Slaying the DRAGON: Cutting Through Divorce Conflict with Diane Dierks and Rick Voyles
Slaying the DRAGON
Diane Dierks and Rick Voyles from the Co-Parenting Dilemmas podcast join Seth and Pete today to teach us how parents can reframe conflict. Diane is a licensed marriage and family therapist, as well as the executive director of the Center for Navigating Family Change, a non-profit that provides court-ordered parenting education and co-parenting services to the state of Georgia. Ric is CEO of the Center for Dispute Solutions, as well as a certified business coach, an anger management specialist and a professional mediator. Together, they are co-authors of “I Am NON-Impossible: A 12-Week Journey to Co-Parenting Peace” and co-hosts of the podcast Co-Parent Dilemmas now it its third season.
Diane and Rick talk about their acronym, the DRAGON, and how divorced parents struggling with conflict can use it to cut back those challenges. The acronym?
D - Describe the dilemma. What’s going on between you?
R - Reframe it. Consider alternate reasons it may be happening.
A - Anxiety. What’s driving your fear? What are you afraid is going to happen if something doesn't change?
G - Goal. For myself and (primarily) for my child in the conflict.
O - Opportunities. Formulate a plan to accomplish the goal for my child and meet their needs regardless of what the other parent does.
N - Negotiate. Discuss how to meet in the middle.
Seth calls these workarounds, but however you work through it, the point is that you’re working to eliminate those conflicts and do what’s best for the kids. We also talk about setting up a structured email protocol to assist in keeping communication structured. This allows parents to live separately while parenting parallel.
Remember, it’s not divorce but conflict that hurts the child. Yet far too many divorced parents are mired in conflict. Use these tips to help get through it so you can have healthy divorce boundaries.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships, from TruStory FM. Today, we're going to slay your Toaster's inner DRAGON.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today, we welcome two guests to teach us how parents can reframe conflict.
Diane Dierks is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, as well as the Executive Director of Center for Navigating Family Change, a nonprofit that provides court-order parenting education and co-parenting services in the great state of Georgia.
Rick Voyles is CEO of the Center for Dispute Solutions, as well as a Certified Business Coach and Anger Management Specialist and Professional Mediator. Together, they are coauthors of I Am NON-Impossible: A 12-Week Journey to Co-Parenting Peace, and co-hosts of the podcast Co-Parent Dilemmas, now in its third season.
Diane and Rick, welcome to the Toaster.
Diane Dierks:
Hey, glad to be here.
Rick Voyles:
Yeah. Thanks for having us.
Seth Nelson:
Pete, that's what they all say at the beginning of this show.
Pete Wright:
I know.
Seth Nelson:
And at the end, they're like, "I don't know."
Pete Wright:
"I'm kind of ready to go. This has been fine."
Diane Dierks:
No, that's not true. We love talking to people about this subject.
Rick Voyles:
Yes.
Diane Dierks:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Well, it's a good subject. And I feel like, just to set the table, so to speak, we're here to talk about co-parenting, conflict in co-parenting. I want to just set the framework for the things that you all are talking about at, both in the podcast and your book, and what is the framework around conflict in co-parenting. What are some of the reasons you find two parents run into conflict when parenting together, and when does that start? Before the divorce proceedings are even launched?
Seth Nelson:
Pete, it starts when you're discussing naming a child.
Pete Wright:
Or having children? I don't know.
Seth Nelson:
You missed the wedding planning.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Diane Dierks:
I think this is a matter of opinion, but I think that when you're married or when you're together in a relationship, whether you're married or not, you have leverage. If I want you to make me dinner tonight, I better do something for you. If you want me to have sex with you tonight, I better do something for you. Relationships are all about negotiation. In the marriage, sometimes we're good at it, sometimes we're not. But I think as soon as divorce papers are filed or someone decides, "I don't want to be in this relationship anymore," the leverage goes away. Then suddenly, it's each man for himself or each woman for herself, and then the conflict begins.
Because the only thing we have in common are these children that we've made, and they're very near and dear to our hearts. I want you to go away so I can have this relationship with my child. That's, I think, the human nature part of it, but we're all smart enough to know that we can't just do that. Once we've had a child with somebody else, the law tells us that they're worthy to at least be in that child's life. I think that's where the conflict really begins when it comes to co-parenting.
Pete Wright:
I am really surprised to hear the words leverage in there. I love that. I love that.
Rick Voyles:
Yeah. I think that's perfect. It is all about leverage and about negotiation. If you don't have the skills to do it, then you're going to be bad at it, either in the relationship or through the divorce.
Seth Nelson:
We all know that parents do parent differently, even when they're in a relationship, not getting a divorce. What I always say is, in divorce, any personality trait becomes very heightened. If you're anxious by nature, you're super anxious. If you watch every dime, now you watch every penny. And your individual parenting styles become heightened. And if they don't align, which they often do not, then the other side will be just pointing out what they perceive to be deficiencies.
Diane Dierks:
Once we're co-parenting, we feel that we now have the right to finally do parenting the way we want to. Because maybe in the marriage or in the relationship, I deferred to your parenting style because I felt maybe you had a little more power in the relationship. Or I just let you be the disciplinarian because I didn't want to fight with you about it. Now that I'm on my own, I can finally parent the way I want to, and sometimes that does go to an extreme.
I am going to finally discipline these kids like they should have been, and I might go overboard with that, or vice versa. These kids have been little soldiers around the other parent. I'm going to finally let them do whatever they want so they can feel some freedom, and maybe because I want to be the better-liked parent. All of those factors become very complicated, I think, after divorce.
Pete Wright:
It feels to me what all three of you have just said is, conflict comes from the point where your activities become examined under a microscope. And therefore, it seems like peace should come from ignorance. If we just stopped looking so hard at each other, maybe we'd be able to find some peace.
Seth Nelson:
Well, I think that's true, Pete. But in a relationship, when you're raising children, what happens is, we all take on these roles in the household. The stereotypical 1950s, man makes the money, women runs the house, but wait till dad gets home. If you're not listening to me, wait till dad gets home. And he's the enforcer. Okay. Now, there's all sorts of permutations of that very simplistic analysis that I just did in relationships when you're together. And kids know.
Literally, I was talking to my son and his, or my soon-to-be stepson as well. We were sitting around and it was during COVID. And we said, "Well, which out of the numerous parents and stepparents in your lives is the most strict about COVID rules?" And they immediately said who it was. They both said it. And who's the lightest? The kids know better than we do what they can get away with with what parent. And in a divorce, that also becomes heightened.
Pete Wright:
My hunch is that's going to be different. That could be different between parents and kids. If you have two kids, those relationships are different, too. I'm only putting that on my own. I've got two kids and I think I have a different relationship with each of them, and they manipulate me differently than they manipulate my wife in unique ways.
Diane Dierks:
One of the things we used to talk about, I don't know if they still do in the classes that we taught, was that, most parents have a favorite child. Everybody says, "Oh no, no, that's not true. I don't have a favorite." But if you pose the question like this, if you had to be on a deserted island with one of your children, you would pick one.
Pete Wright:
Well, not right now.
Diane Dierks:
Not right now.
Pete Wright:
For the record, I certainly won't.
Diane Dierks:
But if you gave a different scenario, who would you rather go on a hiking trip with? That might be a different child. Or who would you rather go get your nails done with? That might be a different child. I've posed that question to children in my office before when they ask me. I've had kids ask me, "Is it okay that I would rather live with my dad than my mom? Will that be hurting my mom?" I would say, "Of course not. That means that you have a unique relationship with your dad." And I always tell them that story. I've asked that to parents, which child would you choose? They always laugh and say, "Oh, I know. She would choose my sister because my sister is this way and I'm that way."
You're exactly right. I think kids are really smart about that. But they feel bad if they do have an affinity toward one parent over the other. What we know, what the research tells is that affinity is not bad. It's okay that you have an affinity towards one of your parents. What we don't like is when that affinity begins to turn into some sort of alienation, or the affinity goes a little bit too far, where I now feel like I have to protect my parent somehow from the other parent. Then that moves into something a little bit more nefarious, which is, I need to now reject one of my parents. But there's nothing wrong with affinity, and I think it's important that kids know that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. If I'm going to be on a deserted island, everybody knows, everybody in my family would pick my daughter. She's the one who's most capable of surviving. If it's stuck in a movie theater with movies and junk food? Yeah, it'd be my son.
Diane Dierks:
Right. Right. Right.
Pete Wright:
He's just better at it than she is.
Seth Nelson:
What if you're stuck in a movie theater on an island?
Diane Dierks:
Oh.
Seth Nelson:
I just-
Diane Dierks:
I don't know about that.
Pete Wright:
God. That? I'm going to be thinking about that all day. But it does lead us to this question of reframing co-parenting. You actually, as we were sharing notes on what we wanted to talk about today, you brought up the idea of wanting to share the DRAGON concept around reframing co-parenting conflict in co-parenting. What a great time. No better time than right now to introduce, what is DRAGON? And how can we unleash it on co-parenting?
Diane Dierks:
Unleash it. I think I like it more thinking of it as slaying the DRAGON. The dragon represents the fear that we have. Sometimes it's like when you're a child and there's a monster under the bed. You're crying and fearful, and your parents take you and look under the bed, and maybe spray some dragon spray on it to make sure, some monster spray to make sure the monster goes away. We have to face it in order for the fear to dissipate.
Rick and I were just talking about, how do we process co-parent conflict, both in our offices when we're doing staff meetings, or when we're doing the podcast and we get a listener question? What are the steps that we take? We outlined it this way and then just came up with a letter for each of the steps that we take. But Rick, do you want to talk a little bit about each step and then we can chat about it as we go?
Rick Voyles:
Yeah. The first step is dilemma, for the D in DRAGON. What we're looking at, the first letter in DRAGON, is D. We call it the dilemma. We want you to describe the dilemma, the conflict that's going on between you. Just give it a simple description. What's going on? And then R is reframe it. Consider alternative explanations for what's happening. It's impossible to describe it without assigning some sort of motive. That motive, we want you to benefit the doubt. Could there be another way to explain why this is happening? Or another way to explain what they're doing, what they're trying to accomplish? That's probably the hardest step to look at it differently. Because you know how it feels, you know the history. We automatically fall into, "Oh, I know what's going on here." But if you can reframe it just a little bit in order to give for a momentary benefit of the doubt, it expands the possibilities later on.
Then we look at A, which is anxiety, if you can identify what's driving your fear. What is it that you are afraid is going to happen if something doesn't change? Then we go to the goal. All right. I don't want that fear to happen. So then, what's my goal? What's my goal for myself? But also, more importantly, what's my goal for my child in this conflict? Because we want to keep it child-focused as the motivation. Once I've set my goal, then I can look at opportunities. The, "Oh, how can I formulate a plan that will accomplish the goal that I have more for my child? A goal that will meet my child's need despite and regardless what the other parent does. We call that having a plan B available. That's what you're formulating.
And then the N in DRAGON is decide now, where are your boundaries? Now, you have a clear idea of what your goal is. You also have an idea of an alternative that you can employ if the other parent will not agree. A basic negotiation technique. I know where I'm going to go. I know what I'm going to do for my child that will meet my child's need. And then you decide, all right, now I can negotiate. But you're in a better negotiating position. You're not trapped in a corner. The other parent doesn't have ultimate power. Your plan B, your opportunity, literally empowers you to negotiate basically without losing, if your child's need can't be met.
Diane Dierks:
The example-
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Let's get to an example because I got a lot of stuff going through my head.
Diane Dierks:
Sure.
Seth Nelson:
That sounds good when you are PhD-studying this stuff. But when you got to put it into action through a text or whatever the case may be, how you're communicating, let's put some meat on the bones of this awesome outline that you got here.
Diane Dierks:
Let's say, right off the bat, let's not react with the text. Unless somebody's life is in danger, it really is okay to step away and think through this. But one of my favorite examples, and we have many, many of them, but was a mom that was in one of our advanced classes that we were teaching. She said, "Oh, I've got a great plan B." She said she was so frustrated for the longest time that her son, when he would go to his dad's house, his dad would never take him to birthday parties. He was at that age, I don't know, seven, eight years old, where every kid's having multiple birthday parties to go to every weekend.
This one particular birthday party was with his best friend, and she really wanted him to be able to go, but it wasn't happening on her weekend. She begged and cajoled the other parent. "Johnny's best friend is having a birthday party. Please, please take him. It's so important to him. I'll even pick him up right before it and bring him back right after. I'll even go to Walmart and buy the gift." Blah, blah, blah. She just was so motivated, and obviously, he wanted control, the other parent. He got some sort of thrill, I think, out of saying the no. He said, "No, it's my time. Johnny's not going to the birthday party."
But she said what occurred to her was that, if I figure out what it is that Johnny really needs, instead of what I want dad to do to fulfill Johnny's needs, then maybe I could work through this myself. She did something very simple. She decided when the son came home and gave her the invitation for the best friend, he said to her, "And dad probably won't let me go, right? Because it's his weekend." She said, "Well, we can ask, but I'll tell you what. If dad says no, then we will plan a special party the weekend after or whenever he's available with your friend, and he can come over and we'll have a sleepover. We'll make a cake and we'll have your own birthday party with him."
She said, "His eyes lit up." Now, that's not a perfect solution. He still doesn't get to be with all of the friends. But when I heard that, my first thought was, that kid will remember that the rest of his life. The mom said, "I can't control what dad decides to do, but we can still make sure that you can honor your friend with a birthday party, even if it's not the best way or the perfect way. It is a way, rather than fighting with your dad." And it released her from the anxiety of it. It maybe even released the kid from some of the anxiety. Well, if I can't go, we'll just have some friends over and we'll have a second birthday party for my friend.
We can think of multiple examples where if you really think through, what's my child's need here, and I can figure out ... We had one dad who said his ex planned or she had final say on activities. His perception was she was trying to keep him away from the activity, so she signed him up for baseball 50 minutes away from where dad worked and lived. He could have gotten frustrated about that. He could have taken her back to court and said, "This is wrong. You should plan activities that I can attend." But because of his work schedule and all that, he wasn't able to attend. What he did was he had a conversation with his son. He didn't blame mom.
He just said, "Listen, because of my work and where I live, I'm not going to be able to come to all your baseball games. However, I found another mom on the team who's willing to take a video of you every time you're up to bat or when you're in the outfield. She's going to send me those videos, and then when you come over, we're going to look at them together. We're going to talk about what's happening, or we're going to practice in the front yard." Right away, he said, I" didn't feel constrained by my ex-wife anymore. I knew what I could do, regardless of what she decided to do, to make sure that my son knew I cared about his baseball."
Seth Nelson:
I call that a workaround.
Diane Dierks:
I think those are brilliant ideas, just because you can't push a rope. You can't make someone do something they don't want to do, especially when they're leveraged with you is to get under your skin. And it really is about what the kid needs from you as a parent.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I appreciate that both of these examples are terrific examples of how to employ the mindset, to flex that muscle of focusing on the kids, getting out of the heart of conflict. But I can't help but land in that zone of, divorce is an adversarial process. And what if you are employing that flexed muscle in an engagement where your partner still deeply wants to get under your skin?
Seth Nelson:
I'm going to challenge that a little bit. The legal divorce is set up as an adversarial process. The fact that we haven't implemented a different way in a legal system to get people divorced as opposed to plaintiff, defendant, so to speak. It's petitioner, respondent.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Fair. Fair.
Seth Nelson:
But it's us in the ivory towers and well, "Let's call it 'In re, the marriage of Jones and Jones.'" Because we think putting a "V" in there instead of an "and" is going to make all the difference. And it does not.
Diane Dierks:
It does not.
Seth Nelson:
Right. They thought when you called it time sharing and not custody and visitation that oh, things would get better. They do not.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Right. But there is the-
Pete Wright:
Oh no, people thought through it? What?
Seth Nelson:
Shocking.
Pete Wright:
I'm shocked there is law going on in this establishment.
Diane Dierks:
Well, Rick, why don't you say something a little bit about the communication protocol? Because the reframe that Rick talked about a little bit with regard to considering alternatives is not so much giving your parent the benefit of the doubt and try making them a nice person in your brain when you know they're not. It really is about, how do I communicate? Do you want to say a little bit about that, Rick?
Rick Voyles:
Well, the primary way for them to get under your skin is how they communicate with you. We promote what we call a structured email protocol, so that we are literally organizing our communication with each other in a businesslike way. We're scheduling like a business meeting. The email protocol says that we're going to talk to each other about what's coming up for the kids this week, once a week. I have one email, you have one email. Each email has a structure. There is an FYI section, and there is an RR section. RR standing for requested response.
Then we train the high-conflict co-parents how to implement this tool, so that I don't have to answer your texts during the day. Because now, if I have this protocol in the court order, I now have permission from the court to ignore all of your texts throughout the week, all of your voicemails that are accusing me and dehumanizing and abusing me. I can just ignore those until the email protocol comes up, let's say, Sunday night, nine o'clock. I send you mine, then you send me, 24 hours, yours. By structuring that communication in such a way, people start to begin to literally pull apart.
They start to figure out how to live their lives separately and parent parallel with each other. The result is, we often get, "Man, I finally got some space away from that other parent. I finally was able to develop and cultivate some peace of mind simply because it was scheduled."
Seth Nelson:
Right. Rick, you mentioned a key term. It's like, this is more like a parallel parenting as opposed to co-parenting. These, Pete, are high-conflict cases.
Rick Voyles:
Correct.
Seth Nelson:
Where it's Monday, "No, it's Tuesday." It's raining, "No, it's sunny." Neither parent, I'm just going to put it on both of them, they are not going to be able to make decisions that, maybe objectively speaking, would be in the best interest of the child. There's too much in the conflict. Basically, Johnny's at your house, you do your deal. Johnny's at my house, I do my deal. And we communicate as little as possible to get the most basic need-to-know information across. And that's that.
Rick Voyles:
That's it.
Pete Wright:
That seems like it flies directly in the face of a child-centered approach to divorce.
Rick Voyles:
Not if you assume or accept what we do. The research seems to indicate that it's the conflict that hurts the children. It's not the divorce that hurts the children, two parents living two separate lives. Much of our society is organized around one parent being gone most of the day.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. We're already doing it. Right.
Rick Voyles:
Right. Right. If it's conflict that hurts the child, what do we need to do to minimize or eliminate?
Seth Nelson:
That's right, Pete. To your point, Pete, it does seem counterintuitive in the sense that, "Hey, we're not really acting in the best interest of the child. We're taking the first step that we're not going to expose our child to conflict." That's different than saying we're not going to expose our child to conflict, and we're going to do all these great things together as parents. We're going to sit together at their shows. We're going to make sure that the stepdad is invited to dad's breakfast at school. We're going to flop days or just, "Hey, your parents are in town and it's my weekend. It's important for my son to see his grandparents. Go. I'm not even going to ask for makeup time." That's the gold standard, right?
Diane Dierks:
But the issue is, we know that only 20 to 30% of co-parents can do what you just described though, so we've got to deal with the other 70%. We know that-
Seth Nelson:
"No, fuck them. Let them figure it out by themselves. I'm tired of this today." Oh, those poor kids.
Pete Wright:
Give me 0 and 30% all day long.
Diane Dierks:
I also will tell you, there's absolutely no research, none that I can find, and anyone's pointed me to, that says that kids who have parents who do the parallel style fare any worse in the long run than kids who have a more cooperative style. The key seems to be, no conflict, kids are okay. Kids know that their parents don't like each other or they wouldn't be divorced, so kids have pretty low expectations. Kids don't expect you to be best friends after divorce, but they do need you to let them be kids and not be all wrapped up in the adult stuff.
The visual that I like to use between parallel and cooperative, cooperative is like two intersecting circles. Our kid is in the middle and we're intersecting with each other. Parallel is a ladder. We're each the side of the ladder and the rungs are very strategically placed. They're placed at intervals that are regular and predictable, so that in order to move up the ladder, we have that communication once a week, once a week. Even if no one has anything to say, you still write the email. I have nothing. I have nothing. Great.
We're both doing great with our kids. We don't need to talk to each other. Yeah. It's not for everybody, but it's for a lot of the parents out there that can't achieve the cooperative.
Pete Wright:
Wow. Well, and I totally get that G. Going through this DRAGON process, even if you have nothing specific to deal with, but you know there is a generalized conflict between the two of you as you're getting a divorce, starting with the G of freeing the child from living with your conflict, everything else, it gives you a new field on which to play. I really appreciate that.
Diane Dierks:
Along with this, we do a lot of coaching on how to communicate, giving the other parent the benefit of the doubt. Not because you believe it, but because it inspires the other parent to want to communicate with you. The example we always use is the dad who writes mom an email and Johnny said, "You're not brushing his teeth every night." Johnny's going to have cavities by the time he is 12. Or gingivitis. The American Dental Association's website says such-and-so. You need to read it.
We've had these parents where they're all-knowing. "I'm the king of co-parenting. I know what I'm doing and you need to listen to me." That just simply doesn't work. We try to tell people, stop what doesn't work and let's try something different that might work. Which, even though dad thinks mom's a horrible, neglectful parent, and Johnny's teeth do look like they're about ready to fall out, he still needs to say, "Hey, dear mom, Johnny said he is not brushing your teeth at your house. I doubt that's true, but I'm just letting you know, in case he's trying to manipulate us."
What a great way to open a conversation with someone. You're not only letting them know, "Hey, I got your number," but you're doing it in a way that says we're a team here and Johnny could be manipulating us. I'm going to just throw this idea out there. She's at least more likely to read it than the other email where he's saying you need to go to this website and read how to be a parent. She's done. She's done.
Seth Nelson:
Right. I've got two points on this though. The most important point of my two is the Dental Association will be in the show notes, that link. If you don't know how to brush your kids' teeth and when to floss, I'm sure Pete will put that in there.
Diane Dierks:
Hey, no one will read it.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Oh, we got like 70% of the parents that are going to be jumping on that.
Diane Dierks:
Really?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Diane Dierks:
Well, you only heard one part of what I said. You didn't hear the second part.
Seth Nelson:
I'm getting there. I'm getting there. The other part, which I do think is important, is that, when you receive that email, you cannot go to your kid and say, "Don't tell dad what's happening at my house." The way that I always teach my clients how to deal with that is just the opposite. You can tell the parent anything that goes on in this house, and that's fine. Because guess what? We talk. You don't think we talk, but we talk.
When you say one thing over there and another thing over there, in fact, we talk now more than when we talked when we were married and living in the same house. So, watch your back. When you do that, and my son, ever since we've been divorced, he was two-and-a-half, we always said, "You can tell mom anything that happens in my house, except if it's a surprise party for mom and you're getting her a gift. Let her wait on that." But other than that, it's free rein.
Diane Dierks:
Yeah. The only rule I have about that with kids, I say, kids come to you because they're trying to manipulate, or sometimes because they need to vent. If your child is venting about the other parent, those are not things you want to go and tell the other parent. I think you need to be very clear with your child, are you wanting me to help you with this problem that you're having with your other parent? I'm limited, but I'll try. Or are you just venting because I'm not going to share your vent with the other parent? So that they do feel like they can come to you and talk about what's painful.
Pete Wright:
That's the corollary to the island thing. The kids pick us too for different reasons, just like we might.
Diane Dierks:
Yes. Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
Hey, Pete, I know you've heard this before, but according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, about 10% of kids live with a parent with an alcohol use disorder.
Pete Wright:
That's got to be hard to hear as an attorney, as somebody with the best interest of kids at heart in your practice, Seth. I think it's such a great opportunity for us to talk about our very favorite partner who aligns with us in our mission to keep kids safe with sober parents. If you have a problem with alcohol in your divorce, who are you going to call?
Seth Nelson:
Well, Soberlink's been great. We've talked about it before, but what's really amazing is, it's a little device in someone's hand that you can blow into with facial recognition, which can only be used in court. So you can't go post the picture of someone blowing into their device on social media. You put in the court order or the stipulation. It will be only used in court to prove or disprove whether you are the one blowing into the device.
But it provides realtime, third-party independent verification that you're not drinking. If you're doing that, that means your kids are safe when they're with you. And then you can spend quality time with them. You do that for six months, eight months, 12 months, whatever the case may be. It's hard for the other side to go to the judge and say you have a problem when you're showing this independent third-party verification in realtime that there is no problem.
Pete Wright:
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Seth Nelson:
I'm going to back way up because you said something at the beginning and then we jumped into DRAGON, which is awesome. But you said about fear. People are going to start to do this to get over their fear. So many people are just fearful. They're fearful of the communication. They freeze up. They don't want to move forward with the divorce because they're fearful of the outcome or they don't want it.
Do you have any tips on how they can face that fear? Because the first step you said is, describe the dilemma, what's going on between you. But there's the individual in that on, how do they even just, man, take a deep breath and I got to go deal with this now?
Diane Dierks:
I think it's different for everybody because it depends on the nature of the relationship. There's people out there that were physically or emotionally abused by their partner. This is a lot harder to send a text, write an email, because there's triggers. For many of those parents, probably some individual therapy is what is needed to figure out what to do with that trauma, how to respond to the triggers, remind ourselves that we took and made the best boundary possible and that was leaving the relationship.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, I tell people that all the time. The bravest thing you've ever done was file for divorce.
Diane Dierks:
Right. But then oftentimes, people feel empowered by that and then they decide they're going to finally fight. That's not a good time to start fighting. It's a good time to accept. We've seen-
Pete Wright:
You just did something awesome.
Diane Dierks:
Yeah. You did something.
Pete Wright:
Let's just celebrate that one thing.
Diane Dierks:
Right. "I'm never going to let him do that to me again. From now on, I'm going to show my power."
Pete Wright:
"It's my whole new me."
Rick Voyles:
"I got a kid going to college next year. I don't know what you're talking about not fighting. I got to fund this. We got to talk to Andy about who'd get on this show."
Diane Dierks:
But the whole point behind DRAGON was to go through this mental process of, why am I so afraid? It's something that I would actually work with someone in therapy. What's the root of that fear? Does it have to do with the past? Can I get over the fear of simply by saying, "Yeah, I don't live in the same house anymore, I don't have to need his approval?" I think one of the reasons co-parent conflict is so prevalent is because we work really hard trying to make the relationship work when we're in it. We do a lot of stuff.
Nobody just gets up one day and decides, "I don't want to be here anymore," and leaves. There's years, often, of therapy, reading books, fighting, having conversation after conversation till 3:00 AM. You wear yourself out in desperation to make it work. And when you finally realize it's not going to work, it's hard for that battery to drain. You're still in that mode of, "I still need their approval. I still need them to affirm me as a good person or a good parent." It's hard to let go of that.
In the therapeutic process, I'm often helping people to say, "Okay, I don't have to keep working so hard. I'm not working anymore." I say, take all of that and put it in a closet and let the battery die out.
Seth Nelson:
Rick, on the DRAGON that you went through, how does a parent who gets that email that isn't as structured, it's supposed to be, it's not, and there's all these attacks and some of them aren't about them? It's, "I've talked to my lawyer and you're not going to get anything." The person reading that is now fearful. They believe it. They call me and I say, "You tell me that he says all these things that are lies all the time, but you believe the things that are negative like that." Is there a spot in the DRAGON to either eliminate or reframe what they're saying to you when they're doing those attacking emails?
Rick Voyles:
One of the tools that we implement, we have mantras that we encourage parents to respond to. If someone comes to me and tells me what you just described, I would suggest, well, first of all, talk to your attorney if you're still in the divorce process. But don't defend yourself to them or disagree. Just, if they accuse you of something, defend yourself on a separate document. Don't send it back to them because all they're going to do is, well, they hooked you. They're going to just continue to argue with you. Defend what really happened, or describe the circumstance and then send that to your lawyer. If they need it, they can use it. If not, then fine.
But the response then to the other parent is a mantra. One of the mantras that I used a lot that was helpful for me was, well, thanks for letting me know. I'll take that into consideration. No matter how many times they attack me or tell me their opinion, or try to abuse me, well, thanks for letting me know that. They come back and say, "Your mom was right about you. You suck." You write back, "Well, thanks for letting me know. I'll take that into consideration." No matter what they say, then I take it to my attorney and go, "Okay, now what do I do with this? Do I need to respond to this? "But we have many mantras-
Seth Nelson:
Your attorney says, "Your mom told me the same thing."
Diane Dierks:
Yeah.
Rick Voyles:
I say, "Thanks for letting me know." But the mantras can be very helpful. What we teach at and what we promote is healthy divorcing boundaries. Where do I stop, and where do I begin? Where do you end, and where do you ... So that they're not overlapping. I'm not crossing your boundaries, but I'm not going to allow you anymore to plow through my boundaries.
Diane Dierks:
A really good, I think, cognitive behavioral therapy tool for people that I use all the time, but you don't have to be in therapy to use this tool, I have them get a three-by-five card. And on the one side, write the lie. The lie in the scenario you gave, Seth, was, "My attorney said you're going to lose everything."
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Diane Dierks:
You write that down on one side of the card, my attorney says I'm going to lose everything. You turn the card over and write the truth. You may need to consult with a few people, like your coach or your therapist, or your best friend or whoever knows the situation. But the truth is, can he really take everything from me? What have I done that a court would say yes, you deserve nothing? Probably very little.
Seth Nelson:
Just the way you frame that, people say that to me all the time. "Well, what did I do where that might happen?" And I'm like, "Nothing." Literally, they say, "Well, I had an affair. How is that going to impact it?" Now, under Florida statute, if you have an affair, it could impact alimony. I've never had one judge apply that to a case. I've never heard of a judge applying that to a case. I tell them, "Here's the deal. You could have been having sex with this person on the kitchen table, and as long as your kid wasn't there watching, you're good. It's not going to impact the case." Right?
Diane Dierks:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
It's not always about what you did or didn't do. Sometimes the law just doesn't care.
Diane Dierks:
Sure. The truth is, what I try to teach as the truth, that you know to be true and if you are not sure, check it out and have people tell you what the truth is to affirm you, the truth will always outweigh the lie. Every time you have that feeling of fear, you look up, ah, okay, I'm afraid I'm going to lose everything. You turn that card over and you say it out loud. You keep saying it, so your brain believes it. That's how the neuro pathways in the brain actually begins to change and get rid of the fear out of your head.
Pete Wright:
I say this supporting your point, conflict thrives on inertia. Conflict thrives on you not doing that. Conflict thrives on you getting that email and reacting to it before you slow down, and I just want to say that while celebrating DRAGON is a long enough acronym to make you slow down.
Diane Dierks:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Right. Part of it is just, stop and reflect for a-
Diane Dierks:
But I have this little [inaudible 00:40:41] too.
Pete Wright:
Right. Just take a hot second.
Diane Dierks:
This is my little stress [inaudible 00:40:44].
Seth Nelson:
Stress DRAGONs.
Diane Dierks:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
Link to Amazon in the show notes.
Diane Dierks:
Yes. You can find them on our website, actually.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, perfect. Even better.
Pete Wright:
I think that the power of taking a hot second and living in fact, in truth. Writing down on the card, taking a moment to just breathe through the acronym. Describe it. Reframe it. What is the anxiety you're experiencing? What's your goal? Opportunities. And then negotiate?
Rick Voyles:
Yes, that's it.
Diane Dierks:
Negotiate with your plan B in mind.
Pete Wright:
With your plan B in mind.
Diane Dierks:
The negotiation is not a stressful prospect.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
I think the main thing about that negotiation on the examples you gave, because the first one about the birthday, I was thinking yeah, that's an easy one." You can do that. All you got to do is plan it with your kid's best friend's parents. I was thinking to myself, well, what happens when there's extracurricular activities? And that's the one you went to next. Totally reframed it. The kids will appreciate that. Like, "Hey, this is a great team for you to be on. But because of work, I might not be able to make the games, but it's more important for you to play. Here's how I'm going to be able to participate in that, because I really want to be there as much as I can." That's brilliant. Pete, you remember?
We had Tami Sbar, amazing mediator, on, and she frequently tells a story where parents lived about 30 miles from each other. Every other weekend schedule, it was actually week on, week off. They literally signed the kid up for soccer at two different select teams. This kid was an excellent player and rode the bench on both teams because he wasn't at practice. They couldn't persuade either coach to put him in like, "Oh, it's not my fault. It's not the kid's fault." Nope, these are the rules. Everyone's going to do the same. This kid, later on, basically when there was a younger brother involved and they were about to do the same for him, he sat his parents down because there was a wide gap in the age between the children, and said, "You ruined my soccer. You're not going to do it to him."
Diane Dierks:
Oh.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
And gave it to the parents on it.
Diane Dierks:
Cool.
Seth Nelson:
Sometimes it takes the kids standing up for themselves, which is hard to do.
Diane Dierks:
Which is the G, the goal. The goal can't be what your goal is. The goal has to be, where are my values, my parenting values, and how am I going to make sure that I still am able to execute those with my child, given these difficult circumstances? And that, you may need to talk through that with somebody if you're not sure.
Pete Wright:
You can see on that story about the soccer. It's just, you can see both parents who are in a conflicted parallel divorce, imagining and internalizing for themselves that they're doing the right thing by making sure their child is active and engaged and on a team, and not being able to see that the goal, the G, is for the kid first.
Diane Dierks:
Because every time he sat on that bench, he's reminded that, "I wouldn't be on this bench if my parents weren't such idiots." How might that feel every week?
Seth Nelson:
Especially when he is running circles around the guy playing his position during practice.
Diane Dierks:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. Well, and I'll just say, I've never been divorced. And in fact, I'm going on 24 years this year.
Diane Dierks:
Congratulations.
Pete Wright:
I'm hearing all this and thinking, holy crap, I could do this right now. This is good for me that hell, this is good for me with my relationship with Seth for crying out loud.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, let me tell you. I've been reframing. I've been reframing all show, Pete.
Diane Dierks:
Do we have time for that story? I'm curious.
Rick Voyles:
Oh my God. We're going to have to ship out some DRAGONs, I think, for you, too.
Diane Dierks:
I think so.
Pete Wright:
Seriously, you guys are fantastic. Thank you so much. We mentioned the book and the podcast in the intro, but please, tell us a little bit more about what you two are up to and where people can go find your good work.
Diane Dierks:
Yeah. We have a book called the I Am NON-Impossible. It's a journal of sorts that goes along with some of our episodes. The reason we came up with this is that, we know you might hear something on the podcast and go, "That's great. I'm going to do that. It sounds good." It's like hearing a commercial about a diet and you think, of course, I'm going to do that. Of course, I'm going to stop eating the way I eat. And then five minutes later, you're off eating the chocolate cake because that's what your brain and body is telling you to do.
I think co-parent conflict is the same, so you really have to practice. And without a coach, we think that this journal can help walk you through the steps of DRAGON with different scenarios, thinking through what your conflict is as you listen to some of the podcast episodes. Our goal for the journal is for people to actually use it as a practice tool to change how their brains think about conflict.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I'd love it. Rick, tell us just a little bit more about the podcast.
Rick Voyles:
The podcast, we have this concept called the Impossible Co-Parent, and what we do in our Co-parent Dilemmas is give practical solutions to those impossible co-parents. We give strategies, techniques, reframing about how to approach a situation. Someone emails us their situation, their dilemma, and then Diane and I talk through it. And then we give them the choice at the end. Okay. If you hang onto this, here's what you're going to risk. If you let go of this fight or this dilemma, then here's what you're going to gain.
Pete Wright:
Beautiful. Yeah. We will put links to both of those things, all your good work and your practices, so people can learn more about you in the show notes. Scroll down, everybody, and check those out. Thank you so much for your wisdom today. On behalf of, and thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We sure appreciate your time and attention. You can find us anywhere great podcasts are served. But don't forget, you can also ask questions.
If you have a question for Seth, you want to get it answered on the show, all your legal questions about divorce and family law are welcome at over to howtosplitatoaster.com. Just click on the ask a question button. It'll get to us and we'll get that on the show. Thanks, again, everybody. On behalf of Diane Dierks and Rick Voyles and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you next week right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce & Family Law, with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce & Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
