Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 148. Confidence After Divorce: 2 Self-Care Practices Every Woman Needs

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148. Confidence After Divorce: 2 Self-Care Practices Every Woman Needs · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi love, building a life of confidence after divorce is one of the top desires that I hear from women.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It's one of the things you talk to me about most often in my DMs and email and in session with clients.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: But there are two elements to true confidence that are sort of divorce-proof right.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: They're kind of like life circumstance-proof elements to truly building confidence and I don't see women using those two elements consistently or reliably.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: In fact, rarely do I see women using these two essential elements to building confidence and instead what I see women using is this other tool that we'll dig into.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: That leads to false confidence and when you have false confidence, divorce shatters.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: That completely shatters false confidence.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: And that's how you and I felt feel, right In this bathroom floor, crying divorce overwhelm.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: What have I done to my life and how am I going to dig out of this moment?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So today we're going to unpack the two elements that you must be digging into to build an actual, true life of confidence, kind of the idea of, like, building your life on a foundation of stone versus a foundation of sand.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Right, we're going to talk about the way that I see most women building confidence, at least up into the point of divorce, right?
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I think that when women come to me, this is where I say like, hey, you need these other two things, let's swap this out.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And then we're also going to hear from Beth, who writes in about how she, in this post-divorce situation, has social anxiety and freezes up sometimes when she's speaking with people, and we're going to help Beth take a look at how we can apply all of these concepts about confidence to move out of the freeze response in social anxiety.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: You know, you could totally relate to Beth, right?
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Like where people are like, oh, and how are you and what happened?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Or then they don't say those things and you just imagine they're saying those things and you're like, anyways, you get it right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So let's dig in.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: What are the two elements to building true confidence that you have to be using in order to kind of have this dream life that you envision for yourself when all of this is over and you've moved through it, right?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: So when I think of confidence, I automatically am aware of so much kind of neurotic self-doubt and anxiety that gets in the way, right?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: What other people are thinking of me and the stories that I tell myself about things that I've said or I've done, or you know, overthinking and replaying the things I've said and done and finding holes and, oh, I wish this and that right.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And it's just like all this kind of neurotic self-doubt.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And then I think to myself, well, how can I clear that out of the way?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Right, because, gosh, we know that when we're people pleasing and we're kind of looking to other people for approval like one person could approve of one thing and then the other person could completely disagree it's like, gosh, where can I find a solid sense of well-being, of belief in myself and the world around me?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: And that's where we have to first look is where can I find a solid sense of self and well-being?
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And for that we have to look to what's capital T true.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: What's capital T true is a hot topic, right, because in modern culture, with social media, with media in general, it doesn't have to be social media, with media in general there are a lot of opinions about what is true, and, gosh, in this day and age, we are in an uproar with each other defending what we each believe to be true.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And so, without digressing into polarizing topics, we do have to find a firm foundation from which to understand life and ourselves.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And so I'm going to oversimplify it.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: But for me, and from my experience as a trained therapist, as just a human who has suffered and has grown through suffering, is that there is a higher power, there is an organized creator of this world we live in, and from that higher power or the order of the universe, right, there is kind of a prescribed, there's an order, there's an organization and there's a way to kind of see and understand and be in align with that higher power.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Right, we can sense it when we feel love or joy or when we're learning.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: We can sense it in nature that there is an order and an organization and a rhythm to things, that there is some really intricately created stuff in this universe that we can't kind of wrap our heads around.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: We study it and we try to wrap our heads around it, but, gosh, it's glorious and beautiful and remarkable, and we can kind of see how, through the history of time, humans have built philosophies and religions around, you know, a higher power and organized creator, and we can see themes around, whether it's ancient forms of relating to God or a higher power or more modern ones.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Right, I kind of low-key love learning about various religions and philosophies, but I have found a lot of peace in seeing the overlapping messages between, for instance, messages between, for instance, ancient principles in yoga, the 12 steps in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon and the Bible, for instance.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Right, like there are a lot of texts that are written on the core, or the similarities in the writings and teachings of Jesus and Buddha.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Like there are some widely accepted, regardless of the walk of life that you come from.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Right, there are some widely accepted ways of relating to a higher power and saying that we are not in this alone, that there is a greater organization and that the mission or the purpose that I have been called to here in this you know I'm a spiritual being having a human experience is connection, is love, is, you know, relationship is to ideally build a life of abundance and connection and growth and meaning from being with other people and being in alignment with a creator, an intelligent creator.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: And so when I first sit and I say like, okay, if I'm going to look at, have I been living my life in touch with an intelligent creator and do I believe that that's true, and have I been living from a place of there is an organization to all of this, that there is an intelligent creator who loves me, who wants to be in relationship with me, and have I been nurturing or fostering that relationship?
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I think some of us would say sure, in places I feel really good when I'm in nature, I feel really good when I'm in a relationship with someone who loves me well and doesn't judge me, that those places feel really, really harmonious.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And it's easy to kind of imagine, when you're standing on the edge of beauty, natural beauty, like, oh yeah, this is, you know, I know what's true in this moment.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Right, but when we get in our houses, in our jobs, in our cars, in our little, you know, concrete boxes, we oftentimes lose touch of a true creator.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: When we look around the world and we see suffering, we say how could there be an intelligent creator?
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: And so those are massive loops that we're not going to open and close right now.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: But to really build true confidence, there has to be an unshakable foundation from which to build it.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Confidence there has to be an unshakable foundation from which to build it.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: There has to be an identity and a purpose in something that cannot be shaken by popular culture, right, in order to really have a sense of well-being.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: So that's the first thing is how you're doing in terms of your spiritual identity, your sense of well-being in relationship to a divine, intelligent creator.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: That's the first element of confidence, because we can talk ourselves in or out of anything.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Love, and I know, you know that, right, he loves me, he doesn't love me, he loves me, he doesn't love me.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: You know, it depends on which pedal on the flower you're pulling at the time, right, and it's like, oh, he loves me.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: We really have to have, we have to be able to tie it back to something deeper and more meaningful.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: The second element of confidence that is essential is to have a working understanding of all the places in life.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: You have picked up, accidentally, you have picked up negative beliefs about yourself, and this is an essential element.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: When I became an EMDR therapist, this was an essential element of the training.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: When I talk about doing the subconscious work, this is the essential element of doing quote unquote subconscious work right, is understanding that, as very young children, we are egocentric.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: The world revolves around us, right?
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And as we have magical beliefs about whether it's Santa Claus or fairies, or that our parents are perfect and they're not actual flawed people, that we also can have equally negative beliefs that get internalized.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Have any of y'all seen the new Inside Out yet, where we see Riley as a preteen and they teach us about identity and they teach us about negative beliefs inside the new Disney Pixar movie Inside Out 2, it's magical, right.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So, as young children, when painful things happen, we internalize those as, oh I did it, it was my fault.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: When we get in trouble for certain stuff, oh I can't be myself, or oh, I'm not worth it, I don't matter, right, we get dumped in middle school and oh, I'm not good enough.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: And you know, riley in Inside Out it was some, you know, when she started experiencing anxiety adjacent to puberty.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: You know, anxiety leads her to the belief that she's not good enough in hockey and as a friend, and you name it right.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: So we just, this is a byproduct of living, right.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: We get all up in our egos and we start to internalize negative beliefs and they are me, me, me, I suck right, I can't trust, I can't express my feelings, I can't let it out, I can't get what I want, I can't trust anyone, I'm in danger, even I'm going to die.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: And so if we don't have a sense of which negative beliefs are running our lives and we don't intentionally swap those out at a subconscious level for positive beliefs, then we end up living life from that place of negative beliefs and those are absolutely going to take out your confidence.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And so, without switching the negative beliefs to positive beliefs, it's pretty impossible to build a life of actual, actual, true confidence.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: If you don't believe I am worth it, I am lovable, I can learn to trust people, I can be myself, I can express my feelings, I can get what I want, I am safe, I am smart, I'm attractive, whatever it is right, if we don't have these positive beliefs rooted kind of deep in our subconscious mind, then confidence is always going to be just like a fleeting thing.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Now that leads me right into the false confidence that we tend to have been operating from pre-divorce and PS.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I think divorce is a magical season to really get busy swapping out these negative beliefs into positive ones, because it's a moment in time where we're so aware of right, where we're just kind of at the raw baseline of how we've been living up to this moment.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful time to be doing this work.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: It's right on the surface and ripe and ready to transform.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And so where we've typically been doing false confidence from up into this point is getting our confidence from things like approval from other humans.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: My mom says I'm great, therefore I'm great.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: My partner says I'm great, therefore I'm great.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I feel pretty today because I have a new outfit and this makeup is on point and therefore I'm great.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: My partner says I'm great, therefore I'm great.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I feel pretty today because I have a new outfit and this makeup is on point and therefore I'm confident.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I am really good at baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie and therefore, you know, when I gave those chocolate chip cookies to my neighbors, they loved them.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I am winning at life, right.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Those are all great things and they're really good feelings.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: But the problem is is that when our confidence is dependent on some sort of performance, role, skill or appearance, when my role as wife ends, when my role as mom transitions because my kids grow up or go to their dad's house for the weekend when my role as employee or sister or youthful glowing person ages out right, I'm screwed because all of those things are circumstantial, they belong to certain periods and times in our life.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: They belong to certain moments, certain performance-based skills, and none of those things last forever.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Love, right, like none of those things last forever.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: They're roles, they're temporary.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: They're not grounded in a stable identity or a higher power.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: They're not rooted in necessarily a purpose-driven life or a spiritually purposeful-oriented life.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Right, they're kind of like skin-deep things.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And that's not to mean that they're not valuable or that I don't pursue any of them, lord knows.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I love being the best at just about anything I tackle.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Who likes to do something that they don't feel good at?
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: So I love to say like, ah, you know, how can I?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: How can I create the best?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Whatever.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: But I can certainly see, looking back, how, when I'm alone at night and I'm feeling anxious or insecure about whether or not I've I am loved by certain people in my life, right, making the best chocolate chip cookie, it doesn't sustain me in those moments.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: It's not sustaining in terms of that.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: When I look at it I'm like, oh no, I'm sure right that I'm a good person and that I'm lovable and that I'm worthy in the dark of night.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And so we have to start exchanging these kind of flash in the pan moments of I look younger than the next woman, my blonding is prettier than the next woman, my performance statistics at work or on this podcast are better than the next one, right?
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Those are all just skin deep moments that are not going to help you actually build a life of confidence after divorce, and if you don't transform those things, then you end up attracting a future partner based on the same way that you attracted your last partner, and the divorce statistics for second and third marriages just go up and up and up.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I also think that, in terms of teaching future generations, we have a job to do as women to teach our children and our children's children's generation how to really have a strong sense of worth and identity that's built in something deeper than social media.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I think that it's brutal season for our children, right that?
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Having a sense of what's capital T true, and knowing how to live from that place, knowing how to shift a negative belief into a positive belief, those are invaluable skills.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: And so how do we actually implement that?
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Well, when we identify a negative belief, how do we actually transition it into a positive belief?
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: We can use EFT tapping, we can use EMDR.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Homeopathy doesn't necessarily swap a negative belief into a positive belief, but what it does is it removes all the blocks.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: It removes all the resistance to being able to shift it.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: It kind of unblocks energetically so that it just becomes really easy to say like, oh, now I get it and connect the dots and kind of carry on Like oh, now I get it and connect the dots and kind of carry on.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: So many people that you hear talk about somatic release or somatic processing, they're always tying to it this kind of shift from a negative belief into a positive belief.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: When we do immersive journaling, you know there's something.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: When we talk about affirmations, right, these are all the process of embracing positive beliefs and releasing negative ones.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Now, very often we have to do that at a subconscious level because these things got internalized at a very young age and you don't necessarily have to pay a bajillion dollars to a healer to have these things done.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: This is why, in the Loneliness Roadmap, I specifically provide you with the tools to identify the negative beliefs and to use bilateral stimulation to stimulate the brain in the way that you get into the subconscious mind.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: So, love, I highly encourage you to empower yourself to learn tools like EFT tapping and bilateral simulation to learn how to identify your negative beliefs and switch them into positive ones.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Beth for a moment and her social anxiety.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I know you can relate to that feeling of being frozen in a social situation.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Beth says I'm tired of having low self-confidence, somewhat, social anxiety and freezing up sometimes when I talk.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: How do I overcome this?
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And so if, beth, you were sitting here with me in the office, I would say to you look at my handy dandy list of negative, positive beliefs and tell me which one lights up your body when you read it or when you hear me say it.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I can't be myself, I can't express myself, I'm not good enough.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: These are common ones around social anxiety and freeze I'm not lovable.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: One that I've had to work through many, many times is I'm too much right.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes we think of a negative belief as like I'm not good enough.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: But oftentimes my negative belief was I'm too much right.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And so these are the negative beliefs that when you read through them and one lights up in your body, then you have a very clear roadmap love for what to start reprocessing, desensitizing, and what to reach for that you would want to reach for, and oftentimes it's not.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: It doesn't feel available to internalize a positive belief until you've desensitized the old one right, until you've processed the old one at a subconscious level and removed all the energetic blocks to it, because the mind likes evidence, and it's going to give you all this evidence of why what you sense is true is true, even though it's not right.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It's just an internalized negative belief.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: So let's say, your negative belief is I'm not good enough and I can't be myself.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: We would want to reach for one that says I am good enough and it's safe to be myself.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: That's going to be hard to believe until we've processed the things blocking it, but that is the work to do, and it can happen pretty quickly, believe it or not.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Now it happens in layers, but very often, after just a handful of EMDR sessions especially when I pair it with homeopathy we start to see massive shifts in how people view themselves in the world around them.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Same thing with EFT tapping.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: It's typically, though, about consistency, right?
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: How consistently do you use these tools, and how dialed in are you to the actual problem and solution.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: So really being able to identify that negative belief that's causing you to freeze when you have that freeze response, that's a nervous system.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Alertness, right, that's a nervous system saying, ah, there is a threat I'm perceiving in my environment.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: If I say the wrong thing, what's going to happen?
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get rejected.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And then what's the worst case scenario?
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: From that rejection, I'm alone, I'm lonely, I'm helpless.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Right, like what?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: What?
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Follow that down that rabbit hole, right?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: If I say or do the wrong thing here, what am I afraid is going to happen?
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: What am I afraid that says about who I am as a person?
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: So, beth Love, I want you to find the negative belief that you're suffering from and I want you to reframe that into a positive one and I want you to get that into your subconscious mind in a meaningful way.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: So in today's episode you have heard me talk about how we all want true confidence, right?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: We want divorce-proof confidence.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: We want to feel so good about ourselves and we want to be able to trust our decisions.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: But very, very often women are relying too heavily on external validation and approval from other people and other roles and skills and experiences, rather than the two elements that are essential to true, unshakable confidence, which is a sense of commitment and awareness and understanding of a divine higher power that has given you a purpose here in this life, and also shifting your negative beliefs into positive beliefs.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about how you can work with me to shift these negative beliefs into positive beliefs, send me a DM that says tell me more and I will give you all the juicy details about the program that we are currently enrolling in order to help you really claim this life of confidence after divorce.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: So send me a DM or an email, my coach, john.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: You can find more at mycoachjohncom.