Episode 5: Get off the Drama Train
Crisis, Upheaval, and Parenting Gracefully through Toxic Transitions
In this episode, Dr. Cindy navigates a difficult personal journey as her abusive ex prepares to move out of state and leave her alone with their daughter. She shares practical skills for meeting crisis and upheaval with self-compassion and how she is trying to parent as gracefully as possible through this toxic transition.
A week and a half ago, my ex announced that he was moving to his home state, where he plans to live in his mother’s basement in an attempt to get back on his feet financially. At first, my daughter appeared to handle it well. She seemed to recognize that her dad needs to do what is best for him, because he has really been struggling to make ends meet in this small rural town, and believes that staying here will kill him. While I felt conflicted by the announcement, and torn between grief and relief, it was mostly relief. Ok, it was all relief.
Our co-parenting relationship has been bitter and characterized by threats, blaming, and other emotionally abusive behaviors, and there is a sense that if he really leaves, I’ll finally be free. After all, it’s about time he found his own way in this world and gave me some space and the freedom to settle into routine, rest, and stability with our daughter. We are both so tired.
But he is not leaving quietly. This week, he has managed to hook me by yanking our daughter’s heart around, discussing his departure plans, rehashing old conflicts and blaming me for his failure to make ends meet here, and promising that he’ll never leave her all in the same breath. She came back from her last visit with him angry and claiming to be “depressed,” and as a result, I’ve spiraled into my own habitual patterns of over-eating, ruminative thinking, and sleeplessness. Because he is a time thief, he is dragging out the long goodbye, spreading the heartache over months, keeping me prisoner, rather than just ripping off the bandaid the way I wish he would. Please, just go away and leave us alone.
But it never ends. In the same email in which he announced to me that he was leaving, he asked me for $2400 to pay for his therapy while he is out there finding himself. He also suddenly requested that our daughter to go with him on the 12 hour drive to his mom’s basement, and then to fly back home a week later by herself as an unaccompanied minor. Yes, you read that right. And this manipulative tactic makes sense because if this is how it goes, she would be the one leaving him, rather than him leaving her. And if I say no, now I’m the bad guy. Oh, and he expects me to pay for the flight, and to give up a day of work to drive four hours each way to pick her up at the airport. Hell no. To all of it. I will not fund him abandoning his daughter.
She is wise and resilient like me, but all this upheaval is starting to take its toll on her too. She tries to be strong for him, and holds it together when she is with him, because he is always falling apart. But now, she is crying “I just want to come home to a mom and a dad who love each other,” and it is almost as if she is experiencing the divorce all over again, even though it happened eight years ago, when she was two, and she has never really known us as a nuclear family.
Needless to say, the way I choose handle all of this is going to have a big impact on our future relationship and her relationship with her father. The pressure on me to make difficult decisions and keep myself calm, cool, and collected is a lot. So, I am doubling down on my mindfulness meditation practice this week, busting out field tested therapeutic and teaching tools from the vault, and doing everything I can to stay compassionate and kind, and to do the right thing, even when it’s also the hardest thing and it scares the hell out of me.
So, in this week’s episode I took the opportunity to share the story of how I am leaning hard into my practice as all this is unfolding in my nervous system, and shining the light of awareness on what is arising, as a radical act of compassion. This allows me to then bring a spirit of curiosity and care to my experience, and to ask myself “how can I best care for myself, given what is here?” In applying the following skills that I learned over many years of offering therapeutic coaching and teaching Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, I am finding my way and doing the best I can to be a light in the darkness for my daughter and for myself.
My hope is that the inquiry in this episode might also support you in your own journey of navigating upheaval and parenting gracefully through whatever crises you are facing. The tools, skills, and writing prompts listed below were what helped me retain my grace and equanimity this week, even in the face of devastation, anger, and loss. May they provide a pathway for you as well.
Tools and Skills for Navigating Relational Turmoil and Toxic Transitions:
Don’t enable or engage in the drama unless you are fully in the driver’s seat of what you are saying. Quick, fiery reactions often lead to regrets and can never truly be taken back. Only respond to toxic communications if you feel resourced, and if what you are offering comes from a place of careful discernment and your words are helpful and kind. As Michelle Obama says in her memoir Becoming, “When they go low, we’ll go high.” Also, check in with your tendency to be an enabler. Chronic over-helping can keep the other person from learning that they have the strength to help themselves, and can actually keep them trapped.
Be the conductor of your attention and reclaim your mental real estate. Practice bringing your attention to the present moment through guided mindfulness meditations, body scans, and sensory awareness. Train your nervous system to pause before jumping into fight/flight/freeze or reactivity. Build neural pathways during periods of stability that strengthen your mental fitness and increase your capacity to respond from a resourced home base of non-judgment and present-moment experience.
Focus on what’s already working. Keep a gratitude journal, list simple pleasures, name the basic needs that are being met, practice appreciation and loving kindness. This practice counteracts our instinctual negativity bias and is the antidote for chronic stress and anxiety. With regular practice of bringing awareness to small moments of pleasure, it’s possible to retrain your brain to more easily focus on what is right, rather than what is wrong.
Keep your body moving. Moving helps us discharge stored traumatic energy, keeps pathways open for physical expression of big emotions, and releases dopamine and serotonin (the “happiness chemicals” in our brains). Externalize your feelings by expressing them outside of your body through nature play, dance, art, writing, and music.
Be a strict gatekeeper of what you are taking in. Bring awareness to all of the things you are taking in, including media, food and beverages, intoxicants, literature, the judgment of others, negative self-talk, air pollutants, and visual stimuli. Make an intentional commitment to allow only those substances, sources of information, and opinions that support nourishing your wellbeing. Avoid anything that adds more stress into your system or creates a negative feedback loop. Plan ahead of time and set boundaries as an investment in your future self. For example, when you are at the grocery store, avoid buying ice cream, and purchase ingredients for healthy green smoothies instead.
Writing/Reflection Prompts:
What would your anger/sadness/fear/grief say if it could speak?
How can you best care for yourself, given what arises?