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269: Conscious Uncoupling with Katherine Woodward Thomas

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this episode, Shane talks with Katherine Woodward Thomas about Conscious Uncoupling. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 269: Conscious Uncoupling with Katherine Woodward Thomas

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In this episode, Shane talks with Katherine Woodward Thomas about Conscious Uncoupling. Katherine is a licensed therapist, recognized pioneer in transformational psychology, and The New York Times bestselling author of Calling in “The One” and Conscious Uncoupling. How to help your clients navigate the shame of failing in a relationship, why finding a great partner comes from within you, how to gently direct questions towards your clients, whether couples therapy works better with one or both partners in the room, and how to shift the language you use when working with clients. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

  • The biology of a breakup
  • Why serial monogamy is the cultural norm
  • Taking Responsibility for Your 3% Without Shame
  • Breaking Patterns and Healing Your Heart
  • The Leaver vs. The One Being Left

To learn more about Katherine Woodward Thomas and Conscious Uncoupling, visit:

KatherineWoodwardThomas.com

ConsciousUncoupling.com

Show Notes

 

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:00

shame can never lead to growth.

 

00:07

to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now,  your host,  Shane Birkel.

 

00:23

Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel, and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy.  Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.

 

00:52

Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit HelloAlma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. All right, for this week, I am bringing back a recording from the archives. This is from way back in 2018. I wanted to share with you this episode that I did with Katherine Woodward Thomas. She's the author of Conscious Uncoupling, which became very famous and popular and

 

01:22

We talk all about that during this recording that I'm going to share with you from 2018. One  of the reasons I brought this back is because I actually just did another interview with Katherine Woodward Thomas, and that's going to be coming out in a few weeks, probably the end of January, because she just wrote a new book, and her new book is called What's True About You? Seven Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future.

 

01:51

She's also written a book called Calling in the One.  She talked about in this new interview that I just did with her, she was talking about how  she wrote conscious uncoupling for people who were working through separation or thinking about separation. And then she wrote Calling in the One  for people who were seeking a partner. And everybody was wondering how she did this work  and it's really deep.

 

02:18

work that can be applied to any aspect of your life. And that's why she wrote this new book that describes  sort of the pathway to healing. uh And so anyway, so that's going to come out  in  a few weeks here. But leading up, I just wanted to share this with you, this recording about conscious uncoupling. I hope you enjoy it.  Without further introduction, here is Katherine Woodward Thomas. Well, I'm really looking forward to talking about

 

02:46

conscious uncoupling with you in particular. And we all know that countless people are uncoupling all the time, but there seems to be so little education about it. And I definitely think it's something we need to be talking a lot more about, especially in our profession. But before we get into all that, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in this? Oh, gosh. Well, both of my books are really

 

03:14

very close to my heart because they come from my own personal experience.  have a pretty unique twist to the story because my first book, Calling in the One, became a national bestseller, came out in 2004. It was the first book to ever marry uh metaphysical principles with the  sound psychological development and the being able to find a partner. So before that it had been, I don't know.

 

03:42

there'd been other books about how to catch a man or whatever  the books were about. You know, and I think all books are great and I love those authors too.  But there wasn't anything that was kind of from the inside out, like do your own work and get yourself ready and get yourself into a state where, you know, you have a lot to give to someone,  which the calling in the One Process is. And it became a national bestseller. It was based on my own experience of getting married at the age of  40.

 

04:10

three and I guess I got married at 42 and had my baby at 43. But it started with this failed love affair after failed love affair and drama after drama and heartache after heartache. And of course I'm a therapist and I'm people have good relationships and I'm disastrously bad at it for myself. It's kind of almost a caricature. But at the age of 41 I thought, you know, I think I have something to do with this pattern even though

 

04:40

feels like it's just happening to me. I want love so much, but I really took personal responsibility. I set a wild intention to be engaged for my 42nd birthday, which was eight months away. And I, lo and behold, I really created a miracle for myself, a huge shift, because my focus was not on running out to try and find love. When I set that intention,

 

05:07

What I did is I went within to really take a good hard look at myself as the source of these painful patterns.  And I wasn't a newbie to personal growth, know, and all of us here have been working on ourselves for years, but there were very specific things that I did and asked myself that allowed me to have a true shift and be able to manifest this miracle of love. And then I wrote Calling You The One, it became a national bestseller, and I started to have the opportunity to teach thousands of people.

 

05:37

virtually because I went online before it was fashionable to go online and start teaching. I was one of the forerunners to do it. Back in 2007, we were doing it. So, you know, I had hundreds of thousands of people in my community who were all following, you know, this wonderful pathway. then a few years into the marriage, I mean, I was married for about 11 years, but, you know, a few years, a couple of years before that, we decided that we were going to get divorced. And that was challenging.

 

06:06

And it was  on a personal level as devastating as it is for any of us because none of us think when we're walking down the aisle that we're gonna be the ones landing on the wrong side of that 50 % divorce divide.  But  I had the added complexity of having. Having written the book.  Having written the manual. But first of all, the saving grace of that divorce is that

 

06:31

my husband, as I affectionately call him now, my husband and I decided  that we were going to,  we were going to get creative about it. And we were going to figure out how our daughter could still have a happy childhood. We had both been the products of divorce. We both knew the damage that could happen.  Both of us, interestingly enough,  had experienced parental alienation. He lost contact with his mother when he was just a year and a half old.

 

06:59

I lost contact with my father when I was 10. It was a devastating experience for me. At least I can't speak for him.  I think he thinks of himself as quite  resilient, but he certainly didn't want to ever  risk having our daughter in that position. So we aligned on an intention to create that for our daughter, that she would have a happy childhood.  And that intention allowed us to really begin to  strive and lean in.

 

07:28

to discover how we might do that.  And  lo and behold, we really did it quite elegantly and beautifully. I'm not saying it wasn't hard, but we figured out uh a way to create,  to recreate, to complete our old relationship and recreate a new relationship that was based on  a lot of generosity, a lot of  thoughtfulness and consideration, and  I would say we're quite good

 

07:57

teammates in raising our daughter. I mean, I think any parent, you know, is filled with all the things that they didn't do and they should be doing. And so it's just kind of the game, especially if you're out there  creating things in the world.  So I'm not going to tout us as perfect parents, but I think the things that we're going through, we probably would be going through even if we were married. So our divorce is not the issue, ah whatever issues our daughter has that she's working through.

 

08:24

Has nothing or little to do with our divorce. So  so I'm  that was really the seeds of conscious uncoupling  and I will tell you Shane that that one of the first things I looked at  was the the overwhelming sense of failure and social embarrassment and shame that I felt  and I'm fortunate enough to have worked with enough people that I know that my own personal experience is a collective experience

 

08:53

And so I began to get curious because I'd heard enough people share about their shame and their social embarrassment and their feeling that they had failed.  That I began to do research  on this happily  ever after story we are all swimming in  and looking and kind of deconstructing some of our assumptions about that story. So that's something important I want to be able to share with people today too. Yeah. So the, the shame.

 

09:21

You're talking about the shame  of  failing at your relationship. think in our culture, we're socialized  to believe that  in order to be a successful adult, need to have  one part, marry the one partner, the love of our life and be able to fulfill all of their needs and have a happy family and live happily ever after. But  when that script doesn't play out, ah is that the shame that you're talking about?

 

09:50

with that you experienced and that so many people experience when they're going through a divorce. We all kind of have a sense of  shame. think Brene Brown  really informed a lot of us  that shame is a feeling that we get when we have failed to fulfill external expectations, which is different than guilt. You know, we're not living up to our own expectations. We've done something that violates our own moral code.  So I got curious about this kind of blanket of shame.

 

10:19

and the expectation that we're all living inside of that happily  ever after myth. Because happily ever after doesn't really live like a possibility for us. It lives like um an expectation.  It's not something like, wow, wouldn't it be cool to do that? It's more like, oh,  that's how it goes. And if it doesn't go like that for you, you're kind of on the outside looking in. Yeah, or you're failure.

 

10:44

You are a failure. So I got curious about that. And so I started to research like, OK, you know,  who who created that? Like, you know, if you really look at culture as just a uh kind of  whatever we collectively agree on in that particular time,  you know, then who who created that story and why were we so quick to agree on that story? Why? Why is that the norm? Because, you we could say, well, from our religious beliefs, but if you even track back the Catholic

 

11:11

In the beginning, they didn't care if people got divorced.  They only started to care, I think, around the 12th century when  marriage meant property. And then they wanted to control the property, so then they made divorces.  So, you you start to poke holes in these cultural paradigms a little bit. It's not hard to do it. It takes about an afternoon of research.  And what I discovered  is that  Happily Ever After was created  about 400 years ago in Venice, Italy.

 

11:41

when  there were there was two things that were happening. One is that half the children  were dying before the age of 16. Half of the children, if you can imagine, just 400 years ago.  So in that world, it's probably good to keep two people together forever. You you give the children the best possible chance of survival if you have two breadwinners or two people caring for them.

 

12:06

But the other thing is that people lived in dire poverty and they were very locked into their class structure.  And if you were born into poverty, you would most certainly die in poverty. It was a miserable life, but it was post-Renaissance. So everybody read, they were literate, but they had no hope of getting out of that structure.  And there was even a law on the books that a common person could not  ever marry a noble person. So there really was no way out.

 

12:34

So here comes these fairy tales  where  a commoner, someone who's downtrodden, meets a prince, someone of royalty and nobility, and that person lifts them and their whole,  they  all lived happily ever after.  It was a fantasy of well-being and rescue, and  there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  And I just love that story because it just shows us how much

 

13:04

our belief structures,  they come out of a cultural construct, something that we're experiencing culturally.  So that's beautiful, but the reality of our day is that what is normal for us  is serial monogamy. Now I'm not  advocating for spiritual monogamy. It is the norm of our culture. So studies indicate that most of us will have two to three significant relationships in our lifetime.

 

13:32

you know,  if my life or  my  client's lives are any indications, and it's often very  much a much larger number than two or three  passionate relationships in our lifetimes, but  it's the norm. And so our job as therapists, as marriage family therapists  is not just to keep a couple together, but it's to help a couple transition if it is clear that they are going to separate.  Because here's the thing,

 

14:00

Inside of this happily ever after  expectation, we have never learned how to do this well. And our biology is still set up from a thousand years ago,  where if somebody, you if you wandered away from your tribe, you were most surely going to die. So when we have a breakup, that attachment wound feels like we're going to die and we get desperate.

 

14:27

and we go into fight or float, are traumatized and it will bring out the beast in the best of us. It is so intense what we go through on just a physical somatic level.  There are studies that show that our brain chemistry when we're going through a breakup is the same as someone who is undergoing the death of a loved one.  And I think we all know that the emotions, the big emotions that we can go through, the big rage,

 

14:56

the big despair, depression, desperation, uh hopelessness, all of those things can begin to take over and cause people to behave in really uncharacteristically bad ways.  So conscious uncoupling  is an  offering of how we might do this better. Everyone that I've ever met or had a conversation with of any intelligence wants to have a good divorce.

 

15:23

if they're going to go that route. want their children to be safe. They do not want to damage their children for life. But this beast takes over most of us.  So  conscious uncoupling is an offering about how we might walk through that process and manage our own emotions  and move through the process in a way that allows people to optimize the opportunity for growth and transformation so that the patterns that they have duplicated from their childhood

 

15:53

don't ever have to be repeated again, this can be their bottom.  They can learn how to take personal responsibility without moving into hatred and shame.  And they can also learn how to  recreate  the family structure so that they have a functional,  well,  post-divorce family, which is gonna be really important if people have children.  Absolutely, and I'm making a connection to

 

16:21

you know, what you're talking about when you were talking about writing the first book  of if you want to find a great partner, it has to come from within you. uh Instead of instead of  external, you know, instead of it just happening to you. And it's sort of the same idea when you were talking about finding a princess like a common or finding a prince like I'm dependent on someone else to sort of make me happy in my life or fulfill my  what I need in my life.

 

16:50

And it must be the same sort of idea in the uncoupling process that it becomes very easy to start blaming the other person for every bad feeling that we're having through that process. And so  is a big part of it taking ownership of those feelings  within myself, which is  more empowering, which I have a lot more control of how am I taking care of myself through this process. m

 

17:19

And I know there's a map, maybe beginning to talk a little bit about what this work looks like when you're working with couples.  Well, so let's talk about the impulse to blame, which I normalize. And part of why I normalize it is because probably the complaints that somebody has  against a former partner, probably a lot of them are valid.  know, people do behave badly and they do egregious things.  don't need to tell.

 

17:48

I'm preaching to the choir on that one. Yeah,  we've all heard those things, So,  Anne, I think that on  a very deep level,  well, as studies indicate this, it's not just my own intuitive thinking, know, feeling about it,  studies show that we are indeed hardwired for fairness.  And I think just the breaking of a marital vow.

 

18:14

or the breaking of a commitment, because conscious uncoupling is not just for people who are married, but anyone who's going through a bad breakup.  It feels like a betrayal. People  have been duplicitous, or they haven't given you enough information, or maybe they lied. So  there's that. So  normalizing the anger. Also,  we all know about grief now because of the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who also wrote,  I think, a book or two with my friend David Kessler. We know about anger.

 

18:43

that anger is that part of that grieving process.  One of the things that I discovered when I was writing Conscious Uncoupling  is as I began to look at all of the research about how we really are hardwired to stay together, nature has  hardwired us to bond so that when we break up, ah I think one of the tricks of nature is to go have us go from a soulmate to a soul-hate  relationship  because hate

 

19:13

is a very highly engaged state. ah Hatred um keeps you just as engaged as when you're in love with somebody who are just as focused on that person and bonded with that person.  And we all know people who have  kept hatred stewing for not just months,  not just years, but sometimes for decades.  I have a family member who is 35 years later still raging at his former  wife.

 

19:43

I know, still, 35 years. It's crossed over into,  okay, this is some kind mental illness problem that he's having, but  it's really intense. So  when somebody is blaming and they're stuck in the blame place, ah I never try to get them to not blame. What I try and get them to do is turn their head in a different direction.  And what happens is, you know, we're,

 

20:08

People are so traumatized and we all know that in trauma that people will replay what happened over and over again because they're trying to, we're trying to wrap our psyches around it. We're trying to integrate that. And so, but what they're doing is they're playing the blame story over and over and they're either blaming the other person or they're blaming themselves. But what I tell people about blame is look, you probably have good reason to be angry, you know, and it's probably 97 % the other person's fault, but we really want to look at your 3 % even if it was passive.

 

20:39

We want to look at  maybe how you turned away from the red flags, you minimize them, where you  weren't asking the questions you really wanted to ask, the ways that you were giving your power away, the ways that you were wanting someone to take care of you in ways that you were refusing to take care of yourself, or you didn't believe you could take care of yourself.  Like all of these ways that we kind of throw ourselves under the bus.

 

21:04

Because what needs to happen for that person is they really need to own that 3%. And they need to  then find the amends that they can make to themselves moving forward like a promise. Like I will never ever again dismiss my own deeper knowing. I will always pay attention to myself. I will always act on what I know  to be true from here.  And I think that when a great trauma and  loss has been suffered, we have to find a way to make meaning of it.

 

21:33

in a way that catapults us forward, that somehow gives us peace,  that the fairness can be restored through what we ourselves are bringing to it.  So the  awakening to one's own power, for example, or one's own worthiness. um You know, one of the things I do with people who are angry, and I'm kind of crossing over the steps, so I'll go over the steps, the specific steps. Okay, great.

 

22:00

But one of the things we do in step one is that when people are angry, is I help them to do an exercise which is kind of, it's called find emotional freedom, to just get them back into more of a regulated state or to give them the tools to be able to self-regulate, not just when they come to see us as their counselor once a week, but where they can do that throughout the week is kind of a modification of what we might know as affect labeling.

 

22:27

where people are just naming their feelings. saying, Catherine, sweetheart, what are you feeling?  But just to go back to what I saying about anger, if the feeling is anger,  is to ask, help the client to ask themselves, well, what is waking up in me? Like, what's right about the rage? Well, the rage, because rage tends to be a reclamation of my rights. Very often, there's some reclamation of something. I deserve to be,  I deserve to know the truth.

 

22:58

I deserve someone to tell me the truth.  I deserve to be respected. I deserve to have my feelings valued and heard. I deserve to be considered here.  So you help someone to really name that and then  use the energy of that anger as an intention that they're creating.  From this moment forward, I will only have

 

23:25

I'm done with co-dependence. will only have relationships that are healthy, where my feelings matter, where my needs matter, and are taken into consideration as well as other people.  And then of course, that sets out a growth journey.  That is what sets people up then for being willing to let go of blame. It's like, look,  you're going to be having to deal with that. And  were there any signs before you married that person and before you bedded that person?

 

23:53

that this might go in this direction. Well, and you'll find it early on. Yeah, as a matter of fact,  on our first date, he told me he didn't really want a commitment and believed in polyamory. And  I just thought I'd change him.  There's some kind of story there.  so there's step two is reclaiming your power in your life. And it's all about  really learning the lesson, but growing up yourself.

 

24:22

like changing yourself and that's how you begin to make peace with it.  And also if people don't do that, they won't be able to trust themselves moving forward. And heartache is so devastating. Anybody who goes through heartache  never, ever, ever, ever wants to go through this again. They're motivated at that moment. You say, look,  we have to do this because we want you to be able to trust yourself.  People will say, oh, I don't trust men or I don't love. But what they're really saying is I don't trust myself.

 

24:52

Hmm. Well, I love the way you're beautifully describing that you can,  I don't know if you would use the word validate their emotions  and their, even, even the, that blame toward their partner and say, this is a good thing. This is a healthy thing. I'm glad you're feeling this. This is  what, you know, what is driving this, these feelings,  um, in that direction.  But then you're, you're very,

 

25:17

uh gently sort of directing the questions more toward them to be able to focus on themselves. And it's much more empowering if they can view it from the standpoint of how can I be more in control of how I feel in this situation?  Absolutely.  that is a skill that we all have,  how to confront people in a way that creates even more safety in their relationship with you.

 

25:47

We want people to feel safe. I mean, I think they feel so unsafe in their life. It's one of the things they're experiencing is their whole life is just dissolving. You know, when you lose a relationship, you don't just lose that person. You lose all of your rituals and you lose friends and you use, you know,  maybe where you live where you lose daily contact with your children. And there's so  many  losses that are happening all at once.  And

 

26:16

You're also it's happening at a time where you have to make very big life decisions. I try and get people to do the conscious uncoupling process before they see an attorney or to see an attorney who's a family oriented attorney who is very pro family and will work to protect the integrity of the family as they're going through a divorce of the spouses. It's a new paradigm.

 

26:43

for people to think.  How do you not be a broken family? Right. Building a private practice can be challenging. Filing all of the right paperwork is time consuming and tedious. And even after you're done, it can take months to get credentialed and start seeing clients. That's why Alma makes it easy and financially rewarding to accept insurance. When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers.

 

27:12

They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment. Plus, when you join Alma, you'll get access to time-saving tools for intakes, scheduling, treatment plans, progress notes, and more in their included platform. Alma helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com or click the link in the show notes to learn more.

 

27:42

Would this be a good time to start talking about some of the steps? Yes, absolutely. I think I've kind of touched on step one and step two, but just to go back a little bit, step one is about find emotional freedom.  And in that step,  we use  the energy of the big emotions to  harness those energies as the drivers of positive change, point them in the right direction. We help someone to get a handle on those hot emotions.

 

28:11

so that they have their emotions rather than their emotions have them.  We begin to uh de-escalate the intensity of the overwhelm, the emotional overwhelm, so that people are more regulated and they're able to self-regulate, as I said. And  I have a very simple practice, actually, which is about just having people just  put their hand  on the part of their body where they're feeling those emotions.

 

28:39

You just say to themselves, know, honey, what are you feeling right now? And really allow them to name the feelings. And that's called affect labeling. You know, there was a study done at UCLA that had people hooked up to all sorts of machines that were testing their body functions, their blood pressure, their heart rate, all that kind of stuff, their body temperature. And they would show on a computer screen faces of people that were just in agony.

 

29:07

They were just like screaming or raging or  and so they and they were measuring the impact on the person who was looking at that.  And then they brought in another group and they did the same thing. But what they did is added a word to the picture that described the facial expression. And what they found is it radically reduced the somatic response to that photograph. So language is a container.  And if you can just

 

29:36

I love that nonviolent communication uh people have put up on the web uh a list of  all sorts of feelings and  all of our needs. Because most people aren't very literate in that way. They're not literate with their emotions. So to be able to just help somebody to say, when you say, what are you feeling, to not answer, feel like he's an idiot.  But to say,  I feel.

 

30:06

desperate  I feel lost  I Feel terrified, you know all of that to really get people and then to just even take a pause and mirror it back I can see to themselves you sit with them as they're doing it You know Katherine, what are you feeling? I feel frightened. I can see that you're feeling frightened, sweetheart What else are you feeling so you go through it you help people and that will begin to de-escalate them So it's a tool you're giving them

 

30:35

Do you typically do that in the presence of each other as they're going through the separation or would that be  individually  or either? That's a great question. Let me speak to that because conscious uncoupling is incredibly unique in this regard.  It is a therapy for the couple to do without the goal being that they become closer.  Right. uh

 

31:05

So you have to stretch your mind around that a little bit. So because of that, I tend to suggest that people do sessions separately, that they go through the process concurrently, that they're not going through it together necessarily, because people have different grief processes. Particularly someone who is leaving the relationship versus someone who is being left are going to have a very different timeline on their readiness to let that go.

 

31:34

because we all know the person who is leaving has been thinking about this for a long time and they've been building an identity out there for some time, usually.  And the person who is left,  even though they might have had warning signals, they were not prepared for it, they were not ready and they are likely traumatized and shocked.  So very often couples will come and they say they wanna do the process together.

 

32:01

But really one person is coming because they want to be honorable. They love their children. They do care about their partner. They want to be there for them. They want to do this the right way. But they're kind of one foot out the door ready to go. They don't want it to be messy. They want to avoid disaster. So they're going to come with a whole different motive. And they're in a whole different place. The person who's being left.

 

32:29

is still trying desperately to hold on, is hoping it's going to change, um is devastated, can't imagine life without their partner, is enraged maybe at themselves perhaps. I mean what we do, I train conscious uncoupling coaches  and the way that we work  is that we have coaches  pair up and offer their services together.

 

32:54

So a  couple will come and the coach will say, well, I work in tandem with this other person or in collaboration with this other person. And they get releases for both the coaches to talk to each other, just so that it rounds out the whole picture.  But they take people through the process separately.  Now, in the book, there's places, there's suggestions about how couples can talk to each other.  But I think it was great that Gwyneth

 

33:23

Paltrow kicked conscious uncoupling into the lexicon, although  most people think that she created it. They also think that it's kind of, another myth is that it's a bit for  privileged people who are gonna have an amicable divorce anyway, or it's just another name for amicable divorce. So that's the misunderstanding that kind of was the shadow side of that blessing of her making that so well known. But  it's definitely not just for people who are gonna have an amicable separation, it's for people who are struggling.

 

33:52

Now the other question I get is what if  one person is coming to you and they're divorcing a narcissist or a borderline personality disorder?  And uh that's gonna be  a rough rocky road.  in many ways you become uh a solace and a support to that person,  but you help that person.

 

34:14

to stay the course, to bring the best of themselves and to take personal responsibility for who they were when they got into that relationship and to use this as their opportunity to grow.  So the goal of a Conscious Uncoupling is not to be vindicated, it's not to get justice, it's not to be buddy-buddy on the other side of this, it's to grow in the best way possible so that you  can love and be loved again in your future in a way that is.

 

34:41

you know, beautiful and sweet and special and  you're not encumbered,  you're not diminished by that divorce.  You're making the best of a bad situation if you have children. You you did choose that person to create children with and so you're going to,  you really need to be your wisest, strongest, most centered self in that situation so that you can keep the family stable even though the other person is not gonna be stable.

 

35:10

There's ways to deescalate. I think we're all kind of hip to that. There's ways to deescalate when someone is dealing with a narcissist. But I digress. You asked me about the five steps. I started talking about that. was step one, find emotional freedom. And set that in tension. That's wonderful digression. Okay, thank you. And then step two is reclaim your power in your life. I'll tell you, this is where you take personal responsibility. But I want to just share with everybody the way to do that.

 

35:39

It really has to do with how do we help people to self-reflect without going into shame and blame, particularly if they feel like they're  the ones who really screwed up. They messed this up and they're in a lot of pain now and their kids are in pain and  their life is in disarray  and a lot of people will have tremendous rage at themselves.  So I always like to tell people, know,  shame can never lead to growth.  Shame.

 

36:10

is the ego's trick to keep you the same.

 

36:16

So I kind of  teach people to even,  what's,  I say to them, what's the question you're asking yourself? Are you trying to understand yourself as the source of this? What's the question you're asking if they're in shame and they're gonna say something like, what is wrong with me? Right? Some variation on the theme. Usually it's what the F is wrong with me.  It's like,  how could I do this? How come I can never get this right? Why do other people get to have love and I don't?

 

36:45

uh You know, they're really in some  disempowered inquiry. It's never going to lead them to growth. So I help them to come up with questions that could lead to growth. Like, okay, let's look at, you know, how did I give my power away to this person?  What was motivating me to do that? You know, how might I begin to reclaim that? So you have to help people to come up with questions to self-reflect on themselves as the source in a way that's going to really

 

37:14

feed them power and not just lead to analysis but I like to lead to specific choices, specific actions, specific behaviors.  You know, how are you the source of it? Well, I just never spoke up as opposed to well, my father and my mother and my sister and then I and then this  and then, you know, then we go down that rabbit hole but nothing ever changes and what I'm trying to get to in step two is what  is the amends you're going to make to yourself moving forward.

 

37:43

What are you never going to do again? Put your hand on your heart, vow this to yourself. So then step three, that's step two. Step three is break the pattern, heal your heart. We could do a whole 45 minutes on that.  That is really like,  what is the identity that we are left with in the breakup?

 

38:06

That's really what a lot of suffering is coming from, is the identity. So we all have these patterns that are lifelong and that show up over and over again.  know, somehow I always wind up alone or I'm never the chosen one or  it's always, you know, I'm always with narcissistic people or, you know, there's a story and the story didn't just start now. The story has  quite a history to it. And we go all the way back to the story. We  call it looking for the source fracture.

 

38:36

What was the original break in your heart? And what's the story? What's the identity that you crafted in response to that? And we have a whole transformation of identity process, which really matters in a breakup because as I said, there are two kinds of suffering in a breakup. One is just the normal grief we're going to feel when we lose someone we love. We lose a relationship. The other is that we make disempowered meaning. I'll never find love again.

 

39:06

I'm not wanted. I'm a person who is rejected and not wanted.  So that identity causes great suffering. So we're looking to make that conscious and we're looking to have the person have an awakening to what is really true about that story. What's really true.  And in a way to heal that pattern for their whole lives. Because they have a broken heart so they're broken open. There's never a better time.

 

39:36

to have people have a breakthrough at this core level than they have right now. The defenses are down. They're kind of, I  like to say, life has you upside down by the ankles and is shaking every lie out of every pocket.  You're upside down and life is shaking  every lie, every way you've ever dimmed down or  pretended to be less than who you are.  Yeah, it's so raw and vulnerable. And I love the way that you're talking about the language.

 

40:07

because I think that language can shape the reality.  Of course, if they're speaking from a place of toxic, I call it toxic shame, there is truth in what they're saying, but it's just leading to this  huge amount of hopelessness,  this feeling like I can't do anything about the situation.  And I think by just shifting some of the language and  viewing it in a different way, it can be so much more empowering for them to

 

40:36

to see that they have a lot more control over how they're moving forward in the situation? Well, studies have shown that it's very important for people to be able to see the possibility  that they are going to one day love again and be happy again when they're in the middle of a heartache.  And that comes out of a study that was done in the  80s where people were trapped in the people who

 

41:06

had the inability to say that.  did like, no, it's never going to work out versus the people who are going to say,  this will be  hard to go through, but I'll get to the other side of it it will be OK.  Predictably, the people who could do the latter then ended up recovering much better.  I think that is important.  Steps four and five, we're finally dealing more with the other person. eh First three steps are all about you.

 

41:35

want the individual. But the four is about becoming a love alchemist and that's really about changing the energy in the connection. So again, it's not for people who are just getting divorced or even if you are, if you have no children, you might not want to stay connected to that person. Sometimes if other people did sociopathic egregious things, it's wise not to if they're not changing and repenting of that. you know, so step four is about forgiveness.

 

42:04

self-forgiveness, it's about how to repair and clear the residue in the field, particularly helpful if you do have children. ah But we all want to be free and clear from resentment.  One  of the things that I love about step four is also the idea of giving generous gifts.  Because we understand that when we're building a marriage, we need to  put money in the emotional bank account. We have to take care of each other and  we're building up the bank.

 

42:34

so that when there's a moment of trouble, we  have a lot stored up between us, a lot of love that's present.  When you have a post-divorce family, you have to start building a new culture of generosity between you. You're building a new form of family. So things like, you know, helping somebody out, being flexible about things,  being generous about certain things, giving people gifts, giving cards, appreciating that person, helping them move.

 

43:02

lending them 500 bucks when they need it. You're about gift giving towards your ex-partner or just other people in general?  sorry, ex-partner. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It started with Mark and I when we were sitting in the mediator's office. He surprised both of us when he declined receiving royalties from calling in the one. He didn't want royalties and he said,  no, Catherine worked so hard on this, I would never think to take her royalties.  Very generous.

 

43:33

And I was married when I wrote that. He helped me write that book.  He  was my sounding board.  And then I returned the favor a few months later when he lost his job. I realized, oh my gosh, he's probably not going to be struggling to pay child support. And we're all struggling because we went from one household to two. And I wrestled with it. But I thought, you know what? There's money. There's a lot of ways to make more money.

 

43:59

but there's only one father my daughter's ever gonna have. So I called him and I said, don't pay child support while you're going through this period of unemployment.  So it's things like that. You start to put money in the bank account again and you start to build up a lot of good feelings and that is good for your children. And it disappears that emotional toxic residue and it begins to build what I call your happily even  after family.  And then step five is, uh

 

44:28

lot of wisdom about how to help  those in your community to  get on board with the new form of your relationship so that they're not taking sides,  help you to choose legal counsel wisely so that you're finding someone who  is going to help you to build that happy even after family  and  not do things that do damage that's irreparable.  And also we look at the residue of having to uh

 

44:57

recreate new agreements with that person. Let go of the old agreements like till death do us part and you know just you're  the great love of my life and just say well you are a love of my life and you are now you know a dear friend and co-parent and that's who you are to me and adjust your expectations and I have a ritual people can do so it's very comprehensive kind of takes people through the whole gamut. Yeah I think so often in the couples that I've seen

 

45:24

who are working through separation and divorce, it's this  scarcity mindset of like, I'm gonna take as much as I can get from you  and I'm gonna get back at you as much as I can. But then it just spirals  or it snowballs because  then the other person feels hurt so then they're just fight for what they can get and  it just goes back and forth. And what you're talking about is so much, is  a potential to snowball in the opposite direction.

 

45:53

with that generosity, with that willingness  to give the other person what they need and that ability to appreciate that both of you are going through this  struggle at the same time.  Absolutely. it has  conscious un-gubbling has kind of a dual purpose.  There's the map, the blueprint for how people can break up better. And there's also great deal of solace and comfort.

 

46:23

and clarity provided for someone who has a broken heart. The book is written from a place of depth and in great compassion. I kind of crawled into the center of heartbreak when I was writing it. So  it's filled with a lot of hope and encouragement and comfort  that is also a good companion for someone who has a broken heart. And I know that  those who work with people are very caring people. And it's hard, the hardest part.

 

46:50

I remember being in private practice for me was when people were suffering from heartbreak and there was only so much I felt I could do for them other than to fully be available and be an empathetic ear and a support and help them to reframe the experience and provide certain levels of hope. But it's one of those times that people go through that is truly a dark night of the soul.  I've heard from many, many people that the book has been  really, really helpful.

 

47:20

because it's kind of crawled into that hell and kept them company and let them know that there was a heaven on the other side of this. Yeah, I can see how that could be.  That would be true.  Well, thank you so much. can people  find out more if they're interested?  I'll definitely put the books in the show notes, but is there a website that people can go to to find out more about you and  your work?

 

47:44

You know, right now I'm inviting people to come to KatherineWoodwardThomas.com.  There is a link there to the Conscious Uncoupling site. I also do train coaches, as I've mentioned, and that information is on ConsciousUncoupling.com. So either of those sites is where you can find me, and I'd love to hear from people. Okay, great. I'll put both of those in the show notes. Thank you.

 

48:10

That's so wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. This is so helpful.  And I really appreciate you being on the show. Hopefully we can talk again at some point. I'd love to, Shane. Thanks for inviting me. All right. Thanks, Katherine. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates. Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks.  Visit HelloAlma.com  or click on the link in the show notes to learn more.

 

48:40

Thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Birkel and this is The Couples Therapist Couch podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everybody!



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