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178. Bitterness Blocking Your Path to Forgiveness? Here's How to Heal Stuck Divorce Grief · 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: There is an astonishing reason that bitterness is such a familiar feeling to you right now and that forgiveness feels so out of reach.
• 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.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Bitterness is an emotion that's been coming up a lot lately in our small coaching group, in my sessions with therapy clients.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Like across the board, it's just been a really common theme and there have been so many elements of it.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: It can be such a complex thing that it was time to really dive deep into it, and so today we are going to talk about a handful of things that have to do with why it can be so hard to shake bitterness and approach forgiveness, and we're going to start by really addressing how bitterness is the opposite of love, that when you are healing from something like divorce and something that has been going on for so long, a chronic feeling of anger, resentment, really like kind of an amalgamation of a blend of all negative emotions.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: When we look at the emotional guidance scale and the vibration of emotion, bitterness has really got like a whole bunch of negative emotion really piled into it and, it is for sure, low vibe and the opposite of love, so it's blocking your healing very much in that sense.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: We're also going to talk about the addictive component of bitterness.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, if you are feeling bitter, there is an element of addiction that needs your addictive behavior.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Right, you're going to be like what I don't drink before work, dawn, I know love, but bear with me.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And then we're going to talk about that astonishing reason.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I mentioned the astonishing reason that it is so hard to approach forgiveness.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to teach you what is going on there and what to do about it.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Let's dig in.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: So bitterness, even as I say the word, you can feel it in your body, right, big deep breath.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: What do you hear?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Lilliput Just took a big deep breath.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: She's on my lap, bright, on cue, baby boo.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: So big deep breath, drop into your body.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Feel bitterness, yeah, and on the one hand, you don't like that.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: You can see where it's wreaking some havoc in your life, but on the other hand, I want to suggest that it's actually a cozy blanket you're using to soothe yourself with these days, that it is a familiar, comfortable emotion.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: You know what to do with it.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: It is negative, for sure, but it's not as low vibe as helplessness or powerlessness.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: It's not as low vibe as grief.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It's a little higher on the vibrational scale, although it has lots of grief in it.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Right, it's not this sort of bottomed out place that you found yourself in at certain points in this divorce journey where you just felt, like you, I will not survive this moment.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Bitterness is higher than the I will not survive this moment times, right?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Can you feel the difference between that?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: That bitterness is sort of like a hardened heart, but it's not as desperate or low or broken or like I can't-ness as those other moments.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So it's interesting in that it's almost an improvement over other moments in time that you felt in this divorce process or at some point in your life, right?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: But bitterness is chronic and it's a hardened heart and it is definitely blocking you from improving your self-esteem.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: It's blocking you from attracting newer, better friends, newer, better dating partners, newer, better jobs, newer, better just situations in general, right, like, as long as you're feeling bitterness, you are blocking a certain amount of abundance from coming into your life in a big way.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: And so, right there, if we had a why to compel us or motivate us to move closer towards forgiveness, it's right there.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, whatever you were planning to put on your 2025 vision board, know that you are already sabotaging whatever those 2025 outcomes are, if you are committed to bitterness and not rehabbing that shit.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: So that's the first thing I want you to know.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Number two is I want you to start to take a look at and this is really a spicy, spicy idea here okay that there is an addictive component to bitterness.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: What do I mean by that?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Well, addiction, you know, when we think of it, we think of, like you know, people who have flasks in their drawers and who wake and bake and who pop anxiety meds left and right, or whatever you name it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Or, you know, drink wine all the time.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: You know, but addiction can be so, so, so, so many things, and it's really the pursuit of numbing emotion and continuing to do the same numbing behavior over and over again, despite negative consequences.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That's really what addiction is right.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: It's the continued use of any substance, whether it's fitness or it's shopping, or it's scrolling Instagram or TikTok, or it's gossiping or dating, or, for sure, wine or vaping or whatever.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Right, whatever your particular addictive process is, it's that system of using instant gratification to avoid feeling whatever you're trying to avoid to feel, right.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And so, when you've got activated, bitterness, I promise you.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: There are plenty of places in life that you are using to stay numb rather than process whatever's underneath the bitterness and yes, there is something underneath the bitterness.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: That's sort of an end of episode teaser, but so I want you to really just kind of notice right now what are the things you're doing to avoid getting in touch with some of those deeper layers of pain?
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: How are you attempting to stay numb as often as possible, right?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Do you stay busy?
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Do you say yes to things all the time?
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Do you do coffee until wine?
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Right, coffee to lift you up, wine to wind you down?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Do you scroll a lot on social media?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Do you eat anytime you feel?
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Right, like I know, for me, eating is definitely like a go-to, and that was sort of a new coping thing for me because for many, many years, right, I restricted to avoid feeling certain things restricted intake, calorie intake, and so in the last couple of years, I've been more likely to grab for food to soothe any emotional discomfort, right?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And so what are the things you do chronically to avoid emotional discomfort, and do you do it often enough that it's a pattern, and does it have power over you in that it would be hard to put it down?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: So let me ask you this right, if I asked you to be sober for a year, what would that sound like?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: What would that feel like to you?
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: If I asked you to delete all social media apps for a year, what would that feel like?
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: If I told you you couldn't buy anything commercially?
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: You could only shop for, you know, secondhand items at Goodwill or yard sales.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: You couldn't buy anything new for a year.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: What would that feel like?
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: It's super interesting where we start, and these are just like the obvious ones, right, I'm sure you can start to become aware of other ones that are yours, that are really, really specific to you, but anywhere we can't kind of see ourselves giving up a particular behavior or pattern for an extended period of time.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: There's a good sign that it's running us and we're not running it, and there's something there that we're using to protect us from having to face something, tackle something, deal with something, feel something.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Right, so we all have our own versions of this and I don't want to strip away all the places.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Have you seen those memes that it's like you know where the health influencers are like and then I gave up coffee and I gained energy and this and that and this and that, right, and then you see the one that's like giving up coffee has 100% guarantee to reduce 100% of my joy or whatever.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know, my comedic timing sucks, but you get the point right.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to strip all the moments of joy out of your life.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Right, where you, you know, my daughter and I love scrolling Instagram and watching silly cat videos and, yes, I look forward to coffee in the morning and when I'm doing an extended fast, it's hard to not have that coffee.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: And there's this mid-afternoon point in my day where I'm, you know, seeing patients all day and whatever, and I'm like I need chocolate and if I don't have chocolate I might punch something.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: You know Like.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: There are these moments where we definitely use whatever it is to boost our mood, and I am not advocating for you not having mood boosting experiences in your life, but I am asking you to take a look at where it goes beyond mood boosting and where it becomes dependency, that you are dependent on these things for you to feel okay, that if you didn't do these things, you would feel out of control, you would feel angry, you would feel sad, you would feel grief, you would feel fill in the blank, right.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: And so there is an addictive component to bitterness, because bitterness is such a hardened heart, it's such a chronic sign of anger, like chronic anger, chronic resentment, chronic hurt, chronic rejection, chronic jealousy, chronic right.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Bitterness has sort of all of that in it and there's such a chronicity to it.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, what have you been doing to cope with that all this time?
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: And I bet there's some addictive patterns in there, and so it can be really hard to break through that, because it is so hard for us to give up the things that keep us comfortably numb.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Right, that was the basis of Brene Brown's sort of breakthrough back in 2011, when she sort of started her rise to stardom and we all started watching her Netflix specials and reading Daring Greatly and we saw her TED talk.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You know, where she went viral is that we use beer and a banana muffin to keep ourselves comfortably numb.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And so if you feel bitter and you're struggling with forgiveness.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Look for the addictive threads in your life.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Now let's get to the absolute crux of this episode, which is there is a reason that bitterness is so familiar, and there is an element of your recovery that you are avoiding Now.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Bitterness, as uncomfortable and toxic as it is, is protecting you from something love.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: All human behavior has an explanation, and we look at some of the beautiful theories of body-mind and of healing processes.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: We look at inner child work or internal family systems.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: However, we look at parts of self that have been wounded.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Right, we know that other parts crop up to protect us from ever having to feel that pain again.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: And so we are right now operating under the assumption that you have wounded parts that feel so wounded they believe that they will never survive this kind of pain that you are experiencing again, like they cannot ever feel pain like this again because you won't survive Feels life or death to those wounded parts.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: And then you have protector parts that are like I am here to make sure that those wounded parts never get wounded like that again.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: And those protector parts will stop at nothing to protect you from ever having to feel that kind of vulnerability or brokenness ever again.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And so the reason it is so hard for you to approach forgiveness, love, is because vulnerability in many ways is not an option for you.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't feel like an option, and this is going to sound shocking, but the good feeling of being able to trust yourself and others is deeply uncomfortable for you.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: The good feeling of forgiveness or redemption is uncomfortable for you.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: The idea of letting go of control, of protecting yourself, is so uncomfortable to you.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: So peace and healing and trust are emotional states that you are struggling to tolerate.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Peace, trust, comfort, forgiveness, these are good feeling, emotional states and they don't feel available to you because and that right, there is already right the astonishing reason that you stay bitter and resentful and struggle with forgiveness because good feelings and surely you've seen this on the tiki-taki right that a nervous system that has chronically experienced distress will stay in a distressed state over reaching for the unfamiliar, safe state, right.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: So we literally have to train our nervous systems.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: We have to train our nervous systems and our mind body to understand like there's no threat externally right now.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Right, the threat is internal.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: The threat is the memories of the pain.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: The threat is largely, at this point, internal, not for everybody, all the time, but for the most part the bulk of our threat is coming from inside.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Now here's the thing when you've been feeling bitter for a period of time, I am of the opinion clinical opinion this is my clinical opinion as a very, very experienced trauma-informed therapist that there are wounds that you have not fully processed.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: This has come up a handful of times lately.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Like you know, where something just doesn't add up in a case for me, you know.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Where there's a pattern that is just not shifting, it means that there is something unprocessed.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: And just today it came up with two different people where it's like it does not make sense that even though you're using tools like EFT, tapping or vagal breathing or a homeopathic remedy, or you're exercising and you have a community built right, you're using tools and you're headed in a positive direction, that a pattern isn't shifting.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And if a pattern isn't shifting, it means that there is a pocket of unprocessed.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: We could call it trauma.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It could be big T trauma, it could be little t trauma, but most of the time with divorce it's both right.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: It's like layers of trauma on top of layers.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: It's usually whatever happened with your ex is also an echo of something that happened in your childhood.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: So there's like layers to it, right, and so I want you to think about the thing you've been avoiding healing For many, many, many, many women.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: It's some sort of sexual assault.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be that, but I've had that come up in a big, big way for multiple people this week, where it's like there is a mental emotional pattern that just seems intractable and it's because you have to go to that pain and you have to release it.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Emdr doesn't have to be the only way.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: It is one of my favorite ways, certainly EMDR therapy, eft, tapping, there are a number of these things.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And it's fascinating, right, because you know how passionate I have been about homeopathy lately.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Did I tell you I'm in advanced practitioner school now, so I could treat like literally any physical illness on top of just mental health issues.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: But homeopathy alone doesn't do it.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Homeopathy can create the conditions where you can release certain things, but you still have to go there, you still have to process it out of your body.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And so, love, what are you avoiding?
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: What's under that bitterness?
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: What is that thing in the back of your mind?
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: That's like I've never talked to anybody about that thing or I've never gone back to that most painful moment in my life and made friends with it.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Whatever you're running away from, whatever you're avoiding, it's calling to you and that, because you have not made peace with your, what you're perceiving as memory or painful experiences, you've not made peace within yourself and that is why you can't approach releasing bitterness or finding forgiveness.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Releasing bitterness or finding forgiveness and mark my words, chronic anger has massive implications for your body in terms of cardiovascular health, heart health, in terms of circulatory health, in terms of autoimmune disease.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Massive implications, love, bitterness can't coexist with love in a meaningful way, and so if you want to love yourself well and you want to attract partners, people, friends, meaningful experiences that are heart-centered, you got to be willing to dig deep and touch the thing you have not been wanting to touch.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: You've got to be willing to break the addictive cycles that have been going on in your life.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Believe it or not, it's not as hard as you think it is.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: You know, oftentimes when I sit with people now, sometimes it is right but oftentimes when I sit with people and we do EMDR processing, let's say we spend 15, 20 minutes really on the topic.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Say we spend 15, 20 minutes really on the topic, right On that really, really painful thing.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: But very often a handful of those 20-minute segments and boom, you've shifted massive patterns in your life and so maybe it's not one 20-minute segment, maybe it's a couple, but you can also do bilateral stimulation at home.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: You can do it with your girlfriend, you could do it.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: You know I have the women in our small group coaching program do it, so it doesn't have to always be some fancy.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: You gotta find the best EMDR therapist, right, like.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: There are ways you can move through these painful moments at home with your support system, but you gotta start by being willing to go there.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Now, one of the tools I often advocate that helps prepare women to do that is the 21-day immersive journaling program called Post Divorce Roadmap, which we are currently offering for free.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: It's normally $33.33.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: But you can find in the show notes the link to the Post-Divorce Roadmap 21 Days of Immersive Journaling.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: And you can use the email, the coupon code called email friends, email friends, because I want to be able to take our conversation online, right.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to talk to you via email.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to send you emails every week that talk about these things that you're struggling with that, help teach you a little bit more.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: That are positive reminders, right, it's so hard sometimes to shift our habits, our mental, emotional habits but when you get that email from me in your inbox it's going to be right on time while you're struggling with exactly that thing.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: And I want to be able to keep you posted when we're launching new EFT events or when we're launching a new group coaching program or when we come up with a fancy new idea and you know, hey, you might want to be part of this.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to tell you about those things in a timely manner.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And so, for this short period of time, if you download the Post-Divorce Roadmap for free, that is a gift.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: That will also help you prepare to bilaterally simulate, to shift, to address these things that you are struggling to face, that are perpetuating bitterness and blocking you from forgiveness.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Now, how does that immersive journaling program do that?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Well, each week of journaling is split into segments on purpose and it's sort of seamless in your experience, right?
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: But between the playlists I have you use the mirror messages I have you write the phone screens that go in your background, the order in which the prompts were written, the tools that I've embedded within the prompts the body awareness that I help guide you through throughout the thing.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: It is truly immersive and it will help you dial into the things.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: It will help you clear the deck so that you can focus on the thing that you've been avoiding and start to shift.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: If you need any extra help, shoot me a DM.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Head to the show notes, click on Post Divorce Roadmap and enter the code emailfriends to download that program for free.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I love you so much.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Peace, dear.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach, john.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: You can find more at mycoachjohncom.