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E140: Cat Climaco: The Quiet Signs of Control: Recognizing Narcissistic Abuse and Finding Your Way Out
The Change Effect - Inspiration and Strategies for Creating Success on Your Own Terms
In episode three of the Pros Who Pivot Series, we get into something very real, how personal trauma can crack a career wide open and point you somewhere you never expected to go.
Cat Climaco is a high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting coach who built a successful marketing career, worked alongside her husband in a thriving company, and from the outside appeared to have it all. But behind the image, she was quietly losing access to her family, her autonomy, and her sense of reality.
Cat shares the patterns she lived through, how the pandemic became the turning point that blew the lid off the control she had been experiencing, and after filing for divorce how she found herself navigating one of the most complex legal systems imaginable, family court, while still deep in survival mode.
Her story doesn't end with leaving. It continues into a two-and-a-half-year battle to protect her son, earn sole decision-making rights, and eventually transform everything she went through into purpose-driven work that is now helping other protective parents find their footing, their voice, and their way forward.
In this episode, I discuss:
- The early warning signs of narcissistic abuse that are easy to miss or rationalize.
- How leaving the work she loved led her to find her purpose in a powerful new career.
- How Cat's helps clients combine nervous system regulation and legal strategy to build a winning case.
- Why the abuse often intensifies after separation, not before.
This episode is a reminder that the hardest chapters of our lives don't have to be the end of the story. Sometimes they become the very thing we were meant to share.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast and tell me what resonated with you.
Connect with Cat:
Website: www.peacefulpresencedivorcecoaching.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/peacefulpresencedivorcecoaching
Instagram: www.instagram.com/peacefulpresencedivorcecoach
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/catclimaco
Connect with Noelle:
https://www.youtube.com/@noellevanv
