Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

307. What If This Is My Life Now? Divorce Anxiety, Trust Wounds, and Your Nervous System

• My Coach Dawn • Season 5 • Episode 307

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What if this life after divorce never gets better?
What if this is just how it is now?
What he ruined everything? What if I can't be healed?

If those thoughts have been looping in your mind after divorce, this episode is for you.

In the Season 5 premiere of Dear Divorce Diary, we’re opening a powerful six-week series devoted to naming the thing under the thing—the deeper, often invisible forces that keep women stuck in anxiety, overthinking, and emotional exhaustion after divorce.

And today, we begin with one of the scariest experiences of all:
the fear that the way you feel right now is permanent.

Here’s what most of us have never realized:
Those thoughts aren’t coming from weakness or fear.
They’re coming from a nervous system trying its best to keep you afloat while you're completely collapsed.

In this episode, we’re not fixing anxiety—we’re explaining it.
Because understanding what your body is doing is often the first moment it finally exhales.

In this episode, we explore:

  • Why divorce anxiety often intensifies after the divorce is final
  • The difference between panic… and the deeper fear of permanence
  • How anxiety gets mistaken for identity—and why that matters
  • What happens when trust has been wounded by loss, betrayal, or overwhelm
  • Why solutions often arrive from places you never could have predicted
  • How protective, pessimistic parts can reject help—and how to soften that pattern

You’ll also hear personal stories from Dawn, Joy, and Tiffini about moments when they couldn’t see a way forward—until something unexpected showed up and changed everything.

And at the end of the episode, we debut a new community segment:
 ✨ Small Wins, Big Shifts ✨
where we share listener-submitted moments that prove healing after divorce doesn’t have to be dramatic to be real.

If you’ve been afraid that this feeling will never end…
 If you’ve wondered whether you’ll ever trust yourself—or life—again…
 Let this episode remind you:

Nothing you’re feeling means you’re broken.
 It means your system learned how to survive.

And survival is not the end of the story.

🎧 Stay tuned for Thursday’s companion episode, where we guide you through a nervous-system practice to help your body feel safe again—no fixing, no forcing, just settling.

Stress-Less Flower Essence by Freedom Flowers


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.

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✨Join the Cocoon Community - your people are waiting! ✨

SPEAKER_04:

Welcome to season five of Dear Divorce Diary. If your brain has been asking the question, What if this never gets better? Or you've been worried that you may always feel like this. Or if you've been asking yourself, What if I ruined my life? I want you to pause right there. Because those questions aren't actually coming from fear, even though that's what you're feeling. They're actually coming from a nervous system that's trying to prevent you from experiencing another collapse. Today we're not going to fix your anxiety, but we're going to explain it. And that alone is going to help your body exhale. 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, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorce day. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. Today's episode is very exciting because A, Happy New Year. B, we're launching season five. We are so excited. And C, we have this series that we're going to be unfolding over the next six weeks. And we are ridiculously excited to literally walk you through the key things we see hold women back or keep them stuck in their healing journey. And we're going to be naming in this series the thing under the thing, right? The thing that's actually going on beneath the surface of what we're talking about on TikTok or on Instagram. We're going to explain what's driving or maintaining the pattern for you so that you can freaking work through it, right? So in today's episode, we are going to start with the fear of permanence, right? Like this way you feel right now, like what if it never shifts? And so one of the scariest parts of divorce anxiety isn't necessarily the panic, it's the thought that sneaks underneath the panic, right? Like, what if this is just my life now and this feeling never ends? And it's really interesting that sometimes the worst anxiety shows up after the divorce is final. We're going to talk a little bit, boy, do I have a story about that. We're going to talk a little bit about why that makes sense. And then later on in the episode, we're going to talk about how anxiety isn't your personality. It's a trust fracture, right? One of the key things we really street see women struggle with is rebuilding trust with themselves and with other people in the world in relationships, in the ability to trust God or the universe, or that love actually exists, or that secure relationships are possible, right? There are so many trustures fractures that happen that you're tapped into right now. So we're going to talk about how we can separate the anxiety that you experience from an identity because we don't want you. You hear people say, like, oh, my anxiety, my anxiety, right? We don't want you to claim that. And then at the end of the episode, stay tuned because you have been submitting your wins. And so we're going to debut segment three, which is small wins, big shifts. And y'all submitted a lot of wins. And let me tell you, some of them are not small at all, some of them are massive wins. We have three wins that we're going to share with you today. We're going to reveal them, you know, one episode at a time. We'll get a get to a few each time. So you'll want to stay to the end and hear the wins that have been submitted from the community. And if you haven't submitted one yet, like get on it, girlfriend. All right. Ladies, good morning. Let's dig in. Good morning. Good morning. Also, happy birthday to Joy. It's her birthday today.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

Sag baby.

SPEAKER_02:

Double Sag. Double Sag baby. Yep. Yep. Yep. Now that I trip around the sun. It's been the best year yet. Can't wait for next year. Amazing. Um, how is it feeling sick while you're while it's your birthday? Listen, I will take this over last week, any day of the week. This is just the remnants. I'm feeling good. I sound awful, but you know what? It it changes. You know what? It's so funny. Have you guys seen Friends where that uh where Phoebe gets um she gets a cold and so she gets this raspy and she goes into like this jazz scener era? Like I feel like that's me. I'm just like mysterious and raspy, right? Like smelly cat and all the whole so funny. Nobody really thinks I'm funny, but I think it's hilarious.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, and to know Joy is to know that all of life for her gets passed through the lens of a friend's episode.

SPEAKER_02:

Or the office, like depends, like social awkward or definitely.

SPEAKER_04:

All right, let's talk about what if this is my life now, right? This fear that the way I feel right now is never going to shift. And I mean, like, I freaking relate to this so much because I think in the deepest, scariest moments of my life where I couldn't see the path out, I couldn't see it, right? I couldn't find the solutions, I couldn't get hooked on to the like it's I don't know, like that's just the place where my mind went is like, what if this never passes? And I think it's really common. Do you all relate?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. I was I was all of a sudden a single mom of three small children. I would get this this in this rut, this victim of the anxiety of the future. Like I gave him my best years, and now I'm a single mom of three children. Like, who's gonna want me now? And um looking for that to be chosen instead of doing the choosing. And it was very uh I I really relate to is this it? This is this is the best it's ever gonna be, is you know, that's it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, so definitely so isn't it interesting how we actually can become more full of anxiety and panicking after the thing happens? And I wonder what y'all would say about this, but do you relate to maybe like to get ourselves to do the thing? And and maybe this is different for women who wanted the divorce versus women who didn't, right? Because for some women I think they just got totally blindsided, this wasn't something that they would have chosen. And so it's like you don't get the opportunity to have uh like anticipatory anxiety, right? But it's like maybe we got the courage or maybe we were angry enough at a point, and then once you're off that cliff, it's like oh crap, I'm in a panic free fall, and so then the uncertainty of the future just causes just a cascade of anxiety that we just can't quite catch up with. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's a whole lot of I I just feel like it took me so much to actually get the balls to leave. Like I had thought about it leading up to it to the point where we bought a home together in May and I left in December. So, like, understand that we had gone through the process of buying a home when all the time I had one foot out, I was freaking out. I didn't really know what was gonna work or how it was gonna work. So for me, the level of dissociation and adrenaline that was pumping through me when I finally had to get on the phone and say, This is over. Like, and then I remember I had a friend who would come over every day to just make sure I was eating because I was packing up the house, like I was getting ready to leave. It was Christmas time, and so I was just trying to get through the day and then being bombarded by his five or six calls a day because he was still overseas. And so it was like, it was it was horrible. It was horrible. Like every moment of my life I felt so disconnected and dissociated.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but I didn't I didn't have the vocabulary back then, so I didn't really understand that I was dissociating or that I even had anxiety about the future or about the um situation. I didn't I didn't have the education or the wherewithal or any of the understanding. I just knew that I couldn't breathe, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, this is it.

SPEAKER_02:

This is right, and I um I didn't I didn't know of course I didn't know what I did now, but I didn't know then what I was feeling was actually anxiety for the future of my you know in my body. I didn't understand that.

SPEAKER_04:

So let's talk a little bit about really, really specifically, like what if this is my life? Because we see this, the women in our coaching program, right? No matter in the beginning, in the beginning, no matter how much we reassure them, this is gonna shift, this is gonna shift. Especially for some of them, like it really feels so true sometimes. What if this is my life? What if this doesn't get better? The difficulty we have as women trusting that help is coming, that a solution is coming, trusting that we are going to overcome. Like there is a point in our lived experience, and perhaps this is to do with our early childhood experience with caregivers. Perhaps it is to do with our relationship with our higher power or not, right? Which often is based on our relationship with our caregivers, right? But that difficulty trusting that it's going to get better is really, really prominent, I think, at some point in every woman's journey. And I really think that it matters to have some people alongside of you that can say, like, oh no, no, no, no. That's not gonna happen. Yeah. And then I think another interesting element of it is that very often the solution comes from somewhere you probably wouldn't have predicted, or like at a moment that you couldn't have seen. Like, I can't tell you how many times in my clients' journeys or my own, where it's like you can't see the path, and you can't, right? Like maybe literally, like on the horizon, there is no clear solution, and you've tapped every resource you know to tap. And then, like, all of a sudden, Paul Revere comes riding or something, I don't know, out of nowhere, right? Like something that didn't exist before pops into your life. Have either of you ever had an experience like that where you didn't know where help was gonna come from and then it popped in out of the blue?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh hundred percent. I call them god wings. Like, there's there's uh moments, one of my that popped into my brain when you were talking was I had a friend and she looked at me one day and she said, Your story is gonna be redeemed regardless of the outcome of your marriage. And I will never forget that moment because it was just like that line a lot. I do, because it was so impactful to me because I had all these, like I had all these beautifully smart, amazing, God focused women. I had a therapist, I had multiple therapists, I had, I had you sending me EFT. Like I was doing all the things and I didn't even understand all of them at the time, but I knew that I just had to do them. Like just take one step, Anna, uh Anna, excuse me, Anna from Frozen, just the next right step, right? You just do the next right step. And when she told me that, it was just like it was like a chance to let go of oh, I don't, I don't actually have to have it all figured out at this moment. Like it's okay, and I can trust that the Lord and the universe and everything is going to be okay. It was like my permission to just like breathe, take a step and breathe.

SPEAKER_03:

Love that.

SPEAKER_04:

Tifferdoodle, do you have any story that stands out in your mind of like you didn't know where the solution was gonna come from, but then boop, it was there.

SPEAKER_01:

So when I moved to Myrtle Beach, I didn't have a job. So I was we had timeshares there, so I'd spent time there, and it just was a place where I felt like I resonated with, and I had to be post-divorce, and so I decided to move there, sight unseen, literally. Like I ended up finding a condo at this ridiculous rate that this guy was willing to rent to me, and it was, you know, had ocean views, and it was$700 a month, fully furnished for a two-bedroom condo. Like it was amazing, right? What? Yeah, so like all these things started happening for me, but the job piece was the thing that hadn't clicked in. And so I remember sitting out there one night thinking, if I don't find a job within the next two weeks, I'm gonna have to make a decision to either move back home to Pennsylvania or I was gonna have to go tailback between my like something had to get right. Like, and he was pushing me hard to come back, and like it was just so hard. And it was one of those moments where I'm like, am I am I nuts? Like, am I nuts? Like, can I actually do this? And I remember I had one more job interview, and I went in and it was a group interview at this small business, and there were five or six of them. It was like a six-on-one interview, and I literally walked out of there. It was my last shot, and it was it was pouring, of course, that day, pouring. And I I was still trying to figure out professional Tiffany, right? So I'm still I walk in with a nose ring and I've got tattoos, and I am trying to dress professionally, but like let's be honest, I didn't have it together. And it came later. It came later. It did, it did. And so I was still very much like the emo girl. So I walk in there, I give the interview, I was very nervous, and they said, Okay, like we'll hear from you know, you'll hear from us at some point, and I'm just like, fuck. So I walk outside in the rain, I get in my car, I'm driving, I was not a block away, and he called me and said, Please turn around. We want to hire you right now. And that was just like one of those moments where I'm like, oh my God, and it wasn't enough money. You guys, I was making ten dollars an hour. It was not enough money, but I didn't care. It was enough to get me through, and I'm like, screw this, I'm doing it. And then from there, I just kind of clawed my way up through the corporate scene. But like he was my savior. Like those men in that company, they were fathers to me. Like when I was in Myrtle, that I needed the most. They were the absolutely. And these were the men that looked at me when I was in my party phase and said, You are going to lose everything you have if you do not get your shit together. Like they could very lovingly pull me on track. And I worked there for 10 years, and and they were just they did wonders for me. Like, it was amazing. It was exactly what I needed. I could bring my daughter to work in the summer. Like, I mean, just stuff that doesn't happen. So it was very universal. At a time when I felt like the universe was leaving me behind, let's be honest. Like, nothing was really coming my way. Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Nothing was coming in my way. Yeah, at a time that we're questioning, like, does true love actually exist? Our relationships relationships actually were like we're questioning everything, right? Like, and for sure that includes like the existence or of a loving God or whatever it is, right? But yeah, I feel like as long as we're open to the miracles, like they will always, always, always come. And so to the woman who has this fear, like, is how I feel right now permanent? You know, when I got divorced, I had cluster headaches. I had had them diagnosed for a couple of years, and it was all trauma, right, that was showing up as pain. But, you know, when everything, when I would be on the bathroom floor and I would be having a headache, and like, is this my life now? Right? Like just between like pain things and I don't know, struggling. Like, is this what it's gonna be? But inevitably there would always be a next solution and a next solution, whether it was a new healing modality or a new friend or you know, somebody that I met who would help help carry me through it. Like, and and things did get incrementally better and better and better, right? Like it always does, just like Joy said at the top of the episode, like best year yet. Um, and so no matter how bad the pain was, like, even after my daughter was born, I would get frozen in these moments where the pain would be so severe and I couldn't get it to shift. And I would say, like, but what if it never ends? And my husband now would always say, like, but it always has, nothing lasts forever, right? And this pain isn't gonna last forever. Be open, be open, be open. And the solutions will flow in, right? And then you just gotta recognize them when they flow in.

SPEAKER_01:

You gotta be willing to be like that's another point, right? Yeah, you've got to be able to recognize it and receive it, and that's another issue. And I feel like the women that we work with from an IFS perspective that have very pessimistic parts that were basically conditioned from childhood, that nothing good ever happens for me. No one ever shows up for me. When when you catch a glimpse of something that looks like it could remotely catch you, like fucking let it and you reject it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah. Because it's it's it's protective, right? It's like, no, I'm gonna reject this thing before I can feel rejected by it. And so that pessimistic part, it does. It rejects solutions out of protection, but don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's talk for a moment. I'm I'm excited about this next thing we're gonna discuss, but I'm also excited about how we're gonna discuss it on Thursday in our premium episode. We're gonna do a panel rant on a panel rant on um if you've ever been told to calm down and like you know, like just we're gonna just like get in the weeds about what that's like, but also maybe a tiny bit of the science behind it. Okay, but let's talk about culturally how we have started to claim anxiety as like a living, breathing part of like who we are, how we function, our personalities, like I am an anxious person, my anxiety, I have anxiety, that we have almost been gaslighted into thinking that that it's normal. And so as we're moving through divorce and we're feeling that much more anxious, we're questioning is this never gonna change? That maybe there's even this societal confirmation that I have to live with this. Uh, do you guys see this like in TV, on the commercials, just in social media in general? Um, what do you see in the women we work with around this sort of maybe like default? I just have to, this is just how it is now. Because it's not like anxiety is it's not our personalities, right? It's it's a fracture of trust that happened very, very, very early on and then has just been reinforced and reinforced and reinforced in our bodies, actually, right? Our nervous systems. But maybe we don't fully realize that that is something that can be repaired and it's it's not like who we are.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna say it's something super controversial right now. Because this is how I feel. Anxiety to me is yet another label that the mental health world doctor psychiatrist put along with depression, DID, bipolar. It's yet another thing that we've thrown into it, right? And not that we're not saying that you don't exhibit symptoms of those conditions, however, it is a beacon for us. So it's like, bring us your diagnosis. I want to know all about it because guess what? In a year or two, you're not even going to test for that. And I'm a perfect case in point. At 19, I was diagnosed with dissociative detachment disorder. Beautiful. And I wore that like a fucking shield. I was like, Well, I can't do that. And I used it as an excuse in all my relationships to say, Well, I'm sorry I can't get too close to you. Like, I just have this thing and like it prevents me from dead. It out instead of working on it. So I think that that's the first thing is that when people give you a diagnosis, it feels super scary. So when they say, like I struggle with anxiety, it just becomes an identity instead of something to work through. I think at first people really love getting a diagnosis, is what I see.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, for sure. At first, like it feels really good. It's like, oh, this explains me, and there's relief in that. And actually, when we name things, right, it helps calm the cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that gets hyperactive and helps contribute to the felt sense of anxiety. And so, yeah, naming something does calm the cingulate cortex, but then when it starts to become a belief, because what is a belief other than a thought that has been rehearsed? When you have a thought and you rehearse it enough times, eventually it becomes a belief. Now you've trained your reticular activating system to see the whole world according to your belief. And then so it is. What were you gonna say, Joy?

SPEAKER_02:

No, I feel like so in the in the for sure, in the mom space, in the your back to your question, Don was is it kind of like um a badge of honor or is it socially acceptable? It's like almost every woman I know uh takes and it's like once you start taking something, it's just assumed you're always gonna be on it. Right. And these these um prescriptions, these pharmaceuticals were designed as a bridge. They were designed to get you to the other side of your healing journey, not for you to stay on. And this concept of once you get on and you just stay on and you just increase your dose and you increase. Dawn has some phenomenal statistics that that she's thrown in previous episodes about the suicide rate goes up the longer you're on things, the depression right the harder it is to write. And so like I it's it's so um kind of heartbreaking to me to have a woman who is confiding in me, and then she you know mentions that she's on these scenes, but there's no action or plan to get off of them. And it should never be and and like listen, if you're on these scenes, I am so grateful that they are available to you to have on the case. I was on conic for years, right? I am not shaming you for taking these medications, but I do encourage our listeners, like if you are on them, okay, let's let's have a roadmap, let's have a game plan to get to get from point A to point B, and then eventually point C off of them. The women in our in our membership, like that is one of the first things we start with is working on tools and tasks and things to and homeopathy to bridge that gap and able to wean them off. That's a goal. Like we want we want them to be off medication because again, it should be a bridge. It should never be the lawn road.

SPEAKER_04:

So if we have chronic anxiety, what that tells us is trust was broken at some point in your lived experience, right? That there was enough of a profound break in trust that it's hard for you to feel safe in the world. And so so many women we see have the goal to not repeat past relationship mistakes, to not end up in another relationship where they don't feel cherished or held or safe or secure or right. And so if you have chronic anxiety and you're dating, or if you're on an anxiety med and you're dating, just notice that the core trust wound has not been recovered yet or enough for you to have a sense of security in the world. And so then you're still attracting dating partners or life experiences from that place of broken trust. And if it's hard for you to feel safe in the world, you are going to be attracting partners who also struggle to feel safe in the world and have their own adaptive methods or strategies for trying to feel safe, which might look like codependency or narcissism or you know, you name it, right? Blame shifting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the things all of us humans do to try to feel safe when we aren't, right? And so we really want you to hear us today talking about anxiety through the lens of trust and how that feels in your body. Because chronic anxiety is absolutely a flag that trust needs to be repaired inside of you and your nervous system and the way that you experience relationships. Would you say that differently, ladies?

SPEAKER_02:

No, I actually really love the way you said that.

SPEAKER_01:

I loved what you were yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think that that is one of the biggest fears of the women that we work with is that they're gonna repeat the same mistake. Realize it. Yeah, or like they're gonna get sucked back in and then it's gonna be too late and they're gonna just continue to repeat the cycles. And again, with the medication, like all of us, like I said, I was on Silexa for 10 years. Um, but it it didn't help me heal the underlying issues to why I was on it, right? It just kind of kept me, I won't even say operating as a zombie, but it gave me a level of like uh like whatever we're at baseline. But honestly, like turning the corner with homeopathy, that has given me more results in less time. Like I'd say I'd got more results in homeopathy in six months than I got in ten years on Selexa.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, homeopathy is one of the things that came out of left field. Like I, as as informed as I was about natural healing and as enveloped, I would really say immersed in functional medicine and alternative therapies. I'd never heard of homeopathy and all of a sudden like it just flew in to my Instagram feed one day. Like you never know where the solution is coming from, loves. And um, yeah, it can do so much, right? And homeopathy alone hasn't recovered us all. We've used all the techniques that we talk about.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. It's this combination of everything. So, Dawn, I have a funny little, just like little in um a funny little thing. Little women, the original with with um Winona Rodder. Yeah, yeah, and um Beth Gets Sick. They pull out the book and she's presenting his article, and my girls were on the couch and like, you know what I mean? Like it was like it's it is, it's in embedded in these little historical themes, and so it's so crazy.

SPEAKER_04:

Was it the ladonna they used and was it for fever? I remember that scene. Right? Like in somebody had a fever or something.

SPEAKER_02:

She wasn't yep. Um, Beth had it right. We just watched this this past week. Um, it was Beth had scarlet fever, and so Joe was sitting on the bed with the book, you know, and she's like, She's presenting, right? Right, exactly. That's what she was doing. She was she's presenting as this, but we've did we've tried this and nothing's working, and and she wound up um having severe heart damage. Um, but the mom came in and you know saved the day and bought her a little bit more time before she, you know, spoiler, but um Joy, that's so good. Like it was so uh uh but yes, I remember the day you found homeopathy on Instagram and you were just like I was all in. Yeah, all in from the beginning. So you dragged everybody. We're going. Kick kicking and screaming, no, this will fix.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's what we discussed last week, right? In order to work, in order to work here on this team, you have to take homeopathy. It's in your work contract, you know, like you gotta you gotta be willing to do the work for sure. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I just wanna I just do want to say that homeopathy isn't like it's not magic. Like you have to do the work with it. Like it's a tool, yeah, and it's definitely it's it's an incredible tool, but like it's not you can't just take uh take a spray and all of your problems go away. You still have to do self-development, you still have to do self-work. IFS has been pivotal, like all these things. It's it is absolutely um incredible.

SPEAKER_01:

But and I've said it before and I'll say it again. In our 12-month program, I always find it fascinating that the first three months all the women are focused on the divorce, and then the next nine months we spend on childhood trauma care because it is that is everything, right? It is everything, yeah, and there's so much living underneath the surface. It's just that your divorce feels so heavy now because it is so powerfully triggering things that were activated in you as a child that are now getting reactivated. And so I just I love doing the deep, deep work with women and watching them connect the dots and make the connections. And um that's how we understand our cycles is by truly making the connections to our younger parts and just being able to work through them and seeing them like I love getting the text messages of hey, like I identified a new cycle, like I figured out why I'm doing this, because it's like they're doing the work. And yes, it is hard work, but oh my god, like wouldn't you rather just do the work one time? Like, wouldn't you rather just get through that to get to the other side rather than you know, like just him hawing around for a decade? Like I did that, ladies. Zero to ten. Like, do not recommend him hawing for 10 years.

SPEAKER_04:

But isn't it interesting also like when we see the women we work with really believe that so much of what they're feeling present day is 100% about present day, and it's not, right? Like the fact that you have anxiety is really only a tiny little bit about this husband and this divorce. It is so much more about the brain map and the trust that was broken early, early, early in your life. And then you just keep re-experiencing it, re-experiencing it, re-experiencing it. And this person that you married and this divorce you're experiencing is just the vehicle for you to feel and experience and work through all of the shit that's connected from all of the years. And so when your parts, your younger, more vulnerable parts, start to feel safe inside of you and inside of the world, the anxiety goes, your well-being increases exponentially, but it's about being able to rebuild trust cell by cell inside of your own body. And we're going to, in this sort of six-week series, get into all the reasons why we don't rebuild trust or how we get distracted from rebuilding trust, how we the things that are going on beneath what you think is happening that is keeping you stuck and not being able to trust, keeping you stuck in anxiety loops. Next week, we're going to talk about overthinking and control as a form of anxiety and how that manifests and how it keeps you stuck. And all of these lived experiences live in your cells, in your nervous system responses and are like these felt senses that allow us to access the stuff when you were younger, even if you can't remember it. Tote's okay, totes fine. The body remembers, the body keeps the score. If you relate to anxiety being a trust issue at all, or you can sort of start to connect the dots, or you're just tired of feeling out of control. Man, stay tuned for these several week series that we're gonna dig into. And if you've never watched us on YouTube, hey, come find us on YouTube because we're gonna be over there now. So cool.

SPEAKER_01:

You can see us. I've been wave now, and people can see us. Yeah. Yay.

SPEAKER_04:

All right, let's. Oh, I am so excited for this next part. Our third segment, small wins, big shifts. So our listeners have been submitting their wins and we've been getting to receive them and hear them or read them or you name it, right? And so we are going to now start sharing them with you. I think we decided every other week. And so when you hear us call small win, small wins, big shifts, like listen for your share. And if you haven't submitted your wins yet, like I want you to pause for a moment and ask yourself why. If you have not sent a win in yet, uh really feel into it. What is the reason you haven't? And then I want you to ask yourself, is that reason contributing to your healing or contributing to your stuckness? I don't know the answer. We don't know the answer. But I just want you to check it out because we literally have trained ourselves and want to include you in that to looking for the silver linings or the positives along the way, right? Because we have to train our reticular activating systems to see the good in life, especially when we feel paralyzed in the bad. So send us your wins. Now, we're gonna share three with you today. The first one is an audio, two we're gonna read to you. This audio, like, oh my goodness, it is gonna take you on a ride. It is so good, so good, so good. We're gonna hear from Monica. We're gonna play this for you right now. Join us in feeling into what she felt as she is sharing this with us. And imagine she is just another you love that you can claim these same wins for yourself. Let's hear from Monica.

SPEAKER_00:

So, my closest single mom friend who has been helping me so much in my healing journey has an opposite schedule as me with her kids, and we wanted to take a road trip. And so I asked my ex if we could switch for this past weekend, but he had this crazy DJ party that he wanted to go and get wild, and no, he didn't want to switch. So I I found each of my kids sleepovers, and I I'm not that good at that, so that felt like an accomplishment that my kids were excited about a place to go, and I thought I'd mom organized it, and we were gonna go to Santa Barbara, we were gonna go thrift store shopping and do a bunch of hiking, and it was gonna be awesome. But on Friday morning, my daughter woke up with a fever, and I just knew I couldn't I couldn't send her sick to a friend's house, and I didn't know if it would get worse, so I canceled the trip and I just was a mom. But I had all this extra time, so frustrated, just sitting there crying, actually, and then I realized you know, my priority is my kids, and so I just did a lot of walking and a lot of listening to meditation teachings, and as I was walking, I found this lending book library, you know, like in my neighborhood, and I picked up this book. It's called Imperfect, it's called Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. And I didn't even think anything of it, just brought it home, made a fire, just relaxing, and opened it up, and it was actually the exact book that I needed. It's so much about letting go of grievances and opening up, healing your own heart, everything that you know the Dear Divorce Diary uh podcast talks about. So I feel like I'm getting it reinforced in all these different places. And I just made a fire, laid in my bed, read this book, really absorbed it, and hope to continue to absorb it. And I didn't feel sorry about not being able to do this trip anymore. I just thought like this was something perfect, and um it's important. I feel my heart is opening and softening and not just healing, but like expanding. So that's a win. Thanks.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay, Joy, as you were listening, I saw you nodding along. You were on the ride with Monica. And oh, I just know when you said when she said, and then I lit a fire, you were like, ooh, why didn't you invite me?

SPEAKER_02:

Fire in a book, are you kidding? Just throw in a cup of tea and a blanket. Like, I'm I'm game. But the fact that she found that book, and it's like that's the moments. Like, those are the moments that are like a god wink, yes, yes. So beautiful. I love that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04:

I can't imagine how many times y'all have heard me say, and then graciously said alongside of me, everything is always working out. When that's the mental or emotional posture that we take in life, right? Like, I can imagine how devastated she felt when she had to cancel the trip. But then also apparently what she needed was all this space to focus on what she needed, right? And sometimes that is the the truth of the thing. We get what we need, not what we want. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, this is a beautiful win. And a very keen example of everything is always working out for us, even when it doesn't feel like it.

SPEAKER_01:

And I can remember as a single mom never feeling like you could catch a break, you know, and just wanting time for yourself. Yeah, so just kind of figuring out in that moment. And I will say this too like so many of our women, they don't want to sit in it. They don't want to sit in it, and so I don't want to sit in it. I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, Joyce, you got one for us? I do. I've got a win coming from Laurie. She said Laurie. Laurie. She says, I bought a new tiny lighty Christmas tree just for me. I am looking forward to counting my blessings and sending out Christmas cards with updates. So much different this year. But my life is not over just because someone chose to stop loving me.

SPEAKER_04:

Laurie, I just thank you so much. I want a picture of the tree. So there's that. Please send us a picture. And I think that owning the differences, right, during the holidays, like just owning like I'm gonna make a new life for myself. And I'm okay with it a little bit being out of spite at first. I don't know. That might be a spicy hot take. How do you ladies feel about that?

SPEAKER_02:

I as our Thursday episode is going to be, I have a little, have a little spiteful self, like a part of me that's a little spell spiteful. So I'm okay with a little bit of spite Jesus. Right, because honestly, for me, a little bit of spitefulness is like it's like validation and and vindication for myself. Like it's self-vindication, it's self-validation, it's self a little bit, a little bit of self-energy of like, no, like I'm actually right. Yeah, right, right. So maybe a little thug ish, but like that thug life energy.

SPEAKER_01:

It's okay. Right. And I feel like I feel like personally a lot of us have been suppressing for so long in our marriages that when we get out on the other side of it, it comes out as anger and spite. And that's the only way we know how to express it in the moment. And I think that that's okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, right. It takes practice and expression and expression and expression. Absolutely. Um, also, Lori, I want to be on your Christmas list. Like we Lori. Can we be friends? I want a Christmas card. I know.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome. All right, Coach Tiffany, what you got for us? All right, so we have another win coming in from Jamie. Jamie says. My win is that this past weekend, even though I'm dreading the holidays this year, I decorated my house for Christmas. It brought me a lot of joy in the moment, even though I balled shortly after. LOL. Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

But Jamie, uh, sometimes that's how it be, right? Like we feel we feel good, and then we have a little more capacity to feel or process or release. Release, maybe. I don't know. Would you say that differently, Tiffany? Like sometimes it helps release, yeah. It helps release, right? So, you know, ladies, that you are celebrating, like decorating your houses and reclaiming your spaces. Oh, we have some women in our current program that have been really focused on redecorating their spaces. Like, this is a common theme post-divorce, right? I think we all want like new sheets, new bed, new whatever, right? We do whatever we can per our budget. But yeah, like owning your space and and making it feel good. And that is all part of creating a sense, a felt sense of safety in today. And I am so proud of Jamie and Lori and Monica. Thank you for sending us your wins. It takes vulnerability to do this, it takes a commitment to being in the solution to do this. It took literal effort for you to send it and then for you to take the time to listen back. Like, I cannot thank you enough. We cannot thank you enough for sending these to us. They put a smile on our face when we see them pop in the box or wherever they get sent. So send us your voice notes, send us your wins. We want to hear them. They're amazing. Okay, tiny bit of homework. Ooh, how'd you feel in your body when I said homework? At full attention? Mm-hmm. But maybe with a twist in the gut. Okay. If you are not a premium subscriber, we want to know why. What is your lived experience of being a listener on this podcast that says, like, that's not for me? I'm we are just so genuinely curious. Did you know that we have premium workshops where you get to attend with Coach Tiffany every month? Did you know that there are certain products that are only available to premium listeners? Did you know that there are so many healing tracks where we do healing, not just talk about healing in premium, behind the scenes stuff that we talk about that we will not talk about in front of a paywall? So, like, we are genuinely curious and from a place of vulnerability, need your feedback. What is it about premium that I don't know, for whatever reason, what's your experience as a listener that we need to understand better? So please, please, please send us a DM on Instagram, either uh at Don Wiggins on Instagram, or send us an email, hello at mycoachon.com and just like help us help some sisters out. All right. Thank you so much for being here. Season five. This is a big, big deal. You as our listener are a big freaking deal. Without you, there is no us. We love you so much. We will see you Thursday for our panel rant on You Need to Calm Down. We love you so much. Peace.

Contributor

Divorce Recovery Maven Dawn Wiggins

Host