Hi. Welcome to another episode of the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black. Today I'd like to talk about something that really transformed my own post-separation journey. It's also something that has been really transformational for my clients as well. It's about our brain, our thoughts, and the incredible power that we have to influence our internal direction even when we can't control the external outcomes. Because this episode is being released near Valentine's Day, I invite you to think about this episode as a love letter, not to anyone else, to you. To the version of you who's been fighting really hard, carrying a lot, showing up every single day, even when it feels impossible. This is a reminder that you have so much more power than you realize. And here's what I'd love for you to understand first. If you're a protective parent who has experienced family violence, coercive control, chronic stress, ongoing post-separation abuse, your brain has adapted to survive. Now that adaptation is not a weakness and it's not about being too emotional or not coping well enough. Rather, it's your brain doing exactly what it's designed to do, which is protect you. The problem is these kinds of survival adaptations, while they're fantastic for keeping us safe in genuinely dangerous situations, they can become obstacles when we're needing to think clearly under stress, communicate calmly with professionals, make strategic advocacy decisions, and to see possibility and benefit as well as risk. Your brain has likely become far more efficient at predicting threat than what it is at seeing opportunity. And I get it. I get it because predicting threat makes perfect sense when you're living with someone who's unpredictable or dangerous, and even when you're dealing with ongoing post-separation abuse. But now you're potentially needing to advocate effectively in a society, in a system that often misunderstands you. And if you're showing up in survival mode, that can work against you. But here's the hope with all of this. Our brains are constantly changing. This is called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is neutral. It strengthens whatever is repeated. Whether that repetition supports us or keeps us stuck. We can think of our brains as being like a forest. Every time we walk the same path through the trees, that path becomes more defined. The grass gets worn down, the earth gets compacted, so eventually it's just the easiest, most obvious, most automatic path to take. Even if it's not the most direct path. And neural pathways in our brain work very much the same way. Every thought pattern that we repeat creates a stronger pathway. And over time these pathways become our defaults. The paths that our brain takes automatically, especially when it's under stress. And here's what's sobering as well as empowering. Your brain is shaped by repetition, whether you choose it or not. So if you're not consciously choosing which pathways to strengthen, your environment is going to do that for you. That could be the horror stories that you're reading online, the worst case narratives that you're hearing about, messages from your former partner, extended family, or professionals who misunderstand you. All of that has the potential to shape your brain, unless you're consciously choosing something different. And that's not an abstract idea. We need a practical way to do this, especially in the moment when our nervous system is activated and old patterns are primed to take over. This is why I developed a framework specifically for protective parents navigating these high stress situations. It's called the STEAR Response Framework. STEAR, as in STAAR, the STEAR response framework helps you to understand and intentionally influence the link between the situation or the external trigger, your thoughts, which is your interpretation of the situation, your emotions, the feelings that arise from your thoughts, your embodied state, your emotions, your energy, how and where those things are showing up in your body and your nervous system, and the action that you take as a result of that. And the results are the outcome that you get. Let's talk about a real world example. You're somewhere in your court journey, and you need to have yet another meeting with a report writer. The automatic thoughts are this is bad. I don't think they believed me the first time. I don't think they like me. I know I said the wrong thing last time. This is just going to get worse for me. Those thoughts create panic, fear, despair. They show up in your body as a racing heart, shallow breathing, you feel it in your chest, a tightness. You can't think clearly. And what do you do? Maybe you send an emotionally reactive email back to your lawyer about the situation. Maybe you spend days spiraling. Maybe you avoid any and all preparation because it feels overwhelming and you've convinced yourself that no amount of preparation is going to help anyway. The result? You go in to the meeting with the report writer, unprepared, dysregulated, defensive, and your stress shows up in ways that can and will be misinterpreted. The outcome that you feared can become more likely, not because it was always inevitable, but because your internal state influenced how you prepared and engaged. Now let's look at an intentionally steered response. Same situation, but this time you're noticing the automatic fear response and consciously choosing a different thought. Those thoughts could be, I really don't know why we need to go through another report again, but I know there could be many reasons. This is an opportunity for me to clarify anything that was unclear first time round. I can prepare, I can regulate myself, I can approach this strategically. Those thoughts can still create some anxiety, and that's reasonable. But there's also feelings of determination. That doesn't mean that there's no fear in your body, but you're able to more intentionally regulate to do some breathing exercises, some grounding and mindfulness, some movement, reconnecting with your body. And what do you do? You might calmly respond to the update from your lawyer. You prepare for the interview. You might read over the previous report, looking over whatever might have been unclear, whatever you may not have articulated the way that you wanted to first time round. Practice regulation skills, seek support from people who are going to help you to prepare in a way that's positive and solution focused. And the result? You're going into the interview more prepared, more regulated, you're able to communicate more effectively. Even if the outcome isn't what you ideally want, you've given yourself the best possible chance of a better outcome, of an optimized outcome. Same situation, but different thoughts, and a completely different result. And this is the power of learning to steer your internal direction. Now, before we can do any of this work really effectively, there's something that I believe needs to come first, and that's the concept of worthiness. You are worthy regardless of what you've experienced, what you've been told, or what you've been made to believe. You don't have to earn worthiness. You don't have to be perfectly regulated, you don't have to be a perfect advocate, a perfect parent, have perfect outcomes. You are simply worthy because you exist. And I know that so many of you have had your sense of worthiness systematically stripped away by your former partner, by professionals, by extended family, by online narratives. All of that repetition has contributed to neural pathways that have reinforced feelings of unworthiness. Not because the messages were true, but because, again, repetition shapes belief. Part of this work is about consciously choosing to reinforce different beliefs. Not through fake positivity, but through intentional self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and a reclaiming of our identity. You are not who they said you were. You are not defined by the worst things that have happened to you. You are not the narratives that have been built around you without your consent. You get to choose who you become from this point forward. This is where affirmations come in. And I need to be clear here that affirmations are not magic spells, they're not about pretending everything's okay when it's not. But affirmations do support intentional neuroplasticity. They can help you to strengthen the thoughts and identity beliefs that support hope, agency, stability, capacity, self-worth. When you utilize affirmations, when you listen to them, when you repeat them, you're actively building new pathways. You're actively strengthening the direction that you want your brain to default to, even when it's under stress. Every time that you repeat an affirmation, even when it feels uncomfortable at first, you're creating that alternative pathway through the forest. And at first, it may feel internally uncomfortable. It might feel like you're hacking away through the jungle with a machete. And your brain is noticing this other well-worn pathway off to the side there that looks way more appealing. But over time, with repetition, the new pathway becomes so much more defined and can become your new default. Here's something that you might not realize. Living in survival mode doesn't just change your thoughts, it changes your identity, your personality. The version of you who has been living in survival mode for months or maybe even years, that's not necessarily who you actually are, but it's who you've had to become to survive. Let me unpack that in a little bit more depth. When you're in chronic survival mode, your brain doesn't just predict threats more efficiently. It starts to build an identity around that survival response. That can lead to you starting to think of yourself as an anxious person, or someone who struggles with conflict, perhaps someone who's not good at setting boundaries, perhaps someone who's, quote, too emotional, or the kind of person who gets overwhelmed easily. But the truth is that those things aren't permanent personality traits. They're adaptations. They're survival responses that have become so habitual, so well practiced, that they can feel like who you are. Your anxious vigilance that kept you safe when you needed to monitor an unpredictable partner. The conflict avoidance that protected you from escalation. Struggling with boundaries? That was your fawn response preventing further harm. The emotional intensity, that's a nervous system that's been operating on high alert for so long, it doesn't know how to return to baseline. Those things aren't character flaws, they're evidence of how hard your brain has been working to protect you. But when those survival adaptations become your identity, when you start believing this is just who I am, what happens is that your actions can become constrained by that identity. And that's often where people get stuck. You might have noticed that sometimes you know logically, cognitively exactly what you need to do. Logically, strategically, you might know that something is the right course of action, but you just can't seem to do it. Or you do it once, but can't sustain it. Or it feels weird or uncomfortable. This is the incongruence that you're feeling in your body between your current identity and the action that you're trying to take. For example, you might logically know that you need to set a firm boundary with your former partner about communication. You know it's the right thing to do, your lawyer has confirmed it, maybe even your coach. But every time you try, something gets in the way and stops you. Maybe it feels wrong, maybe it feels mean, maybe it feels rude, maybe it feels like you're being difficult or you're overreacting. Why? Because your identity is still firmly, quote, I'm someone who keeps the peace. Or, quote, I'm accommodating. Setting a firm boundary contradicts that identity. So even though you might logically know that it's right, it's fundamentally feeling misaligned with who you believe you are. Or you know you need to advocate strongly for yourself and your children. You know you need to communicate clearly and calmly about what you've experienced, perhaps abuse, without minimizing it. But when you start talking to someone, maybe a lawyer, maybe a report writer, you find yourself downplaying things, or maybe becoming overly emotional, or maybe shutting down completely. Why? Part of your identity might still be that you're someone who doesn't make waves, or that you're someone whose feelings are too much for others. Or what's the point because I won't be believed anyway? Advocating powerfully contradicts that identity. Or maybe you know you should really stop doom scrolling through the horror stories on social media and Google. Maybe logically you know it's reinforcing worst case thinking and increasing anxiety, but you can't seem to stop. You feel compelled to keep reading, keep researching, keep preparing, keep scrolling, keep preparing for every terrible outcome. Why? Because your identity has become that you're someone who needs to be prepared for disaster. Stepping away from that information feels dangerous to who you've become. This is why people often feel and say things like, I know what I should do, but I just can't. Or I tried, but it just didn't feel like me. Or I started off okay, but I just can't sustain it. Or I feel stuck. You're not broken, you're not weak, you're not failing. You're experiencing a natural tension between a survival-based identity and the actions that are required for strategic advocacy. The reality is you can't just force yourself to take different actions if your identity stays the same. It creates deeply uncomfortable internal conflict. It's exhausting and it's not sustainable. So we need to work on both levels, the action and the identity. And this is where intentional identity work becomes essential. Something I want to invite you to do right now is to imagine just for a moment the version of you that has more capacity. Not perfect, not superhuman, just more than what you've got access to right now. What does that version of you do differently? Maybe that version of you sets and maintains healthy boundaries without guilt or second guessing. Maybe that version of you responds to your co-parents' messages with calm clarity instead of emotional reactivity. Maybe that version of you walks into a court-related appointment feeling regulated, prepared, and clear. Even when you're worried or fearful. Maybe that version of you is less triggered by things that currently send you spiraling. Maybe that version of you no longer spends hours doom scrolling through family court horror stories because you've learned to be discerning about what you expose your brain to. Maybe that version of you trusts your own judgment more. Maybe that version of you knows how to pause, regulate, and calmly choose a response. Take a moment and really picture that version of you, feel that version of you. How does she move through her day differently? How does she handle conflict? How does she show up in professional interactions? How does she care for herself? That version of you is not a fantasy. That version of you is possible. The pathway to becoming that version isn't about willpower or just trying harder. It's about deliberately choosing your thoughts. It's about deliberately choosing your internal direction. It's about deliberately choosing to use tools such as the steer response framework consistently and intentionally. It's about using affirmations to support that work. It's about using neuroplasticity to your advantage instead of allowing it to work against you. Every time you choose a more helpful thought, a better feeling thought, you strengthen that pathway. Every time you practice regulation before responding, you build that capacity. Every time you set a boundary and maintain it, you reinforce that identity. Every time you choose to step away from content that reinforces helplessness and instead move toward content that builds agency, you're rewiring your brain. You're literally becoming that other version of yourself. One moment, one choice, one practice at a time. Some people can do this work on their own. They can read through the lessons in the blueprint, listen to the affirmations, practice the frameworks, make steady progress. Other people need support, and that's where coaching is invaluable. This is what I do when I coach my clients and what my team does. Yes, we work a lot on strategy. Yes, we help our clients to think through how to approach meetings with report writers, how to communicate with other professionals. But that's not all we do. So much of coaching is helping you with your thoughts. I coach my clients on their thoughts all the time. Every day, that's what we're doing. We work on reframing the automatic survival-based thoughts that are keeping them stuck. We practice choosing better feeling thoughts, not fake positive thoughts, but thoughts that preserve their capacity to act. We make space for more than one truth to be real at the same time. For example, this is genuinely hard, and you still have agency and choice. You're worried right now, and you can move forward despite the fear. The system has significant problems, and you can still advocate strategically within it. We practice moving away from survival-based thinking when survival is not actually under threat. We do those things because that's the work. That's what creates sustainable change. You can have the best strategy in the world. But if your internal state is one of panic, helplessness, and identity-level belief that you can't do this, then no strategy is really going to make a huge difference. Advocacy happens from the inside out. Which is why in our three-step framework, our three-step process to protective parenting, we have building our knowledge, growing our capacity, followed by advocacy. Coaching helps you to build the internal foundation that can then make the external advocacy possible. Coaching can help you shift from a survival-based identity to an identity that's rooted in agency, capacity, and worthiness. My team and I can help you to close the gap between who you've had to become to survive and who you need to become to thrive. And we do it through consistent, compassionate, trauma-informed thought work. Not once, not in a single breakthrough session, but consistently over time helping you build new pathways until they become your new default. I want to invite you to make space for the thought that that version of you with more capacity, the one that you imagined, that version of you is reachable. Not overnight, not without effort, but absolutely reachable. When you make the decision to consistently take the wheel, when you use tools like the steer response framework intentionally, not just once, but as a regular practice, when you utilize affirmations to support that work, when you leverage neuroplasticity to your advantage instead of letting it reinforce old survival patterns, that new, highly capable version of you becomes real. Some people can navigate that journey on their own, but if you're someone who struggles to do this work alone, if you find yourself knowing what to do but not being able to sustain it, if you keep getting stuck in the same patterns, if you need someone to help you see your blind spots and coach you through the thought work, that's where coaching support becomes essential. And whether that's coaching with me or coaching with someone on my team or another trauma-informed professional who understands this work, getting that support is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign that you're serious about becoming the version of yourself that your children need and the version that you deserve to be. But for right now, for this moment, it's enough to be aware, it's enough to notice, oh, I'm in a survival-based thought pattern right now. It's enough to ask, what would a more helpful thought be in this moment? It's enough to choose something different in that one moment. That's how change happens. One choice, one thought, one moment of steering yourself in a different direction. And then another and another. Until the new pathway becomes stronger than the old one. Until the version of you with more capacity isn't something that you're imagining anymore. It's who you're becoming until it's simply who you are. Now this brings me to why I'm releasing this episode now around Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is usually framed as being about romantic love. Flowers, chocolates, all of that commercialization, not that I don't enjoy flowers and chocolates. But what if this year you gave yourself a different kind of gift? What if instead you chose to invest in your own capacity, your own worthiness, your own ability to build the life that you want, that you deserve after separation? Life does not end after separation. This really is just the beginning of your next chapter. And you deserve to shape your brain in ways that are going to support you in creating the foundation for that next chapter. Shaping your brain in ways that support you and your kids. Not just to optimize parenting arrangements or financial settlements, but to create the life of your dreams as you move forward. To take back your power, to no longer have your default, your identity linked with what was done to you, linked with the trauma. So this is what I'm offering our amazing community, this Valentine's Day. For those of you who don't yet have access to the post-separation parenting blueprint, from now until midnight, the 16th of February, that's Australian Eastern Daylight Time. You can access this powerhouse evidence-based resource with a$200 automatic discount applied at checkout. So that's an automatic discount off the post-separation parenting blueprint. All of that includes everything that is in the blueprint, plus this entire new lesson on neuroplasticity, identity, and the STEAR response framework. There are comprehensive affirmation recordings in the resources section of module 16. So this has all been added new. Everyone who has access to the blueprint automatically gets access to everything that is updated. There are some examples of the steer response framework and a printable resource if you're the sort of person who wants to work through the steer response framework in a guided way, and free access to AI Danielle until December 2026. AI Danielle is my digital mind. She has my knowledge, my approach, my trauma-informed perspective. She's also updated now with the STEAR response framework. She's available 24-7 when you need support, guidance, someone to help you self-regulate when your human coach is not available. This is my Valentine's gift to you. Because I genuinely believe this work can and will change your trajectory if you engage with it actively. And if you're already a Blueprint member, you already have access to this new lesson inside module 16. The affirmation, resources, audios, the printable resources. It's all waiting for you in module 16. And as my gift to you, I'm opening up access to AI Danielle to all people who have access to the blueprint. That's right, everyone who has access to the blueprint is now going to have access to AI Daniel. Please be patient with this rollout. We're doing the best that we can behind the scenes, so you will be hearing from us if you have access to the blueprint but not yet have access to AI Danielle. Whether you have access to the blueprint already or not, whether you join as part of this Valentine's Day gift or not, I still have a gift for you. That is a free affirmation recording. This is designed to be something that you can listen to daily to help you to start building new pathways. Because I want you to experience what it feels like to be consciously choosing your internal direction. That's available by going to the website danielblackcoaching.com.au. When you go to the website, you will see the resources section in the main menu, and then you just need to navigate to free resources. That's where you'll find it. I'll also put a link in the show notes. To access the blueprint, again, you go to the website danielblackcoaching.com.au. I'll also put a link in the show notes. And remember that discount is automatically applied at checkout. You don't need to remember any codes. Before we go, I want to invite you to begin being increasingly discerning about the narratives that you're exposing your brain to. The reality is that not all support spaces are equally helpful. Some spaces can validate your experience without trapping you in victimhood. Some spaces can build your capacity and agency in a way that's really solution focused. Unfortunately, there are some spaces that reinforce helplessness, where there tends to be a focus on worst case outcomes. Spaces that can unintentionally reinforce an identity that revolves around victimhood rather than strength, capacity building, solution-focused paths forward. And remember your brain is learning from repetition, and this includes the stories that you are exposing yourself to repeatedly. So I invite you to ask yourself in any space that you are in, whether or not you're leaving those spaces, those conversations feeling more empowered or more hopeless? Is there room for nuance? Or is everything black and white and absolute? Are there success stories shared or are they primarily horror stories? Are there solution focused, credible, evidence based paths forward? Or is it venting without resolution? I'm not saying that you don't need and deserve validation. Absolutely you do. Your experience should be believed and taken seriously. But you also need spaces that help you to build capacity and move forward. Before we wrap up today's episode, there's something else that I want you to take away. And that is the thought, the reality that your brain is going to be shaped by repetition one way or another. But you can choose what you reinforce. You can build capacity, you can support your nervous system, you can strengthen more supportive beliefs, you can extend compassion to yourself, you can learn to steer your internal direction. Even when things are happening that you can't fully control. This is capacity building. This is the foundation for sustainable advocacy. This is how you show up as the most capable version of yourself for you and for your kids. And this Valentine's Day, I'm hoping that you give yourself the gift of that increased capacity. So head to the website, download that free affirmation recording. If you're a Blueprint member, dive into the new Module 16 lesson on neuroplasticity and learning to steer your internal direction. And if you're not a member of the Blueprint yet, but you've been thinking about it, this is your moment. Again, the Discount's automatically applied at checkout. You deserve to build new pathways. You deserve to reclaim your identity. You deserve to create the life that you want intentionally after separation. And my team and I are here to help you do it. Thank you so much for being with me here today. I'll look forward to chatting with you again soon.