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52. Using Law of Attraction to Navigate the Two Most Important Stages of Divorce Grief · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, this is Dawn and you're listening to Dear Divorce Diary with my coach, dawn, where we explore the post-divorce life and you, the woman who lives it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We cover everything from trauma during and after divorce to feeling like a stranger in your own life and the new frontier of life as a single woman.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: We're cozy in for the conversations we've been longing to have about this new life.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, we are going to talk about all things stages of recovery and healing today, and this is such an interesting episode to plan for you because, oh my goodness, it occurred to me I don't know why it took so long that you have a lot of interest in the stages of post-divorce life.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Right, you want to know what are the healing stages, what are the stages of recovery?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: how long does this take?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: what's the fastest way to do it?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: what's the hardest part of it?
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: is there a cycle to the recovery process?
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: which stage is going to be the stickiest?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And so when I really got in touch with what you're looking for about stages and I started thinking about how I would talk with you about it, oh my goodness, my head exploded and I got really excited.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And now I have to tell you.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: So, when we think about stages, what immediately comes up for me is you want to plan something, right, you want to know what's coming.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Congratulations.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: That makes you very human.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: So do I, and so so much of what Brene Brown has taught us about the urge to control and predict our lives is that when we are able to control and predict something, it takes some of the vulnerability out of it, right, it makes it hurt a little less, it makes it a little less uncertain, it makes it a little less scary, a little less raw.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So when you're asking all these questions about stages, there is a very useful tool to knowing first comes this, then comes that, because then we know if we're on the right track, we know if we're progressing.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: We don't have to use as much energy in kind of working through that uncertainty space, right, if you know.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: After summer comes fall, and after fall comes winter, and after winter comes spring, you know.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: You know what's coming, and it doesn't alarm you when it arrives.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: When you know that a caterpillar starts out tiny and it munches and munches and munches, and then it all of a sudden disappears into its little chrysalis before it emerges into a butterfly.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: When all the caterpillars are gone one day you're not alarmed, right, because you know, oh, they're hiding in their chrysalis.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, when you hear someone talk about, like we did earlier, pushing hormones inside of your 28-ish day cycle and some days certain hormones are higher and some days certain hormones are lower, and all of that leads to a particular cycle within your body, then when, all of a sudden, you know your mood shifts or your cravings shift, it's not alarming because you know what's happening, right?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about these stages, but I'm going to frame it for you so that you can put this knowledge about stages to better work for you, right?
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: The purpose of these conversations is always to allow your healing process to be more efficient, because you have way too much on your plate right now.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So we want, when you come here and you spend your precious time here, we want it to shorten your healing journey, we want it to lighten your load.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And so, while we want to do the best we can today, to say okay, and then this is what you can expect, what we actually want to do today is sort it out.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: You know your Tupperware drawer, your Tupperware cabinet, when it's super messy, and then you reorganize it and it feels like you literally conquered the world.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: That's how I want you to feel today.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I want you to feel like we reorganized your Tupperware cabinet so that, as you're moving through the stages of recovery and healing, you have a clear path and a clear strategy and you know what to do and you feel some ease around that Right, make sense.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we've established that you have a lot of questions about stages, because you want to control and predict, because it's going to lighten your load to a certain extent, it's going to make the journey a bit easier.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: But the thing I want you to really tune into when you are moving through the stages of divorce, healing and recovery is how you feel.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: We know you're feeling a lot of shit, right Grief, anger, frustration, overwhelm, fear, insecurity.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Right, we could go on and on about what you're feeling, but I want you to notice on any given day, are you feeling those feelings but you're in touch with gratitude?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: or are you feeling those feelings and you're in touch with feeling a bit sorry for yourself As you move through the stages of healing?
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: these are your key indicators.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Are you doing it knowing you are in tune with a power greater than yourself and you are on a road to the most amazing life you've ever had, and you can see it through the lens of gratitude.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Or are you so steeped in resentment that you can't see the benefits of this process and it feels so unfair to you and you're so disempowered that in your grief you can't even find a sparkle?
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Those are the two stages that I want you to be the most keyed into The grieving with gratitude stage or the grieving with disempowerment and hopelessness stage.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Now, it's kind of oversimplified, right, but the reality is is that at any given moment in a day, we are either in solution, which is in touch with love and in touch with possibility, and in touch with power, in touch with God, however you want to call it, or we are in touch with our inner victim And she feels like this isn't fair and like she can't do it and like it shouldn't have gone this way, and that there may not ever be a good life for her.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And so can you feel the difference, as I call it, your inner victim versus your inner optimist.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: The part of you who feels acutely the absence or the cut offness from love, or the part of you that feels like love is possible In Gipsy languages may not be in touch with it right now, right, but but that you are aware that love exists, you believe in love, you know that love is possible.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: It's just not the season you're in right now, right.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: So feel your way through that And, girlfriend, it can change from moment to moment, like literally moment to moment.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: But those are the two stages grateful and victim, and and at each stage of this process you will experience both quite frequently, and the goal would be to move further and further into the direction of grateful optimist who's just kind of slogging through some shit right now, versus the other darker space.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Now, fun fact Abraham Hicks, whom I follow very closely, who is an inspirer of mine, talks a lot about the law of attraction, manifestation and how to create a life that you absolutely are in love with.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Abraham and Esther Hicks put out this emotional scale that you can find and maybe we could link it in the show notes, maybe we could stick it in this blog post, but in this emotional scale it really helps us understand if you can imagine the keys on a keyboard or a piano right keys.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: She laid out all like a lot, not all the emotions, but a great deal of emotions ranging from the lowest vibrational frequency.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: We could call that the lowest music note on the keyboard.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: It's a very low tone, it's heavy, it's dark, it's haunting, and that is grief and hopelessness.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So love the thing that you're feeling right now.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It is very low on the emotional vibrational scale.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: And then she listed all the emotions, all the way on up to joy or bliss, at the top of the emotional scale.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Now what is valuable for you to know about that is that when you are functioning primarily from the lower end of the emotional scale, you are attracting a lot of lower end emotional scale things to you, and when you're operating primarily at the upper end of the emotional scale, you are primarily attracting positive, joyful things to you.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Now, the tipping point between the lower end and the upper end is the, the between boredom and contentment.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: That's the tipping point, right.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And so as you move through these stages of shock, overwhelm, grief, rage, disappointment, jealousy, each of these has a particular frequency, just like a note on a keyboard would have.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: That is either lower or higher, and it is either moving you in the direction of the optimistic, grateful woman or moving you lower, into the direction of the kind of helpless, powerless victim.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Now I understand that, the way I'm describing this has you throwing hatchets at me that you're like screw you, dawn, i'm not a victim, but I kind of feel like one, but I don't want to be one.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: But crap, did you just call me a victim?
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I know, i know I do it too, but the reality is is that the root of most of our suffering in life is victim consciousness, the root of codependency, the root of drama, the root of suffering, the root root of stuckness.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So you know, when you're Googling those stages because you want to know if you're on the right track or not, if you sense you're stuck love, it's because somewhere, victim consciousness has snuck in there and you're functioning on the lower end of that emotional scale in this place of I don't think I can, i don't think it's possible, i don't think I'm loved, i don't think I'm worth it, i don't think anyone's looking out for me.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: That's all very cut off from the love of God, very cut off from the beauty that is the world we live in, and it's really with this lens of suffering over your eyes.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And if that's how you're feeling PS, i felt that way this morning when I got mad at my kids So no big deal, okay.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: But if you're stuck there, i want you to know that your mind is lying to you.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: We have been told a lot of things through the course of our lives that our minds have grabbed onto and have carried as truth along the way.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But when you are coming from this place of hopelessness and helplessness and feeling like love is not possible for you, your mind is lying to you, and that is the thing that is so important to change when you are really working on healing through the stages of divorce, recovery is saying okay.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Somewhere Someone said did you know?
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's a backstreet boy song.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I wonder if producer Joe could confirm this for me.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Is it backstreet boys?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Love comes to those who believe, or is it in sync?
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: It's one of those boy bands, oh, is it?
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, but it's also in a boy band song, okay, but, but this is the concept, right?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Is that love comes to those who believe?
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And so part, you know, part of this stage's journey of healing from divorce, at least if you did it the way I did it, which you don't have to but I definitely went through a stage where I stopped believing in love, and I hear this from a lot of my clients when they're absolutely heartbroken.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: And and if you've listened to some of the podcast episodes about healing your heart, you will hear that when we're in a heartbroken state, our heart is literally protected, our heart chakra is closed off, that there is a metabolic thing that is happening in our body that is causing our heart to literally be energetically shut down, and that there are many ways that we can support that heart opening, whether it's through supplements or homeopathic remedies or essential oils, or through meditation, or through EFT tapping or EMDR therapy.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: But that's the thing when you're in a grief process and you're hard to shut down and you're disbelieving in love, don't hang out there too long, because that stage is going to cause you to attract more negative things, which then is going to reinforce the idea that love is not real, that you are not safe, that good things cannot come to you, that all is fucked Pardon my language.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So I want you to notice that little interplay that I'm describing there that when you're on the lower half of the scale, probably experiencing some level of victim consciousness, that you're then attracting more pain to you, which then reinforces your negative belief.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: There it is, dawn.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: We're right back at negative beliefs, yup, and so at the core of this message is love is completely possible, it's completely available to you.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: You are pure magic.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: You are and always will be a part of God source, energy, universal abundance, flow, state.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: You cannot remove those things from you.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: You can cut yourself off from them, but love, you are always a part of a power greater than yourself.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And when we're in a victim spot, we can't feel it, we can't tune into it, we are blocked off from it.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And so when we get down into this and we say, okay, i want to know what the hardest part of healing from divorce is.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I want to know what the most painful part of healing is.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I want to know what the most painful stage is.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: It's any time you're in a spot where you are cut off from God's love and you are actively afraid that love is not available.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: It is not possible for you.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: That is a fully entrenched victim consciousness that has lost hope, and that is always going to be the most painful stage.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And what I want you to do from their love is to get curious, because nobody can force you to change your mind about that, and it's coming from a sense of being betrayed, either by a person or a set of beliefs Right.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Part of the betrayal that I experienced in a post-deforce life was feeling not just betrayed by the institution of marriage but by the belief systems that had me believing in the institution of marriage, by the parents who taught me the belief systems, who told me that there was one person out there for me.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: And then I made this deal with myself that I would never get divorced.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And then, oh, ps, i did So.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I'd betrayed myself at the beginning, the middle and the end, right.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: So a lack of belief, hopelessness.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: It comes symptomatically as a result of all these betrayals.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: But don't call it what it isn't.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Don't call that series of betrayals that love doesn't exist.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: That's what I did, right.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: That's what I see my clients do.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I see them experiencing the pain of betrayal and then say love doesn't exist, it's not out there for me, it's not possible, i can't, it hurts too much, it's not safe, i'll never do it again.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: That's a dangerous spot to be in, because, a it hurts like hell and B it's going to attract a bunch of crap sandwiches to you and it's going to keep you stuck there longer.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: So if any of this is resonating, okay now.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: What do we do Now?
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: what do I do, dawn.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Now, it's a tricky thing to tip up on the emotional scale, to start moving with some momentum in a different direction.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Right, i'm just kind of staying down at the lower end of the keyboard in that heavy kind of you know lower note space.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: How do you start to move up towards happiness when everything feels so heavy?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: How do you do that?
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And the reality is is it takes a lot of believing in the power of choice.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: When you believe in the power of choice, when you believe that you have the choice now that's the game changer right there.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: All it takes is to believe in the power of choice and then to get curious about how.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So when you believe that you are accountable for you are responsible for moving up on that emotional scale and you are responsible for healing your life, and that your best life is absolutely going to come as a result of you getting intentional about your choices, now it's just like well, how do you want to do it?
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do it by looking at pretty flowers?
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do it by doing some EFT tapping, finding the perfect homeopathic remedy?
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do it by listening to an awesome song that makes you feel really good.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do it by taking a walk?
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do it by watching a sunset?
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Like once you believe in the power of choice.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: You have infinite choices to start to improve your mood and your mindset and to get intentional about how to heal your heart.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Do you want to listen to this podcast, a different podcast?
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Do you want to listen to comedy?
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: instead of all this serious shit on all these podcasts?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's time to turn the podcast off and just turn on some comedy, right?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do it by completing the journal prompts with the super cool, perfectly picked homeopathic remedies I already outlined for you in the post divorce roadmap, like how do you want to do it?
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of it is, once we're like oh, i get to choose.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: So how I'm currently doing it is I'm going to extended fast, because Dr Mindy Pelts has been teaching me about fasting in my hormones And so I've been tracking my hormones on a different level to know when to fast.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Because I want to inject my body with stem cells in a way that my body knows how to do it on its own, so that I can improve my mindset and my mental clarity and my capacity to think clearly.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I want to improve all of those things.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: So currently, how I'm doing it is through fasting, because that's what's got me lit up right now.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: But what's got you lit up right now?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: that's where you get to be on the adventure, where you get to follow the clues and figure out what new thing falls in your lap.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: That gets you excited about the process of being in charge of your life.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Because, let's be honest, being in charge of your life can feel really intimidating.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: But when you know and you believe that it unlocks all of the best things, that it is literally how you architect your best life is through a series of your choices, starting with what you think, what you feel and what you believe, that's pretty powerfully motivating.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Right there, and as I was preparing for this episode, i was saying to producer Joylike man, there is a lot of stuff in here where I'm going to piss some people off, because what I'm implying is that you are completely accountable for what you are experiencing right now, and that is enough to make anybody angry.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: You know, when I was recovering in the earlier days, i used to say you know, i didn't choose this path, i didn't choose to be born to these parents.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I didn't choose this particular path of trauma And I don't want it.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: And you need to change.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I don't need to change, you need to change.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: But the reality is, is the path that you are on right this moment?
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: this moment you are in the process of choosing And you are in this moment because of series of choices you made.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Now, very often, we end up in places because we weren't intentional about our choices, we just allowed a bunch of things to happen without intervening on how we were thinking, how we were feeling or the choices we were making, and also because we believed things that weren't necessarily true.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I have done it.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I've made a lot of choices in my life because I believed things that weren't necessarily true.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I believe that if I was a good girl, good things would happen, but that's not necessarily true.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And so when we get clear that we feel really, really justified in doing a lot of things that are actually hurting us, we feel really justified to eat a lot of foods that are hurting us.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: We feel justified to watch a lot of screen time and to be addicted to a lot of things that are hurting us, like alcohol, drugs, scrolling We feel really justified to do these things and love you are and I do them.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I do them right alongside of you, and so I'm not beating either of us up about that right.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: But when we get clear that when we are functioning from that place where we feel justified to do the things that are hurting us, we are on the lower end of the scale, we're operating from victim consciousness and we're going to attract more pain, then we know which stage of healing we're in.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: We're in the stalled out stage.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Now when I say, okay, i am going to get really intentional about what I put in my body, what I put in my mind and how I live my life, and I'm going to focus on what feels good and I'm going to focus on the people around me that are here to support me and who love me, and I'm here to support myself and I'm here to love myself and I'm going to go do 10 things today that feel happy, joyous and free, even if it's only for a moment.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Now I'm on the productive growth gratitude end stage of healing and that is going to make crazy amounts of progress.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Now we're all going to backslide right, like we backslide all the time, just like I said this morning, when I was upset at my kid because I was feeling kind of bad about myself, because feeling bad for myself because she didn't listen, when I was feeling bad for myself, i backslid down into frustration, into feeling entitled to her doing what I say all the time and I was angry.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: So I was down on that lower end of the emotional scale and I was not in a place where I was really grateful or joyful.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: And I was able to get there.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: A little bit later I was able to say to her you know, kiddo, i struggle these same struggles, i do these same things right.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: So I was able to start to tip up towards optimism.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I was able to start pointing out to her how everybody in life has to overcome these kind of negative habits and negative tendencies and that she's no different than me or anyone else, that she's in class with right.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I was able to point out to her how we really are all in this together and then I felt kind of connected and felt less angry and I felt hopeful and see, so that's the key when we coach ourselves into higher frames of consciousness, more optimistic ways of thinking, and that's how we do it.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: But it takes time and it takes consistency in you embracing some pretty intentional positive habits, and that takes time.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: And then when we backslide, the key is to not beat ourselves up, because when we're beating ourselves up now, we've toggled temporarily back into that victim place.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: So if you've ever heard anything to do with the victim triangle, it's when we dance around the three points on a triangle between victim, rescuer and persecutor.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Now if you're on one point of the triangle, you're doing all three.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: There are some great articles out there about this.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: There's certainly one on one of my websites and, oh gosh, victim triangle stuff is just so good.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: It's also called the codependency triangle.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Same points of the triangle drive codependency, victim rescuer and persecutor.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Now when you think of persecutor who are the persecutors in your life?
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you think of The people who make your life harder, the people who criticize you, the people who come down on you.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: When you are coming down on yourself, love, you are being your own persecutor.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: You are functioning in a victim triangle space with yourself.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: So when you backslide into lower levels on the emotional scale, no big deal, don't beat yourself up, say hip, hip, hooray.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I am human and now I get to make a different choice.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I get to work on tipping up into the other stage of healing, which is the optimistic stage.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: And so when you're thinking about the healing stages of divorce recovery, i really want you to break it into two stages the victim stage or the grateful, optimistic stage.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: And when you notice you've slipped into the victim stage, i want you to coach yourself up.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: And if you can't coach yourself up because you're too low, that's what I want you to put on something that coaches you up a podcast, a meditation, a uh, glennon Doyle's book, um, a comedy series.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I want you to put on something that lifts you up and helps you remember that we can do hard things and that the more consistently we do them, we accomplish amazing stuff.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Because you have every bit of that power inside of you.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Love, i know it Like I know anything.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I believe in you so much.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: You've got this Peace Dear divorce diary is a podcast by my coach, john.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: You can find more at my coach Johncom.