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

308. Divorce Panel Rant: If You Tell Her to Calm Down… You’ve Missed the Point

Subscriber Episode • • My Coach Dawn • Season 5 • Episode 308

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If someone has ever told you to calm down after divorce—and it made everything inside you feel louder, sharper, or more volatile—you’re not broken.

You’re responding to a loss of connection.

In this Thursday Panel Rant, Dawn and the crew get cheeky, honest, and deeply real about why “calm down” is one of the fastest ways to shut a woman down—and why it so often backfires in relationships after divorce.

This episode explores:

  • Why being told to calm down often feels like being told your feelings are inconvenient
  • How emotional suppression turns into explosive anger later
  • The link between anxiety, anger, and broken trust after divorce
  • How gaslighting and dismissal train women to doubt their own reality
  • The difference between nervous system discomfort from growth vs. true emotional unsafety
  • Why anger isn’t the problem—it’s information

The panel also weaves in the concept of Martin Buber’s I–Thou relationship dynamic—reminding us that real connection requires honoring both people’s lived experience, not just managing the loudest discomfort in the room.

Because here’s the truth:
Women don’t need to calm down.
They need to feel seen, understood, and safe enough to tell the truth.

Instead of asking yourself to be quieter, smaller, or easier to handle, this episode invites a different question:

What feels unsafe right now—for me, or for them?

That question—asked with honesty instead of judgment—is often where regulation actually begins.

This is not a polished episode.
It’s a lived one.
A little ranty.
A little funny.
And deeply validating for any woman who was taught to silence herself to survive.

Welcome to Panel Rant Thursday.

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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SPEAKER_02:

Because I think that's what we're talking about today. Someone saying you need to calm down is like, oh, I need to act different to make you feel comfortable, right? Maybe there's some truth to that. And also, maybe you know, maybe there's some truth in what I'm expressing also. And I think that's the I thou, right? Martin Buber is a philosopher from like 1930, 40, something, 20, I don't know, shame on me, but like he's like one of the early, like pre-freud um philosophers that led to the development of like what we call modern day therapy, right? And it's the acknowledgement of the I and the thou in relationship. And so whether we're checking out at the grocery store or we're sitting in a therapy therapist's office, or like we're on Facebook in the comments with someone, or we're in, you know, I don't know, friendships, family relationships, you name it, right? There's an I and there's a thou. And in order for there to be connection, which is where we all feel safe, we all feel safe when there's connection, right? Right. There has to be an acknowledgement of the I and the thou.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, love.

SPEAKER_02:

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 divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. Darlings, has anyone actually told you you needed to calm down when you were anxious or panicking? Yes. Yeah?

SPEAKER_04:

I heard I heard that, but I also heard a lot of um you're just being dramatic and you're just being emotional. I heard that a lot. He uh my uh husband had every time I had a any like anything, anything, it could be the smallest thing. He was an avoidant, right? Like he was an avoidant attacher, and so the smallest thing became a huge deal, right? And so he actually convinced me that I was hormonal, that I was being too emotional, and I went and got on birth control to counteract me being crazy because he was cheating.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, well, but and also both things can be true, right? Like actually, it's cute to tell women that they need to calm down because yeah, like what if their hormones are out of whack?

SPEAKER_04:

Because I don't never met a woman whose hormones weren't out of whack, I don't think, because think about this time period, like in in I I've really been digging into this a lot recently. Like I had my first baby in 2012, twin, she was non-verbal, twins at 2014, um, spent the next six years going, you know, to to specialists to therapy into like appointments. I did all of that, and then my my home fell apart, my marriage fell apart, and all of that happened, and I didn't I wasn't on anxiety medicine, I wasn't on antidepressants because I didn't take the time to take care of me because I was not because you need them right, so my hormones, my core, like everything was out, right? And so um it like that that season, and then of course him being an asshole, there's no other word, of not like I was not support, not encouraged, like you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02:

So, but and also when when someone tells me to calm down, I just feel bigger, right? The feelings just get bigger, like that is a profound experience, like but also we, and when I say we, I mean like as a collective, like at least in this country, and probably many countries, I think many, many, many countries, we do not feel safe witnessing other people's big emotions. Like we really don't.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you yeah, I don't think I feel like for me, it takes me a long time in a relationship-ish to go from zero to a hundred. So, in other words, like there was so much fucking suppression happening in my marriage. There were so many times where I just kept my mouth shut and looked the other way and didn't want to rock the boat because I was very much an avoidant too. And so then when things would come up and I finally found my voice, I would lose my shit. And then he would say, All of it would come out at once. Oh, yeah. And I was the type that would keep everything inside, and then six weeks later, you throw a sock and you miss the hamper, and I like fucking lose my mind. You know what I mean? I think that's really relatable. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I was the suppression queen for sure, and I, you know, hearing somebody tell me to calm down tells me that I'm not allowed to have a voice. Like, that's what I hear when you tell me to calm down is like I'm too much and you can't handle it when I feel like I have sucked up so much of your shit and handled you, so you're gonna listen to me right now, and that's where I went in my mind, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So, and I know that this week, like we're like the theme is trust and anxiety, but also I my lived experience of this has been more to do around anger, right? Like, I think the things that I get angry about are really valid, but like nobody likes anger, nobody likes witnessing other people's anger. It like scares, like as a collective, right? It scares people. Um, so yeah, definitely echo that feeling too much thing. Also, when I historically got anxious, I don't really do this anymore. I don't do this anymore, but when I would get anxious, my husband would start telling me things, I think whether or not they were true, just to pacify me, like like almost like patting me on the head, like there, little girl. Like just really trying to sell me that everything was in hand, even if it wasn't. Which I think back to you know, the anxiety equals a breach of trust thing. Like when somebody is gaslighting you or trying to just make your feelings stop versus address your concerns, it's another trust breach.

SPEAKER_04:

I can see that, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Because they can't make you feel understood or seen in the moment. And it makes you feel more out of touch with yourself. Like, you don't understand why I'm upset right now. I hated hearing that. Like, hey, I don't understand why you're so upset. And I'm like, are you kidding me right now? Like, how can you not understand? And then they want to apologize, but I'm like, do you even know what you did wrong? Or are you just apologizing to me to shut me up?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and we see that all the time in couples counseling, right? That couples keep fighting over the thing because clearly there's never been a true understanding of what the actual problem is or repair for that problem underneath the problem. It's not about the remote or about the this or that or the whatever. Um, I know your storytelling was coming to mind. So yeah, I feel like Taylor Swift helped everybody understand that you're not supposed to say you need to calm down, but people just got sneakier about the ways that they do it. Right.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't take apologies now. I hate the word apology. I'm not gonna, I've never pushed my girls to apologize. Like, I don't want the word apology in our vocabulary. I want action. I want to know, I want to hear the work of you doing it. Why'd you just do that? Why'd you just say that? Like, I'm not no ma'am. No, no, sir. Because I think that some so often apology is like a band-aid, and that's not the actual problem.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like they're lacking the self-awareness to know why they did the thing. And so what I find too is that if you have somebody that is apologizing for something but then saying they don't understand why they did it, it doesn't help the other person trust and feel protected and safe that it won't happen again or keep happening. Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Man, you're working with several couples that have this going on right now, Tiffany.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like the theme right now, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but I think that's what so many of our women have experienced, right? Is being pacified versus ring understood.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and the problem addressed.

SPEAKER_02:

Then it's no wonder we can't trust ourselves because we just like how many times are we told, um, oh, is this pickle? Is this pickle? Yeah, you can't see us on YouTube. Pickle the cat, just join the mic. Join us at the mic. Yeah, or we've been told that I don't want to just say we're crazy, right? But that, and maybe because people were actively hiding or lying or denying, right? Or maybe they were lacking the self-awareness, or maybe they were lacking the humility. But yeah, if if of you know, when you've been told for so long that your feelings are wrong, it really is hard to trust what's real.

SPEAKER_00:

It is, and I remember like my second husband stirred up a lot of this in me because he had only had one other relationship before me, and so he was young, you know, and I was a little bit older than him, and so it was like he just had such a very like skewed view of the world, and so I was too much, my past was too much, I had too much baggage, and so a lot of times in fights he would tell me, like, you just need to go back on your meds, like clearly you can't handle your own feelings, and oh my god, that would piss me off because and then it made me question like, I've heard Am I crazy?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, maybe, but and also Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I relate so much to being too much and being intense and being intimidating and being all the things, um, and also believe that I am the way I am for a reason. Like uh, you know, I have a mission in this life and I'm doing the mission. Um but yeah, I think that my fallback for a lot of years was that if somebody told me my feelings were wrong, I would exchange their truth for mine. Right. Then my truth, or like what my body was saying, all of a sudden I had to find some way to invalidate it because I'm gonna defer to you and your truth. That had to come from a very, very young place, right? Where my truth gets deleted by yours. But that's the default. And then in order to live like that, you have to disassociate, right, or suppress so much.

SPEAKER_00:

But I also feel like it's so hard to when you're in another relationship with somebody who doesn't make your nervous system feel safe, but you're trying to heal. And so for me, there were relationships that I had where I still never felt calm and I didn't realize that they were the problem either. Like it wasn't about me, it was my nervous system telling me that. Yeah, but you know what?

SPEAKER_02:

That's a thing that we have to freaking unpack because my nervous system feels unsafe with safe people all the time. Right. So, how what is the decision tree for my nervous system feels unsafe because you are doing unsafe behavior? You are your behavior over the course of time consistently demonstrates a lack of care for your nervous system or my nervous system, right? How do you discern between someone who is who is really displaying a lack of care versus when our nervous systems feel unsafe because we're in a stretch goal? We are doing things that have never before felt safe, and then therefore there is going to be discomfort. Like, I'm not gonna go to the gym and work out, and it's gonna be without discomfort. Growth will never come, healing, recovery, like growth, you name it, will never come without discomfort. So when you say with someone who makes my nervous system feel unsafe, and I know I think I know what you mean, but like what does that mean for you?

SPEAKER_00:

It's like, well, when you were talking about on the pod last week about making sure that women have a partner that's willing to grow with them and emotional healing. So for me, it was always men who closed the door on something. So I remember I was dating this guy and like abandonment things, like withdraw well, not really, but even like something as simple as this, where I said, I like to travel. Travel is something that I want to be able to do when my daughter's grown, you know, and do this. And he didn't want to travel, but he said, But you can go alone or with friends. And I'm thinking to myself, like, but that's not aligned with what I want, right? And like he's not able to meet me there. And so it's just little things like that where I feel like people are not willing to step outside of themselves. I know when I have a safe person and they're challenging me, that's a whole different feeling. And I don't like that either. Being challenged in certain ways, and so still feeling like, okay, I'm still being challenged in this relationship. This is shit that I need to do work on. Because before in relationships, I never took accountability or responsibility. It was always, this is who I am. If you don't like it, screw it. So I wasn't a partner, a good partner either to somebody who was secure because I wasn't willing to change.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

When you're so rigid and you can't I see that.

SPEAKER_02:

I think that it must be commonplace for us to feel some type of way in our bodies and not know what to do with that data. Like, I don't feel good or safe. You know, I feel threatened, right? That's what the nervous system is saying when it's in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. I don't feel good right now, and I don't know if I should keep going, stop, back up, run away. Like, I don't know what to listen to or believe or do next.

SPEAKER_04:

That's so I I had so I had a woman call me last week and she just started therapy for the first time. She's in her, she's never been in therapy, she's in her late 30s, she can't remember half of her childhood, she can't remember any of her childhood. And it's like this whole journey of like, oh, like that's not normal. It's not normal, right? And so um, what would you like for someone who's never ever been in this space, who's never doesn't know what anxiety is, much less that she has it or whatever, what is the single most impactful thing they can do to move the needle to integrate ever all of the stuff that we talk about? So I want to I like I want to like I told her something, but I want to see what like what you guys would say.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think it's somewhere in the realm of like practice feeling and processing and not projecting, right? So something like sitting with your journal and feeling the volume of maybe words that are coming up or right, because I think that when one is not used to feeling and processing, like it's like some people it's just words in their brain, right? And it's so many words, or maybe it's a lot of body sensations, or maybe it's a lot of tears for some people, right? But getting in the habit of sitting down and starting to notice the things your body says or does at certain times, and then processing those things and practicing understanding that feelings are not gonna kill you. That it's you know that that feeling them is essential, and then understanding that it's it's going to be a journey to untangle what needs to change in your life. Is it you, is it them, is it something else, right? Like is it both being slow and intentional about untangling what needs to change in that moment because I think that's what we're talking about today. Someone saying you need to calm down is like, oh, I need to act different to make you feel comfortable, right? Maybe there's some truth to that, and also maybe you know, maybe there's some truth in what I'm expressing, also. And I think that's the I thou, right? Martin Buber is a philosopher from like 1930, 40, something, 20, I don't know, shame on me, but like he's like one of the early, like pre-Freud um philosophers that led to the development of like what we call modern day therapy, right? And it's the acknowledgement of the I and the thou in relationship. And so whether we're checking out at the grocery store or we're sitting in a therapy therapist's office, or like we're on Facebook in the comments with someone, or we're in, you know, I don't know, friendships, family relationships, you name it, right? There's an I and there's a thou. And in order for there to be connection, which is where we all feel safe, we all feel safe when there's connection, right? Right. There has to be an acknowledgement of the I and the thou. And that takes pausing, breathing, slowing things down, sorting them out. And I think women, especially women who are of childbearing age, because before puberty and after menopause, the hormones are not fully activated, right? They're not in the building in the way that they are when you're of childbearing age. And those hormones are the hormones that cause us to really adapt in relationship. And that's so that we could be good moms, right? So that we like don't leave our kids in the car when we go in publics or whatever at the grocery store. So those hormones facilitate us adapting. And so when you're in relationship with someone who's more I, less thou, as women, we tend to self-sacrifice in order to create homeostasis, right? In order to keep things copacetic or like peaceful. And so we have to get better at the I and the thou and recognizing when we're in relationship with someone who's doing I thou with us, and not just all I, but like women, we sacrifice too much and we don't get enough often. I don't want to say across the board, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Because some women are narcissists and they don't realize it. It goes back to suppression, too. You know what I mean? Like, how much are we shoving down on a daily basis? Like your friend Joy, like how much has she been shoving down or disassociating talk? She can't remember childhood. Like that's it's a lot of checking out time.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really I love I want to close a loop because Don said something a few minutes ago about how people can't sit with anger with someone else having anger. And then she said just a few minutes ago about we are designed for connection, and that that connection is threatened, perceived, it's threatened when someone is in anger. Like so it's a very much, it's a very um kind of lovely grammar there. It's a very much um it very much is a visceral reaction when someone is anger because that threatens that safety bond, the connection that that you are craving, you are needing.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's obviously amplified with people who have experienced anger in childhood as a source of trauma. If you have parents. That fight all the time or would fight with you or physically abusive with you, like that's going to amplify that for that other person. So a lot of times what'll happen is as soon as somebody raises their voice, like I will shut down. Like I you can just see my reaction, and I just literally glaze over, and that's it. I'm not listening to what you say because as soon as you raise your voice, like that becomes the point where my body just disconnects from my mind. I would say for me, like expressing anger when I was younger, when like telling me to calm down. Like, have I ever told you guys the story about the stereo system when I was in college? Okay, so I was I my first relationship. Well, like so my first relationship ever, we were together for two years, and we had taken a break, and he had gotten back together or hooked up with his ex-girlfriend while we were Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02:

You did tell us a story. Carry on. It's violent, it's violent, it's got crazy eye in it, wild eyes in it. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00:

But it's just like, you know, so I was getting ready to go to class and um she popped up on my AOL instant messenger and told me that, you know, they had hooked up. And what pissed me off is that he didn't tell me that, but also she was rumored to have like an STD. So of course, like I was really pissed after that. And he was upstairs sleeping. And so I just very calmly walked upstairs and I picked up our$2,000 stereo system that he had sitting on his dresser, and I I threw it down the stairs and it went into a million pieces. And of course, he woke up because it was super loud and he looked at me and he was like, What the fuck are you doing? And I looked at him and I was like, Don't ever lie to me again. And I just very calm, like, and then I went to class. Who does that? I did that. But understand like how much suppression there was for me. Like, anger was never a safe emotion for me to feel ever.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and that's the thing, right? The more afraid we are of other people's anger, the more afraid we are of our own anger. And when women are disconnected from their own anger, that's when they end up getting taken advantage of over and over and over again, right? Because anger is a part of our emotional fabric that's supposed to tell us, like, hey, something's off. Like it's part of God's design is anger, right? So, how many women need to have anger unleashed for them in order to heal, in order to get well? There's some cool research that is being bandied about. I don't have any really good stuff to quote or anchor here, so shame on me. But around the tie between suppressing anger and autoimmune disease.

SPEAKER_03:

So yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

That would be interesting to dive into.

SPEAKER_03:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04:

For sure. I think that the whole the whole theme of you need to calm down is so rooted because so I've I've talked about this before about how everybody breaks, but when you're when you say something that's bothering you, or you find out your boyfriend cheated on you or whatever, and you do something, and then you're labeled as emotional or crazy, but like reactive abuse, right, right.

SPEAKER_02:

And then you get labeled as crazy label on the woman who gets arrested because she did a react reactive abuse after the narcissistic husband did, you know, XYZ million billion, yeah, really sinister things, and then she breaks, mmm, reactive abuse, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It's a it's a thing for sure, and then you get and then you get labeled as the crazy one, or you have a temper, or you're whatever.

SPEAKER_02:

That's why I always say like all human behavior has an explanation. All human behavior has an explanation, and more often than not, when we really listen to each other, like really, really, really listen, there is so much power in what people say, even if what they're saying or how they're saying it isn't cute. Like there's something being expressed here that is worthy of being heard, even if it's you know, uh in a way that feels triggering to us. Yeah, or even if we're triggering someone else, right? There has to be we have to be willing to love each other more than we hate big emotions. I don't know, say that part. I don't know. Yeah, I actually like that. That needs to be a pillow. Yeah, I like that. I get you know, I've heard it, I've heard that phrase used, but like other, you know, we have to be able to love blank more than we hate blank. Like, you know, I think it's a valuable frame regardless of what the I don't know, things are we're trying to gaps we're trying to narrow, right? If if where we feel safe is in connection, then we have to narrow the gap of disconnection. And um yeah, in order to do that, we have to be better listeners. The sp listen to the spirit of what people are trying to share. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll say that every time somebody has ever told me to calm down, there is an underlying fear of they're not understanding me and I don't feel seen, and I don't feel like I can truly be myself with you. That is what usually triggers me to get to that point where somebody needs to tell me to calm down, is because in that moment, the lack of connection to somebody that I'm supposed to feel safe with feels like such a threat to my system that I just kind of go on overload. So I would say the next time somebody is asking you that, or if you feel like you're reacting to somebody in that manner that's making them say, Hey, like you're too much, you're too intense, you're too this, ask what feels unsafe about them in that moment because that's usually what the underlying underlying source is coming from.

SPEAKER_02:

Ooh, say that again a different way. So, like if someone tells me to calm down, you want me to ask them what is feeling unsafe in this moment?

SPEAKER_00:

Either for you or them. Like what triggered you to have such a big reaction in the first place? What triggered you to be so intense or to be so angry?

SPEAKER_03:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

We have themes, like every client we deal with has a theme. Some women feel trapped. That's their that's their thing. You know, for me, it was always the fear of not being able to have a voice. Anytime I feel like I was being silenced, that was a huge trigger for me because I felt silenced almost my entire life.

SPEAKER_02:

Mm-hmm. Well, and the times, yeah. And when women are literally silenced, right, is when the worst things happen to women. Like, yeah. Yeah, it's when we break, right? Like when our little psyches, as little people, break when we're being silenced. Yeah. Have y'all rant? Have y'all seen the social media trend where women put tape on their mouths and put tape on their daughter's mouths, and then the husband holds up a sign and says, Finally, peace on earth?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I don't like that.

unknown:

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02:

Like, like curated Christmas card pictures with women and girls having tape on their mouth. Finally, peace on earth. I have not. Have not. Right. Yeah. Well, that's good. Our algorithms are clean. And the how it showed up on my feed was with like um like a guru, right? Like a spiritual speaker, I don't know, trying like saying this, we can't. How are we here? How are we here? Yeah. But I just know that any woman who would volunteer for that has a history of being abused. For sure. Well, wait it be a buzzkill at the end, Daunty Dawn.

SPEAKER_00:

But I think it's so funny though, because I'm sitting here imagining like all of us have girls. You know, Joy has three, I have one, Don has one. Can you imagine if we asked our girls to do this? Like, my daughter would tell me some expletives about why she's not effing doing that. Like that would right like that. Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02:

They might put tape on their mouths just because it's a pretty color. Like, I don't know. It's like a joke, right? But like in real life, no, all of our daughters are pretty good self-advocates, I would say. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Which is how we want it, right? Yeah. All right, darlings. So, Tiffany, you want us to check in with ourselves what feels unsafe, what got triggered, what feels unsafe for I, what feels unsafe for thou, and take it from there. Amen. Rather than calming down. Maybe, maybe in in checking that out, one uh naturally calms down.

SPEAKER_04:

Could happen.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

But that's when you like that's when you throw that's when you throw a pillow, yeah, not a person.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Praise. Yeah. Preached. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. Do some healthy somatics, not people.

SPEAKER_02:

Not knives. Yeah. All right, darlings. We love you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

Peace.com.

Contributor

Divorce Recovery Maven Dawn Wiggins

Host