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
246. Escaping the Cycle of Hope and Heartbreak With Divorce - Holding on to Fantasy Blocks Happiness
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Why does it feel so impossible to let go, even when you know your relationship is built on broken promises and “almosts”?
If you find yourself stuck replaying old messages, hoping for another sign, or endlessly waiting for your ex to finally change, you’re not alone—so many of us are trapped in the addictive cycle of “maybe,” clinging to hope rather than facing the deep fear of being alone.
Listen in to discover why your brain keeps chasing breadcrumbs of hope, how your nervous system gets hooked on the cycle of waiting and disappointment, and why holding on to fantasy actually blocks you from future happiness.
Hit play now to finally understand and break free from the addiction of “almost,” and find the peace and self-worth you deserve.
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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, 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 forgiveness and letting go.
Click HERE To Attend Somatic Workshop For Releasing 'What Could've Been'
It wasn't all bad. He almost got it, he almost changed, he almost loved you the way you needed. And even now, maybe, he still texts, just enough to keep the hope alive. If you find yourself stuck in that painful space, replaying the good moments, waiting for another breadcrumb, thinking maybe this time you are not weak, you're human and you're still chasing the almost. Today we're going to talk about why almost is so freaking addictive and why it feels safer than being fully alone, and how to finally start letting go of the waiting so you can return to yourself. 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. Okay, two main topics in this episode, and we're going to talk about the literal chemistry of breadcrumbs and why your nervous system clings to maybe. And then we're going to talk about how your fantasy is one of the things that blocks your future, because, as long as you're holding on almost, you literally can't be open from a heart-centered place to what's real or what could be in the future. So let's start with the chemistry of crumbs.
Speaker 1:Now, in order to do this, we have to talk for a bit about addiction and intermittent reinforcement. And if you're cringing right now because you're like Dawn, really Are you calling me an addict? Well, just hear me out, right, so you know when you're gambling and you win every now and then, and when you win, it makes you want to do it again. That is the concept of intermittent reward, and the reason that casinos work the way they do is because they figured out how to hack our intermittent reward system to keep us engaged in that way. It's the way phone games work, like if you have a favorite phone game, right, it's very, very similar. It's the concept of intermittent reward and it just keeps the dopamine hitting it just the right amount so that you're kind of hooked on being in the process, right. So when you are getting these sort of intermittent hits of occasional kindness or the random I miss you text, it's reinforcing that sort of brainwiring for addiction.
Speaker 1:But now let's tie that in with what we understand about attachment theory. And when we have exiles, exiled parts of ourselves, right, that felt abandoned or we were not fully seen or not fully chosen, and then it really just allows us. It's like this it becomes this fertile ground for avoiding being in touch with those early pains. Right, and so it's. We'll do anything to avoid being in touch with early abandonment wounds or early rejection wounds or early not being chosen wounds. And if we can just sort of keep this intermittent reward going with him, then I don't have to fully process what it felt like back then when this attachment wound happened in the first place, and I don't have to feel this sort of crushing weight of loss. But let's talk about what that looks like in your nervous system and how it's getting confused.
Speaker 1:Now, when you start to feel this sense of maybe he's not choosing me right, or you've initiated a divorce, or he's initiated a divorce, or you've talked about it or whatever, but like you can't pull the trigger because you just can't quite tolerate getting there right. But he does these things to reject and to distance and to whatever, and you start to panic right, and you feel in your nervous system nervous system activation. You feel tension, horrible, horrible tension in your nervous system, like something bad is happening, like you are experiencing a very real what your nervous system believes is a very real threat to your safety. Now it's not right. Really. What's actually a threat to our safety? Right, is staying in chronically toxic relationships. But your nervous system is interpreting his distancing or his rejection of you as a threat, and then one of two things happens Either that threat becomes so enormous and so painful and so distressing that, from a nervous system perspective, you go from activation to collapse, to dorsal, vagal shutdown, right To where you can't cope, you can't process. It could look, could look like depression, but it looks like shutting down, like freezing, like not functioning anymore, which I think is what happens to many, many women when they feel chronically rejected, because that's what happened when we were very, very young and we experienced attachment wounding.
Speaker 1:But here's the other thing that can happen is he does something to distance or criticize or reject you. You feel that nervous system activation, that nervous system tension, and you turn yourself into a pretzel to get him to say something validating or affirming or reassuring in some freaking manner and you get temporary nervous system relief. You breathe this huge sigh of relief, your shoulders drop, you feel an immense amount of hormones flooding through your body that suddenly signal that you're safe because the threat has passed, when actually nothing's changed. You're stuck in the same cycle of nervous system tension, collapse, or nervous system tension and a false sense of temporary relief. But that is all built on a system of.
Speaker 1:From a long-term perspective, you don't feel safe inside of yourself and so you rely on these breadcrumbs from him and you just stay stuck in this cycle of nervous system tension, fake sense of relief, nervous system tension, fake sense of relief, because you're avoiding that big nervous system dorsal vagal shutdown, collapse state and you confuse that nervous system tension and relief for connection. Because it's not connection, love, it is a false sense of safety that you are clinging to because you have not yet done the work of unburdening those parts that have all those abandonment wounds. So you weren't crazy to want the good moments back. You were just chasing regulation through someone who only gave you just enough to keep you in the cycle. So now what do you do with that awareness? Because as long as you're holding on to almost, you can't actually be open to something new in your future.
Speaker 1:So it's time to take a look at the second piece, which is how the fantasy is blocking the future, the story that you tell yourself of almost. And if I could, only if he could, only if he could only change, if he could only regret, if he could only see, if he could only realize, right, what that does. It's actually a manager part love, protecting you from grieving the truth. It's so interesting, no matter how many times I do IFS, emdr sessions, where we will see a manager part has an actually pretty unhealthy mental loop or story it tells itself. But it's actually less painful than the full kit and caboodle right, Because this almost story you tell yourself, this protective fantasy you tell yourself, is not as painful, it's not as low on the vibrational scale from a law of attraction perspective, as complete despair or complete grief.
Speaker 1:And so the deeper fear that you're avoiding is, if he never becomes who I needed, then I was never actually chosen, and that grief is harder than the breakup or the messy, toxic dance you're in, right, and so this is where you have to start looking at, okay, what work, what concrete work do I need to do so that my body, mind, becomes a safe enough place that I can tolerate processing that grief? Typically, the reason we really avoid processing that grief is because some part of us believes we can't handle it, can't handle it, and so this is reason 9,472,684 that I love homeopathy, because I have never seen anything resource a body-mind faster than a well-paired remedy. Once there's a well-paired remedy on board, all of a sudden I have nervous system resource in order to tolerate whatever it is that I'm avoiding. That needs to be processed in order so that I can come home to self. And so if you resonate with, if he never becomes who I needed, then I was really never actually chosen by him. He was choosing something I did for him, some outcome, some look, some thing I provided him some you know, performance-based element of our relationship, but not me, not me. Me, me, who I am, what I love, what I think, what I feel, what I believe, who I am. That's not what he chose and the pain of that rejection ties right in to your earlier attachment wounds and your job is to get strong enough to be able to process those exiled parts, love and come home to yourself. What you're addicted to isn't him, it's the illusion of being chosen, and you don't need to be chosen by anyone other than yourself. And then you will attract so many people from there friends, potential dating partners. You will attract an unlimited amount of really feel-good relationships once you have a grounded sense of worth.
Speaker 1:I want to challenge you. Close your eyes for a moment, unless you're driving right. Take a big, big, big, deep breath and I want you to turn your attention inward and just notice what your body says. When I ask this question Do you feel like you get to choose? Do you feel like you have a choice in life right now, about who your partner is, where you live, how you work, how you earn a living, how you spend your time with your children? Do you feel like you get to choose, choose and if not love, then you know that this episode is for you and that working with those exiled parts so that you get out of this loop of clinging to maybe and chasing this fantasy and feeling like you have to wait to be chosen All of that is garbage.
Speaker 1:Let's flush that right. Let's get out of that nervous system tension and relief cycle for a true sense of peace and safety in your body. I know that's what you're looking for. Shoot me a DM on IG at Dawn Wiggins and tell me where you are in this cycle. I would love to know. All right, talk soon. Peace, dear. Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach, john. You can find more at mycoachjohncom.
