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170.How Your Attachment Style is Affecting Your Divorce Proceedings and Co-Parenting · 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: In today's episode, we are unpacking the number one top thing you can do to impact the outcome of not just your divorce proceedings but your co-parenting.
• 1:00
  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.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I think the season of divorce has to be one of the most out of control feeling seasons.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Right, you go from like planning a life and a family with someone to literally, it seems like fighting them, like fighting for enoughness, right.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Like feeling like all of a sudden you have to fight for your finances or fight for your children, or fight for your sense of esteem or worthiness.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It's like, and it literally feels, like you're fighting against someone who is wanting the opposite of what you want, and that's not in all circumstances, but I think most of the time it feels very, very out of control.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And so in today's episode, we're going to unpack these three things that are going to help you shift that balance of out of controlness into being able to have more control and help you impact your divorce proceedings and your co-parenting.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And these three things that we're going to cover are understanding the connection between your mind and body, really being able to break the pattern and the tendency that you have to feel like you'll be better when I want right, like as we're digging in, I want you prepping, like what's your, I'll be better when statement we all have an.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when statement what is yours.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And then the third thing, which is really the key to it all, is taking a look at how anxious and disorganized attachers right, so anxious and kind of insecure, disorganized is when you push-pull kind of within an attachment style.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Right, understanding how your attachment style and those internal habits and patterns are absolutely dictating how these divorce proceedings are going, and learning how to positively influence that.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's dig in.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: So this episode all sort of started today when producer Joy showed up and we were unpacking the weekend and I told her the story about how I got into a pretty intense thing conversation.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to call it a fight, I don't know what would we call it.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: We would call it a thing.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: It was a thing Saturday morning, early Saturday morning, right, and I was, on the one hand, able to be really, really proud of myself for the way I handled myself in the conversation.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I would say I stayed, let's say, nervous system yellow light right, I definitely was not green, I was super activated nervous system activated.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Threat perceived right, massive threat perceived, but I didn't go to dorsal vagal collapse.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't go to nervous system red and I was able to stay in my sort of capacity to express myself clearly and I did.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I expressed myself more clearly to this person than I ever, ever, ever had, and that felt like a win.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And then I kind of spent the weekend unpacking it and trying to make sure that my side of the street was clean.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And is there something I could have done differently?
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Did I say everything I could?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: This situation kind of feels like a Kobayashi Maru for my Star Trek fans right, meaning it sort of on the surface looks unwinnable or like there's not a yeah, unwinnable right, and I think that that's a lot of how divorce feels.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It feels unwinnable that you know what's good for you may not be good for your kids and what's good for your kids may not be what's good for your ex or I don't know right.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: It just feels like sort of, how does everybody get what they need from this circumstance?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I think so much of divorce feels unwinnable.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And so I'm, you know, unpacking all of this with producer joy and I'm like, and you see, what happened next was my left wrist hurts and my right foot hurts very badly.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: My left wrist started kind of yes, kind of like, let's say, 36 hours later, and then I woke up with the right foot thing.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And the right foot thing is like sort of it comes and goes right, and so when it's really flared, I know something is going on.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: So I immediately pulled out my book on what is called German New Medicine and it's understanding the psychological roots of disease patterns or processes, right.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And so I looked up left wrist and I looked up right foot, and both of them loves, our self-esteem, conflicts, right, and they're about, you know, did I do my best?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Did I do something wrong?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: The left wrist is did I feeling like I did something wrong, wrong or bad?
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Right For speaking up for myself in the way that I did?
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: So left wrist is feeling like I did something wrong or bad.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: And right foot was feeling like I'm stuck in a situation that I can't get out of.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Right, isn't that cool.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: It's the foot, and so I was like so excited, such a fascinating thing.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But I was so excited telling producer Joy about look how the body keeps the score.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: This is like in a very tight time span where we could see that the conflict happened Saturday morning and by Sunday afternoon I'm having physical symptoms in the body, and so this is a call for you to shift how you're seeing your body.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: We tend to see symptoms in our body as something we need to fight against or suppress, or thinking that something is going very wrong in the body, that something is breaking down and we need to go to a medical doctor to fix it or to figure it out.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: But I'm here to tell you, love, that if you can start to see your body as an ally and understand that it is appointing you to some mental or emotional conflict, and that is up to and including your patterns of sickness or illness.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Now can there be environmental factors?
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Like you know, because of all of the historical trauma and things that I've experienced and some of the things that I inherited genetically, you know I've had a lot of what we would see as poor nutrition, like I eat really healthy, but my body has trouble absorbing the things and I'm rehabbing all of that and it gets better all the time.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: And producer Joy gets really excited when my body gets healthier, because my hair gets healthier and she does my hair and so she can always tell kind of how I'm doing mentally and emotionally and nutritionally based on how my hair.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Is that particular cycle Super interesting?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But if you started to see your body as explaining to you the internal conflicts that need to be healed, gosh, you might feel really overwhelmed at first.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: But that truly is the path to wellness, because as clearly as it unfolded for me this weekend is as clearly as it's unfolding for you.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Love, this came up for one of our students in our current healing cocoon.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: She just had her court date and she has been having a lot of headaches and a lot of stomach aches and so you know, I said to her you need a day off to process what you're feeling, right?
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: She wanted another remedy and I said, well, we can throw a bunch of remedies at you, but then your body is going to break down because it's going to force you to process what you're feeling.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Because that's what homeopathic remedies do they help you process and express the stuck emotion.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And so sometimes the answer really really is the body is telling us when it's time to process painful emotion and when it's time to love ourselves.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Well, that student, she said to me I can't take a day off work and it was because there's too many people relying on me, I have too many responsibilities.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And I said but if you had COVID you'd take the day off.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: So COVID is a good enough excuse, but you loving yourself well isn't.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: But then it gets into but the money and the letting people down and the being responsible and right.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: And that's where we can start to see the underpinnings of I am not in the habit and the pattern of trusting the universe, of trusting my community, of trusting myself, of loving myself well, of prioritizing taking care of myself versus taking care of other people.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And this is the clue about attachment style, right.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: So your body is a clue and the symptoms it's experiencing.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So, if you relate to headaches and stomach aches and all of these types of things insomnia, overthinking if you relate to aches and pains in your joints, if you have some arthritic stuff going on, if you get sick a lot, if you, when you get sick, you have a horrible cough or a horrible sore throat or you you know any of the, if you have reflux or any of these things, love, they're all clues about your mental, emotional well-being and your thought patterns and your attachment style.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: So I want you to start to relate to your body as an ally, as a co-facilitator, as a co-communicator, ally, as a co-facilitator, as a co-communicator, she's telling you what needs attention and it's all related to your attachment style.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: So, as producer Joy and I are talking about the weekend and I'm explaining to her how these physical symptoms are demonstrating where I'm having some self-esteem issues, where I'm going to shame rather than empowerment or self-love self-esteem issues, right, where I'm going to shame rather than empowerment or self-love, where I'm doubting my heart or my identity, because you know my underlying insecure, disorganized attachment style, right, you know we started talking about.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Well, what does that mean really?
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: If we're saying that our wellness comes from our thoughts and our emotions, if our wellness comes from a sense of security, and when we have insecure or disorganized attachment styles, it's implied that we don't have a secure attachment style, right?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: So if my wellness comes from a sense of security, is that really true?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Do you really believe that?
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Producer Joy was like no and I said, okay, well, we got to talk about that, because this is what I'm trying to teach all the time, right?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Is that our wellness comes from how we see ourselves, how we treat ourselves, how we feel, not the other way around, right?
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And our tendency is to believe that I'll be better when.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when he apologizes.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when he owns his shit.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when I have more money.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when I have the better job.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when I know my kids are okay.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when and that is literally the opposite of what I want you to know and believe about your circumstances, right?
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So if you have a tendency to believe that you'll be better when, I want you to know that that's why you're struggling to manifest certain things, because you have to embody the when in order for the all be better to unfold, right?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: So how would you feel, how would your life be different, how would things shift for you if you loved and accepted yourself so deeply that you knew that your ex-husband's behavior was about him and his own mental, emotional patterns and it didn't have to do with you, and you didn't go to shame and you didn't go to blame and you didn't go to resentment and you knew that you were able to handle all of your mental and emotional patterns and you were able to believe in yourself completely and you were able to see yourself through my eyes, love, and you were able to know that you were unstoppable and that you were fire and that, yes, you've seen some shit and you've done some shit and you've dropped some balls in your life, but like that was then and this is now and you are just like the shit now, which is hysterical because I'm on a parasite cleanse kick, but that's a different episode.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: So if you knew all those things about yourself and that was unshakable, right how would your life be different?
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: You would be attracting the money, you would be attracting the relationships, you would be attracting the jobs, like everybody would want to hire you, your kids would be feeling a sense of security and well-being, being close to you right.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: But your tendency to believe that you are not enough, your tendency to believe that you can't trust the world that you live in and you can't trust people around you and you can't trust your own decision and that there's something wrong with you and you're damaged that's a belief that I am still really working to change about myself is that I am damaged because of certain early childhood things and that that has played out right in my relationships, and so it's those subconscious beliefs that are driving your illness, the power struggle in court, the power struggle in co-parenting, your tendency to attract shitty circumstances and to attract friendships that are less than rewarding or fulfilling.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: How you see yourself, how you treat yourself, dictates how your court proceedings go and how your co-parenting goes.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Now, this is not a switch you can flip.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: That doesn't just mean suppress and repress all shame and negative thoughts that you have about yourself and that your life is going to be magical.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: It's a process of going from massive momentum in the direction of I'm not good enough and there's something wrong with me, to, over time, shifting the momentum to actually I am a beautifully messy human.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Humans make mistakes.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: It's not that I need to be perfect, it's that I need to be accountable, and I am accountable.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I am willing to own my life, my outcomes, my mental emotional patterns, my feelings.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: That's a process of going from one to the other, but here's where it gets really freaking juicy, really juicy, and where it feels sort of like a setup for you to not be successful is that when you have an anxious attachment style or a disorganized attachment style.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: We're simply, for this episode, not addressing avoidant attachers, because it is less likely that you are an avoidant attacher and it is more likely it's not.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you are avoidant attachers, but it is more likely that you are anxious or disorganized in your attachment style.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: So that is what I'm focusing on for the sake of this episode.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: But if you have anything, anything that is a less than secure attachment style, it means that you are still functioning from a mental and emotional pattern that does not automatically trust that what is unfolding for you is for your benefit, does not automatically trust that you can solve any problem that comes your way, doesn't automatically trust that there are enough resources for you and that you're going to figure it all out right.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Anything other than a secure attachment style is automatically coming from a place of mistrust, a lack of security and a dependency really hear this?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: A dependency on something or someone outside of you to solve your problems for you, outside of you to solve your problems for you.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Because insecure attachment styles became your brain map when you were a dependent child, right, when you were an infant or a young child.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Those attachment styles that are anything less than secure were established when you were young and you were still dependent on others for certain things, and you were not taught how to move through negative experiences or negative emotions in a completely empowered way.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: That's just not something that has been part of our kind of global culture.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: It is counter-cultural to own your mental and emotional patterns, to own your outcomes, to own that your life is 100% a reflection of your internal patterns and so, love, what I really want you to feel empowered around today is that the top thing you can do to impact how this divorce goes and how the aftermath of this divorce goes is to understand that rehabbing your attachment style is the key to you being in a position of power and being able to determine how everything unfolds from here, from a place of power.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Now, if you identify or relate to having an anxious attachment style, anything other than a secure attachment style right, anxious, disorganized or avoidant, for that matter.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Right, because avoidant attachers are also deeply, deeply insecure okay, they just do it differently, they just manifest that differently, okay.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: So if you have anything other than a secure attachment style, ps, people with secure attachment styles don't get divorced.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: So that's all of us.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, then automatically, your reflexive nature is going to be to not immediately own your shit.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Your reflexive tendency is going to say it must be something else's fault.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Because, think about it, if you're a young child, your thought process is going to be I'll be better when my diaper is changed.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when I'm no longer hungry.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when the temperature is better.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when she picks me up and snuggles me and tells me I did a good job.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: That is just how young minds work.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: I'll be better when my caregiver gives care.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: But the thing is is that in a healthy evolution of an infant into an individuated adult, there's a transition of handing over from being dependent and reliant on a caregiver to provide care.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: There's supposed to be this process of us taking ownership of our own care.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: But when we don't have a secure attachment style and when we don't have caregivers who know how to take care of their own mental and emotional patterns, then how can we ever learn those things?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: And there are places we can learn them right, but we have to sort of go in search for them and to be in search of those healthier mindsets we have to first be aware that there's something that needs healing healthier mindsets.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: We have to first be aware that there's something that needs healing, and so I want you to really start to notice the places where you tend to not own that every negative emotion you feel and every negative thought pattern you think is yours to confront, is yours to transmute, and that when you turn negative emotional patterns and negative mental patterns into the truth which is you are magical, you are powerful.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: You were created by an intelligent creator with already the built-in means to heal yourself.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Creator with already the built-in means to heal yourself.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: That there is an entire community of people that you haven't even met yet who love you so much you have to be able to let them in.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: And that there are all of the resources that you long for, whether they're financial or love-oriented or career-oriented or purpose-driven right.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Everything you want is just waiting for you to shift your mental and emotional patterns love.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: If you can get that in your mind, you will start to rehab your attachment style and automatically create a greater sense of security in the world, therefore attracting every outcome you want.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: In this divorce, you feel out of control.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: You are not out of control.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: You have complete control.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Will you grab for it?
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: That's the question, right?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: So rehabbing your attachment style is the key to changing the way this unfolds for you.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: And really to be able to do that, you have to start to understand that your thoughts and your feelings will create symptoms in your body, and the symptoms in your body are the path to you knowing that something's off and needs to be healed, and by healed I mean you learning how to love and accept yourself in the deepest of deepest ways.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: You will be better when you love yourself deeply and meaningfully.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Everything will be better then.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: If this episode has helped you have some aha moments and connect some dots about the things that need to have some love poured on them in your life, if this episode has made a difference in how you understand yourself and how you're going to approach your divorce, I would invite you to leave a written review for us on Apple Podcasts.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: It makes such a huge difference and it would be something that would be so meaningful to me in this conversation that we have about how to rehab your life after divorce love.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I would ask for you to leave a written review or, if you listen on Spotify, leave a five-star review.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: It would just mean so much to me.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Peace, dear.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach Dawn.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: You can find more at my coach johncom.