Series Recap And Today’s Pivot

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host for this episode, Danielle Black. And this is part four of our Good Girl Contract series. So far, we've covered the naming of the contract and where it came from. In part two, we walked through what happened when we took it into adult intimate relationships. We've discussed some of the tropes. The oh so sexy wounded men in some of the film, some of the literature that we've read and that we've watched. Or the mysterious man, or the dark and broody man, or the neurospicy man, whatever the trope, the result was often the same. A moth to a flame, a perfect pairing, a match made in well, maybe not hell necessarily. Certainly not from the start, but certainly not heaven. At least certainly not in the end. And we did our thing. We overfunctioned our cute little asses off until we couldn't, or until we didn't want to, or for some of us until they grew tired of us and needed to swap us out for someone new. And it's worth saying here that there are very gendered elements that we will explore further in future episodes. But here at Danielle Black Coaching we also work with a lot of women who are separating from women, so we know only too well that what we're talking about here can exist in same-sex relationships too. If that's you, please know that I see you, that you're welcome here at the Post Separation Abuse Podcast, and at Danielle Black Coaching more broadly. Part three of our podcast series named the mirror problem, that the same nervous system that can struggle to set and maintain healthy boundaries can also struggle to receive them. You might have noticed that everything that we've covered so far has been a bit diagnostic. The patterns, the tropes, how they can show up, where they've come from. Today we're pivoting a little bit. We're going to talk about what interrupting the patterns created by the Good Girl contract can look like. When the contract is still whispering those sweet nothings, when the internal doubt is still there. Not always, but enough that you're never really sure when to expect it, and what it can look like and how it can feel to set and maintain healthy boundaries anyway. What's important for me to acknowledge here to let you know is that I'm not fully on the other side of this. I'm still in it in many ways, I'm still doing the work, and who knows, maybe I'll never be completely out of it. None of us who were unwilling signatories to the contract might ever get to a point where we're completely unaffected. But I don't think that we need to make that a problem, and I don't think that getting to a point of being completely unaffected really should be the goal. I guess what I'm saying here is that this is not necessarily a triumphant recovery narrative. It's really just me being honest. The truth is that I still have moments of struggle. I still hear the whispers of the contract every now and then, I still notice the discomfort occasionally when I set and maintain a boundary. And I do those things anyway. I do what I can to stare the contract down and say, Is that the best you got, baby? Come at me. That's what today is all about.

Invitation To A Bigger Conversation

SPEAKER_00 4:14

But before we dive more fully into this episode, I want to share with you a little bit more about this new conversation that we've been having. One that's going beyond post-separation abuse, beyond separation, even beyond post-separation parenting. It's a conversation around what we've been touching on here in the Good Girl Contract series. The fact that so many of us were trained long before we met an abusive or controlling partner to be good by being accommodating, useful, undemanding, responsible for everybody else's comfort, the list goes on. And as I've been sharing with you, I've come to think of that training as the good girl contract. I've got plans to share more about how that contract is formed, how it can continue to show up across our lives, and what it can mean to interrupt it. Not to prosecute all of our past decisions or the women that we were when we made those decisions, but to become more fully the authors of who are in the process of becoming, of who we want to become, to step more fully, more deliberately, more intentionally into that work. Because, you know, if I've learned anything on my journey, it's that what I'm navigating, and I think what we're all navigating, it doesn't end when the relationship ends, it doesn't end when we've sorted out the parenting plan or when we have final orders, it doesn't end when the court journey ends, and truly for me, I'm also learning that it doesn't even end when you're no longer co-parenting, when your child has aged out of the system, even, you know, the child that I share with my ex-husband is now nineteen and they have no relationship with their other parent. There's been no form of co-parenting for me for a while now. But that doesn't mean that I've stopped examining what it is that has happened to me, what I'm still navigating, what I'm still processing, and as we've unpacked through the episodes that we've discussed already, so much of what occurred, so much of what has impacted me, that started long before I met my ex husband. It started long before abuse in intimate relationships. Unpacking that has become an important part of my journey, an important part of interrupting that good girl training, as I said, what I've been referring to as the good girl contract. And if that speaks to something in you as well, no matter where you are in your separation journey, or even if you're not navigating post-separation, if you happen to have stumbled across this content from, you know, some other avenue, or maybe you've had somebody send this episode to you, you're also more than welcome. This is not just about post-separation, it's also just simply about being curious about how we've been trained and wanting to interrupt that, wanting to reflect on how that's impacted us and wanting something different moving forward. If that speaks to something in you, I'd love for you to join me and our other coaches and all of the other women that will be joining us on this journey. I'd love for you to join us. You can do that by heading to the website danielblackcoaching.com.au. You will see on the home page, early on in the home page, an area where you can register your interest. And I recognize that what I'm saying here is sort of a little bit loose and broad. You're probably thinking, okay, what exactly am I signing up for? And you know what? That's going to be revealed as we go along. There's going to be some conversations, you're going to be hearing from me in your inbox. There's definitely some things that I've got planned that I'm not going to um share all at once. And some of it that I'm actually still planning, I'm really excited about it. And again, post-separation, post-separation abuse, post-separation parenting, even motherhood is not a prerequisite for this work. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, hey, there's actually people in my life who I think might be interested in this, might benefit from this, please do let them know where they can put their name down as well. If you think that they'd also be interested or would benefit from being part of those conversations that we're going to be having together. Post-separation parenting is just one landscape in which the contract can become visible. But I think this work that we're doing together in terms of looking more deeply at the Good Girl contract, I think this really speaks to so many of us who are navigating intimate relationships, family of origin dynamics, friendships, work and professional authority, money, sexuality, aging and changing identity, motherhood or even life that does not include motherhood, and really a fundamental question of what we actually want for ourselves in our lives when our conditioning, our training is no longer the organizing factor of everything. And for those of you who are dedicated listeners of this podcast, I hope you know how much I appreciate you and how much I'd love to have you joining me with that other conversation, that other work as well, if it's something that you're interested in. Because you know, you know, like me, I know that so many of you have really learned to very deeply understand the abuse that you've experienced. I know that you've learned to navigate separation in oftentimes what is a very sophisticated way. I know that you've learned to protect your children to the best of your ability. But what then? What then? That's part of the conversation too. Who who are we beyond what has happened to us? Beyond the fight. The fight with former partners, the fight in the court system, and who are we beyond who everyone else has required us to be? I'm excited about having those conversations. I'm excited about where this work can take us because I'm excited to be stepping more fully into who I am and into my life and into what I want to be creating. And I'd love to extend that invitation to you. So again, if that's something that you'd be interested in exploring, please do go to the website danielleblackcoaching.com.au. Early on in that home page, you'll see where you can register your interest for exploring those conversations. I'd love to see you in that space.

What Boundaries Feel Like Inside

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Okay, now after that slight segue, on with the rest of the episode, where I'm about to be sharing with you some of the examples from my own life about setting boundaries and how that can show up, how that can feel, and how it's related to my conditioning from the Good Girl contract. Before we dive into the specific examples, I want to share what maintaining a boundary can feel like for me from the inside. I think there's a version of boundary setting conversations that can suggest that once you know what to do, then setting and maintaining boundaries becomes easy or comfortable, or you know, just another day at the office. Maybe for some people it does. And on some days, yeah, maybe that's what it can feel like. But that's not how it is for me every day. Setting a boundary, maintaining a boundary, holding the line, and honestly, really, probably even move too far ahead, because from the start it's also about acknowledging that a boundary needs setting. In my body, those things can sometimes feel like a tightness in my chest. So for example, before sending an email that I know that I need to send, and anticipating that it's not necessarily going to land well with the person on the receiving end, you know, I will feel it somewhere in my body. Now, again, not always, not even often, really, for me now, but definitely every now and then, and it does depend on the situation and the person that I'm dealing with. Sometimes it can feel like an urge to add paragraphs of explanations to what really needs to be a briefer message. Sometimes it can be the physical discomfort of not immediately responding to a message that comes through, even though I could technically drop what I was doing and jump to it straight away. And I know that there's so many of you listening that can relate to that, particularly when we're talking about co-parenting communication. For me, it can also manifest rehearsing in my mind what I would say if I was going to respond right then and there in that moment. And again, I know that so many of you know what I'm talking about here, and it's why I encourage so many of my clients to set up a separate email for their legal correspondence and to communicate with former partners only via a co-parenting communication platform with notifications turned off unless the kids are in the other parent's care. That way, you have a lot more control over when you check messages. It can be on your terms, not just checking messages, but when you also respond to messages. And an important caveat: this is not individual coaching, it's not individual advice for your situation. What I just mentioned may not be best for your situation, and it's also not legal advice, but for so many of the clients that me and the senior coaches here at Daniel Black Coaching, for so many of the clients that we work with, setting those boundaries around communication are incredibly important because unfortunately we can fall into a trap of thinking that the other person is eventually going to calm down, that the communication will calm down, that we won't keep being affected by the communication in the same way, and a lot of us learn the hard way that that doesn't happen. You know, the weeks, the months, the years go by, and the inappropriate communication, the relentless communication or the triggers within us can still be there. And if any of that's going on for you, I'd just like to gently suggest to you that that's a sign from your body that there's perhaps a boundary that you need to be considering. And if that's something that you think you would need some support with, then that's part of what we do here at Danielle Black Coaching. So the point of this being, what I was just mentioning here about communication, is that it's all well and good to not respond to something immediately. But for many of us, simply seeing that there is a message there can make the waiting, the waiting to actually read it, the waiting to respond to it, that can feel unbearable. And again, as I said, I've supported a lot of clients with this successfully, and I think part of why I've been so successful in supporting clients with this aspect of their post-separation journey is because I know what it feels like. I've been there and I was there for years and years and years. As I've said before, I made all the mistakes in my own situation, which is one of the reasons that I'm doing this work. The contract can also continue to show up in the mental replay of a conversation that you just held a boundary in. So whether it's an in-person conversation, a telephone conversation, a written conversation, you know, in email, text message, co-parenting app, whatever the scenario. Hours after the conversation ended, you can be still wondering what the fallout might be from what you've said, from the position that you've held. You might be wondering whether the other person's okay, whether they're upset with you, whether you should have softened the delivery, whether there were other words you should have used. You might wonder whether you should have relented, just scrapped the boundary, just dropped it in order to feel more emotionally safe. You can be anticipating some kind of retaliation, thinking that you know what, I just should have toed the line, I should have done something that would make me more likely to be liked, accepted, more likely to feel safe. The contract showing up can also be the specific emotional ache of that person probably thinks I'm difficult now, that can arrive after you say no to something that maybe in the past you would have said yes to. Maybe you say no to a particular invitation, for example. All of these things that I've just mentioned are examples of how your nervous system can react to a decision that your thinking mind, your prefrontal cortex, has already made and carried out. Your nervous system, which was trained by the contract to consider those decisions as dangerous, catches up and is then telling you, oftentimes in the language of a somatic sensation, so a physical sensation that you feel in your body, that the choice that you have just made is not safe. But we can reframe this. We can think about this in a different way. I think it's important that we do. Setting boundaries no. Let me go back to the start. Acknowledging that there's a gap, that there's likely a boundary that needs to be set, determining what that boundary is, then setting the boundary, maintaining the boundary, holding that line. None of that is the absence of discomfort. It's oftentimes at least initially, the presence of discomfort, sometimes significant discomfort, and making the decision to hold that line anyway, to hold firm anyway. Now the contract, the training that we've received, that wants us to reverse the decision in order to make the discomfort go away. To send another follow-up message, maybe another, to add context, to add an explanation or two, to soften the no that you might have just given someone, or to say, actually, you know what, yeah, you know, I could be available after all, yeah, sorry about that. You know, to apologize, to check in with the other person to make sure that they're okay. All of those things can be the contract's solutions to the internal discomfort. What we're practicing when we want to break free from the contract is to hold both that discomfort but also the decision that we've made. Acknowledging a boundary, setting or maintaining a boundary, we need to be able to hold those things at the same time. The discomfort and the decision. And to let the discomfort wash through us without acting on it, without that knee-jerk reaction of softening our boundary, of letting the boundary go. Because the discomfort is not evidence that we've made the wrong choice with our boundaries in any given situation. Rather it's evidence that we've made a choice that our nervous system was trained to consider dangerous. Now I'm

Holding The Line With Work Limits

SPEAKER_00 21:29

going to share some specific examples of what boundary setting and boundary holding can look like in my life right now. I think being specific can be more useful than talking about it in the abstract, and hey, we've shared so much on this podcast about my own journey that, well, why the fuck not? I also know that talking about my own lived experiences, and not as an unreachable professional, but as someone who's also a victim survivor and still does a lot of. In-depth client-facing work, I know that that has been helpful for so many of you on your own journeys. The things that I'll share with you are things that I currently experience, things that I currently do, even when I'm feeling uncomfortable emotionally. And yes, that's probably the first thing that we need to clear up and get out of the way. I still experience discomfort at times with setting and maintaining some boundaries. And as I said earlier, I expect that I probably always will to a certain extent. And I do think that that is just a normal part of being human, particularly for me with the level of the trauma and the abuse that I've experienced across my lifetime, not just in adulthood, but also in childhood. And importantly, knowing that there might be a level of discomfort at times for me, sometimes with particular boundaries, maybe even for the rest of my life, that doesn't stop me doing the work. Doing the work despite the discomfort has really helped me to expand my capacity for that inner work. Before we begin, I'd like to invite you to take a slow deep breath in, to hold it for a few moments, and then slowly release it. To loosen up your body, to unclench your hands, your jaw, to lift your shoulders up to your ears, to let them drop, to allow some of the tension that you might be holding in your body to ease, even if just a little bit. I'll start by sharing with you something that I've said to my husband Drew more than once. Sometimes when I get to a point of feeling at the edge of what I can carry emotionally, mentally, psychologically, I say to him words of the effect of if I don't take some time off work I'm gonna have to burn this business to the grand and go and work at Bunnings. Now the Bunnings part's interchangeable. Sometimes I say Bunning, sometimes I say Kmart, sometimes I say the public library, sometimes I say Maccas, sometimes I say a bookshop. My comment in those moments is not really about wanting to work at Bunnings or Kmart or the library. And I mean anyone who works at those places is doing genuinely important work in no doubt quite challenging conditions at times. This is certainly not to minimize those sorts of public facing roles. What the comment is for me in those moments is about a fantasy of having a particular kind of job. The kind of job where I can turn up, do the job, leave, get paid a consistent amount each pay cycle, paid leave, sick leave, superannuation, long service leave, other entitlements that are all taken care of by my employer very different to being self employed. It's not really about me wanting to work at Bunnings. It's about a specific fantasy of where the load, the responsibility ends. Someone else holding the weight when I'm not there where being sick doesn't mean losing income, where the ceiling of my responsibility is not how much I can manage to withstand to carry, but rather being about a particular job description with appropriate health and safety measures in most regards in Australia Because sometimes my work can feel relentless but it's not necessarily the relentlessness of it that's really the problem. I'll unpack that with a bit more detail because you might be thinking, well, how does this actually relate to the contract? Well, it relates because that particular fantasy is what the contract offers up to me when I'm exhausted. The thought is that if I performed less or worked for someone else or made myself smaller that my exhaustion would end, which I don't think is necessarily true. But for me specifically, the exhaustion that I feel at times is not purely because I've built a business, it's because sometimes I'm trying to function inside my business alongside the contract, and the contract wants me to come to the conclusion that the problem is the scale of what I'm doing when the actual problem is the terms that I'm doing it on. Every time the fantasy of burning my business down arrives, it's important data. Not data about my business, data about my current relationship with the contract and how it's infiltrated the work that I'm doing in my business. So what does it look like for me to set and maintain boundaries in that dynamic? Well firstly, it looks like noticing that I'm having that particular fantasy of r running away and burning the business down, naming it, not acting on it, not actually ending my business, but just taking note of what I'm feeling and acknowledging that I need to make some kind of change, that I need to be looking at my calendar and pulling at the areas where I've got an opportunity to step back a bit, creating a bit more balance in my life, making sure that I've scheduled extended time off in the school holidays on my terms, so that then I can come back to the work that I genuinely love doing. It can also be putting a pause on accepting new clients and delegating some tasks to one or both of my senior coaches. Relevant to this is that I don't work on weekends and I don't work on school holidays. The exception to that is if I'm working on a particular work-related project that's sort of more of a passion project than actual client-facing work. Now for me that boundary is not an optional nice to have. It has to be a structural feature of my business. Now, the discomfort can come because the contract actually really wants me to work 247, to check emails and DMs on the weekend, just to, you know, keep an eye on things, to respond to any messages that are framed as being urgent. Now all of that would functionally mean never taking any time off, never stepping away, never turning off, never letting my brain or my body or my nervous system rest, or focus on anything other than work, just always being overseeing things in some way, shape, or form. Essentially never getting to immerse myself in all of the other things in my life that I love, never getting to have any balance. So what I actually do is make sure that I step away. To help with that, I have two phones, one personal and one work. I don't have anything work related on my personal phone, except for the contact numbers of my senior coaches, because sometimes we do just chat. At the end of my workday, my work phone is switched off and put in a drawer. I log out of my work email at the end of my workday, and I log out of our online community space. This means that I won't see any emails or DMs if they come in, no notifications, no alerts. That's a healthy boundary, it's a necessary boundary for me, but again it's the opposite of what the contract tells me I should be doing. I've got a customer support and general admin superstar, Kylie. She handles all the correspondence that comes in from the contact page on the Danielle Black Coaching website. I don't see any of that unless it's forwarded to me, and there's a protocol that Kylie and I have in place so that she knows how to filter things appropriately. And she handles the timing of sending things to me as well. So if she knows that my calendar that week is really full on with coaching calls, clients in court, that sort of thing, she'll hold back an email until the following week. She uses her discretion. During the most recent school holiday period, Bridget, one of our senior coaches, handed all the general communication on our Stronger Braver Together online community platform. That's a platform that's available only to clients who work with us via a coaching package. I also arranged for Bridget to host additional group calls while I was away for clients who wanted to connect or needed support in my absence. None of this is about being unavailable to people who need me. Rather it's about me setting, maintaining and honouring healthy boundaries. It's about me being genuinely present with my current clients without burning myself out. And it's about being present with my husband and my children during my downtime and ensuring that my downtime really is actually downtime. Some of you might recognise yourself in what I was saying in terms of feeling the urge to check emails, messages, communication, particularly if notifications land. And again, this links to what I was saying earlier about why it can be so important to have really firm boundaries about that, about whether or not you have notifications turned on. The reality is that if the kids are with you, not with your ex, it's highly unlikely that anything that your former partner is going to communicate with you is genuinely urgent or time sensitive. It's certainly not going to be genuinely urgent relating to your kids. And particularly for those of you that have got parenting orders or maybe contemplating parenting orders, or even if you're just contemplating a parenting

Co-Parenting Messages Without The Spiral

SPEAKER_00 32:37

plan, it can be really worthwhile having a specific clause where you're talking about all communication being via a particular co-parenting app, unless in case of emergency or time-sensitive situation. In a genuine emergency or a time-sensitive situation, it can be appropriate to send a text message or to make a phone call. But again, the reality is that in the vast majority of emergencies, unless they're directly relating to your kids, you're not going to be the one that your ex is calling. So hence it makes sense to have some healthy boundaries where that's concerned. Because any notification coming in from our family wizard or app close or talking parents or whichever app you're using, any notification that comes in, that can cause your brain, your nervous system to be focused on that. Oh, I wonder what they want. Hmm, maybe I should just check. It can impact you in a way that means that you're not actually then present in other areas of your life to the point where you're like, oh fuck it, I'm just going to have to read the message because I can't concentrate on anything else until I've read it. And then when you've read it, well, sometimes you realise that it's really benign and you can stick it to one side. Other times it's something that is bothering you, maybe it's inflammatory, accusatory, whatever the case may be. And then you can't focus on anything else until you've responded. You can see from here how easy it is for boundaries to be eroded if we're not actually really diligent with the maintaining of them. It's not just about acknowledging that we need them, it's not just about setting them, it's also about being able to maintain them and putting in place some of the processes and protocols that make maintaining them easier. Even now, with these boundaries that I've had for many years, there can still be discomfort for me at times. That internal somatic discomfort, the so not just emotional discomfort, but discomfort that I feel in my body. The wondering whether a client will be upset or disappointed, the specific ache of what if people don't think I'm doing enough that I'm not committed enough that I'm not enough? The passing thought of just quickly checking client communication. All of that is the contract still. It's not gone. But I'm committed to making sure that it's no longer running the show. So all of that to say that my boundaries are important and they still sometimes cause emotional and physical discomfort when I maintain them, when I hold them, when I honour them. But I don't see that as evidence that I shouldn't be holding them. Rather, that's what the setting, maintaining, and honouring of healthy boundaries can feel like when you've been trained according to the Good Girl contract.

Protecting Capacity With Client Access

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Another boundary that I have is that currently there's no way for new clients or just any random person to access me directly. So, Kylie, who I mentioned earlier, she's the gatekeeper. Working with me has been an application-only process for a while, just simply because of the client load that has developed over the years. And currently, applications to work directly with me are closed. However, anyone who's interested in one-on-one coaching can connect with one of our senior coaches, Trudy or Bridget. The application process will probably reopen in a few weeks, and that's relevant to the timing of the release of this particular episode. And then anyone who is interested in working with me one-on-one or who would like Kylie to be triaging them to the best coach for them will fill in an application. Kylie reviews those applications, and the applications that are sent to me are the ones that have been determined to be the best fit for me, for my coaching style, for my specific expertise. Now, this is not about me being exclusive for the sake of being exclusive. Rather, it's just necessary because the work is intensive. The Danielle Black coaching business has grown significantly, and my capacity is finite. We also have other coaches on our team. Currently, that's Trudy and Bridget at the time of recording this, and it's really important to me and to our team as a whole that we match the right client to the right coach. That matters. Some potential clients might experience that application process as a barrier. Some might experience it as a personal rejection if there's a recommendation that they work with a coach other than me, especially if they were hoping to work with me directly. Some might experience it as a thought of, well, who does she think she is? And again, that can be part of the mirror problem that we unpacked in part three of this good girl contract podcast series, where the boundaries that other people have can sometimes be difficult to make space for, where my boundaries might be taken personally by someone and land harshly, which of course is never my intention. Rather, protecting my capacity this way is just really important. Holding this boundary, maintaining this boundary looks like me continuing to require applications rather than just having a book now button on the website, even though it might cost me clients. It looks like a filter being in place to ensure that clients are matched with the right coach. It looks like continuing to trust the process, even when I'm aware that some people won't be happy, and even when I struggle with feelings of wishing that I could personally work with everyone, help everyone. The application process managed by someone other than me protects me and the clients that I do work with. It's also important for me to say here as well that the way that our ecosystem works is that for anyone who works with one of our senior coaches, we're regularly having team meetings, and obviously in those team meetings we talk about anything and everything, but that can also include client matters. It can include one of the senior coaches asking for my input if they think that there's something going on for one of their clients that perhaps I've had some professional experience with. And for anyone who works with a senior coach via a coaching package, they have access to our online stronger, braver together community. That's a really safe and secure online space. It's not connected to social media. So you've got the opportunity to protect your anonymity to a much higher degree if that's something that's important to you. That's where people who are in that community, again, I might not be their primary coach, but they will still get to see updates from me, content from me as part of that community environment. We have fortnightly group video coaching calls, and each of the coaches on our team takes it in turns to host one of those calls. So that means that I'm in the rotation of hosting calls, Bridget's in the rotation, Trudy's in the rotation. So it doesn't really matter from that perspective who your primary coach is. If you're working with any coach via a coaching package, you can jump onto one of those regular group coaching opportunities. Again, they're held fortnightly for our coaching package members. And that way, someone who's perhaps not a direct one-on-one coaching client of mine would still have the opportunity to chat with me directly about something if they were curious about my take on a particular situation. And again, that's something that we put in place deliberately, not because we want to be more liked, not because we're worried that people will get upset if they don't get any direct access to me, but rather we just simply felt that it was the best way to utilize all of our expertise. You know, we're not individual little islands separate from one another in in terms of our coaching team. We really are quite genuinely a team, and and not just professionally, but also personally. So I'm often emailing, texting, and even having phone call conversations with both Bridget and Trudy. I consider them not just coaching colleagues, not just important members of the coaching team, but genuinely friends. Another boundary is Kylie, our customer service, admin, all the things, just the the whiz behind the scenes virtually. As I mentioned earlier, communication that comes in from anyone who's not a current one-on-one client of mine is handled by Kylie. Now that's you know, general correspondence through the contact page on the website. Anyone who's a one-on-one client of mine has my coaching email, which is obviously separate to the contact email on the website. Any one-on-one client of Trudy's or Bridget's has their particular

Sustainable Support Beyond One Person

SPEAKER_00 43:23

coaching email address. But for other inquiries, general inquiries, prospective clients, correspondence about the podcast, people wanting to come on the podcast, people wanting me to come on their podcast, customer service about the blueprint. Kylie handles all of that. And I don't see it unless there's something that she needs to flag with me, and even then I'm likely not going to see the actual email correspondence, rather, it's just an email from her asking me about something so that she can be sure that she's handling that request in the right way. Way. Now that boundary exists because my capacity to hold sustained deep coaching work with my current clients depends on me not being infinitely available to everyone else. For every minute, every hour that I would have to spend responding to general correspondence, that's a minute, an hour, potentially multiple hours based on the amount of communication that comes in, that I wouldn't be available for the clients that I've already committed to and who have committed to me as their coach. For me, the discomfort of maintaining and holding that boundary can show up in me being aware that some people might be annoyed that they're not getting to communicate with me directly. But I continue to hold that line and I continue to have Kylie filter the correspondence, even though I know that it's going to disappoint some people. I continue to simply trust that the people who are meant to work with me will find their way to me through the appropriate channels and will find their way to another coach on the team if another coach on the team is genuinely a better fit. Maintaining that boundary, holding that boundary, honouring that boundary also requires me just acknowledging the discomfort that I sometimes feel, again, both emotionally and also just held in my physical body. The discomfort that can come with not always being available, um, and yet still making that conscious decision to refuse to let that discomfort be in the driver's seat of the decisions. And it's important for me to say here that Kylie is not at all a barrier between me and my people, you know, the the Danielle Black coaching people and community. Rather, Kylie is what makes it sustainable. She's what makes it possible for me to be genuinely present and to keep doing the work in the ways that actually serves our community rather than me sacrificing myself on the altar of being available all the time and being all things to all people. This is also a big reason that I created and maintained this podcast, the post-separation parenting blueprint, and our digital coach AI Danielle. Because I was aware that there's just so many people in our community, in our society, in our world navigating post-separation abuse and post-separation parenting dynamics who need and want support, and there's only one of me, there's only one of Trudy, there's only one of Bridget, and I wanted to help. I wanted to help in as many ways as I possibly could, and not from a contract driven, you know, not from a place of my worth being connected to helping people, but just because I genuinely wanted to help people. And I know that this is something that has come up in other podcast episodes before, and I think for anyone who works with me one-on-one, it's something that they know about me, and hopefully if you're a regular listener, it's something that you will have picked up about me as well, and that is that my own personal lived experience of my post-separation journey is incredibly influential with the work that I do, but also with the things that I create. I'm not just a person who's out there creating content for the sake of creating content. I regularly reflect on what I experienced on my journey, and I know that because I experience something, it's highly likely that there's other people who are experiencing something really similar to what I did. And I know I've said this before, but I just remember how lonely I felt, how misunderstood I felt my situation was. And oftentimes, to be honest, I really didn't spend much time talking about my situation or what I was experiencing to anyone much at all because, well, partly because it took me a long time to actually really make sense of what I was experiencing myself, and then you know, there's understanding it, and then there's actually being able to articulate it in a way that someone else might be able to make sense of it. And then there's the reality that just so many people in our community have no fucking idea when it comes to family violence, post-separation abuse, particularly when that violence and when that abuse is not physical, when it's not a black eye, when it's not a broken bone, when it's not something that you can photograph an injury of, or when it's not a death threat in writing, you know, the vast majority of family violence and post-separation abuse is not physical, it's not the obvious stuff that anyone's gonna look at and say, oh yeah, wow, that's abuse. So much of what I dealt with was so subtle and nuanced that I mean, for years I gaslit myself about what I was actually experiencing. And so I deliberately did not put myself in situations where other people could gaslight me and talk me out of what I was going through. And so it's from that basis that I've created the resources that I've created, the content that I've created, because I know that I'm simply not going to be able to help everybody that needs help. It's just the reality. And yet I nevertheless want to be putting things out there into the world that people can access if at all possible. So I do reflect on that, you know, when the discomfort of holding some of those boundaries comes into place, you know, not being available to everyone, just the realities of that. I think about the other things that I've created, I think about the information that's on the website, the information that's in this podcast, the information that's contained in the post-separation parenting blueprint, AI Danielle, our digital coach who's available 24-7 and who does not have access to the internet, you know, doesn't have access to the World Wide Web, but rather is primarily and really only trained on my content. You know, I think about those things, and it does help to ease some of that discomfort. It helps me to recognise that, yeah, you know what? Just because I'm not satisfying the terms of the contract that I was trained in, just because I'm not, you know, sacrificing myself to be available to everyone all the time, that doesn't mean that I'm not helping people, that doesn't mean that I'm not still doing something that's really worthwhile. I'm just doing it in a way that's sustainable, and that's what's healthy. That's what makes me able to actually continue on with this work. So much can be activated when we're acknowledging, setting, and maintaining boundaries. So much of the contract training. Be available, be pleasing, don't say no, but also don't be too much. Be just the right size, don't take up too much space, but make sure you're always on. Accept less, don't disappoint. And we haven't even got into the pricing of services yet. That's just I'm not even going to touch that to be honest. But I'm sure you can understand just from the just from what we've unpacked about availability being available or not being available, or how is that availability managed, I'm sure you can understand that there's a heck of a lot of emotional and somatic discomfort that comes up when I'm navigating the pricing of services and courses. So now you know some of the boundaries that I'm maintaining and holding each day, and I've spoken about some of the discomfort that can still come up for me. And each of those boundaries is still set, still maintained, still honored, even though the contract can sometimes be whispering sweet nothings in my ear, even if I'm dealing with some discomfort with it, and that's what boundary holding actually looks like and feels like in real time. It's not the absence of discomfort. Rather it's the presence of discomfort and just doing it anyway. Holding the line anyway. Now I'm going to say something that has actually been running sort of underneath this whole series so far, this good girl contract series of our podcast.

“Good” As Manageable And Interchangeable

SPEAKER_00 53:30

I think it can change what interrupting the contract looks like, what it's about, what it what it looks like, what it feels like. Just in case you're thinking this is just more good girl deprogramming content, which I don't think it is. With all of the reflection that I've done on this, I've come to the conclusion that I don't think the contract, the good girl training, I don't think it was ever about making us good. Good was the surface story. Surface level, superficial. And for those of you who know me, you know I'm a lot of things, but I'm not surface level or superficial. Good is the word we were given to describe what we were being trained toward. It sounds like a virtue, something to aspire to. And it sounded like the reward would eventually be safety, acceptance, belonging, love. But the mechanism underneath was something different. And I think we need to be able to see it clearly because otherwise we'll keep misunderstanding what interrupting the contract can actually really give us. I don't think the contract's purpose was to make us quote good. I think it was to make us manageable and ultimately interchangeable. Let me unpack that because I know it might be a little bit abstract. A man who is operating from the kind of entitlement that is a complement to the training of the contract doesn't have to tune into the specific woman that he's with. He doesn't have to know what makes her different from every other woman that he's known, because the contract training has calibrated her and every woman like her to the same generic profile, which means that her needs can be inferred from what women in general want and need. Her upsets can be predicted from general knowledge of women's sensitivities, her presence can be met with the same behaviour that would have worked with the previous partner and the one before that and the one before that and the one before that and so on. What the contract produces is not a good or pleasing woman. It produces an interchangeable woman, a woman who doesn't require the specific work of Bang Seen. A woman whose specificity has been pre sanded off so that she can just slot into the same shape as every other woman who's been shaped by the same training, which means the labour that she provides is extractable precisely because it's generic. It's a lot easier to extract from a woman whose specificity has been sanded off, sanded off to the extent that any similarly shaped woman could just simply do the same work. Imagine we're in a movie. Imagine the credits at the end of that film. The male lead has a name, so do his friends, his rivals. Every man in the film is named, but the woman that he sleeps with in the second act is quote girl at the bar. The woman he leaves at home is quote wife. The woman who serves him coffee is quote waitress. The woman he works with is quote co worker. The contract produced a dynamic in which every man gets to be named and every woman is a function. The contract is what trains us to accept that in our lives, in our actual lives, to be wife, to be mum, to be girlfriend number two, to be roles rather than to be named. So what we're walking towards together in this series is not to challenge being quote unquote good. You know, it's not to become quote bad, it's not to become naughty, it's not to become a rebel, it's not to unleash some cutesy infantilized version of misbehaviour. Because those framings, I think, can still operate inside the contract's own moral vocabulary. The actual intervention, the actual interruption, I think, is different, it's bigger. The intervention is to be named, to become so specifically, unmistakably you that you cannot be substituted for another woman. To claim the details of who you actually are, your likes, your dislikes, your passions, your pet peeves, your specific preferences, your boundaries, the particular texture of your presence that no other woman in the world has. And none of that is about being difficult. It's not about being demanding, it's not about being too much. Rather, I'm talking about us being specific, which incidentally is what the contract has trained us not to be. So for example, with me, I prefer staying at home in my PJs as opposed to going out to parties. But if I'm at a party, I'm the kind of person who would talk to one person all night in the corner as opposed to mingling with all the people. I'm actually very introverted. I drink whiskey straight or with a huge chunk of ice depending on my mood. I don't need it fancy, I just like it good. I spend good money on good whiskey because I like it. I love bushwalking, but I also love luxury hotels. I'm covered in tattoos, and my nails are often really well manicured. I'm highly educated, I use big words, I know what they mean. I also swear, sometimes a lot. Sometimes people struggle to reconcile all of those things. Sometimes people don't really know what to make of the specifics of me, and we've really only touched the surface, obviously. There's there's a lot more to me than just the things that I've mentioned. But every one of those details, all of the things that makes me me, makes me not, quote, woman three in someone else's credits. All of those things and more are what make me Danielle Black, a specific woman. What the contract had me doing for so many years was hiding a lot of that, sanding it off, softening

Becoming Specific Like Whiskey

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

it, making myself easier to categorize in categories that other people felt comfortable with. Now, being specific can bring a lot of vulnerability, it can feel dangerous. Being interchangeable can feel like you're slowly losing your colour, fading into monochrome, but also because you're not really being genuinely seen, it can also feel a bit safer. Which brings me to the line that you probably would have heard before because it's, you know, not something that I made up myself. And that line is I would rather be one person's shot of whiskey than everyone's cup of tea. That saying is telling us that anyone's cup of tea is essentially like anyone else's cup of tea. It's fine, it's agreeable, it's comfortable, it's a known quantity. I'm certainly not saying tea is bad. But in this example, in that particular line, what we're talking about is the tea being interchangeable, which is precisely the problem. Pleasing, agreeable, and functionally identical to everyone else shaped by the same training. But whiskey's different. Whiskey has a particular distillery, a batch, a specific profile, a character, not everyone likes it, and that's not a bug, not a flaw. That's what makes it whiskey. If everyone liked it, it wouldn't be whiskey anymore. It would be tea. Sometimes whiskey burns, but it burns because it has something specific to burn with, which is what can make it so enjoyable to those who like it. With this metaphor, being whiskey is not about being disliked, it's not about being bad, it's not about being rebellious. It's just about being unmistakably you, which some people will love and some people won't, and both are okay. The audience that I am for will find me because I'm me. The audience that I'm not for will find someone else. And both outcomes are fine. Both are okay, both are correct. And in the meantime, I refuse to become more comparable, more palatable, more generically acceptable simply to be more likable and more consumable. Because that would be the contract being alive and well, and well, frankly, fuck that. So I'd like to invite you to be increasingly specific in your own life, to like what you like without justifying it, to refuse what you refuse without softening it, to be the woman whose presence in a room cannot be summarized, filed, categorized, or replaced. And that is what interrupting the contract actually looks like from the outside. From the inside it feels like coming alive.

Closing Thoughts And Thanks

SPEAKER_00 1:02:56

Thank you so much for being here with me for this conversation. As you know, as I say so often, I truly value your time. I truly appreciate deeply that you're willing to sit with the things that I've been sitting with and reflecting on and thinking about and wanting to share with you here in this space. I really appreciate the fact that you're willing to reflect on those things to consider different perspectives to some of the things that we've spoken about. I'll look forward to chatting with you again soon.