312. Behind the Mic: Divorce, Dissociation & Trauma...What Happened to Us?

Behind the Mic is where we slow the conversation down.

In this premium episode, we speak candidly about dissociation during and after divorce—not in clinical terms, and not from a distance, but from inside our own lived experience.

This is a quieter, more intimate conversation about the ways women cope when life becomes overwhelming… and how easy it is to miss what’s really happening while you’re busy surviving.

We talk about:

• The moment you realize something has been operating under the surface
• Why certain habits, patterns, and “coping strategies” feel hard to change
• The difference between functioning and actually being present
• How the body protects us long before the mind understands what’s happening

This episode isn’t about fixing anything or tying it up neatly.

It’s about noticing.
Getting curious.
And letting yourself hear something you may not yet have words for.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing all the right things after divorce but still feel oddly disconnected…
If you’ve ever wondered why certain patterns keep repeating…
If you sense there’s more happening beneath the surface than you’ve been able to name…

This conversation is for you.

As always, Behind the Mic is raw, personal, and meant to be experienced—not skimmed.

💛

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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Stress-Less Flower Essence

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Speak About Dissociation Now
• 2:00 Feeling Seen And Normalizing Protective Parts
• 5:20 Dissociation, Addiction, And Parts Work
• 9:30 From Analysis Loops To Physical Collapse
• 14:36 Homeopathy, Nature, And Yoga As Bridges
• 17:51 Naming The Addict Part And Its Shapeshifts
• 22:16 Consequences, Recovery, And Nonjudgment
• 25:46 You Can’t Fake A Vibration
• 27:30 Note: All timestamps within 1644s duration

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Loves, we made a decision to do this behind the mic episode where we talk more intimately about number one, our personal experiences with disassociation. Number two, the tools we use for ourselves, with each other, with our communities, with our families to deal with disassociation. I personally didn't understand for a very long time in my healing journey. I did not understand when I was getting divorced that this was the thing. I think it's very cool that we're talking about these things these days because I think gone are the times where you could get to an advanced level of EMDR training before you realized, you know, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me. Whether we call it addiction or we call it disassociation, it's an attempt to distance ourselves from what we're feeling or what we're experiencing because it's overwhelming. I want people to hear that it doesn't matter how complex or how overwhelming this sounds, there's always a solution. 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 divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. Let's just talk for a moment about why we're wanting to do this. Like, right. It's not just oh, we're just gonna like bear all on this premium episode, right? But I I personally didn't understand for a very long time in my healing journey. I did not understand when I was getting divorced that this was the thing. And when it first really landed with me was actually when I was in an advanced level EMDR training. And I think that is a profound thing that I had already gone through first and second level EMDR training. I had already have a master's and a specialist degree in therapy and counseling. And I was that far down the like seasoned clinician track before I understood that this was something that was happening inside of me. So what do we want? And I know we're like I'm asking you to say this in front of our listeners. Like, what do you want our listeners to hear in this behind the mic today? What do you want them to take away from it?

SPEAKER_00: 2:52

I just want them to feel seen and to come into a space to feel understood and that the behaviors that they're engaging in that are dissociating behaviors, there's nothing wrong with them. It's this beautiful protection that the body is offering them. And then also understanding that until they come to terms with it and get brave enough to really be curious around what they're burying underneath of this, it's it's never gonna change. You're still gonna, you know, the cycle of shitty friends. The cycle of shitty friends, yeah, like it's it's all gonna stay the same un until you're ready to take this leap.

SPEAKER_02: 3:34

You hold so much shame in what you're doing, or like, why can't I just do this? Or how why is it so much easier for this person to just do this, and why I feel feel like I want to eat this entire pound cake and scroll on my phone with a glass of wine all night to numb and to check out of what is happening inside my body or what my body is trying to tell me. Like I heard this thing in in our membership, we are on feeling our feelings, like trying to understand and and really sit with our feelings. And I saw this thing, our feelings are is a roadmap to what is happening and what needs to be witnessed. If you're angry, like why are you angry? What is inside you that is triggered, that needs to be seen, that needs to be witnessed, that needs to be worked out. So if your body is calling to dissociate, there's something there that is needing to be seen, but is scared to be seen and is scared to be witnessed because it has never been safe to do so. And so, like, yeah, my my instinct is to say, like, you you're not special, and that's not because you aren't, it's because it's not you're not broken, like there's not some, there's nothing that you can't that you can't have the power to shift and to change and to work through and to own.

SPEAKER_01: 5:07

I see okay, so like in AA they say, um, there's this, yeah, like the people who go to AA think they're terminally unique, like there's something different about them that they can't get well or that they can't, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, no, we all have the capacity to get well, but you have to understand what you're dealing with and you have to be willing to do. I, you know, there's a level of willingness, right? Or a level of safety you have to cultivate and then a level of willingness. But yeah, well indicated. Well indicated. Okay, so first of all, I think it's very cool that we're talking about these things these days because I think gone are the times where you could get to an advanced level of EMDR training before you realized, you know, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me. I think that the internet, right, and social media and Chat GPT has like made this content so much more available. I think I would like to add here that disassociation and addiction share a lot of common ground. And internal family systems or parts work can help us look at it through this lens or that lens, but they're very similar concepts, right? It's whether we call it addiction or we call it disassociation, it's an attempt to distance ourselves from what we're feeling or what we're experiencing because it's overwhelming. Disassociation can happen from a very young age, from infancy, right? I believe very strongly that my kid came out of me in a highly dissociated state. And I spent years helping her thaw her nervous system using a whole host of tools so that she could tolerate feeling. And I think that's because she had generational whatever, it's because of how sick I was while I was pregnant with her. It's just so many things, right? And so I want people to hear that it doesn't matter how complex or how overwhelming this sounds, there's always a solution. My go-to's are very much in the cerebral realm. One of my greatest gifts, if you pull my human design chart, is how strong my mind is. Like my mind is like literally one of my greatest gifts, and one of the gifts, my gifts to the world, right? It's like literally the gift I'm meant to share to the world to understand things in a way that many people just don't naturally and that gift became the way in which I avoided feeling or escaped my body. And so very often when I am looping in the analysis of something that I am struggling to feel, that's it's a cue that I am disassociating, analyzing it, analyzing, analyzing from this angle, from that angle, from this angle, from that ways that I used to do that when I was getting divorced is like running the numbers, like doing like running the numbers over and over and over again on my budget, on my this, on my that, like running financial numbers meant that I was like really trying to avoid having a panic attack about finances or things like that. Overworking is one of the profound ways I would just escape whatever I was feeling, like, oh, I'll just do more, I'll just take on more, I'll just do, and I'll just solve it by doing more or functioning more. And that was very much because that's what disassociation does, right? It keeps us too busy to notice what we don't want to feel, and all those things together eventually led to my physical collapse. I want to make a note here that I think a lot of autoimmune disease, there are multiple factors that contribute to autoimmune disease, certainly toxins in our environment, MTHFRG mutation. There are many, many, many, many things. And I would argue that there is a strong correlation between women who have chronic disease and autoimmune and their tendency or capacity to disassociate. I would not be here today in the capacity that I am if it weren't for homeopathy. For me, that is one of the key tools that finally broke through disassociation in a way that allowed me to sit here in the way that I am today. Before I found homeopathy, I would say one of the game changers for me was a nature, being outside, feet in the sand, in the grass, spending a lot of time in nature and yoga. And I don't mean performative yoga where I'm like powering through, I mean slow, hot yoga where I was getting grounded in my body. And what I would just say about that is yoga and nature did profound things for me in disassociation. Those were the conditions where I got pregnant when I was historically infertile, right? But the thing is, is it didn't stick. It's like when I stopped being in nature, I stopped doing yoga. Disassociation came back. Whereas with homeopathy, it melted it seemingly in a very permanent way.

SPEAKER_00: 10:08

So I will tell you that my protector parts made me want to dissociate while you were talking about that because as soon as you started talking about being dissociating an addiction, my ears started ringing. Oh so this is like probably the first time. Yeah, like this is the first time that I've ever talked about this on the pod. And I'm I'm very now that I've done IFS work myself and also as a practitioner of IFS, what I want people to know is that when people come to me and say that they're an addict, I correct them and I tell them, you have an addict part. Okay, so you have a firefighter that deals with this by engaging in addictive behaviors. And so for a very long time, I engaged in behaviors with my addiction. And it's like the addict part just morphed. It just changed over the years. You know, it was alcohol at one point, it was sex at one point, it was porn at one point, you know, it was cereal dating at one point, overeating, right? Like whatever it was, binge eating. I would almost trade one for another, but it was the same thing at the end of the day. It was me just trying to numb out. And so I think what I want women out there to understand is that you're not an addict. You have an addictive part that is in there. And and I also tell people this that have also had suicidal attempts or ideation. That is also a very protective firefighter part. And so, again, all of these parts are beautiful in the sense that at one point, yes, they were protecting me from feeling very uncomfortable things. They were protecting me from very dangerous relationships and situations that I found myself in. And it was always that I coped with things until I finally was able to bring myself to the table and say, enough is enough. You know, at some point I was so bad that one of these things were gonna kill me. You know, I was engaging in behaviors that were very dangerous, and I say all the time, you know, I I joke about it now, but it's like I should be in a ditch somewhere, the decisions that I made and the things that I engaged in and the behaviors that I engaged in. And so I I I relate to that just from a different end of the perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 12:22

Like all of my overworking and all that, right? Like my kidneys were gonna fail from the amount of headache medication that you know what I mean? Like, yeah, anything you put before your recovery is going you are going to lose it. Like absolutely anything you put before your recovery, you're gonna lose it, right? Like it's if we're not reaching for alignment or wellness, there is a toll to pay, and you pay it eventually, either with your life, your health, your relationships, your money, like you pay the toll somewhere.

SPEAKER_00: 12:48

Yeah, yeah. And I think I was my thing was I was at the risk of losing people that were very important to me until I came to the table and figured out that these methods were not working for me anymore. And so for me, like women that are on the other side of the spectrum like that, that have very addictive behaviors or parts, like I see you. There's nothing you're ever gonna tell me through a DM that I'm gonna be shocked about or judge you for. Yeah, yeah, you know, like I've probably done it, tried it, you know, whatever. Yeah, toys on something absolutely, absolutely. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 14:22

Thank you. That's beautiful. I love it when Joy's face lights up while Tiffany's talking. Pleasing, pleasing, yeah. I love it when Joy's face lights up, period.

SPEAKER_02: 14:37

But when Tiffany talks and like she gets she's real and she's raw and she's like loving, like I just you're one of my favorite people. Like, I just I just adopted.

SPEAKER_00: 14:48

Thank you. And I love you so much. And I will tell you too, I I will echo what Don said, the homeopathy. I could do all the parts work too, right? But like that, as far as the homeopathy has helped me realize my my routines, my behaviors, my dissociative tactics, like whatever you want to call it, but it's really called it out and it's allowed me to not hide anymore. And so that also allows me to be so raw because there is no fear anymore of judgment or people saying anything or people not receiving it well. It's just yeah, people are gonna judge us all day long.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

People are judging us, right? But like that's not gonna knock us out of our identity or out of our purpose or out of our taking action anymore.

SPEAKER_00: 15:29

No, I feel zero fucks about it because I know that what's more important to me is the women that need to hear this. You give a fuck about anybody else's judging at this point. Like that's just how I feel.

SPEAKER_01: 15:41

Yeah, we're not gonna play small. Yeah. No.

SPEAKER_00: 15:46

Joy, Joy's eyes are getting really big right now. What's gonna drop, Joy?

SPEAKER_02: 15:52

I know. I just I love, I mean, that's literally like um when a woman steps into that moment of like, I'm done being small, so you can feel big. It's like I literally just get chills all over. Like that is it. That is the that is the magic. That's when you know that she's about ready to pop off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:16

Yeah. Like I'm I'm yeah. Let's talk for a moment about this idea you can't fake a vibration. We say this from time to time on the podcast, right? But like we can have manifestational goals, but like disassociation is in many ways trying to fake a vibration. And we can't see like the rotten food in our mental refrigerator drawers and not understand why we keep attracting shitty, shitty, shitty situations. Yeah, what are your personal reflections on not realizing you had a pocket of rotten fruit and like not and like not realizing you were trying to fake a vibration?

SPEAKER_00: 16:59

I think it's like filling the void for me, you know, like that's how I relate to it. It's like I just kept chasing because nothing felt good. And so I was chasing the high, whether it was food, sex, you know, dating, playing with men's emotions. Like, let's be honest, like I did it all. And I think at the end of the day, I would come up still feeling lonely, still feeling empty. Nothing was working. I just I could not get myself to feel good in my own skin. I couldn't get myself to sit and just be calm and peaceful because I was scared as hell of the thoughts that were coming to mind. The ways that I was thinking and blaming him and blaming me for things I had done. And um it was just a very uncomfortable feeling for me to just be able to sit with myself. I did not like myself, I just didn't, and it took me a long time to realize that when you finally look in the mirror and you say, Hey, it wasn't just him, it was me. That shit's heavy, you know? It's heavy.

SPEAKER_02: 17:58

I've been I've been seeing that a lot lately, or I've been hearing it a lot lately, is like you can tell how much you love yourself by the partner you choose because it's vibrational, right? Like you when you it's funny, like I only attract, you know, the bad boys, the the I only attract the losers, and I'm like, but like aren't you it's the vibration about your vibration? Right. How was I saying that?

SPEAKER_01: 18:27

How you so much of what we're blocking, like I I know it's so hard for women to believe that like our current lives are a reflection of our vibrational state. Um yeah, and I think disassociation is a key to unlocking why can't I break certain habits or cycles or patterns?

SPEAKER_00: 18:52

Because you're making a choice not with your authentic emotions, you're making it from a state of disconnect from a place of bypass. Correct. And a lot of times what feels comfortable is trauma, is drama. You know, like Joy had said before, she's addicted to the drama, right? So, like that's where you're choosing this from is because you're still stuck in this, I call it the breadcrumb mentality when you are just you're you're gonna go with anybody because any type of attention feels good.

SPEAKER_02: 19:19

I want to speak into a little bit about so I am an overeater, I don't feel comfortable unless I am full. Like it it bothers me if I'm not full. Um, and that's absolutely like Tiffany has pointed out, it's a firefighter.

SPEAKER_01: 19:38

Um, but it's attachment comes from a very early young place, right? An attachment wound, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 19:46

I uh Dawn is actually very pivotal in this realization a lot, not a long time ago, but several months ago. You asked me what it would feel like if I was skinny. I have very, very large boobs. Like it's just like you know, it's in our family.

SPEAKER_01: 20:05

I'm well, um did our grandmother have her grandmother had big boobs on on my dad's side, right? And our on our side of the family, I think.

SPEAKER_02: 20:11

Yeah, because my mom, Dorothy, right?

SPEAKER_00: 20:13

Yeah, because my grandmother on my mom's side did not have large boobs. They're tiny. So I feel in good company because all three of us have large boobs, which is great.

SPEAKER_02: 20:21

And blue eyes. I feel like we're Dawn's attracted, her vibration has has pulled in some lookers, but um and I don't feel safe. Like I don't like attention from men, I don't attend like attention in my so I don't feel safe in my body when I the idea of being skinnier, because that means my boobs would just be more on scene or whatever. And so it's a part of me, and I'll be honest, I haven't I am uh I have not done as much IF um internal family systems obviously as I need to, and that is something that I'm going to make my priority 26 goals because I don't I sabotage myself in my overeating or my um dissociation because I haven't done the work to go along with the homeopathy. I've done all of the homeopathy.

SPEAKER_01: 21:13

Thank you for saying that because I think self-sabotage is a common topic. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that, right? Self-sabotage is a common topic, but we don't realize how often that's a dissociated part, like having a sneaky strategy to derail us from our goals, right? It's like I don't like, and I've had people say this, like where they'll um they don't miss appointments, but then they miss their therapy appointment because some part of them really didn't want to come feel the things, right? It's like literally, oh, I forgot that thing that I had three reminders set for, right? It's like, how do you forget this thing that's actually monopolizing your life? Because there is some part of you that cannot fathom facing these feelings or this issue. Cannot fathom feeling it or facing it. And that's what drives disassociation.

SPEAKER_00: 22:13

What I also have picked up on with clients who have a firefighter part that overeats in regards to weight, sabotage with weight, it is because somewhere along the way, there is either some sort of sexual trauma or they were with a partner that had a sex addiction that made them feel objectified. Okay, objectified. And somewhere along the line, they learned that being skinny and attractive was not safe because they were taken advantage of. Somebody crossed a boundary there, and that's a huge theme that I see. That was one of my own things. That's why I overeat, because I felt like, well, if I'm not attracted to other men, then I'm not gonna go out and sleep with a bunch of people, or then I'll be loyal in a relationship, or then I'll be this or that, right? Like there were so many things that I was protecting myself from by not getting skinny.

SPEAKER_01: 23:11

I think that's a really important thing to say it in reverse, right? Sometimes it's about sexual abuse, and sometimes it's about I'm there is some part of me that's trying to protect me from self-sabotaging by going and having multiple partners, right? Like I am trying to find some clever way, some adaptive way to keep myself safe. Yeah. It's such an elegant system, the process of disassociation.

SPEAKER_02: 23:35

I was sexually assaulted at 13, and he called me beautiful, and I was skinny and beautiful. How effing weird is that? I mean, not like not weird, but like connected, right? Mm-hmm. What we resist, and now Joy's processing if you could see her face, oh yeah, I was, and oh yeah, that makes so much sense. And like I remember saying I had these beautiful um denims, like they were jeans. What in the Walmart? What? Right, but I was wearing these like jeans with beautiful painted flowers because I'm you know off with the fairies, and so like and I remember they were my favorite pants, and I remember saying in the car, I'm gonna I'm going to I want to burn them. Of course, my parents said no, but like I never want to be pretty again, and I don't feel like I'm ugly, like I wear makeup and do my hair, and like I I don't feel like I neglect my looks, but I will overeat because there's comfort in my size, I guess. I don't know. Uh it's something I'm gonna work on though.

SPEAKER_01: 24:54

Yeah, and then it's so interesting, right? Because we were talking about GLP1s this morning and we were like sort of pro-conning it for you, right? But it's like right, oh well now we're sitting here and there's just glaring stuff that needs to be done, and that doesn't mean we're anti-GLP one, but it's like, you know, when I sometimes sit with, well, what would it be like to walk through the money through the world with like millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars? Well, people would think I'm greedy. Oh people would think I'm greedy. So we say we want these things, right? Right. But and so I think for women with love, it's often, well, they could hurt me or they could leave, right? You could manifest an amazing love, but they they could hurt me then, and then they can leave me. So whatever it is that's missing from your life, I promise you it's because you have subconscious, disassociated, painful content that has not been witnessed or processed. And this is your invitation. And have in layers a little bit at a time. Go for it, Troy.

SPEAKER_02: 26:04

No, I was just gonna say, and message me like I would love um someone who related to this uh episode to message and say, I see you. I wanna I wanna um I wanna walk alongside the women who you know in our membership and our community that feel this resonates with them and and help them.

SPEAKER_01: 26:40

Because it feels better to do it together, right? That's the thing is healing in community. Uh one of my dear friends sent me a reel this weekend. So good. It was a divorce recovery reel. I'd never seen it before. But it was how it feels to have the best support system during divorce, and it was a football play. Tiffany will appreciate this. It was a football play. It was somebody who intercepted the ball in the end zone and ran the ball down the entire field. But it's because their teammates blocked the entire length of the field. And I actually felt deeply emotional watching the reel. It was wild because that is how it feels to heal in community when you can let it in, when you can receive support. And so many women they don't realize how much disassociation blocks them from even being able to receive support. I love that. Yeah. So yeah, it's a very different experience to heal in team. All right, my darlings. If you have had some aha moments about disassociation, we would love, love, love for us to reach out and and did I say for us to reach out, for you to reach out to us and tell us. So either send us an email at hello, mycoach dawn.com or send me a DM on Instagram at Don Wiggins. You can find those links in the show notes. We love you so much. Peace Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoach Dawn. You can find more at mycoachdawn.com.