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111. Navigating Boundaries in Coparenting: The Hidden Codependent Mistakes Divorced Parents Make · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi love.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Today we are talking about boundaries in co-parenting with your ex and the three most common mistakes that people are making and you don't even know you're making them.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Love, hi love.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: In today's episode, we're going to dig deep into the nuances of boundaries and the mistakes that you're making without realizing it.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: The first one is understanding the difference between functional boundaries and relational boundaries, and knowing if you're using a boundary in the correct context or if you're making that mistake.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: The second one is not being aware of the specific negative beliefs that are driving your urge to set a boundary or avoid setting a boundary.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: The third one is your tendency to stay in power struggle with your ex because you're actually avoiding layers of grief to do with not just your marriage but your motherhood.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Let's dig in, okay.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So the first mistake is when you're having the urge to set a boundary or you're having the urge to avoid a boundary.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Are you aware of the difference between a structural boundary or a functional boundary and a relational boundary?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Relational boundary is when you have somebody that you're actively in a relationship with your best friend, your mom, your kid, your boyfriend, your therapist there's mutual agreement.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: We are in some sort of a relationship here and something about the relationship in its current form is not working for me.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I need to somehow clean up my yeses and my noes.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I need to get clearer about where I need to say no and where I need to say yes, where I need to lean in, where I need to lean out right inside of an existing relationship Then there are functional boundaries, which are around meeting deadlines, completing projects and kind of the logistics of life right, and just being able to show up when we need to show up and accomplish certain tasks.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That's a functional boundary.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: More times than not, women are trying to set relational boundaries with their ex when what's actually called for is a functional boundary.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Too often we are acting as if we still have a functioning relationship with the ex and that we get to still call shots in those places, either with the ex or to do with the kids.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, one of the things that, as parents in a divorce we have to get really, really good at is accepting things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: So very often you're wanting to set relational boundaries to do with parenting your child with your ex and you don't get to set unilateral relationship boundaries to do with your kids anymore because you only get half a say, because they're only half yours.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: That's a really difficult transition, right?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: So I want you to think about the places where you've been longing to set boundaries or you're avoiding setting boundaries.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Do you have this clear awareness about?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Is it relational, is it structural?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And you need to tease those two things out.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: The next mistake that I really see people struggle with a lot when it comes to co-parenting and boundaries is that there's an attempt to control the situation because underneath there there are negative beliefs.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: You have active and you know if you're a friend of the pod love, you know that I am all about the subconscious work of shifting negative beliefs into positive beliefs, because A bulk load of our negative relationship patterns and behaviors come from internalized negative beliefs, and there are handful that are very specifically driving you to kind of want to control and stay in power, struggle with your ex.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And let's go through a few of these now, very, very specifically, and I want you to.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read through them slowly and I want you to notice which ones.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: You get a zing in your body around, right?
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Because if you get a zing in your body when I read any of these, then you it definitely means you need to take a look at A for sure, re, re, re wiring those in your subconscious mind, but also take a look at where they might be driving you to want to over control or set boundaries with your ex where it's not appropriate.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, so here they are.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I should have known better.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I should have done something different.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I can't trust anyone, I am helpless, I can't get my needs met, I'm not good enough.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: All right, big, deep breath of I'm going to go through them one at a time and give some examples where you might be wanting to set a boundary that is directly related to these negative beliefs.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So I should have done something and I should have known better.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Those are two common ones that we struggle with in a divorce context and so because of that, because we have not fully processed that, we're holding ourselves to an unreasonable standard or expectation.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: We haven't forgiven ourselves, we haven't reprocessed that negative belief.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Right Now, we want to over control, to manage the fallout of this divorce, especially to do with your kids.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Right, there's this tendency to control.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: So, for instance, you know where your ex maybe has not ideal parenting behaviors and they're not, you know, really being attentive to do with healthy food choices or proper medication administration.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Or you know clothing exchange or bedtimes or maybe even substance use.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Right, there is a strong tendency that, if you are beating yourself up and feeling like you should have known better and you should have done something, that you're going to try to over control those situations that you do not have control in and you're going to try to set boundaries that aren't actually boundaries.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: They're either requests or they're actually none of your business, which sounds terrible.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Because this is terrible, because this is your kid and what wouldn't you do for your kid?
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Right, but the reality of divorce and co-parenting or parallel parenting is that we have to accept the limits of our influence when the kiddos are not with you, and that means a lot of letting go and practicing that new skill set.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: All right, what's another one I can't trust.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I can't trust anyone.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: This one is so common in divorce, especially because things like infidelity and dishonesty and substance use and whatever right are often reasons for the divorce and, of course, it feels like you can't trust anyone right, and, quite frankly, the reason you would have picked a partner who you can't trust in the first place probably became from childhood experiences where you felt like you couldn't trust your caregivers or yourself, with instances where there's a lot of gaslighting either in childhood and or in your marriage, there's going to be this difficulty trusting yourself or trusting other people.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And so when you believe that you can't trust anyone, rather than the positive belief that you would want to work towards, which would be I can learn how to trust or you know, with time and effort and right, I can trust other people, just the right people, right when you believe that you can't trust anyone, you are going to be up your kid's ass and up your ex's ass about did they do this and did they do that, and you're going to be very paranoid and suspicious about what is happening with your ex's new girlfriend and you're going to really loop on a lot of things and wanting to set boundaries that are not appropriate to set when you feel like you can't trust.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Here's another really juicy one.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I am helpless, right, and I think with co-parenting that one feels so large and so just consuming, and it's not true, because so much of the things that we feel helpless around it's actually that we need to find acceptance and peace and we need to let go of a lot of things.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: We need to grieve, we need to really need to understand that I can only control what's inside of my hula hoop and not what's outside of my hula hoop.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Right, but helplessness is never real.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: We always have.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: There is always something we can do to improve a situation, but that answer usually has to do with inside of my hula hoop.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And so often, yes, you are helpless to control somebody else's behavior, but that does not mean that you are helpless to positively influence the situation.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: But so often we misconstrue how we can positively influence the situation.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: We don't really understand that we are vibrational frequency driven beings and the higher vibe we have, the more positive we are.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: The more we have dealt with our negative beliefs and our negative emotions, the more we have processed those things, the more we have integrated them, the more we have healed, the more we are going to always automatically positively influence a situation.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: The more we are going to make wise choices about when to act and when to wait, the more we are going to love ourselves and people around us better, the more we are going to attract really powerful solutions, right?
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So you are never helpless, love, but you are always helpless to control somebody else.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: The next one is I can't get my needs met.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Man, oh man.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Is that a negative belief that I have worked on a lot in my life?
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Love, you can always get your needs met.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: If you have a pattern of going to the hardware store to buy a gallon of milk, you are definitely going to reinforce the negative belief that you can't get your needs met.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But that's because you've been shopping at the wrong store for the right item, right?
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So typically this idea of I can't get my needs met, it causes us to subconsciously keep going to the hardware store for milk, and so when we start to reprocess these you know all the events that led to this internalized negative belief we automatically start going to the proper places to get our needs met, which then reinforces oh, I can get my needs met, right, if I'm going within to get my needs met, if I'm going to my higher power to get my needs met.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: If I'm going to my support system who has consistently shown up for me, I'm going to get my needs met right.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: If I ask for help in the right places more consistently, I'm going to get my needs met.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: The final one that we're going to talk about for today is not good enough and the way I see this, showing up a lot in boundaries with co-parenting is to do when your ex gets the new girlfriend and when all the feelings or when your ex is doing Disney dad stuff, right, that it kicks up all those feelings of where you're not good enough either as a romantic partner or as a parent, and then feel all this guilt and shame to do with you know your kids preferred over there or with her, or you comparing yourself to her, or you know financial comparison about what you can provide your children versus what he can provide right, and so all that not good enough stuff keeps you all wound up about wanting to set superficial boundaries with your ex around who he can see and when and where when he introduces her, blah, blah.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: You know like all that stuff and things around vacations and holidays and you know it just gets very, very messy.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: So I know that there is just even enough meat on that bone with what we've just talked about there.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Just know that you starting to address your internalized negative beliefs using things like EFT, tapping, emdr therapy, homeopathy, guided journaling, is going to be a game changer for you, no longer kind of chasing these inappropriate boundaries with your ex, all right.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: The third mistake you are probably most definitely making that you don't realize, when it comes to setting boundaries with your ex in co-parenting specifically, is you are staying in power, struggle with your ex about your kids and about all the things, because you are avoiding grieving.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: You are avoiding grieving and you know a lot of the things that you have to grieve is only having your kids a certain amount of the time, not having control over what happens when you're not around time alone, and grieving your loss of self, your loss of your true identity and not just your role as mom, your shift of identity from wife to just woman.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: The loss of the family structure as it was, the loss of your partner as you envisioned him, whether he was or he wasn't right.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: The loss of the dream of how you thought it was all going to go right.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And so when you stay in power struggle, attempting to set boundaries and then being mad at him for violating them or whatever it is right, you are actually avoiding sitting with these heavier feelings that need to be processed and feeling them, forgiving yourself, forgiving him, finding acceptance and releasing them.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And so the power struggle that you're doing with your ex is a lot of I don't want to feel and I don't want to face, and I don't want to sit with the reality of the current situation.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Now, I don't want you to stay stuck in the reality of the current situation because, girlfriend, I got plans for you.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: You got plans for you, right.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So I want you to be aspirational, I want you to be looking forward, I want you to be making plans for your future self, but I don't want you to be completely bypassing the emotions that need to be processed, because until you process those love, you are not going to find peace and you are not going to attract the man of your dreams, the job of your dreams, the home of your dreams, right.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Those things that you want to manifest require you to process your grief, and so I want you to check that out right.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: How much are you leaning into anger and resentment and power struggle, instead of grieving and allowing your loneliness at night and your grief at night to be your little kind of beacons guiding you towards getting in touch with the truth of who you are and the truth of where you want to go and what you need to let go of and what you need to forgive yourself for.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of information out there about boundaries and co-parenting, and I think that the truth of boundaries is often, especially when it comes to co-parenting, that a lot of your work is really more internal work than external work with your ex.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: If you are going to set a boundary with your ex to do with co-parenting, there is a checklist that I have created for you and we're going to go through that in the next episode.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: But know that you know I really want you to be checking these things out with yourself that if you're going to set a boundary with him, first ask is this a relational boundary or a structural boundary, and am I using the wrong context, right?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Is there a negative belief that I have about myself that's driving this boundary, and am I avoiding grief and that's why I want to set this boundary, right?
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: So there's that's part of the checklist there, right that I really want you to be checking these things out, because the reality is is, if you're setting a boundary a co-parenting boundary with your ex, it's very rare that you can enforce it short of enlisting someone like the law or the court in order to enforce it right.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: We have to get really honest with ourselves about our motives and our methods of enforcement in these contexts, and sometimes really complex boundaries, really complex scenarios that require a more complex boundary setting, are going to require far more specialized support and guidance, and so we really need to take a close look at those things before just kind of perpetuating power struggle and rushing in to set a boundary that you're not prepared to really execute or enforce.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I am here to tell you that this piece about grief and internalized negative beliefs is probably the root of most of your issues where it comes to boundary setting and co-parenting, and I cannot highlight enough where taking action to reprocess those negative beliefs and to be able to cultivate the positive ones absolutely will change the nature of your relationship with your ex.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And now it is time for our Getting Unstuck segment, where we unpack a submission that you one of our amazing, beautiful, powerful listeners has sent in to get some feedback so you can get unstuck.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Today's submission is from Molly, who writes in and says Dawn, my ex will not stop with the hostile, aggressive, bullying communication via text message and email and, no matter what I try, just won't stop doing this and keeps blocking my attempts to try to make positive choices for myself and my kids around switching days with the parenting plan or taking trips or anything where I'm really just trying to live my best life and move forward.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: He's bullying and blocking and being aggressive.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Molly, I love this submission.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, because, if it's so well with our topic of boundaries today, I think that the knee jerk response here is definitely around wanting to set a boundary right and wanting to say you can't do this, you can't talk to me this way.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: The kind of go to boundary I think I see people making is around blocking blocking someone right Via text or email and blocking their number so that they can't keep communicating.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: But then, unfortunately, sometimes there are those structural communication pieces that we have to do in order to, you know, just execute daily tasks.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And so how do you, how do you navigate?
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I can appreciate the struggle, molly, because how do you navigate Like you want to just block them, but sometimes you have to be in communication and anytime you get into communication they, you know, lean back in with all those toxic behaviors.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: And so, while it seems like the best advice here is some sort of structural advice around, well, just don't engage, use gray rock.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Have you heard of the gray rock technique?
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Right, where somebody who's attempting to control and manipulate you just either don't respond or respond with very, very boring answers, answers that are tantamount to a gray rock?
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Right, that you're just so boring that your ex loses interest in being in power struggle.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Right, because that's what controllers want to do.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Controllers want to just kind of cause chaos in your life so that they can feel that they're still in control, right, and so anytime you're going to make a request or set a boundary, they're going to intentionally whether it's subconscious or otherwise right, put a hiccup in there so that you, so that they can perceive that they're in control.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So, while it sounds like the advice here would be structural, around using a, you know, co-parenting communication app or having a court order that says X, y, z, and those things may be true, those structural advices may be true that, hey, maybe Molly, you need to get willing to submit something to the court, represent yourself.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: You know, you maybe need to be willing to go to those links to get your needs met.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I can't say enough about really lasering in on which of the negative beliefs we talked about today that is feels like your Achilles.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Is it about not being able to get your needs met?
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Is it about feeling helpless in the situation and then floating back through your life and figuring out the other times that you felt helpless, the other times you felt like you couldn't get your needs met, that you were out of control, and processing those using the butterfly tap technique and journaling.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And if you've not done the loneliness roadmap, that's kind of the magic sauce that I have in there is combining asking these really big questions about internalized negative beliefs using the butterfly tap, where you cross your arms over your chest and just tap left right, tap left right while you're thinking about these painful experiences where you felt helpless or you couldn't get your needs met, and then journaling it out right, because switching that negative belief to a positive belief is going to create such an energetic shift in your body, such a vibrational shift in your body, that you are now emanating a different vibration, a different frequency.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: You have a different belief and suddenly these problems are going to start solving themselves.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: It sounds like woo-woo, but it is not.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: It is quantum mechanics at work, and when you have an internalized negative belief that you're helpless or you can't get your needs met, love somehow, some way, that is what you are going to attract for yourself.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: And so, whether you start working with an EMDR therapist like myself or you start doing EFT tapping, either through the tapping solution app or Brad Yeats videos about, I can get my needs met.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I am powerful, I am empowered.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: That's what we need to switch these two right negative beliefs into positive beliefs.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Unless you fully process and feel, feel your way and heal your way through all those times in your life that have reinforced that negative belief you are, it doesn't matter how much structural advice you get.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: The pattern will persist.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And so I think too often when we're stuck, we're looking for structural advice.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Well, what we really need to do is dig into the subconscious work, and things will automatically start flowing differently.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: So my question to you, molly Love, is how much of the subconscious work have you done specifically related to being able to get your needs met?
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I cannot wait to hear what your next steps are.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I love you so much, peace.