339. Why Your Ex Moving On Makes You Question Your Worth | Divorce Healing

You see the photo.
The new relationship.
The vacation.
The smile that looks a little too easy.

And suddenly, your entire body reacts.

Not because you want them back.
But because it feels like proof.

Proof that they’re happier.
Proof that they’ve moved on.
Proof that somehow… you were the problem.

This is one of the deepest wounds in divorce healing:
when their next chapter makes you question your worth.

In this episode of Dear Divorce Diary, we unpack why your ex moving on can trigger shame, resentment, comparison, and that quiet spiral of self-doubt that keeps you stuck long after the divorce is over.

Because the pain usually isn’t about them.

It’s about what their moving on makes you believe about you.

We talk about:

– Why comparison keeps your nervous system stuck in survival
– How resentment is often envy in disguise
– The hidden shame underneath “why am I still here?”
– What you’re actually afraid of when you spiral
– How to come back to self-trust, safety, and emotional peace

Healing after divorce isn’t about watching them.

It’s about returning to yourself.

Because your worth was never determined by who stayed.

Join us inside Cocoon, where the real healing happens.

Transcript

Solo Reset And Big Theme

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Darlings, not every day can go to plan. And today is one of those days for our team. So I am back on the mic solo. They left me in charge. We've been talking so much about grief lately. And today's conversation about grief is going to piggyback on some of Brene Brown's work on shame. And what we're really going to unpack is our tendency to compare ourselves where we are in the grief journey, where we are in life with so many other people while we are in the midst of processing divorce. Get ready. It's going to be provocative. 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. All right, pause for a moment to just think about what are some of the intrusive thoughts you've been having comparing yourself to other people lately? Like, just sit with it for a moment, take a breath, drop into your body. What are the persistent intrusive thoughts about where you are versus where your ex is, where you are versus where maybe your ex's new partner is, where you are versus where your friends are or your kids, or I don't even know, your neighbors? Like, who are the people that you tend to compare yourself to? And how do you feel when you're doing it? What are you noticing in your body as I'm asking you to sit with how it feels to compare? Now, this is something we deal with a lot in working with the women in our programs is the tendency to get hung up and stuck on what he's doing, what she's doing, what they're doing, and it completely derailing our capacity for connection, for growth, for processing, for creativity, right? Comparison has been said to be the thief of joy. It kills creativity, it kills emotional processing, it certainly stalls your actual grief processing, but yet it's a massive part of our grief journey. And so I turned briefly to Brene Brown to just see what she has to say about all of this because there's such a wisdom. Have you to have her book, uh, Atlas of the Heart? I've talked about it in quite a few episodes. So I just pulled out her book, Atlas of the Heart, to see. And would you know she has an entire section of that book dedicated to comparison? And here's the first thing she does is she defines comparison for us. She says it's the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other. It's simultaneously trying to fit in and stand out. So she uses her example of swimming, right? She loves swimming, it's like a meditation, it's time alone, it's exercise, it's the trifecta for her. But she says she wants to, for instance, be able to swim the same workout that you are, but wants to swim better than you, right? It's this idea that we want to fit in, we want to be just like everybody else. We want to feel a part of something, but we want to do it better. And she also argues that our tendency to compare ourselves is actually innate, that it's something that happens to us, right? That it's something that's hardwired into us to compare both down, like to compare ourselves to people who we perceive are doing less well than us, and to compare up, to compare ourselves to people who we perceive are doing better than us. And ironically, it can cause us to feel temporarily better or temporarily worse, but ultimately both comparison down and comparison up cause us to drop out of our heart center, drop out of creativity, overall feel usually flawed or arrogant, one or the other. And it absolutely blocks us from connection with other people and with ourselves because we've dropped out of the heart. So what are some of those intrusive thoughts that you have? And if you look at that tendency to compare as a sort of automatic, hardwired set of intrusive thoughts, what's your next move? Because it's actually slowing down your grief process. It's actually slowing down the thing you say you want, right? Which is like great girlfriends and eventually someday, right? You want a love who will cherish you, a safe love, right? You want a sense of peace in your life. You want a sense of security in your life, you want things to feel easier, right? But when we cave to those repetitive, intrusive thoughts comparing ourselves to other people, we're actually blocking ourselves from all of that sort of joy-ease sense of security. You can never have a sense of security when you're comparing yourself to somebody else because you are always going to feel off doing it, right? Security comes from a sense of well-being, like I am okay at who I am, where I am, a sense of presence and acceptance in the now moment that even if I feel awful, I'm okay, I'm where I'm meant to be. Like, even if things are stressful and somewhat traumatic right now, I'm going to be okay, I'm going to prevail, I can reach for my support system, I can ask for help, I can receive help, I can be well, I'm worthy of help, I'm worthy of love and belonging, right? Comparison blocks all. I mean all of that out. But here's where I'm really gonna blow your mind. Very often when we compare, one of the things that comes up is resentment. So just sit with that for a moment. Can you connect those dots that when you compare yourself, especially to him or to her, one of the things that gets really, really loud is resentment. Now, this is where Brene Brown blew my mind with some of her data. In pages 29 and 30 of Atlas of the Heart, she starts to have a conversation about resentment. And it really caused me to dig deeper into my own processes. So she offers that she treated resentment as a brand of anger most of her life. And I think most of us would endorse that, right? Resentment feels like anger, and maybe on some level there is some anger in resentment. But she argues that in her research and the research of some of her colleagues that she quotes in the book, resentment is actually a function of envy. Envy. So when we are comparing ourselves to the other people who we perceive have it more or better or worse, even, right? And we become resentful, and all of this is derailing us from our grief. Her argument is that we're actually feeling envy. I wish I could just say YOLO and up and leave the kids and get a new relationship and not have to do any of this BS work. I wish I could just say, who cares, and not wash the dishes or the clothes or have the things ready for the kids. I wish I could just say, screw it. I don't have to be financially responsible and fly to Costa Rica for the weekend because I feel like it. I wish I could just say, screw it and pour a glass of tequila and carry on and not worry about how it affects the people in my life. That when we're feeling resentment, we're actually not battling with anger as much as we are battling with envy, expectations, a lack of boundaries, and a tendency to be self-sacrificing, perfectionistic, overfunctioning, and all of the things. And it culminates sort of in this big crash that we might call divorce. And then continuing on with these feelings, like we have to carry the whole bag. And then comparing ourselves to people who don't, who are going to have very different outcomes and um maybe have very different beliefs about what they expect of themselves, and we get stuck there. So what do we do with all of this? Comparison, resentment, envy, and how it comes crashing in so frequently into our grieving process and our recovery journey. I don't think my go-to move is going to be particularly revelatory for you. I don't think I'm going to teach you something so profound here that I haven't taught you before, but I do believe that repetition is the key to learning and sometimes getting re-grounded in what's capital G true, capital T true, is what's needed. And so my choice today, alone my choice today to hop on the mic solo is one born out of, even if things don't go to plan, I can still be a highly effective, not stressed person. My first move was to maybe go to stress or to go to like, what the F am I going to do today? But my second move was to say, hey, what are the expectations I'm having of myself right now? What are the expectations I'm projecting onto all of you lovely, lovely humans today? What is the story I'm telling myself about what they're expecting of me or us? What is the pressure I'm feeling to produce or perform at some level? What actually is essential? What really matters most, which is maintaining a connection with you, love, right now, maintaining a connection with you right now, maintaining a connection with my team, maintaining a connection with myself, which means finding that place, that grounded, steady place where I can still drop into my heart. I can be willing to feel whatever is going on in my body because all of those intrusive thoughts you are having comparing yourself to other people is taking you right out of a sense of security and safety. It's distracting you from what actually needs to be heard in your body talk. So I could sit here and I could say, all right, what matters is me, Joanne Tiffany, you, and us being in this community and holding space for each other. And so here I am. We love you so deeply. We see the struggle you are struggling. And you don't need me to always sit here and teach you the most profound thing. You need me to stay connected, available, open, grounded, and to be able to remind you that hey, shit's not always gonna go to plan, and you can be okay. I can be okay, and we are actually literally doing this together. So do you ever catch yourself comparing yourself to us and saying, like, well, Dawn and Tiffany enjoy they must have it in some way easier, or maybe I'm doing better than them and this way or worse than them in that way? Screw it. None of it. What matters, love, is connection. And to be willing to question, what am I actually afraid is going to happen? Like, if today's day did not go to plan, like what's gonna happen? Are all of you gonna disappear because today's episode is not as didn't go the way we were gonna do it? Um, you know, like what are you afraid is going to happen if you do it differently? What are you actually afraid of? And is it capital T true? Or is it an echo of something in the past that's terrifying you? If you took a break and performed less well for a period of time, if you actually got quiet and let yourself rest, if you actually said, it's okay if I am not looking as young as I used to, as fit as I used to, if I am not performing as well at work as I used to, like for a moment, cut yourself some slack. There are so many ways we compare ourselves and make so much noise in our grief journeys that absolutely cause us to feel shame, to feel inadequacy, and they actually cause our performance to be worse and not better. What are you afraid is going to happen? Are you afraid you're never gonna be partnered again? That you're never gonna be cherished? Are you afraid you're not gonna have enough money? Are you afraid your kids are gonna resent you? Are you afraid what are you afraid of? Because whatever you're actually afraid of is what's sort of driving this tendency to compare, this envy, this resentment. And so when you identify what you're really afraid of, then you have to identify, well, what within this is in my control? Can I control that I have wrinkles in places I didn't have now that I have to date with wrinkles? Can I control that my kids are affected by this and that they're going to have feelings to work through and I can't work them through for them? Can I control what my ex or is doing in his new relationship or what his new partner is doing? Can I control any of what they what people think about me? Oh man, you're gonna try. You're gonna try to control all of those things, right? But what are you actually afraid of that is within your control? How you respond, how you view yourself, how you speak to yourself in comparison, ain't it love? What is within your control that you can actually move the needle on today? Do you need a glass of water? Do you need proper nutrition? Code Dear Divorce Diary for organize the protein company. Do you need to rest? Do you need to pick up the phone and cry with someone? Do you need to join Cocoon to be part of our group and see what our magic drop is this week? Do you need to reach out to Coach Tiffany inside of Cocoon and say, like, man, I'm really struggling. Help me figure out what to do next. Do you need to listen to a manifestation track on Spotify? There are so many good ones. You know what I mean? Like, do you need to put your, do you need to touch grass and put your face in the sun? What do you need right now that you can control of? Bring it back home. When the comparison sets in, when you are experiencing resentment and envy, it's triggering a cascade of shame that is telling you all these big, bad, scary things. And let me tell you what, it is in vogue right now to feel resentment. In vogue. Like your algorithm wants you angry and resentful and bitter and attacking and addicted to all of that. Whatever you want to call those outside forces, whether you want to call it like the cabal or capitalism or the patriarchy or spiritual warfare, like whatever you want to call it, it is in vogue to be angry and resentful and to compare. Are you going to keep giving into that? Or are you going to get regrounded in capital T truth, which is there is love and abundance in the world, but you have to seek it. I don't mean, what do I mean by seek it? Like you have to get open to it. You have to be willing to move all of this shit out of the way in order to see the good shit. So here's to the pivot, right? The pivot away from the cognitive avoidance of the deeper things, right? Intrusive thoughts and comparison and envy, it is cognitive avoidance. Comparison isn't an emotion, it's a behavior we do. It's an intellectual avoidance of the trickier stuff, which is to I don't want to say quiet the mind, but focus on something more productive and more powerful, which is whatever it is you can control that's in the realm of heart-centeredness. So I'm inviting you back into the light if you've been struggling with comparison lately. But connection is where we find security. And it can be really scary post-divorce because we're afraid that if we connect, if we let the love in, something's gonna take it away, right? Like you're gonna lose it again. I understand. One step at a time. But if you are not yet in cocoon, girl, what are you waiting for? Find the link in the show notes, join cocoon. It's where all the magic happens. We love you so much. Peace.