347. - Why Do Smart Divorced Women Keep Doing Things That Make Them Feel Worse?

You know what would help.

The walk.
The boundary.
Going to bed earlier.
Not texting him back.
Turning off the phone.
Booking the therapy session.
Saying no.
Asking for support.

So why does it still feel so hard to choose those things in the moments that matter most?

If you’ve ever found yourself doom scrolling instead of sleeping, people pleasing instead of speaking up, reaching for the wine, texting your ex, or choosing temporary relief over what you know would actually help… this episode is for you.

Because the truth is:

Smart women do self-defeating things after divorce all the time.

Not because they’re lazy.
Not because they’re broken.
Not because they “should know better.”

But because emotional pain, nervous system overwhelm, loneliness, fear, and familiar coping patterns are powerful.

Inside this episode, Dawn unpacks:
– Why insight alone doesn’t create behavior change
– Why short-term soothing often wins over long-term healing
– The nervous system’s attachment to familiar pain
– How childhood conditioning can make healthy choices feel threatening
– Why texting your ex, scrolling, numbing, or staying quiet often make emotional sense in the moment
– The hidden role support and accountability play in actual transformation
– A practical exercise to help you interrupt painful patterns in real time

If you’ve been asking:
“Why do I keep doing this?”

Start here.

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

When You Watch Yourself Spiral

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Watching yourself do the things you know make you feel worse might be one of the most painful parts of divorce. Things like texting him back, doom scrolling until midnight, stalking her social media, pouring the extra glass of wine, saying yes when you mean no, staying quiet when your soul, your body is screaming, and then asking yourself, what's wrong with me? If that question has lived in your head lately, this conversation is for you. Here on the pod, we're about to spend a lot of time unpacking over the course of weeks why smart divorced women choose short-term relief over the things that will move the needle on your healing. Let's dig in. 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.

The Post-Divorce Paradox Explained

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Okay. I am obsessed with this episode. We are gonna cover three main things today. Number one, we are gonna talk about the post-divorce paradox. You crave healing while simultaneously rejecting it. It is fascinating. And this is because divorce wakes up the parts of you that want healing, but it also wakes up the parts of you that resist healing. Well, shit. We'll dig into what to do about that. The second thing we're gonna dig into is what your nervous system and your childhood wounds have to do with all of this. And it's very much connected to the fact that nervous system defaults to familiar pain rather than foreign pleasure. So we will chitty chat all those issues. And the final thing is I'm gonna give you an actual practical tool where we activate your phone calendar and we're gonna put a task in there for you to actually calendar, set an alarm or a reminder, and I'm going to give you a little script to paste into the notes of the calendar so that when it comes time to challenge this, I know the good, but I struggle to choose the good thing. You have me, producer Joy Coach Tiffany, right there beside of you, right, helping you break the habits.

Short-Term Soothing Versus Real Healing

SPEAKER_01 2:36

All right, let's dig into this post-divorce paradox. You are running on patterns where, right, you you have these parts of you that want to heal, and you have these parts of you that say, This is too painful, I can't tolerate it, right? And you're still running on patterns where the short-term soothing, the short-term soothing feels safer than the long-term benefit. So for instance, right, the short-term soothing is responding to that text message from the ex, the glass of wine, people pleasing, scrolling, whatever it is, right? Versus the long-term thing, which is scheduling EMDR, hard conversations, going to bed alone, whatever it is, right? And I would like to say to you that while healing this pattern is your responsibility, like, oh my goodness, love, it is not your fault that everything about modern life has led to this dopamine addiction piece, right? There are so many addictive cycles going on inside of our brains that we are just unconscious too, right? And so not only are you recovering from losing your marriage, so your brain is hypersensitive to further loss, and choosing healthy change can feel like you're rejecting other people and thus leave more loss, right? But the truth is you're rejecting yourself when you abandon the healthy choice. But modern society has conditioned you and primed you to reject yourself at every turn. When producer Joy and I were walking the loop in the neighborhood and talking about this episode, we were talking about how she mentioned the movie He's Not That Into You and a Drew Barrymore quote. But it's like we have lived into this experience in life where we spend so much time on social media or media in general, and we now feel like this collective rejection from entire groups of people, right? When we're functioning outside of the ways that social expectations say we should form. And I think we just must always be feeling some level of rejection these days. It's like we're exposed to way too many people's opinions en masse, right? To scale, it's bizarre. And so what needs to shift is that you choose healing, you recondition yourself where you're prioritizing, choosing, protecting, healing, growing yourself based on what you know is aligned, right? By aligned, I mean what you think, what you feel, what you say, what you do, what you believe, what your soul calls for, you know, what's grounded in truth. Like that's what you're executing on versus several billion people's opinions, right? So there's like a reconditioning that needs to happen. But there is this grief-layered tension of wanting growth, but feeling fragile, afraid, or unworthy of it. And that's all happening below the surface, right? You've got the literal dopamine loops that are happening in your brain. You've got the negative beliefs that are in there that your reticular activating system is constantly scanning for and cautioning you not to not to feel any more pain, right? You've got your internal family systems, right? Your parts of self, your wounded parts, those exiles, those managers, those firefighters that are seeking actively to protect you, right? And so it is a very nuanced journey to know what's good for you, but then to act on it. And having awareness of those layers will help you break through it. And then when you become aware of them, being able to slow down, breathe through it, notice what is it that's getting activated right now? Is it dopamine? Is it parts, right? Is it parts work? Is it an unconscious negative belief? Like what is the thing that's getting activated right now and how can I take some breaths and gently hold space for myself to move through it, right?

Nervous System Defaults To Familiar Pain

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Which takes us to your nervous system and childhood wounds. Just that little tidbit there. So the nervous system defaults to what's familiar, right? It's like a familiar pain, is the thing that the nervous system and what it's been programmed to do. The nervous system is very, very predictable and reliable, but it is not necessarily intelligent in that it doesn't have the capacity to interpret the environment accurately, right? If you train the nervous system to be afraid of an email from your boss, your nervous system is going to be afraid of an email from your boss. And so it doesn't have the capacity to just say to you, I don't know, maybe you should reconsider that this isn't actually that scary of a thing, right? It's it doesn't have that level of intelligence. We have to use our wise minds, our higher self, to coach it or reprogram it or gently allow it to expand its capacity to experience more and different things. So you have some childhood coding, right? Don't rock the boat. This one's really good. This one's really, really good. Be easy to love. And those childhood conditionings are often stronger than your adult logic about what's healthy, right? So even down to like, you know, you're at a some social event and everybody is eating the cheese or the gluten or drinking the tequila. I'm gonna be the one drinking the tequila. But, you know, everybody's doing the thing and you want to not rock the boat or be easy to love or fit in or be accepted or not be the weird girl or not stand out or whatever it is, right? And and so that conditioning in the moment is always going to trump unless we've practiced changing that pattern or that brain map, right? And so your system was trained to equate healthy boundaries or just healthy prioritization of self. I'm not talking about selfishness in the sense that you don't care about and aren't caring for other people. That's not what I mean, but I just mean like healthy self-prioritization with danger, right? Like, so you've come to learn that healthy boundaries or self-care are tantamount to rejection, abandonment of shame or shame, right? Of yourself or someone else. That there's going to be some painful consequence associated with choosing a healthy behavior for yourself. That's equated with pain. And the process of separating, teasing those things apart is an uncomfortable one. And you want it to go way faster than it's actually gonna go at a cellular level, right? Because there's this feedback loop between your brain and your nervous system, and the brain is where we can intervene on it using things like somatics and reprogramming our negative beliefs and all of that stuff, right? But it is a layered, gentle, ongoing reprogramming. So divorce is the thing that reactivates very specific very beliefs, like if I choose what's right for me, I'll be alone forever. Or who even cares if I heal? Does it even matter? And so this sort of gentle somatic reconditioning, we don't want to force ourselves into choosing or doing the behavior we're trying to incorporate into a new habit. We don't want to just override those painful parts of us that are saying, like, I don't want to do this thing, it's too uncomfortable, right? We want to help those parts of us recognize that this new way is actually going to create deeper connection, more safety, more safety for our future self and our present self, right? But we have to help coach those internal parts. We have to hold space for that discomfort. We can't just suppress it, deny it, bypass it, and expect that we're actually recovering because it's all about integration, love, integration, integration, integration.

Tiny Ego Deaths And Self-Approval

SPEAKER_01 10:19

So, for instance, just this morning, somebody texted me a video of myself on Instagram. And they were so cute. One was like, oh, that's so cute, and somebody else was like, Oh, this is amazing with like fire emojis and hearts. And when I watched it back, I was like, cringe, cringe, cringe, cringe, cringe. I I'm sure you have very, very similar experiences where you like hear a voicemail from yourself or see a video or a picture or something, and you're like, ah, and so I like was already feeling anxious about some other crap, and this just like sort of piled on, and I was like, okay, there are parts of me that want to get it perfect or you know, be some type of way, but that is that historical conditioning towards ego versus deep meaningful connection and relationships and not needing to be perfect, right? There was this very real coaching I did with myself that's like which would feel better being perfect or connecting with other people. And I sat and I did a little bilateral simulation and I was like, okay, tiny little baby ego deaths, tiny little baby ego deaths. And, you know, as kids, we rely on ego to keep coming back to the table of life, because life is really daunting for children, right? It's like a big, big world, and children are so, so small and they don't have as much autonomy and all the things, right? And so we rely on things like you are a good girl, you did a good job, you know, um, walking, talking, getting good grades, whatever it is. So, like I am telling you what what I relied on as a kid, right, to keep me going when it was brutally painful. And so shifting from that external validation to like, man, I did my best, I put myself out there that's brave, that's courageous, right? And connecting with one other person is more important than it being perfect. So it's these little ego deaths, right? And this somatic reconditioning and this holding space for discomfort when we are trying to accept ourselves first, we're trying to validate ourselves first, prioritize having our own self-approval, not abandoning ourselves, right? Because when I criticize my efforts there, that's what I'm doing. I'm rejecting my own self, right? And that just leads to long-term reinforcement of all the things that led us to be in this particular marriage and end up in divorce in the first place, right? A strong, grounded sense of esteem and worth is going to lead to very, very different relationship choices down the road, love.

Calendar The Habit Change

SPEAKER_01 12:51

All right, let's talk about our practical task for today, right? I want you to pick the thing that you've been avoiding, that you know is the self-caring thing that you've been trying to break through, but it's hard. Whether it's a support group that you've been telling yourself you would join, scheduling an EMDR session, uh, turning off your phone at 9 p.m., journaling instead of texting him, walking instead of scrolling, like changing a food choice, whatever the thing is that you know is the next thing that you need to tackle. I want you to put it in your calendar this week at a time you are most likely to skip it. So take a moment to pick the day and the time. I highly recommend doing it probably two or three times in the week, scheduling it. The time you're most likely to skip it, the time it's most likely to be an issue that you need to hold yourself accountable for. Put it on the calendar, but this is what you're gonna title the task in the calendar. Choose me instead. Choose me instead. So that's what you're gonna calendar this task as. You're gonna know that that is the thing. It's the time for you to do the hard thing that you need to gently recondition your nervous system to recognize, like, okay, this is us choosing the bigger picture, right? The healing instead of the short-term dopamine fix. And then in the show notes, I'm gonna give you these three prompts and I want you to copy and paste them into the notes of the calendared task. Because

Three Prompts For The Hard Moment

SPEAKER_01 14:18

in that moment, when you feel like snoozing it, I want you to ask yourselves these questions as though Coach Tiffany, producer Joy, and I are sitting here in a group session with you just gently holding the space, right? Number one, and these are in the show notes, so you can copy and paste it in there, right? What emotion am I avoiding right now? Number two, if I snooze this, what am I saying no to in the bigger picture? If I snooze this, what am I rejecting, turning down, losing out on in the big picture? What am I sacrificing in the big picture if I snooze this thing right now? Number three, what would it feel like to choose me right now, even if it's uncomfortable? And I suspect that there'll be be there will be several different answers to that question, right? One part of you is gonna be like, Oh, it'll feel so good, and the other part of you is gonna be like, it's gonna feel like panicky, and that's okay, right? But holding space for all of those responses matters. Now, whether you actually journal to these questions or not, it doesn't matter, but just asking yourself them and considering the responses is a good, good nudge to breaking the brain map for avoiding the hard thing in real time. Okay, you do not need to be perfect to be powerful. Choosing yourself after divorce is gritty freaking work, love. It's spiritual, it's emotional, it's biological. But each moment that you're honoring the healthy choice, even imperfectly, you are literally rewiring the belief that you are safe, loved, and worthy, not just when you're fixing things, but when you're building a new you. One calendar entry at a

Support, Accountability, And Closing

SPEAKER_01 16:12

time. I would love for you to shoot me a DM and tell me what you calendared. I would love to know and tell me how it went, right? We've had a lot of conversations over here over the years about how to break through this pattern and this habit. And I think that our approach to this today is sort of like a favorite of mine. And I would love to know how it goes for you because I think that most often what's missing for most of us to break through a painful habit is some level of, I'm gonna use this word, but it's not like the best word, accountability, but I think it's about support, right? So the only reason I'm super consistent lifting weights, I know, is because I have a coach who holds the space for me to show up and that I pay for that coach. And if I didn't, I probably wouldn't go. So that's how I hold myself accountable. But it's like having the support of her holding the space for me and saying, Okay, now you're gonna pick up this heavy thing and put it back down again, it matters so much. And I think that's what these types of concrete action steps that we can take do provides us that in the moment, wanting not only to, you know, have like I want Colleen to tell me I did a good job and I want her to be proud of me and I want to be a good student of hers, right? But also I feel so proud of myself when I go consistently and I make gains. And that's the feedback loop, right? Of having communities and support is you calendar this thing, you break through it, you feel like you have the three of us with you. You tell us how you did, you feel good about yourself, we feel good about you. It's such a win-win win, right? So shoot me a DM. All right, I love you so much. Peace.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

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