Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
We are on a journey to get into the nitty gritty of divorce recovery and reveal why your divorce healing journey is still not working for you–even after you’ve tried therapy and read all the books.
Let's transform your pain into strength and take charge of your own narrative. Now’s the time we reclaim your healing journey–and why exactly we struggle to not only heal from past traumas but move beyond them to the ultimate goal: inner peace. That is real self-empowerment, and this is Dear Divorce Diary.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and EMDR specialist. I draw on decades of experience to help women navigate the emotional rollercoaster after ending a marriage. Using a little bit of science, a few alternative remedies and emotional release techniques, a whole lot of love, and zero BS, we step out of the victim mindset and into building a new life after divorce.
We emphasize nuance because overcoming challenges after divorce means questioning everything that got us here and using your divorce as a springboard to a better, more resilient (and certainly happier!) you.
On Tuesday, we have our listener segment called: "Getting Unstuck," where we anonymously unpack a difficult situation a listener is going through in their divorce healing journey.
And, on Thursday, we explore a "Hidden Healing Gem," which is a healing product or process we've tried and tested personally and/or professionally and are sharing our results and observations with you!
We cover essential life after divorce topics like grief, anxiety, codependency, loneliness, boundaries, nervous system health, attachment styles, the Law of Attraction, and homeopathy.
Join us twice a week as we go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave, and rebuild your confidence.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
240. Dissociation Explained: Signs, Survival Modes, & the Path to Reconnection from Trauma After Divorce
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Have you ever caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and wondered why you feel so distant, almost like you’re watching life from somewhere far away?
After divorce—or even just surviving daily life—many women find themselves “holding it all together” for everyone but themselves, quietly slipping into dissociation without realizing it. Dissociation goes far beyond zoning out or autopilot; it’s your nervous system’s way of protecting you from pain, overwhelm, or trauma, and it can leave you feeling disconnected from your own body and emotions long after the hardest moments have passed.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to recognize the real-life signs of dissociation in your day-to-day routines, discover why your brain and body rely on this survival tool (and how it may be quietly impacting who you attract and how you heal after divorce), and get hands-on, compassion-based steps—including a soothing, guided reflection—to help you gently reconnect and start feeling whole again.
Press play now and gift yourself the understanding—and relief—your heart has been waiting for.
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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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You've seen that look and maybe it's easier for you to recognize it in her than it is for you to see it in yourself. But it's the look where her eyes are open but she's not really there. Maybe you've seen it in the mirror where she's holding it all together, showing up for everyone but herself. This episode is for the woman behind that look, that distant, disconnected look. Hi, love.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence. I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. Today's episode is a deep dive into dissociation and what your dissociation is trying to say and how to address it. In today's premium episode, we're going to walk through what dissociation looks like and what to do with it, but also, at the end, we have a guided reflection that you could journal on. You could just listen to it and connect with it. But it's a guided reflection to help you gently reconnect to the places where you've gone offline, the parts that have dissociated, to keep you safe. It's not about forcing anything. It's just about offering a presence to the places you've had to abandon in order to feel okay. So we are going to talk about what dissociation looks like in real life, the purpose of it and how it functions. We're going to look at how to deal with it and then we will have that guided reflection where you can allow yourself to really get in touch with your dissociative patterns and reconnect. Let's dig in All right.
Speaker 1:Dissociation is a medical term. It is recognized in the DSM. When psychologists and therapists are putting in their diagnostic codes to your insurance companies or whatever. Dissociation is a true medical concept and it is the idea that, when something has been profoundly overwhelming to our mind and to our nervous system, that there is this built-in capacity to distance ourself from that overwhelming experience in a way that allows us to become separate from our bodies or from our environments in order to cope. So it is this sense of attempting to create distance or space, or the perception of separation from our bodies or our environments or our minds in order to cope or survive what is happening.
Speaker 1:So trauma is not a buzzword, it is not just something we're joking about on the tiki-taki. Certainly we can joke about it, right. A little dark humor never hurt anyone, but I need you to know that it is something that is happening at the structural level in your brain. When we experience trauma and dissociation, it changes how your brain functions. We can literally do a brain scan of someone pre-trauma and post-trauma and we will see different MRI images from someone who tends towards dissociation. Now, in a modern world, it's like they are training us to be dissociated. Right, these little glowing rectangles we can't stop scrolling while we're watching the television, like, oh, my goodness, how dissociative could we possibly be?
Speaker 1:But dissociation, secondary to trauma, it changes the structure in our brain and so this is something that is a profound part of healing or recovering from divorce and from the attachment wounds or the things that happened prior to your marriage and got reactivated during the divorce, because this is part of an integral part of how you recover and, more importantly, how you attract a different partner in the future. If you're dissociating and you have not treated that at a neurological level, at a nervous system level, you are going to have pockets of energy hidden from view, from yourself, that are going to affect who you're attracting, how you're moving through life. You're going to have hidden negative beliefs that you don't realize are there. You're going to keep attracting these experiences and not realize why and I'm going to say a good chunk of that is to do with dissociation. Part of its design is to keep secrets from us. Friend, I cannot tell you how many times as a therapist who is trauma-informed, that even when I'm doing marriage counseling with people, I have helped people process things that were going on in their marriage that then led them to become aware of profound traumas that happened early in life and it was directly impacting their relationships and how life was unfolding for them. So the design is to hide this traumatic content from us so we don't have to be in touch with it until it's safe enough, until we can go and do that work. Now let me give you some secrets of the therapeutic industry, things that not every therapist is going to tell you.
Speaker 1:But when you've sat in enough trauma-informed trainings, like I have, or moved through graduate school at high enough levels, you will hear this whispered in the halls. You will hear this actually highly contentious, hotly debated topic in the halls of the therapist's conversations and now you get to weigh in on which way is better for you. Some therapists will say you cannot profoundly treat trauma until you have helped someone become stable. They have to be stable enough and in a safe enough environment in order to treat their trauma, and you will hear a different camp of therapists say not everyone has the luxury of getting to a stable environment before they are able to start treating their trauma. Sometimes you have to meet people where they are and you have to just get in there and you have to help them start really working on their trauma, because that is what's going to lead towards them being able to create stable environments for themselves.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure if you've scrolled Instagram or TikTok long enough, you've seen people say like you can't heal in the environment that harmed you. And while that is true, I think very, very, very many children are trapped in environments that they do not have control over. And what are we going to say? They're not eligible for healing because they're trapped in their childhoods. I think there's room for both sides of the argument, and so I want to say to you, when you hear two different things going on in social media, we have to be able to hold space for both. You can start to heal even if you're not stable or in a stable environment, and then you'll maybe do the rest of your healing down the road once that has happened.
Speaker 1:However, when we go in too hard and too fast, treating trauma in a non-stable setting, it often leads to dissociation. So what do we do there? We have to become aware of the ways and places we dissociate so that we can start there with supporting and nurturing and having compassion and curiosity for those parts of us that feel like they cannot stay present or they will just self-destruct. So here are the things I want you to look for in your day-to-day life Zoning out, going cold, emotional numbness, autopilot, feeling like time is weird, feeling like you're floating above your body, feeling like you've lost track of time, like where was I just now? Where did I go? Sometimes this happens when we're driving, right. We're like where was I just now? Right, when you've gone, when you've been driving long distances that kind of thing is what I want you to really look for. People telling you you seem quiet lately, are you okay? Feeling a little flat, less emotionally engaged than you usually are, looping Looping is one of my favorite signs of dissociation, where you're just sort of repeating the same phrases over and over again, trying to sort of get a grip or make sense of something and it just you can't quite seem to make mental or emotional progress with it Looping. One of my favorite signs of dissociation Sometimes hyper-focusing or hyper-thinking of things, right is it can be really a dissociative loop.
Speaker 1:Common post-divorce dissociative like embodiments right, like dissociation is the absence of embodiment, but like, these are sort of dissociative roles we take on, specific to post-divorce. It's like court mode right, I've got to go into court mode. What does court mode feel like in your body? How do you know you're in court mode? Right, it's like you've gone intentionally hard or steely or you shut something off. Right, that's a form of dissociation. Or survival mode right, you're just talking to the. Well, I just got to be in survival mode today. Why, what is going on there? That's a form of dissociation. Or mom mode, right, mom mode is like where we have to be all dialed in and hyper-focused on our kids' needs and turn off certain awarenesses of our needs because there's no space for them. Right, these are all sort of dissociative zones where you might be able to start to connect space for them. Right, these are all sort of dissociative zones where you might be able to start to connect the dots about. Oh, there are elements of dissociation in these various modes post-divorce modes I've been going into and then, if you want to get really fancy, you can look at what modes you went into in your marriage and then you can rewind in the timeline and modes you went into in your childhood that had elements of dissociation.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about the value and the benefit of dissociation. We don't want to get rid of it all at once. It's not an all or nothing thing. It is valuable because it is protective. It's an adaptive survival response that God built our bodies to be able to do and it is so freaking elegant and I have the utmost respect for it because it allowed us to get from that moment in time to this moment in time. But when we want to manifest a life that's amazing, we can't do that from a dissociative place, because high vibe manifestation means you have to be able to feel high vibe, and Brene Brown taught us all the way back in 2010 and 2011,.
Speaker 1:You cannot selectively numb emotion. So if you've been numbing your pain or your shame or your panic or your whatever, you are also numbing your joy and your sense of accomplishment and your sense of vision for your future and excitement and passion about things that you want to call in for yourself. You cannot selectively numb emotion, love. So it's especially common in people who learned early on that to stay present in their body meant that they were going to feel danger or disappointment.
Speaker 1:And very recently, a thing that you can hear me say to people is it is safe to feel safe and feel discomfort. It is safe to feel safe and feel pain or discomfort. That is the thing we have to coach our nervous systems into right, because that is almost the hallmark. Like if someone said Dawn, what is secure attachment? Like, what does that mean? How will I know? If I have an earned secure attachment style? And I would say, if I could oversimplify it and boil it down to one thing, it would be that I can both feel safe in my body and feel emotional or physical discomfort. Because if I had a secure attachment style with a secure attachment provider, a caregiver, I would feel safe in that person's arms and know that it is okay to just feel what I'm feeling, but that it'll pass and that I will feel well again soon. What I'm feeling, but that it'll pass and that I will feel well again soon, right, and so that is what we're working to move from.
Speaker 1:I have to dissociate in order to feel safe. To it is safe to feel safe and feel discomfort. So I want you to look for this tendency to have blank eyes or a retreat inside of oneself. Right, those are all hallmarks of dissociation. Now, some of my favorite remedies, because some people stay dissociated for years after divorce, not because they want to, but because their nervous system never had a safe landing and they don't know, they don't realize it's happening, or they just don't have a clear path.
Speaker 1:I think very often people don't get well because they don't understand the path to wellness, right? It's like they've tried a lot of things but they're not working and then they feel shut down and helpless and then they dissociate even more. Right? So there are a handful of remedies I absolutely love for dissociation. One of them is opium, another one is thuja, another one is anacardium, another one could be zincamate. There are, oh, carc. I love carc for dissociation. Right, there are so many. We use a number of those in our dissociation blend and then you know which one is right for you. That's the key, right? Or maybe several of them are going to really chip away at dissociation. So homeopathy really really helps us clear a lot of those initial layers of dissociation and then we can do the hard work of really reprogramming our nervous systems and our minds to feel safe, even though we might feel pain.
Speaker 1:There's really this essential element of getting back into your body when you've been dissociating. That means really practicing body scans and somatic work, right, and really you'll hear me, especially if we work together, one-on-one or in a group program like what does that feel like in your body? I'm sure you hear me ask that a lot here on the podcast. What does that feel like in your body? You know, it's the sort of the old therapist question. What does that make you feel? That question no longer suffices, right. What does that make you feel in your body? That is how we know we're breaking through layers of dissociation. That is how we know we are breaking through layers of dissociation. And to the woman who's thinking I don't know, other people have it worse than me Is this dissociation thing really real? How do I know? I just want you to be curious about this, right, if your body has ever had to shut down to protect you from feeling something fully, that's trauma and that's dissociation. And you know I want you to give yourself the gift of getting curious about that.
Speaker 1:I want to help you reconnect with those parts of you you've been dissociating from, and so, if you're driving, maybe this is or isn't the time to do this piece. This is going to be a guided reflection. It is something absolutely. If you are sitting in a place where you can journal, I want you to do that after this reflection, this guided reflection. So I want you to find a quiet place. I want you to take a deep breath. I want you to put a hand on your heart or your cheek.
Speaker 1:I want you to find a deep, gentle breath, soften through your shoulders, release a little, unclench your butt, cheeks, and I want you to think of a time, recent or long ago, where you saw that. Look in your eyes. Maybe it felt empty or distant or disconnected. Don't try to fix it, just notice it. Where were you, what was happening? And I want you to gently and curiously explore what was I protecting myself from in that moment? What would it have cost me to stay fully present and in my body and feeling feelings? What did my body do in that moment to help me survive and feel less? Staying with your breath, noticing if you're still breathing, doing a body scan, notice what your body is saying.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to ask you to do some trauma-informed care. Close your eyes and imagine looking into your own disconnected, detached, dissociated face, the version of you with that behind-the-eyes. Look, she's not weak, she's not broken, she's brilliant. She's brilliant. She's adapted, she's doing exactly what God programmed her body and her mind to do, and she's doing it. She guarded the part of you that was too tender to touch, and I want you to thank her for that. And then I want you to acknowledge she's had to be really strong, that part of you, and in this moment we're going to help her carry that burden and soften it.
Speaker 1:I want you to ask her what do you need from me right now? Where would you like to come back? Online, but it feels too scary or hard or confusing. If I met you with warmth instead of shame, would that feel better? Now let whatever comes a word, an image, a memory, a body sensation let it come Without judging it, without pushing it away. Now you can pick up the pen and you can write about it, or you can just sit with her, that part of you that has been so strong in protecting you from your pain. She's been waiting for you for this moment, for this awareness, for this. Aha, take a deep breath, soften again through your body, unclench and allow dissociation to melt just a little, to let in more space for healing, for the truest you, for the wholest you working together as a team, pain and purpose. I love you so much. Peace.
