or nine years old, dirty and covered with cuts and bruises.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_05: Does she say anything?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't get enough love from mom and dad.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_04: From you.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_04: You you you left me alone.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_05: She's mad at me.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_04: What do you want to say to that little girl?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_05: I love you.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_05: No, you love everybody else.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_05: You love me.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_05: Say it again.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_04: What do you want to tell her?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sorry.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: That makes me super emotional.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_04: Holy shit.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: Holy shit.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: It made me so emotional.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that was powerful.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is the first time you two are watching a reel, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: But the frame here is how we pour so much more energy into being angry with other people or serving other people and completely abandoning our younger selves or our earlier versions of ourselves.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: It don't even have to be younger, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: It could be three-year version of a go version of myself, to Tiffany's point often when she's working in IFS, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: But we completely abandon our own alignment and needs in deference to our anger, our resentment, our fear, our insecurity, our self-doubt, all of these things.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so when this woman that we work with sent this to me, I knew we were having this massive breakthrough.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because just like it did for the two of you just now, it finally landed, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's what self-abandonment looks like.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it sounds like.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: And there was a coming home that just happened for all of us as we heard that reel.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: A coming home.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Talk about what you're experiencing.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It just made me super emotional from a lot of different perspectives because I'm working with a client right now that has a part that's very, very angry with her.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And her younger part appears in the form of an emo girl with combat boots, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And like all of the things and her arms are crossed, and she's just so angry at my client for saying, look, no, I'm running the show because clearly you can't, you know.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's when she's starting to experience these shifts, where this part is opening up a little bit and trusting and trusting.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's just these beautiful moments that I feel super blessed to get to experience with people every single day.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what resonates for me is like, my God.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I've said this before, like doing IFS for me, I feel like a conduit.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing anything magical, but my God, does it feel like magic every single day to be that?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: And what we just what we just listen to, it's results not typical.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's rare that, like it's just very, very rare that a part would just surrender that quickly.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's role.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Be like, okay, I forgive you.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It takes time.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Joy, what's going on for you?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: So often in my IFS work or my um, it's very much the the abending myself, not sticking up for myself, not making space for myself.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: So when I actually teared up, like my left eye has been leaking since I watched that because it was, you know, like when we had that when when Tiffany and I did that IFS session in Rich at retreat last year.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: And my little girl and I sat in the woods, and then we've done another session where I met her.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's so healing when you start to forgive, and it's not it's not a it's not a one-time thing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: You don't forgive yourself one time and you move on and live happily ever after, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like, but it's very powerful when you can start recognizing the moments where you abandoned yourself or you left yourself or you served.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm all emotional in my voice, but must be true.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: When you served others, you know, I've talked openly about how I received love as a child by my actions and earned it, you know.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so, and then I went into my relationships of what I could do for them and how I could um serve them and how I could be the good Christian wife.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, like when you start looking back in in the lens of forgiving yourself, forgiving yourself for staying, forgiving yourself for abandoning yourself time after time after time to keep the love, to keep your attachment, your codependency, the things that you're you you feel safest in, but you're not really the safest in, you know what I mean?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, that was really powerful.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm kind of shooketh.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: Shooketh.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: I'm shooketh.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we're at the punchline, but let's walk it back, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because we sort of like blew our load at the beginning here, which is beautiful.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: I hate when that happens.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about what does it look like day to day?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because this was like, you know, the the woman with whom I was having this conversation, this is like how it started.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: What does it look like day to day when a woman is pouring her energy into anger at her ex, but not pouring into herself, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's where it began.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like the anger that she has towards her ex keeps affecting her ability to enjoy being with her children, and vice versa, right?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it affects her children's ability to enjoy also.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: But the anger at her ex really stems from anger at her parents, which really also stems from right anger from her younger self to her today self.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: So what do y'all see?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Women who are just so hyper-focused on being angry at someone else versus attentive to their own emotional needs.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's easier to be pissed off at him.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to place the blame on somebody else to project it, right?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: To blame everybody else in the room except yourself.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's when we see women start making a shift, is when they can even start taking their own responsibility in the breakdown of the marriage.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I know for women that their husbands have had affairs, it's really easy to point the finger there.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's really easy to be angry and say that he's a piece of shit and he did this and that.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: The shift becomes Which may be true, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: That could be true.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it can be true, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's also part, yeah, like we have to take responsibility too for whatever the breakdown was in the marriage.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like at some point there was a massed, yeah.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And like what attracted that person in.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and yeah, he might have stepped out and did the wrong thing, but I assure you there were probably years of breakdown that um resulted in somebody stepping out of the marriage.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't something that just happens overnight.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of women would rather bury their head in the sand or avoid, right?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because they don't want to think about well, let's qualify some of the things you're saying, because I know the people out there in divorce land just some of them blew a gasket hearing what you said, right?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: So let's assume that he or she stepped out on the marriage, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it does happen overnight, meaning, well, it's like in the marriage, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Meaning if two people come to a marriage and there's already pre-existing addiction that started much earlier in adolescence, there may have already been an established pattern of addiction.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so they may have been stepping out the entire marriage.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: It may not just be resulting from breakdown in the marriage.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: There are sort of two different expressions, right?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Of am I oversimplifying it?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Two different expressions of infidelity, but yeah, no, I could see that.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I could see that.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: But even so, like that was my my case, right?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like, even if like I married him, like knowing wasn't a great boyfriend.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: He wasn't like even on paper, like there was not.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I still one of those moments, your inner child or your younger selves would have been like, What are we doing here?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I married mine knowing he was he was actively addicted.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like what self-abandonment at its finest.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I do think that there is a case where it isn't overnight, but I don't think that the if the addiction is is there from the beginning, right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: The I think that there's a moment in which to to Tiffany's credit or to Tiffany's point, it's the moment in my case, it was the moment when I realized I married him.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when I asked myself, right, I chose the right.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and addiction is also self-abandonment.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: So when we talk about like calls to like, right, for those of us that have spent lifetime self-abandoning, it's very easy to be in relationship with fellow self-abandoners.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's just the mechanism is different, right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: The or the I don't know, the substance or the addictive whatever mechanism is different.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: So for our women who we're not saying that resentment is inappropriate or that anger is inappropriate, right?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're saying if you're not sourcing your chronic resentment at its root, its roots, which is probably early childhood abandonment, that led to you getting on the bandwagon of self-abandonment, which led to you being chronically abandoned in your marriage, that we have to get at all of those layers and stages in order to really be able to recover from this dynamic.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I have a question.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Do you experience some women as waiting to feel loved or supported before they learn how to offer that to themselves?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's an easy answer for me.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's it look like in the field when you see it?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So or in your own lives, yeah.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I start going through initially somebody's IFS map and we start figuring out what parts, you know, are appearing so that we can start working with those parts.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I get to the part about a toolbox and I ask people, well, what do you do to regulate yourself?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how do you get back to a place of calm?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when all I hear them say is, I call a friend, I go hang out with friends, I hang out with my kids.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I so if you are, if the only way for you to feel calm and regulated in your nervous system is by reaching for external validation from others, that tells me that you have a lot of work to do on yourself, right?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're not, you're just not able to get that in yourself.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: I I did no.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: I was just when you said from others, I do think that um, because it can also look at social media, like posting for social media for the social media likes, and it can be from other women too, and getting approval from other women, getting the that dopamine hit of Well, yeah.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I'm in a I'm in a lot of Disney Cruise Facebook groups.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Y'all know this is how I go.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I saw someone post in there.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Here I go, psychoanalyzing the people.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: All right, all right, all right.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I saw one someone post in there this week.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: My two-year-old, blah, blah, blah.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to these ports of call.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: What gifts have you bought your two your two-year-old from these gift shops?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: P.S.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Here are the things I'm already bringing for our two-year-old on the cruise.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, can I tell you about the hundreds of dollars this woman spent on her two-year-old already and then was looking for more feedback, right?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that's an exceptional example, Joy, of what you're trying to get at.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, your entire identity is wrapped around compensating, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: Trying to have this two-year-old feel some type of way you didn't feel when you were two.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so maybe, you know, maybe it's like so surface, but yeah, that's it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that sparked a memory for me.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was at a birthday party one time of the freaking hundreds that I attended when my daughter was little, you know, of like all the friends, right?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like you're at that age where the parents have to stay the whole time, yeah, because you know, the kids aren't yet old enough.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I was sitting in the living room with this other mom and she was married.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And she said to me, She goes, Well, I can imagine, she goes, that you feel the need to overcompensate with your daughter like crazy because you're a single mom.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember being so pissed when she said that.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: But looking back on it, yes, I was.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was overcompensating for having a one income versus two income household.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was overcompensating for her dad living in another state.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like the experiences that my daughter had growing up are ridiculous for a single mom.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just, we did all the things.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: We went all the places, did all the things.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: She had everything she needed, wanted, didn't want, whatever, right?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember being so pissed at that moment at the fact that somebody could have possibly thought that I was overcompensating because I felt guilty or whatever.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: But my God, it was so true.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: So true.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we that's what sparked this entire conversation I was having with someone, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: How this even came to be, yes, is we really reach for these other ways.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I remember early on in parts work, like way, like way early post-divorce parts work when we weren't calling it parts work, we were calling it inner child work, but you know, tomato tomato.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: And really having these blended parts who did who just like refused to take responsibility, right?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like either felt like they couldn't, because they were blended, right?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Felt like they couldn't, or felt felt so much resentment because my parents should have, right?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Or somebody else should have.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like this really uh entrenched sense of abandonment and injustice.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and there's a nuance here because I know that what softened those parts over time are amongst the many modalities, right, that I engaged was two things.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Me continuously showing up and taking good care of myself.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: So meaning, journaling, walks on the beach, yoga, like things where I was really meeting myself.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe it wasn't unhooking the very specific abandonment issues, but it was me showing up consistently over time, doing the things that were taking good care of my mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then also being in relationship with people, mostly women, right, in healing places who saw me, who were supportive, who weren't rescuing me, but they were consistent and could have those thoughtful conversations, could hold space when I was in pain and could abide.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so I think those two things, they weren't necessarily like the big fireworks moments we heard in this reel, but it was that consistency over time that allowed those parts to become unblended and be like, oh, actually, I really like taking responsibility for my emotional well-being because then I can have it anytime I want it or need it.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't, right?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't require anyone else's participation.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: I can always do what I need to do to be okay.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: It feels so much more empowering, so much more freeing, so much less trapped, so much less, oh, what am I trying to say?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: You follow me.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think a lot of clients to me with that when they come to me and they say, I can't be still, like I struggle with stillness, that tells me that they have very blended parts that are just kind of running the show all the time because there's no self-trust.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, you've completely abandoned the ship.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's women that are coming forward who in their marriage were either self-sacrificing, self-sabotaging, people pleasers, fixers, like all the things, controllers, like whatever it is.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't be still with yourself, and this is a great test, if you can't just sit there for 10 minutes with nothing stimulating going on around you without feeling like you want to crawl out of your skin, it's a huge indication that your parts are absolutely 100% running the show.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Such a good metric for women to be able to check in with themselves.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: Here is a complex inquiry.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Is anger in the situation, right?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like the situation we heard on the reel, or you know, when a woman is really angry with her ex.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: Can the anger be helpful or does it always keep her stuck?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_03: We should throw out always and never, but I have I there's a there's a reel or a quote or something where it's I sat with my anger long enough to realize it was grief.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think that anger is powerful and I think it's necessary, I think it's biblical to be appropriately handled, and to really unpack the anger to to see its true origin.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: Do you thoughts disagree?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think anger is natural and appropriate.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's the chronicity, it's when it hardens into resentment or bitterness that it signals that it's moved beyond anger into something else that hasn't been dealt with.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of women are afraid to be angry because somewhere along the lines in childhood they were told it was either not appropriate or if they were from really traumatic homes where anger escalated into violence, right?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or they I have women tell me all the time, I feel like I'm gonna go crazy and have to be institutional.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like there's fear there around feeling those big feelings because they feel like they're never gonna come back from it.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I love what Joyce said about, you know, being able to get very curious about what's underneath that anger and staying very curious about what sits under there because I think that that's the key, not letting it harden, but being genuinely curious about why am I so pissed off right now?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, why can't I seem to shake this and stop being angry.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And like Joyce said, a lot of times it's the grief underneath that the body isn't yet ready to feel or process.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what our client said when we were in the DMs, her and I.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: She said she just acknowledged that anger often feels better than the more vulnerable feelings.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of course it does.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can keep that at a distance.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're projecting onto somebody else instead of having to look at yourself.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's Yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: So when women, whether it's ourselves or the women we work with or whomever, right?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: When women keep that same dynamic, giving outward and withholding inward, what happens in her next relationship?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Tiffany's.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Got another divorce coming down the pipe, honey.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's gonna happen.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Either that or another failed relationship, or something where you're gonna lose more months or years of your life.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just continuing to search for something that you can only give yourself.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: That will be your cycle.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: I would add a good chronic health diagnosis is probably coming alongside.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And why do we think this pattern is so hard for women to break through or to see or to really connect the dots?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier though.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to sit in the cycle.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to blame him.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to say this wasn't the right person.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine, I'm moving on.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't have to do any work or change.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't me.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like whatever.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's so much easier than having to walk through it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: But isn't it so much dissociation that like sort of blocks awareness?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: I wish there was a way, like a button we could push, or like a right.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think every woman sort of breaks out of that dissociative fugue state in her own time, right?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Her own perfect moment of awakening.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: I saw this post this weekend that was like, you're questioning the timing of a universe that has not missed a single sunrise on a single day.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I love that.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, you know, whatever the thing is.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess I don't want to rush any woman's awakening, right?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because it happens in its perfect time, space, and sequence, but it's like, oh, dissociation keeps us so perfectly unaware until the moment.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And like we've all had multitudes of these moments where it's all of a sudden like this massive down, it's like where shit clicks and you're like and all this stuff installs and then your life changes because you can't unsee it then.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_04: You can't unsee it.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what this reality shines, right?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: This is where the internet shines.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: I have such a love-hate relationship with social media.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because I really hate it, but I also really love it for these moments, right?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: And my sourdough.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And sourdough.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel like how many of it, like how many women, especially that are, you know, 35 plus that are hanging out in this perimenopause, menopause stuff, like how many times are we told that dissociation is actually hormones, right?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like the brain fog and the paralyzed mind and the feeling stuck and the headaches.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like so many women when they come to us.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how many clients have told me, like, I wish I did, I wish I had a dollar for every client that has told me that once they did the work, all of these quote unquote hormone issues that they had went away.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not that there's not hormone issues, it's both, right?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: But hormone issues driven by what?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: And PS, your liver has to metabolize all those hormones.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when your liver is clogged with anger, grief, fear, you know, all the things.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's all so you can't separate hormones from trauma, from grief, from it's all connected.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: So what's it look like?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, our Thursday episode, our VIP episode on Thursday, is going to be supportive of this concept, right?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: This sort of coming home concept.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: But what's it look like for women to start slowly chipping away at this?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: It happens over and over again, right?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like we still have these aha moments here on this team.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: So there's no one and done.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's no one and done.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: But what's it look like to, I guess there is a tipping point, I do think, in a healing journey, right?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Where you're more grounded than you are dissociated, or you're more home than you are away, or would you say that any differently?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we're sort of aiming to get to that tipping point.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or you at least have more awareness.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I said to people.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is a lifelong journey of healing and doing parts work.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: The difference, though, is now it's like when I have a part that I know needs to be worked on, I have such insane awareness about it and I don't let it get me down the rabbit hole where I'm just for days like ruminating on terrible thoughts or overthinking, right?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the difference.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like now when the part comes out, I stop and I'm like, oh, this part needs attention.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we just work on it and we move on.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because the more you shove it down, the more you're ashamed of it and you stay in that shame loop.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna keep you stuck right in those parts.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so fascinated.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to really squirrel here, like big squirrel, like the biggest squirrel.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like this squirrel lives in an alternate reality where there are only large squirrels and people are little, anyways.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um what in this reality from a daughter.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's a book.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's a book right there.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like that show The Miniature Wife.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: That new show, The Miniature Wife, where he shrinks his wife.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't watched it, but I've been seeing a lot.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, go ahead.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: What platform is it on?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, I don't know.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: Fascinating.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: I will be so curious in our next 50 years.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: I fully plan to live to 100.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: So in our next 50 years, to watch the health outcomes in the world, but especially in our country, because as we've started to have these conversations on the tiki-talkie about embodiment, somatics, dissociation, suppression, the people who choose to continue going down the path of dissociation, please don't come for me with this, but I just mean generally like the pharmaceutical path.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying the pharmaceutical path is wrong.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: I still have and use and appreciate pharmaceuticals on a weekly basis, but I just mean like all in on that path versus the embodiment path, the being able to be in one's body, the be able to feel one's feelings, the ability to do this sort of somatic embodiment work to see the bifurcation between those sort of two paths, because they're not, they're, they really diverge.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the more we do all this and then we go to the doctors, and then they say, like, oh, what happened to your medical diagnosis?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's gone.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and that's what I experienced, you know, and I've said that before on the pod is yeah, you know, the issues that I used to have with dense breast cysts, the issues that I had with my interstitial cystitis with my bladder condition.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not presenting for any of those anymore.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all of that is gone for my body because I've been able to regulate my nervous system and be able to, you know, reduce stress and all of that good stuff.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the feelings that you feel, you're you can tolerate them now, right?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to escape your body in order to sit with your feelings.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because that's what would happen, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: The nervous system would experience an emotion um and tag it as something present time traumatic, but it's like feelings are meant to be a very normal part of our everyday experience, and they're not meant to be traumatic every day.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm somebody that spent most of my life dissociated.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: So all of my dissociation queens out there, like, I'm your main girl.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like I and I even said to Don, like experiencing things in personal life right now where I have really big feelings, my tendency has always been to dissociate or drink.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: That has always been my go-to, right?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, but now it's like now the anxiety that I feel or the angst I feel inside is because it's my body calling me to sit with myself, which is crazy because normally, you know, so now my body almost gets at me when I'm not sitting with myself that much.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I crave that groundedness.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I crave the stillness and the quiet, which is wild.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's so wild because I never used to crave that before.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which is what we saw happen with J-Lo and her young self.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: At the top of the episode.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: God bless Jenny from the block.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: I love that music video.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: This is also what happens in EMDR therapy, right?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Joy sent me a reel earlier last week, maybe Miley Cyrus and her EMDR session.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, mm-hmm.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, what happens also is integration, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then Yeah, and then IFS cleans up whatever isn't integrating.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: So cool.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: But I met a new part this weekend, and it was so fascinating to now I pick up on it, you know, like I'm like, oh, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, okay, okay.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: And being able to sit with it, recognize it, understand it, kind of dive into why it exists or how it became or like all those things.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's really powerful and it's also very liberating because now I can specifically speak to this part that I'm at this weekend.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like I had known about her, but never really had really messed her in the halls.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, um, I had known about her, and I but being able to like see it in action in real time and like immediately understand what was happening inside of my body, understanding the feelings and being able to sit with it and see her and love her so clearly that she did the best she could until she knew better, and now she's learning better and proceeding accordingly.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Does that make sense?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it actually turned out it was, you know, it was a it was a mother part.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: It actually turned into something so beautiful on the flip side, like walking through her and sitting with her in the aftermath.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: It was it wound up being probably one of my favorite moments from the weekend.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth it, ladies.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's the awareness, right?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think the IFS, like people that talk about it, like the difference that it makes is because so many women come to us and say they think they're crazy or this is the way they're always gonna be, or they don't know why they're anxious.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't explain why I'm just like this.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like to realize your cycles and then to be able to call it out and look at it from a place of curiosity and calm rather than spiraling for days or weeks, like, oh God, yeah.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: So if this is something you struggle with, my dear ones, Art Thursday VIP episode will just help sort of ground into this work to support those parts of you that have been exiled and felt inaccessible.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: So join us over there in Cocoon VIP.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: And if you are not yet in Cocoon, what are you waiting for?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: We are so excited to connect with you, to spend time with you, to chat with you, to give you free shit.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: We just want to do the thing with you.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: So come on in.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: Link is in the show notes.com.