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

309. Divorce Hypervigilance & Overanalyzing: The Cost of Being the Only Adult In the Room

• My Coach Dawn • Season 5 • Episode 309

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Hypervigilance doesn’t come from wanting control.
It comes from realizing—often too early—that no one else was going to handle it.

After divorce, many women find themselves overanalyzing everything: conversations, tone shifts, finances, social dynamics, parenting decisions, other people’s moods. Not because they’re anxious by nature—but because their bodies learned that vigilance was the price of stability.

In this episode of Dear Divorce Diary, we name the real cost of being the only adult in the room.

You’ll hear why:

  • Hypervigilance is a role your body took on when things became unstable
  • Overanalyzing doesn’t calm anxiety—it quietly feeds it until it erupts later
  • Control is often a substitute for safety, not a sign of strength
  • Letting go isn’t about trust-falling into uncertainty—it requires somewhere safe to land
  • Exhaustion, resentment, and panic are downstream effects of never being able to stand down

We also talk honestly about why healing can’t happen in isolation—and why many women have to outgrow environments, relationships, and identities that once felt necessary but now feel depleting.

To close the episode, we share Small Wins, Big Shifts—real listener moments where control loosened just enough for relief, clarity, and trust to return. Not because everything worked out—but because they stopped carrying it alone.

If you’ve been living in constant readiness…and rest feels unavailable…if your mind never fully turns off…

This episode will help you understand why—and what it actually takes to change it.

If you’re craving a room where you don’t have to explain yourself, you’re invited to join Cocoon, our free community on the Heartbeat app. The link is in the show notes.

You don’t need more control.
You need support.

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! ✨

Stress-Less Flower Essence

SPEAKER_04:

Most women we work with aren't controlling or hypervigilant because they want power or control. They're controlling because their nervous systems don't believe that anyone is coming to help. 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. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. In today's episode, we are talking about the difficulty trusting in a post-divorce situation and what that has to do with all the ways that you overthink and try to control situations in order to get through. In the first part of the episode today, we're gonna talk about how control is not a personality flaw. It's a job your body took on when things became unstable. So hypervigilance is a behavior we do when your nervous system decides you're the only adult in the room. And of course, it causes exhaustion and it's something that needs to be relaxed down. But what most women miss is that control doesn't actually calm anxiety. It quietly fuels the fire beneath the surface where you've suppressed it, where it's lurking and growing stronger. And what happens is it comes out down the road at very inconvenient times as a panic attack or many panic attacks. So we're gonna talk about that in the first part of the episode. Then later on down the road, we're gonna talk about how we need to be responding differently to hypervigilance, overthinking, a need for control, and a difficulty trusting. Because what your system is actually calling for is a felt sense of safety. So we're gonna talk about all the juicy ways that we are actually fueling the cycle of the need for hypervigilance and control. Because trust and letting go of control isn't about needing things to work out in a particular way that you had envisioned or that you wanted. It's trust is the capacity to believe that you can thrive even if they don't go that way. And so we have to shift into this needing less control by increasing safety. And so if you notice that it's really, really hard for you to let go of like anything, any amounts of control, or to just sort of trust fall in any way, then I need you to really think about that in order to let go of things, you need a new softer place to land. The system has to perceive, your body mind has to perceive that there is a safe place for it to land if things go haywire. This is why healing in community is so pivotal. So we're gonna talk about all that. Did I say pivotable? There you go. And then at the end of the episode, we are gonna do our new segment, Small Wins, Big Shifts, where three of our listeners submitted wins that they have been having through this holiday season, actually. Um, and there are three moments of relief, clarity, and softness that did not exist before. So come hear what happens when you stop managing your healing and start experiencing it. Let's dig in. Darling dears, good morning. Welcome to 2026.

SPEAKER_00:

Good morning.

SPEAKER_04:

Woo! Actually, last week's episode was our first week, but this shows you the delay of recording versus releasing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. A little bit. So I have to tell you guys something funny. So, you know, we're we're getting ready to prep and potentially, you know, go live on YouTube and all of that. And so I did something this weekend that has resulted in something on my face. So I'm sure if you guys look super, super close, I was shaving my face this weekend and I freaking cut myself. What? Yes. Have you always been shaving girly, or is that new? No, because my mother always scared the hell out of me and told me that if I shave my face, it would grow a great big beard and it would grow in black and thick, which by the way is a freaking lie.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, but I love shaving my face. It's a great exfoliator. But this weekend I slipped up and didn't realize it until I was at Brunch yesterday. Oh no. And he was like, uh, honey, I think you cut your face. I was like, shit.

SPEAKER_04:

So I follow this woman on Instagram. Her name is Jordan Harper MP, and she is like a hardcore face shaving enthusiast. She has a whole, she's an influencer, right? So she's got like whole product lines she shares involved. Like between there's like this spray that she sprays on that makes the microwave white or whatever, and then all of these razors. And I'm just like, I don't have time for this amount of beauty trend. Like there's so much of life that I just want to live. But like, okay, if you're here for it, I'm here for you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, like cut to the chase. Basically, there is never anything better than a men's razor and men's shaving cream, so that's what I use. And done. I do it once a week and that's done.

SPEAKER_04:

When I was younger, probably in my 20s. So it's probably still first married. My mom definitely made a comment about hair on my face, which was very distressing to me. But what else?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Can I? I'm gonna really, I know we're on a Tuesday episode. Yeah, so I apologize for this, but the first time that I was shaving my nether region at 14 or 15 years old, my mother gave me an electric shaver to do that.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my god, I mean you know, uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Anyway, okay. That was enough. She was looking for a different reaction. No, it was terrible because I wanted an actual thing, but she didn't trust me with it. She's like, You're gonna catch yourself. Well, permanently.

SPEAKER_04:

Like, yeah, control risk.

SPEAKER_01:

And my friends have scared me so much with the thought of a Brazilian that I'm so not willing to do that. Like I'm scared with all the horror stories I've heard.

SPEAKER_04:

Not worth it. I'm not gonna light bulb out in my room. Squirrel, um, can I tell you? We we play a lot of Mario Party over here, my husband and daughter and I. And there's three players, and then the fourth is a CPU, and we gang up on that CPU and we take her coins and we take it, whether, I don't know, it could be like whatever. We take their coins, we take their stars, we take all this. And I often think while we're playing it, like, this is what we do to women. We expect them to get Brazilians and shave their faces and wear high heels and blow out their hair. This is what we do to women. We just expect women to like do all of this crazy crap in addition to like raising children, having jobs, getting divorced. Like, what the actual F. I don't know. Anyways, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

All right, so getting on my soapbox now, yeah. All right, let's um back on track, ladies.

SPEAKER_03:

Um let's talk about control as a way to like cope with an inability to trust. Like, welcome to the story of my life pre-healing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, me too. I see so much of myself in this. And when you said that hypervigilance is the feeling that you're the only adult in the room, I was like, oh my God. Because my two biggest managers from an IFS perspective are the controller and the hyper-vigilant. And that is why. And I think it's because I felt for so long that I was the only adult in the room. And so, in many of my relationships over the years, and so for me, my hypervigilance came from a sense of trying to prevent pain or embarrassment. That's what I'm realizing, right? Like, I did not want to see my partner, like, I didn't want to miss him give a look to somebody across the room. Like, I didn't want to miss a flirtatious thing of him putting his hand on someone's back. Like, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So I spend a lot of times in my relationships scanning the room. So it was extremely anxiety-inducing.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. And then here's the thing, right? When you are in relationship, whether it's romantic or friendships or work or family or you name it, when you're in relationship with people who aren't in integrity or who aren't functioning as adults, it just reinforces all of that underlying noise, right? Like I can't let go of hypervigilance. And I think that's the transition, that's what we're trying to transition, try to transition out of as a result of divorce, right? Is we're trying to let go of relationships where they're not in integrity or they're not mature. Right. But maybe we haven't built new communities of people who are in integrity or who are more emotionally mature. And we still see threat everywhere, right? Our systems are still programmed to see threat everywhere. Even if maybe that isn't the case sometimes. I think that's a very difficult part of healing is to discern discernment, right? Is this danger or is my nervous system reading it as danger? But yeah, I think, you know, I I think there are a lot of people in the world who are not emotionally adults. I know I was one of them probably up until about 10 years ago. I was not probably even less than that in certain ways, right? And so it's very true that our parts are going to perceive a lack of responsibility or maturity and feel a sense of instability and then try to compensate, right?

SPEAKER_01:

But I think that also when you pick a partner from a very low vibe state, and I tell my clients this all the time, the chances are you've probably also picked friends from that same low vibe state. And so I can even remember in high school, like I had the type of friends that like if you didn't hold on to your man, and not all of them, but like they were the type that would, you know, when you break up, they'd be the ones dating him next week or like hooking up with him in college or like some shit like that. And I was like, I really had to take a hard look at like, is my environment causing me to feel unsafe because of the people I'm surrounding myself with and the fact that I cannot trust the people I'm with. And that was like a huge thing.

SPEAKER_04:

What are we a vibrational match for? Yeah. So it's like correct, yeah. Yeah. So, and I think this is something that's very hard for women in the thick of it to wrap their head around. Like, how do I how do I get to a higher vibe? How do I attract something higher vibe? Is it true that I'm attracting all of this? Is it true that this is emanating from me? How do I get to a higher vibe when I'm just in the thick of it? Right. And um that I think is this the part that's so hard in the early phases of healing. And it's why our program is a year long, because this is not an overnight fix. It's it's really um a process to like be able to surrender enough to trust a little bit to receive relief or a benefit or some healing, and then to let that build on it. You know, like when you're trying to do weight loss or whatever and you um change your diet and you exercise, and like the it sometimes feels like it takes forever to get a result, but then the minute you get that result, then that's intoxicating. And then you just sort of build on that. But it's like that moment before you see results, it is so freaking hard to keep going.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think for a lot of women, if you grew up like this, where you always had to be hyper-vigilant, always the adult in the room, there was alcohol issues, abuse issues, like a lot of fighting or turmoil or whatever, you think that this is just how life is, and you think that this is just how you are, and this is how it always has to be. And when I tell you, the fact that we can have a barbecue and there can be 30 or 40 people at my home, and I am not feeling the need to constantly be watching everyone to see what's happening. Like I never knew that I could experience that kind of peace, you know, where I could just relax, correct. And I could trust the entourage that I had around me. That is like a crazy feeling that I never thought I would get to in my life. And it took me until I was freaking late 30s to get there, you know.

SPEAKER_04:

I heard Joy talk about that a lot lately too. That's just feeling so much less vigilant in social settings.

SPEAKER_05:

Right, but uh a lot of it was yes, uh healing and doing the hard work. But then you also, like you said just a few minutes ago, about it's also reprogramming. Like you have some of its habit, like your it's habit to scan the room, it's habit to know where everything is at all times. And so you have to make the choice of allowing your nervous system to to relax.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, anytime. Yeah, anytime any of us or anyone we've ever worked with, right, starts to create bigger gaps of peace or quiet, right? The nervous system and the mind together, they want to say, like, oh no, no, no, we're supposed to be busy or oh no, no, we're supposed to be stressed, right? It's uh it's a conscious choice. Yeah, it's so interesting, so interesting. Yeah, like space, quiet, peace feels threatening. It's fascinating. Yeah, because threat has yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

So you really do have to reevaluate am I actually in danger or am I so used to danger that I'm looking for when there is no danger? Like the friends you choose. And Tiffany, something you said earlier about how your friends, um, when you attract, you know, you attract from a low vibe vibe state. Dawn told me in the big the very, very beginning of my healing healing journey that my friends were gonna change. And I was like, they are not, they are my ride or dies, they are gonna, and it's so interesting as I started to heal and come out of the mark and the the I I really think of it as like smog, right? Like where everything's foggy and everything's thick and everything's hard, and you start really starting to come out of that, how your friends actually shift because they either grow with you and do the work with you, or they don't. And it's you want them to, of course, because you they you do love them, but there comes a point where everybody comes to a crossroads and you either dig in and do the work or you don't, and then your friends start shifting, you know, like they they really do, and you start you start attracting people that come to the table versus people that it's always your fault, you know what I mean? So I'm I I won't just wanted to say it really, it's it's crazy. Total rebrand. Healing is a total start shift, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and that's why I think a lot of women are scared of it or hesitant of it, right? To come in to step into this space because it's like you don't know what your life is gonna look like on the other side. We can all sit here and assure you that it's gonna be effing fabulous, but you don't know that at the time. And you are gonna have to let go of a lot of things in people. Um, sometimes family, right? Like I've had to reevaluate some of my family relationships in this if they're not healthy for me. And so it's kind of just like, but I I cannot tell you what it feels like to sit in a room with people who you know are for you and not against you. Like, oh my God. Like it is incredible to have just a room full of cheerleaders and like good people that show up for you.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, trust and rest, they go together, right? So if you're exhausted, you probably can't trust. And that is a big project that we would love to help you tackle. Let's talk a little bit about, let's talk a little bit about how control is a symptom that you need more protection and safety, right? Because so much of being in this moment in time is like the grief of what you thought you were gonna have, right? And it's like, you know, feeling like you can't trust anything. And even your ex, right? This person that maybe you had children with or you build, built a home with, or you built a vision for the future with, right? Um, and so because you have been betrayed or blindsided or, you know, let down so many times, maybe your soon-to-be ex or ex is like a very underfunctioning kind of man, because I think that's like an epidemic in this country. And so we're asking you to actually create a new world for yourself where you can increase your felt sense of safety, right? Where you can consciously choose to do behaviors all day long that improve your sense of safety in the world. Now, that is not what you are currently programmed to do, right? If you think about the beauty ads we are inundated with, they tell you, oh, did you all know this? I'm slightly squirreling, slightly, slightly, slightly squirrel adjacent. Do you know that Instagram, for instance, but I'm sure all of the social media sites use this. There is an algorithm that dictates the order in which your posts show up in your feed. So first it's, I forget the order of it, but first it's like, it's like a sick animal story or some something to make you evoke a sense of pity or like compassion. And then it's like something about war, and then it's something about like local violence or something like that, and then it's an ad. Like it's like the order of the posts in your algorithm are designed to make you buy something, and it's probably by something that you don't need, but you're convinced that there's something wrong with you, so you need it. So it could be a supplement or a beauty product or something, but it's the order of posts is designed to make you feel not trusting, not safe, and not secure inside of yourself or your body or your life, your world, right? Like literally the way we relate to ourselves as being not attractive enough, not this enough, not that enough, the way that we engage with social media all day long. And it is literally targeted to make us feel less safe so that we will buy things, the way that we scan the environment, right? And we've programmed our reticular activating systems to see threat. So let's talk about how do you start dismantling that and how do you start creating a felt sense of safety, even if that means down to no coffee before protein. Because if you add a stimulant before grounding, right, when you're in a depleted state, right? There are days that I drink coffee before protein. There are days that I drink coffee before protein, but I'm first looking at how grounded or how well am I in my felt sense this morning before I make that choice, right? So I don't know. What are y'all's thoughts about DC?

SPEAKER_01:

It's my favorite word on the face of the planet. It's boundaries.

SPEAKER_04:

Boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries.

SPEAKER_01:

So I told Donna Joy this, but I'm sharing with the world. So last week I went ahead and put my phone on focus time. Okay. Like I literally gave myself screen time. Yes. And so at 5 p.m., all of my apps shut off until 7 a.m. the next morning. And so what I noticed was in the first week my phone usage was down 45%, which was a bit like cringy for me because I looked at that and I was like, oh shit. Like I'm just mindlessly scrolling at night. Yes. There's also this thing on your phone that you can look at that tells you how many times you've picked up your phone to look at it that day. That is also disgusting. Yeah. Yes. So my point is small boundaries, right? Um, setting boundaries with an ex that we're only gonna talk about the kids, you know, setting boundaries with friends. Like, my thing is stop. Stop surrounding yourself with people who don't feel good energetically. Like that cringe factor, that whatever, like start putting down a boundary. Um, I'm not saying cut a bunch of people out of your life overnight, but I'm saying really start to be aware of how people show up for you and how you feel around other people. Super important.

SPEAKER_05:

It's not selfish to protect your energy. It's not selfish. That's something that I really had to work on. It's like I felt like I would be uh a selfish or that my people pleaser, my people pleaser part, right? Like it's not selfish for you to take care of you. Like even the airplane tells you to put your oxygen mask on first. Like this is like yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

So um, yeah, it's it's really like to be in alignment. Did y'all know that the highest vibration that you can vibe, that you can vibe, that you can vibe? So to every listener out there right now, the highest vibration you can vibe is authenticity. I love that word. Authenticity. We could say that it's like joy, or of course it's joy. Um, or like um, you know, actually education, like learning is a very, very, very high vibe. There are many, like in our emotional guidance scale that we use, right? There are there are like several high vibe words or, you know, feelings, but authenticity. So, like being the fullest expression of who I am. And that's not, I think too often, let me say something very, very important here. Too often people associate a lot of their illness. I there might be a better way to say that. So maybe y'all can say it better than me, but they associate their illness with their who-ness, right? They say my anxiety, my depression, my trauma, my anxious attachment style, right? None of those things are who you are, friend. Those are vibrations that have gotten caught in your field over the years based on, you know, inherited energy from previous generations or from your lived experience. Those are not who you are. Those are frequencies, vectors you have picked up along the way that are not of you. They are in you. Get that crap out of you. So I'm not talking about things that are in you. I'm talking about what is of you, the design of you, the magic that you are sent here on this timeline to do, to create, to connect, to love, to the particular ways you see the world and move through the world that are your particular forms of magic. That authentic expression is the highest vibration you can embody. And so when we suppress that by depleting ourselves, exhausting ourselves, trying to help everybody else reach their high vibe state, but neglecting ourselves, you're actually depriving yourself, the world, your children, your neighbors, your like from your gifts, right? So it's actually the most selfless thing for you to step into wellness and to let go of the things that got in you so that you could focus on what is of you and separate that shit out. Yeah, to be in that high vibe state of authenticity, your pure magic. And I think a lot of times when we're early on in healing, all we hear is like the noise of the darkness, the things that got in us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I remember, you know, when I was 19 and I got my first diagnosis, like I wore it like a badge of honor. Do you know what I mean? Like it became my entire identity. It became a lot of excuses. I took on a lot of victim mentality. Oh, I can't do this, or this is why I'm not great in a relationship.

SPEAKER_04:

Demake. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, right. So, like, which yeah, there's that too. But then also, like, even using my daughter for an example, like, you know, pre-homeopathy, she had a diagnosis, post-homeopathy, she had a completely different one, a very lighter one. And now, if she would be tested now by a psych, she probably wouldn't have much of anything in there. So it's kind of just like that's great that you have it, but I love to tell people I feel like these diagnosis or conditions are just a stopping place on your map. Like it's literally just a stopover until you get to the next thing, um, until you get clear enough to sort of overcome and be able to work on your healing enough. But it's like especially, I don't know what it was about turning 40 for me. And I think a lot of women agree that we work with that are approaching 40 or past 40. Um, your zero F start to take over and things that don't feel authentic to you anymore start feeling very wrong. Um, and I remember it was like this sense of unrest and angst. I I felt like I had teenage angst back, if that made sense. Like I was just so angsty and I couldn't understand why. And and then I realized like I was in the wrong field at work. You know, I was surrounding myself with the wrong friends. Like I had nothing to lift me up and support me. Everything around me felt depleting. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

That needs to be a pillow. The angst of misalignment.

SPEAKER_01:

I have 40-year-old angst. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Wow. The angst of misalignment. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. So, yeah, and so it is big and hard and scary to do this work of like, how can I create a soft place to land? This is why, like, I know that this is the case for all of us, right? We can't, none of us can say enough about healing in community because you can't just let go of old habits without having a new way to immerse yourself in. And um, you know, the ability to be witnessed, to be understood, to feel seen, to feel supported. And so when we invite women into community, right, whether it's into our programs or just into our community, um, it's because we know the power of feeling seen, witness, supported, feeling like somebody else has got you while you get busy figuring out how to get yourself, right? It's such a process, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So and can I tell you that most of the women that are in our community are in our divorce programs when they're initially starting, these women were lone wolves. You know, we attract very independent masculine energy women into our independent, yeah, overlooking. Yeah. Yes. And these are not women that typically would have ever chosen to heal in a group, ever would have found connection with other people. And so to see them walk into this community and watch their energy shift in month one, month two, month three to where they are like, holy shit, like these women see me, feel me, know me. Ugh, like that's incredible. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay, let's pivot to our community-based small wins, big shifts segment, right? So last year, loves, we asked you to start sending us your wins, big or small. And let this be a call for another wave of them, right? Many of you sent in, some of you sent voice notes, which are amazing. We're gonna play one today. And some of you sent in just, you know, written little excerpts. But we are sharing them this year on the pod. So small wins, big shifts. We have three listeners submitted wins today. Moments of relief, clarity, softness that didn't exist before. Okay, we are gonna start with a clip from Sarah. Let's hear what she's got to say.

SPEAKER_00:

I got another thing to report. Um, I was thinking because we have this financial um disagreement over a particular topic that was perfectly super problematic. And I couldn't see anyway how we were gonna work it out. Um like what about my favorite and I can't handle it. I don't know how to figure it out. Like either I needed what I need to do. Like, no way, like I don't have to do this on my own. Thank you for all the references you provide.

SPEAKER_04:

That was amazing. Like, that's literally what we're talking about in this episode, right? Is feeling she said super vexing. I love the word vexing, but like feeling like I cannot see a way through, but being willing to let go of controlling it and say, like, I am open to whatever the solution needs to be. And I love that she said she was walking because you know, Francine Shapiro is the therapist who discovered and developed EMDR as a trauma treatment approach. And she discovered EMDR while she was walking. She was walking, which is already bilaterally stimulating, and then her eyes were moving left to right. And so she was processing something super vexing, and then she felt a state change or a shift. So, really interesting that Sarah shares that story, something that shifted while she was walking. She was probably bilaterally stimulating and it facilitated a shift in our bodies, her body. So amazing. It's so inspiring.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to go ahead and share a win from Kelly. Kelly wrote into us and said, My win is that this past weekend I drove an hour to spend time with my sister and her family instead of isolating. I was aware of a holiday social event that was happening that I was no longer invited to, and I was at home pacing. So I got in the car and drove an hour to spend the evening with my people. I love that. I love using it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01:

Like so community, energy, support. Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, got iced out of her old community. I remember when she shared this, got iced out of her old community, feels so left out, feels so other, feels so like she doesn't belong. Yeah. And then rather than staying home and pacing or isolating, yeah, went and connected with people, which it's so like it seems so obvious as we're listening to it, right? But when you're stuck in those feelings of pacing and feeling like you don't belong, it doesn't feel natural to go try to belong somewhere, right? It feels like the last thing you want to do because your literal heart is guarded, right? You're like literally closing off to protect from the pain, to brace from the pain. And so it is a big deal to shift out of that moment where you're feeling stuck and isolated. Huge win. I love that so much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Um, I'm gonna read read a win from Sarah Kay. We have two Sarah. I decided to let Sarah, I decided to let go of the anger and bitterness at my ex. He shared that he had gotten into a relationship so quickly because he was afraid of being alone. Thankful that I can be alone and I'm not settling for just anyone to fill a void. That alone is so powerful.

SPEAKER_04:

Chills, right? Because so many women we talk to and that are listening right now get really stuck in the story. This is the story they tell themselves. He moved on so fast and now he's just happy. He just gets to be happy and he just gets to be happy. He gets to be happy. He gets to be happy, right? And I am over here and I'm not happy and I'm alone. But it's actually not true that he gets to be happy. He gets to have some fear or anxiety numbed temporarily. That's it. And I am obsessed that Sarah is able to see that rather than just settle to fill a void or to numb a noise, she's going to abide with herself and she's going to release him from the fear and the bitterness. That's a massive win that I think a lot of women will have benefited from hearing just now. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. All right, my darling dears. If you have ever walked into a room feeling misunderstood, feeling like you had to explain yourself. Ooh, ladies, can you relate to that? Feeling like walking into a room and feeling you have to explain yourself, your choices. You're gonna get questioned, people aren't gonna understand, like that sensation. And you can also recall a time where you walked into a room and felt the opposite of that, where you just felt understood, you felt celebrated, you felt like people just got where you were coming from, and there was like resonance, or what's a better word than resonance? Like, I don't know, seen, like good, felt good, seen, connected, I don't know, synergistic, right? That is what we want to invite you into in our cocoon community on the Heartbeat app. We know that you just came out of the holiday season where you walked into a lot of rooms where you felt like you were gonna have to explain yourself, right? Like there were gonna be the questions like where is he? What happened? How are you? Um, it's like the worst, right? Like, how do you think I the pity, the pity?

SPEAKER_05:

Where how are you? You know.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, right. So if you want to be in one more room where you do not have to explain yourself, where you could experience the physical relief, the unburdening of feeling understood, witness scene related to, we want to invite you to join Cocoon on the Heartbeat app. There is a link in the show notes where it just says join our community here. It is completely free. Every month we do a magic drop where there's a giveaway, there are discussion threads to jump into, there are so many things to get involved in, and we automatically send you an email and explain all of that. So don't worry about it right now. But come join us. Join us. Be in a room where you do not have to explain yourself. We love you so much. Peace.

Contributor

Divorce Recovery Maven Dawn Wiggins

Host