Divorce Diaries: Lessons From the Trenches
Welcome to Divorce Diaries, where host Cary Jacobson, attorney and mediator brings you real stories, hard truths, and practical advice on navigating divorce and family law. Whether you're going through it, considering it, or just curious, this is your place for clarity, confidence, and resilience.
Divorce Diaries: Lessons From the Trenches
EP #24: Co-Parenting with High-Conflict Exes with Guest Jill Kaufman
Attorney and mediator, Cary Jacobson is joined by divorce coach Jill Kaufman to tackle one of the most challenging aspects of family separation—co-parenting with high-conflict ex-spouses or narcissistic personalities. Drawing from her own difficult divorce experience and professional expertise as a therapist, Kaufman shares transformative strategies that can revolutionize even the most strained co-parenting relationships.
Discover practical techniques like deep abdominal breathing to regulate emotions during triggering interactions and learn how setting thoughtful boundaries can transform your co-parenting experience. Ready for more support? Visit divorcecoachjill.com for resources designed to help you navigate this challenging journey with greater confidence and peace.
Visit jacobsonfamilylaw.com to learn more.
Visit jacobsonworkshop.com to learn more.
when I talk to people about their relationship with their soon to be ex, they really have to do a shift because they've been married to this person for an amount of time and the relationship is very different. It is you have to really compromise with each other and you have to care about each other's feelings and show empathy and really be the support for each other, and that's not what the relationship is when you're going through divorce.
Intro/Close:Welcome to Divorce Diaries, where Cary Jacobson brings you real stories, hard truths and practical advice on navigating divorce and family law. Whether you're going through it, considering it or just curious, this is your place for clarity, confidence and resilience.
Cary Jacobson:Welcome back to Divorce Diaries Lessons from the Trenches. I'm your host, Cary Jacobson. I'm an attorney, mediator and founder of Jacobson Family Law, where we help clients keep the drama out of divorce. Founder of Jacobson Family Law, where we help clients keep the drama out of divorce. Today's episode is all about the most emotionally training complex situations many divorcing parents may face how do you co -parent with someone who's high conflict or might even be a narcissist? And to help us unpack this incredibly important topic, I'm joined by someone who truly gets it, not just professionally but also personally.
Cary Jacobson:Jill Kaufman is a divorce coach, a therapist, a mediator and a co-parenting expert. After going through her own difficult divorce, she made it her mission to help others navigate the process with more clarity, less stress and a greater sense of peace. She's the author of a fantastic book, a creator of a powerful online course and works with parents in her transformational coaching program. Jill is passionate about helping families, especially children, thrive even in the middle of conflict. Thank you so much, jill, for being here.
Jill Kaufman:Thank you, Cary, for having me
Cary Jacobson:Absolutely. Can we start with your story? I understand that you've been through a high conflict divorce yourself. How did that experience impact the work that you do now?
Jill Kaufman:Well, so I was a therapist and I thought I could handle it emotionally going through divorce, and little did I know that it is very different when you're counseling people than when you're going through it yourself. And so I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I, you know, I was barely functioning. I had three, you know, children, 18 and 18, 16 and 12. And it was, it was really overwhelming. And you know, my relationship with my now ex-husband was not great.
Jill Kaufman:I mean, I think most people, when they're going through divorce, struggle with that. You're living in the same house and it's it's very difficult, but I, I the positive is we do have a very good relationship now. Um, this is years later and you know it happened a couple of years after the divorce. And so you know, even if you do have a high conflict divorce, you can change um during the divorce or or after the divorce, um, and you can change the relationship. And there are things that you can do to make things better, which I didn't really know back then. But I've worked with tons of people now and it really does work.
Cary Jacobson:Yeah, you mentioned that, even though you were, you are or were a therapist, how did that help or hinder how you you know, kind of went through the process yourself?
Jill Kaufman:Well, luckily I was in therapy my own therapist and that helped, but I think it also I was able. During my divorce we were trying to come to agreements that you know it was a mess and we couldn't. We we did this like full day mediation with both in separate rooms, with us going back and forth, and after that I really started detaching myself from the emotions and I started to think about, okay, how there must be a better way. I don't want to go to court. There must be a better way to get to a solution here. And I actually figured it out with you know, because I knew my ex better than my attorney did and I knew what was important to him and I knew what was important to me. And so I just went to him after that day and I said you know what? I will agree to everything that you want if you give me this. And there was just one thing that I wanted. And he said okay, and we told our attorneys and we signed the agreement and that was the end of it.
Cary Jacobson:And so I think maybe being a therapist helped me kind of know that I was too emotional and I needed to think clearly helped me kind of know that I was too emotional and I needed to think clearly yeah, and when you're working with clients because I know that you are also a divorce coach how do you kind of guide them in keeping those emotions in check?
Jill Kaufman:so that they can kind of do that same process. Well, it's easy as a therapist, it's easy for me to to recognize when somebody is making emotional decisions, also because I've been through it and so I I very gently point that out and and I don't point out you know you're making an emotional decision I just ask them is this really worth it to you? You know, like what is really worth it? And so we really get down to and sometimes they don't know at first. You know they're like yeah, of course it's worth it to me to stay in the house because I don't want, you know, the kids to go through an upheaval and so, or something like that, and we kind of break it down. And what are you worried about? You know, why do you think your children won't be able to to be OK if you sell the house? Or, you know, is, how do I co-parent with someone who just wants to fight?
Cary Jacobson:You know someone who may send the you know multi-paragraph text message or email and so much of it is just bashing that person and not really an actual issue. Or there might be just a couple of you know small issues in there with all of this, these other things. How do you talk to your clients about dealing with that situation?
Jill Kaufman:Great question, I so. I mean it happens all the time. People are anxious and fearful that you know, financially they're going not to be okay and there's so many things going on, are they going to have enough time with their children and are they going to have a good relationship with their children? So, basically, when I talk to people about their relationship with their soon-to-be ex, they really have to do a shift because they've been married to this person for an amount of time and the relationship is very different. You have to really compromise with each other and you have to care about each other's feelings and show empathy and really be a support for each other. And that's not what the relationship is when you're going through divorce. It's completely different. It's like being colleagues or coworkers and you really don't have to care about all the things that they feel and compromise about everything. You can set boundaries. You can set boundaries and you can set them. Like if you were talking to a colleague or coworker, would you make a wise guy comment or would you be sarcastic? No, you would be very straightforward, kind, friendly, but also set some boundaries. And that's the shift that people have to make so that they can really take the emotion out of it. The past is the past and you really shouldn't talk about the past anymore. You should talk about what you need today and going forward, and so, if you can make that shift, it makes it a lot easier to interact.
Jill Kaufman:The other thing is I don't know. You know Bill Eddy, right, I am very familiar. Everybody who works with high conflict divorces knows Bill Eddy. But he has the BIF method and you want to be brief, informative, friendly and firm, and so anytime you email or text anybody, or even when you talk to them, you don't want to go off on tangents and say, well, I really think that this is the best thing for our daughter. You know she's, you know whatever it is you're. You don't want to give your how you feel, because that's not really relevant anymore. You just want to talk about the facts and you want to make it as brief as you can and you want to set some boundaries. So there's a lot of tools you can use, but the biggest thing is that shift in mindset from being a married couple to being co-parents and like colleagues.
Cary Jacobson:Right and just reminding yourself that you don't have to always respond right away. I think that's one, especially in our, you know, tech world people. People kind of think that just because they've gotten a message or an email or what have you, that they have to respond right away. And you know, I often tell people, you know, you can set those boundaries as well, unless, unless you can, you know, unless it's an emergency, you can say I'm not going to respond outside of you know, until I'm out of work hours or, you know, in certain times of day and that sort of thing, just so that you it doesn't have to impact you directly as much, right?
Jill Kaufman:yeah, exactly, and you know you can set your phone to not give you messages while you're at work. And and if you could tell your soon to be ex that if it's an emergency, call me, you know, because I can't look at texts or emails during work hours. You know, and you want to say that in a friendly way to you know, so that they don't it doesn't trigger some kind of argument.
Cary Jacobson:Right yeah of argument, right yeah. Now I've heard of the term parallel parenting and I know that this has come up, you know sometimes, and I want to talk about that a little bit. Can you explain what parallel parenting is and when it may be a better option than traditional co-parenting?
Jill Kaufman:be a better option than traditional co-parenting, right? So co-parenting is when you both together come to an agreement on the rules and how you're going to parent your children and you listen to each other and you try to work together for solutions. Sometimes that's not possible if you have a co-parent who is not interested in doing that, so then you would need to parallel parent, and parallel parenting is basically you're doing something in your home and they're doing something in their home and you're just not communicating about that and you're basically having different rules in each house and you parent differently. And while that's not ideal, children can be OK with that.
Jill Kaufman:Children understand that their parents are different and there could be different rules. I mean, they know there's different rules at school than there are at home, so, like they understand that it's not so bad for kids. I mean, of course it's better to have a really you know, collaborative relationship and work together, because they do sense tension in the relationship and that's not good for kids. But if you can't, then you really you can't control someone else, right? So you have to. You have to do what you have to do.
Cary Jacobson:What's a scenario where parallel parenting might be appropriate Like? Under? What are those circumstances?
Jill Kaufman:So if, let's say, you have children who need to get to bed by like 830 because they need a lot of sleep and they're young and they have to be awake for school in the morning, and your co-parent says, well, I don't get home until 730. So I'm not going to put them to sleep at 830. It's not enough time for me. I'm going to put them to bed at 930. And you know that that's not good for your children, and so you put them to bed at 830. And that's OK and you can just explain that.
Cary Jacobson:You know I've had more time with you no-transcript and this is the way it is Okay, Got it. Obviously, conflict between the parents can impact children. What are some ways that parents can protect their kids from you know those emotions that come up during the divorce and protect their kids from that conflict?
Jill Kaufman:Oh, there's, there's a lot of ways Now. First of all, you get so caught up in the divorce that you focus on the divorce instead of focusing on your children. Right, you're like I have to spend time, you know, going through my financials and I can't, you know, focus on them. Well, the bottom line is kids need your attention, even when you're going through divorce, so they're not going to understand that you have lots of other things to do, so maybe you have to put off, you know, doing some things because your kids need you, and that doesn't mean you can't take breaks and you know work on things that you know that are divorce related. But make sure you're present and in the moment with your children and you're not distracted when you're with them thinking about your divorce. And the only way to do that is to take care of yourself, exercise, have a therapist, divorce coach, you know. Have a team around you that you can really trust so that you don't have to worry, you know, about your divorce all the time.
Jill Kaufman:The other thing is you don't want to say anything negative about the other parent, you don't want to use your children as messengers between you and the other parent and you want to support the child's relationship with the other parent, unless there's abuse. A child does better having relationships with both parents, and so whatever you can do to support that relationship. Now let's say a child comes to you and says I'm really upset because you know dad won't let me do this, and when he says that I get very upset, you shouldn't be the one to go then and tell the parent. What you should do is tell the child well, it sounds like you're really upset. You need to talk to dad about that, and so what you're doing is you're empowering your child to set boundaries themselves and learn how to manage the relationship between them and the other parent. If you get involved, it's called triangulation and it's not healthy. It's not a healthy dynamic in families. So you really want to encourage the child to talk directly to the parent.
Cary Jacobson:And it also gives them a place, the empowerment to, to share what their feelings are with that parent and how those feelings are impacting them.
Jill Kaufman:Exactly, and that's really important that you know you didn't. You didn't then get upset and start a fight, and then the child feels like, oh, it's my fault that my parents are fighting. So all of that is not ideal. You really want to. You want to step out of that relationship between the parent and the child.
Cary Jacobson:Now, does that potentially change if that child may be fearful of how that parent may react to those feelings? You know, maybe, that the other parent is not as emotionally supportive, right? Because not both parents aren't necessarily the same when it comes to supporting a child's emotions. How would your advice, if it, would it change at all, in that scenario?
Jill Kaufman:Yeah, I mean, I think if they express that they're scared to talk to the other parent, I would, I mean, as a therapist, I would say what are you scared of? You know? But really you can get a therapist involved and you can have the child talk to the therapist about that if you aren't able to handle that. But if you can, you can ask the child you know, what are you scared of? Well, you know, mom might get mad if I say that. Well, so what? What if mom gets mad? What's frightening about that? Well, I don't like it when she gets mad. What's frightening about that? Well, I don't like it when she gets mad, you know.
Jill Kaufman:If they say, you know she yells at me, well then you can tell her not, please don't yell. You know, like you want to really help children handle this on their own and it's amazing how they can. They can get really empowered when they confront a parent and set some boundaries, set healthy boundaries. And you know, I've seen it happen where a parent changes, you know, and they, once the child, you know, says please don't yell at me. They're, they're realizing that you know, this child is not going to want to come here if I'm yelling, you know, and I really have to protect my relationship with them and I've seen really positive things happen after that.
Cary Jacobson:Yeah, what are some early signs that someone may be divorcing someone who is a narcissist I feel like I hear that term all the time, so I'm cautionary in using it or someone that's just a high conflict person? And is there something that those people should do to prepare differently for the divorce process?
Jill Kaufman:Well, it depends. I think there's a strategy. When you're divorcing someone who's a high conflict person, whether they're narcissistic or not, it's pretty much similar behavior. There's a strategy because you don't want to trigger that person. And a lot of times, you know attorneys are very useful but a lot of times attorneys don't realize their wording triggers other people you know, especially high conflict people, and so you want to make sure that you, you have an attorney who's who's knowledgeable on how to interact and communicate with a high conflict person. And you want to say things in very subtle ways. So you don't want to say you know you've been late every time you come to pick up Sally, and that's poor parenting. You want to say could you please let me know if you're going to be late and don't be more than a couple minutes late, because she you know Sally gets really worried when you're not there. And so you really want to be non-threatening.
Jill Kaufman:And most people know they have a high conflict person they're dealing with because they were married to them. Right, and they aren't easy, they're difficult, and so you know, to prepare for it you you really have to work on taking the emotions out of it, because if you were married to that person and it was a high conflict person. You have a lot of built up anger, maybe in resentment or your fear about dealing with them. A lot of times I get clients who don't want to be in the same room with them. I get clients who don't want to be in the same room with them with a mediator, and they don't realize that you know, when you're married you're really kind of stuck living with someone. When you're divorcing, you have a lot more. You're more empowered if you're dealing with a narcissist or a high conflict person because there are laws in place to protect you and, yes, they can make it more difficult, but at some point they can't, you know.
Cary Jacobson:Yeah, there's going to be. There's going to be an end of some sort.
Jill Kaufman:Right, exactly. And if you have to go to trial, the judge will, you know, will rule probably in your favor. And and I think that's the strategy too you want to really talk to the talk to the attorney and the mediator about like this is going to be. I'm going to make a better deal than if we went to court. So to avoid that, to avoid avoid going to court, you know this is going to be better for everybody.
Cary Jacobson:Absolutely. I know you have a coaching program and that in that program you talk about reducing stress and increasing, you know, the individual's confidence. What is one small mindset shift or tool that you people can make to make a big difference in how someone is feeling, you know, just overwhelmed by the divorce process?
Jill Kaufman:Well, this sounds really simple, but there's deep abdominal breathing and if you do it right, you breathe in and you actually push your stomach out when you're breathing in so that you can get a really deep, deep breath. And you pull your stomach in when you breathe out and as you do this, more and more your lungs expand and you're able to get these really deep breaths. Like I always tell people, if they put their hand on their chest and their chest is going up, that's a chest breath, but if you put your hand on your stomach and your stomach's going out, that's an abdominal breath. And so when you get these deep breaths, your brain actually releases a hormone that calms you. And if you practice this before you go to sleep, when you wake up in the morning, you actually expand the surface area of your lungs and you can learn how to do these deep breaths anytime. So if you're talking or you get a text from your soon to be ex, you can do these deep breaths and you can really get yourself more calm.
Jill Kaufman:And that's the key we're triggered. We're triggered and our blood starts pumping and our heart starts racing. And your amygdala is the base of your brain, your prefrontal cortex is the thinking part and that thinking part shuts off. So your own, you can't really think through how you're going to respond and your base of your brain is really just fight or flight and you can't really um handle all the things you need to handle when you're going through this process. If that's the only thing you can do, fight or run away. So you really have to learn techniques like deep breathing. There's meditations, there's lots of things like that to get yourself calm. Even drinking a glass of water, you know, is something that will give you some pause so that you don't respond right away.
Cary Jacobson:Yeah, and exactly I was just thinking that as well. Take a moment to to, you know, think about it, to calm yourself down and then respond. I think you know, setting those boundaries again about how much time you're going to wait to respond can also, you know, greatly improve your emotional bandwidth of you know when responding.
Jill Kaufman:Absolutely, and you you're not going to respond in the best way if you respond right away. So it's much better to think through how you want to respond or if you even need to respond.
Cary Jacobson:Yeah, and then you know the other thing that can also help. I'm a huge person like of using technology where it can be appropriate. If you're using co-parenting apps, some of them have like a tone, check um or chat, tpt. You know any of any AI thing. You can put in the, the question or the text or the, you know whatever it is, and say help me respond in a simple, professional manner. And it takes some of that emotion out of it because you're not the one like it.
Jill Kaufman:Yes, absolutely. Chatgpt is amazing for this and it, just when you do that and you read it back, it changes your, it shifts your mindset, so that you're thinking and you're not reacting.
Cary Jacobson:Yeah, so tell us a little bit about your book and the course that you teach or that you have available to your clients. What can our listeners expect and who are they best suited for?
Jill Kaufman:So the book and the course, they kind of parallel each other, but it's really for people who are going through divorce, for parents who are going through divorce. So, from the point of like, when you're almost ready to make that step, until the divorce is over, it goes into how to handle your emotions, how to develop your clarity around your goals and priorities and how to negotiate your settlement agreement, and it also has information on you know how to deal with your finances and budgets and what information to collect and I have a ton of information in there. And if people are really good at doing it on their own, they can. They can do that with the book or the online course. If not, then they can join my group coaching program and you can use the online course in the book in addition to having me facilitate them working through that.
Cary Jacobson:Got it Awesome. Those sound like great resources for anyone who may be going through the divorce process.
Jill Kaufman:Yeah, there's a lot there.
Cary Jacobson:Yeah Well, jill, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom, your practical tips, and they are exactly what so many of our listeners need right now. If you listeners are going through a divorce or struggling to co-parent with a high conflict ex, I highly encourage you to check out Jill's work. You can find her book, online course and coaching program at her website, divorcecoachjill. com. As always, thanks for tuning in to Divorce Diaries and don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with a friend who might need it. And if you're looking for legal support for your own peaceful divorce or custody process, check out our website at JacobsonFamilyLaw. com.
Intro/Close:Thanks for joining us today on this episode of Divorce Diaries. Remember, every journey is unique, but you don't have to navigate it alone. No-transcript.