329. Divorce Grief & Loneliness: That “I Just Want to Feel Wanted” Feeling

There’s a kind of loneliness after divorce that no one really prepares you for.

Not just emotional loneliness…
but physical loneliness.

The absence of touch.
The absence of affection.
The absence of being desired.

And in that space, something can sneak in quietly:

I just want to feel wanted again.

In this episode, we go straight into the tension most women feel but rarely say out loud—how attention from men can feel like relief… and how quickly that relief can become something you rely on.

We talk about why being desired can feel so regulating to the nervous system, especially after a relationship where you felt powerless, unseen, or not enough. And we unpack the difference between real connection and the kind of attention that only soothes the surface.

Because for many women, this isn’t actually about connection.

It’s about relief from rejection.

It’s about trying to outrun the deeper feelings: not good enough, not chosen, not worth fighting for.

We also explore how these patterns show up in real life—flirting, hookups, staying busy, avoiding stillness—and how easily they can become another form of numbing, just like overworking or drinking.

And we ask the question that sits underneath all of it:

Are you actually healing…
or are you just trying not to feel?

This episode isn’t about shaming the desire to be wanted. That desire is human.

But there’s a difference between being chosen…
 and needing someone else to prove you’re worth choosing.

Because the moment you stop needing that proof—

is the moment everything starts to change.

If this episode stirred something in you, you’re not alone. This is exactly the work we do inside Crisis to Clarity, our 90-day program designed to help you stabilize your nervous system, process grief, and rebuild trust in yourself so you’re no longer reaching outside of you just to feel okay.

You can reach out via DM, email, or our website to learn more.

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.

Transcript

owerlessness And The Need Control

SPEAKER_05 0:00

For so much of my marriage, I felt not in control. I was at the mercy of his reactions, other people, the military's orders. I never felt control in my marriage. So for me, post-divorce and separation, getting attention from other men felt like a drug to me. So after I got through the hump of not wanting anybody around me, then it became super intoxicating. So for me, it was a control thing. I wanted to feel like I was in control. And I wanted to feel that sense of power because I had felt powerless for a really long time.

elcome To Dear Divorce Diary

SPEAKER_01 0:42

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. Divorce creates a kind of loneliness that most women don't see coming. And we get into this in the episode where, right, we almost feel smothered or like we can't wait to escape. So down the road, it's like not just emotional loneliness, it's a physical loneliness, the absence of touch, the absence of affection, the absence of being desired. And that's when something dangerous can start to sneak in because when you're grieving and you're lonely and your nervous system feels rejected, being wanted again can feel like medicine or a drug. So in this episode, we talk about the uncomfortable truths of why attention from new men can feel almost addictive, the nervous system reason flirting and hookups can temporarily regulate your grief. And the difference between wanting real connection and actually just wanting relief from your feelings of rejection. We talk about how many women disassociate during sex without realizing it. And we unpack how to tell if dating again is part of healing or just another way you're escaping grief. But the real question we dig into throughout the episode over and over again is am I on a path to healing? Am I trying to heal? Or am I just trying not to feel? Let's do it.

he Shock Of Physical Loneliness

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Okay, so in the intersection of grief and loneliness, I feel like loneliness is its own brand of grief in a divorce process. And so in the intersection of grief and loneliness, we have this temptation to feel wanted again. But my first thing that I'd like us to explore is do you think, or did this apply to you? What do you see with our clients? Do you think most divorced women underestimate how physically lonely divorce will feel? Like not just emotionally, but the absence of touch, the absence of affection, the absence of being desired. It's super interesting because I think many of us felt disgusted by our partners. I did not want to be wanted by my partner, right? I was disgusted by it. But it's like then when it's gone and there's this like echo chamber of physical touch. What do you think about women and their underestimation of that?

SPEAKER_05 3:22

I totally agree with that. And I can resonate with it because I, you know, and I feel like a lot of women can say this, right? There's like this breaking off period at the end of a marriage where you you might not have had sex for months on end, maybe a year, like who knows, right? I hear women tell me all the time in marriage we didn't have sex for over a year, and I'm like, oh my God. But yeah, like when you get out of it, the last thing that you're thinking about when you're moving your shit out of the house or like vice versa, is is sex and being touched and loved. Like I wanted to get so much distance from everyone and everything. Yes. I just felt suffocated in every form of the word.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Like, yeah. And then it's gone.

riendship Touch And Real Support

SPEAKER_04 4:05

That actually, that very thing actually came up in our membership call last night about how one of our women um got her tax refund and just booked a trip to go see another one of our women. It was magical, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

No, no, no. Let's just take a moment, right? Podcast listeners uniting across the country. Like literally, right? Like these are podcast lists, like people who found us on the podcast and spent the weekend together. Three of them. Like, ladies, you don't know this, but you are part of a girl gang. And if you're not joining us in cocoon, and if you're not connecting with other women, like you are missing out.

SPEAKER_04 4:49

And it was, it was, it was so magical because they hug, they hug each other. She's, you know, she was like, I it's been so long since I've had a hug other than, you know, my sister or whatever. Intimate one. Yeah. Yes, like a friend, like a true friend. And so I think that it's one of those things that A isn't recognized enough about the physical loneliness of just an intimate touch, an intimate hug from someone who cares about you. It's a very real thing that is a another layer of grief in this process.

SPEAKER_05 5:22

But I know so many times I used to tell people, please don't touch me, don't hug me, because I knew that if someone touched me or hugged me, I would completely open the door. Oh, yeah. Floodgates would come open.

SPEAKER_04 5:32

Yeah. Like you're holding it together and a touch would regret.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

I've always been a close sitter, though. Like I'm a close sitter, right? Like the number of times I've climbed in producer Joy's lap.

SPEAKER_05 5:43

Dawn is a very close sitter. I was not prepared for that when I met Dawn for the first time, but she is a very close sitter.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

No personal space. Yeah. Yeah. So I made all these friends in Al Anon. And then we made all these arrangements that we were popover friends, right? And we could just pop over and climb in bed with each other. That sounds weird. Not like that. Like literally just like friends, you know, just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And some of them, like you still hear me talk about to today, right? Like, um, yeah, they just are people who I could pop over and climb in bed with anytime still. Yeah. Cause I needed, I need, right? I'm such a close sitter and I know that so like to not have anyone to close sit with, that was not not ideal. Okay.

hy Being Wanted Feels Soothing

SPEAKER_01 6:29

This is like this is the next, this is what happens next when you're lonely and grieving and uh having an absence of physical touch. Why does being wanted by someone feel so powerful, right? What is it actually soothing in the nervous system? Or Tiffany, like from an IFS standpoint, like why does attention from a new man almost feel like medicine? And it's it is, but it's not, right? From a nervous system perspective. Why might like flirting or being desired or hooking up feel regulating for the moment?

SPEAKER_05 7:03

For so much of my marriage, I felt not in control. I was at the mercy of his reactions, other people, the military's orders. I never felt control in my marriage. So for me, post-divorce and separation, getting attention from other men felt like a drug to me. It was also because as a military wife, I was kept away. I was not allowed to go out and socialize with other people that were men. Like I just was not. Um, and so for me, your girl went buck wild, you know, when I finally got out of the house, you know, like I had been locked away for so long. So after I got through the hump of not wanting anybody around me, then it became super intoxicating. So for me, it was a control thing. I wanted to feel like I was in control. And I wanted to feel that sense of power because I had felt powerless for a really long time.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

I relate to all of that so much. I was actually voted in high school, the class flirt. So at a very young age, I was already very much leveraging that exact mechanism that you just spoke of, right? I did not get attention as a kid in my home, period. And then I grew boobs, and man, there is something about our DNA over here, Joy and I. Like we got we got the boob DNA. And so then I got too much attention. It was very uncomfortable. I would get crap for it in church, whatever. And I couldn't do anything about it. So it was like what that turned into was me figuring out how to like leverage flirtation and sex for attention and to get what I wanted. But what it did was it reinforced, well, A, it got me married to a sex addict. So there's that. B, I ended up being in the cycle, right, of like you get what you pay for. So I was attracting things that were shallow and surface oriented and only went skin deep, right? So, which includes my ex-husband. And so it's like, even though what my nervous system needed was a sense of safety, it would temporarily get satisfied with a sense of being desired or wanted. But that wanting was so conditional, right? It was like I was conditionally wanted, but that was what my nervous system was used to performance-based wantedness, right? Which was the whole setup for my It hits at that attachment piece.

SPEAKER_04 9:23

Yes. Like that validation, that that dopamine hit of I'm worthy because he's paying attention to me, you know.

SPEAKER_05 9:34

I remember in high school, my nickname was Runway because I would walk the damn hallways like I was on a catwalk. Like there was something about eighth to ninth grade where I my braces came off. I grew my hair out. Oh my God. And like I would just ooze sex and people would tell me that all the time. Like I was a very sexualized person, even way before I started having sex, right? Like I was just very much into that zone. So for me, I associated that very early with I found it very easy to get attention, you know, from guys. And I remember guys saying to me, like before I lost my virginity or whatever, and they would know that I wasn't. They're like, the way you talk, like you don't seem like the virgin girl. Do you know what I mean? Like I just had a foul mouth and like I was very sexual and sexualized, but like I wouldn't sleep with anybody for a while. Like, you know what I mean? Like it was that kind of a thing. Like I was a tease. Like I loved the attention. I soaked it all in from probably 14 on.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Okay.

onnection Versus Relief From Rejection

SPEAKER_01 10:35

So talk about the difference between wanting connection, because I don't think we were actually looking for connection, right? Like doing all this behavior. I don't think it was actually about connection. Talk about the difference between wanting connection and wanting relief from rejection. Mm. Cause I don't think I could tolerate connection very many spaces. Like I had a couple of really dear friends that I still have today when I was young that I've been able to maintain connection with. But I think with men or with intimate people, like I never really knew what connection was.

SPEAKER_05 12:23

Yeah, I had a friend. He was in our rock band with me. I met him when I was 14. He didn't come out as gay until he was in college, right? Because we were from a very small town. But I can remember going over to his house and him and I would lay in his bed together and we would just cuddle and we would watch Dawson's Creek and it was like a whole thing, you know? And I would call him my Dawson and he would call me his Joey, and we were just super connected, but we never got physical with each other, which is why my other guy friends were like, he's totally gay. Like if he's not touching you, he's gay, right? Whatever. Um, but it was all he was really the only person that was a man that like saw me. Um, yeah, like other people, no, I was not seeking connection. For me, it was a game. Like, I'm gonna reject you before you can reject me. So I'm gonna get you hooked on the line.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:13

And then when you feel like you're catching feelings, I'm gonna bounce. And I continued that up until my mid-20s to late 20s. That was kind of my my MO. I would even gauge to say that I was never even friends with anyone in a relationship that I was in until my current relationship. Like oh, like like a marriage or like a romantic relationship having the depth of friendship. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Because I never allowed my everything was very performative with me. You were gonna know about me what I wanted you to know. And even though I was sharing deep things with people, they were still surface level. You know what I'm saying? Like they weren't the depths of me, it was the story I was telling people.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Really, really interesting because conversely, well, I guess you're saying, you know, your partner now, but like my now husband Brian, we were friends for decades before we ever dated. So interesting. Did you guys ever hook up? No. Oh okay. I mean, he would have, right? But like, no, that was that's okay. Not yeah, no. Mm-hmm. But then it left all of this space, right, for us to cultivate friendship. He was a safe guy for me. Safe guy.

unknown 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:24

Cause it just That's the thing, right? And yes, I've had men like that in my life, very, very few. And when I mean few, I mean one or two who have never tried to make a move on me, who have always been emotionally safe men for me to be myself with, that never made me feel any type of way. But most men in my life made me feel like my worth was only about sex or attraction or how I looked or how I made them feel.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Um, it was never about me. I've been analyzing this lately because I want to try to encapsulate for our daughter, like what advice I want to give her, like outside of like spiritual wisdom and whatever, like the things that have been written, right, about attraction and dating and partnerships and whatever. But you know, I'm gonna take it to a vampire movie, I think. It's like from the moment Brian and I met, he always sought to keep me safe, to protect me. We didn't get married, like he came to my first wedding, right? But it's like, how do you convey that to women, right? To our listeners, to our daughters. Like, there was never a moment where he was willing to put me in danger to the extent that he understood, right? We went four-wheeling and rode motorcycles and all the things, and he, you know, but never anything risky or dangerous, or like he went over and above and out of his way to make sure that other guys weren't putting me into, you know what I mean? So there's something about that. I think the way that source or God intends relationships to be provider and protector, provider and protector, right? That there's if a man is not seeking to protect you, like that's not it. And and how and it's so interesting that I only went after men who were not protecting me, right? Like I only went after men who actually were treating me poorly. So and then that just keeps the loneliness, grief, disconnect, superficial thing going. Um okay, how much of the temptation to be wanted is about identity or a lack of identity, like an identity based on not who I actually am, not grounded in what I know and understand about myself, but some right facade that we've been talking about here, like all of it.

SPEAKER_05 16:48

Like that was me for so many years, right? It's like if I was the girl who could oo sex and confidence, if I could be the one that all the guys wanted, but I was still mysterious, right? Like it kept them wanting. I was the chick in the band, I was edgy, you know, I was a poet, like I could hang with the guys, like they always saw me as like one of them. I had a little bit of masculine energy. It was almost just like I was that alter ego. It took me a really ego state in IFS, right? Like oh yeah, oh yeah. Like, and I was very full of myself

dentity Masks And Ego States

SPEAKER_05 17:22

and I would say terrible things to people. Like, I didn't give a shit. You know what I mean? Like I just I said and did whatever I wanted to do at whoever's expense or cost. Like it didn't matter. I was very aggressive. I would chase and then I would get bored with you, you know what I mean? And I would move on. It it was not I stayed in that ego state all the time. And I don't think I figured out how to start working my way out of it until I was probably my late 20s and 30s. I stayed that way for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Relatable post-divorce, I think I at first like clicked right back into that old way where I was trying to drum up attention and affection. And it felt so empty, and it felt so I guess, you know, after being married for so many years, it's like, oh, I don't know, there's a comfort or rhythm or a closeness, even if it's not close, right? There's some like I don't know, and all of a sudden, like hooking up or flirting or whatever, there was there was no depth to it, right? And and so that's why I decided to go solo, right? I took this chunk of time to be completely absent of dating or flirting or like took myself off the market completely. And I think it was such an essential part of recovery and establishing an identity for myself that was based in something more than somebody else's approval. But it was really hard, and that definitely didn't happen right out of the gate for me post-divorce.

SPEAKER_05 18:50

It was a conscious decision I made as I started to recognize that it and it's almost this push and pull, right? Because it's like we I was hanging out in such a sexualized ego that like when guys would start to fall or start to catch feelings, it was like I had to push away because that felt too close for me, right? It's like I can't go there. So it's like I was never allowed to be who I was with anyone. And that felt like rejection in a sense, if that makes sense, because it's like I felt this overwhelming sense of rejection for who I was, but I couldn't even show it. Like I knew it was in here. But I'm like, these guys would never go for me if they really knew the core of like who I was, right? So it's like I have to stay in this other zone. Yeah. Yeah, it was rough. And I like to blame it on somebody that I dated around the time that I was 14 years old that completely smashed my heart into a million pieces. Like he was my first heartbreak. And when I look back on that, I think that he was probably the person who I had the purest feelings for before that ego stepped in. And then whenever that happened, it just like oh, I was I was out for blood at that point.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Like I was done. Yeah.

unknown 20:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

So this question might seem obvious, but is hooking up or flirting or trying to fill that touch void similar to other ways we try to escape grief, like drinking or overworking or distraction or shopping or, you know, being codependent with our children. Like, is it just another version of numbing or escaping?

SPEAKER_05 20:27

Oh yeah. Sure. It absolutely is. It's your firefighter part, you know, like in IFS, right? It's the firefighter part, it's the part that wants to numb. And so that's where we see the drinking, we see the weed, we see the binshop. You don't call it weed anymore.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

They're gummies now. They're sleeping.

SPEAKER_05 20:44

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're gummies. I relate to but it's another way to numb.

SPEAKER_04 20:49

Right. I relate to the almost like the people pleasing part of it because if my if my image was that I am this servant and I am this Bible loving Christian good girl, my identity

ookups As Numbing And Dissociation

SPEAKER_04 21:05

is in people's opinions of me and views of me being positive. It created that sense of, so it wasn't necessarily men, but it absolutely was the approval of others. Does that make sense? Uh-huh. So it's just it's the same thing, just different manifestation of the problem.

SPEAKER_05 21:29

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I wanted to add too for our listeners though, because I hear this a lot from women now. Once they start to understand what dissociation is, right? Where they are checked out mentally or they're paralyzed or it's a brain fog, how often during sex have you dissociated? Because when I look back over the years, I was always dissociated when I was in my ego state. I was never present with anyone sexually looking back.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

I would guess that that is true for 100% of our listeners. That is a bold thing to say.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Bold. Yeah. Bold.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

I was having a conversation last night with someone whom we all know like and trust that I am treating homeopathically. And she was saying she, and she's in a great marriage, right? She's not one of our listeners per se, but she really struggles with sex drive, which I think is relatable for a lot of burnt out women. And every so often she just feels so bad for her husband, right? And then she talks herself into it. And she said she was like three minutes in and she was like, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, and then she actually shut it down. And I think that's because she's been taking the remedies, right? So she couldn't dissociate fully. And so then she had to go, right? Because she could actually feel how much of the stuff that she has to work through. So I think so many of our listeners, yeah, have been dissociated. Okay. So we hear so many of our listeners talk about feeling like divorce like highlighted this they're not good enough thing, right? Like they're not good enough to be chosen or to be fought for or to work on it. Or to like come to the mat or for their partner to like really want to dig in and do the work, right? And so do you see our women sort of struggling with dating or flirtation or external validation as trying to get it that pain of not being, not feeling good enough? Like it's like a superficial way to try to soothe that. Well, if this person thinks I'm good enough, or if this person wants me, then maybe I am good enough. Right. But it's like still trying to be chosen instead of choosing.

SPEAKER_05 23:43

Yeah, being the pick me girl, right? It's like if I can just get him to sleep with me, if I can just get him to, you know, whatever, then I won. I think too, and this is gonna sound really out there, but I had comfort in knowing that the men that I was hooking up with were also hooking up with other people too, because for so long I had was dealing with that in my marriage to where now it was at least out in the open. Like now I at least knew that I wasn't the only person in somebody's life. Like we could both be up front with each other and hook up with whoever we want. Do you know what I mean? Like there was a comfort in knowing that everything was out on the table and that I didn't have to worry anymore about the deceit because I was allowing it, essentially, which is awful when I look back on that. Like that's, you know, it's a it was a dark place for me to be in where I would basically just accept anything because I literally didn't give a shit. Um, but the being good enough was a big thing, you know, and especially for women out there that have been with men who are sex addicts, we never feel good enough. And so when we get out there and we start getting all this attention, right, from all these men and we're keeping a man's attention and then, oh, they're falling for us, and now they're wanting to take us to dinner and they're wanting to tell us they love us. There's so much comfort in that, you know, when for so long we felt like we were being measured against something that wasn't even attainable.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

My goodness. I mean, the pressure of being in a relationship, any relationship that's based on sex or just image, right? Like fantasy, yeah. Looking young or having perky boobs or having like it's like you can't maintain that. It's not, and our culture is still is already so obsessed with how things look. And it's totally causing us to disconnect from the truth of our feminine power, right? Because we're all wound up and trying to not have wrinkles rather than figuring out how we can freaking change the world to be a positive, fertile place. It's it's wild how they've brainwashed us. All right, I've got a big, hairy, awesome, crazy good question.

SPEAKER_04 25:41

Okay. Good question. All right.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Is seeking validation from someone new always unhealthy, or can it sometimes be part of the healing process?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Ooh. For me, it was part of the healing process.

SPEAKER_05 26:04

For me, I regained a lot of power and confidence again because I was such at a low point in my divorce. Like, you know, post. And so it was like when I was going out and I was starting to get this attention where men wanting to spend time with me, that did boost me up. Like it made me feel like I didn't have to crawl back into my marriage when he was begging me to come back to him. You know what I mean? And it was like, oh, well, I have options now. Like I have the ability to go out and pretty much do what I want now. So, yes, I think it was part of my healing journey, but for me personally, I took it way in left field. Like I took it to a place that it should not have gone. So I wish I would have had a little bit of restraint in that, but it was part of my journey and I didn't. So that's kind of where it ended up for me.

SPEAKER_04 26:50

I do

hen Validation Helps Healing

SPEAKER_04 26:51

think that there is you know, we're we we're creative for connection, right? So when we scope out and when we have people see us, it's powerful. And so while if you're solely basing your identity on that validation, it could cross getting a little fuzzy lines or whatever. Hairy gets hairy lines, but but I do think that there is power in connection and being seen and being heard and being chosen, even if the ultimate goal is you doing the the choosing, you still want to be chosen in that mutual intimacy.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

So we're gonna get like further into the episode, we're gonna get into some how do I tell if it's this or if it's that questions, right? Because how do I tell if what I'm doing is part of a healing process or if I am just like it's crossing my own grave. Yeah, right. But I do think that feeling acceptance or seen by other people has the capacity to be incredibly healing. And if you think about it, like if you think in our current cohort of a different T-word, how many times in the thread, and this is just in our messaging thread, not even in the sessions, right? Where someone says something and someone says me too or I see you or whatever, and then something unhooks, right? And it's in the feeling accepted by others, feeling met by others, that sometimes we are able to take the next step towards seeing and validating and approving of ourselves. I do think that it's both. It's an I thou, right? I think the problem is when it's with men and not with safe women, that it takes on a different thing, right? And I do think ultimately for true grounded sense of worth and wellness, it has to happen A with your higher power and B with safe women. And I think that that's really the path to like I'd much rather you get validated and seen by safe women than a man any day. But I do relate to it, was a lily pad system that I jumped from one lily pad to the other sort of as I climbed out of a hole, a pit of despair. Okay, so how do we, what are the signs someone might be using attention or hookups, attention or hookups, right? Because we also see that in our community sometimes, right? Where it's like, I just needed attention or hookups to avoid feeling grief. Right. We had this question from somebody yesterday, like, I'm feeling things in my nervous system, I'm feeling things, what do I do? Any feedback, right? And I was like, actually, my answer is to find some comfort in the discomfort. Um, how do we tell the difference between or how do we what are the signs that someone might be using attention or um hookups to avoid feeling their grief or their loneliness?

SPEAKER_05 30:11

I didn't feel at peace in myself ever. So I couldn't be in the quiet, I couldn't be in the stillness or the calm. So, and I've said this before. So when my daughter would go with her dad, I constantly had plans. I constantly feel like I had to fill the void. So, whether that was going out with friends, partying, being at the club, having dates with men, like whatever it was, like I just couldn't be by myself. And that was how I knew that I was using other people to cope with the feelings that I had of inadequacy and

ow To Spot Avoidance Patterns

SPEAKER_05 30:40

absolutely like I really had a hard time just sitting in it.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:45

Didn't want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

And some people can sit, but it's actually they're totally dissociated, right? They've been drinking or they're on their phone scrolling, or they're right. Because some people can sit home alone, too alone, if you will, but like there's some other numbing agent happening there. Probably.

SPEAKER_05 31:04

Yeah. It's like just the lack of being able to be present with yourself. Because clearly, when I'm in ultra ego, I don't have to be present with myself. I can just do whatever I want with whoever I want. And so there was a lot of comfort in not having to feel those intense feelings. I think that's the piece, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Is can I feel? Can I feel because in a day, we really are designed to feel a whole host of things. And I actually think too often we feel, and then, oh, this is something I want to really drive home and teach in our um our workshop that we're doing this month is on the nervous system, right? And somatic healing. So so often we feel a feeling, and then we immediately jump into our thinking minds and we start to define why we're we start to tell ourselves a story about why we're feeling that feeling, right? And that story we're telling ourselves is actually pouring gasoline on the fire and it's perpetuating the feeling. But the the key is to really just drop into the body and just feel the sensation of emotion in the body. But I think that most people cannot do that in the beginning. They're you know, their nervous systems are in the red line. There's so much dissociation, there's so much burnout. So we think feelings a lot, we tell ourselves stories about feelings a lot, but it's really hard to actually sit and just be in connection with the sensation of sad or mad or alone.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

I agree. What are the feelings like and I know I just named some basic feelings, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

But what are the themes we often see women trying not to feel when they're rushing into being desired? Um not in a vague sense, like what are the actual patterns that are coming out in IFS sessions, feelings that women are trying to escape on every level?

SPEAKER_05 33:01

I mean, yeah, the feelings of rejection, the feeling not good enough, unlovortly, unwanted. Yeah, like all of that is coming up as exiled parts, right, in IFS. And so when those parts are screaming for attention, affection, it's like, you know, then the managers are stepping in and they're trying to deal with it through other ways, but then we hit a breaking point where that doesn't work. And then that's when we're starting to reach for the sexual connections with other men because that's where we go.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

And I wish, to goodness gracious golly, that women understood more about their attachment styles because they could have had really lovely childhoods with really lovely parents, but they could have had overwhelmed parents or parents who were dissociated themselves. And so then they never felt intimacy or consistent or responsive intimacy as infants. And then that ends up coming out as loneliness or a lack of belonging or a lack of connection or a lack of something downstream and this chasing, not being able to, you know, chasing, right? Not being able to sit with a grounded sense of wellness or grounded sense of security, right? And so if you've ever grappled with a sense of unworthiness or feeling like you don't matter, chances are that goes all the way back to something pre-verbal, right? Like infancy, like zero to three, but you can't remember it or you can't find it or you can't put your finger on it. And that's why it is so hard for our current mainstream approach to mental health to facilitate healing that. Breaking like we we have gotten so good in therapy at naming the patterns. But how do we clear the pattern of feeling unwanted and unworthy? And it really usually means coming at it from a completely different angle than our mainstream treatment record.

SPEAKER_05 34:54

Yeah. Yeah. And I always I love giving clients micro experiments, is what I call them, because when you're giving someone the journal prompts or the reflection prompts, it's like that is that's what builds awareness around this is my pattern. But then the micro experiments is the thing that makes you step outside of the comfort zone slowly. And that's the thing that starts to recondition the brain and retrain the brain, get a different response. But it's like, you know, the action has to happen. And so many of us sit in our cycles and then we don't move it.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

We just ladies, we are spoiled over here. Like you love giving microexperience experiments with your clients, but like all your clients are on homeopathic remedies and they're moving. Like their patterns are shifting like rapid fire. We are spoiled over here because we do it so differently. So, you know, women who are not on homeopathic remedies are doing the same work in other spaces, but they're banging their heads against the wall, getting fractions of the movement and feeling frustrated. So just saying, I love it.

SPEAKER_05 35:54

Well, and here's how you know. Here's how you know, right? Like for me personally, if you are going to a therapist right now and when you walk into that session, you're picking up where you left off last time. That's a clue that you're not shifting. Like when I get into a session with my clients that I haven't seen, some of them even in a week, just one week, we're not even on the same page. And sometimes we're not even in the same book because there's been so much shit that's happened in the past week that like they're already on to the next thing. Not crisis, not so much crisis that's happened in the last week. But like recognizing patterns, recognizing regulators, like, yo, uh-huh. And like now we're ready to move on to the next thing because that thing is no longer a thing, right? We have less anxiety, our blood pressure's lower, we're regulating better, like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

If a woman could sit with the loneliness instead of immediately escaping it, what might she discover about herself?

SPEAKER_04 36:55

So that again, if a woman could sit with her loneliness instead of escaping it, what would she learn about herself?

SPEAKER_01 37:03

So I'm gonna say that my answer to this question would depend on if I were inside the house or outside the house. And it's such a fascinating observation, okay? That if I were sitting on the beach or in a forest or on a cliff and I was sitting with the loneliness, I would immediately not immediately, but like if I could sit with it, right, for five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes outside, I would be I this is what happened, right, when I was post-divorce and so lonely, like attachment style lonely, not just like healing divorce lonely, right? Like healing divorce plus attachment style lonely, right? I would immediately understand that there was a power greater than myself and that I was gonna be okay, and that I had pieces of me that I had to keep coming home to. But if I did that same sitting

earning Self Trust In Loneliness

SPEAKER_01 37:56

inside the house, it probably would be very hard for me to get grounded in that. And I would end up calling many people, I would end up putting on Downton Abbey at the time, right? Or Dexter, or I don't know, whatever, right? Trying to distract myself from it, which, okay, I had my Louise Hay book of affirmations. I might try coloring those, and that might have, right? But it would probably have taken me three to four to five times longer, and that's if I could get there, if I were in the house. Now, this was pre-EMDR, pre-homeopathy, pre-nervous system understanding, pre-somatic healing, right? Maybe I could have gotten there in yoga. I would take these heated two-hour yoga classes, and then at the end of that, I could be in touch with it, that I was actually okay, and that all of this stuff was noise. How would you answer that though? If a woman could sit with the loneliness instead of immediately escaping it, what might she discover about herself?

SPEAKER_05 38:50

That she she has the ability within herself to regulate, like she is all that she will need at the end of the day. It's gonna take you a while to get there, but again, I did the same thing. That's probably why I moved to a beach town, right? It's like I spent so many hours just laying on the beach, and that's where I learned to heal myself was when I stopped reaching for things outside of myself and started trusting myself a little bit more that I had the capacity. And I think that's one of the things too. When you stay in these cycles where you are continuously putting yourself out there sexually or for attention, you keep reinforcing to the nervous system that you are not to be trusted. You are not a safe person for yourself because you keep getting with these train wrecks of men or putting yourself out of the way. So you keep reinforcing that you're not safe with yourself, right? So it's like for me, it literally had to come down to the fact where I was like, okay, I'm not going to have sex for one week. That's literally how it started. And then it came to two weeks and three weeks and a month, and that turned into six years. No shit. Like that turned into six years of celibacy for me. But it took me a while to be able to sit with myself and learn that I've got everything inside of me that I need. I just keep reaching outside, and that's what's keeping me stuck.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

And so what we want women to hear is that when she stops needing someone else else to prove she's desirable is when she becomes powerful, right? When when you or I or she stops needing someone else to prove her worth, that's when she becomes unstoppable. That's when she becomes peaceful. That's when she becomes able to stand in her per her like source-given purpose in this lifetime. And that is a path that many will want, but few will walk. Because healing is hard, right? Like shedding all of this. And I wish I didn't call it hard. I wish I didn't call it hard. What do I mean by that? Because it's actually not that hard because it's like just also it's all just so available right here, but you have to feel so much.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

Yeah. Right. It's feeling it's feeling.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

You have to feel so much, right? You have to surrender so much control. So that when I say hard, that's what I mean. You have to surrender so much control and you have to be willing to feel so much that you weren't willing or able to feel in the past. And so, in that feeling, it's a journey to to build confidence and to surrender control um to finding your true power. And dang, worth it. But so many women want safe love, they want confidence, they want clarity, they want peace. But they want that fairy tale. Uh-huh. But then when it's like the choices, big and small, because it is big and small choices that lead to those things, right? Sometimes it's a million little micro choices, and sometimes it's some really big commitments to self. What do you think really gets in the way of women being able to truly choose the path to freedom? It's fear or insecurity, but like deeper than that.

SPEAKER_05 42:10

It's also social pressure. It's social pressure of feeling like you need to move on quickly, you know, like you need to get with somebody, you should be remarried. Like the women that don't have children, like the clock's ticking, babe. Like you got to move it along. Everybody's telling you that you need to be like coupled up and you should be over this by now, and da-da-da. And it's like it doesn't give you space to be able to do your own work. And so then what ends up happening is we settle again. Like we settle again for some bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Yeah, it's like scarcity, right? Scarcity.

SPEAKER_05 42:40

Yeah. Um all the good ones are gonna be taken. And that's what I tell women all the time. If you can trust, if you could trust right now that your person will show up right on time, right on time.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

What would you do differently? Yes. Yeah. I was saying this this weekend about some someone totally outside of our community who's like, I don't know, maybe even about a guy or a family member. I don't remember, but I was like, oh, that person has always

carcity Beliefs And Settling Again

SPEAKER_01 43:05

needed to keep everything that they own and everything in the world like in perfect working condition. And you can't drop it or scuff it or scratch it or use it or right. And Brian and I were talking about like that whole generation of people who kept like plastic on their furniture and then piped up. And she's like, Yeah, and why keep the dishes in the cabinet and why not use the things you own, right? And I said, Well, I think all of that comes from scarcity, that there's it's never gonna come around again. You're never gonna have it again. And if you use it or break it or mess it up, you're gonna lose it and that's it. And so you can't use it and you can't live into it, and there's not enough. And I think that's so much of what drives us not choosing to have the whole thing, right? We just don't believe that it's coming or it's there, there's more, there's enough. And so we settle. We do. Cause like, nope, I can't trust it.

SPEAKER_05 43:55

To give you an example, right? Like this is wild, but I didn't meet my partner until he lived four hours away. But the entire time that I lived in Myrtle Beach over 10 years, this man lived within three miles of me.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_05 44:10

Yeah. Fascinating. Now he was married, right? Like he was living his life, he was raising his kids. However, yeah, like he was there. He was right there. And then when he moved away and they got divorced and he ended up visiting his parents, here we go. You know what I mean? And you still connected, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Um, I was watching a reel from who's the guy, Joy, you might know this, the Diary of the CEO, Diary of a CEO podcast.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Um, I can't remember his name, but he's got that great British accent, right? And so the reel was so powerful because they were talking about how they did this experiment with ants on a piece of paper, and they did it with spiders, and they did it with ants. And um, if they drew a circle around the ant with like a sharpie, the ant would perceive that as a barrier, it would never cross it. It would never move outside the circle, even though it was just an illusion, right? Like there's nothing keeping the ant in. And um, and then once, like uh, I don't know, the ant Can't like there was a gap and it got through and something and then it realized right. And then he tells the story about he when he runs on a treadmill, he knows that at 10 kilometers he gets gassed and he can't go any further. But then one day he was running on some other treadmill where it didn't have the metrics displayed in the right way. And so he rant. He's like, Oh, okay, I'll just run until I feel gas, and then it'll probably be my 10 kilometers, I'll be done. And he ended up getting off the treadmill and he run 21 kilometers because that mental limiting thing that he was so used to believing wasn't there. And I do think that's the same for women. Like they think, like, oh, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough, right? Like it's just, it's not possible for me. It's not possible for me, it's not possible for me. I'm trapped here, I'm too trapped in this version of me. And they can't see that it's all an illusion. They cannot see that everything that unfolds in our lives is about what we believe. And it all comes back to negative beliefs, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:02

Yeah. And I could have settled so many times over those 10 years. Like, not every guy that I went on a date with was a complete ass, right? Like they were really nice guys. Yeah. But for whatever reason, I just, it just wasn't what I wanted. And I just kept moving. I just kept moving. And I would always say, like, you have to feel better than my peace for me to want something in a relationship with you.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 46:25

Like it has to feel better than my solitude because like I just got to a place in my life where I loved my own company. I was so in love with like me as a person. You know? Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Tiffany, tell them about if they are hearing anything that they know they need, if they know that their nervous system isn't regulated enough, if they know that they, you know, are really struggling with loneliness and grief and needing to feel desired. And tell them about what Crisis to Clarity, our 90-day program, could look like for them.

SPEAKER_05 46:57

So we are enrolling Crisis to Clarity right now through April 30th. And what this is, is it includes um IFS coaching with me and it includes some introductory homeopathic support. We have had women get phenomenal results with this 90-day program. I have had women tell me that their blood pressure is lower. Methods, right? Like physical measurable metrics. Yes, way less anxiety. We have women setting boundaries. I have one woman that just booked her own vacation by herself without her kids for the weekend. She's like, I have never felt like I could do anything like this before. So this is a

risis To Clarity Invitation

SPEAKER_05 47:35

program that will get you very quick results to stabilization.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

To stabilization, right? It's not gonna change your whole life, but it's yes, help you ground your nervous system, feel a sense of clarity, and be able to have these shifts that we talk about. Yeah. But I would guess also, if you put our 90 days next to anyone else's year of therapy, like the results are gonna be different.

SPEAKER_05 48:00

Absolutely. Joy's face. If you could only see Joyce face.

SPEAKER_04 48:06

Like the amount. I mean, I don't even think it's comparable. No, that's all. That's not even comparable. Like, how many years of therapy did I do? I've I've been in therapy since I was 13. You know what? Yeah. And this is something I was trying to explain to someone about what we do differently. Is that going, like Timmy said, and you go and you talk about the same thing over and over, and they they try to therapists, a good therapist, will give you, try to give you tools to manage that, but not move it, not not get rid of it, not like, okay, let's heal from that instead of letting letting those moments and traumas and triggers manage your life and you just manage the the triggers. Like we don't we don't live by that philosophy. Like I my husband and I got into a tiff this weekend and I s and I made him uh I made a comment about how you know little your little Jonathan is coming through, and he was like, I'm just gonna start saying your little little girl you just came through. And I'm like, excellent, because that points out something that's not healed yet. So like I'm here for this, you know? Yeah. So I want to it's it's getting to the root of the issue, the seed of the issue, not clearing, not just manage giving you managing tools. Bottom up versus top down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Yeah. Awesome. All right, darlings. We love you so much. If you are interested in crisis to clarity, send us a carrier pigeon, a smoke signal, an email, a DM. We are here from you, and we would love to chat you up. All right, we love you so much. Peace.com.