Episode Details

I was a trained marriage and family therapist when I got divorced. I understood attachment theory. I knew the language of relationships. And I still couldn’t prevent my own divorce.

For a long time, that felt embarrassing. But it taught me something I needed to understand about divorce healing: knowing what’s happening in your mind is different from feeling safe enough to live differently.

In this episode, Joy, Coach Tiffini, and I get personal about the gap between insight and change. We talk about the coping patterns we could recognize but kept repeating, why deeper healing felt frightening, and what helped us begin to trust ourselves and other people again.

Tiffini shares what survival mode looked like for her as a newly divorced single mom—and why she feared that opening up her pain might make it harder to care for her daughter. Joy talks about knowing a habit wasn’t helping while feeling like it was all she could manage in that moment. And I reflect on what my training couldn’t teach me about moving through divorce in my own body and life.

We also talk about holding a boundary after you’ve drawn it, receiving honest feedback from someone you trust, and finding people who can hear the parts of your story you’ve been afraid to say out loud.

If you’ve done the therapy, read the books, and learned your attachment patterns but still find yourself asking, “Why am I doing this again?”—come listen. We’re talking about what can help the work begin to land.

In this episode:

• Why knowing your patterns doesn’t automatically change them
• The fear of falling apart if you begin deeper divorce healing
• How survival mode can narrow the choices you feel able to make
• What support, boundaries, and honest relationships changed for us
• Why feeling safe enough to be seen matters when you’re learning to trust yourself

Want a place to keep practicing? Join us in Cocoon to connect and ask questions. VIP members also get our Thursday healing episodes and a monthly workshop with Coach Tiffini. Find the links in the show notes.

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