Recap And Widening The Lens

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, welcome back to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm Danielle Black. This is part five of our Good Girl Contract series. Part one is where we named the contract and discussed where it came from. Part two of the series was where we discussed what happened when we took the contract training into adult intimate relationships. Part three named the mirror problem. The way that struggling to acknowledge the need for boundaries, the ability to set and maintain healthy boundaries, can also create a dynamic in which we can also struggle to accept the healthy boundaries of other people. Part four walked through what holding boundaries can look like in real time, and I gave some real life examples of how the contract's training can continue to show up for me. And the fact that no matter where we are in our journey, whether we're out of an unhealthy relationship, whether we're in or out of the court system, whether we're still co-parenting to any significant extent or not at all, none of that means that the training of the contract disappears. And as I think was clear from some of the examples that I gave of my own life, if we don't acknowledge the contract, if we don't address the way that it shows up for us, for many of us, it will continue to play out in some way, shape, or form, no matter where we are on the post-separation journey, and importantly, it can have an impact on women who are not navigating post-separation abuse, they're not in the court system, they may not have children. This work is relevant for so many of us. In part four, we also dove into a reframe. A reframe of the contract's purpose that it was never really to make us quote good. Rather, my take, my view, is that it was ultimately to make us interchangeable. Rather than being specific, rather than being named, we became a function, much like a dishwasher. We served a purpose with what we did, and we could be swapped out whenever needed. Everything that we've been unpacking so far has been about us, you and me. Our histories, our patterns, what the contract has done to us and how we can interrupt it in ourselves. And today we're widening the lens because the reality is that the contract does not stay contained just to ourselves, to our own inner lives. Rather, it's also operating in our relationships right now in ways that you know maybe we have not examined all that deeply. It can still be operating in your relationship with a former partner. It can show up in your parenting arrangements, in the decisions that you're making about the parenting arrangements. It can also be showing up in how well you are or aren't advocating for yourself and even for your kids. And it can also be operating in what your children are seeing, what they're learning from you. The contract did not start with our former partners. And that means that it doesn't end when the relationship with a former partner ends, and what our kids might be watching and witnessing right now is potentially a mother that is still operating from the terms of the contract, or for some of us a mother who has begun the work of interrupting it. What our kids can inherit from us depends on which one of those things that they're seeing. Today we're going to look at that a little bit more closely, and it's important to take this gently. Some of this might land a little bit differently from the other episodes. Retrospective work, so just simply reflecting on the past, can be easier in many ways. Reflecting on and identifying problematic, unhealthy patterns that operated in past relationships, relationships that have ended, can feel much easier than identifying and acknowledging problematic patterns that is operating for us right now in our current life. That can feel a bit challenging, that can feel a bit confronting. And again, as I've said a number of times on this podcast, please do not take anything that I say and use it against yourself. That's not why we're having these conversations. It's also really important that I say that everything that we're going to discuss, I've done. The patterns that we're going to be describing, I've lived them. This is not an episode where I stand above everybody with my thoughts and and the content and just point at it from afar. I've been in it, as we've learned from the the previous episode, part four, I'm still in it in many ways. Before we jump into that work, I'd like to put forward an invitation. If something in this conversation is helping you to understand patterns that maybe you have felt on some level, but you've struggled to name what you've been experiencing, struggled to put words to it, to articulate it, I've created a free resource to help you explore the Good Girl contract a little bit more deeply. It's called The Contract You Never Agreed To, and it introduces you to what I consider to be the master clause of the contract. The hidden ordering of things that teaches girls and women to give other people's judgment greater authority than their own. You can choose the written guide. There's also a private podcast audio version for those of you who prefer to listen. You'll find both at Danielleblackcoaching.com.au. When you sign up, you'll also join a separate mailing list where I'll be sharing more about the Good Girl contract and this developing body of work. Again, that's at Danielleblackcoaching.com.au and there's also a link in the show notes. All right back to the episode.

Why Patterns Persist After Separation

SPEAKER_00 7:21

I'm going to start with the assumption that most, if not all, content in the post-separation space is operating from, and then I'm going to challenge it a bit. The assumption in the post-separation space is that once the relationship ends, healing begins. Once the harmful partner, the abusive partner, is no longer in the daily equation when you're not living under the one roof, then our patterns, the problematic patterns, the thing, the patterns that have been having a negative impact on our life, on our thinking, on the the decisions that we make, that those things will resolve. That we'll feel our feelings, work through them, and be able to gradually rebuild life on our own terms. Now, for some of us, in some ways, that that can absolutely be true. I'm certainly not saying that it's impossible for everyone, but I do think that it misses something really important, and that is that the patterns that so many of us have been operating from during the relationship didn't actually begin with that relationship. Rather, many of them began in childhood. Now this means that removing the relationship from the equation doesn't remove the patterns. It just changes what those patterns get attached to. Our nervous system does not stop overfunctioning because the person that it was overfunctioning for is no longer physically present in our house. Rather it can look for the next thing to overfunction toward. And in post-separation life, the most available candidates for that overfunctioning are the former partner in the form of ongoing co-parenting communication and arrangements, our children, in the form of over-anticipating needs, over-managing their lives, the professionals in the family law system, in the form of over-explaining, over-preparing, over-accommodating, and in ourselves, our relationships with ourselves, in the form of relentless self-improvement work that just never really seems to end. The mechanism is the same, the patterns are the same, the muscle that we're working is the same, but the object has slightly shifted. And something that I've been reflecting on is that life post-separation can actually intensify the way that the contract training shows up rather than actually resolving any of it. Because we've now got multiple things to manage, maybe more than what we did when we were still in the relationship. Our former partners' expectations and needs and demands, our children's needs, the lawyers' requirements, the assessment of a report writer, the extended family's opinions, the list goes on. All of which can activate the clauses of our training simultaneously. Be pleasing, don't disappoint, read the room, anticipate what others require, perform highly, place other people's judgment, opinions, emotions above your own. Never say no. Make yourself indispensable. And so on. The contract is not operating less after the relationship ends, but rather in many cases I think it's operating even more. There's more people to manage, more decisions to make, more emotional weather to be tuned into, and the stakes for ourselves and for our kids can be actually in many ways much higher. If you were the one to leave the relationship, the leaving was necessary. It was hard, it was courageous, but it didn't, on its own, interrupt the contract. Because the good girl contract was never really about your former partner. Rather it was about the training that made you the person that your former partner selected. And this means that the work of interrupting the contract is a separate project from the work of leaving a relationship or from healing from all things post-separation. I don't think it necessarily matters one way or the other whether we were the ones that did the leaving or whether we were the ones that were left, although I know that there can be different layers of hurt. A lot of women arrive on the other side of a really difficult separation expecting everything to be a lot better, that that the ending of a unhealthy relationship, that that's solved a lot of the problems. And then they find that that's just not necessarily the case.

Pity-Driven Parenting Agreement Traps

SPEAKER_00 12:21

I want to name one specific pattern now because I think it's a dynamic in the post-separation space that is not regularly discussed, but it's something that I see constantly in my coaching work. Many women, mothers, well past the point of separation, sometimes years past, agreeing to parenting arrangements not necessarily because they're afraid of their former partner, although that can play a part, but for many women, it's more so because they actually feel sorry for him. So let me unpack the internal experience of that. It can sound like in a coaching situation when I'm gently challenging why they're agreeing to something or why they're proposing something, it can sound like the client saying to me he's lonely. He doesn't have anyone else, his family doesn't really support him. He'll be upset if I don't agree to this. He's trying and I don't want to make things harder for him. The kids want to see him and he's their father. He's not really that abusive. He's never hit them. Surely they need their dad. Aren't I doing something wrong, maybe even breaking the law by not coming to agreement with him, by not agreeing on the parenting arrangements? What choice do I have? Every one of these is contributed to by the contract. The overfunctioning for the former partner's emotional state during the marriage the overfunctioning for the emotional state of the former partner that occurred during the relationship is now overfunctioning for their emotional state after the end of the relationship. But now the currency has slightly changed. It's no longer the love of the former partner that we're trying to earn. Rather, we're wanting to provide relief for them, comfort, ease. Oftentimes because underneath it all, the ease and the comfort of a former partner when we share children with that person, well, we can be fooled into thinking that that's going to give us peace. And that the peace that it brings is going to produce a temporary sensation of having made the post-separation situation work. Pity-driven capitulation is one way that the contract can show up post-separation. The terms are the same, but the currency has changed. We're not trying to earn the love of the former partner. We're trying to keep them on an even keel, give them some kind of emotional relief because we think it's going to bring us peace. It's us working double time to make the post-separation dynamic easier for us and for our kids. At least that's what we think that we're going to achieve. And the pattern is often invisible to the woman who's perpetuating the pattern. Because it often doesn't show up as fear. Fear-based capitulation is well documented in coercive control literature. You don't have to look very far to find conversations about women who agree to inappropriate or unsafe parenting arrangements because she's terrified of the escalation that would follow from saying no. That's very real, that's very documented, and it does deserve the attention that it receives. But pity-based capitulation is much less discussed, and it's often the pattern that persists long after separation, partly because it doesn't actually feel or look like fear, and therefore it doesn't trigger a protective instinct. In those situations, we're not actually being coerced, we're not being threatened, we're choosing from what can feel like our own values to accommodate someone that we once loved and who now appears to be struggling. Except we're not really choosing in those moments. We're still operating from the contract, and the contract doesn't care whether the currency is love or fear or pity. And again, as I said at the start of the episode, none of this is an accusation. This pattern was in me too. There were arrangements that I agreed to in the years after my first marriage ended that I partly agreed to because I felt sorry for my ex-husband. Sometimes I capitulated on things because I was afraid. Now I'm not going to dive into the details because I'm not sure that the details in this situation are really the point. But rather I'm just wanting to provide some honesty of that pattern. The fact that I did this well after I understood intellectually that the relationship needed to end, well after I could name what had happened to me. There were still moments where I pitied him, and that pity produced accommodations that I would not agree to today, with everything that I now know about how the contract was operating. What I didn't see at the time was that the pity wasn't really about him. Rather, it was about the muscle that had been overfunctioning for his emotional state for years, still doing its job. And he didn't even have to ask. But I do have compassion for who I was back then and for what I was navigating and for what I was not able to see at that point in time. So if you're recognizing part of you in what I just mentioned, in terms of that, you know, capitulating because you're feeling sorry for your former partner, or if you're capitulating from something that's not fear, then please know that you're not alone. You know, that was me. So many women that I have worked with and am currently working with are right there with you or have been there. And the recognition of that, that's not where the story ends, but it rather can be the beginning of something different. You know, the first step is actually acknowledging that pattern, it's in recognising that pattern. So a specific example of what pity-driven capitulation can look like in post-separation life, because I know that sometimes a specific example can help make it more recognizable. It can be extending your children's time with the other parent because the other parent says that they don't see the children enough, even when the current arrangements are working for the kids. Agreeing to changes in the schedule at short notice because the other parent is disappointed. Even when the children's routines and schedules, or your routine or schedule, will be disrupted. It can look like softening communication about significant issues that are important because you don't want the former partner to feel attacked. Even when the softening can mean that the issues don't get properly addressed. It can look like not requiring proper agreements or documentation because you're worried about that landing harshly with the other parent. Even when the lack of proper agreements and the lack of documentation might cost you, particularly if you end up in the court system, could cost you or your kids later on. It can look like explaining and re explaining things to your former partner that, on some level, you know damn well that they actually. Understand. And so you're continually providing that emotional labor. It can look like managing the emotional response of the other parent regarding major decisions about the kids. Again, taking that emotional labor and making it yours. It can look like backing down on a position that you're holding about parenting arrangements, parenting arrangements that are age and developmentally appropriate, because holding on to that position would impact your former partner emotionally. They'd be disappointed, they'd be upset, they'd be lonely. Even when your proposal, your position is right and supported by the developmental and attachment science. All of those things is how the contract can show up in the post-separation space. And all of those things can cost our kids something. It can teach our children that their needs are secondary to the other parents' comfort. And it can teach the children that their primary caregiver, their mother in many cases, is not going to be the person who advocates for them when it matters most. Now again, if you're recognizing yourself in any of those examples, please know that none of that recognition that you might have is evidence of your failure. Rather it's just evidence that the contract has been operating still, which is what this whole podcast series is about. And it doesn't have to end here. We can work

How The Contract Reaches Your Kids

SPEAKER_00 23:40

with this. Let's widen the lens a little bit now. And I will say something again that we need to be gentle with because I know it can be challenging to think about. That is that our kids on some level are often watching us. That can sound a bit creepy. I'm not meaning it in a way that they're consciously analysing us, not sitting in judgment, but rather they're oftentimes absorbing every day. The parenting arrangements that we agreed to, the conversations that we have with the other parent, the softening of our language and our voice when we talk to the other parent, every decision that shifts to accommodate the desires, the wishes, the comfort of the other parent. What they're absorbing is not necessarily limited to the specific decision. Rather, they can also be absorbing who we are in relation to the other parent. And this is where we can bring this back to the reframe that we unpacked in part four, because I think what our children can be absorbing, it's more precise than just my mum manages my dad's feelings, though that can be part of it. But rather, more specifically, I think what they can be absorbing is my mum is a function in this household. My dad has preferences, needs, moods, opinions, and my mum's job is to organize around all of that. Now that can mean that what our children are being taught in many ways at a level below conscious awareness and analysis is that women are functions and men are people with needs. That women are the ones who make the arrangements that let men be specific, that our specificity is not required for the household to function, but men's specificity, dad's specificity is what the household functions around. This can be how the contract is passed on to other generations, how it can be reinforced. Children learning that women are functions. Men get to be the one with the needs, and the women are the ones who cater to those needs. And this is exactly what the contract exists to teach the next generation, not just through instruction, but through demonstration on a daily basis in many cases. But it's not spoken necessarily in those words, it's not explicit to that level, it's not being taught deliberately, but it is often being transmitted at the level of felt experience, which is how our kids learn most of what they actually learn from us, not from what we say, but from what they see us doing every day in thousands of small moments, before they have the language to describe what they've absorbed. And where does it take us? Well, we often see it showing up in our kids. And I know that this is true for so many of you, including many of the clients that we work with here at Danielle Black Coaching. This is oftentimes things that clients bring to coaching. They're worried about their kids because their kids have started displaying a pattern of prioritizing the other parent's feelings, starting to manage the feelings and the behavior of the other parent, starting to read the moods of the other parent, softening their own preferences to accommodate the other parent. This is how our children, and in particular our daughters, learn the shape of the contract training directly. They've been shown by us, their mothers, that this is what women do. This is how women love, this is what a woman is, and critically, this is how women disappear into being a function. Wife, mum, girlfriend, roles that can be filled by anyone with the right training. And our sons can learn it too, but it can be expressed differently. Sometimes it can be expressed as our sons protecting us, their mothers. Sometimes it can be expressed as them taking on the emotional labour of the household themselves. Sometimes the beginning of a similar overfunctioning pattern that will show up in their own future relationships, but our sons can also absorb something else. They can also absorb that women are the ones who organize themselves around men, and that his own specificity, his own preferences, his own complexity are the things that his future partner should make herself available to. Not because he's intentionally learning that, but because he's watching it every day in his own house, played out by his own parents, whether his parents are living under the one roof or not, which is how the contract passes forward, not through our daughters alone, but through daughters and sons. Our daughters learning to become interchangeable, learning to become functions, to overfunction for others and underfunction for themselves, and our sons learning to select for a woman who is those things. And then the mother becomes upset that her children are behaving this way, that they're siding with their father, that they're feeling sorry for the other parent, that they're prioritizing the ease and the comfort of the other parent over their own feelings and emotions, that they're not seeing the other parent for who and what they really are, which is understandable. I know how painful that can be to watch. And it's also structurally striking because the mother is upset that her children are doing exactly what she unintentionally trained them to do. Yeah. I know that lands hard, doesn't it? And this is absolutely not a judgment of you. And I do encourage you to take this gently if you're recognising this in yourself and in your own children, because I know how easy it is to start prosecuting and persecuting yourself for what you've inadvertently demonstrated to your children that is now alive and well in them that you're seeing play out, that you might then be actually getting really upset and irritated about, and then that realization that hang on a second, this is not a fault that my children have just developed within themselves that you know it hasn't been beamed into them out of nowhere. It's part of what I've taught them without realizing that that's what I was teaching them. That's hard. That is hard to reconcile the fact that our kids might be showing us patterns and that we actually might have been part of that training of those patterns. But again, we do not want this landing as blame. Rather, it's a recognition, it's an acknowledgement, and when we can keep it as that, then change is possible. But it is important that we recognise that so many of our children are doing what they've been trained to do and that we have inadvertently been part of that training in many cases. And that means that we can also be the person who can interrupt that pattern. The recognition of this is not evidence that we've failed our children, but it's the beginning of the work that can give our kids something different. There's no scenario in which recognizing a pattern too late is worse than not recognising it at all. Noticing what has been happening even years into it. That's the beginning of that interruption work that can become possible from this point forward. I'm not telling you that you've harmed your kids. I'm telling you that the training of the contract has been possibly transmitting quietly, even if you thought that those dynamics of your past relationship were over simply because the relationship's over, you're not in that relationship anymore, you're no longer living under the one roof. Now if blame, guilt or shame is landing in you, if some part of you is spiraling into so it's my fault. I've I've damaged them, I've caused the harm, I'm the problem. Well, I want you to know that that can also be the contract talking because the contract doesn't want you to see it, which is why the exact moment that you start to see the pattern, well, the contract training's going to give you an alternative frame to turn the recognition against yourself, to spiral into that shame and blame. And I want you to please refuse that. If you're listening to this and and there's been recognition, however uncomfortable that is, it is not evidence that you failed. It's the beginning of the work that interrupts that intergenerational pattern that stops that pattern from continuing.

Refusing Shame And Starting Change

SPEAKER_00 33:15

So please do not turn the recognition of any pattern into evidence against yourself. The recognition is how we begin the interruption process, and that's exactly what our kids need from us. We didn't know what we didn't know, but now we do, which changes things from this point on. Not retroactively, not you know, we can't go back in time, but we can do things differently going forward. In the next episode, we're going to unpack what our children need from us, what interrupting the transmission of the contract looks like, so that we can begin to shift, to interrupt, to change what our kids might be absorbing. But even now, even before we get to that next episode, some examples that we can start putting in place to change what our children are seeing can look like not agreeing to parenting arrangements out of pity for the other parent when those arrangements don't actually serve our kids. Not softening communication around issues that matter when the softening is all about protecting the comfort of the other parent at the expense of our children's needs. Letting the other parent carry their own emotions and their own emotional response to our decisions and boundaries rather than taking responsibility for all of that. Being direct in our positions on our children's age and developmental needs, even when we think that that may upset the other parent when they're feeling lonely, when they don't have anybody else, when they're struggling. Modelling healthy boundaries with former partners so that our kids see what it looks like to have limits with someone whose feelings matter but are not more important than our needs or our children's needs. And underneath all of this, being visibly specifically you in your own house, which is where we bring some of those elements of part four into the parenting context. Because our kids need to see us not just holding boundaries, but being who we really are in our lives with likes, dislikes, preferences, refusals, opinions, humour, all of those things that make you who you are, specifically who you are, not just a function, but someone who's not interchangeable. This is what helps to interrupt the transmission of the contract at its roots. When we change what our kids are witnessing from us, what they're absorbing, whether we realise it or not, our kids recognizing that us as mothers, that we have needs and that we take responsibility for those needs, that our needs are not less important than anyone else's, that we're not just a function in the household or in the family, that we're specific people with a name and that we take up space. That whether we love our former partners or not, either way, we are a whole person who doesn't disappear into managing our former partner. That's what being a whole person looks like. Now we can't expect that shift to be immediate, you know, within ourselves, within our households, within our kids, because it's not a single interaction. It's the sort of thing that is transmitted over years in tens of thousands of tiny moments, and our kids will absorb it in the same way that they absorbed the original pattern. Not consciously but somatically. And it's not about performing, it's not about thinking now that you've got to become a perfect boundary holder, but it's about the ongoing practice of interrupting the good girl contract patterns and training imperfectly, day after day, in our lives and in ways that our children are going to see whether they realize that they're saying it or not, and whether we realise if they're seeing it or not. Now, today might have been a lot for you, particularly if you've noticed in yourself some of what I have described. But again, please do remember that we really want to avoid reaching for the shame and blame that you know is very natural to be reaching for, it's very understandable and it's exactly what our contract training wants us to do. But instead of doing that, I think it's really important that we recognise that rather than this being about guilt, about blame, shame, persecuting ourselves for past decisions, that instead we actually celebrate the beginning of really being able to see the patterns, to identify the patterns, because with the seeing, the acknowledging, the recognizing, well that then brings options that we didn't have before.

Blueprint Update And Upcoming Discount

SPEAKER_00 38:30

For those of you who are interested in exploring age and developmentally appropriate and safe post separation parenting arrangements, the post-separation parenting blueprint is the structured way through that work. It's available at Danielblackcoaching.com.au. If that's something that has been on your radar, something that you're thinking about, please do go to the website where you can learn more about it. There's also a free video training that's relevant to the content of the blueprint. However, if the blueprint is something that you're interested in, if it's been on your radar, if you've been umming and aring about it and you're leaning towards purchasing access to it, if you can wait a little bit, I highly recommend it because we do have something special coming up at Danielle Black Coaching that I am not going to share with you just yet, but part of it is going to involve a special limited time discount on the blueprint price. So I know you might be thinking, Danielle, why are you telling people that? Because people could be paying full price for it now. Look, yes, maybe I'm not a very savvy business owner, but I know sometimes when I've had my eye on things, and then I think, oh yeah, you know, yep, I'm just gonna stop wasting time. I'm just gonna go and buy that thing, and then I buy it, and then like a week or two later I get an email and there's some kind of discount on it now, some kind of promotion, and I'm like, oh damn it. It would have been really great to have known about that ahead of time. So that's what I'm doing. I'm just giving you a heads up. If the blueprint is something that's been on your radar or you're interested in learning more about it, please do so by going to the website danielblackcoaching.com.au. That way you'll be perfectly primed to take advantage of the discount when that lands in a handful of weeks. You'll be getting more information about that. So if you can at all wait to get your hot little hands on the blueprint content, please do wait. And we're rolling out all the audio uh content for the blueprint as well. That's been happening behind the scenes, and we do appreciate everybody's patience uh with the rollout of the audio um accompaniment that goes with all of the modules and all of the lessons that unfortunately was delayed. Um, I moved house, I've had sick children, I got sick myself. It's been a real roller coaster. But we are really getting on top of it, and so there's going to be modules sort of landing in that private podcast audio feed. For those of you who are blueprint members, you'll understand what I'm talking about. For those of you who are not yet blueprint members, um, this is just me letting you know that before too long there's going to be uh audio versions of every lesson, which you know, there's over 20 modules in the blueprint. It's it it really is a substantial body of work. But we know that for many of you, listening to the content or being able to listen while you're reading, that can be helpful, particularly for those of you who like to just pop in the uh the airpods or the the headphones while you're going about your day or walking the dog or whatever it is that you're doing. And again, as I said earlier in this episode, if what we've been exploring in our Good Girl Contract podcast series has been landing for you, please do head to the website to get your hands on our free introductory resource. That is a PDF and it also has an audio version for those of you who would prefer to listen or who would like to access both. That's completely up to you. Thank you so much for being here with me for this episode. I know that sometimes making space for all of this can be really challenging, and it's part of what makes us change makers and cycle breakers. And the reality of being a change maker and a cycle breaker is that some of that work feels pretty uncomfortable. Growth and transformation can feel deeply uncomfortable on a variety of levels. And I do appreciate that you're here with me with us, the Danielle Black coaching team. I really appreciate that you're here with us for that work because I think that's ultimately is what will make the difference in our lives and in our children's lives and in the lives of future generations. Again, thank you so much for being here with me.

Closing Thanks And Cycle Breaking

SPEAKER_00 43:39

I look forward to chatting with you again soon.