Why Challenging Perspectives Matter

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Hi. Welcome to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you'll probably have heard me say something like this at the end of an episode. Thank you so much for spending time with me on this topic. Please don't underestimate how important it is that you're willing to make space for different perspectives, even when those perspectives are challenging. I say variations of that quite often, and I say it because I mean it. It's not just a nice little sentiment to finish off an episode, and it's not something that I say because I'm looking for something warm and fuzzy to close with before the outro music starts. I say it because I genuinely believe that our willingness to consider different perspectives, particularly perspectives that challenge what we already believe, is one of the most important capacities that we can develop as parents, as partners, as professionals, as human beings. And today I'm explaining why. I've spent many years working with people navigating separation, coercive control and other forms of family violence, and extraordinarily difficult parenting circumstances. One of the things that I've learned through this professional work is that there can be an enormous difference between someone who knows a lot about their situation and someone who's actually willing to learn more about their situation. Sometimes the people who arrive at coaching with the greatest certainty are the people who find coaching the most difficult. They already know why their former partner behaves the way that they do. They already know why children are resisting contact. They already know why the family report was unfavourable. They know why their lawyer isn't getting the results that they want. They know why the other parent is seeking additional time. They know that their former partner is a narcissist and that everything they've experienced is narcissistic abuse, that their children are being love-bombed, and that every action their former partner takes is designed to control, punish, or destroy. Sometimes they might be right about one or more of those things. But here's the question that I want to explore further today. What happens when we're so certain of our own explanations that we stop being capable of considering anything else? And what might that certainty be costing us? This episode is not about whether or not your ex is actually a narcissist. Rather, it's about what happens inside your own mind when an explanation becomes so familiar, so convincing, and so emotionally important that you stop questioning it. It's about the difference between validation and growth. The difference between understanding why you behave the way that you do and taking responsibility for what you do next. And the possibility that changing the way that you think about your circumstances might change far more than just your own opinion. It might change the way that you feel, the way that you parent, the way that you relate to other people, the way that other people perceive you, and ultimately the way that you show up and live your life.

When Certainty Feels Like Relief

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Let's start with something that might sound a bit counterintuitive. Certainty can feel really good, especially when you've spent a long time feeling confused. Imagine you've been in a relationship where your experiences were repeatedly questioned, your concerns dismissed, your understanding of reality challenged. You leave the relationship and then you try to make sense of what happened and you discover an explanation. Maybe you come across information about coercive control, maybe you begin learning about emotional abuse. You might discover terminology, vocabulary, that describes experiences that you've struggled to articulate for a really long time. And then suddenly things start to make some sense. Understandably, there can be enormous relief in that. You might finally have language for what happened. You might begin recognizing patterns, realizing that experiences you previously thought were isolated incidents were perhaps part of something much bigger, much broader. That knowledge can be genuinely life-changing. And it's important that we're clear about that because I'm not suggesting that learning about abuse, coercive control, or trauma is somehow problematic. Quite the opposite. Education is very central to the work that we do here at Danielle Black Coaching, and it is absolutely fundamental to our key resource, the post-separation parenting blueprint. But there is a point at which learning can quietly become something else. Instead of helping us to ask better questions, information can become a way of reinforcing answers that we've already decided are correct.

Familiar Ideas Start Feeling True

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And that's where we need to talk about how our brains actually process information, because contrary to what we might like to believe, human beings are not particularly objective information processing machines. Our brains don't simply gather evidence, evaluate it impartially, and arrive at rational evidence-based conclusions. Rather, our existing beliefs, emotional experiences, expectations and motivations influence what we notice, what we remember, how we interpret and filter information, and ultimately what we accept as credible. And this happens to all of us. Me, you, lawyers, psychologists, family report writers, judges, and every other professional whose opinion you might encounter on your journey, no one gets a magical exemption from the realities of human cognition. There's a well-established psychological phenomenon known as the illusory truth effect. In simple terms, what this means is that when we encounter a statement repeatedly, we're more likely to perceive it as being true. Even when the repetition hasn't actually provided us with any evidence. Researchers have demonstrated this effect across decades of experimental work, beginning with research published by Hesha, Goldstein, and Topino in 1977. The basic finding is that repetition can increase perceived truth. An important explanation involves processing fluency. When information becomes familiar, our brains can process it more easily. That ease of processing can be mistaken for a signal that the information is accurate. Now, I want you to think about how this might play out in the world of post-separation. Someone leaves a difficult relationship and begins searching online for answers. They watch a video about narcissistic abuse. The algorithm inevitably recommends another and another. They join Facebook groups, they follow social media accounts, they listen to podcasts. They read stories from other people who describe remarkably similar experiences, and they begin hearing the same statements over and over again. Narcissists always do this, narcissists never do that. If you share children with your former partner and the child enjoys spending time with them, well then clearly the children are being love bombed. If your former partner's being cooperative, they're manipulating you. If they're being uncooperative, they're manipulating you. And before long, these explanations can start to feel less like possibilities and more like established facts. Not necessarily because they've actually been carefully evaluated, but rather because they've become very familiar. And here's where things get tricky. Some of the information circulating in these spaces is genuinely useful. Some of it can accurately describe patterns of abuse and coercive control. Some of it helps people recognize behaviors that they might otherwise struggle to understand. But some of it's also really oversimplified. Some of it's speculative. Some of it takes very complex psychological concepts and turns them into catchy little rules that can supposedly explain everything. And some of it is complete bullshit. The problem is that the repetition doesn't distinguish between any of those problems. Hearing something a hundred times does not make that thing true. Recognizing yourself in someone else's story doesn't mean that every conclusion that that person comes to in their own experience is accurate about your experience. And that's a really important distinction. Recognition can be very powerful. You hear someone describe an experience and you think, oh my god, that's exactly what happened to me. And maybe it is. But recognizing one experience doesn't automatically validate every other claim that follows. The person who accurately describes something that you've experienced might still be wrong about why it happened to them in their life. They might be wrong about what it means, they might be wrong about what should be done next. If we're not careful, familiarity can begin doing the work that the evidence should be doing. While we're chatting

Confirmation Bias In Co Parenting

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about psychological phenomena, let's add another one to the mix, confirmation bias. Confirmation bias refers to our tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information in ways that support our existing beliefs. This can be really powerful when those beliefs are emotionally significant. For example, if you've concluded that your former partner is deliberately trying to make your life miserable, they send you a message requesting something. You interpret it as an attempt to control you. They don't respond to your message, you interpret it as punishment, the silent treatment. They respond immediately, you interpret it as evidence that they're monitoring you. If you share children and they request additional parenting time, you interpret that they're trying to hurt you by taking the children away. They don't request additional parenting time, clearly they don't care about the kids. I'm sure you can see what's happening here. Every possible behavior is being interpreted through the same explanation. When that happens, we need to ask ourselves a rather uncomfortable question. What could this person actually do that would cause me to reconsider my interpretation? If the answer is nothing, if nothing would cause you to reconsider your interpretation, then we're not evaluating their behavior. Rather, we're fitting their behavior into a conclusion that we've already reached. Now, this is not to say that people don't engage in persistent patterns of coercive control. I know only too well that they do. I know that apparently ordinary behaviors can take on a very different meaning when they're understood within the context of a broader pattern. The context matters. But context isn't a license to abandon critical thinking. We need to be able to distinguish what we know from what we suspect, what we've observed from what we've inferred, and what the evidence supports from what our existing beliefs lead us to expect. This is particularly important when our interpretations begin influencing decisions about children after separation, because the consequences of getting those interpretations wrong can be significant. This then brings us to a

The Question What Would Change My Mind

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question that I think we should all become more comfortable asking ourselves. What would change my mind? Not what would make me abandon everything I know, not what would convince me that my experiences weren't real, we don't need to get all black and white and lose the nuance, but rather what information would cause me to reconsider my current conclusion? If I believe my child's resistance to spending time with either me or the other parent is entirely caused by the other parent's behaviour, what evidence would make me consider that other factors might be contributing? If I believe that a professional has misunderstood me, what would make me consider whether I communicated something poorly? Or that there was something else about something that I said or did that impacted the way that I was perceived? If I believe that every action my former partner takes is motivated by a desire to hurt me, what would make me consider another explanation? And if I genuinely can't imagine any information that would possibly change my mind, then that's worth examining. Not least because certainty can become a very comfortable place to live. It gives us answers, it reduces ambiguity, it allows us to predict what things mean before we've fully understood them. But it can also become a prison, and sometimes we don't realise how much of our certainty is limiting us until we're invited to consider something different.

Coaching Is Not Just Validation

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And this brings us to coaching. I'm going to share with you something that happens in my work. And I know I'm not alone in this because every member of our coaching team has also experienced some version of it. All of us on the coaching team have wrapped up coaching sessions and found ourselves wondering why the person booked the coaching appointment in the first place. Not because they didn't have legitimate concerns, not because their situation wasn't genuinely difficult, but rather because they appeared to have absolutely no interest in considering anything beyond what they already believed. They came with an explanation and they wanted us to confirm it. And when we asked questions or introduced another perspective or suggested that something might be more complicated than they've first assumed, they weren't particularly interested. Some people come to coaching wanting reassurance that they're going to get the outcome that they're seeking in court. They might want us to guarantee that a family report will be favorable, that a judge will recognize their former partner's behavior, that their children will eventually understand what's happened. And of course, we understand why people want those assurances. Remember, all of us on the Danielle Black coaching team have significant lived experience in the post-separation space. We understand only too well that uncertainty is exhausting. Particularly when you share children with a former partner and when your children's well-being, your financial security, or your future relationship with your children feels as though it's hanging in the balance. But we can't guarantee those outcomes. No one can. And it's not what coaching is. We're not an agreement service. We're not paid to tell clients that everything they've done is correct, that their former partner is entirely responsible for every problem, or that the outcome that the client wants is inevitable. Rather, when clients come to us, they're paying for professional expertise, perspective, and guidance. And sometimes that means hearing things that they don't particularly want to hear. Sometimes it means being asked a question that they've been avoiding. People that come to coaching with me or another coach on the Danielle Black coaching team are paying for professional expertise, perspective, and guidance. Sometimes that means hearing something that they don't particularly want to hear. Sometimes it means being asked a question that they might have been avoiding. Sometimes that can mean being invited to consider that an explanation that they've become really attached to might be a bit incomplete. And sometimes it means being willing to recognise that there are aspects of their own behavior that need some attention. Now, I'm not saying any of this because I think that I'm always right or that any member of my team is always right. There are absolutely times when new information changes my understanding of a situation. There are times when clients challenge something that I've suggested, and their challenge is entirely reasonable. And there are times when the most useful thing that I can do is acknowledge that I don't yet have enough information to reach an informed conclusion. However, I am a very experienced coach. I have spent decades developing specialist knowledge, and I'm often right about things that clients initially find difficult to hear. This is not arrogance on my part. Rather, it's one of the reasons that people pay to work with someone who has a high level of expertise. The value of coaching isn't that the coach possesses some magical ability to know everything, rather, it's that a skilled coach in this space can help you to see possibilities, patterns, and problems that you might not be able to recognize from inside your own circumstances. That's very helpful for many aspects of the post-separation journey, particularly if you are in the court system, particularly if you are engaging with other professionals in the court system, including your own legal team. The reality is though that all of that only works if you're actually willing to consider what the coach is

Family Reports And How You Present

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saying. Let me give you an example of something that I've encountered more than once. Someone books a session because they've received a family report that they consider deeply unfair. They might tell me that the report writer misunderstood them, that the report is biased, that their concerns about the other parent were dismissed, that the recommendations are completely inappropriate. Sometimes, when I have a deeper understanding of what it is that they're referring to, I agree that there are some serious problems with the conclusions that were drawn in the report. However, there are other times when I've spent however many minutes speaking with someone and I begin to have an understanding of how the report writer might have formed some of their impression. This is partly because during these conversations I'm noticing things about the way that a person communicates. Perhaps they struggle to answer a question directly. Maybe they say a lot, but they never actually answer my question. Perhaps every discussion about their child's needs quickly becomes a discussion about their former partner's behaviour. Perhaps they respond to questions with defensiveness or hostility. Perhaps they interpret an attempt to explore another possibility as evidence that I'm questioning them and their credibility. Perhaps they seem unable to identify. Anything about their own parenting that might benefit from reflection. And the vast majority of the time, they are completely unaware of how they're presenting. They feel misunderstood, but they don't necessarily understand how other people are experiencing their interactions with them. Now, this is not me suggesting that all family report writers are right. Anyone who's listened to a significant amount of this podcast or who has worked with me one-on-one knows that I've seen enough problematic professional assessments to know that that's certainly not the case. And I'm also not suggesting that a parent who has experienced family violence should be able to present as calm, agreeable, and endlessly accommodating before their concerns are taken seriously. But here's the thing: your experiences can be valid, your concerns can be legitimate, and your behavior can still be contributing to the difficulties that you're experiencing. Those things can coexist. And if we're not willing to consider that possibility, we can miss an opportunity to change something that's actually within our influence. One of the more interesting things about this work is that sometimes people aren't ready to hear what we're saying. They book a session, we have a conversation, they're offered perspectives that they may not like, and then we might not hear from them again until occasionally we do, six months later, sometimes longer. And the message is usually something along the lines of I've been thinking about what you said, things have not gone particularly well, and I wonder whether you might have been right about a lot of it. Could I possibly book another session with you? I love those moments, not because I'm sitting there feeling smug about having been right, but rather because something has shifted in the client. A person who previously couldn't tolerate a different perspective has become willing to consider it, and that can open up entirely different kinds of conversations. Sometimes people still need time to sit with an idea, they might need more information, they might need to discover that their existing approach isn't producing the outcomes that they'd hoped for. Sometimes they simply weren't ready to consider something that felt too uncomfortable at the time. And that's okay. But I do think it is worth asking how much time, energy, money, and distress we might save ourselves if we became a little bit more willing to consider challenging perspectives before the wheels get even wobblier.

When Trauma Explains Everything

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Now we're going to move into territory that I know that lots of people will find uncomfortable. But hey, that's kind of what we do here on the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast. We're going to talk about trauma and more specifically the way that trauma can become an explanation for virtually everything. I'll start by saying something that should be obvious. That is, that trauma is real. Its effects can be profound. I experienced complex PTSD for a number of years, and I know only too well the way in which trauma can influence the way that we perceive threats, regulate our emotions, interpret other people's behavior, experience relationships and respond to uncertainty. It can affect our body, our sleep, our concentration, our capacity to make decisions, and our sense of safety. And people don't simply choose to stop having trauma responses because someone tells them to. But we can understand the effects of trauma and still struggle to accept that trauma doesn't need to be in charge of our decisions indefinitely. I've worked with people over the years who explain almost every difficult behavior through the lens of their trauma. They sent an aggressive message because they were triggered. They couldn't tolerate a different perspective because they were traumatised. They reacted badly to something that someone said because of their trauma. They made a decision they now regret because their trauma response took over. You get the idea. Oftentimes the explanation is very relevant, but I often find myself asking a different question. When do you think your trauma might no longer be in the driver's seat? What would that look like? What would it feel like? How would you know? How might you respond differently to your former partner? Would you make different decisions? Would you feel more comfortable with uncertainty? Would you find it easier to hear something that you don't like? Would you be able to acknowledge making a mistake without feeling as though that mistake threatened your entire understanding of yourself? And here's another question. If your trauma was no longer so responsible for so many of the decisions that you made, do you think you'd still sometimes regret the choices that you made? Of course you would, because you'd still be human, you'd still misunderstand things, you'd still get angry, you'd still make assumptions, you'd still occasionally say things that you wished you hadn't. But now you might have to sit with the discomfort of recognizing that you made a decision that you regret without making your trauma entirely responsible for it. And I wonder whether that might actually be harder for some people. Because if trauma explains everything, then it can become a way of avoiding the discomfort of personal responsibility. Not always, not for everyone, but sometimes. And I do think we need to be willing to talk about that and to reflect on it. There's something else that I want to challenge, and that is the tendency to explain every difficulty in our lives via the relationship that has ended. I work extensively with people who have experienced coercive control and other forms of family violence. I also have significant lived experience of coercive control and other forms of family violence, including post-separation abuse that extended for well over a decade. I understand only too well that abuse can have significant and enduring consequences. And sometimes I still find myself wondering whether people have forgotten that they existed before that abusive, intimate relationship. We had childhoods. We had experiences of attachment, belonging, conflict, approval, disappointment and relationships. We developed beliefs about ourselves, about what makes us lovable, about what we're responsible for, about what happens when we disappoint someone, about whether it's safe to disagree, about whether other people's needs matter more than our own. We developed ways of coping with discomfort, ways of seeking approval, ways of protecting ourselves, and all of that happened before our former partners came along. Our first 20 or 30 years didn't simply disappear because we entered an abusive relationship. And examining those earlier experiences is not about blaming ourselves for anyone else's behaviour, but rather it's about understanding the person that we were when we entered that relationship, the person that we became within it, and the person that we're becoming now. Our former partners might have exploited vulnerabilities that already existed. They might have reinforced beliefs that we already had about ourselves on some level. They might have taken advantage of patterns of accommodating others, avoiding conflict, or prioritising other people's needs. None of that makes us responsible for their abuse. But recognising those patterns can help us make different choices in the future. And if we refuse to examine anything that predates the abusive relationship, we run the risk of missing some of the most valuable opportunities for growth. There's also a psychological dimension to all of this. Sometimes we become so attached to an explanation that it starts to form part of our identity. I'm the person who was abused. I'm the person whose ex is a narcissist. I'm the person whose children have been alienated. I'm the person who has been failed by the family law system. Any one of those experiences or all of those experiences might be real. They might have shaped enormous parts of our lives, but they're not the entirety of who we are. When an explanation becomes central to our identity, questioning it can feel threatening. If I reconsider whether every difficult interaction is caused by my former partner's narcissism, am I somehow denying the abuse? If I acknowledge that my parenting could improve, am I admitting that the other parent was right about me? If I recognise that my childhood experiences influence my relationships today, am I blaming myself for what happened? No. But I do understand why those questions can feel really uncomfortable. Human beings don't always experience challenges to our beliefs as neutral intellectual exercises. We often experience challenges to our beliefs as being very personal. Those challenges can feel like threats to our safety, threats to our identity, threats to our sense of coherence. And that's one reason that cognitive dissonance can be so uncomfortable. Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological discomfort that we can experience when our beliefs, attitudes, or behaviours are inconsistent. We often try to reduce that discomfort sometimes by changing our beliefs, sometimes by changing our behaviour, and sometimes by finding explanations that allow us to preserve and keep safe what we already believe. If I believe that I'm a thoughtful, child-focused parent and someone suggests that my behaviour might be making it difficult for my child to speak openly, I have a choice. I can consider whether there's something worth examining. Or I can dismiss the person making the observation. They're biased. They don't understand trauma, they don't understand coercive control. They've been manipulated by my ex. Sometimes the criticisms might be justified, but if they're my automatic response every time someone challenges me, perhaps there's something else going on. Maybe I'm protecting an image of myself that feels too important to

Preparing For Family Law Assessments

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question. I want to explain why I think all of this matters so much, particularly for parents who are involved in family law proceedings. I've worked with people who have spent months, sometimes years, receiving support from family violence services, counsellors, and other professionals only to have an extraordinarily difficult experience when they meet with a family report writer. And I think there are circumstances where part of the problem is that nobody has really prepared them for the kind of questions they're going to be asked. They may have had many conversations about what their former partner did. They may have been encouraged to recognise patterns of abuse, to trust their perceptions, to understand their trauma responses, and to stop blaming themselves for what happened, all of which can be enormously valuable. But have they been asked to explain how they understand their child's relationship with the other parent? Have they been asked whether there could be other factors contributing to their child's behavior? Have they been asked to identify aspects of their own parenting that they find difficult? Have they been asked how their own emotional responses might affect their children? Have they been asked what they would do if their child expressed a preference that was different from what they believed was best? Have they been asked to distinguish between something they know happened and something they've concluded about another person's intentions? Maybe, but in my experience, some people arrive at coaching having had very little opportunity to practice having those conversations. And then suddenly they're sitting across from a family report writer, and the report writer starts asking questions, detailed questions, questions about their parenting, questions about the children, questions about their decisions, questions that introduce possibilities they haven't considered or don't particularly want to consider. And sometimes the person experiences those questions as an attack. They feel disbelieved, they feel invalidated, they feel as though they're being gaslit all over again. Now I want to be careful here because there are absolutely situations where professionals ask inappropriate questions, misunderstand coercive control, or make assessments that fail to adequately account for family violence. Those problems are real. But there's something else that can also be true. Sometimes a person has become so accustomed to having their interpretation of events accepted that they're simply not very practiced at responding when somebody asks them to examine it. And that can create enormous difficulties in a process where questioning, assessment, and competing interpretations are unavoidable. The reality is that the family law system is not designed to provide the same kind of experience as a supportive counseling relationship. A family report writer is not there to validate your experience. They're there to undertake an assessment concerning your children. And that means they're going to ask questions. Some of those questions may be challenging, some may feel unfair, some may be based on information provided by the other parent that you strongly dispute. And some may require you to consider aspects of your own behavior that you haven't previously examined. That doesn't mean you have to agree with the premise of every question. It doesn't mean you have to accept inaccurate allegations. And it certainly doesn't mean you should minimize family violence to appear reasonable. But you do need to be able to engage with the assessment. And that's one of the things we work on in coaching. Sometimes I'll be preparing a client for a family report interview or cross-examination at final trial, and I invite them to consider another possible interpretation of something. Not because I think another interpretation is necessarily correct, not because I don't believe them, but because I want them to practice thinking about a situation from more than one angle. And sometimes the response is immediate resistance. They become defensive. They start explaining why the alternative interpretation is impossible before they've really considered it. Or they tell me that they've already spent years questioning themselves and they're not going to do that anymore. And I then say to them that I understand why this is uncomfortable, but this is precisely why we're having the conversation. I'm not the person who's going to be making recommendations to the court about their children. I'm not the family report writer. I'm not the judge. It doesn't ultimately matter whether I agree with every conclusion they've drawn. What matters is whether they're developing the capacity to engage thoughtfully with the questions they're likely to encounter, communicate their concerns effectively, and demonstrate insight into their own parenting. And if an invitation to consider an alternative perspective in a coaching session feels intolerable, I worry about how difficult the actual assessment might be. Not because I think the client is necessarily wrong, but because I know they're going to encounter questions they don't like. And I would much rather they have an opportunity to practice responding to those questions with a coach who is trying to help them than encounter them for the first time in a high-stakes professional assessment. Sometimes we have these conversations and something shifts. The person starts to recognize that considering another perspective doesn't require them to adopt it. They begin answering questions more directly. They become more comfortable acknowledging uncertainty. They start distinguishing between what they've observed and what they've inferred. They become more capable of recognizing aspects of their own parenting that might need attention. And that can make a meaningful difference to how they present to professionals and also how they understand and respond to their children. But sometimes that doesn't happen. Sometimes the person leaves the session convinced that I simply don't understand. And I think that's really unfortunate because the whole purpose of the conversation was to give them an opportunity to develop skills that could help them navigate the very process they're so worried about. Now none of this guarantees a favorable family report. You can communicate beautifully, demonstrate insight, answer questions thoughtfully, and still receive recommendations you disagree with. You can have a difficult interview without that meaning you're an inadequate parent. But being able to tolerate questions, consider different perspectives, and reflect on your own behavior gives you a much better opportunity to communicate the information that matters. Perhaps more importantly, those capacities are valuable long after the court proceedings have ended. Because your children are going to grow up. They're going to develop opinions you don't share. They're going to challenge your decisions. They're going to tell you things you don't want to hear. Sometimes they're going to have experiences of you that are different from the way you understand yourself. What happens then? Will you be able to listen? Will you be curious? Will you be willing to consider that their perspective might contain something important even when it makes you uncomfortable? That's where I think the real value of flexible thinking becomes apparent. We're not simply preparing people to answer questions in a family report interview. We're helping them develop

Living Like A Grown Up

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capacities that can make them better parents, better friends, better partners. And that to me is far more important than getting somebody to agree with an alternative interpretation of their situation. This is where I want to introduce an idea that came up in a conversation that I recently recorded with Bridget, one of our senior coaches. Something that you might not know about me is that, amongst other things, I enjoy intermittent fasting and have done for around 10 years. And related to that, there's a podcast that I enjoy listening to called Fast Faced Repeat, hosted by Jin Stevens and Sherry Bullock. They sometimes use the expression, quote, eat like a grown-up. The idea, broadly speaking, is that having the freedom to choose what you eat doesn't mean that every eating decision should be driven by what feels most appealing in the moment, that we still need to make choices that support our well-being. So that's the context about what I'm about to say. When Bridget and I, in our recent recording, were discussing personal responsibility, I found myself thinking about that phrase, eat like a grown up. Except I was thinking about what it means to live like a grown up. Now, before anyone gets offended, I'm not suggesting that people who struggle with trauma, emotion regulation, or difficult Relationships are children or that they're immature. Rather, I'm talking about the willingness to take responsibility for the decisions that we make, even when those decisions are difficult, and even when our feelings are intense, and even when we have very good reasons for finding something challenging. The way that I think about it, living like a grown-up means recognizing that our feelings matter, but they shouldn't automatically determine what we should do. It means recognizing and making space for the fact that we can be angry without acting aggressively. We can feel frightened without treating every uncertainty as a threat to our safety. We can feel misunderstood without assuming everyone who disagrees with us is incompetent. We can have experienced genuine harm and still take responsibility for the way that we show up and treat other people. And we can make mistakes without needing to construct an elaborate explanation that removes our responsibility for said mistakes. Sometimes the most useful thing we can say is, I made a decision that I now regret. I understand why I made it, I'm determined to make a different decision next time. That's not self-blame, that's agency. And this is where I think all of this becomes genuinely exciting because changing the way that we think about our circumstances can change the way that we experience them. Not magically, not instantly, and not because positive thinking makes reality disappear, but rather because the meaning that we attach to events influences how we feel and respond. Imagine someone who believes every message from their former partner is designed to provoke them. They receive a notification, their heart races, they immediately begin analysing the wording. What does this mean? What's the hidden agenda? What are they planning? How do I protect myself? Now imagine the same person begins considering a different approach. Maybe their former partner isn't trying to provoke them in absolutely every correspondence. Maybe they are, but again, perhaps they aren't. Perhaps the motivation is genuinely unknowable. And perhaps we don't actually need to establish the motivation before deciding what to do. Perhaps we can just read the message, identify whether it contains something that requires a response, consider our responsibilities and decide what action, if any, is appropriate. The former partner hasn't necessarily changed. The circumstances might not have changed, but our relationship with the situation has changed. And that can make an enormous difference. Now imagine a parent who believes every difficult behaviour their child displays is caused by the care arrangements or the time spent with the other parent. They begin considering other possibilities. Perhaps the child is experiencing developmental challenges. Perhaps they're struggling at school sometimes as well. Perhaps there are sensory or neurodevelopmental needs that haven't been adequately understood. Perhaps the child is responding to conflict that's occurring in both households. Perhaps something in the preferred parent's own responses is contributing to the difficulty. Suddenly, there are so many more possibilities to explore, more questions to ask, more ways to support the child, and more opportunities to act. That's what I mean when I talk about developing a more flexible way of thinking. It isn't about replacing one rigid explanation with another. Rather, it's about expanding the range of possibilities we can consider. When we can think differently, we might also begin to feel differently. And when we feel differently, we find ourselves capable of responding differently in our parenting, in our relationships, in our professional interactions,

Flexible Thinking With The STEAR Framework

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and in the way we treat ourselves. Incidentally, this is essentially what I refer to as our STEAR response framework. STEAR as in S T dour. When we can develop flexible thinking, be open to thinking about situations in a different way, we're then also open to feeling about a situation in a different way. We're open to feeling something different in our bodies, in terms of our energy as well, and in terms of the action that we take or don't take. And inevitably, that increased flexible thinking about a particular situation can then lead to different results. That's something that is covered in much more detail in the Post Separation Parenting Blueprint. If you're a Blueprint member, you can find the information on the Steer Framework in the bonus neuroplasticity resources in module 16. And for everyone who is listening who isn't yet a member of the Post Separation Parenting Blueprint, I have added printable Steer Framework Resources along with a general resource to help with reframing thoughts to our free resources section on the website. You simply need to go to our website, danielleblackcoaching.com.au, then go to the resources section in the main menu, and then to the free resources. But now let's return to something that I said earlier about coaching. Sometimes the people who are most convinced that others have misunderstood them are the people who have the least awareness of how they're presenting to others. And I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm saying it because insight is a skill. Being able to recognise how our behaviour affects other people is a skill. Being able to distinguish our intentions from our impact is a skill. And those skills often can be developed. You might intend to advocate strongly for yourself or for your child, but the way that you're communicating might be making it difficult for professionals to identify the most important information. You might intend to demonstrate how harmful your former partner's behaviour has been. But if every answer you give returns to your former partner, you might inadvertently leave professionals with very little understanding of you, or in situations involving children, they may have very little understanding of your own parenting. You might intend to show that you're a protective parent, but if you're not able to acknowledge any possibility that your child has needs or experiences independent of your own, that might raise questions about your capacity to understand their perspective. Again, none of this means that a professional's assessment is necessarily correct, but it does mean that how we communicate matters and how we respond to questions matter. Our capacity for reflection matters as well as our willingness to consider feedback. Not just because those things can influence a family report or court proceedings, but because they can also influence our relationships with our children and with a lot of other people in our lives. It's also important that I say here that I'm not asking you to agree with everything that I say. Rather, I'm asking you to think, to question, to examine evidence, to notice when something feels true simply because you've heard it or read about it repeatedly, to recognize when you're interpreting information in ways that simply reinforces and supports what you already believe. And to become curious about the things that you might not yet understand or know. And that includes questioning professionals, but it also includes questioning yourself. Questioning isn't the same as automatically rejecting anything that makes you uncomfortable. But sometimes the most valuable information that we come across is information that challenges our understanding of ourselves. If you're currently working with a coach, a psychologist, a lawyer, or another professional, I'd encourage you to consider whether you're genuinely interested in their expertise, or whether you're primarily hoping that they'll confirm what you already believe. Because clearly those are very different reasons for seeking support, and they can lead to very different outcomes.

Even If You Are Right What Next

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I want to finish by considering something that might seem like the opposite of the question that we've been exploring. What if you're right? What if your former partner really is engaging in coercive control? What if your child really has experienced harm and is maybe continuing to experience harm? What if the family report genuinely is flawed? What if your concerns are entirely legitimate? The ability to think flexibly is still valuable, maybe even more valuable, because being right about what happened does not automatically tell you what you should do next. Doesn't automatically tell you what should happen next. You still need to make decisions, you still need to communicate effectively, you still need to navigate relationships with professionals, you still need to manage uncertainty, disappointment, and difficult emotions. If you have children, you still need to parent your children. And you still deserve a life that is not organized entirely around the behavior of another person. All this to say, you can be absolutely right about what someone else did to you and still be wrong about what you need to do next. That's not a contradiction, rather, it's an invitation to recognize that understanding the past and shaping the future are different things. Sometimes the explanation that helped us make sense of what happened becomes much less useful when we're trying to decide how we want to live now. The next time you encounter a perspective that challenges something that you believe, I encourage you to notice what happens. Do you become curious? Do you ask questions? Do you consider the evidence? Or do you immediately begin preparing your argument for why the other person is wrong? And if you notice yourself becoming defensive, perhaps you could ask, what am I protecting here? Am I protecting my understanding of the facts, my sense of identity, my need to feel safe, my desire to believe that I've made the right decision. What might happen if I allow myself to consider to make room for another possibility? This is not me telling you to abandon your opinions or your beliefs, and I'm certainly not telling you that you have to agree with everyone. You certainly don't have to give equal weight to every opinion that you come across, but I hope you'll remain willing to learn. I hope you'll remain open to making space for other perspectives. Our capacity to change our minds isn't a weakness. It's one of the things that makes growth possible. Perhaps the most important question isn't whether you've been right about everything so far. Perhaps it's whether you're willing to keep learning even when the things that you discover might change the way that you understand

Staying Open To Learning

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yourself and your life. Thank you so much for spending time with me on this topic, and I really do mean it when I thank you for being willing to make space for different perspectives. That willingness is not something that you're doing for me. It's something that you're doing for yourself and potentially for your children, all of the other relationships in your life, and the life that you're still building and moving towards. Thank you so much for your time. I'll look forward to chatting with you again soon.