39. Managing your mind post-separation: The importance of optimism

Speaker 1: 0:00

You thought you knew, but you didn't have a clue baby. You thought you knew, but you didn't have a clue baby. Hey, I'm Danielle Black and I'm the coach you need if you're dealing with post-separation abuse. I help you make sense of ongoing abusive behaviour after separation and help you take back your power and control. Let's go. Help you take back your power and control. Let's go. Hi, thanks for joining me on another episode of the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, danielle Black.

Speaker 1: 0:42

In one of the episodes last week, I touched on a quality that is common in women who are separating from a controlling former partner, and the main quality that I see in women who optimize their outcome post-separation is the fact that they are prepared to take action. They are prepared to take action to achieve a better outcome and with the clients that I work with, that means taking action to work with me. They take action to book the discovery call. They take action to attend the call and they take action to sign up to work with me. They take action to book coaching calls. They take action to join the group, support video sessions. They take action to join the online community and engage with other women to share their experiences. They take action to ensure they optimize their outcome, and they take action in terms of challenging their current thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They take action in challenging the things that they might be thinking, feeling or doing that aren't serving them, the things that might be holding them back from achieving the outcome that they ultimately want for themselves and their children. What I'd like to talk about today is another thing that I see in women, who ultimately achieve a better outcome when separating and divorcing from a controlling and abusive former partner, and that is their ability to manage their mind. One aspect of this is positive thinking. When we talk about positive thinking, what we're talking about is looking at things from a positive point of view, maintaining a positive and optimistic attitude. Positive psychology is sometimes used interchangeably with positive thinking. Positive psychology is a branch of psychology that studies the effects of optimism and what causes it and when it's best utilized.

Speaker 1: 2:43

I support my clients to manage their mind when they're navigating separation, divorce and co-parenting with their former partner. It's so common to think that we have zero control over what we're experiencing when we're separating from a controlling person, a person who might be abusive in other ways, a person who might have personality traits consistent with one or more personality disorders. It can be common to think that we have zero control or influence over that, but that's not entirely true. There are things going on in our lives right now that we have no control over, and also things that we do have a certain amount of control or influence over. Part of the fundamentals of the coaching work that I do is supporting my clients to take back control of the things that are actually controllable. The things that we can't control are the thoughts, emotions and behavior choices of other people. The key things that you have control over are your thoughts, your emotions, your behavior and the results that are linked to those things.

Speaker 1: 3:47

Your ability to manage your mind will have a direct impact on how you experience separation, divorce and your co-parenting situation, as well as your life in general. How you manage your mind will also impact your children and your ability to show up for them in all the ways that they need you to. Part of managing your mind is learning to manage your expectations, learning to regulate your emotions, learning radical acceptance and learning the importance of boundaries. And what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. To reflect on the way in which you think about your situation. Do your thoughts tend to be primarily negative or positive, and it's really important that I make it clear here that I'm not an advocate for what can be referred to as toxic positivity. So much of the journey of separating from a controlling person, an abusive person, a personality disordered person so much of that journey is horrible. I'm not going to lie about that. However, a lot of what happens in our brains is not just based on the reality of what's going on in any given moment. Our brains are telling us stories all the time. Our brains are making shit up on a fairly regular basis, and if you're someone who goes down the rabbit hole of all of the scary what-ifs, you'll know what I'm talking about. And this is where that question of do you see the glasses half empty or half full comes from. Your answer to that question relates to the concept of positive thinking, relates to whether or not you have a positive or negative outlook on life in general.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Research has found that positive thinking can help us in all kinds of ways to our overall health and well-being and to stress management, along with other aspects of self-esteem and physical health. It's important that I say here that positive thinking doesn't mean that you approach challenging situations with a big smile on your face. It's not about seeing the world through rose-colored glasses or ignoring or glossing over the negative aspects of a person or a situation. For many of us, that's what got us into this mess Not showing healthy discernment, not showing healthy skepticism. We likely brushed over the negative things of our former partners much too readily and look where that got us. So I'm not talking about approaching everything with a purely positive outlook, regardless of how horrible the situation might be.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Positive thinking doesn't mean avoiding difficult situations or pretending that everything's fine. Instead, positive thinking refers to viewing yourself and your abilities in a positive light, to thinking about potential obstacles in a reasonable, rational way, instead of going down the rabbit hole of pessimism. People who have a pessimistic style of thinking tend to blame themselves a lot, tend to not give themselves appropriate credit when something's been successful. They also tend to view negative situations and circumstances as things that will last for a really long time or have a significantly negative impact that will last a long time, and this has a really detrimental impact on that person's state of mind. It has a really detrimental impact on the thoughts that they're thinking. That then has a really detrimental impact on their emotions. That then has a detrimental impact on how they're showing up in the world, the action that they're taking and then the results that they're getting.

Speaker 1: 7:46

This ties in really well with why the women who I see doing better are those who take action and work with me, because in our coaching together, this is one of the things that we work on how to manage their mind, how to not go down the rabbit hole of pessimistic, negative thinking, how to not catastrophize things when something doesn't go right, how to radically accept the situation for what it is factually, how to put in place healthy boundaries, how to manage our expectations. All of these things are part of what we work on in coaching, and I think that's why that aspect of taking action is so important. Because if thinking about things in a more optimistic way, in a factually optimistic way if that's not something that comes easily to you, particularly if it's a stressful situation, that's where working with a specialist coach like myself can help. It's important for me to say here, too, that my coaching is also based on my own lived experience. So, yes, I'm a coach, but I'm a coach who gets it. I'm a coach who understands what it is to separate divorce and co-parent with someone who has very high conflict personality traits, and I was able to optimize my own outcome and I think that's crucially important.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Who you choose to support you on this journey, who you choose to walk beside you, matters. Who you choose to walk beside you can have a significant impact on your outcome. Are you choosing to work with someone who has never experienced a high conflict situation, who has never experienced separation, divorce or co-parenting with a controlling person? Or perhaps with someone who does not consider their own outcome to be positive, someone who does not believe that they were able to optimise their outcome? All of those things matter.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Coming back to positive thinking or optimistic thinking, one way to work out whether or not your thoughts tend to be positive or optimistic or negative is pessimistic is to notice your thoughts, to start paying attention to the thoughts that you have each day. If you notice that a lot of your thinking patterns are pessimistic, are negative, that's an important realization, especially when you're thinking about your own situation. Also, also important is to notice whether or not one pessimistic thought leads to a spiral of pessimistic thinking, to just become aware of that. Once you've become aware of that pattern, start to notice whether or not that pessimistic, negative spiral is actually based on fact. So, for example, you might get a strongly worded legal letter. Understandably, that might cause you stress, particularly if there's false allegations. If it's clear that your former partner is seeking a parenting arrangement that you disagree with, that you think is potentially harmful, that's going to create stress within you. That's going to create all kinds of thoughts and emotions. But if the thoughts turn to worrying about the future, to your brain making up pessimistic future events that haven't happened, if you start getting worried about a court actually giving him what it is that he's seeking, if your brain starts spiraling down those lines, if it's all turning into doom and gloom and concern that your children are going to be negatively impacted for the rest of their lives, and on and on it goes. That's important to be aware of. That spiraling, that pessimistic spiraling doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve your ability to optimize your outcome. And again, this is part of the way in which I help some of my clients, the clients who struggle with that style of thinking.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Our thoughts are also linked to our self-talk. So, noticing your self-talk, do you talk positively to yourself, about yourself, or do you talk negatively to yourself or about yourself. Part of the work that we need to do when we're trying to optimize our outcome, when we're wanting to optimize our outcome is we're wanting to optimize our outcome is related to our thoughts and to our self-talk. Those things don't just impact our enjoyment of life, our ability to tune into our kids and our kids' needs, our ability to be present, no matter where we happen to be, whether that's with our kids, with friends at work. It doesn't just impact those things, but it impacts how we present ourselves in other situations, potentially related to the court process, if that's relevant for you, and where your situation is right now or might be in the future. And it impacts how we feel at the end of things.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Because, you know, as someone who is now almost 16 years post-separation, as someone who has final parenting orders, I can tell you that the hardest parts of this journey do come to an end. They do. Things do get easier. It's not the passing of time that makes those things easier. At least, I don't believe that that's the case. I think the work that I did on myself is what transformed things for me the way that I transformed my thoughts, my emotions, the way that I thought about my situation, the way that I thought about the impact on my children. All of those things now impact the way that I think about my journey. So I'm not someone who is bitter. I'm not someone who is focused on my ex partner. You know that's not how I live my day-to-day life. I've very much moved on. In fact, 11 years ago I remarried and had three more children.

Speaker 1: 14:13

So being able to see a future, to contemplate a future that's positive, being optimistic about that, I think, is key to optimising your outcome. And that is difficult when you're on the receiving end of legal letters. That is difficult when you're dealing with a controlling and abusive former partner. But it is possible. I'm proof that it's possible. My clients are proof that it's possible, that it's possible to have positive experiences in life even though your former partner is controlling, even though you might be navigating the court system, challenging negative thoughts, challenging those spiraling stories that our brain likes to tell us, that usually have zero factual basis. Challenging that is so important because what if it all works out? What if it all works out? What if it's okay? What if your outcome's positive? What if your children are okay at the end of this? What if it all just works out. That's a powerful thought.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Something that I thought to myself a lot on my own journey to the point that I had it written up on sticky notes is everything is unfolding perfectly. It's not that I never had pessimistic, negative thoughts Of course I did. I'm a human being but I noticed the negative thoughts. I was aware of them and I was aware that they didn't help. They sent me in a direction that was not helpful, and so, by telling myself that everything was unfolding perfectly, I hung on to that. I hung on to that idea, that belief that everything was going to be okay. And you know what? Everything was okay, everything did unfold perfectly.

Speaker 1: 16:00

Now, I'm not saying that you can magically transform your situation with positive thinking. That's not what I'm saying. Positive thinking can absolutely have its downsides. Sometimes people who think positively all the time, despite what's going on around them, they can become toxic. It can get to a point where you blind yourself to reality. It can lead us to set unrealistic expectations in terms of an outcome, particularly, for example, if your case is in the court system or is potentially heading for the court system, and having unrealistic expectations can then lead to significant disappointment. Positive thinking, optimistic thinking, does need to be balanced with managing our expectations, with the radical acceptance of our situation, with the setting of boundaries, with regulating our emotions. All of those things are linked together. All of those things are important components when it comes to managing our mind, and managing our mind is one of the most significant things that we can do to support ourselves and our children when we're navigating separation, divorce and co-parenting with a controlling former partner. Thank you so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.