April 22, 2025 • 22 mins
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Divorce is tough enough without being your own biggest critic. When you dig into this episode, you'll realize those harsh judgments may actually be a reflection of issues you need to work through within yourself, offering a starting point for genuine healing.
You'll figure out why those pesky habits of your ex drive you nuts, get to the bottom of why some folks just push your buttons and snag a dead-simple tip to start flipping that internal script from critic to cheerleader.
Tune in now to find out how to turn projecting judgments into a superpower for self-discovery and pave your way to more freedom and peace post-divorce!
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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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ever catch yourself rolling your eyes so hard at
someone that you give yourself aheadache?
Or maybe you're convinced yourex's new partner is definitely a
downgrade.
But what if all those judgmentsabout others and yourself are
actually mirrors reflecting yourown lack of self-acceptance?
Yep, plot twist Today we'reexposing how projections shape
(00:21):
our reality, why our judgmentssay way more about us than the
people we're judging and, mostimportantly, how to stop being
your own worst critic duringthis post-divorce season.
Buckle up, because this onemight call you out and set you
free.
Hi love.
(00:42):
Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary,the podcast helping divorcees go
beyond talk therapy to processyour grief, find the healing you
crave and build back yourconfidence.
I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, atherapist, coach, integrative
healer and divorcee.
Join me for a fresh approach tohealing grief and building your
confidence after divorce.
(01:18):
One of the things Ifundamentally believe about our
experience as human beings isthat our bodies and minds were
designed to heal themselves.
I have so much faith in theintelligent creator and the
intelligent creation, and thisepisode really is one of those
things.
So in today's episode, we aregoing to take a look at how
judgments and projections arepart of that design for us to be
(01:41):
self-aware and to healourselves.
So, first things first.
You know that super annoyingtrait your ex had that you just
couldn't stand.
Ooh, your body just talked toyou, didn't it?
It's like what, if I told you,that trait of his might just be
living rent-free in you also,what?
(02:04):
So stick around, because injust a minute, I'm going to
share a truth bomb about why thepeople who drive us crazy are
actually showing us something weneed to see.
And then, a little bit later on, we're going to look at why
certain people trigger you waymore than they should, and the
hint is that it's probably gotless to do with them and so much
(02:26):
more to do with a wound fromyour childhood.
And so, before we're done withthe episode, I'll show you how
the childhood experiencestrained your brain to see the
world and certain people aparticular way, and how to
rewrite that script so you couldstop reliving that same old
pattern.
And then, finally, we're goingto look at the self-acceptance
hack.
That changes everything,because the key to feeling less
(02:48):
judged and less judgy probablyisn't about changing anyone else
, because that would make youhelpless and we're not helpless.
It's more about shifting theway you see yourself.
So, before we wrap up theepisode, I will give you one
ridiculously simple mindsettrick that will help make you
feel lighter, freer and way lesstriggered by other people's
nonsense.
Let's dig in.
(03:13):
In my very early post-divorcedays I really immersed myself in
so many different forms ofhealing and therapy and started
doing that relationship autopsything that we all do right, and
it had become all this.
It had hit me like a ton ofbricks, honestly, that my ex
(03:33):
really struggled with a coupleof types of addiction and it was
really easy for me to analyze,project and judge the lack of
emotional awareness, the lack ofemotional availability, the
(03:54):
similarities between how hisaddiction presented and the
experiences that I had in mychildhood, that I had in my
childhood.
Long story short, it was reallyeasy for me to see the things
that he had done and was doingthat really hooked into my
traumas and wounded me.
(04:15):
But you know, what took me alot longer to figure out and
sort of be in on the joke aboutwas the ways in which my
untreated trauma and highlydissociative tendencies also
kept me completely emotionallyunavailable.
I could intellectually likeassess something up one way and
(04:39):
down the other, but that didn'tmake me vulnerable, transparent
or emotionally available andthat's what this episode is
really about is the things thatwe tend to get really distressed
, stressed, triggered,frustrated with.
We are usually last to be in onthe joke that that thing has a
(05:04):
kernel of truth inside of me,inside of you, about our own
behaviors, and so I want you tothink about a handful of the
things that have been sort ofdriving you crazy lately, about
people in your life, and itcould be your ex mother-in-law,
it could be your ex, it could beyour ex's new partner, it could
be like any number of things,and I want you to take a breath,
(05:29):
pull out your journal, and Iwant you to get ridiculously
honest with yourself about theways in which you may be doing
that exact thing in some way,shape or form.
Very often, it's easier for usto see our own stuff in other
people, but it's stuff that'sbeen dissociated or
(05:52):
disintegrated from ourself-awareness, and so, in that
whole idea that we are designedto self-heal and self-regulate
right, this is one of thebuilt-in tools for us to become
self-aware, but we're so used tobeing validated for criticizing
(06:13):
and blaming right, brene Browntalks about blame as one of the
most pain-relieving things we doto shift out of our own
discomfort and vulnerability.
It's like, oh, if I can blameyou, then I can immediately get
pain relief from the shame andinsecurity that I'm feeling.
And PS, that's been rewarded inpopular culture today, right On
social media and just ingeneral, right, we have really
(06:34):
been rewarded for not beingvulnerable, right, and for
instead like cultivating thesesort of curated presentations of
ourselves, right, our skin, ouroutfits, our age, our
relationships, our this, ourthat, our vacations, right.
It's like it's just nottransparent and authentic
anymore.
And so this is really a deepdive in starting to understand
(07:00):
what radical self-acceptance,the roots of radical
self-acceptance is reallylooking at how all the things
that we judge in other peopleare really also self-judgments
in places where we lackself-acceptance,
self-forgiveness, self-awareness, self-integration.
So if that didn't already pissyou off enough, I will give you
(07:22):
that every now and then.
A judgment or a trigger isn'tjust about something inside of
yourself that you're judging,but it could be a projection
from your childhood that youhave projected as like a film
that you're projecting onto ascreen.
Right, we project things fromour childhood onto our life
(07:43):
around of us.
What's that movie, producer Joy, where the guy is actually
playing in a whole movie set andthe Truman Show, right, like
that's really like the TrumanShow really is us in our lives,
right, we're just constantlyreplaying sort of these old
early childhood experiences, andthat's just because when our
(08:03):
brain map was formed and whenour beliefs were structured, and
it can be tweaked over theyears with lived experiences.
But we're all just projectingour own reality onto each other
as we move through life andwe're often seeing things the
way we see them and not the waythey are right.
So every now and then I'm goingto give you the benefit of the
doubt that sometimes what we'reactually doing is we're
(08:24):
projecting onto other people ourwounds, our pain from early
childhood.
So, for instance, my wonderfulnow husband for the first five
years of our marriage Iprojected my parents onto him
left, right and center, like allthe time.
And that doesn't mean that hewasn't doing things that were
(08:44):
problematic right in center,like all the time.
And that doesn't mean that hewasn't doing things that were
problematic, like there wereproblematic intimate
relationship behaviors, right,also a lack of emotional
awareness or, you know, adifficult time expressing
himself or looping me in on whathe was experiencing or thinking
or feeling or whatever.
Right, but also, hey, myparents did all these behaviors.
The intensity with which Iwould react like really react to
(09:09):
my now husband was more in linewith the intensity of the
emotions that I have towards myparents and my childhood, not
towards my current husband.
Right, my current husband hasalways been a willing engaged
partner who is willing to takehis own inventory, you know,
like nine times out of 10, rightIs willing to accept feedback
and have the conversation withme and would literally put
(09:31):
himself on train track.
So why would I get so angry?
Why would I get so wounded andso hurt by him?
Ah, because I was projectingthe way I would anticipate my
parents would respond to me,onto him, and I was like living
out this whole fantasy you know,pain script screen with him and
he wasn't even responding to mein that way, right?
(09:52):
So, because of the way that weinternalize beliefs, painful
experiences, especially in theintimate realm, there is a part
of our brain called thereticular activating system and
it is the part of our brainthat's responsible for filtering
out information in ourenvironment and it's going to
filter it based on the beliefsthat we hold about people in the
(10:16):
life around us, and it's goingto sometimes filter out the good
stuff because we've programmedit to see the bad stuff.
I can't trust anyone, I can'tbe myself, I can't get my needs
met, I should have done better,I'm not lovable.
And so when we're functioningfrom these negative beliefs, the
reticular activating system isactually filtering out the good
(10:36):
stuff.
Isn't that interesting and thatoften can make or break a
relationship's success orfailure, because of the way
people trigger us from those oldprojections, from negative
beliefs we have carried with usfor a very, very long time.
And we're not aware that we'redoing it because it's in the
subconscious mind, right?
(10:56):
And so until the subconsciousbecomes conscious, then we just
keep living out theseprojections over and over again.
So how do we rewrite that scriptso that we can break the
pattern, both in the way thatwe're judging other people, the
way that we're judging ourselvesand the way that we're judging
the world around us?
Well, I would say post-divorce,like man, what a time where
(11:17):
we're feeling shut down,shameful, insecure, inadequate,
second-guessing everything,struggling to trust, right.
We're just really in, I wouldsay, a defensive position in
general, feeling on the backfoot, right, and I think that
that's a time where we reallyhave to take a look at.
Okay, the way it feels to be inthe world right now does not
(11:38):
feel good, it feels threatening,it feels hard, it feels
insecure.
And in order to start reallyfundamentally shifting that
script, we have to consistentlytake the steps to say, okay, my
mind is going to give me a bunchof feedback, information, input
(12:00):
.
We rewatched the movie ShortCircuit this weekend.
Oh, my goodness, johnny Five'salive and he would eat the robot
.
He would keep saying input,input, need input.
But our minds are going to giveus tons of input, right, and we
have to start getting clearthat the input is rarely fact,
(12:20):
right?
And so our thoughts and ourfeelings, they're valuable, they
need to be processed, they needto be sifted and sorted through
, but they are rarely factual.
There's a lot of data in thatinput that the mind and the
emotions in the body gives us.
It's data and it needs to befelt through and it needs to be
processed.
But I want you to really getclear that you can feel through
(12:41):
those feelings, you can siftthrough the thoughts and the
messages without believing them,without believing them, so I
can drop into my body, do a bodyscan and I can feel into how
defensive and insecure I feeland like really feel how
(13:04):
crippling and debilitating thatis Not now right, I'm
remembering back, but then sayto myself, okay, but that's not
true.
It's a feeling state that canpass, based on how I respond to
it.
So I find it helpful often tothink about weather patterns
with regards to thoughts andemotions, that there are weather
(13:27):
patterns that come in and howlong they stay right, how long
this storm lasts, depends on howI respond to it and whether or
not I believe it is me versus apassing pattern.
So, for example, last night Iwas having a lot of worrisome
thoughts in my sleep, like somany, like worry, like one
(13:47):
thought led to another worriedthought led to another worried
thought and I was like what isgoing on?
This is weird.
I just haven't felt like thisin such a long time, right.
And then when I got up thismorning and I was like sitting
with it, I was like, ah, Istarted a new detox protocol
this week because I used to haveto take so many medications for
cluster headaches that when Istart detoxing specific
(14:11):
medications, sometimes thatcreates kidney inflammation
because, all of the right, thekidneys have to filter out all
those medications and I have akidney vulnerability.
Well, guess which organ systemis tied to worry?
You guessed it the kidneys,right?
So as I'm up this morning andI'm like, oh, my kidneys are
inflamed and therefore my mindis doing this worry, you guessed
it the kidneys, right?
So as I'm up this morning andI'm like, oh, my kidneys are
inflamed and therefore my mindis doing this worry thing, let
me go take my little kidneydrops and let me just interact
(14:31):
with this differently today, sothat I'm not like getting all
like, ah, I am worry, right,there is a behavior of worry
moving through my body as I'mdetoxing certain things, and so,
in order to get a handle onprojections and judgments, first
you got to get honest withyourself about where it's coming
from, what it's got to do withyou, what it's got to do with
(14:53):
your childhood, and then you'vegot to get clear that, oh, this
is old stuff moving through meand I don't have to believe it.
It's feedback, it's input.
I can process it, I can feelinto it so that I can release it
, but I don't have to trust it.
I don't have to believe thatit's still happening, or that
it's real, or that it's now, orthat it's my truth or that it's
me.
It's not me, it's a weatherpattern to do with me, and I can
(15:17):
release that Now.
The final thing that I reallywanted to talk about today was
one of my favorite tools to movecloser to self-acceptance and
to move closer to this sort ofopen-hearted way of living and
seeing ourselves and the worldaround us.
Quite frankly.
Right, because if we continuein this post-divorce world to
(15:37):
stay stuck in projections andjudgments, guess what?
We're going to attract somereally awful dating partners.
We are going to be in a verylow vibrational state, which
means we're going to havetrouble breaking out of
financial blocks, relationshipblocks like career blocks,
parenting blocks, right, we'rejust going to stay super blocked
and attracting a bunch of crapto us.
(15:58):
So we need some fundamentaltools right to start shifting
into self-acceptance, and I amnot going to sugarcoat it for
you.
Like, the path toself-acceptance is a process.
I find that the tools we useover here at Dear Divorced Diary
are the ones that will get youthere fastest.
But in the journey ofself-acceptance, there is this
(16:20):
very, very quick, down and dirtytool that I love to use, and it
is called loving eyes.
And so when you feel judgmentwelling up inside of yourself,
whether it's towards yourself,towards someone else or towards
an early childhood experience.
I want you to remind yourselfthat A, you don't have to
(16:41):
believe every thought you'rethinking and every feeling
you're feeling.
And then, b, I want you to grabfor this tool called loving
eyes.
Now I'm going to unpack in thenext episode loving eyes from
top to bottom, marie, and helpyou apply it, but for this
episode, I want you to at leastget the hang of it.
What do I mean by it?
So I want you to think about ahandful of things in your life
(17:02):
that when you think of them, youfeel your face soften, you feel
your eyes soften, you feel thecorners of your mouth turn up
right.
For me, consistently, that isalmost always going to be a
little put the Frenchie or alittle podcast pup or something
in nature.
Very, very often it will be mydaughter or my husband or
something like that.
But I think when you're in anearly post-divorce phase, I
(17:23):
don't think it is your kids.
In fact, when I was in apost-divorce phase, anything to
do with kids was actually verypainful and triggering for me
and I think for many people,kids can remind you of so much
of the pain and hurt, so it'snot that right.
But think of something that isvery, very consistently going to
(17:43):
trigger you to feel warm andsoft and good and open-hearted.
And when you find that, I wantyou to drop into your body, I
want you to do a body scan.
I want you to notice how, whenyou are engaging that thing, I
could just stare at Lilliput,the Frenchie's face, like all
day long, it's just.
I just soften when I stare ather right.
And that is your key or yourbridge to self-acceptance.
(18:09):
Because when we can find thatfeeling state in our body, then
we can bridge over to adoptingand adapting that feeling state
towards ourselves and towardsother people.
Now, that's a deeper dive.
How to get from one to theother is a deeper dive that
we're going to unpack in thenext episode.
But I want you to just noticethat when you can find something
(18:32):
in your body in a feeling state, then it can be applied to a
different area and being able tofind loving eyes for your
enemies right or your yeah, Idon't know your enemies right.
I think very often people areafraid to do that because it
feels like letting them off thehook or condoning their bad
(18:54):
behavior.
But it really is the key topeace in life, to finding
forgiveness towards yourself,towards other people, and you
can't forgive other people ifyou haven't learned how to
forgive yourself first.
And you can't learn toradically accept other people
unless you've learned to toforgive yourself first.
And you can't learn toradically accept other people
unless you've learned toradically accept yourself first.
So loving eyes is a necessarytool and if you're like, oh,
(19:19):
dawn, I hate this, that's fun,cool, I get it.
You can hate it, but it's anessential part of your healing
journey and you cannot skip it.
There's no bypassing this.
So if what you want is peaceand what you want is a future
love, that's like worth it.
And if what you want isabundance, then Loving Eyes has
(19:44):
to be part of your toolkit toreleasing judgment and feeling a
greater sense ofself-acceptance and acceptance
for the people that you todayfeel like you could never, ever,
ever forgive.
I know that by the end of thisepisode, it feels like I have
just given you a massive to-dolist.
Like Dawn, you have just givenme like way too much crap that I
(20:06):
now have to work through, toomuch crap that I now have to
work through.
And you know, yeah, that'sright, because because, again,
as I mentioned at the top of theepisode, our body, minds were
designed to heal themselves andwhen we know where to focus our
attention and what to heal, thenall of a sudden we can start
having breakthroughs left andright.
And you know, this is why wedesigned our intensive healing
(20:28):
program that is so personalizedthe way that we did, because we
know that it feels reallyoverwhelming to have to take
responsibility for all of thisstuff in order for you to have
an abundant life.
Yeah, it's overwhelming andit's a process, and sometimes it
can feel like, well, crap,where do I start?
Right?
But I think what you start withis just the awareness thing like
(20:49):
, oh, when I'm feeling judgy orwhen I'm feeling afraid of being
judged, that what's actuallypopping up for me is a lack of
self-acceptance and that'ssomething I can work on.
And when I can work on it, thenthe sky's the limit for what I
can manifest, because it'swithin the realm of something
that I can positively influenceand to me that's intoxicating.
(21:11):
So, thank you so much forhanging with us today and really
taking a look at how judgmentis really something that you can
work on around self-acceptance.
Thanks for spending your timewith us.
Thanks for coming here to hangout with us.
It means the world to us thatyou are here and raising your
vibration, because it makes adifference for you and it makes
(21:32):
a difference for the worldaround us.
And without you there is noDear Divorce Diary podcast.
So get on with your bad selfand we'll talk soon.
Peace.
Dear Divorce Diary is a podcastby my coach, dawn.
You can find more atmycoachdawncom.
Ever catch yourself rolling your eyes so hard at
someone that you give yourself aheadache?
Or maybe you're convinced yourex's new partner is definitely a
downgrade.
But what if all those judgmentsabout others and yourself are
actually mirrors reflecting yourown lack of self-acceptance?
Yep, plot twist Today we'reexposing how projections shape
(00:21):
our reality, why our judgmentssay way more about us than the
people we're judging and, mostimportantly, how to stop being
your own worst critic duringthis post-divorce season.
Buckle up, because this onemight call you out and set you
free.
Hi love.
(00:42):
Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary,the podcast helping divorcees go
beyond talk therapy to processyour grief, find the healing you
crave and build back yourconfidence.
I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, atherapist, coach, integrative
healer and divorcee.
Join me for a fresh approach tohealing grief and building your
confidence after divorce.
(01:18):
One of the things Ifundamentally believe about our
experience as human beings isthat our bodies and minds were
designed to heal themselves.
I have so much faith in theintelligent creator and the
intelligent creation, and thisepisode really is one of those
things.
So in today's episode, we aregoing to take a look at how
judgments and projections arepart of that design for us to be
(01:41):
self-aware and to healourselves.
So, first things first.
You know that super annoyingtrait your ex had that you just
couldn't stand.
Ooh, your body just talked toyou, didn't it?
It's like what, if I told you,that trait of his might just be
living rent-free in you also,what?
(02:04):
So stick around, because injust a minute, I'm going to
share a truth bomb about why thepeople who drive us crazy are
actually showing us something weneed to see.
And then, a little bit later on, we're going to look at why
certain people trigger you waymore than they should, and the
hint is that it's probably gotless to do with them and so much
(02:26):
more to do with a wound fromyour childhood.
And so, before we're done withthe episode, I'll show you how
the childhood experiencestrained your brain to see the
world and certain people aparticular way, and how to
rewrite that script so you couldstop reliving that same old
pattern.
And then, finally, we're goingto look at the self-acceptance
hack.
That changes everything,because the key to feeling less
(02:48):
judged and less judgy probablyisn't about changing anyone else
, because that would make youhelpless and we're not helpless.
It's more about shifting theway you see yourself.
So, before we wrap up theepisode, I will give you one
ridiculously simple mindsettrick that will help make you
feel lighter, freer and way lesstriggered by other people's
nonsense.
Let's dig in.
(03:13):
In my very early post-divorcedays I really immersed myself in
so many different forms ofhealing and therapy and started
doing that relationship autopsything that we all do right, and
it had become all this.
It had hit me like a ton ofbricks, honestly, that my ex
(03:33):
really struggled with a coupleof types of addiction and it was
really easy for me to analyze,project and judge the lack of
emotional awareness, the lack ofemotional availability, the
(03:54):
similarities between how hisaddiction presented and the
experiences that I had in mychildhood, that I had in my
childhood.
Long story short, it was reallyeasy for me to see the things
that he had done and was doingthat really hooked into my
traumas and wounded me.
(04:15):
But you know, what took me alot longer to figure out and
sort of be in on the joke aboutwas the ways in which my
untreated trauma and highlydissociative tendencies also
kept me completely emotionallyunavailable.
I could intellectually likeassess something up one way and
(04:39):
down the other, but that didn'tmake me vulnerable, transparent
or emotionally available andthat's what this episode is
really about is the things thatwe tend to get really distressed
, stressed, triggered,frustrated with.
We are usually last to be in onthe joke that that thing has a
(05:04):
kernel of truth inside of me,inside of you, about our own
behaviors, and so I want you tothink about a handful of the
things that have been sort ofdriving you crazy lately, about
people in your life, and itcould be your ex mother-in-law,
it could be your ex, it could beyour ex's new partner, it could
be like any number of things,and I want you to take a breath,
(05:29):
pull out your journal, and Iwant you to get ridiculously
honest with yourself about theways in which you may be doing
that exact thing in some way,shape or form.
Very often, it's easier for usto see our own stuff in other
people, but it's stuff that'sbeen dissociated or
(05:52):
disintegrated from ourself-awareness, and so, in that
whole idea that we are designedto self-heal and self-regulate
right, this is one of thebuilt-in tools for us to become
self-aware, but we're so used tobeing validated for criticizing
(06:13):
and blaming right, brene Browntalks about blame as one of the
most pain-relieving things we doto shift out of our own
discomfort and vulnerability.
It's like, oh, if I can blameyou, then I can immediately get
pain relief from the shame andinsecurity that I'm feeling.
And PS, that's been rewarded inpopular culture today, right On
social media and just ingeneral, right, we have really
(06:34):
been rewarded for not beingvulnerable, right, and for
instead like cultivating thesesort of curated presentations of
ourselves, right, our skin, ouroutfits, our age, our
relationships, our this, ourthat, our vacations, right.
It's like it's just nottransparent and authentic
anymore.
And so this is really a deepdive in starting to understand
(07:00):
what radical self-acceptance,the roots of radical
self-acceptance is reallylooking at how all the things
that we judge in other peopleare really also self-judgments
in places where we lackself-acceptance,
self-forgiveness, self-awareness, self-integration.
So if that didn't already pissyou off enough, I will give you
(07:22):
that every now and then.
A judgment or a trigger isn'tjust about something inside of
yourself that you're judging,but it could be a projection
from your childhood that youhave projected as like a film
that you're projecting onto ascreen.
Right, we project things fromour childhood onto our life
(07:43):
around of us.
What's that movie, producer Joy, where the guy is actually
playing in a whole movie set andthe Truman Show, right, like
that's really like the TrumanShow really is us in our lives,
right, we're just constantlyreplaying sort of these old
early childhood experiences, andthat's just because when our
(08:03):
brain map was formed and whenour beliefs were structured, and
it can be tweaked over theyears with lived experiences.
But we're all just projectingour own reality onto each other
as we move through life andwe're often seeing things the
way we see them and not the waythey are right.
So every now and then I'm goingto give you the benefit of the
doubt that sometimes what we'reactually doing is we're
(08:24):
projecting onto other people ourwounds, our pain from early
childhood.
So, for instance, my wonderfulnow husband for the first five
years of our marriage Iprojected my parents onto him
left, right and center, like allthe time.
And that doesn't mean that hewasn't doing things that were
(08:44):
problematic right in center,like all the time.
And that doesn't mean that hewasn't doing things that were
problematic, like there wereproblematic intimate
relationship behaviors, right,also a lack of emotional
awareness or, you know, adifficult time expressing
himself or looping me in on whathe was experiencing or thinking
or feeling or whatever.
Right, but also, hey, myparents did all these behaviors.
The intensity with which Iwould react like really react to
(09:09):
my now husband was more in linewith the intensity of the
emotions that I have towards myparents and my childhood, not
towards my current husband.
Right, my current husband hasalways been a willing engaged
partner who is willing to takehis own inventory, you know,
like nine times out of 10, rightIs willing to accept feedback
and have the conversation withme and would literally put
(09:31):
himself on train track.
So why would I get so angry?
Why would I get so wounded andso hurt by him?
Ah, because I was projectingthe way I would anticipate my
parents would respond to me,onto him, and I was like living
out this whole fantasy you know,pain script screen with him and
he wasn't even responding to mein that way, right?
(09:52):
So, because of the way that weinternalize beliefs, painful
experiences, especially in theintimate realm, there is a part
of our brain called thereticular activating system and
it is the part of our brainthat's responsible for filtering
out information in ourenvironment and it's going to
filter it based on the beliefsthat we hold about people in the
(10:16):
life around us, and it's goingto sometimes filter out the good
stuff because we've programmedit to see the bad stuff.
I can't trust anyone, I can'tbe myself, I can't get my needs
met, I should have done better,I'm not lovable.
And so when we're functioningfrom these negative beliefs, the
reticular activating system isactually filtering out the good
(10:36):
stuff.
Isn't that interesting and thatoften can make or break a
relationship's success orfailure, because of the way
people trigger us from those oldprojections, from negative
beliefs we have carried with usfor a very, very long time.
And we're not aware that we'redoing it because it's in the
subconscious mind, right?
(10:56):
And so until the subconsciousbecomes conscious, then we just
keep living out theseprojections over and over again.
So how do we rewrite that scriptso that we can break the
pattern, both in the way thatwe're judging other people, the
way that we're judging ourselvesand the way that we're judging
the world around us?
Well, I would say post-divorce,like man, what a time where
(11:17):
we're feeling shut down,shameful, insecure, inadequate,
second-guessing everything,struggling to trust, right.
We're just really in, I wouldsay, a defensive position in
general, feeling on the backfoot, right, and I think that
that's a time where we reallyhave to take a look at.
Okay, the way it feels to be inthe world right now does not
(11:38):
feel good, it feels threatening,it feels hard, it feels
insecure.
And in order to start reallyfundamentally shifting that
script, we have to consistentlytake the steps to say, okay, my
mind is going to give me a bunchof feedback, information, input
(12:00):
.
We rewatched the movie ShortCircuit this weekend.
Oh, my goodness, johnny Five'salive and he would eat the robot
.
He would keep saying input,input, need input.
But our minds are going to giveus tons of input, right, and we
have to start getting clearthat the input is rarely fact,
(12:20):
right?
And so our thoughts and ourfeelings, they're valuable, they
need to be processed, they needto be sifted and sorted through
, but they are rarely factual.
There's a lot of data in thatinput that the mind and the
emotions in the body gives us.
It's data and it needs to befelt through and it needs to be
processed.
But I want you to really getclear that you can feel through
(12:41):
those feelings, you can siftthrough the thoughts and the
messages without believing them,without believing them, so I
can drop into my body, do a bodyscan and I can feel into how
defensive and insecure I feeland like really feel how
(13:04):
crippling and debilitating thatis Not now right, I'm
remembering back, but then sayto myself, okay, but that's not
true.
It's a feeling state that canpass, based on how I respond to
it.
So I find it helpful often tothink about weather patterns
with regards to thoughts andemotions, that there are weather
(13:27):
patterns that come in and howlong they stay right, how long
this storm lasts, depends on howI respond to it and whether or
not I believe it is me versus apassing pattern.
So, for example, last night Iwas having a lot of worrisome
thoughts in my sleep, like somany, like worry, like one
(13:47):
thought led to another worriedthought led to another worried
thought and I was like what isgoing on?
This is weird.
I just haven't felt like thisin such a long time, right.
And then when I got up thismorning and I was like sitting
with it, I was like, ah, Istarted a new detox protocol
this week because I used to haveto take so many medications for
cluster headaches that when Istart detoxing specific
(14:11):
medications, sometimes thatcreates kidney inflammation
because, all of the right, thekidneys have to filter out all
those medications and I have akidney vulnerability.
Well, guess which organ systemis tied to worry?
You guessed it the kidneys,right?
So as I'm up this morning andI'm like, oh, my kidneys are
inflamed and therefore my mindis doing this worry, you guessed
it the kidneys, right?
So as I'm up this morning andI'm like, oh, my kidneys are
inflamed and therefore my mindis doing this worry thing, let
me go take my little kidneydrops and let me just interact
(14:31):
with this differently today, sothat I'm not like getting all
like, ah, I am worry, right,there is a behavior of worry
moving through my body as I'mdetoxing certain things, and so,
in order to get a handle onprojections and judgments, first
you got to get honest withyourself about where it's coming
from, what it's got to do withyou, what it's got to do with
(14:53):
your childhood, and then you'vegot to get clear that, oh, this
is old stuff moving through meand I don't have to believe it.
It's feedback, it's input.
I can process it, I can feelinto it so that I can release it
, but I don't have to trust it.
I don't have to believe thatit's still happening, or that
it's real, or that it's now, orthat it's my truth or that it's
me.
It's not me, it's a weatherpattern to do with me, and I can
(15:17):
release that Now.
The final thing that I reallywanted to talk about today was
one of my favorite tools to movecloser to self-acceptance and
to move closer to this sort ofopen-hearted way of living and
seeing ourselves and the worldaround us.
Quite frankly.
Right, because if we continuein this post-divorce world to
(15:37):
stay stuck in projections andjudgments, guess what?
We're going to attract somereally awful dating partners.
We are going to be in a verylow vibrational state, which
means we're going to havetrouble breaking out of
financial blocks, relationshipblocks like career blocks,
parenting blocks, right, we'rejust going to stay super blocked
and attracting a bunch of crapto us.
(15:58):
So we need some fundamentaltools right to start shifting
into self-acceptance, and I amnot going to sugarcoat it for
you.
Like, the path toself-acceptance is a process.
I find that the tools we useover here at Dear Divorced Diary
are the ones that will get youthere fastest.
But in the journey ofself-acceptance, there is this
(16:20):
very, very quick, down and dirtytool that I love to use, and it
is called loving eyes.
And so when you feel judgmentwelling up inside of yourself,
whether it's towards yourself,towards someone else or towards
an early childhood experience.
I want you to remind yourselfthat A, you don't have to
(16:41):
believe every thought you'rethinking and every feeling
you're feeling.
And then, b, I want you to grabfor this tool called loving
eyes.
Now I'm going to unpack in thenext episode loving eyes from
top to bottom, marie, and helpyou apply it, but for this
episode, I want you to at leastget the hang of it.
What do I mean by it?
So I want you to think about ahandful of things in your life
(17:02):
that when you think of them, youfeel your face soften, you feel
your eyes soften, you feel thecorners of your mouth turn up
right.
For me, consistently, that isalmost always going to be a
little put the Frenchie or alittle podcast pup or something
in nature.
Very, very often it will be mydaughter or my husband or
something like that.
But I think when you're in anearly post-divorce phase, I
(17:23):
don't think it is your kids.
In fact, when I was in apost-divorce phase, anything to
do with kids was actually verypainful and triggering for me
and I think for many people,kids can remind you of so much
of the pain and hurt, so it'snot that right.
But think of something that isvery, very consistently going to
(17:43):
trigger you to feel warm andsoft and good and open-hearted.
And when you find that, I wantyou to drop into your body, I
want you to do a body scan.
I want you to notice how, whenyou are engaging that thing, I
could just stare at Lilliput,the Frenchie's face, like all
day long, it's just.
I just soften when I stare ather right.
And that is your key or yourbridge to self-acceptance.
(18:09):
Because when we can find thatfeeling state in our body, then
we can bridge over to adoptingand adapting that feeling state
towards ourselves and towardsother people.
Now, that's a deeper dive.
How to get from one to theother is a deeper dive that
we're going to unpack in thenext episode.
But I want you to just noticethat when you can find something
(18:32):
in your body in a feeling state, then it can be applied to a
different area and being able tofind loving eyes for your
enemies right or your yeah, Idon't know your enemies right.
I think very often people areafraid to do that because it
feels like letting them off thehook or condoning their bad
(18:54):
behavior.
But it really is the key topeace in life, to finding
forgiveness towards yourself,towards other people, and you
can't forgive other people ifyou haven't learned how to
forgive yourself first.
And you can't learn toradically accept other people
unless you've learned to toforgive yourself first.
And you can't learn toradically accept other people
unless you've learned toradically accept yourself first.
So loving eyes is a necessarytool and if you're like, oh,
(19:19):
dawn, I hate this, that's fun,cool, I get it.
You can hate it, but it's anessential part of your healing
journey and you cannot skip it.
There's no bypassing this.
So if what you want is peaceand what you want is a future
love, that's like worth it.
And if what you want isabundance, then Loving Eyes has
(19:44):
to be part of your toolkit toreleasing judgment and feeling a
greater sense ofself-acceptance and acceptance
for the people that you todayfeel like you could never, ever,
ever forgive.
I know that by the end of thisepisode, it feels like I have
just given you a massive to-dolist.
Like Dawn, you have just givenme like way too much crap that I
(20:06):
now have to work through, toomuch crap that I now have to
work through.
And you know, yeah, that'sright, because because, again,
as I mentioned at the top of theepisode, our body, minds were
designed to heal themselves andwhen we know where to focus our
attention and what to heal, thenall of a sudden we can start
having breakthroughs left andright.
And you know, this is why wedesigned our intensive healing
(20:28):
program that is so personalizedthe way that we did, because we
know that it feels reallyoverwhelming to have to take
responsibility for all of thisstuff in order for you to have
an abundant life.
Yeah, it's overwhelming andit's a process, and sometimes it
can feel like, well, crap,where do I start?
Right?
But I think what you start withis just the awareness thing like
(20:49):
, oh, when I'm feeling judgy orwhen I'm feeling afraid of being
judged, that what's actuallypopping up for me is a lack of
self-acceptance and that'ssomething I can work on.
And when I can work on it, thenthe sky's the limit for what I
can manifest, because it'swithin the realm of something
that I can positively influenceand to me that's intoxicating.
(21:11):
So, thank you so much forhanging with us today and really
taking a look at how judgmentis really something that you can
work on around self-acceptance.
Thanks for spending your timewith us.
Thanks for coming here to hangout with us.
It means the world to us thatyou are here and raising your
vibration, because it makes adifference for you and it makes
(21:32):
a difference for the worldaround us.
And without you there is noDear Divorce Diary podcast.
So get on with your bad selfand we'll talk soon.
Peace.
Dear Divorce Diary is a podcastby my coach, dawn.
You can find more atmycoachdawncom.
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