May 16, 2023 • 27 mins
If you've been strong for everyone else and crave a space where your truth isn't too much - come exhale with us in our exclusive online community and receive the Loneliness Roadmap for free. Join here ✨
*************************************************************************************
Fresh out of my divorce, feeling desperate for comfort and reassurance, I discovered the unexpected twist that changed everything. It was a concept so basic (yet so difficult to DO) that it gave me the roadmap needed to navigate my healing journey. But what was this twist? And how did it transform my life? Keep listening!
"Part of the betrayal that I experienced in a post-divorced life was feeling not just betrayed by the institution of marriage, but by the belief systems that had me believing in the institution of marriage." - Dawn Wiggins
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Uncover the key phases of healing after a divorce for a more peaceful life.
- Utilize the emotional scale to heal your heart.
- Discover the indispensable role of gratitude, optimism, and inquisitiveness to find yourself.
- Master the art of making confident choices and establishing uplifting habits.
- Assume responsibility for your own recovery and move forward into happiness.
Abraham Hicks Emotional Guidance Scale
Post Divorce Roadmap - 21 Days of Guided Journaling
Join The list for A Different D Word, our personalized healing program.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyCoachDawn
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dawnwiggins/
On the Web: https://www.mycoachdawn.com
A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, love, this is Dawn and you're listening to
Dear Divorce Diary with my coach, dawn, where we explore the
post-divorce life and you, thewoman who lives it.
We cover everything from traumaduring and after divorce to
feeling like a stranger in yourown life and the new frontier of
life as a single woman.
We're cozy in for theconversations we've been longing
(00:26):
to have about this new life.
Hi, love, we are going to talkabout all things stages of
recovery and healing today, andthis is such an interesting
episode to plan for you because,oh my goodness, it occurred to
(00:50):
me I don't know why it took solong that you have a lot of
interest in the stages ofpost-divorce life.
Right, you want to know whatare the healing stages, what are
the stages of recovery?
how long does this take?
what's the fastest way to do it?
what's the hardest part of it?
is there a cycle to therecovery process?
(01:11):
which stage is going to be thestickiest?
And so when I really got intouch with what you're looking
for about stages and I startedthinking about how I would talk
with you about it, oh mygoodness, my head exploded and I
got really excited.
And now I have to tell you.
So, when we think about stages,what immediately comes up for
(01:36):
me is you want to plan something, right, you want to know what's
coming.
Congratulations.
That makes you very human.
So do I, and so so much of whatBrene Brown has taught us about
the urge to control and predictour lives is that when we are
(02:00):
able to control and predictsomething, it takes some of the
vulnerability out of it, right,it makes it hurt a little less,
it makes it a little lessuncertain, it makes it a little
less scary, a little less raw.
So when you're asking all thesequestions about stages, there
(02:20):
is a very useful tool to knowingfirst comes this, then comes
that, because then we know ifwe're on the right track, we
know if we're progressing.
We don't have to use as muchenergy in kind of working
through that uncertainty space,right, if you know.
(02:42):
After summer comes fall, andafter fall comes winter, and
after winter comes spring, youknow.
You know what's coming, and itdoesn't alarm you when it
arrives.
When you know that acaterpillar starts out tiny and
it munches and munches andmunches, and then it all of a
sudden disappears into itslittle chrysalis before it
emerges into a butterfly.
When all the caterpillars aregone one day you're not alarmed,
(03:04):
right, because you know, oh,they're hiding in their
chrysalis.
Okay, when you hear someonetalk about, like we did earlier,
pushing hormones inside of your28-ish day cycle and some days
certain hormones are higher andsome days certain hormones are
lower, and all of that leads toa particular cycle within your
(03:26):
body, then when, all of a sudden, you know your mood shifts or
your cravings shift, it's notalarming because you know what's
happening, right?
So we're going to talk aboutthese stages, but I'm going to
frame it for you so that you canput this knowledge about stages
to better work for you, right?
The purpose of theseconversations is always to allow
(03:50):
your healing process to be moreefficient, because you have way
too much on your plate rightnow.
So we want, when you come hereand you spend your precious time
here, we want it to shortenyour healing journey, we want it
to lighten your load.
And so, while we want to do thebest we can today, to say okay,
and then this is what you canexpect, what we actually want to
(04:13):
do today is sort it out.
You know your Tupperware drawer, your Tupperware cabinet, when
it's super messy, and then youreorganize it and it feels like
you literally conquered theworld.
That's how I want you to feeltoday.
I want you to feel like wereorganized your Tupperware
cabinet so that, as you'removing through the stages of
recovery and healing, you have aclear path and a clear strategy
(04:36):
and you know what to do and youfeel some ease around that
Right, make sense.
Okay, so we've established thatyou have a lot of questions
about stages, because you wantto control and predict, because
it's going to lighten your loadto a certain extent, it's going
to make the journey a bit easier.
But the thing I want you toreally tune into when you are
(04:59):
moving through the stages ofdivorce, healing and recovery is
how you feel.
We know you're feeling a lot ofshit, right Grief, anger,
frustration, overwhelm, fear,insecurity.
Right, we could go on and onabout what you're feeling, but I
(05:22):
want you to notice on any givenday, are you feeling those
feelings but you're in touchwith gratitude?
or are you feeling thosefeelings and you're in touch
with feeling a bit sorry foryourself As you move through the
stages of healing?
these are your key indicators.
Are you doing it knowing youare in tune with a power greater
(05:48):
than yourself and you are on aroad to the most amazing life
you've ever had, and you can seeit through the lens of
gratitude.
Or are you so steeped inresentment that you can't see
the benefits of this process andit feels so unfair to you and
(06:11):
you're so disempowered that inyour grief you can't even find a
sparkle?
Those are the two stages that Iwant you to be the most keyed
into The grieving with gratitudestage or the grieving with
disempowerment and hopelessnessstage.
(06:35):
Now, it's kind of oversimplified, right, but the reality is is
that at any given moment in aday, we are either in solution,
which is in touch with love andin touch with possibility, and
in touch with power, in touchwith God, however you want to
call it, or we are in touch withour inner victim And she feels
(07:00):
like this isn't fair and likeshe can't do it and like it
shouldn't have gone this way,and that there may not ever be a
good life for her.
And so can you feel thedifference, as I call it, your
inner victim versus your inneroptimist.
The part of you who feelsacutely the absence or the cut
(07:26):
offness from love, or the partof you that feels like love is
possible In Gipsy languages maynot be in touch with it right
now, right, but but that you areaware that love exists, you
believe in love, you know thatlove is possible.
It's just not the season you'rein right now, right.
So feel your way through thatAnd, girlfriend, it can change
(07:48):
from moment to moment, likeliterally moment to moment.
But those are the two stagesgrateful and victim, and and at
each stage of this process youwill experience both quite
frequently, and the goal wouldbe to move further and further
into the direction of gratefuloptimist who's just kind of
(08:12):
slogging through some shit rightnow, versus the other darker
space.
Now, fun fact Abraham Hicks,whom I follow very closely, who
is an inspirer of mine, talks alot about the law of attraction,
manifestation and how to createa life that you absolutely are
(08:35):
in love with.
Abraham and Esther Hicks putout this emotional scale that
you can find and maybe we couldlink it in the show notes, maybe
we could stick it in this blogpost, but in this emotional
scale it really helps usunderstand if you can imagine
the keys on a keyboard or apiano right keys.
(08:57):
She laid out all like a lot,not all the emotions, but a
great deal of emotions rangingfrom the lowest vibrational
frequency.
We could call that the lowestmusic note on the keyboard.
It's a very low tone, it'sheavy, it's dark, it's haunting,
and that is grief andhopelessness.
So love the thing that you'refeeling right now.
(09:19):
It is very low on the emotionalvibrational scale.
And then she listed all theemotions, all the way on up to
joy or bliss, at the top of theemotional scale.
Now what is valuable for you toknow about that is that when you
are functioning primarily fromthe lower end of the emotional
(09:41):
scale, you are attracting a lotof lower end emotional scale
things to you, and when you'reoperating primarily at the upper
end of the emotional scale, youare primarily attracting
positive, joyful things to you.
Now, the tipping point betweenthe lower end and the upper end
(10:03):
is the, the between boredom andcontentment.
That's the tipping point, right.
And so as you move throughthese stages of shock, overwhelm
, grief, rage, disappointment,jealousy, each of these has a
(10:25):
particular frequency, just likea note on a keyboard would have.
That is either lower or higher,and it is either moving you in
the direction of the optimistic,grateful woman or moving you
lower, into the direction of thekind of helpless, powerless
victim.
Now I understand that, the wayI'm describing this has you
(10:45):
throwing hatchets at me thatyou're like screw you, dawn, i'm
not a victim, but I kind offeel like one, but I don't want
to be one.
But crap, did you just call mea victim?
I know, i know I do it too, butthe reality is is that the root
of most of our suffering inlife is victim consciousness,
(11:06):
the root of codependency, theroot of drama, the root of
suffering, the root root ofstuckness.
So you know, when you'reGoogling those stages because
you want to know if you're onthe right track or not, if you
sense you're stuck love, it'sbecause somewhere, victim
consciousness has snuck in thereand you're functioning on the
(11:27):
lower end of that emotionalscale in this place of I don't
think I can, i don't think it'spossible, i don't think I'm
loved, i don't think I'm worthit, i don't think anyone's
looking out for me.
That's all very cut off fromthe love of God, very cut off
from the beauty that is theworld we live in, and it's
really with this lens ofsuffering over your eyes.
(11:50):
And if that's how you'refeeling PS, i felt that way this
morning when I got mad at mykids So no big deal, okay.
But if you're stuck there, iwant you to know that your mind
is lying to you.
We have been told a lot ofthings through the course of our
lives that our minds havegrabbed onto and have carried as
(12:11):
truth along the way.
But when you are coming fromthis place of hopelessness and
helplessness and feeling likelove is not possible for you,
your mind is lying to you, andthat is the thing that is so
important to change when you arereally working on healing
through the stages of divorce,recovery is saying okay.
(12:34):
Somewhere Someone said did youknow?
I think it's a backstreet boysong.
I wonder if producer Joe couldconfirm this for me.
Is it backstreet boys?
Love comes to those who believe, or is it in sync?
It's one of those boy bands, oh, is it?
Oh, but it's also in a boy bandsong, okay, but, but this is
the concept, right?
Is that love comes to those whobelieve?
(12:54):
And so part, you know, part ofthis stage's journey of healing
from divorce, at least if youdid it the way I did it, which
you don't have to but Idefinitely went through a stage
where I stopped believing inlove, and I hear this from a lot
of my clients when they'reabsolutely heartbroken.
And and if you've listened tosome of the podcast episodes
(13:15):
about healing your heart, youwill hear that when we're in a
heartbroken state, our heart isliterally protected, our heart
chakra is closed off, that thereis a metabolic thing that is
happening in our body that iscausing our heart to literally
be energetically shut down, andthat there are many ways that we
can support that heart opening,whether it's through
supplements or homeopathicremedies or essential oils, or
(13:35):
through meditation, or throughEFT tapping or EMDR therapy.
But that's the thing whenyou're in a grief process and
you're hard to shut down andyou're disbelieving in love,
don't hang out there too long,because that stage is going to
cause you to attract morenegative things, which then is
going to reinforce the idea thatlove is not real, that you are
(13:57):
not safe, that good thingscannot come to you, that all is
fucked Pardon my language.
So I want you to notice thatlittle interplay that I'm
describing there that whenyou're on the lower half of the
scale, probably experiencingsome level of victim
consciousness, that you're thenattracting more pain to you,
which then reinforces yournegative belief.
There it is, dawn.
(14:20):
We're right back at negativebeliefs, yup, and so at the core
of this message is love iscompletely possible, it's
completely available to you.
You are pure magic.
You are and always will be apart of God source, energy,
universal abundance, flow, state.
You cannot remove those thingsfrom you.
(14:42):
You can cut yourself off fromthem, but love, you are always a
part of a power greater thanyourself.
And when we're in a victim spot,we can't feel it, we can't tune
into it, we are blocked offfrom it.
And so when we get down intothis and we say, okay, i want to
(15:07):
know what the hardest part ofhealing from divorce is.
I want to know what the mostpainful part of healing is.
I want to know what the mostpainful stage is.
It's any time you're in a spotwhere you are cut off from God's
love and you are activelyafraid that love is not
available.
(15:27):
It is not possible for you.
That is a fully entrenchedvictim consciousness that has
lost hope, and that is alwaysgoing to be the most painful
stage.
And what I want you to do fromtheir love is to get curious,
(15:48):
because nobody can force you tochange your mind about that, and
it's coming from a sense ofbeing betrayed, either by a
person or a set of beliefs Right.
Part of the betrayal that Iexperienced in a post-deforce
life was feeling not justbetrayed by the institution of
marriage but by the beliefsystems that had me believing in
(16:10):
the institution of marriage, bythe parents who taught me the
belief systems, who told me thatthere was one person out there
for me.
And then I made this deal withmyself that I would never get
divorced.
And then, oh, ps, i did So.
I'd betrayed myself at thebeginning, the middle and the
end, right.
So a lack of belief,hopelessness.
It comes symptomatically as aresult of all these betrayals.
(16:32):
But don't call it what it isn't.
Don't call that series ofbetrayals that love doesn't
exist.
That's what I did, right.
That's what I see my clients do.
I see them experiencing thepain of betrayal and then say
love doesn't exist, it's not outthere for me, it's not possible
(16:55):
, i can't, it hurts too much,it's not safe, i'll never do it
again.
That's a dangerous spot to bein, because, a it hurts like
hell and B it's going to attracta bunch of crap sandwiches to
you and it's going to keep youstuck there longer.
So if any of this is resonating, okay now.
What do we do Now?
(17:15):
what do I do, dawn.
Now, it's a tricky thing to tipup on the emotional scale, to
start moving with some momentumin a different direction.
Right, i'm just kind of stayingdown at the lower end of the
keyboard in that heavy kind ofyou know lower note space.
How do you start to move uptowards happiness when
(17:38):
everything feels so heavy?
How do you do that?
And the reality is is it takesa lot of believing in the power
of choice.
When you believe in the powerof choice, when you believe that
you have the choice now that'sthe game changer right there.
All it takes is to believe inthe power of choice and then to
(18:01):
get curious about how.
So when you believe that youare accountable for you are
responsible for moving up onthat emotional scale and you are
responsible for healing yourlife, and that your best life is
absolutely going to come as aresult of you getting
intentional about your choices,now it's just like well, how do
(18:21):
you want to do it?
Do you want to do it by lookingat pretty flowers?
Do you want to do it by doingsome EFT tapping, finding the
perfect homeopathic remedy?
Do you want to do it bylistening to an awesome song
that makes you feel really good.
Do you want to do it by takinga walk?
Do you want to do it bywatching a sunset?
Like once you believe in thepower of choice.
You have infinite choices tostart to improve your mood and
(18:44):
your mindset and to getintentional about how to heal
your heart.
Do you want to listen to thispodcast, a different podcast?
Do you want to listen to comedy?
instead of all this seriousshit on all these podcasts?
Maybe it's time to turn thepodcast off and just turn on
some comedy, right?
Do you want to do it bycompleting the journal prompts
with the super cool, perfectlypicked homeopathic remedies I
(19:07):
already outlined for you in thepost divorce roadmap, like how
do you want to do it?
And that's the beauty of it is,once we're like oh, i get to
choose.
So how I'm currently doing it isI'm going to extended fast,
because Dr Mindy Pelts has beenteaching me about fasting in my
hormones And so I've beentracking my hormones on a
(19:28):
different level to know when tofast.
Because I want to inject mybody with stem cells in a way
that my body knows how to do iton its own, so that I can
improve my mindset and my mentalclarity and my capacity to
think clearly.
I want to improve all of thosethings.
So currently, how I'm doing itis through fasting, because
that's what's got me lit upright now.
But what's got you lit up rightnow?
(19:48):
that's where you get to be onthe adventure, where you get to
follow the clues and figure outwhat new thing falls in your lap
.
That gets you excited about theprocess of being in charge of
your life.
Because, let's be honest, beingin charge of your life can feel
really intimidating.
But when you know and youbelieve that it unlocks all of
(20:13):
the best things, that it isliterally how you architect your
best life is through a seriesof your choices, starting with
what you think, what you feeland what you believe, that's
pretty powerfully motivating.
Right there, and as I waspreparing for this episode, i
was saying to producer Joylikeman, there is a lot of stuff in
(20:36):
here where I'm going to pisssome people off, because what
I'm implying is that you arecompletely accountable for what
you are experiencing right now,and that is enough to make
anybody angry.
You know, when I was recoveringin the earlier days, i used to
say you know, i didn't choosethis path, i didn't choose to be
born to these parents.
(20:57):
I didn't choose this particularpath of trauma And I don't want
it.
And you need to change.
I don't need to change, youneed to change.
But the reality is, is the paththat you are on right this
moment?
this moment you are in theprocess of choosing And you are
in this moment because of seriesof choices you made.
(21:18):
Now, very often, we end up inplaces because we weren't
intentional about our choices,we just allowed a bunch of
things to happen withoutintervening on how we were
thinking, how we were feeling orthe choices we were making, and
also because we believed thingsthat weren't necessarily true.
I have done it.
I've made a lot of choices inmy life because I believed
(21:39):
things that weren't necessarilytrue.
I believe that if I was a goodgirl, good things would happen,
but that's not necessarily true.
And so when we get clear thatwe feel really, really justified
in doing a lot of things thatare actually hurting us, we feel
(22:03):
really justified to eat a lotof foods that are hurting us.
We feel justified to watch alot of screen time and to be
addicted to a lot of things thatare hurting us, like alcohol,
drugs, scrolling We feel reallyjustified to do these things and
love you are and I do them.
I do them right alongside ofyou, and so I'm not beating
(22:24):
either of us up about that right.
But when we get clear that whenwe are functioning from that
place where we feel justified todo the things that are hurting
us, we are on the lower end ofthe scale, we're operating from
victim consciousness and we'regoing to attract more pain, then
we know which stage of healingwe're in.
We're in the stalled out stage.
(22:45):
Now when I say, okay, i amgoing to get really intentional
about what I put in my body,what I put in my mind and how I
live my life, and I'm going tofocus on what feels good and I'm
going to focus on the peoplearound me that are here to
support me and who love me, andI'm here to support myself and
I'm here to love myself and I'mgoing to go do 10 things today
(23:05):
that feel happy, joyous and free, even if it's only for a moment
.
Now I'm on the productivegrowth gratitude end stage of
healing and that is going tomake crazy amounts of progress.
Now we're all going tobackslide right, like we
backslide all the time, justlike I said this morning, when I
was upset at my kid because Iwas feeling kind of bad about
(23:27):
myself, because feeling bad formyself because she didn't listen
, when I was feeling bad formyself, i backslid down into
frustration, into feelingentitled to her doing what I say
all the time and I was angry.
So I was down on that lower endof the emotional scale and I
was not in a place where I wasreally grateful or joyful.
(23:50):
And I was able to get there.
A little bit later I was ableto say to her you know, kiddo, i
struggle these same struggles,i do these same things right.
So I was able to start to tipup towards optimism.
I was able to start pointingout to her how everybody in life
has to overcome these kind ofnegative habits and negative
tendencies and that she's nodifferent than me or anyone else
(24:13):
, that she's in class with right.
I was able to point out to herhow we really are all in this
together and then I felt kind ofconnected and felt less angry
and I felt hopeful and see, sothat's the key when we coach
ourselves into higher frames ofconsciousness, more optimistic
ways of thinking, and that's howwe do it.
(24:35):
But it takes time and it takesconsistency in you embracing
some pretty intentional positivehabits, and that takes time.
And then when we backslide, thekey is to not beat ourselves up
, because when we're beatingourselves up now, we've toggled
temporarily back into thatvictim place.
(24:55):
So if you've ever heard anythingto do with the victim triangle,
it's when we dance around thethree points on a triangle
between victim, rescuer andpersecutor.
Now if you're on one point ofthe triangle, you're doing all
three.
There are some great articlesout there about this.
There's certainly one on one ofmy websites and, oh gosh,
victim triangle stuff is just sogood.
It's also called thecodependency triangle.
(25:17):
Same points of the triangledrive codependency, victim
rescuer and persecutor.
Now when you think of persecutorwho are the persecutors in your
life?
you think of The people whomake your life harder, the
people who criticize you, thepeople who come down on you.
When you are coming down onyourself, love, you are being
your own persecutor.
You are functioning in a victimtriangle space with yourself.
(25:41):
So when you backslide intolower levels on the emotional
scale, no big deal, don't beatyourself up, say hip, hip,
hooray.
I am human and now I get tomake a different choice.
I get to work on tipping upinto the other stage of healing,
which is the optimistic stage.
And so when you're thinkingabout the healing stages of
(26:05):
divorce recovery, i really wantyou to break it into two stages
the victim stage or the grateful, optimistic stage.
And when you notice you'veslipped into the victim stage, i
want you to coach yourself up.
And if you can't coach yourselfup because you're too low,
that's what I want you to put onsomething that coaches you up a
(26:28):
podcast, a meditation, a uh,glennon Doyle's book, um, a
comedy series.
I want you to put on somethingthat lifts you up and helps you
remember that we can do hardthings and that the more
consistently we do them, weaccomplish amazing stuff.
Because you have every bit ofthat power inside of you.
(26:52):
Love, i know it Like I knowanything.
I believe in you so much.
You've got this Peace Deardivorce diary is a podcast by my
(27:15):
coach, john.
You can find more at my coachJohncom.
Hi, love, this is Dawn and you're listening to
Dear Divorce Diary with my coach, dawn, where we explore the
post-divorce life and you, thewoman who lives it.
We cover everything from traumaduring and after divorce to
feeling like a stranger in yourown life and the new frontier of
life as a single woman.
We're cozy in for theconversations we've been longing
(00:26):
to have about this new life.
Hi, love, we are going to talkabout all things stages of
recovery and healing today, andthis is such an interesting
episode to plan for you because,oh my goodness, it occurred to
(00:50):
me I don't know why it took solong that you have a lot of
interest in the stages ofpost-divorce life.
Right, you want to know whatare the healing stages, what are
the stages of recovery?
how long does this take?
what's the fastest way to do it?
what's the hardest part of it?
is there a cycle to therecovery process?
(01:11):
which stage is going to be thestickiest?
And so when I really got intouch with what you're looking
for about stages and I startedthinking about how I would talk
with you about it, oh mygoodness, my head exploded and I
got really excited.
And now I have to tell you.
So, when we think about stages,what immediately comes up for
(01:36):
me is you want to plan something, right, you want to know what's
coming.
Congratulations.
That makes you very human.
So do I, and so so much of whatBrene Brown has taught us about
the urge to control and predictour lives is that when we are
(02:00):
able to control and predictsomething, it takes some of the
vulnerability out of it, right,it makes it hurt a little less,
it makes it a little lessuncertain, it makes it a little
less scary, a little less raw.
So when you're asking all thesequestions about stages, there
(02:20):
is a very useful tool to knowingfirst comes this, then comes
that, because then we know ifwe're on the right track, we
know if we're progressing.
We don't have to use as muchenergy in kind of working
through that uncertainty space,right, if you know.
(02:42):
After summer comes fall, andafter fall comes winter, and
after winter comes spring, youknow.
You know what's coming, and itdoesn't alarm you when it
arrives.
When you know that acaterpillar starts out tiny and
it munches and munches andmunches, and then it all of a
sudden disappears into itslittle chrysalis before it
emerges into a butterfly.
When all the caterpillars aregone one day you're not alarmed,
(03:04):
right, because you know, oh,they're hiding in their
chrysalis.
Okay, when you hear someonetalk about, like we did earlier,
pushing hormones inside of your28-ish day cycle and some days
certain hormones are higher andsome days certain hormones are
lower, and all of that leads toa particular cycle within your
(03:26):
body, then when, all of a sudden, you know your mood shifts or
your cravings shift, it's notalarming because you know what's
happening, right?
So we're going to talk aboutthese stages, but I'm going to
frame it for you so that you canput this knowledge about stages
to better work for you, right?
The purpose of theseconversations is always to allow
(03:50):
your healing process to be moreefficient, because you have way
too much on your plate rightnow.
So we want, when you come hereand you spend your precious time
here, we want it to shortenyour healing journey, we want it
to lighten your load.
And so, while we want to do thebest we can today, to say okay,
and then this is what you canexpect, what we actually want to
(04:13):
do today is sort it out.
You know your Tupperware drawer, your Tupperware cabinet, when
it's super messy, and then youreorganize it and it feels like
you literally conquered theworld.
That's how I want you to feeltoday.
I want you to feel like wereorganized your Tupperware
cabinet so that, as you'removing through the stages of
recovery and healing, you have aclear path and a clear strategy
(04:36):
and you know what to do and youfeel some ease around that
Right, make sense.
Okay, so we've established thatyou have a lot of questions
about stages, because you wantto control and predict, because
it's going to lighten your loadto a certain extent, it's going
to make the journey a bit easier.
But the thing I want you toreally tune into when you are
(04:59):
moving through the stages ofdivorce, healing and recovery is
how you feel.
We know you're feeling a lot ofshit, right Grief, anger,
frustration, overwhelm, fear,insecurity.
Right, we could go on and onabout what you're feeling, but I
(05:22):
want you to notice on any givenday, are you feeling those
feelings but you're in touchwith gratitude?
or are you feeling thosefeelings and you're in touch
with feeling a bit sorry foryourself As you move through the
stages of healing?
these are your key indicators.
Are you doing it knowing youare in tune with a power greater
(05:48):
than yourself and you are on aroad to the most amazing life
you've ever had, and you can seeit through the lens of
gratitude.
Or are you so steeped inresentment that you can't see
the benefits of this process andit feels so unfair to you and
(06:11):
you're so disempowered that inyour grief you can't even find a
sparkle?
Those are the two stages that Iwant you to be the most keyed
into The grieving with gratitudestage or the grieving with
disempowerment and hopelessnessstage.
(06:35):
Now, it's kind of oversimplified, right, but the reality is is
that at any given moment in aday, we are either in solution,
which is in touch with love andin touch with possibility, and
in touch with power, in touchwith God, however you want to
call it, or we are in touch withour inner victim And she feels
(07:00):
like this isn't fair and likeshe can't do it and like it
shouldn't have gone this way,and that there may not ever be a
good life for her.
And so can you feel thedifference, as I call it, your
inner victim versus your inneroptimist.
The part of you who feelsacutely the absence or the cut
(07:26):
offness from love, or the partof you that feels like love is
possible In Gipsy languages maynot be in touch with it right
now, right, but but that you areaware that love exists, you
believe in love, you know thatlove is possible.
It's just not the season you'rein right now, right.
So feel your way through thatAnd, girlfriend, it can change
(07:48):
from moment to moment, likeliterally moment to moment.
But those are the two stagesgrateful and victim, and and at
each stage of this process youwill experience both quite
frequently, and the goal wouldbe to move further and further
into the direction of gratefuloptimist who's just kind of
(08:12):
slogging through some shit rightnow, versus the other darker
space.
Now, fun fact Abraham Hicks,whom I follow very closely, who
is an inspirer of mine, talks alot about the law of attraction,
manifestation and how to createa life that you absolutely are
(08:35):
in love with.
Abraham and Esther Hicks putout this emotional scale that
you can find and maybe we couldlink it in the show notes, maybe
we could stick it in this blogpost, but in this emotional
scale it really helps usunderstand if you can imagine
the keys on a keyboard or apiano right keys.
(08:57):
She laid out all like a lot,not all the emotions, but a
great deal of emotions rangingfrom the lowest vibrational
frequency.
We could call that the lowestmusic note on the keyboard.
It's a very low tone, it'sheavy, it's dark, it's haunting,
and that is grief andhopelessness.
So love the thing that you'refeeling right now.
(09:19):
It is very low on the emotionalvibrational scale.
And then she listed all theemotions, all the way on up to
joy or bliss, at the top of theemotional scale.
Now what is valuable for you toknow about that is that when you
are functioning primarily fromthe lower end of the emotional
(09:41):
scale, you are attracting a lotof lower end emotional scale
things to you, and when you'reoperating primarily at the upper
end of the emotional scale, youare primarily attracting
positive, joyful things to you.
Now, the tipping point betweenthe lower end and the upper end
(10:03):
is the, the between boredom andcontentment.
That's the tipping point, right.
And so as you move throughthese stages of shock, overwhelm
, grief, rage, disappointment,jealousy, each of these has a
(10:25):
particular frequency, just likea note on a keyboard would have.
That is either lower or higher,and it is either moving you in
the direction of the optimistic,grateful woman or moving you
lower, into the direction of thekind of helpless, powerless
victim.
Now I understand that, the wayI'm describing this has you
(10:45):
throwing hatchets at me thatyou're like screw you, dawn, i'm
not a victim, but I kind offeel like one, but I don't want
to be one.
But crap, did you just call mea victim?
I know, i know I do it too, butthe reality is is that the root
of most of our suffering inlife is victim consciousness,
(11:06):
the root of codependency, theroot of drama, the root of
suffering, the root root ofstuckness.
So you know, when you'reGoogling those stages because
you want to know if you're onthe right track or not, if you
sense you're stuck love, it'sbecause somewhere, victim
consciousness has snuck in thereand you're functioning on the
(11:27):
lower end of that emotionalscale in this place of I don't
think I can, i don't think it'spossible, i don't think I'm
loved, i don't think I'm worthit, i don't think anyone's
looking out for me.
That's all very cut off fromthe love of God, very cut off
from the beauty that is theworld we live in, and it's
really with this lens ofsuffering over your eyes.
(11:50):
And if that's how you'refeeling PS, i felt that way this
morning when I got mad at mykids So no big deal, okay.
But if you're stuck there, iwant you to know that your mind
is lying to you.
We have been told a lot ofthings through the course of our
lives that our minds havegrabbed onto and have carried as
(12:11):
truth along the way.
But when you are coming fromthis place of hopelessness and
helplessness and feeling likelove is not possible for you,
your mind is lying to you, andthat is the thing that is so
important to change when you arereally working on healing
through the stages of divorce,recovery is saying okay.
(12:34):
Somewhere Someone said did youknow?
I think it's a backstreet boysong.
I wonder if producer Joe couldconfirm this for me.
Is it backstreet boys?
Love comes to those who believe, or is it in sync?
It's one of those boy bands, oh, is it?
Oh, but it's also in a boy bandsong, okay, but, but this is
the concept, right?
Is that love comes to those whobelieve?
(12:54):
And so part, you know, part ofthis stage's journey of healing
from divorce, at least if youdid it the way I did it, which
you don't have to but Idefinitely went through a stage
where I stopped believing inlove, and I hear this from a lot
of my clients when they'reabsolutely heartbroken.
And and if you've listened tosome of the podcast episodes
(13:15):
about healing your heart, youwill hear that when we're in a
heartbroken state, our heart isliterally protected, our heart
chakra is closed off, that thereis a metabolic thing that is
happening in our body that iscausing our heart to literally
be energetically shut down, andthat there are many ways that we
can support that heart opening,whether it's through
supplements or homeopathicremedies or essential oils, or
(13:35):
through meditation, or throughEFT tapping or EMDR therapy.
But that's the thing whenyou're in a grief process and
you're hard to shut down andyou're disbelieving in love,
don't hang out there too long,because that stage is going to
cause you to attract morenegative things, which then is
going to reinforce the idea thatlove is not real, that you are
(13:57):
not safe, that good thingscannot come to you, that all is
fucked Pardon my language.
So I want you to notice thatlittle interplay that I'm
describing there that whenyou're on the lower half of the
scale, probably experiencingsome level of victim
consciousness, that you're thenattracting more pain to you,
which then reinforces yournegative belief.
There it is, dawn.
(14:20):
We're right back at negativebeliefs, yup, and so at the core
of this message is love iscompletely possible, it's
completely available to you.
You are pure magic.
You are and always will be apart of God source, energy,
universal abundance, flow, state.
You cannot remove those thingsfrom you.
(14:42):
You can cut yourself off fromthem, but love, you are always a
part of a power greater thanyourself.
And when we're in a victim spot,we can't feel it, we can't tune
into it, we are blocked offfrom it.
And so when we get down intothis and we say, okay, i want to
(15:07):
know what the hardest part ofhealing from divorce is.
I want to know what the mostpainful part of healing is.
I want to know what the mostpainful stage is.
It's any time you're in a spotwhere you are cut off from God's
love and you are activelyafraid that love is not
available.
(15:27):
It is not possible for you.
That is a fully entrenchedvictim consciousness that has
lost hope, and that is alwaysgoing to be the most painful
stage.
And what I want you to do fromtheir love is to get curious,
(15:48):
because nobody can force you tochange your mind about that, and
it's coming from a sense ofbeing betrayed, either by a
person or a set of beliefs Right.
Part of the betrayal that Iexperienced in a post-deforce
life was feeling not justbetrayed by the institution of
marriage but by the beliefsystems that had me believing in
(16:10):
the institution of marriage, bythe parents who taught me the
belief systems, who told me thatthere was one person out there
for me.
And then I made this deal withmyself that I would never get
divorced.
And then, oh, ps, i did So.
I'd betrayed myself at thebeginning, the middle and the
end, right.
So a lack of belief,hopelessness.
It comes symptomatically as aresult of all these betrayals.
(16:32):
But don't call it what it isn't.
Don't call that series ofbetrayals that love doesn't
exist.
That's what I did, right.
That's what I see my clients do.
I see them experiencing thepain of betrayal and then say
love doesn't exist, it's not outthere for me, it's not possible
(16:55):
, i can't, it hurts too much,it's not safe, i'll never do it
again.
That's a dangerous spot to bein, because, a it hurts like
hell and B it's going to attracta bunch of crap sandwiches to
you and it's going to keep youstuck there longer.
So if any of this is resonating, okay now.
What do we do Now?
(17:15):
what do I do, dawn.
Now, it's a tricky thing to tipup on the emotional scale, to
start moving with some momentumin a different direction.
Right, i'm just kind of stayingdown at the lower end of the
keyboard in that heavy kind ofyou know lower note space.
How do you start to move uptowards happiness when
(17:38):
everything feels so heavy?
How do you do that?
And the reality is is it takesa lot of believing in the power
of choice.
When you believe in the powerof choice, when you believe that
you have the choice now that'sthe game changer right there.
All it takes is to believe inthe power of choice and then to
(18:01):
get curious about how.
So when you believe that youare accountable for you are
responsible for moving up onthat emotional scale and you are
responsible for healing yourlife, and that your best life is
absolutely going to come as aresult of you getting
intentional about your choices,now it's just like well, how do
(18:21):
you want to do it?
Do you want to do it by lookingat pretty flowers?
Do you want to do it by doingsome EFT tapping, finding the
perfect homeopathic remedy?
Do you want to do it bylistening to an awesome song
that makes you feel really good.
Do you want to do it by takinga walk?
Do you want to do it bywatching a sunset?
Like once you believe in thepower of choice.
You have infinite choices tostart to improve your mood and
(18:44):
your mindset and to getintentional about how to heal
your heart.
Do you want to listen to thispodcast, a different podcast?
Do you want to listen to comedy?
instead of all this seriousshit on all these podcasts?
Maybe it's time to turn thepodcast off and just turn on
some comedy, right?
Do you want to do it bycompleting the journal prompts
with the super cool, perfectlypicked homeopathic remedies I
(19:07):
already outlined for you in thepost divorce roadmap, like how
do you want to do it?
And that's the beauty of it is,once we're like oh, i get to
choose.
So how I'm currently doing it isI'm going to extended fast,
because Dr Mindy Pelts has beenteaching me about fasting in my
hormones And so I've beentracking my hormones on a
(19:28):
different level to know when tofast.
Because I want to inject mybody with stem cells in a way
that my body knows how to do iton its own, so that I can
improve my mindset and my mentalclarity and my capacity to
think clearly.
I want to improve all of thosethings.
So currently, how I'm doing itis through fasting, because
that's what's got me lit upright now.
But what's got you lit up rightnow?
(19:48):
that's where you get to be onthe adventure, where you get to
follow the clues and figure outwhat new thing falls in your lap
.
That gets you excited about theprocess of being in charge of
your life.
Because, let's be honest, beingin charge of your life can feel
really intimidating.
But when you know and youbelieve that it unlocks all of
(20:13):
the best things, that it isliterally how you architect your
best life is through a seriesof your choices, starting with
what you think, what you feeland what you believe, that's
pretty powerfully motivating.
Right there, and as I waspreparing for this episode, i
was saying to producer Joylikeman, there is a lot of stuff in
(20:36):
here where I'm going to pisssome people off, because what
I'm implying is that you arecompletely accountable for what
you are experiencing right now,and that is enough to make
anybody angry.
You know, when I was recoveringin the earlier days, i used to
say you know, i didn't choosethis path, i didn't choose to be
born to these parents.
(20:57):
I didn't choose this particularpath of trauma And I don't want
it.
And you need to change.
I don't need to change, youneed to change.
But the reality is, is the paththat you are on right this
moment?
this moment you are in theprocess of choosing And you are
in this moment because of seriesof choices you made.
(21:18):
Now, very often, we end up inplaces because we weren't
intentional about our choices,we just allowed a bunch of
things to happen withoutintervening on how we were
thinking, how we were feeling orthe choices we were making, and
also because we believed thingsthat weren't necessarily true.
I have done it.
I've made a lot of choices inmy life because I believed
(21:39):
things that weren't necessarilytrue.
I believe that if I was a goodgirl, good things would happen,
but that's not necessarily true.
And so when we get clear thatwe feel really, really justified
in doing a lot of things thatare actually hurting us, we feel
(22:03):
really justified to eat a lotof foods that are hurting us.
We feel justified to watch alot of screen time and to be
addicted to a lot of things thatare hurting us, like alcohol,
drugs, scrolling We feel reallyjustified to do these things and
love you are and I do them.
I do them right alongside ofyou, and so I'm not beating
(22:24):
either of us up about that right.
But when we get clear that whenwe are functioning from that
place where we feel justified todo the things that are hurting
us, we are on the lower end ofthe scale, we're operating from
victim consciousness and we'regoing to attract more pain, then
we know which stage of healingwe're in.
We're in the stalled out stage.
(22:45):
Now when I say, okay, i amgoing to get really intentional
about what I put in my body,what I put in my mind and how I
live my life, and I'm going tofocus on what feels good and I'm
going to focus on the peoplearound me that are here to
support me and who love me, andI'm here to support myself and
I'm here to love myself and I'mgoing to go do 10 things today
(23:05):
that feel happy, joyous and free, even if it's only for a moment
.
Now I'm on the productivegrowth gratitude end stage of
healing and that is going tomake crazy amounts of progress.
Now we're all going tobackslide right, like we
backslide all the time, justlike I said this morning, when I
was upset at my kid because Iwas feeling kind of bad about
(23:27):
myself, because feeling bad formyself because she didn't listen
, when I was feeling bad formyself, i backslid down into
frustration, into feelingentitled to her doing what I say
all the time and I was angry.
So I was down on that lower endof the emotional scale and I
was not in a place where I wasreally grateful or joyful.
(23:50):
And I was able to get there.
A little bit later I was ableto say to her you know, kiddo, i
struggle these same struggles,i do these same things right.
So I was able to start to tipup towards optimism.
I was able to start pointingout to her how everybody in life
has to overcome these kind ofnegative habits and negative
tendencies and that she's nodifferent than me or anyone else
(24:13):
, that she's in class with right.
I was able to point out to herhow we really are all in this
together and then I felt kind ofconnected and felt less angry
and I felt hopeful and see, sothat's the key when we coach
ourselves into higher frames ofconsciousness, more optimistic
ways of thinking, and that's howwe do it.
(24:35):
But it takes time and it takesconsistency in you embracing
some pretty intentional positivehabits, and that takes time.
And then when we backslide, thekey is to not beat ourselves up
, because when we're beatingourselves up now, we've toggled
temporarily back into thatvictim place.
(24:55):
So if you've ever heard anythingto do with the victim triangle,
it's when we dance around thethree points on a triangle
between victim, rescuer andpersecutor.
Now if you're on one point ofthe triangle, you're doing all
three.
There are some great articlesout there about this.
There's certainly one on one ofmy websites and, oh gosh,
victim triangle stuff is just sogood.
It's also called thecodependency triangle.
(25:17):
Same points of the triangledrive codependency, victim
rescuer and persecutor.
Now when you think of persecutorwho are the persecutors in your
life?
you think of The people whomake your life harder, the
people who criticize you, thepeople who come down on you.
When you are coming down onyourself, love, you are being
your own persecutor.
You are functioning in a victimtriangle space with yourself.
(25:41):
So when you backslide intolower levels on the emotional
scale, no big deal, don't beatyourself up, say hip, hip,
hooray.
I am human and now I get tomake a different choice.
I get to work on tipping upinto the other stage of healing,
which is the optimistic stage.
And so when you're thinkingabout the healing stages of
(26:05):
divorce recovery, i really wantyou to break it into two stages
the victim stage or the grateful, optimistic stage.
And when you notice you'veslipped into the victim stage, i
want you to coach yourself up.
And if you can't coach yourselfup because you're too low,
that's what I want you to put onsomething that coaches you up a
(26:28):
podcast, a meditation, a uh,glennon Doyle's book, um, a
comedy series.
I want you to put on somethingthat lifts you up and helps you
remember that we can do hardthings and that the more
consistently we do them, weaccomplish amazing stuff.
Because you have every bit ofthat power inside of you.
(26:52):
Love, i know it Like I knowanything.
I believe in you so much.
You've got this Peace Deardivorce diary is a podcast by my
(27:15):
coach, john.
You can find more at my coachJohncom.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.