25. The importance of building your village when navigating separation & divorce

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, danielle Black, and I'm a strategic separation and divorce specialist coach for Australian women who are navigating separation, divorce or co-parenting with a controlling person. This also includes women who are living in Australia because they have a partner or co-parent who is Australian. I provide my clients with specialised strategic guidance, resources, tools and support to take back their control with less confusion and, importantly, to move forward with greater certainty and confidence. Part of my past training has also included working with renowned US author and advocate, tina Swithin. You might have heard of Tina. She's most well known for her One Mums Battle website and her work in the space of narcissistic abuse. A number of the women that I work with have ex-partners with personality traits that are consistent with one or more personality disorders, including narcissistic personality disorder. Whether your ex-partner has controlling behaviours or whether you think they have behaviours consistent with one or more personality disorders, please reach out. I can help. You can quickly and easily book a free discovery call with me so that we can have a chat about whether working with me is the right thing for you and your situation. My website is danielblackcoachingcomau and there's a link to my website in the show notes of this episode. For anyone who is navigating separation, divorce or co-parenting with a controlling person or a person who is abusive in other ways as well as being coercively controlling, I firmly believe that we are stronger and braver together. In fact, that's the name of the group membership program that I created for my clients Stronger, braver together.

Separating from and co-parenting with a high conflict person, a controlling person, can be confusing, even paralyzing at times. I don't recommend that you do it alone. Your ex-partner would love for you to be isolated from support for one main reason. It simply makes you so much easier to control. All the more reason to surround yourself with people who you trust. Choose those people carefully. This is part of building your village. There will be some people who are part of your inner circle. These will typically be your closest friends and family members, your separation and divorce coach, and perhaps a GP and or a therapist. There will also be some people who will form the outer circles of your support network.

The inner circle of your village will know most of the nitty-gritty of what's going on for you. These are people who you can safely vent to without worrying that anything you say is going to be repeated or find its way back to your ex-partner. Choose these people carefully. It's important that they don't have any connection to your ex-partner. So if you have a friend who is a mutual friend of your ex, this is not someone who should be part of your trusted inner circle. If you have family members who are trying to remain on good terms with your ex-partner, whilst that's very admirable of them, these are not people who should be part of your trusted inner circle. Whether they mean well or not, the reality is that anyone who has any connection to your ex is attempting to maintain any friendship with them. Whatever the reason for that that they give you, they are not people that should be part of your trusted inner circle.

The outer circles of your village will know somewhat that you are navigating a high conflict situation, but you won't share all of the details with those people. You'll also be really careful to not say anything overly negative about your ex-partner to them. The people in the outer circle of your village will be work colleagues, perhaps your boss, your employer, maybe employees If you're running a business, your children's teachers, the parents of your children's friends, neighbours, extended family members and anyone who is in your world who is maintaining any sort of relationship or contact with your ex-partner. These people will likely be supportive, but it's important that you are careful about what you share with them. It's important that you don't make those people aware of all of the details about the conflict. You may make those people aware that there is a degree of conflict. However, you won't go into details with those people. I know that this might be a difficult balance to strike.

It can be tempting to tell people in this outer circle more about the nitty-gritty of what you're dealing with, but don't underestimate having friends and family members who don't know all the details. These people can be great to spend time with when you really want to get away from the high-conflict drama and talk about something else other than your ex, and this is clearly easier to accomplish with people who don't have all the information about what you're dealing with. This is another really important reason for connecting with a separation and divorce coach. So many of my clients tell me everything that's going on and seek my guidance and support and advice so that they don't have to put all of that onto friends or family members, and a number of my clients have made the comment that their friends and family members are so grateful that my client has someone like me to work with so that the friends and family members aren't put in the position of having to give advice when they're really not sure of what the right way to go is. And my clients really appreciate that they're getting support and guidance and advice from someone who is able to be a bit more objective about the situation, who is able to see the situation more clearly and someone who also has an understanding of the legal system and can help to ensure that any action they take is not inadvertently going to come back to haunt them later on if their situation ends up in the court system.

And talking about court, if your situation ends up in the court system, having a village of people around you can be so important, particularly if it involves needing to take some time off work, needing someone to look after the kids for a few hours here or there. You get the idea. Don't underestimate the importance of building a village and of having a trusted inner circle and an outer circle of people who know that you're navigating a conflictual situation but who don't know all of the details. We are stronger and braver together If you need someone who you can trust to support you, to guide and advise you on this journey, someone who can be part of your trusted inner circle. I'm here to help. Thanks so much for your time. Please join me on the next episode. I'll talk to you soon.