349. Why You've Done So Much Healing... But Still Feel Stuck in the Same Divorce Patterns

You've read the books.

You've listened to the podcasts.

You've been to therapy.

You know your attachment style, your triggers, your patterns, and exactly why you do what you do.

So why do you still find yourself reacting the same way?

Why do you still answer the text?

Why do you still overthink the conversation?

Why do you still tolerate things you know aren't good for you?

In this episode, Dawn, Joy, and Tiffini explore one of the most frustrating parts of divorce recovery: the gap between understanding yourself and actually changing your life.

Together, they unpack:

•  Why insight alone doesn't create lasting change 
•  The difference between consuming healing and practicing healing 
•  How self-awareness can become another form of avoidance 
•  Why knowing your patterns isn't the same as changing them 
•  The role vulnerability, action, and community play in true healing 
•  What keeps women standing on the sidelines of their own lives 
•  Why healing often requires more than information 
•  The hidden difference between feeling better and living differently 

If you've ever found yourself thinking:

"I've done so much work... so why am I still struggling with this?"

This episode is for you.

Because healing isn't measured by how much you know.

It's measured by what you're finally willing to do differently.

Resources & Links

💜 Join Cocoon — our free community for women navigating divorce recovery, healing, confidence, and life after divorce.

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

Cruise Catch-Up And Email Deliverability

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Darlings. I was on vacation for a whole week and the ship didn't burn. That's not the right way to say it.

SPEAKER_03 0:08

That's a that's actually a horrible way to say it. She was on a cruise. Like, let's not talk. Um no. How does it feel in your body to know that you are held and everything?

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Everything thinged. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. Amazing. I also heard that while I was away, Gmail did an update and our listeners might not be getting our emails because some whatever, like we're going to spam or promotions or whatever, right? So first of all, if you don't get our emails, like come on now. A. B, if you're on our list and they haven't been delivering, like, check to see if they need to be whitelisted because they might be in your spam. Oh man, we are about to really dig in over the next 12 weeks to all of the beautiful ways that we as women do not fully support ourselves, abandon ourselves, really struggle to um give ourselves the things we truly, truly, truly need. Would y'all say that any differently? And today is like step one in the 12-week journey. We are finna take. 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.

Knowing Better Yet Doing Opposite

SPEAKER_02 2:00

I got a spicy fire question to open with today. Which is, have either of you this is not rhetorical, I expect you to answer. Have either of you had the humiliating experience of knowing exactly what would help you in doing the opposite anyway.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

So I think a lot I've ta talked about it uh a lot of it is eating, right? I know that I shouldn't be eating this by meat anyway. But but my relationship, I knew I should stand up, I knew I should hold a line, I knew I should question him about this hair I found in his car or the text message that I you know I mean, like I knew, but it my avoidant kicked in and my people pleaser ruled about just keeping him happy, and so I self-abandon in not doing not following through with what I knew I should be doing. So there's two ac two ex two examples.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah, they're exceptional, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:10

One is like daily and the other or the drink that I shouldn't have, or the you know, like I shouldn't be scrolling on doom scrolling on this app or whatever, you know, like there's all these addictions that kind of have ruled my life. Traditionally, one of them is attachment and to my husband and the addiction of the happy happy marriage facade.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

You know, I heard someone everybody's talking about that Mel Robbins podcast where the she has the therapist on. I think her name is Julie, and she talks about mother hunger. And um she was talking about the concept of love addiction. I don't know if I'm squirreling it or not. And it's true, all old, older books about love addiction, that's what it's called love addiction, but it's not actually the addiction to love, right? It's actually the addiction to uh like attachment or being needed or wanted.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

I was gonna say needed.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Yeah, they mean romance addiction, right? But like I sort of loathe that we called it love addiction for so many decades because there's like not actually a lot of love involved in what we're talking about. It's the opposite, right? It's self-abandonment. Okay. I love how you framed all of that, Joyce. Tifferdoodle, do you have your own version of knowing better and not doing better?

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah. I mean, I I think when I started getting into romantic relationships after my first real heartbreak when I was 16, after that, I became avoidant AF. Um, big capital AF. And I carried that with me for a very long time in my life. And I always find it so interesting that the couples who we work with, when I ask them individually why do you guys not want to have deep conversations? A lot of them say because I don't want to know the answer.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That gave me chills.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Right?

unknown 5:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

So, yeah. So I feel like a lot of my avoidant behavior came from the fact that I already knew that my ex-husband was cheating. I already knew what the text message said. I already knew, right? Like all of the things, or that they weren't that into me, or that they, yes, they were flirting with that other girl. I already knew all of that. I just don't want to deal with it. I didn't want to deal with it. It was easier to stay. It was easier to keep the peace. If I blew up my life, what would everyone else think? Like I had such a crazy image manager when I was younger where I felt like I had to keep it all together. She does rear her ugly head every once in a while. And I'll say ugly, I love her much more now. But sometimes in my current life, the bitch does stand up at the table and get a little loud when she needs to sit down, you know? And I'm like, oh, yeah. I'm like, oh, okay. Um, yeah. So I think I've learned over the years how to not avoid, but for sure I wrestled with that for a very long time in my life. And it was because I already knew, but I didn't, I didn't want it to be said. There was something about him saying it out loud or people saying it out loud, my friends, even like in friendships when things weren't going right. Like there's all these areas of my life where I could, I just don't want to ask the question because I didn't want to know. Cause then that would mean I had to make a decision. That would mean that I had to actually face my shit and decide do I deserve this? Am I gonna take this? Yes. Or am I gonna go?

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Avoidance Image Management And Cheating

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Y'all have kick-ass answers. I'm gonna go more modern with mine, modern day. And then if you want more, say so. But I'm gonna go with calling the person, going to the hardware store looking to buy a gallon of milk, right? Have you ever heard that phrase? Like they don't sell milk at Lowe's and Home Depot, right? So, but the pattern or the habit of going to the hardware store to buy a gallon of milk. So by that I mean being on the phone with a person who I know cannot receive the things that I want to share or say or express, and expressing them anyways, and then hanging up the phone and being in an emotional spiral because I felt dropped on the call. And I do that infinitely less, but I definitely did it two weeks ago. So, right, that habit of like wanting, like arguing with reality, right? Like wanting, like almost insisting that no, this time it's gonna be different. This time I will, I won't be affected, I won't be bothered by it.

SPEAKER_03 7:57

Or I don't know, this time I'm so much healthier, I'm so much stronger now. I don't need, you know, like Yeah, I don't need it. When you were talking about that, I was thinking of the child who's constantly seeking approval from the parents. You know, like the the the top doctor is all he's wanting to do is hear he's proud, his dad is proud of him, but he just keeps like adults. Yes, like pursuing that approval. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

And I feel like that's such a misconception with women, too, is that the healthier they get, the more they will be able to tolerate situations like that. I'm fighting for the opposite side because to me, the more healed I get, the more I can see things in my life that I don't want. And I can't tolerate it anymore. It feels super activating to me. Um, instead of the other thing. And I I feel like there might have been relationships that I could tolerate more, but more often than not, the more healed I get, the less tolerant I am of the inadequacies that other people have in relationships where I'm not getting what I feel like I need out of the relationship. Like I get really tired of giving and giving and getting nothing in return.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Oh, right. That one-way street. That's been a conversation with my girls right late recently.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

All right. So we have established that sometimes we know better, but it is infinitely harder at times to actually do better or integrate or implement the things that we know, right? So let's talk for a moment about how as women, we often can become addicted to understanding ourselves, but terrified of actually doing it differently, right? That's what that's what Tiffany says she hears in the couples that we work with. It's what both of you sort of indicated you understood about like, I didn't want to know, I didn't want to confront it because then I was gonna have to do something differently, right? So let's talk about, especially in this information age where we can learn all the things on the tiki-talkie and on Instagram, and we can like have all we can listen to all these podcasts and have all this information, but use that as a way to say we understand ourselves, but not actually have the courage to be different. Where do you see that showing up

The Hardware Store Milk Lesson

SPEAKER_02 10:20

in society, in the lives of the women we've worked with, in ourselves, like and I think I know, I don't think, I know we've heard this from many of the women that we've worked with, that they really were pursuing knowledge because they thought it would solve it. Right? We want to think ourselves better because then we don't have to feel.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

We have a remedy for that, and I love it, and it's hydrogen, right? So hydrogen is for the woman who feels like they're watching life go by. They are just a spectator. Um, and it kind of forces them to get out of their shell. And I say this to women all the time, especially when we're dealing with IFS and things like that. There's two parts in my mind to IFS. There's this awareness. Like, first of all, we have to have this awareness, but the second part is the action. And I've said to women before, you cannot sit on the sidelines of your life and not put any of this shit into practice and think that you're healed. But is knowledge awareness? Are those the same thing? No, they're not. I don't know. No, they're not. It's like a three-part step, right? Yes. But even when you take the knowledge and move it into awareness, there still has to be action. If you're just continuing to live how you're living, continuing to stay in your little bubble. And look, I speak from experience. I was in a bubble for 10 years. I was like, no, I'm healed. This is great. But really, I was not being vulnerable in friendships, not putting myself out there dating. I was creating this little bubble where I was safe and never ever triggered triggered. Correct. So when I went back out into the world again, holy shit. Everything triggered was on fire. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Yeah. I think we use information as like a safety protector thingy. Right. Like if I can quote Bessel Vanderkock. Right. If I can quote the body keeps the score. Right. Or I could quote scripture, or I can, you know, quote that podcast. Or if even people who say, like, oh, I need to stay up on current events so that I don't feel embarrassed or sound like I don't know anything in polite conversation, right? It's this idea that yes, knowledge is power. And it can be, knowledge can be power, but also it can be something that we use to avoid implementation.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

And that's what I was gonna say. I feel like that's another, it's another avoidance thing.

Consuming Healing Versus Integrating

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Because it's way more intimate and um authentic and confident. That's maybe the word that I want more, right? It's way more confident, self-confidence to be able to stand at a party and say, No, I actually don't know anything about what's going on with regards to XYZ subject. Tell me. Right. Right? Like that level of ability to say I don't know versus I do know is like the difference between true confidence, like grounded self-worth, right, versus like a facade, right? So we're sort of talking about the idea of like consuming healing versus integrating. Yeah, yeah. And I think I think social media has like caused like that concept or that thing to become viral, where all of a sudden we're consuming lots of healing. And we can, I've heard a lot of great therapists talk about that, where we can name the patterns. Oh, Raquel, the capacity expert, she talks about this a lot, right? Where you can name the pattern that you're observing, but you actually don't have the capacity to change the pattern in your own life. So yeah, that's I think we got really good at naming patterns.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

We should drop her link because that's yeah, pointing fingers, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:04

At being able to point out what other people are doing, maybe even what we're doing, right? But not actually creating the shift. Um yeah. Okay, so what actually changes people? This is the meat and potatoes, right? Because if insight alone worked, then our podcast listeners and therapy clients, we would all be thriving, right? Like the everybody would be thriving. If all it took was listening to podcasts and reading a newsletter and um, you know, having a handful of the really great classic self-help books and a year of therapy, and we all would be fine.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So so what do you what do we know it actually takes to change our lives?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

It's the action behind it. So, in other words, you know, when I work with clients, I give them little challenges to step outside of their box every week. As far as, hey, I want you to tippy toe just outside of your comfort zone, and we're gonna try this for a week, or we're gonna try that for a week. That's when I start seeing people start to shift when they go from having the knowledge to understanding the awareness of their cycles to then creating action that starts to rewire the brain. And the action is the only thing that is gonna rewire the brain. And I'm gonna be bold and just say that out loud because we talk in IFS all the time about brain scanning. And I had the opportunity to work with a client who had a brain scan done right before we started IFS. Went back to the doctor and within 90 days or four months, whatever it was, three to four months, went back and another brain scan. And the area of the brain that showed trauma was very much altered post-IFS. So my point is there is a way to rewire all of that. And we say all the time that the area of the brain that trauma sits in is the most neuroplastic, meaning it's the, it's the most, it's the biggest area of the brain that can be changed, which to me is like fucking incredible. So it's like it's like that's why I love what I do because you can literally see it and people can start experiencing it. But just soaking up knowledge isn't gonna do it. You have to do the actions associated because that's the thing that creates those new little roadways in the brain that teaches your brain that there's different ways to do things than what it's been used to.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

And the people who have the hardest time with that, I think I'm one of them. Um people who struggle to surrender control, right?

unknown 16:36

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Or to go out on a limb of

Action Vulnerability And Neuroplasticity

SPEAKER_02 16:40

trust or to let go or to shift from thinking to feeling.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Cause it's like the the moving from knowledge to action requires vulnerability. It requires courage, it requires the capacity to fuck up and not collapse, right? It requires the capacity to be embarrassed, to get it wrong, to be seen, to not know, right? That all of that in the realm of moving from thinking or learning to doing, it's literally a raw. Would you say that differently? Like a raw experience.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

It is. And I tell people all the time, it's not about perfection, it's always just about progress. So I don't care that you tried to do the challenge three times and you failed, quote unquote, twice and you were only able to do it once. Like that one time is the one launching pad that's gonna start being the whisper in your mind that's eventually gonna go to a roar, right? Like you have to start small. And, you know, it it gives you a good idea. But yeah, it's hard to get out there and do different things because you know what? If everybody could just change overnight, they would have done it. Yeah, 100%. You know? Yeah. They wouldn't need a therapist.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Human nature. And there's this idea also that our capacity to change is also directly linked to our capacity to see ourselves clearly. So, how much of our denial or avoidance or our tendency to stay in the, you know, learning version is like, no, I actually can't tolerate feedback about myself. Like I I actually can't tolerate seeing myself clearly.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

I mean, it's it's difficult. And I think what I see a lot in women in divorce is when they finally come out of the other side of that awareness and it's like the fog lifts, then it's dealing with everything that goes along with that. It's the guilt of staying for so long. It is the guilt of showing your children what you showed them. It is the guilt of XYZ, the shame, the disappointment, the whatever, right? So that's the scary part to come on on the other side of that too, is to know, wow, like now I'm aware of what's going on and I see myself for everything that I tolerated.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Like I think back to relationships that I tolerated, and I'm like, my God, was my self-worth that low that I felt like that's the sort of behavior and partner that I deserved? That there was nothing else better.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Yes, what we tolerated and also what we did, right? The amount of times that I screamed at my kid or um, you know, the person I hooked up with. But you know what I mean? Like both things, right? Both what I tolerated from other people and the behavior that I tolerated to myself.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

And I've said that before with my past. Like there is nobody out there that destroyed me more than I did. Like I was very self-destructive. You know what I mean? Very self-destructive in my 20s. And um, yeah. Your girl was leading the train. She was she was she was driving.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

But yeah, the shame and the guilt, right? Keeps us from keeps us in the in the thinking versus the doing. Yeah. So how can women know if they're truly like recovering versus staying busy? You know what I mean? Like the busy work of healing, like, like, oh,

Shame Guilt And Seeing Clearly

SPEAKER_02 20:00

I caught the trendy concept, right? Versus really expanding their capacity versus really creating meaningful change in their lives. How can women sort of scan and say, oh yeah, no, I'm I'm doing it? I think my answer my answer for this would be it's about how it feels, right? If it feels uncomfortable, if it feels out of outside of your comfort zone, if it feels like you are trying and failing, if you are getting triggered in different ways or processing your triggers differently, right? It's like it's going to feel vulnerable. It's going to feel way outside of your comfort zone. True healing, true recovery. How would you ladies invite women?

SPEAKER_00 20:49

I think for me it's it's women's ability to start to tolerate stillness. That's when I know when somebody's starting to shift. Yeah. Like if they're telling me, hey, I I actually started reading again. You know, I actually started to sit with myself and I could meditate without scrolling too bad. I could actually lay in bed at night and fall asleep without scrolling on my phone or having to have the TV on. So when women can tolerate stillness, that's a main indication to me that they're starting to be okay, that their nervous system is starting to feel safe.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Yeah. Yeah. Uh that's literally what I was gonna say. The quiet. When you can tolerate being with yourself in the quiet and going for a walk. The only thing I'm gonna add to Tiffany's is because that was a comprehensive list, but like going for a walk and not needing anything, that you get to just abide with yourself.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

What about the ability to align your no's and yeses?

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Rather than boundaries. Boundaries are huge. That's a big indication when I hear women say that they've started to lay boundaries. Even as small as a simple no, I don't want to go do that tonight, or you know, just small little choices. Yeah, that's huge.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Uh me just personally, I've really noticed asking for what I need, giving myself permission, giving giving myself permission to be important to in the ecosystem of my life, my friends, my family, my children. Um that's been a huge shift for me and my tolerance of myself. Did I say that right? Tolerance of myself.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

So very often we want to avoid healing in team or groups or community because I don't know, because we have very negative associations, right, with healing in a group, which I think is around vulnerability. Um but why is it so hard for us to heal on our own or just in one-on-one therapy? You know what I mean? Like, why is it hard to actually recover? And I think this has become a top popular topic on social media too. Like, even in the world of dating, there's only so much healing you can do to prepare yourself for a relationship. At some point, you have to practice

Stillness Boundaries And Asking Needs

SPEAKER_02 23:10

dating and being in a relationship, right? And you have to put the things that you've implemented and integrated to work or to practice, and it's gonna be messy at first, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

So why is it so hard for us to actually implement and integrate healing work just with ourselves or just in a one-on-one therapeutic context?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

There's no test. It's like me that sat there for 20 or 10 years in my bubble. There's no test. There was no opportunity for people to hurt me, to let me down, to disappoint me. There was no opportunity for me to fuck up, for me to say the wrong things, or to act in a way that was really over the top because I was feeling triggered. So until I actually started dating again, got into my next relationship, started making real friendships where I had to actually feel into my intuition, you know, sense into those flags, feel like, you know, the triggers, and again, it's just information. The triggers just told me where I needed to still do the work as I was moving along. But I tell women all the time, like, yeah, there is only so much healing you're gonna be able to do in this space. So when we talk about healing in a group, we talk about healing in our program, our 12-month program, you know, yeah, the women trigger the hell out of each other, especially in the very beginning, right? Because we're still kind of feeling each other out and we're trying to figure out who the other is. And somebody's dealing with something that I'm dealing with, and that feels triggering to me, and I'm projecting. What do I mirroring and how do I fit? Yeah. Like there's all these concepts that go into it. But at the end of the day, it teaches them so much about what they still need to work on. Cause every time we're triggered, it says something about us, not the other person.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

100%. And you can't build that sort of ride or die thing without going there with people, right? The same is true for the three of us as a team, and there's more than three of us on this team, but like the hard conversations, the being in the moments together, the highs and the lows, all of those things together, right? Like how many, how many of the like when you think back on the people who are still in your life or the strongest relationships? It's when you've walked through things together, when you've been vulnerable together, when you've um supported each other in dark spaces, where you've had the courage to ask, like, what did you mean by that? Um, where you've sifted and sorted it all out, right? The the nitty-gritty of attachment, s feeling secure in relationships. Um or without them. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

So, like, I I because I do believe that outgrowing relationships is a thing. So being okay, loving them well, but being okay without that maybe relationship that's kept you.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Going back to that Mel Robbins podcast about mother hunger, so much of recovering that brain, though that neuroplasticity, right, and how it got inflamed in the first place is to do with early caregiver stuff. And so being remodhered by like Capital M mother, like all the mothers, right? There are so many people who have so many women who have played a huge role in remothering me, up to and including myself, very, very, very, very much being willing to step me step fully into that role, right? But and also being modeled and held by other women. That is so much, so much of building that healthy,

Group Healing And Remothering

SPEAKER_02 26:40

secure attachment within, within myself that then I can carry into other relationships. So that involves getting intimate, becoming intimate with other women and letting them, letting them show up like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

And I think the women in our group are starting to learn that and they make comments about how nurturing certain people are in the group, or how they do feel mothered or received, or how we as coaches are starting to be able to re-mother them, right? Like there's all of these spaces, and and they wouldn't have that if they didn't have the group dynamic. And so, yeah, I feel like healing in a group, it's definitely the thing that's gonna take you to the next level. The one-on-one therapy is great too, but uh honestly, like until again you're putting these things in practice, you're not really gonna know what you need to still work on.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

So to the woman who says, I'm so tired of this work and this healing. I've tried the therapy, I've tried the journaling, I've listened to all the podcasts, the books, the healing, and I'm still stuck. What do you think she actually needs next?

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Like, what is she missing? She's missing the awareness and the action and the integration that comes with healing. She's standing on the sidelines. She's not an active participant, she is a spectator in the healing world. Joy is having a Joy's body is talking.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

I love your answer, Tiffany. I went a different direction. I I think that there are some women that need a homeopathic consult because there is an energy block that is not getting the like the hydrogen, right? Like there is something that's not I call it fog a lot, but but it's not only fog. It's like the ability to see the matrix when you have all of the data and you have all of the streaming, but you can't see it. So I do think that there are some women, maybe not every woman, but some women who have done XYZ, PD, you know, like done all of it, but there's still a level of sh um film shield over them that they just can't get to where they want to go.

SPEAKER_04 28:52

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

So I will add to that, I'm glad that you said that because it's really interesting. Something I've been processing over the last I don't know how long. There are people out there who say, like, EMDR didn't work for me, or IFS doesn't work for me, or I can't drop into my body, or I can't feel the things, or I can't, you know what I mean? Like it really, for some people, there really is a like I love that you use the word film. And that could very well be because in the world of integrative wellness, where we really, really understand the depths of mind-body, and we hear about gut dysbiosis and environmental toxins and parasites, right? People who have an imbalance of bacteria in their body stay stuck and fight flight or freeze. People who have a viral load in their body, an imbalance of viral load in their body, so like think long COVID. People who can't seem to quite shake viruses, stay in over-adaptation and over-functioning. People who have a heavy parasitic load are very, very, very blocked and sluggish. And how many therapists will never catch those things because they are not trained to see it, spot it, or know how to maneuver around it, even if you were willing to see and understand and accept all of that, right? We are complex organisms with complex organisms living inside of us. And when there is not harmony internally, there is not harmony externally, right? So in our modern world where we have an imbalance of bacteria because our guts have been decimated? Or do you know that C-section babies who don't travel through the birth canal don't get proper flora, intestinal flora, because they don't travel through that birth canal? So, how many people who had a C-section who were a C-section baby, for instance, don't know that they automatically have a gut instability? How many people who, like you, Joy, who had chronic infections or like people who had chronic ear infections as children, and then they were given boatloads of antibiotics, and now they have gut dysbiosis and it's contributing to disassociation and depression. How many people who can't shake COVID, you know, like all these things, right? And parasites, we just it exists in the food that we eat. How many of us grew up on lunch meat and you name it? And there's a correlation between, you know, heavy parasite load and trauma. And it's because our terrain, right? When our bodies are under stress, they're more vulnerable to attack. And um, yeah, so it's like a weird thing to say, right? But this is why we take such pride over here in having an integrative approach because yes, the issue may be you're a side, you're on the sidelines of your healing journey and you haven't stepped fully into it, right? You haven't been willing to fully surrender or take the plunge, or you're maybe still resent resentful or bitter, and you're wishing that you didn't have to do it. And so you're avoiding it, right? And maybe there is an integrative component that no one has ever taught you about or pointed out to you, and you need an integrative approach. Or maybe it's you've been telling yourself you're protecting your peace and you're not

When Your Body Blocks Progress

SPEAKER_02 32:20

um, you know, putting yourself in the situations to actually be vulnerable and to um get triggered and then work through those triggers differently. What else would either of you add about this idea that, you know, so many women know so much information. We know so much information today that we didn't know pre-COVID. I'm sort of like, you know, listing the line of demarcation, like where mental health information just took off. And and the therapists are now even entertaining us with their mental health information. It's like, oh, the information alone isn't enough. Now we're gonna be entertained by it. But what would you add to the woman who she's learned all the things and she feels stuck? Anything else you feel?

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Look, it's about these reels that I watch online that I love that talks about van life, right? Like these people that just buy a conversion van or a schoolie bus and they just run off onto Montana or wherever the hell they're going, right? Yeah. I can watch that shit all day and feel like I know what to do. Well, I feel like I know what to do. But you give me the keys tomorrow to a schoolie or a conversion van and you tell me to figure shit out on my own. I have no clue what I'm doing until I actually get out there and do it. So that's the thing. It's like you can sit here and collect all your little information about mental health and boundaries and all this sweet little work. And then the next time your ex sends you a nasty text and you engage in spiral for days, that, my love, is an example of you not being able to practice your own shit and your own boundaries, right? So it's like you can collect all the information, but until you start applying to actual life, you will sit in this place. You will be stuck.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

And watching all those reels gives you a temporary sensation that you're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I envision myself somewhere in Montana scrambling eggs outside with my cat that loves to walk around outdoors, right? Like, whatever the hell. But then, like actually going out there and doing it and being able to be in that lifestyle. And I I'll tell you, like, my dad's lived in the RV life for however long. When I go to his RV, it's very different. It's not like a house. You don't just pop the heat on, you don't just pop things on. Like everything is a process, everything is different. And so it's like until you start getting out there and practicing it and making part of your daily life, you're gonna continue to sit on the sidelines and that's it. So we love that you consume things and that you listen to it.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

But oh, that's the thing, right? It's creating versus consumption. And consumption is our most modern uh addiction, like social media consumption, most modern addiction that people don't realize is actually their roadblock. You being in the habit of consumption versus creation. Yeah. All right, my darlings. If this has resonated with you, please come hang out with us in the cocoon. It is our private free community for women who are moving through divorce where we have the conversations, we get connected with one another, we have monthly giveaways, really cool swag, opportunities to go deeper, free workshop, all sorts of things, right? So come hang out with us in Cocoon. We cannot wait to see you there. The link is in the show notes. We love you so much. Peace.com.