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How High-Conflict Divorce Hurts Children — And How to Help Them Heal & Feel Safe Again | David Marcus · Bent Not Broken: Starting Over After Divorce | Post Divorce Life

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to another episode of Bent Not Broken.
0:04
SPEAKER_02: Heartbreak and trauma may feel like the end of your story, but here it's the beginning of a bold new chapter.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Coach Deborah Griffiths, and this is the space where women rise, rebuild, and rediscover their purpose.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: Remember this truth.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: You are bent, not broken.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: Divorce doesn't just change the lives of the adults involved, it affects the children caught in the middle.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: When conflict between parents escalates, children can experience anxiety, loyalty conflicts, emotional withdrawal, and in some cases, even parental alienation.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: Today's guest, Dr.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: David Marcus, helps parents understand the emotional impact high conflict parenting can have on children and what families can do to protect their well-being.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: Drawing on years of experience helping families develop healthier communication patterns, Dr.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Marcus teaches parents how to create a safe environment for their children, even when divorce, co-parenting challenges, or blended families are part of the picture.
1:21
SPEAKER_02: In this conversation, we explore how conflict between parents shapes the child's emotional development, the warning signs of parental alienation, and practical tools parents can use to support their children through difficult family transitions.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Bed Not Broken, Dr.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: David Marcus.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Deborah.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate your having me on.
1:49
SPEAKER_02: How does ongoing conflict between parents affect children emotionally and psychologically?
1:58
SPEAKER_01: There's your 30 minutes right there.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: First of all, you have to understand that children are exquisitely in tune with how their parents feel.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: You can pick up an infant, and if you're 10, still start to cry.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: It's just part of the biology, I guess you'd say.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: So parents, they may try to hide their conflicts, but it doesn't work.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Their children can really read them.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: And just with young children, it's just the tension in the house sometimes that they need to get away or the yelling.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: I've seen many children between three and six, for instance, who just run up to their room and shut their door so they don't have to listen to their parents yelling at each other.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: I had a little girl who was four, and she is in my office, and we started talking about parents yelling, and she went like this.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: She covered her ears.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: She couldn't tolerate the question because she was so used to the yelling.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: And children will just withdraw.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: They don't want it.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Children, young children especially, experience their emotions extremely intensely.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: The temper tantrum, the things they feel and what they need to help them learn to tolerate those intense emotions and eventually develop a common emotional language with their parents to use words to describe their behavior rather than just acting on it behaviorally, like with the temper tantrum.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: They need what I have termed a soothing presence.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: A soothing presence in its simplest form is someone who's okay when we're not.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: When you think about the people that we turn to when we're upset or have something heavy on our heart, typically certain people, friends or family, but invariably these are the people who are okay when we're not.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: So why do we turn to people like that?
3:44
SPEAKER_01: Because we can get things from in here where they're intense, out here in their soothing presence.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: And we can, the term I use is especially with parents with children, I use the term, they borrow your okayness for a while.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Parents come in and I explain a soothing presence to them, and they say, What do you mean?
4:04
SPEAKER_01: I say, if you came in just now and you told me what was going on, my reaction to you was, oh my goodness, I can't believe you're going through that.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: That's a terrible thing.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: You might look at me like, this guy's weird.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: And then you'd say, How can he help us?
4:17
SPEAKER_01: And it upsets us.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm a soothing presence with the parents and the children that I see, and the individuals that I see as well.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: And I use the term a soothing presence rather than a soothing person, because to get to the high conflict, this is where it relates.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: So you can't be a soothing presence if you're all conflicted yourself.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: You can't be a soothing presence if you're fighting with your spouse or have financial pressures or job difficulties or anything like this.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: All you can really do is react to your kids rather than respond to them.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: That's a soothing presence.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: So I'll talk to families about lifestyles sometimes.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: And in high conflict situations, they cannot communicate.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: They simply cannot.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: Everything is, oh, here we go again, and they start to fight.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: And I explained to them that this affects your children.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: One of the things I talk to parents about is a process called internalization.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: And what that really means is almost learning on a subconscious level.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Children take things in on this unworded level.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things they take in is how to react to stress.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: Their parents, if they yell and scream, that's what the children will internalize.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: This is how you deal with stress.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Or in cases of physical abuse, you learn that when you internalize that when you're stressed, you aggress.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: And this is the reason why children who are abused as children, excuse me, when they grow up, they'll swear up and down and sideways.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: They would never do to their children what happened to them.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: But in moments of extreme stress, because children can all of a sudden blow up, they regress.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: They regress back to these internalized responses and they hit.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: They may regret it 10 minutes later, but now it's been passed on.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: Because it's a learned behavior that they've seen that is how you deal with those situations.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: We got to understand, learned implies that it's worded.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: I learned this, but it's internalized and without words.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's an important distinction because people react and not know why.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: They don't have the words for it.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: Supervisor of mine asked me once, I was in graduate school, what is psychotherapy?
6:54
SPEAKER_01: Which is, of course, a loaded question for a psychology student.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: Psycho and help people, the typical things that we say.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: He just shook his head like this.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: He was the head of the clinic.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: He said, No, David, no.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: Therapy begins where the words run out.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: That really struck me.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: When people tell you what's going on, they come to the point where they say, I do this and I don't know why.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: Or I feel this way and I don't know why.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: Does that sound normal to you, Dr.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: Marcus?
7:24
SPEAKER_01: That's what I make notes on.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: And I say, This is where we go.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: And I tell people, if you could figure it all out, just give me the nice logical explanation for what's going on, you wouldn't need to see me in the first place.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
7:35
SPEAKER_01: You'd have it all picked up.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: And that makes them feel a little better realistic.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Hey, there's something there.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: I just need some help in understanding.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: Now, to get back to divorce, high conflict is that this is what happens.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: What people do is they become filled up.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: And I'll get to the children because this will happen, this will be with them too.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: And what do I mean by that?
7:58
SPEAKER_01: We have an emotional space within us.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: It's a psychological space and we point to our heart.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: It's connections in our mind.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: Most of the associations in our mind are emotional, not logical.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: And so what fills up this space is intense emotion.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Intense anger, fear, apprehension, anxiety, depression, whatever it might be.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: What I explain to people and what your audience wants to understand is what happens when you get filled up.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: It's uncomfortable.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: It feels very intense and sometimes scary because we don't really understand why we're feeling so intensely.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: So what do we do?
8:36
SPEAKER_01: We focus on how we feel, we focus inwardly and try to do something about it.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: We may get it off our chests, we may journal, we may go for a run, we may watch TV and hurt ourselves, but we're focused inwardly.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: So therefore, we're not focused outwardly.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: So when we're filled up, we don't really hear what people are saying to us.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: The best example is blinding rage.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: And high conflict parents have this blinding rage.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: When you're that angry, you're pretty much blind to anything that's going on around you.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: You can get the most cogent, obvious, logical explanation, calmly given for why you shouldn't feel the way you feel.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: What they pick up is the 5% that supports how they're feeling.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: And they get angrier or more depressed.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: And the person who's trying to explain it scratches their head, what's going on here?
9:32
SPEAKER_01: And finally it goes to, I can't talk to you.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: It's like talking to a brick wall.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: From there on, we get the conflict because now they're both expecting a conflict.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh oh, here we go again.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: And so they're immediately filled up, both of them.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to be heard, you listen to me.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: No, you listen to me.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: No, you listen to me.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: The louder you get, the more filled up.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: And we take this down the line here.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Now you have a high conflict family.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: They're so immersed in their own problems that their children go begging as far as needing to be attended to.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: Now, notice I use the term attended to rather than attention, because attention connotes negative attention.
10:18
unknown: Okay.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: I use the term attended to because in order for children to internalize, it's say a soothing presence, you need to attend to them.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: In order for them to learn a language rather than just act on their behavior, you need to attend to them and help them develop this emotional language.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: Self-esteem is a matter of mirroring emerger experiences with their appearance, and you need to attend to them.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: Children go begging with this.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: And you have to understand it's not that they want the attention or to be attended to, they need it.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: So what happens?
10:50
SPEAKER_01: I explained there's a difference between a want and a need.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: You may want a new car, but you can't afford one right now.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: So you make the one last a little longer.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: A need is like air, food, and water.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: And what happens if you don't have air for three minutes or food for two days?
11:06
SPEAKER_01: Does the need go away?
11:08
SPEAKER_01: It intensifies.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: And so you all you can think about is that next glass of water.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: Same thing with emotional needs.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: The child can't get them just by gently asking or doing whatever they do to get attention, it'll increase the need and they'll use something more graphic, more obvious to get attended to.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Then we get into the bad behavior.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: They'll hit their brother just to get attended to by my parents, and they think their brother's getting more attention than they are.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: Things like, and the ironic part here is that's why I hate the word attention in this negative attention thing, I'll tell you the truth, because psychology 101 behavior modification, which by the way, does not work, but don't tell anybody that, is the fact that they say, ah, negative.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: I have to give a consequence so they don't do it again.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't work because the need is where I ignore the behavior, tell them to go up to their room, whatever it is, they're not being attended to.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: So they'll just get more and more blatant with their behavior.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: And you off the ante now, I'll punish them for three days.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: The only message the child is getting is not, gee, I did wrong, I should stop, because they can't stop.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: They need this.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: The message is mom is mean.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Dad, all he does is yell.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: I can't talk to them.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: Now you've got a real situation, and this affects the children.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: You're asking me about the children all the time.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: They take on a role that could be the role of the placator.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: They try to make their parents okay because young children need their parents to be okay if they're going to be okay.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: That changes in tweets and teenagers where they don't care how you feel.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, the placator, the pleaser.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: There's another role that's very common.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: The mediator sometimes.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: They try to get in between their parents.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's I call it a not me situation because they can't develop themselves.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: They have to play a role.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: This is a true anecdote.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: I saw a young man when he was 10, his parents were always fighting.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: They were divorced.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: And he took on the role of the pleaser to protect his younger sister from the anger between his parents.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: I worked with them.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: He came back to me 13 years later.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: He's now grown.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: He's smart, he's got a good job, but he's in a relationship with a very high maintenance woman who keeps demanding more and more of him.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: And he keeps trying.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Dr.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Marcus, I feel empty.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: I feel empty.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: And as you realize you're playing the same role with this woman that you played with your parents, the pleasure.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: The emptiness is that you never had a chance to develop yourself, a sense of yourself.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: His eyes went this big, and he went, You're right.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: You are absolutely right.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: I forgot about that.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: He got out of that relationship, he found a nicer, more soothing, better relationship.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: They got married, they have a child, they have a house.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: Now it really worked.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: And all he needed to do was understand what he had internalized to.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: You answered one of the questions about the long-term emotional impacts on children.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: And you gave that good example of that man that you saw at 10, and then saw him 13, 15 years later, and that missing piece you knew right away from having gone through that early experience with him.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: But that's one case.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: Kids caught in the middle of these high-conflices, they're going to have some long-term issues, correct?
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: And how do they end up recognizing that it's from that childhood trauma?
14:58
SPEAKER_02: So they're going to come into adulthood, they're going to hit a brick wall and wonder why they're hitting that brick wall, going back to that high conflict divorce.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: I've given you two examples.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: One, the young man who was the pleaser, the not me role.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: And the other is these internalized responses.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: That's the long term, also.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: Like I explained about the abused child becoming an abusive parent.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: And the other side of this, which is much happier, if the parents can become a soothing presence and how to do that when you're co-parenting, we can talk about that gets internalized.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: And in children, when they get the emotional language, they can feel comfortable talking to their parents.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: How many times have you heard a parent say, Don't hit your brother, use your words?
15:43
SPEAKER_01: You can get there by being a soothing presence and knowing how to be a soothing presence.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: Or get into the emptying out part of it.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: But you can't do that part without being a soothing presence.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's an important lesson for couples going through a divorce, is to realize the impact that they could be making on their child and learning to become that soothing presence for their child.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: They're dealing with some conflict themselves.
16:17
SPEAKER_02: There's a time and place, and put the kids first, in essence.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: Of course.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: And the parents may be well intended.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: Couples, they're either sent to me by the court, not my most pleasant thing to do, but okay, that's true.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: But they're truly there because they don't want their kids to be impacted.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: Unless you have a narcissistic parent, and then they don't care.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: But another topic altogether.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of conflict cases because one or both parents are narcissistic, I have to tell you that.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: When a child can take in the soothing presence and they can begin to soothe themselves, that's called resilience.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: That term is bandied around to mean a lot of different things.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just giving you my definition.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: Resilience.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: When they grow up, they can still be resilient.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: They can handle their own things and they use their words and they have the language and they find themselves a soothing presence, and that's who they end up marrying, for instance, because they can relate to that.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: In adulthood, do you know what that's called?
17:14
SPEAKER_01: Stress tolerance.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: If you don't get that, if everything stays internal, children at first, it's all internal.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: They need to learn the language to get it out and have a soothing presence do that.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: If they never get that, it stays internal.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: A temperatant in a five-year-old expect that because they don't have the words, they haven't developed it then.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: But a temper tantrum in a 19-year-old is jail time.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: Sometime in between, they have to learn how to use their words.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: This is a major part of parenting.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: When you do this correctly, the child will learn from their own experiences and know what to do the next time it happens.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: That's resilience.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: It's called wisdom.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: Been there, done that, know what to do the next.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: And that's a lifelong process.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: You have to process your own experiences in order to do that.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And you're setting this up by having a soothing presence, a soothing environment.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: Now, the parents who don't get along, how can they do that?
18:24
SPEAKER_01: I tell the parents we have to pre-divorce and post-divorce, custody, pre-divorce, and if they're still living in the same house, it's very difficult because they're just at each other hammering tongues.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: They try to live totally separate lives, but their kids know there's so much tension in the house.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't do anybody much good.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: But I know that's legally that you can't leave because then you're abandoning your children.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: There's all this legal stuff.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: I've done a lot of custody evaluations and so on.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you this.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: But what I tell parents post divorce in their co-parenting, what you're trying to achieve with your ex now is indifference.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: I think, what indifference?
19:08
SPEAKER_01: I think no.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: What all relationships are love-hate relationships?
19:15
SPEAKER_01: You can see this in little children.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: One minute they can love you for giving them a little toy, and five minutes later they're screaming at your age.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: People get confused by this because they think love and hate are totally opposite emotions.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: If there was a scale of emotions, one would be love and ten would be hate.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: That's a fallacy.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Love and hate are actually closely related emotions.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And this really applies to high conflict cases.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: One phrase: you can't hate somebody you don't care about.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Comes up to you and says, I don't like you.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: You care.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: If your best friend comes up to you and says, I hate you, you might get mad or sad because you're important.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: So I tell him, you're trying to achieve this state of indifference where the other person's maybe a mild irritant.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: And indifference means your emotional connection with this person is now over.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: All you talk about is children's schedules, medical school, whatever it might be.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: And they try to suck you into a lure the boundary.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: I call it a benign boundary because you're not sitting there yelling at them.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: You just don't respond to it.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: If they try to suck you into an emotional conversation, you say, that's not part of our relationship anymore.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the kids.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: It's a hard boundary sometimes because there's unresolved marital issues, like the divorce.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: The hardest thing is you need a good attorney.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: Both parties need a good attorney.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean by that, in my view?
20:44
SPEAKER_01: There are three kinds.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: The man be pan be one, which will give away the whole ranch just to settle the thing.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And then somebody feels cheated.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: There is the other extreme, which I call the legal eagle, go for blood, stalling tactics, whatever they can do to suck more out of the opposing party.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: And then the good ones are the middle ground ones, maintain the integrity of the family.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: So you come to some sort of mediated agreement sometimes, there's a collaborative law sometimes.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: There's things that you can do.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: And those are the ones I try to refer to.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: But you need two of them.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: I recommend attorneys, these are reasonable people, and they'll tell you exactly what you can expect and what you can't expect.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: So you need that because the damage done by three years of court, going back to court for$100,000.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: I tell people, you keep doing this, you keep butting heads like this, all you're doing is spending your kids' college money.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: That's all you're doing.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some divorces go on for two or three years, spending literally$100,000 going to court every three months because of some little disagreement.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: Now they have parent coordinators.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Get these people off my docket, please.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Some psychologists do this.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: Any little thing.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: They go to the parent coordinator at$300 an hour.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: It still is going to cost you a lot of money.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: So what you're trying to achieve is this benign boundary.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: You communicate if you have to use Family Wizard or something non-intrusive.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: At transitions, don't get into it.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: As parents, sometimes unresolved things get brought up right in front of the children.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: Don't do that.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: Establish your own life, your own emotional life.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Get your own soothing presence so that you have somebody that you can talk to and gain a safe emotional distance from this person.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you'll see them at sports events and the school playing.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean you have to sit with them, doesn't mean you have to even talk to them.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: They try to engage you in something that's tense, you say, that's not part of our relationship anymore.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: Or if they keep going, talk to my attorney.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: Don't get into it because you have to be okay if your children it's really important.
23:04
SPEAKER_02: How can parents communicate with their children about divorce in a way that is honest but still emotionally safe?
23:12
SPEAKER_01: We have to talk about how honest you can be with children.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: How you present it is very important.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: The first thing they're afraid of is when am I going to see my mommy?
23:34
SPEAKER_01: When am I going to see my daddy?
23:36
SPEAKER_01: So before you sit down with the children, it's better to do it together.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Before you sit down, you should have at least a temporary visitation schedule.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: That's important.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: Your children are going to be sad, angry, they're going through a mourning process.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: They're losing their nuclear family.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: They don't know what to expect.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: The uncertainty.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: No, they're going to stay in the same house, same school.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: The more predictability you can give them, the better they'll be.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: And notice my tone of voice.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: You don't say mommy is this or daddy's that, and that's why we're getting divorced, because that puts them in a divided loyalty situation.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: And now one parent's going to say one thing, other parents going to say something else.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: Who do I believe?
24:26
SPEAKER_01: Who do I defend?
24:28
SPEAKER_01: I can't talk to these people because they're both upset.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: Children are very bad at keeping secrets, especially young children.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: Teenagers are great at it, not young children.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: And they can't go to daddy and say, I had a really good time, but mommy did this because that's going to upset daddy.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: And they pick it up.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: Same thing in the other direction.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: So who do they go to for?
24:47
SPEAKER_01: But don't tell your daddy.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: Children are lousy at keeping secrets and they shouldn't be put in that position.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: All right.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: That's really stressful.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: Or another one.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, you tell your mommy doesn't really come out.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: Daddy says this, and mommy gets all upset.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: It's a delose situation.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: You get into these not me roles and the children are really impacted by it.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: So one thing that the children have in their favor is they have the ability to what's called elasticity.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: Elasticity is this.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: If they can't get their emotional needs met from one source, they can transfer them to another.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Uncle Billy Grandma.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: I was seeing a 15-year-old, very smart, and he wanted to go live with his grandma for the last couple of years of high school because his father was totally depressed.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Mom was enabling him, and he got nothing if he did something wrong.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: And his grandma was a soothing presence.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: She would listen to him.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: She would help he realized what he needed.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: It's right there.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: So this is also a benefit for young children because of elasticity, don't have any problem having two mommies or two daddies when people need somebody.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: That's daddy Fred, and that's daddy Frank, two houses.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: They can adjust to that.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: They have a problem because they want their parents, they need their parents to be okay if they're not okay.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: If daddy Fred says, Frank's not your parent, I'm your parent, there you go.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: The kids put in a bind.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: So I have to hate Frank to please my daddy Fred.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: This is where parenting of the nation starts coming into the picture.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: When they get serious enough, the child has to side with one parent.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: In order to do that, they have to unside with the other ones, the total problem.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: All right.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: It's called reintegration therapy.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Judge, for sending them to Dr.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Markins because this is the hardest therapy I've ever tried to do.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't work, although I'm admitting I'm not God's gifting this type of work.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: It's a struggle.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: And the struggle is very, there's a pattern here.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Typically, one parent's doing the alienating, the other one's being alienated.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: The children who are siding with the alienating parent and the alienating parent have absolutely no motivation for coming into treatment.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: They are winning.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: They have to be court-ordered.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: And you think they want to be there?
27:21
SPEAKER_01: You don't think the alienat parent's going to sabotage anything that you do?
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Good luck with it.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: And I've had some really tough cases like that.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: It was one case that was so bad that they actually put the mother in jail.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's really rare.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: The parent that has been alienated, and I've had that experience, it's painful.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: To say the least.
27:49
SPEAKER_02: And it's really hard.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: You were talking earlier about being that calming source.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Soothing.
27:56
SPEAKER_02: Soothing source.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: It's really hard for that alienated parent to be that.
28:03
SPEAKER_02: But I can only encourage to try your best to be that soothing source for your kids, because one day it will pay off.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And it does.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: You're absolutely correct.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: What happens, and when I tell parents is time is on your side when it comes to this, because as the child gets older, they become more aware.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: And when they get into the tweens, they're beginning the process of individuation, which means it's individuating from their parents.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: And now that they begin to look at their parents, sometimes they're an idiot, but at least they're backing off and judging for themselves what's going on.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: They're not geared just to please the you.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: So what happens then is the parent who's alienated can go, mom says this.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, has that been your experience with me?
28:49
SPEAKER_01: What do you make of what mom told you?
28:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, Dad.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe I've done it sometimes.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
28:58
SPEAKER_01: You try to get them to insert their own experiences rather than just what they're being told from mom.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: You see what I'm getting at?
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Matt's very consistent with thinking for yourself.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: Dad, that's right.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: Mom shouldn't say that about you because you've done this and you've done that.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: What she's saying is not right.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: The fact that you can figure these types of things out really shows me that you're growing up.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: You know, any tweener teenager, that's exactly what they want to hear.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: This is what growing up is judging for yourself.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: Learning from your own experiences, not what mom's telling you or what I'm telling you.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: So time is on your side.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: With younger children, it's a lot tougher because they're stuck in the middle.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: The message or the pleaser, the, you know, and this type of thing.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: There you just try to find them a soothing presence.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, grandma, they have elasticity.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: Maybe a therapist, whoever is that counselor.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: They need something.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And I try to make the parents this way, of course, that's my job.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: But they can't do it.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: If they can't reach that stage of the difference, kids are really stuck.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: And these high conflict divorces, or even maybe it's not a high conflict divorce.
30:10
SPEAKER_02: Do you recommend like family therapy or at least having the kids attend therapy to help work out some of these things?
30:18
SPEAKER_01: Or it depends on the age of the child.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Like this 15-year-old boy, I could see him by himself and then I talk to his parents, but he wants to talk to himself.
30:26
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: So that's a little different.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: But other than that, I never see children without seeing their parents.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: Unless it's a case of abuse.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: If a child is being abused, I'm not going to sit there with that parent.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to get that child out of the house.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Um a therapist.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: I see people once a week, maybe once every other week.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Me seeing your child every week or every other week is not going to make the difference.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: You, the parents, are the agent of change.
30:56
SPEAKER_01: I am temporary.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: The idea of coming to see me is to learn from me what your children need, what you need, and how you can communicate with each other.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: And once you have access to your children, because you've now made it safe for them to talk to you directly, not through me.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: So I tell parents the idea of coming to see me is to get rid of me.
31:17
unknown: Okay.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: Get rid of me.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Once you come to me and say, This is what my child's experiencing, this is what they told me, and this is what we I talked about it with my ex, and we both talked to the child, and he seems to be okay now.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: Have a good life.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: Come back to me when your seven-year-old is painting their fingernails black and spiking their hair.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay, then we may have another conversation.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: If you could give every divorcing parent one piece of advice to protect their child's emotional health, what would that advice be?
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Get a resource.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: If you've been going on for years with this high conflict, you're not just going to resolve it yourself.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: You're going to need not just a mediator, but somebody, a therapist, a family therapist who can say, this is what's going on.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: This is what you internalize.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: This is where you regress to.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: And Dad, this is what you internalize and you regress to.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: And this is why you get filled up and you fight.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: I tell them about emptying out process.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: Emptying out, like I said, people get filled up.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: They can't hear you.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: So obviously the implication is you've got to empty them out first before they can even hear your logical explanation of anything.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Emptying out is not the same as catharsis.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: It's not just getting things off your chest.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: All right.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm going to explain why I mean that.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: Emptying out has to actually come from three different sources of emotional intensity.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: And all three need to be emptied out.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: The most superficial one is the here and now.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: And we have lots of words to be able to explain the here and now.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: And the example I typically use is the simple one.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: You need to take out the garbage.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: Now we have lots of words to describe why you need to take out the garbage.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: It's your chore, the man's coming tomorrow to pick it up, it's beginning to smell bad.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: This is the seventh time I've asked you to take out the garbage and you haven't done it.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: Now, obviously, the asking is going to be much more intense the seventh time than the first.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: But if you were an observer who did not know the history, you say, what's the big deal?
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Why are you getting so upset?
33:16
SPEAKER_01: So they didn't take out the garbage.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: The logic begins to break down.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: The deepest level is the tapped into level.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: The fact that you didn't take out the garbage after I asked you seven times means you don't listen to me.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: I hate when people don't listen to me.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: My parents wouldn't listen to me, and my brother always got away with murder.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: And this one can go anywhere.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: And on this level, sometimes there are no words.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes things are internalized and they just come up.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: That's my job.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't expect parents to go into finding the words.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: But in any case, all three levels need to be emptied out.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: By the way, we when we're chilled up, we have terms for it.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: I've had it up to here.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: Straw that broke the camel's back.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: So this isn't a strange thing to be filled up.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: Stepping out when they say things like, you always do this and you never do that.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: Now they're referring to previous events.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Tell me about that.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: Maybe this has happened before.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: Tell me about that.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: The deepest hope is, boy, I really hate when this happens.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the word hate.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't give you the sense of it.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: I feel it in my stomach.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: I feel it in my head.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: Even that's helpful, right?
34:24
SPEAKER_01: Because they're using words rather than just feeling it inside where it stays intense.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: The person who's listening, dreams and presence is mirroring.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: You're mirroring directly.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: You don't sum up, you don't give your own stuff, you don't give the solution.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: You simply mirror back what you hear.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: So the person realizes that you're listening to them and you're taking them seriously.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of this, you say, What you heard, is that it?
34:48
SPEAKER_01: They say yes.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: Now they're emptied out.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is, you say this based on how you see it, no wonder you feel the way you do.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a very important line because what you're doing, you may not agree with what they're saying, but you're honoring their perception.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And what you have just done is show them a common word called respect.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: When somebody feels that they really listen to and taken seriously, they feel respected.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: That's really important with anybody, especially with teens.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: The next is notice the qualifier.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: The qualifier is this, based on how you see it, because you may see it totally different.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Now is your turn.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: Look, based on how you see it, no wonder you hit your brother.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: He was being a pain, he reset your the Nintendo and you were in the middle of a.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: But my job as your parent is make sure that you're safe, that you're both safe.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: So what can we do?
35:45
SPEAKER_01: It's called a merger, to make sure that I don't have to come down on you again or punish you again.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: What can we do about the situation so it doesn't happen again?
35:56
SPEAKER_01: Now you come up with a resolution.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay, when I'm playing, he'll have his own time and I'll have my time.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Learning from their experience and coming up with something.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: Now, with a teenager, if they come up with something, you have a 10 times better chance that they'll actually do it than whether you tell them to do something.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: That's just the breed.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole thing on adolescence that we're not going to get to today.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm giving you the gist.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: And in my book, Parent RX, it goes through parents as child says, parents says, child says.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: I give actual examples at different ages and different situations, and I annotate and say, This is what you're accomplishing.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: And I get very specific with the verbiage.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've noticed I've been very specific with what you actually say.
36:34
SPEAKER_02: You have.
36:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: And believe me, it took me years to think about how to do this.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: Last thing, the question, why?
36:43
SPEAKER_01: This is the most common question that parents ask their children when they misbehave.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: Why?
36:48
SPEAKER_01: Why did you do that?
36:50
SPEAKER_01: Why do you feel that way?
36:51
SPEAKER_01: And usually you don't get an answer.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: Especially with young children.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: I'd learned this from seeing hundreds of children, and I see their reactions and that question.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: I finally realized this.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: This is how a child interprets that question when their parents are upset.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: They can see you're upset.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: That's why you're asking why.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: I am upset with you.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: This is what the child's mind is.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm upset with you.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: So give me a totally logical explanation for this totally illogical thing you just did so that I feel better about you.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: I challenge you to answer that question.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: Child doesn't know what to say, or they'll change the subject, or they'll say, I don't know.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: And the parent says, Don't understand that because it's a logical thing, and they get angries.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: Now the child's even more afraid to say anything.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: This is a vicious cycle.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: There's better ways to ask it.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: Something made it happen.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: Something made you hit your brother.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: The word something is neutral.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: Something is making it tough, is another phrase I use.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: And parents should use this with their children.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: Something's making you sad, something's making you no tough because it's tough.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: You want the child to define the word.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: Are they sad?
38:01
SPEAKER_01: Are they angry?
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Are they desperate?
38:03
SPEAKER_01: Let them define it.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the word desperate.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: What is desperate here?
38:09
SPEAKER_01: Because the meaning of the words, if you do this correctly, you'll develop a common emotional language with your child based on their experiences, not on your own.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: That's very encouraging for children.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: I've had one boy came up with, when my mom yells at me, I get volcano mad.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: And so, what does she do that's just a little annoying?
38:32
SPEAKER_01: When she makes me eat my peas, I just get a little mad.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: So after that, when he's telling me something about being angry, I said, Was that volcano mad or he smiles big?
38:41
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm relating it to his experiences.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: A common emotional language.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: Actually, couples need to develop it.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: Any couple that's good to have their own language.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: We know they have their own, almost private language sometimes.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: This has been a very interesting conversation.
38:57
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned your book.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: What is the title of the book again?
39:00
SPEAKER_02: And how can the listeners get a copy of it?
39:02
SPEAKER_01: The book's gonna come out.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: The title of the book, I'm gonna give you the whole title because it's a long one.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: It's Parent RX.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: Parent RX, like there's prescription.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: And the subtitle is Prescriptive Wisdom Tips and Strategies for Communication with Your Child.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: Now I have a website.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: I've done a number of these podcasts explaining different pieces of this and the emptying now process in more detail.
39:29
SPEAKER_01: If people are interested, they can go to my website, which is parentrx.org.
39:34
SPEAKER_02: Can they pre-order your book on your website?
39:37
SPEAKER_01: Not yet.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: I'll let people know.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: It'll be on my website when you can.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: If they need to contact me, Ds Marcus, D S M A R C U S P H D at ParentRx.org.
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SPEAKER_02: All right.
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SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much for having me, Deborah.
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SPEAKER_02: Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
39:54
SPEAKER_02: This has been a very interesting conversation.
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SPEAKER_02: And whether you're in a high conflict divorce or not, there's a lot of nuggets on just being that soothing presence for your child and helping them become the best version of themselves as they grow.
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SPEAKER_02: So I love this conversation.
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SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: It's been a pleasure.
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SPEAKER_01: You take care.
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SPEAKER_02: You do.
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SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to today's episode of Bent Not Broken.
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SPEAKER_02: I hope that this episode reminded you that even through life's toughest moments, you are bent, not broken.
40:36
SPEAKER_02: If this message inspired you, please share, rate, review, and subscribe, as it helps us reach more women who are ready to rise and rebuild.
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SPEAKER_02: And until next time, keep living bold and walking in your purpose.