Listen: How to divorce or separate well

Is it possible to thrive after a divorce or marriage separation?

Jack:
Good day. It’s Jack Whelan here, Barrister and Mediator, and I am on the sunny Central Coast of New South Wales and I had the great pleasure of being joined by senior clinical psychologist, Heather Irvine-Rundle. Good day Heather, how are you?

Heather:
Good day. Good to see you.

Jack:
Good to see you. Thanks for joining us on The Separation Guide podcast number one.

Heather:
Great to meet you.

Jack:
And thanks to the READ Clinic for being a part of the Separation Guide Network.

Heather:
It’s a pleasure and an honor.

Jack:
Terrific. Now we have a fairly profound question before us today and a question that no one is better equipped to answer than you, given your over 20 years of experience in helping families, kids and parents live well. In particular, in many cases, assisting families and parents after separation and divorce. So Heather, here is the question, is it possible to thrive after separation or divorce? And if so, how?

Heather:
You start with the big ones don’t you?

Jack:
I do!

Heather:
Yeah, okay.

Jack:
No point messing about.

Heather:
It’s really important for listeners to know that it’s very possible – but the pace at which we do this varies greatly and it can depend on many factors regarding how the breakdown occurred, why the breakdown occurred and when the breakdown in the relationship occurred. For some parents, they can take more time than others to realize that where one door is shut, other doors can open. So it’s very possible to thrive.

But it’s also dependent on what other resources we have. So some people will have huge support networks that can hold them during this time, some won’t have as many. Some will be naturally more emotionally resilient and they may have lives free of hardships and complexities.

But the important thing is, if you don’t have those things, this is the time to build them. And this is a time where we can have new freedoms, new opportunities. We’re not held up by perhaps how someone saw us for many years. We can rebuild ourselves, get a new sense of self and we can actually flourish. As we say in our industry, we don’t survive through divorce and separation, we thrive through divorce and separation and we come out our best selves at the end.

Jack:
And in respect of that reframing – people merely thinking that the best they can do is survive – for people to be able to take that step and to try and thrive, what are the things which you believe can empower people to be able to make that step?

Heather:
Okay, so some of the things that parents need to make sure about is that one, that they both realize that although the has ended they remain in a lifelong business partnership where the business is raising healthy children – and both parents need to stay willing to work as a team and that’s providing consistent boundaries, turning up at events together for goodness sake, mum and dad, turn up together.

The kids want to see that they can have a basketball game and you can both be in the same room. The stadium’s a big enough place for you both. And parents need to stay united on things like drugs, education and healthy lifestyle choices. Both parents need to model healthy lifestyle choices and communication styles. And both parents need to recognize that professional help may be needed and that’s clear.

The other things parents need to do is realize that we need to grieve. At some point, both or one of you have thought you were going to be together for a long time, and perhaps one of you thought you’d be together forever. Now that needs to be grieved – even though one parent may have been out of the relationship in terms of having an affair or moving on in some ways, still the ending is really painful.

Because the grief is the dream of what you thought you were going to have and it’s really important that you’re supported to grieve in that way. And that doesn’t mean that you have to not think about what’s happened before you. We need to be sad, we need a space to be angry, we need a space to be hurt and disappointed, and then we need to move forward.

Because we need to show our kids that although we’ve lost a lot of families, lost a lot, we can move forward.

When we look at it in our industry, we call this radical acceptance. The American’s coined the term, they call it radical acceptance, but what it means is that although we don’t want to, it takes a radical step to accept that this person isn’t going to be the person in our lives that we wanted. It’s radical to believe that we’re not going to grow old together. It’s radical to accept that there’s going to be a new mother or a new person who’s going to be around our children. And it’s called radical acceptance because it often is a big radical leap.

The other thing that’s really important for us as parents is to say, okay, if I want my child to be healthy I have to model what health looks like. So I need to keep up my sport. I need to keep-up my friendships and my healthy diet. I need to keep-up all of those healthy behaviors, particularly for the mums out there, and I’m not being sexist, it is moms who tend to be more emotional about the divorce. And if kids see us falling apart emotionally and not being able to pick ourselves up, that’s really concerning. By all means, throw yourself on the bed and cry your eyes out. But let your kids see you pick yourself up and say, okay, I’ve had my cry now. Now I’m going to go and have a cup of tea or I’m going to go for a walk or I’m going to do something healthy. Kids can see you fall apart, as long as they also see you pick yourself up. Because that’s what then they learn they can do too.

How can you manage grief in a marriage separation or divorce?

Jack:
So for people, there’s much to unpack there. People who are in that grieving stage and there’ll be many people listening to this who are going through that. They could be on the train, on the way to work, listening to the podcast, or at home at night, trying to figure out all the complexities of separating and divorcing. Or living after separation or divorce. Going through that grieving process practically, what can they do in that moment? You mentioned having a cup of tea, having some activity.

What are the other things that people can do in order to help manage that grief?

Heather:
There’s two aspects. One is a cognitive aspect and the other one is a physical aspect, so cognitively it’s reminding yourself you are someone important and valuable. Before you even met this partner who’s now left. You can go back to being important and valuable too, in fact it never left you.

And so that the cognitive part is finding those thoughts and that sense of self within that says, I can do this, I’m still valuable, I’m still important, I can move on. And it’s really important that if you can’t find any of those thoughts, that you do find professional help. Of course we all have doubts now and again, but if your sense is I can’t go on living, I can’t do this, it’s all too much, I can’t handle it – and you’re not finding that there’s some other thoughts coming in to say, yes you can, come on, get yourself up. Keep moving. You can get through today. Then you need to see someone that can get you thinking just what can you do that’s better for you today? What is it that you can actually get done today? How can you be different today than you were yesterday? How can you be better for your kids or for yourself and your work?

So there’s a cognitive aspect and sometimes we need our friends to provide that for us when we can’t find those words. Sometimes even our kids will be our little cheerleaders and say, come on, let’s do this today mom. And sometimes you’ll find that it might be a close family member or a support group of someone else that’s gone through it. So there’s a cognitive aspect of finding those cheerleading voices within.

The other, of course, is that we need to stay really physically well. And if people want to go and see a psychologist or just check in with the GP even, you’ll find that things like watching your breath rate is really important. We know that breath rates, they get really high and make us more prone to anxiety and more vulnerable to depression and anxiety. So watch your breath rate, you can do some breath rate work with some apps, just look them up on in Apple or wherever your type of phone you have. And you’ll see ones like Breathe Zone or Breathe To Relax. We need to keep our breath rate around 12 breaths per minute in order to be psychologically well.

We also need to make sure that we’ve got a healthy diet and we need to have a healthy sleep patterns, both of which load on what’s known as the sympathetic nervous system. Which is the system that makes us feel overwhelmed and feel we can’t cope. So having too much caffeine, going without sleep loads on the system. That also says to the brain, I can’t cope. It’s all too much, I can’t keep going. So we need to put in place cognitive and behavioral strategies and – as I’ve mentioned – some aren’t particularly hard. Watching how we think and sometimes just regulating our breathing can be enough to pull us down out of that fight/flight freeze zone and back into a part of the brain that says, I’ve got this. I can keep moving forward

Jack:
And does that feed on itself? If people are able to have that mindset and reach that point whereby they start to have some confidence that yes, I’ve got this – what happens next? And then I’m going to ask you, if they can’t manage that, what can be the consequences of walking through other doors?

Heather:
It’s important what you say because basically once you say, I’ve got this, you start to take responsibility for what happens next. And with many people who have gone through separations and divorce, what happens is they’re still stuck in a culture of wanting to blame the other person for everything that’s gone wrong in their life. They’re wanting the other person to change in order to bring about change for them.

And what we find is that once you can have those cognitions that say, I’ve got this, I can handle this, you start making the changes you need in your life rather than waiting for someone who may not be interested in your welfare and may not be interested in where you’re going in life to change for you. Because that can put you in a really tricky situation. The best person who can put your life on track is you. And if we’re still waiting for someone else to change, for someone else to come back, for someone else to somehow be the person we want them to be rather than who they are, we put all the power back in their hands and that’s dangerous. We need to show our kids and ourselves the power sits within and that’s how we move forward.

How can your behaviour affect your kids during a divorce?

Jack:
So you mentioned there a couple of minutes ago about the behaviors that the parents need to model for their kids, and the importance of that – what could be the consequences of modeling the wrong sorts of behaviors?

Heather:
A great question and one that we see mainly in our clinic. It’s an interesting line and I hope you forgive me for a little bit of psychology speak, but we actually call this being a grown-up or being an adult. Because what you’ll find is that when we’re vulnerable and we’re scared and we’re hurt and we’re disappointed and we’re grieving, we can often behave a lot like children. And when you’ve got children trying to parent children, as you can see from the playground, it usually doesn’t work very well.

Jack:
Just on that. Just really quickly. It’s such a rich vein itself, so important. Presumably, any parent, wealthy, not sophisticated, not, struggling or managing, is still capable of exhibiting those sorts of childlike behaviors when they’re not their best self.

Heather:
We all are, you watch me for long enough and you’ll see that I’m the same. The issue isn’t whether we move into those states or not, because we all do. The issue is how quickly we recognise how appropriate it is for the circumstance. As I said, it’s okay to become emotional. If you can find enough of your grown-up self to say, how do I get out of this? How do I move on from this?

We need to model sadness, we need to model grief, we need to model anxiety to our kids so that they know what to do with it. But what is the most harmful for kids, and research shows it time and time again, is when we’ve got one very angry parent dealing with another very angry parent. And conflict between parents is the single biggest problem we have all separated families. It is in the research. It is loud and clear.

If you’re in conflict with the other parent, your kids are going to be in trouble.

And it’s not the divorce or the separation that determines whether a child thrives or not in life, it’s what the level of conflict is, right? That is very clear. So even in families who stay together with high level conflict, the outcomes aren’t good. If you’ve got a divorce and separation plus conflict, the outcome is not great. And you at least have to hold up your end of the bargain wherever possible of not engaging in that child-like conflict. Moving up, sometimes being the bigger person, even though you know the other person may not have an appropriate position, may not have a healthy way of dealing with things. If you can avoid conflict, avoid it.

And you might need to come back and deal with it another day. Not every situation has to be dealt with at the time in that moment. Take a break, come back. At least you can show your kids. Because if your partner is highly conflictual, it’s likely they’re going to conflict with your kids too. And your children need to learn how to step back from that parent who’s involved in a lot of conflict, and when to come back and try again a different way on another day.

Jack:
If in circumstances where you do have that children-raising-children dynamic and parents are at war, so to speak, in an escalation cycle and the kids are seeing that over a long period of time – what can that mean for children, and what are the consequences of being stuck in that escalation cycle for the kids?

Heather:
Yeah, so a pretty easy one to answer in terms of some low level concerns. And one is that you end up with a, what we call it parenta-fied child. And that is, as the name suggests, when the child ends up becoming the parent for the one who can’t actually parent themselves. So that child is the one who therefore takes responsibility for getting mum up and getting her a cup of tea in the morning or telling dad to calm down or managing the family finances or looking after the little baby in the family because her mum’s too tired or too distressed or dad can’t be bothered with it because he’s too busy working on the iPad. I’m giving some of our guests some examples from the families we’ve worked with here.

The other one of course is that these children get involved in a whole level of unhelpful behaviors and thinking styles themselves, which can end up with a lot of mental health related issues. So the anxiety of not knowing whether mum’s going to get them to school on time, or whether dad’s going to be aggressive, or whether their siblings are going to actually get picked up from sport because the parents are warring about who should pick up who.

They are obvious things that really lead kids to be very anxious and anxiety over a long period of time often leads to depression and sadness, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. And of course these kids, depending on their age, it’s very hard for them to verbalize that in a healthy way if they haven’t seen that done for themselves. So that often escalates into these kids becoming more angry or aggressive at school, withdrawing.
And then you’ve got the ramifications of social skills problems, and conflict at school. Which again, we know then that that puts peer relationships at risk and we know that is a protective factor for kids going through divorce. The better their peer relationship, the more protected they are from mental health issues. But also if they’re withdrawing, they’re withdrawing from school as well. And we know that academics are incredibly important as well for these kids in terms of their sense of self, their sense of achievement. And as they withdraw from school, their grades go down. Then that’s another thing that’s actually very difficult for them to pick up.

So we really want kids to be engaged as much as possible and as many activities outside the family structure during these times as they can cope with. Because sometimes it’s the footy coach that keeps them on track. Sometimes it’s the classroom teacher that keeps them on track. The swimming coach, the cheerleading coach and wherever possible we want healthy adults to stay engaged with these kids. So on those days when we’re not doing our best, when we’re quite childlike, there’s another adult who can pick up and be that for us on that day.

Separating with kids

Jack:
Yeah. So you mentioned before this idea of even if you are separating, or separated and divorced, or divorcing, this concept of understanding that it’s still business for life, especially for the kids. When you mention that to people, how do they react to that? Because most people implicitly regard separation or divorce as an end of something and it’s an end of one thing. But how do you reconcile the end of the nature of one relationship, with the fact that it’s in everybody’s interest to regard the rest of the life as still a business, especially where there are kids involved?

Heather:
Yeah, and it’s interesting because depending on how the separation/divorce has occurred and the type of parents that you’re dealing with, some will inherently know that. Some will inherently know that although this romantic part of the relationship has ended, the job of parenting hasn’t. And they’re the easy ones to work with I must say, because they just get it and they get that they need to make handover times really easy. And they get it that they both have got to have the same set of rules in both houses. And they get that they need to make bedtime the same and that they need to let kids move their belongings between houses and not have to have one set of clothes at the other. And this really is an important space for the kids to feel like they have still got some consistency between homes. They’re the ones that are easiest to work with and where the kids tend to still thrive regardless of having two homes now.

The ones that are harder to work with and the ones who seem to get stuck in the idea that the other parent needs to be blamed or shamed or put back in their place or made to feel something for the reason the separation has occurred. So by and large the dynamic is destroyed a little bit by the fact that they’re still so focused on the adult relationship that they’ve forgotten that the business is actually that of the children; and they’re the families we work with for quite long periods of time to help them get beyond what is now finished. Which is the romantic relationship where they now need to be parents forever to these beautiful children that are produced.

Jack:
That, understanding the nobility of the cause, that must be a hard transition to let go of romance and all of that with that particular partner. But also let go of blame, especially if you feel hurt.

Heather:
Yeah. And you’re so right. And that’s where I said it’s radical acceptance, and I said you need to be grown up. Because it is really tough to let go of those hurts and those vulnerabilities because they are very childlike positions, very childlike emotions. And that little part of the self doesn’t actually want to adult at those times, it just wants to hurt somebody or it wants to blame somebody else. And it’s really tough to say, actually, I’ve got to put that aside now and be grown up enough to realize I have little eyes watching me and I need to be a better person for them and for me to keep moving forward.

Jack:
It sounds like, and this is a lay person’s interpretation of some of the message, but it sounds like for many people, you’re in the business of skills building. Plainly, people will have different levels of skills, different types of skills. So is it a truth that when you’re meeting with people, you need to make an assessment about the skills that they have as opposed to skills that they need? So are you taking people on a skills building journey? Is that a large part of what this is about?

Heather:
You’re right, and people will come to marriage with a set of skills based on their experiences, family of origin, support networks. And some people may come into a marriage with an extraordinary set of skills around conflict resolution, about managing emotions, about maintaining healthy lifestyle. And some won’t have built many of those at all and be relying on another person to do a lot of that for them. Now obviously that leaves that person very vulnerable, if that other person they’ve relied on quite heavily leaves. And then they have to do what they should have done years before, which is now grow-up. But I didn’t say that was easy.

So that is our job as psychologists to not say where they should be, but rather identify where they would be if they were being healthy compared to where they currently are. And identify that gap and then put those skills in place in order to help them move into that adult space. If they’re not there, identify where their strengths areas are, because we don’t just want to look at struggles, we want to look at strengths. And to help them know, okay, if we do this, these are the next things they can build on, and this will be the repercussions.

But it’s not a quick process. There’s many people who are missing many skills for reasons that are not their fault. If you come from a dysfunctional family of origin, you hardly asked for that. Now you’ve had a dysfunctional family of origin and perhaps an unhelpful or abusive partner. They may find it very hard to build skills in those zones. So they’re the people we’d want to hold for a lot longer and support for a while longer and get them a whole lot of skills that they deserve to have, but were never given the opportunities to develop. So some families we will work with them for very small periods of time just because of circumstance, as they have a whole lot of skills already. And some families we may need to work with for years as they slowly start to build those skills and become the self that they deserve to be.

Jack:
This is Jack Whelan speaking with senior clinical psychologist, Heather Irvine-Rundle about the fascinating subject of how people can thrive after separation and divorce. Heather, we’ve just discussed building skills in order to be able to do this and make this transition really well. Let’s just talk very practically about one of those skills I suspect many people don’t have and many of us may have on some occasions and not on others.

That moment where there is conflict on the horizon, even say, picking up the kids from school or wherever it might be. It could be in the middle of a separation or divorce, it could be in court or not. And you feel as if something needs to be said to your partner, but you have a sense that that may be a course of an escalation – with all the passion, all the emotion, so forth. In the context of de-escalation being one of the important messages to ensure that kids are in good shape themselves, what skills does one actually need to be able to avoid that moment where you feel as if you are going to escalate conflict?

Heather:
Well firstly, and I say this to all the people I work with, the only person you can be in control of is you. And there’s lots of rehearsal that we can do. There’s lots of skill building we can do. But you can’t always be in control of what the other person does or says. And so in those situations where that’s the person that you need to be, remind yourself that what is in control there is you. So that’s making sure you’re going into that situation with an idea – and we will do some imagery of rehearsal – of you staying calm regardless of what the other person says. Now, that’s not saying you need to stay calm if they become threatening or violent. That’s a different set of circumstances. However, if it’s words that are being used, we always work on the person staying calm, regardless of what’s being said. Because if you use a tone or if you use anything that suggests that you’re becoming threatening towards them, that escalates very quickly.

Now, in a lot of the work that I do, I will actually say to the dads or the mums that I’ve worked with, just notice your heart rate. Notice your heart rate. If you feel it starting to be at that point where it’s about to burst out of out of your chest, that’s probably a good time to say, “Hey look, I feel like this is getting heated. Why don’t we leave this for today? What if I send you a text or I’ll send you an email describing what I was going to talk to you about and let’s do it via that way.”

Now because it can take three, four or five times to actually get through an issue – remember the reason that you broke up as a relationship, a romantic relationship, is because you probably had some conflict management issues before. It’s interesting that some people think it can get better now that you’re not together. No, if you had that with them before, you’re going to keep having it. But the difference is that you can be your better self when you approach it now.

So you’ve got to keep in mind that you have to stay clear with how you want to be in those circumstances and that getting an outcome isn’t always something that’s possible and it may take a few goes before you to get actually what you want. Now, did I say that was perfect? No. This is again a case of radical acceptance. We have to radically accept that we cannot always get outcomes we want. Because if you’ve got two people and one doesn’t want to achieve the same outcome as you, it’s not always possible. But you have to take care of your own sense of self and your own sense of behavior and it’s better to walk away and not get an outcome then to keep pushing for an outcome and become completely emotionally and behaviorally dysregulated, scare the kids, scare yourself. And then all we’ve got is another example of all the kids seeing that mum and dad can’t work together at all. And therefore they can’t ever see them being together at weddings, together at basketball, together at teachers’ feedback sessions. And that just puts the kids in a really tough spot.

Jack:
Does that cause kids in those circumstances sadness and grief themselves? The prospect of perhaps a future whereby knowing that mum and dad aren’t going to be at their own wedding or even just at their own footy games on the weekend or netball games?

Heather:
And this is where it’s not dissimilar to the work we do with kids, which is about grieving their dream. They never saw it in their minds that they were going to have to have a time where they would have the mum and the dad that they love at opposite ends of the basketball stadium. Or that they may not speak to each other at their wedding. Kids have to grow their dream too. So often a lot of the work we do post separation divorce is grief work for kids as well. Then we’d move into that word I said before, radical acceptance. There has to be some radical acceptance of this or else these kids are often stuck in a place where they’re still trying desperately to get mum and dad back together and doing whatever they can to get that to be the result.

And at some point, it’s a really tough day for kids when they finally resign themselves to this idea that they can’t, but then we can start the work of then, okay, so if they’re really not going to be together, we can radically accept this. How can we move on with healthy ways of having two homes, having two Christmases, of having two Easters, having maybe two different places to spend holidays with – and then we can start to move on. But you have to radically accept before you can actually integrate this new world into your behavior.

Jack:
This sounds like a design question. How at the appropriate time you actually make a choice and hope with your partner that there is some amicability. Of how you can design a future for yourself, your kid. That must create, well, as you said empowering, the idea that you can actually take responsibility and then move towards designing a way forward for yourself and for your kids.

Heather:
Yeah, and that’s where you have two parents who are willing to work together, who can sit down with myself or another psychologist, or with the kids – if their skills are high enough – and say, let’s make this Christmas great. I know it’s not going to look the same as all being together in the same room, but you’re going to have two Christmases this year. You’re going to have one set of presents from here and one set of presents from here. You’re going to have two lots of Christmas pudding or whatever it is and suddenly you’re engaging with the child’s sense of wonder and excitement and all the things that they want again and the same with holidays.

I’m not here trying to present something that looks like some sort of utopia, but certainly you can give the kids an idea that as they’re saying goodbye to one dream, they can create another. And it’s really important we do that for our kids because fantasies are more powerful than fact, for kids. They will always dream up a whole set of scenarios that are either unhelpful or helpful depending on what support we give them. So we need to stay engaged with these dreams that they’ve got of the future and help them create them in ways that they can get excited about too.

Jack:
It just strikes me listening to what you’re talking about in respect of helping people build their skills, helping people try to de-escalate conflict for the good of the kids. People being out to work with the kids to design new futures and so forth, or be different from what they had anticipated. It just strikes me that that’s one set of messages of which is somewhat contradicted by many of the messages coming out of my own profession, the law. When you look at how much of the law manages disputation in families in particular, the message is to fight. We fight for you, that type of message. It strikes me that in one circumstance a profession is giving one message and another professional is giving another contrasting message. So there must be circumstances where the family, husband or the wife, or both are stuck in the middle.

Heather:
Absolutely. And what’s hard is where you’ll get, say, one parent who wants to work with psychology and mediators, who wants to work on deescalation, et cetera. And you’ve got another who’s really engaged with a high conflict type of legal team. And he’ll shoot off emails, ask me for reports and really want to get this idea of the parents being divided. When what we find, as I said, is separation will only work if we have parents united with the business that they need to raise children. And that’s the key concept that we need to keep reinforcing.

And I hope that through the work that you’re doing, Jack, the message gets out there that only through parents being, not in a romantic relationship, but in the business of raising healthy children, are we going to get a way forward; because we have a huge level of divorce and separation across the world. And particularly in Australia, we’ve got to move on from the idea of being on different teams. You’re on the same team for the rest of your life and that team is raising healthy kids. So yes, I hope we can all get on the same page and work in the same direction.

Jack:
So fascinating isn’t it? Heather, it strikes me that the things we were talking about won’t be necessarily applicable to everybody because people are so individual and the dynamics of relationships are so different. What do you have to say about that reality?

Heather:
Yeah, that is a really important reality that in fact the advice we’ve given today will be useful and parts of it will be very meaningful for about 80% of separating parents. We cannot deny that there’s a cohort of people dealing with partners who have got severe personality disorders, whether that’s any social personality disorder, or narcissism, borderline personality disorder where there’s a high level of really extreme conflict, violence and aggression and and really no intention of actually ever being a team player. And for those parents who are listening to these podcasts, I just want you to know that in those situations, it really is important that you keep in mind about being your best self and being the best you can be for your kids, but also you need to get together with the type of legal team that Jack’s suggesting here. One that’s not into more conflict, one that’s into resolution, but can also really support you on that journey of making sure you have your voice heard and your rights known and met in a very complex and difficult time for you. If that’s the type of person that you’re dealing with.

Jack:
It’s very case specific. Heather, I feel like we could talk all day and I suspect we’ll need a part two and a part three of our podcast. But thank you so much for your time and it’s been a real pleasure and hopefully those who are listening to the podcast have picked up some really wonderful insights from one of the best in the business, Heather Irvine-Rundle. Thank you very much.

Heather:
Thank you.