Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / Creating Peace in the Uncertainty - of separation, divorce or life afterwards

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Creating Peace in the Uncertainty - of separation, divorce or life afterwards · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate, a podcast covering all things relationships, separation, and divorce.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: How to create healthy, happy, fulfilling relationships without sacrificing any part of yourself.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Supporting anyone feeling challenged in their relationship or marriage.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are confidential conversations for you if you're navigating separation, divorce, or reorganising life afterwards.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Decide whether to stay or leave a relationship or marriage, divorce with less drama, and consciously choose what's next for you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Warren Tree people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this land.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this week's episode of Reflect, Reclaim, and Liberate.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And by that I mean the uncertainty if you're still in a relationship, questioning it, wondering about it, asking, should I stay, should I go?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: The uncertainty of separation, divorce, and of reorganising life afterwards.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this episode is prompted by me kind of reading, revisiting a quote that has since been sitting in my brain, going over and over.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that is if your peace depends on everything going right, that's not peace, that's control.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know who said it first, I can't attribute it, I can't attribute it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, but it's been circling in my brain and in social media for a while now, and I keep coming back to it because of all the people I work with.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: People in the middle of separation, those trying to co-parent with someone they're not sure they ever really knew very well.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um people rebuilding a life afterwards, even one that they didn't really ask to rebuild, and this really cuts to the point of what they're experiencing, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: If your peace depends on everything going absolutely according to plan, everything according right, that's not actually peace that is control.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing about divorce is you are not just breaking down it divorce is not just the breaking of your relationship, right?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It breaks your sense of certainty, your absolute taken-for-granted sense that you knew what tomorrow looked like, and that loss, that loss of predictability, can actually feel really destabilizing.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say more destabilizing than the relationship ending, but that's not quite true, right?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a bit traumatic.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It can feel so destabilizing on top of the destabilization that is the separation, the relationship breakdown itself, right?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm talking about that.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: How to find a sense of certainty, how to find your footing when the ground underneath you keeps moving, how to find a sense of if not peace, then at least some sort of ease when everything feels and is so uncertain.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And first, I want to speak about waiting because we spend a lot of time waiting, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're waiting to make the decision to leave, we're waiting to have the discussion where we make that decision together, we're waiting for the next steps.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to ask you something.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are you waiting?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are you waiting?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's not for anything huge or dramatic like the end of a relationship or a marriage, but are you waiting?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Just waiting to feel okay, waiting to feel better, waiting for something to shift, waiting until all the agreements are made, the paperwork signed, waiting until he or she stops doing the thing that drives you absolutely mad, waiting until the kids are more settled, waiting until the kids are older, waiting until you know what the financial picture actually looks like, or until the future has some sort of shape that you can hold on to, right?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are, if you are waiting, and most of us are at some point, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want just to gently offer you this.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: You might be waiting for a really, really long time.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And now to qualify, to clarify, there is absolutely good reason to be waiting if you're waiting for things like agreements to be finalized, paperwork to be signed, court documents to be submitted, and also there are other elements or other types of waiting that are a little bit more insidious, I suppose is the word.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Separation, relationship breakdown and change, divorce changes lots of things.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it changes your relationship, yes, but it also changes things like your routine or your routines, your identity, your financial reality, your parenting rhythms.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And while you're in the mess of it all, the uncertainty is one constant.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: You feel like you can't plan tomorrow, let alone next week, next year.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And especially if you've got kids together, children together, or some parts of a shared life afterwards, the ground can just keep moving even after everything is finalized, you know, long after the legal stuff, the lawyers have done their part, sometimes long after I've done my part, because you are in the middle of negotiating with, or perhaps afterwards you're co-parenting with or running a business with another human who makes their own choices on their own timeline and with their own version of events, right?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not a situation that can ever become fully certain.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're dealing with another human.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the question isn't really how do I get certainty back?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The question becomes: how do I become someone who doesn't need certainty or absolute certainty in order to be and feel okay?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so let me state something pretty obvious, but that's easy to forget in the middle of a hard season, right?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Peace is not the absence of chaos or even the absence of uncertainty, right?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is where a lot of people get kind of stuck.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: We confuse peace with calm, we confuse steadiness with everything going well and according to plan.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: We think once things settle, I'll settle.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Once he or she cooperates and plays nicely, I'll stop being reactive.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Once I know the outcome, I'll stop maybe catastrophizing and I can start planning.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not peace, that's contingency, and it hands your entire nervous system over to circumstances outside of your capacity to control.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: It gives over that control to something external, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, real peace, and I'm talking about the kind that is actually available to you right now in the middle of whatever it is you're going through.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Real peace isn't about everything being resolved, it's about you being and feeling okay, even while things remain unresolved, are uncertain, and that's a completely different thing.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And something I see constantly, all the time, with almost all of my clients at some point, and that is that relationship breakdown, separation, divorce, even the reorganization of life afterwards often activates this hyper control, the urge to get everything under control.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe it's to get every detail of the parenting plan perfect, maybe it's to show up in a really controlled manner in mediation, maybe it's to manage how your kids are feeling so they don't fall apart, maybe it's to monitor what your ex is saying to mutual friends or family, maybe it's to figure out exactly what the future is going to look like before you can take a single step forward.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: This hyper hyper control.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand it, I really do, when everything feels uncertain, trying to control what you can is a completely human response.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's your nervous system just trying to keep you safe.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is you simply cannot control everything.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I a reframe I offer my clients and I offer you as well.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that using control as your primary coping mechanism or strategy, the problem with that is that you will always eventually come up against encounter something you cannot control, which means you are always at some point eventually going to feel unsteady, unsafe.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: I also need to clarify and qualify here: the there are real such situations where having every I dotted and every T crossed is incredibly important in say documentation and agreements.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody knows what they're agreeing to.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: There is no wiggle room, and in certain situations, this is vitally important to keep everyone accountable.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I'm talking about control or abuse, or even just those exes who, if given an inch, will take 100 miles of leeway.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So don't hear in what I'm about to say or have already said that this type of attention to detail is perfectionism or control.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's about real boundaries and safety for everyone.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm talking here is about is how to be steady when the ground is moving, when so much is outside of your capacity to hold or control, or at times even influence, right?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm going to do is give you five things, five points, five things to think about and consider, and I'm not giving them as steps one to five because this isn't linear, healing isn't linear, but I'm giving you practices, things you can return to when everything feels uncertain.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the first one is accept what is without resigning yourself to it.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Acceptance is probably the most, I think, misunderstood concept in any kind of personal growth work.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to be really clear here about what it is and what it isn't when I'm speaking about acceptance.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Acceptance is not this is fine, I'm fine, I'm okay with this.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Acceptance is not I'm giving up on this.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Acceptance is simply this is what's happening right now.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that distinction really matters, or perhaps more accurately, the reason acceptance creates stability, internal stability, is that when you're fighting reality, you actually create more suffering.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You suffer twice.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you suffer the event or the events themselves, and then you suffer that exhausting, relentless, completely futile fight against the fact, against the fact that the event, the thing has already happened or is happening, right?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: This shouldn't be happening is one of the most painful places you can live.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not because it's wrong, maybe whatever this thing this is for you, maybe it genuinely shouldn't be happening, but it is, and no amount of pushing up against it, anguish changes that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying acceptance is about giving up, making it okay.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Acceptance is about this is, this is what is, and that kind of acceptance gives you a footing, it gives you internal stability.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean it stops being wrong if it's wrong, it doesn't mean you stop trying to change the things that you can change, but it means you stop wasting time, effort, energy going in circles arguing with what is already true.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing, and again, these are in no particular order, right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Second thing is let go of what you isn't yours to carry.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are parenting with somebody, co-parenting, parallel parenting, and we could do entire episodes on this alone, right?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Co-parenting is one of the most profound, challenging experiences or exercises in letting go that exists, right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have these humans that you've birthed, you've brought into the world, and a part of their life is going to now be completely out of your capacity to control.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can't control your ex's engagement with your children, you can't control their emotional intelligence, their emotional maturity, you can't control the way they show up for the children or don't show up for the children.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can't control their parenting style, you cannot control how long the legal process takes or what other people think or whether your kids come home from their other parents' house, dysregulated, unsettled, none of that.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that is what you need to work on letting go because you can fight it, a bit like acceptance, right?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can fight up against it, or you can put it down not yours to carry, let go of what isn't yours to carry.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: What you can control, you can control what happens in your home, you can control your reactivity, your responses, you can control your tone of voice when you're communicating, whether that be with your kids or your ex.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can control your boundaries, the environment you create in your home, the the boundaries, the rules, the container that you work in as a parent with your kids.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can control the healing work, the personal growth work that you do on and for yourself.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you can control with practice your nervous system, your regulation, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And certainty, peace grows in the space between those two things.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you stop pouring energy into the first part, the things you can't control, and you start investing in the second, things automatically start to shift.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to give you a really practical thing.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: If this is something that you're coming up against, that you're finding it hard to let go of what isn't yours to carry.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Get a piece of paper, literally divide it into two columns.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: First one, not mine, second one, mine.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds really simple, and it is.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is also deeply regulating and can be incredibly cathartic.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm really honest, it can be absolutely infuriating.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then if it is for you, then circle back to acceptance and work out how to let go.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you write down two columns, not mine, mine, and spend your energy focusing on what is in the mind column.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let go of what is in the not mine column.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Easy to say, hard to do.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of lots of nervous system regulation and somatic practices probably needed in there too.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, number three, build internal certainty.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because external certainty isn't necessarily coming, isn't guaranteed.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's coming, it might be a long way off.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So build your internal certainty.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Build that rich inner life and connection to self.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a version of certainty that does come from outside, right?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Guarantees, answers, reassurance, knowing exactly how this all turns out, but that can't really be held.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not really.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: A financial settlement, a binding financial agreement, parenting plan, consent orders, that gives you certainty around certain things.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Gives you certainty around your money, gives you certainty around how you or some certainty around how your children will be cared for, when by who that offers some kind of certainty, but it's never absolute, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a different kind of certainty.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: The kind that comes from your inner knowing, from inside.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that you're able to adapt, to move, to change, to shift because you've built that bank of evidence.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: You've built the internal certainty that you're absolutely capable of holding yourself even on ground that keeps moving under your feet.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So look for evidence, build the bank of evidence and build your internal certainty rather than looking for certainty outside of yourself.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, and I've already touched on it across the other three, but it's regulate.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Regulate your nervous system, regulate before you react.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uncertainty activates us, it activates our nervous system.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Full stop.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when your nervous system is activated, you catastrophize, you escalate, you make decisions from fear, you send the email or the text message that maybe you might regret sending the next day.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a state where it's physiologically impossible to accurately absorb information, to absorb information well, even at all, or make sound, reasonable, objective decisions with that information.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you are dysregulated, you can't absorb information, you can't make good objective decisions.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: So steadiness isn't about suppressing your activation.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about pretending you're fine when you're not and pushing through.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's about learning to recognize when you're not, it's about learning to acknowledge when you're activated, and it's about learning to pause when you are, to name what's happening, even just to yourself, to not let the urgency that uncertainty creates around us and within us to push you into action or reaction before you're ready, before you are regulated.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the most powerful things you can do or say in negotiation, in divorce, or when you're working through parenting and life afterwards, and this is something I I work with on with clients all the time, and it is to say to yourself, I don't actually have to decide this today.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to decide this right now.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it is about verbalizing that to another person, to your lawyer, to your ex-partner, to your co-parent.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I need to take some time to think about this.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you the opportunity to regulate and then respond.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wait 24 hours before you shoot the message off, respond to something that's activated you, whether that's made you angry or tipped you into sadness and grief.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that activates you, sit with it.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sit with it, allow that feeling to settle, practice regulating your nervous system, sit with the big decision before you make it.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: You will almost always make a better decision, a better choice when you're not in that fight-flight phase, when you're not activated, when you're not in the group of fear.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Know how that works for you, or know what I should say works for you in terms of regulating your nervous system so that you can bring yourself out of fight-flight fear and then make conscious, objective, smart, strategic, future-focused decisions.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Regulate before you react or respond.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the fifth thing that I want to share with you about creating certainty when everything feels uncertain is to actually redefine what stability is for you, what that actually looks and feels like for you now.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, stability for you might have been two adults, two parents living under the same roof, shared routines, predictable finances, a certain kind of family.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Shape that's not the stability that's available to you right now, but think about what is available to you.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about it a little, I talked about it a little bit earlier.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, emotional consistency, showing up for yourself and your kids the same way every time, predictable boundaries, yours for the kids, for someone else, a home environment that feels calm, even if it's smaller, even if it's different to what you previously had.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a parent who isn't consistently or constantly dysregulated by what's happening on the other side of the co-parenting fence, and even taking kids out of it, if you're not consistently activated or dysregulated by whatever's happening externally, that creates a new definition of stability for you, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: This new version of life, your new definition of stability, even in the uncertainty, might also ask you to let go a little bit, might ask you to embrace near enough, good enough.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to know that research supports good enough parenting, good enough life.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps it's about releasing a hold on some idea or image or story that you had of the perfect life, the perfect family, the perfect parent.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't exist, and releasing yourself from that opens you up to a redefinition, a redefinition, a new version of stability and security.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps it is about redefining what stability and certainty looks like for you in this new phase of life, because I know it from coaching so many people through it.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: If in the in the midst of all the change and all the chaos and all the challenge, you can actually redefine what stability looks like for you, that creates a different kind of security and a different form of certainty, but one that is very often, and I genuinely believe this, it is very often a deeper one because it's grounded in you and not in the circumstances, not externally.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: You become the stability, you become your own certainty, and that's predictable.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to leave you with this, and I want you, I would invite you to really sit with it.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is there perhaps somewhere somehow that you are trying to force certainty right now?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to hang on to it, white knuckle it, and not in a self-critical way, but just a question: is that happening for you?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Where is it?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something that you are white knuckling, but it's something that you cannot actually hold on to?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what would it look like to be steady and certain internally instead of that?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not absolutely certain because we can't be, right?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not calm because everything outside of you is also calm, but steady, present, okay, even while this is unfinished, or parts of it are outside of your control, even while, right?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because if your peace depends on everything going right, that's not peace, that's control.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the invitation of this season, the hard, maybe unwanted, um, completely real invitation of this season is to discover, find out what you're capable of, how you can best show up for yourself and in your life when absolute control isn't available to you.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is is there somewhere, somehow, something, some way that you're trying to force certainty and what might happen if you shifted that.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: You might be surprised.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you for being here.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, divorce coach and strategist, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim, and Liberate.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching, and if you can think of anyone who would love or benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also be so grateful if you would follow and review the podcast so we can get it in the ears of a whole lot more people just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Until then,