Hello and welcome to Revolutionize your love life. Do you

want to know more about love relationships? What makes them

work? How to create the one of your best dreams?

Do you want to be in a really healthy juicy

love relationship? In these podcasts, we will give ideas and

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There will be something to inspire empower and support you.

Revolutionize your love life is a fortnightly podcast where you

will access the knowledge and wisdom of love experts and

relationship coaches from across the world to help you find

true fulfillment in love. I am your host, Heather Garbett.

Welcome. Hello, everybody. I'm here today with Brandon Rourke Cares.

She's a licensed clinical mental health therapist in the US

and she's worked in the mental health field for over

22 years. She specializes in supporting Children, adolescents, parents and

families in her clinical practice. And over 85% of her

practice is focused on supporting Children and adolescents who live

in two homes and the co parents navigating parenting from

two home structures. Just such important work. She's a specialist

in collaborative divorce and a mediator and co-founder of parent

team. Welcome Brandon. It's absolutely lovely to have you here.

Thank you so much, Heather. Thank you for having me.

I'm I'm really delighted and grateful to share this information

with you and everyone. Thank you. So, today we're gonna

talk about trauma and divorce, the effects on Children and

each other. Uh So shall we begin? What is trauma?

What is trauma in divorce? I think. Yeah, it's a,

it's a great, great question and, and we use the

word trauma a lot. Fortunately, we use the word and

the term trauma a lot more now than we did

even five years ago, a decade ago. So there's more

research, there's more understanding, there's a lot more literature out

there and great books that have been written in the

way that I really appreciate trauma being defined. Doctor Nadine

Burke Harris who um was from the US. She's a

pediatrician and the way she described it is when our

stress response system gets so overwhelmed that we can't cope

anymore, right? So our stress response system gets activated and

we're activated, activated, activated and we don't have that ability.

Our body doesn't have that ability in our mind doesn't

have that ability to be able to cope and to

process and to self regulate through a possible traumatic event.

Now, that can be anything from you know, a one

acute event like a car accident or that can be

chronic. So over time, continued traumatic events abuse, neglect individuals

who experience racism, individuals who experience war it. So there

are just a lot of different types of events and

there's also how we manage that, you know, in our

own personal world and in our life. And from 1995

to 1997 Kaiser Permanente out of San Diego and the

Center for Disease Control and Prevention did a very large

scale population study. It was about 17,000, I think actually

even more um patients and they asked them a series

of different questions about what are some of these possible

traumatic events in children's lives? Right. So they kind of

looked at, I think it was 17 years of age

and under and there were sort of three categories which

was abuse, you know, different types of abuse, different experiences

of neglect. And then also this category over here, which

is like household dysfunction. Ok. So we have different challenges

with addiction. And what's interesting to me and what I've

always been interested in, in my work within mediation and

divorce and working with kids with two homes is that

divorce is an ace, an adverse childhood experience. It is

on that Aces questionnaire. It is considered a possible traumatic

event for Children. And, you know, I think it's just

really important that we know that it can be experienced

that way. For young Children, teenagers and even the adult

Children of divorce that I work with, share their experiences

with me. Right. They're, they're 35 they're 42 and their

parents are going through a divorce and they're like, I

don't wanna hear, I like I'm, I'm still your kid,

even though I'm 40 I'm still your kid. So it's

important that we know some of the factors of the

why, you know, what are, what is the data showing

us about why divorce is on there? You know, what

are some of those factors? And, and two of the,

the bigger ones, the most impactful for Children. And I

see this in my work every day when I work

with kids in my office and when I work with

families and I work with co parents, which is ongoing

chronic parental conflict and I don't mean the one or

two blow up fights that parents have in front of

their Children when they decide why I'm getting a divorce,

right? We're not, we're not talking about those whoops is

that we do as parents. I've done that as a

parent, you know, just in terms of like, oh shoot,

I could have done that better. We're talking about that

sort of chronic ongoing sometimes it's I almost define it

as an undercurrent sort of there's this undercurrent, even if

it's not explicit in front of Children, Children are little

vessels of emotions, right? They, they hold everything and they

can feel it. Yeah. They feel that bitter resentment and

the struggle for power. Absolutely. Yeah. That's a beautiful way

to put it. They, they feel that they feel when

they're put in the middle they feel when they're asked

to be a messenger there, you know. Well, what did

you do at your mom's house last weekend? Did you

meet? So, and so what did you do? Did you

brush your teeth? Did you? Right. And so they're, they're

asked questions constantly, you know, did you meet dad's new

girlfriend? Did you meet that? You know, so those types,

even some of that can be if it's ongoing and

there's not an intervention to help support that family and

to help support those Children and those parents, this can

be a really strong current in a child's life. So

it's the ongoing. Yeah. Yeah, stress response system, right. So

I'm activated, activated, activated. And then over time, what I

noticed with a lot of Children that I work with

is it becomes so normalized. So I have like a

little um heart rate monitor that I use with kiddos,

it goes on their finger and in my office a

couple of things, you know, like maybe um a parent

who's not supposed to be there, it's not, their parenting

time will just show up at my office, right? And

not listen to my boundaries and a child will walk

out and see that parent and their stress response system

early on would have been really activated. Like, oh, no.

My parents are big fighters. They don't get along. What's

my other parent doing here? Ah, you know, and I've

helped kids. It's not like that. Like, I work in

a world of a lot of conflict but over time

what I noticed with some of my kids they don't

even have a stress response. They don't, they don't have

a response anymore because it's become like so normal and,

you know, in helping them because then we look at

the impact in their life as adults. Right? How, yeah,

how does that affect their ability? Not only to self

regulate in their own lives, but to set healthy boundaries

to know, you know, where do they, where do they

begin and end? And their parent begins and end? So

you have a lot of a mesh, a lot of

kids trying to take care of their parents emotionally. So

there's that piece, the ongoing parental conflict. The other part

of that adverse child experience or traumatic experience for Children

is the dramatic change or loss of a relationship with

a parent. So, if I'm a child and I went

from seeing my parent every day, right. I saw them

every day. Maybe they came home, maybe they were late.

They may, maybe they worked a lot and they didn't

come home till 7 p.m. But I always saw them

and I had a relationship with them and then all

of a sudden my new parenting time with that parent,

maybe I see him two weekends a month, maybe I

see them just in the summer and I have kids

who have experienced that. So there's also that dramatic change

or sometimes, and I know it's different in every county

in the United States. I know it's different there and,

you know, in the UK and in all of our

different countries where we have different divorce proceedings. But in

some countries where I've consulted with different um lawyers or

mental health practitioners, you know, Children are more automatically given

to one parent or the other with parenting time and

with custody. So we really gotta start talking about the

impact of attachment and that relationship with those parents and

how, what's the story those Children are walking away with

in their life. Yeah, absolutely. Because it seems to me

we just forget about the emotional bit. We look at

the practical abuse, we look at the practical neglect. We

look at the sort of practical indifference or um the

literal practical effects of living in two homes or witnessing,

continual bickering and bitterness and all of that. You don't

look at the emotional and then, and that's what you're

talking about. We get the Children get into panic and

it's like we get into panic. But if, if we

are Children of divorce, we get into panic and you

talk about self regulation and it's how do you stay

calm in that situation. How do you not dissociate? Which

is sort of what you're saying, they become sort of

numb and it's normal. How do you stay as a

parent, you know, focused on your child's attention at the

same time as managing your own feelings. It is really

important developmental work that we need to do in ourselves

as we divorce so that our Children can too. I

know this is slightly at a tangent to where we

were planning to go. But it just come up to

me as we're speaking. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought

that up because you know, when Jen and I started

parent team, which is our company to help support two

home families and the professionals that help support two home

families like lawyers and mental health practitioners and financial practitioners.

We really started our work in our workbook and our

course around helping the parent first and helping them first

as, as an individual, as a human being. And unless

we're able to self regulate and a little personal disclosure,

I've been through a divorce. I remember what that felt

like when you're in a divorce fog, like you have

to make all these important decisions about your Children and

about your finances. And if you don't have Children, you're

still making massive decisions about your future. And I always

called it the fog because our prefrontal cortex, the best

part of our brain, the CEO the boss of our

brain shuts down. And when we're in stress and we're

not prioritizing, organizing, making wise decisions. And that's sometimes why

we show up in ways that we may never have

thought we would have shown up in these really stress

times in our lives. So help being parents first because

parents are disassociating, they're checking out they're in the fog.

So helping them first calm their regulatory systems and just

find some of that space. so then they can co

regulate with their Children. Help their Children to regulate is

really important. So by regulate, we mean, calm down so

that your blood is in the frontal cortex, not in

the reptile fight and flight. And you can just think

and decide from a, the, the most rational kind, compassionate

part of you rather than part of you that is

regressed might be behaving as a two year old if,

if you've got emotional wounds that go back that far

or a, a 10 year old or in some sort

of playground competitive way. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of

the best ways, right, when we watch a young toddler

or even six, you know, I have a six year

old. So when we're, when she's dysregulated, right? Maybe she's

yelling, she's crying her body. I always think, ok, how

do I help her regulate neck down first? Regulate her

body, come back into her body and then we'll talk

about like the behaviors, the stuff, all of the things

Well, it's very similar in us as adults. We just

have learned more social skills, but we're really dis regulated

inside sometimes. And I love Marsha Linehan work in dialectical

behavioral therapy. She talks about the wise mind. So we

have our emotional mind, we have our rational, reasonable, right?

Like sort of that logical mind. And when we can

bring the two together and honor our emotions that are

in the room, but also have our brain online. We

can find our wise mind. And I really love to

help coach, a lot of my parents and a lot

of my collaborative divorce clients that we want you to

make decisions and be able to attend to your Children

and your, your wise mind. So let's help you with

some tools and strategies to find that wise mind. Mm

So I guess this is the, the part as well

in this section of our podcast where we talk about

conscious uncoupling because that's how you and I met. Yes.

I'm so grateful if you want to say a bit

about it, you know, what conscious uncoupling does and how

it helps parents. Yeah, I mean, my first, I read

the Conscious and Coupling book from Katherine Woodward Thomas many

years ago. I it was it, I don't think she

had written it yet when I went through a divorce,

but I read it a few years later and I

was like, oh, this looks great and I do collaborative

divorce, work and mediation. And I had always asked a

lot of my clients to read her book. And then

I discovered there's this whole coaching model, this beautiful, there

are coaches all over the world who are there to

help, you know, with, with five or six sessions, maybe

sometimes a little bit more of just some very specific

support and help in and through a breakup. And I

think that's so important because sometimes what I've found is

mental health therapists that I've worked with don't understand that

very unique process more than a grief process, right? It's

very deep and very. Yes. And so the conscious and

coupling work that I have seen my clients do, whether

they're a co parent I work with or um a

collaborative divorce or mediation client. It's pretty astounding the growth

and the journey of accountability and healing themselves. And I

think sometimes there's a misconception that conscious uncoupling is done

with as a couple. It can be, but that's definitely

not the norm in my experience. The norm is individuals

just meet with their own coach and it's beautiful. It's

a beautiful five step process to really bring individuals from

really a place of, you know, sometimes we step that

I remember this in my divorce of like this is

happening to me. I have no control over this. Um

I have no, you know, no power in this and

feeling in a victimized place. And it really helps people

in that transformational journey to come into this space of

hold on. Here's what I'm in control of. Here's where

I, you know, where my power is and how do

I move forward in my life? One in new relationships.

But also the beautiful part is when I see both

parents being willing to do conscious uncoupling work in their

own separate time and then they come to the table

with a different co parenting relationship and that's absolutely wonderful.

That's wonderful. Yeah. And what, what I love about it

is sort of pertains to what you've been saying about

regulating that. The first piece we do is help the

parent, the divorcing partner to calm down and to teach

them ways of having inner conversations themselves with all the

different parts of them, from that wise mind, from that

compassionate mind. You know, they, they see people with their

little child self on their lap, you know, that's maybe

been through divorce as a child, you know, seeing their

parents divorce or had distress that gets triggered by divorce

and they want to identify with that part and live

from that. So the wise mind takes that on their

lap and says, no, it's ok, kiddo. I've got you

now, I've got you now and I'm making the decisions,

you can just relax. And then the, the wise mind

also looks at the in internalized parenting messages or other

big influences from authority figures from being a child. And

stares them down too. It, it doesn't mean I'm not

good enough. It doesn't mean I don't belong. Yeah. It

doesn't mean I'm not worthy of love. And that's the,

the context for me, of conscious and coupling, really looking

at those patterns and stopping them replicating. So this part

in the middle is really able to hold, study and

reflect. Now, what did I do that got me to

this point. How was I relating to me? How was

I relating to my partner, husband, wife? What was I

doing? What was I thinking? What was I assuming? How

did I give my power away? How did I stop

being me? Because quite often, you know, that that's there

people compromise and compromise and compromise till there's nobody left

to love because there's no firm identity. Just an absence

that can happen with both sides at the same time,

which is very painful to see. Yes. And it's, you

know, I, how we met, right is you're interviewing me

to be, to be a conscious uncoupling coach and go

through the training, which I'm so grateful that I stumbled

upon that um from a colleague. And the I love

the point in, in working with clients where they, it's

almost like a shock. They're like, oh my gosh, this

is completely from when I was three years old. This

is totally when such and such happened when I was

five and how we, you know, wash and recycle wash

and repeat, wash and repeat throughout our lives. And we

have this really pivotal moment and this chance to transform

and show up differently for ourselves. And also for if

they're a parent, for their kids, for their co parent

and work, I mean, it's really just, it's such beautiful

work. It is so they can, they can be there

for themselves from that wise place, but they can be

there for their Children and give the Children maybe what

they didn't get as a child. The developmental pieces are

so important that, that the actual growing up and the

maturing. Yeah. And the self care that is fundamental to

that. I just love. Yeah. So important. Hm. So let's

talk a little bit about children's experiences of divorce. Hm.

What do you see? Yeah, I mean, I think there's,

I have kiddos who come to me in all different

stages, right? So maybe parents are contemplating divorce and they

come to me and ask we wanna get them some

support. We also wanna know, how do we tell our

kids? Right. So how do we talk to them? And

we have, you know, we have a whole entire module

in our workbook and a and a whole section devoted

to that and really helping parents and holding their hand

in a gentle way and all the way to, you

know, kiddos whose parents divorced eight years ago and they're

really struggling and there's maybe a lot of anxiety or

depression or suicidality showing up. Um I think it's important

I didn't mention earlier but the, the later life effects

of an adverse childhood experience, you know, kids who grow

up and who have four or more aces. So if

you have a kiddo who, whose parents are divorcing in

addition to, you know, some of those other household dysfunction,

so maybe we have a parent who really struggles with

alcoholism. Um Maybe there's abuse going on in the home,

maybe there's witnessing domestic violence. Um So you have all

these different factors and when you have four or more

um aces, it really starts to impact your later life

outcomes with your health. So you're two times more likely

to smoke cigarettes, you're seven times more likely to abuse

alcohol, you're 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide.

So that I just, you know, really looking at those

later life outcomes and even twice as likely to have

cancer or heart disease. So the impact, right, when we

look at that effect on our bodies are physical bodies

that trauma, right? Or I love the book. Our body

keeps the score from Peter Levy. It's just really looking

at how our body holds all of this and those,

that's what that study really reflected. So when we look

at the impact on kids and we talk about all

of let's call them, you know, those micro adjustments, micro

traumas that kids are constantly experiencing, you know, a lot

of times kids put in the middle, I see kids

put in the middle a lot and oftentimes parents have

no idea that that's how their child is experiencing it.

So, you know, I've got a teenager that I work

with who needed some money for a big school event.

Right. So there's a school event. They needed a couple

$100 to be able to attend and went and asked

parent a and parent A said, no, I always pay

for everything. Go ask parent b they never pay for

anything. I'm the one that covers everything. I pay the

child support. I did and they kind of rattled off

all of the things. Well, if I'm that kid, I

just, I just need my needs taken care of like

I don't, I don't need all that information. Right? Because

that's parent to parent, that's not parent to child, parent

to parent. We wanna help parents keep that and really

insulate Children so they can have a childhood and kiddos

do grow up, they grow up a little faster, they

grow up earlier than we would maybe hope for it.

They can still be ok. But we've got to help

parents to help their kids because they don't know, there's

not a manual. That's why Jen and I wrote it

right. We wrote the workbook because we hold so much

compassion and care that when you go through a divorce,

you don't know you don't, you might have an idea

of like, oh, well, no, I never put their other

parent down. Yes, foundational. Don't put their other parent down

because that is a sacred relationship. So that's another really

big impactful part for kids is that it's not just

the, like, angry fighting in front of the child. Those

are really scary incidences for kids, but it's also just

those, like, snippets of conversations that they hear or when

you know the backhanded put down or throw the other

parent under the bus. And that's hard. Even if you're

a one home family. Hm. But it makes, you know,

a child identifies themselves as part of each of their

parents. And so when a parent puts down the other

parent, there's a part of that child in there. Right?

And so your parent, you know, your parent b is

a narcissist, they're selfish. They're this and they're saying that

to their child, that child is identifying with both of

their parents. So there's a part I've had kids say

to me it, Brandon. Do you think I'm a narcissist?

Brandon, do you think? Right. Their little brains. Well, honey,

tell me like, why do you ask that what's coming

up there? Well, I heard my parents say that to

my other parent, da, da, da da. And I don't

know what it means. I mean, I've even had kids

bring child support checks to my office and in the

memo of the check, I'm not gonna swear. But you

can imagine what it's said. Here's your Blankety, blank, blank

blank money. You blank written on the memo of the

check given to the child as a messenger to give

to their other parent because it was Transition Day, it

just made my throat go tight. Fortunately, it was therapy

day for that child. So when that child was like,

what does this word mean? It was a very horrible

name, calling word and I read it and was thrown

off, right? But it allowed me to, to help right

and step in for that family. And you better believe

when that child met left with their other parent, their

next on duty parent, I called the parent who wrote

the check, right? And we talked through that and I

had them come in for a parent session with no

shame, right? I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna shame you.

That's not gonna help you. And, and I, I see

that you're hurting. I see that, you know, and so

I hold the compassion for all of that anger and

rage and resentment that's there. And we got to talk

about how this is affecting your kid and we've got

to have some boundaries. So um and not continue to

generate that kind of energy within that family system because

to that child that is their family and that's, that's

so toxic. And I'm thinking like the the mention of

shame, I was thinking about the child feeling shame as

a, you know, I'm part of that parent. So I'm

ashamed and I'm guilty and I'm blamed and I'm wrong.

All of those things that can just take you into

a um an adapted identity of badness. So you'll go

up and living in your life as if you are

bad as if your feelings and needs are bad. Right?

If your existence is wrong. Yes. And I've had kids

say to me, Brandon, my parents wouldn't be fighting if

I didn't exist. I, I I'm the cause of everything.

Yeah. Not just a nuisance. I'm the cause. Yeah, I

have artwork from Children. I do a lot of art

with kids and some of the most impactful parent meetings

I have is when I with permission, I ask kids

if I can share the artwork with their parent or

both parents. And oftentimes one parent thinks the other parents

a monster and they're the good parent and in the

drawing, both the parents are monsters. So it's really helping

them to see. Oh my gosh, this is the lens

my child looks through and this is their experience of

this and the importance of going. OK. I've, I've got

to try to shift this because I truly believe outside

of some cases that parents all parents deeply love their

Children and want to help them. Yes, they do. I'm

I'm convinced of that too. Yeah. So do you have

some successes? You can tell us about where there were

really difficult times to begin with. But actually the parents

came through when the Children came through. Yeah. I mean,

um, lots of those too, which is so fun to

talk about. You know, I started, this was many years

ago but I started therapy with a child under the

age of 10 who was refusing to go to school,

um, had school avoidance issues and, and pretty, pretty intense

clinical anxiety and depression And, you know, parents really parent

to home, family and parents really had no idea what

was going on and they didn't know what to do.

So we addressed the the school avoidance, we addressed the

anxiety, we were treating the depression and I just kind

of noticed there's something else just really going on within

this family system. And I'm trained as a family systems

therapist. So that means for people that don't know what

that term means is if I'm working with a child

or I'm working with a parent, I see them within

their whole system and all of the threads and layers

and relationships and attachments that are going on. I don't

just look at that eight year old, right? So when

I was working with them and I just said, you

know, would everybody be willing to do some family work?

And these were parents who could not sit in my

office for an initial intake together, they could not sit,

you know, across from couch to chair, they could not

be in there at all. Um, and just spewing to

me, hatred of the other. Right. When I would meet

with them, I noticed and I would say, hey, I

noticed, you know, we've been talking for 20 minutes and

you're talking about your co parent, not your child. And

I'm here to help support your child within their family

and your child's relationship with you. So gently, gently, gently.

Right, just constantly, gently. And I would say, you know,

a lot of intervention and a lot of support and

a lot of family work for that child. But it

was literally that kid would walk into my office with,

you know, just bright eyes like this, right? And big,

big eyes look, just physically looked very, very anxious all

the time, skittish, right? Just like what's happening, what's next?

Can't regulate stress response system, activated, activated, activated. Parents are

mad all the time. Fast forward. I think it was

about a year, a little over a year of support

for a child and then family work and parent work,

you can imagine all the layers and all the support.

And I had a co therapist too who would help

with um some of the parent work. So we teamed

together and really collaborated together to, you know, that child

isn't even in therapy anymore. Graduated from therapy, went back

to school would, at the end would walk into my

office in this just calm, regulated space. And the most

beautiful part of that work was that child was able

to in session with both parents sitting on my couch

and share what their past experience was and how hard

that was for them and for those parents to be

able to listen and validate and not have to defend

because his parents, you know, oftentimes we defend, right? It's

like kids, kids hand us their little precious emotions and

they, there's these tiny opportunities in life to hold that.

And as parents often just because we just step in

and defend and we parent, we parent but they were

so coachable by the end in a lot of John

Gottman work around um emotion coaching and just sitting in

it with their kid sitting in that this was devastating

for their child when they got worse and their own

grief and shame around that, right? They they were holding

that as parents and when we were able to process

that, they both read conscious and coupling, they just did

all the work and it, I would say that doesn't

always happen where people are like, ok, give me the

stuff and I'll do the work and I'll really show

up and transform, but they did it and i it

almost brings me there. Their child will, their kid will

be OK. Oh That's really beautiful. Can't happen all the

time, but at least it's happening some of the time

and that's good for us all right across the world.

Thank you so much for today, Brandon. Let's hold on

and, and, and do the next one together too. Yes,

of course. Thank you so much. Bye for now. Thank

you so much for listening to this episode of Revolutionize

your love life. I'd like to know what has been

your biggest takeaway from this conversation. Do take a minute

and share this with us and visit us on our

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out to me as I'm always keen to learn more.

Thank you so much again for listening and we'll meet

again on the next episode of Revolutionize Your Love Life.