Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
This isn’t a breakup pep talk. It’s a full-body recalibration.
Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary—the only podcast for women navigating the messy aftermath of divorce who are done with quick fixes and spiritual fluff.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist and homeopath, and I’m here to give you something the divorce advice space rarely does: real healing.
Through somatic therapy, EMDR, IFS, and homeopathy, we go deeper—into your nervous system, your unspoken grief, and your buried rage.
Every week, we hold the tension: the body-based anxiety you can’t shake; the hormonal upheaval no one warned you about; the unresolved longing for identity.
You’ll hear raw solo episodes, real voice notes from women in the trenches, and intimate interviews with experts who do more than perform healing.
Here, you won’t be asked to “just move on.”
You’ll be asked to feel.
If you’re tired of tutorials that leave your nervous system humming and your heart disconnected, hit subscribe.
Your nervous system already knows the truth—it just wants a safe space to embody it.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
267. Divorce Drama & Dopamine: the Addiction No One Names
Ever sworn you wouldn’t check his Instagram at 1 a.m. … and still did? Or did you tell yourself, “just one glass,” and finish the bottle? That loop isn’t just bad habits—it’s codependency as addiction.
In this episode of Dear Divorce Diary, dawn, Producer Joy, and Coach Tiffini unpack how post-divorce codependency functions like a hidden addiction—hooking you on approval, fixing, and being chosen. We’ll explore:
✨ Why shame (not loneliness) is the engine that keeps you stuck
✨ The breadcrumb → boundary cycle every divorced woman knows too well
✨ How “good girl” conditioning rewires your nervous system for addiction
✨ Practical ways to interrupt the dopamine-drama loop
You don’t need another glass, another scroll, or another half-love. You need a nervous system that feels safe—and that’s what we help women build every day.
👉 Ready to break the cycle? Apply now for A Different D Word, our 12-month divorce recovery program, and book your inquiry call here: Click to Apply
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyCoachDawn
Instagram: (@dawnwiggins)
Instagram: (@coachtiffini)
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.
Post Divorce Road Map : 21 Days of Journaling
Promo Code: MAGICDROP
Tell me if this sounds familiar. You swore you'd stop checking his profile, but there you were at 1am scrolling and you also told yourself just one glass of wine to relax and somehow that stinking bottle is empty and you swore you'd never go back to someone who treats you like that. And yet you answered the text Dang it. We don't typically call that addiction, but what else do you call it when you can't let go, even when you know it's hurting you? Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence. 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.
Speaker 1:Okay, darlings, we are on fire over here today, so watch out. I have producer Joy and coach Tiffany and we are really excited to talk about codependency today and scare the pants out of you. No, no, we don't scare pants out, we scare pants off. Scare the pants off of you by really taking a look at the ways in which codependency is actually a hidden addiction. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the hidden addiction of codependency you tend to relate to addiction looking like rehab rock bottom. You know a bottle of vodka in your desk drawer at work, but what it actually looks like is also pouring another glass of wine just so you can sleep, or refreshing his social media, even though he's where you wouldn't right. The truth is, codependency is an addiction to approval, to fixing, to being chosen, and the withdrawal, the actual symptoms of withdrawal, the neurobiological experiences, are just as real.
Speaker 1:We're also going to talk about the way that the sort of good girl mentality many of us have been raised to have is a trap for this whole codependent addiction cycle, right? So every time you set a boundary, guilt drags you back. Every time you say never again, loneliness pulls you into another half love. That's the trap, right there. Right, craving connection so deeply which is right. We're built for connection but while simultaneously, and probably subconsciously, not believing you can have it, or still carrying a wound from times that somebody's connection was withdrawn from you and so you keep sacrificing yourself to get scraps of it until your nervous system learns safety which is what we help women do over here is really help the nervous system embody safety. You can't think your way out of this loop that you're in right, that sort of ache, reaching for connection and then just settling.
Speaker 1:And then finally, at the end of the episode, we are going to talk about why this conversation about addiction and codependency is so freaking important for divorced women. Because codependency is a socially accepted addiction. Instead of a bottle or a pill, you get hooked on approval, fixing and being chosen, and we, if anything, have validated each other for all of that self-sacrificing martyrdom. Bullshit, right, but like any addiction, it rewires your nervous system, your stress hormones spike, your self-esteem plummets, your identity gets hijacked by other people's needs and, just like alcohol or drugs, the brain map and the withdrawal that happens when you don't have access to those things, the anxiety, the loneliness, the cravings are real. And so our approach to divorce recovery is different, because it takes this into context and we're going to talk about the evidence we've gathered over the years that you need to hear, because there are a couple of very specific metrics that we've looked at over the years that show us that women are deeply in denial about this and how you can specifically recognize if you are one of those women.
Speaker 1:Let's dig in, ladies. I already talked too much. Save me from myself.
Speaker 2:This topic is so on point, though, for so many women. I'm super excited to dive into this.
Speaker 3:I just got a text last week from somebody that's like, oh shit. I just looked at his Instagram.
Speaker 2:I promised myself that.
Speaker 1:I wasn't going to do it, but here I am scrolling through the photos promised myself that I wasn't going to do it, but here I am scrolling through the photos, yep, and it wrecks us, right, like I've had multiple women who I've met with this week that are listeners, right, admit that they, yeah, when they drop into that it's so dysregulating, right, it takes them out for a few days from an emotional standpoint, from a nervous system standpoint, yeah, okay. So we're going to, we're going to unpack these loops, these three sexy things we're going to talk about. With regards to addiction, right, but it's truth telling time.
Speaker 1:Talk to me about the ways each of you see yourselves doing hidden addiction, right, this, like we think it's this, but it's really that, right, where you tell yourself you're not going to whatever, but then you do the thing and it's just to avoid feeling. Because what is addiction? Right, it's a difficulty feeling a feeling and processing it. It's like I need something outside of me to solve the pain that I'm experiencing, the discomfort I'm experiencing. So I need something outside of me to rescue from this feeling. So what are the ways that you know the three of us experience trying to distance from painful emotions by using addictive substances, whatever they are for us, right?
Speaker 3:I was younger it looked a lot different. So when I was younger it was definitely alcohol and weed. Can I say that Of course that's what it was right? Of course, yeah, I always used alcohol and marijuana to sort of like just mask whatever I was feeling, from a pretty young age too, right. So, like my young adult life, that's kind of how I was raised to do it. So there was this time period then when I went sober off of everything for several years, and so addiction looks different for me now.
Speaker 3:Right, and I know that a lot of women, of women think well, if I'm not drinking or I'm not using a substance, how can I possibly be an addict? Right right but now what I noticed in myself is like I changed from alcohol and weed to eating. Late night eating, binge eating, when I'm not even hungry. Everybody knows what that is. You sit some kettle chips and I can pound a whole bag like it's nobody's business, like they're delicious, right. So to me like.
Speaker 1:I posted this meme recently that said so, I'm really disappointed to find out that a serving size of potato chip is 12 chips. Girl, I eat 12 chips. Just trying to decide if I want to eat chips or not. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You got to get that good flavor, you know, like whatever. So to me it looked like overeating at times. To me it looked like exercising too much at some times. It looked like scrolling on my phone, Any sort of behavior where you are checking out mentally because you don't want to feel, and those are the more subtle things where sometimes it's harder to recognize when you're doing it because it is such a sneaky, insidious.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and yeah well, and we?
Speaker 3:go. Yeah, when I knew that I had a problem with social media in particular, it was to the fact where I would literally just get on my phone and I'd know exactly where that social media icon was. Yeah, you could do it and when I moved the icon to another page. I still was in the habit of getting up and pushing on the same freaking icon, like it was wild.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's really good.
Speaker 3:So I think that, again, when you start picking things that are different than what people normally consider to be addictive substances, you know even sex, even random hookups like that's all addicting things, even sex, even random hookups, like that's all addicting things. So I think that you have to be really careful about what are you doing habitually to ignore what you're trying to feel.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, we talked about this last week, right, because we were all hanging out in person together and I was like we got to change the question from what are you feeling to what are you avoiding feeling right now? Yeah, yeah, Because that's the habit of the pattern.
Speaker 3:Yeah, feeling right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cause that's the habit of the pattern. Yeah, and that's easier to answer. Yeah, I think that there's. I think my personal experience with addiction is addicted to the drama, like if, if something's not on fire, my nervous system wasn't okay, and addicted to the busy. So like when I have a space in my calendar, if I don't fill it up so I can be calm and I can process, I couldn't, I could not handle that. So like relearning Dawn, do you remember a couple years ago, when I was going through like the recognizing the addiction of the drama and trying to break those cycles and those circles, my heart literally went haywirewire and.
Speaker 2:I was palpitating really bad and like there's something structurally wrong with my heart and I went to cardiologist and all these things and there was actually nothing physically wrong with me, but you could watch my heart just being going because I was literally detoxing all of that and that was the moment for me of that, and that was the moment for me. It was so clear to me how, by choosing differently, my body was literally experiencing withdrawal like revolting yeah it was revolting.
Speaker 2:It could not. I went through a physical withdrawal because I was trying to, you know, reprocess and reintegrate and rewire those pathways of the addiction to the busy, addiction to the drama, addiction to the, and it meant cutting, you know, kind of pulling back from family members and pulling back from some of those behaviors of Facebook stalking.
Speaker 2:Like it was a physical social media, mm, hmm, mm, hmm, um like it was a physical social media and so you know like, yeah it's, it's crazy how your body reacts withdrawals from things that you wouldn't necessarily think would be addiction in today's mainstream, you know yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 1:you know, I hate to be one of those people that's like gosh today's day and age, right, because does anything ever really change? But I do think that with modern conveniences right, we have really lost track of how to feel.
Speaker 1:We're not sitting outside anymore, we're not working in our bodies anymore and I want to say not because my husband literally works outside in his body, so I'm not trying to oversimplify the thing but, generally speaking, right, we are really numb and Brene Brown has some amazing research right that she really enlightened us all with back in 2010, 2011,. Right, about how, you know, she talked about a beer and a banana nut muffin. Right, that we would all do anything to stay numb and to avoid feeling, and so all of her research on shame and vulnerability. She taught us that most of what we're trying to escape from with our addictions is shame. That's for most of us. That is the emotion we really struggle to process, and we'll talk about this a little more, you know, later in the podcast.
Speaker 1:But most of the time, we can work through feelings of, you know, fear or sadness, or. But most of the time we can work through feelings of you know, fear, sadness or whatever, right, but it's the underlying shame that most people, I don't think, realize they're actually struggling with. They don't recognize when that's the thing they're dancing away from. And then, yeah, we have all these behaviors we do. So the ways that I have done it and definitely still do it is with like work and achievement and, right, if I can just get it right and good and perfect and what are some other things that I do. Yeah, I would say a lot of times I struggle still with it when it's got to do with my husband or my daughter, like if they do something that's embarrassing to me, that will feel like shameful to me, and then I'll want to like have them be perfect so that I don't have to feel shame. Right, so it's, those are the places where I can still see shame sort of creep in in little ways.
Speaker 3:I love how people always tell me I just want to get over this. I don't want to feel it, I just want to come out on the other side of it and it's like unfortunately, sweetheart, you have to feel every single part of this to get the healing part. And it's not comfortable and it's not always fun, but it is a crucial part of being able to get from point A to point B. And that's the hard work that most people are not willing to put in.
Speaker 1:If you want the outcomes that people talk about when they're manifesting right.
Speaker 1:Like you know you can't say that you want high vibe things and not go through the shedding of the low vibe shit. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the sort of good girl trap loop, right, where you end up accepting less than because. And so you end up in this like I'm craving connection, craving connection, I'm pursuing it, I want to be wanted, so badly. Right, you end up falling back. Right, you end up violating your own boundaries. You end up sort of you know, eating the chip, scrolling the scroll, answering the text message, whatever it is right. And it's because, actually right, because I hear a lot of women talk about the ache of wanting to be touched, of wanting to be sexed, of wanting to be cherished, like this ache of like physical emptiness or these types of things. Right. And the connection piece isn't the problematic part, right, it's that below that ache is a deeply rooted fear that you're not good enough or you can't have it right.
Speaker 1:There's shame underneath the desire for connection. It's actually the shame that causes the relapse into the loop or the accepting the breadcrumbs or the chasing shit that doesn't actually solve right. But people think it's loneliness. People think it's the loneliness that's the problem. But it's actually the shame that underpins loneliness. Talk to me about what you've seen, either in yourselves or with the women we talked to right, that end up with the scraps and the breadcrumbs. Do you see women recognizing that it's actually the shame piece underneath or that they're actually afraid they can't have it? Or do you see them really thinking it's something else like loneliness, or there's no good men, or whatever it is?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me. The women that I work with specifically think that there's no good men out there that they're not deserving, they're not good enough or they just want sex, you know, and they don't understand why there's that like loneliness or aching part in there. Usually I tell people to get a cat. Yeah, yeah, get something to love on, you know, like yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, connection doesn't have to be romantic, you know, and I think that that's where a lot of people feel like if they don't have a romantic love in their life at that point, then it's like some catastrophic loss and they can never feel genuine love connection.
Speaker 2:But I feel that with my friends, I feel that with my family and I feel that, towards my cats, and I know that sounds silly, but like you know there's genuine connection there.
Speaker 3:As far as me, I followed breadcrumbs forever, forever in my life. I settled for these bullshit texts from men that maybe would text me good morning, or maybe look my way, or Right. Because I didn't feel like I could attract the types of men that I was truly craving. But the thing is I couldn't because I was so fucking codependent that a man with a secure attachment style was not going to find me attractive.
Speaker 3:He was going to find me needy as hell, and that's exactly how I came off for quite a long time in my dating journey.
Speaker 1:So even for those women who just want to have sex, like I don't think they're recognizing, Do you think they're recognizing that? Actually, that that's, that's probably a part of self right, Like like a manager part or a firefighter part that's found an adaptive way to perceive connection. It's not actually connection right, but it's to get that fix, that addictive fix, Like I will feel better about myself if I can have this particular type of experience and it solves the craving for needing to feel seen, heard, understood, whatever Right and it doesn't actually address, like it doesn't actually create connection, deeper, meaningful right.
Speaker 1:It's like the dopamine hit Correct, it's like a hit.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what I was just going to say. Anything and this is an easy way to figure it out, ladies anything that feels to you like a dopamine hit. Way to figure it out, ladies anything that feels to you like a dopamine hit, that is an addictive habit, whether it's the instagram scrolling, the sex, the chips, something that gives you that instant hit of adrenaline shopping, the busy all the shopping.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is a way to know that you're using it to cope for sure, and it's addiction. Well, society now makes it so easy to do all that.
Speaker 1:That's it right, you can celebrate it. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Celebrate it, we can do it, ash, we can do. You know, ordering things online, we could have something. Oh, my goodness, was it right, like I know.
Speaker 1:I think it was like early this summer and I saw a commercial. We must have been in an airbnb or like somewhere where we would have commercials, or maybe we were watching macgyver, I don't know, sometimes we'll watch throwback television shows and so I'm not right. When I watch Netflix I don't watch commercials. But we were watching something where there was a commercial and I saw a commercial for, like, now you can door dash your McDonald's coffee and I was like we are crumbling as a society, not for the reasons people think right, but if we have to door dash our McDonald's, I don't know. You know what I mean. It's like we are not addressing the underlying needs as a society of people for rest, connection, shame, tolerance, right, healthy ego, like we are not. Like spiritual, spiritual awareness and connection. Like we are not pursuing the right things. We are pursuing addiction the dopamine hits.
Speaker 3:It's all at our fingertips. Whatever your poison is, pick it. It's right there on your phone, which is like you know Hunger Games.
Speaker 1:Does anybody you know love Hunger Games like we do over here? But it's like when you look at you know who lived in the city, what were those people called, and you know they would have these lavish parties where they would eat.
Speaker 2:Capital.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the have these lavish parties where they would eat capital. Yeah, the capital.
Speaker 3:And then they would vomit in a in a bowl so that they could keep eating. Like we're on the brink of that, like pretty much across the board. It's wild and even like the TV shows that you binge. I know this sounds silly, but like every time, if you come in and ever find me watching Gilmore girls, which I'm obsessed- yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a million times. Yeah, but when I'm watching it, not in the background, but when I'm sitting and actively watching it it is because I'm avoiding feeling.
Speaker 1:A feeling because that actually brings me good feelings oh, I've heard other people tell me about this before. What like? I have someone who watches hallmark movies because it makes them feel good that's so interesting. So what feelings do you tend to avoid from watching Gilmore Girls? Now, I know.
Speaker 3:True confessions, and usually it is a lot of like it is. It's like a lot of shame around just things that I'm continuing to experience. You think that you know I'm still in my healing journey and again, this is what I love about our program because the women in our program get a behind the scenes.
Speaker 3:Look at the fact that, like we're not standing on the other side of this Right right, like we are. But the only difference, guys, between us and you is the fact that that we know the tools, we, we know what to do for ourselves, but it doesn't mean that shit just magically stops happening in our lives.
Speaker 1:We're still human. That's right. Well, can I say what you just said? Can I say what you just said a different way? Yeah, okay, I do think we're on the other side of this, right, like, I do want to clarify that. That's my perspective. But the thing is, is there's always a new this? Unless you stay stagnant in life unless you stop growing, unless you're like, okay, I feel from this thing and I'm never going to push myself outside of my comfort zone again, there's always a new this. So, like, not for nothing, the shit we tackle around here, the dreams that we all have, they're big, and when you have big dreams and big goals, there's always going to be new layers of becoming. That mean facing new levels of am I good enough? Am I worthy? Can I do this? Am I whatever? Right, there's always a new this. So I think that's the thing to really understand is like this is the cycle of becoming in the course of life, right, if you have a growth mindset, you're always going to have closets you're cleaning out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I like that again we can share that with the women in the program, right, like that just offers another sense of vulnerability and I know that a lot of them were kind of shocked, like to hear sometimes what we deal with on a case by case, because we're giving you guys a behind the scenes on our relationships, our marriages, our parenting, and you know we all have girls over here, so pray for us.
Speaker 2:We have a bunch of girls. There's a lot of girls that were over here, oh my God. Pray for us. Yeah, I feel like I do feel like I'm a completely different person than I was you know, in the Valley, in the Valley.
Speaker 2:But I still have that struggle of like am I good enough? I have a party coming up where I'm supposed to bring some of my favorite things and the amount of bandwidth and time that I've I've taken up in my brain because I want to be chosen. I want my. That I have taken up in my brain because I want to be chosen. I want my favorite things to be chosen. I want to be good enough for this party and like these women are wonderful and they're lovely, but I have my circle and so it's like why do I need their approval on a simple little item? Right, because I'm so, I'm still. You still have those moments where it reveals to you.
Speaker 3:I don't need to be chosen.
Speaker 2:Yes, like this is something I'm still kind of in the weeds about, about being good enough and being chosen and being, like, socially accepted and being a cool chick. You know like it's very, very much always a work in progress, because there's there's not a level of which I don't want to be better always. I want to grow always, and so there's always going to be something. That why did I just react when, when so-and-so said that to me? Because that's her, that's, that's her thing, that's her. You know people, people give you feedback through the lens of their story and so, when you can understand that that's their story, that's not actually a reflection of me, that's the way she sees me not who I actually am.
Speaker 2:So it's very it's. It's very exciting, donna, and I talk about this all the time where it's like, oh, I just had this revelation, and how exciting, because this is something that I can actually work through and clear and, you know, kind of address in my, in my sphere, of me being growing and me developing as a person, you know. But, but also, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:When you spot it, you can massage it out or whatever. Yeah, I think I even. I think I even use growth mindset a lot of times to run away from shame. I'm going to try to, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try to Deep into that.
Speaker 1:If I can just have this growth mindset and I'm always getting better then I don't have to I don't know get hard feedback about certain things sometimes because I'm a step ahead. So it's like yeah, understand that.
Speaker 3:Dawn just put me on a remedy that's like truth serum and is making me truth bomb everyone else in my life, so it's almost like she wants me to come at her in certain ways and challenge her. I do.
Speaker 1:Subconsciously right, I'm purging Like there's I'm less affected by right, there's less pockets to get. There's probably something. Let me, let me, like, get a little more in the weeds about that. There's probably something about being blindsided and I think a lot of women relate to this.
Speaker 1:Okay, Think if I had to say it's maybe not the shame, because I really think that I've learned how to leverage shame. I've learned how to spot it inside of me, outside of me, all around me, in people. You name it right and so I do. I welcome critique and feedback because then I know you're calling out a blind spot I can't see, and then I can put it to work and I can feel better. Right, but I think it's being blindsided is probably what I. So, whatever that is shock panic, heart racing right is shock panic, heart racing right Like that. And I think a lot of women will relate to that, because the woman who is constantly planning what she's going to say next and she's planning eight different versions of the conversation so she can feel prepared because she doesn't want to feel blindsided.
Speaker 1:So that is probably what my growth mindset allows me to distance from right. So if I had to work on something, it probably would be my capacity to feel blindsided and still stay grounded in my faith that all is well and it's just a feeling, and a feeling can be processed right and be put down. So that's, I would say, is probably your biggest yeah, because I welcome the feedback.
Speaker 3:I mean my biggest right now, which you know. This right now, something that I'm still actively or that I'm working on in this part of my life, is feeling like I have to do everything on my own in this business, in my partnership as a parent.
Speaker 3:all of that, like this theme has finally been circling me for way too long, and I'm finally being called out on all fronts of it, and so now I'm addressing being called out on all fronts of it, and so now I'm addressing it because it is an issue and I know that it's preventing me from moving forward in certain parts of my life, and so now I can't hide from it anymore. I can't hide from it anymore, I can't numb from it. Too many people are aware of it. Too many people have called me out in recent weeks. I'm like I guess I need to deal with this now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean so like an addiction to hyper independence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's what's under there, right. It's like it's what's the insecurity under there, which is, like you know, we were shooting the shit about this the other day when we were talking about podcast titles. We were workshopping a title, right, and it's like, if you're not as good at titles, or if you're not as good as whatever, what does that mean about you? Does it mean you're not good enough? No, that's the thing that hyper independence tries to solve, right, is feeling like you're not good enough. In some way you have to be able to do it all, or that I can't handle it all and I have to rely on others, which then creates fear in me, right?
Speaker 3:So Dawn had sent me this voice message and she was like you, just there's this fear, this underlying fear that you have about doing things on your own, and so I played that out loud and I automatically just hear, like my partner sitting in the next room, and I'm like, because I'm like now everyone's in on my game, right yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just like well, yeah, well, yeah, because then it's number one like okay, so I can't do it, all right, I have to rely on people, which is how we're meant to rely on people right, but not in the addictive way where we're distancing from our pain right In a vulnerable way. So, yeah, it's like okay, all right, shit, I need people. But then to be able to trust people right is the next insecurity, the next feeling that's big and scary and whatever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and that's something I've dealt with my whole life, so that's something that I you know, and again, I say this all the time. I would not suggest doing it my way, because I feel like you definitely want to get healed prior to trying to get into your next long-term relationship. I have a very, very patient partner that has stayed with me through my own healing and through his too right.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's definitely been a journey and a challenge and it's crazy to think that I'm still, at 42 years old, struggling with still being able to trust and let go in all capacities, right.
Speaker 1:In my job, my career, my parenting, like everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think it makes sense. So because, again becoming right, one of the things that I've been leaning into so much in the last couple of years is we don't necessarily have to trust people. We have to be able to trust God and the universe, whatever however you want to relate to that right. And so if I can trust that the universe has my back and believe that capital B, believe that God has my back, that the universe has my back, then I don't necessarily have to trust people. I have to be able to have a nervous system that's well-resourced enough that it can feel safe and can access faith and positive beliefs, and so I think that that's probably what the deeper calling is right Is do I put my faith in people because people we all fuck up, right? Like, so you could work on building up your trust in people all the time, but like, then your nervous system is going to still take hits all the time because people are people right and we do shit all the time that makes other people feel uncomfortable or whatever you know. So I think being able to have a really grounded nervous system that's well-resourced, very flexible like the band-aid, not band-aid. What's that? What's those squishy rubber band? Rubber band. There was a band in there, right?
Speaker 1:Nervous systems are supposed to be flexible like rubber bands. Right Under stress they're supposed to be able to flex out and then, when the stress is removed assuming your stress gets removed most people, I think that have been living in chronic fight, flight, freeze, fawn the stress never gets removed and then the rubber band gets stretched out and if you've ever seen a really oxidative rubber band, it can no longer go back to its old shape anymore. That's how most people's nervous systems are. They're stretched to the limit and they're not conditioned to be able to go back to rest and digest, so there's just a constant state of hyperarousal, right? So you need a well-resourced nervous system that can flex and bend and return to its healthy, normal shape, and you need a strong faith in a organized universe that loves you, right? And then people are just going to people and we can just enjoy them.
Speaker 1:You know, that's what I think we're all at work on is leveling up from that perspective. Okay, let's dig into why this all matters for the women we work with who are recovering from divorce. Right, because, okay, what's the upside of healing, what's the downside of healing? Because there's both. Right. The downside of healing is you have to learn to feel all of this shit and there's no running away from it or escaping it. The upside is right you get to actually manifest the high vibe things because you become a high vibe individual who feels safe, who anticipates abundance and said abundance shows up. Right, but you know what we often talk about around here and I think a question I ask both of you a lot. I think that, if you really reflected back I've been thinking about this the last couple of days, I bet.
Speaker 1:I asked you this question a lot. I say things like do you think she knows? Do you think she knows? Do you think she knows? That is a question I'm constantly asking, because do you think the women who are listening right now know, do you think they know, what the downside is to not doing this work? Do you think they know that they're struggling with addiction? Do you think they know that talk, therapies and even yoga is not going to resource their nervous system to the depths of what they need? Do you think they know that their nervous systems are revved? Because they've never felt what it is to have their nervous system not revved? And how do you know something you've not felt, right, do you think they know? So let's talk about the really, really specifically. Let's get in the weeds about the things we see our women who we've been working with and our listeners right Struggle with with regards to denial and being able to recognize the way codependency as addiction is running their lives.
Speaker 3:What I would say initially is that when we first start working with people in our program, they don't recognize cycles, they do not have the awareness to know. All they can really feel is something's wrong. Right, and I feel like you know, one of the emails that went out recently is, like you know, it's time to join this program when you can't live like you're living anymore. Right.
Speaker 1:So you, you recognize there's like fed up of feeling like shit, yeah, but like you're living anymore, right?
Speaker 3:So you recognize there's a problem. Yeah, you're just like fed up of feeling like shit, yeah, but like you might not recognize why you're feeling like this or how to prevent it from happening again or how to prevent from choosing someone like that again. So I feel like I don't think initially, the awareness is there. No, and I don't even think most women, when they join the program, know exactly what they need, right, like they just know that something has got to change because they cannot continue doing it. Um, I think a lot of our women who are mothers, it's when they can no longer parent in the best way that they want to, because they are so in their head about like that's the red line, Like they can see their parenting slipping.
Speaker 1:And so, or like the way they're responding to their kids slipping, and that's their red line. Yeah, which that's a beautiful recognition. Yeah, so if you're like, willing to do something on behalf of your kids but not yourself, that is a hallmark. Hallmark of codependency is addiction. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I tell women that all the time that are moms that I start working with like to start making those initial shifts, Like if you can't fight for yourself in this moment, at least fight for your kids, because that will click something over in a mom's mind to bring that mom and bear in there.
Speaker 1:It's a lily pad to the next thing.
Speaker 3:Correct. Until she finally starts figuring out how to care for herself and to do for herself.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, that was certainly my path. Your kids are a great catalyst. Yeah, I absolutely would set boundaries on my kids' behalf Absolutely Before myself Until that changed right. Until, yeah, it wasn't. Yeah. What are some other very specific things we can help women see themselves in the denial racket?
Speaker 3:The activation that occurs during IFS.
Speaker 3:For me, if I have someone that comes in and is getting ready to do an IFS session. I love you know it's got to be on camera clearly, because I'm studying you. I want to see what the physical reactions are to the body that you're having, and so I have seen people's eyes change in session when they start to dissociate. I have seen people start to nervous, tapping looking away. Their breathing becomes labored, like whatever. It is right, even if you don't have the awareness to know what's going on, if I can mirror it back to you and show you that you are clearly in an activated state, whether you recognize it or not then, women start to recognize it for themselves.
Speaker 1:So when you're talking to women and you and I know you have this superpower and you watch them answer their own why you watch them start their self-reflection process and stop before they actually get to the truth. Where do you see women getting?
Speaker 2:stuck going a layer deeper and owning their shit. I see so many times when I'm working with, when I'm sitting with a woman and I ask them why, or I encourage them to ask themselves why and they stop because they get to the brink of kind of where it's at, but then they default to it's been done to me, it's been happened to me Instead of but what are you like? Owning yourself and owning your own choices and like every woman has, everybody on the planet has things happen to them, but it's how they handle, it is their superpower and that's where they get the best result and the owning themselves, when you can kind of click out of that victim of like this isn't this might have occurred to you in your life, your childhood or whatever, but like you are in charge of yourself and you don't get to live in this spot of victimhood and be the healthiest version of yourself because those two things don't.
Speaker 1:You can't have them both. Uh-huh, hot damn.
Speaker 2:There it is. That was fire.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's recap right, so the things we see. Denial is when we toggled a victim consciousness, right, like. But this was done to me and that I think I know. I can definitively say beyond a shadow of a doubt that that is one of the things that homeopathy really delivered me from, Because I would know, like I practice all the things right, I'm a law of attraction junkie. I freaking know that I can't be having these thoughts and manifesting my dreams and I think that when I would use all the tools and I couldn't get those thoughts to stop popping in, and I understand the way cognitive behavioral therapy works, like we can't necessarily control the pops, the thoughts that pop in, but we can control what we do with them, right, but I was like we're having to wrestle victim oriented thoughts for most of my life and it's like with homeopathy they just disappeared and then I could just work through the feelings and that right Is like worth its weight in gold. So Tiffany says she sees it when women have activated nervous systems and they don't realize it.
Speaker 1:Joy sees it. When women go to sort of a victim consciousness Awesome. Anything else we see women do where they're in denial. We can help women spot their own denial while they're listening to this so they can know they're actually struggling with the pattern of codependency and addiction. It's way more rampant than people think. There were a lot of statistics and studies I could have quoted at you all today, but do we trust the organizations that did the research? What does statistics actually mean to us? But like codependency and addiction, it's a massive cultural problem and a massive phenomenon. Anything else we see women doing that's denial oriented, that would help them break through and realize like fudge, this is me.
Speaker 3:I think, just you know, even with with some of them, like people that have had multiple partners, even proud of being married, I would sit there and tell them like write down similarities between these partners there's always themes. There were so many themes between my first relationships and my marriage.
Speaker 3:Like so many themes, you know the same way, escalated the same way, treated me the same way, like not not perfectly, but there were a lot of themes that I resonated with. You know, do you tend to gravitate towards men who are avoiding attachment or anxious attachment or whatever it is? You know there are going to be similarities between the partners in your life that you're choosing whether you want to see that or not, and I think that that's when I see women take a step back and be like shit. I didn't even realize that there were similarities between these two because they were completely different.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, I totally get that. Like the guy married and the guy dated after post-divorce right, they were radically different men, but like underneath it all, there were themes, right, and yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:But that's what I put in my email this morning and that I sent out to our online community about you know, basically the fact that you know you can have a partner who's different, but it still doesn't mean you're aligned. You can still be a totally different book from that person.
Speaker 1:And this goes back to Lori Gerber's 3-H method, right Is that we think we want like dress as well tall, dark and handsome, she says right, or like a certain like funny or whatever, right.
Speaker 1:But it's like if we can't define why we want those things, it's like we can pick a different partner that looks different, acts different, has a different job, has a different whatever, but like, underneath there, the way it feels to be in conflict with them similar. The way it feels to be celebrated or not celebrated by them similar. The way it feels to be in a tight spot in a social situation with them similar, right. It's like if we can't define why, if we can't really get into the nitty gritty of how it feels, and if we've been practicing, not feeling, we are not willing to assess that at that level, right, and so it all freaking ties together. Yeah, you can't be stuck in a codependency addiction loop and be able to define your three H's and know whether or not you're cycle breaking.
Speaker 3:I think what I want women to know is that there is an other side to this. But in order to get there, you need to go through the deep work and the cycles and the recognition of the cycles are essentially. What's going to set you free is the awareness to know what the cycles are. There is so much peace in that to know that you are not crazy.
Speaker 1:Right right, right, you know like yeah, but I reason behind the reason 100%.
Speaker 1:All human behavior has an explanation. But I think this is where I hear women get really frustrated with like, how much more of this shit do I have to do? When does my work get to be done? And that's where it's like you mean I have to have a whole nother chapter of this, and then we toggle into the victim consciousness, right, and then we run away from the work. Yeah, yeah, okay, my darling dears. Well, I think we did this subject justice. I don't know that we like it's a definitive guide on codependency and addiction, but I think we helped people think differently about it, which I love. Anything else you want to add before we wrap up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just really hope that our listeners feel seen that we're not preaching from the top of the mountain, Like we're in it with you and we want to come along beside you while you are in this season of self-discovery and self. That's why our program we're all three so passionate about our program, because it is such a space to be held.
Speaker 1:Right To feel. Safe to feel. To develop the capacity to feel. Painful shit, yeah To feel. To develop the capacity to feel Painful shit, yeah, okay. So if you haven't filled out our inquiry form yet for a different D word, our 12 month customized program that is integrated all in like rehab your nervous system. Feel safe to feel. Learn how to do intimacy. Learn how to break the cycles of codependency and addiction. Attract different partners. Feel good in yourself. Be done with that fucking loneliness ache. Can I say that right there?
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:If you have not filled out an inquiry form yet, here's your sign to check it out. You get to jump on a call with me and see if it's a good fit or not. Right, because it's not the right fit for everybody right now, but we certainly want to help you determine if that's it or if there's something else in the way right, so cannot wait to connect with you. All right, we love you so much. Peace, dear. Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn. You can find more at MyCoachDawncom.
