In this episode, Andrew and Barbara talk with divorce coach Trish Guise about how a coach can protect you during a high-conflict divorce.
Note: This podcast was originally hosted on Barbara La Pointe’s website, which has since gone offline. I’ve reposted the episodes here so people still have access to the materials.
Transcript
Andrew Folkler: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Broken Families, where we host conversations on divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships. My name is Andrew Folkler.
Barbara La Pointe: And I’m Barbara La Pointe. Today, we are going to discuss high-conflict divorce in family court. And to dive deep into this topic, we’ve brought on a very special expert guest, Trish Guise.
Barbara La Pointe: Trish Guise is a divorce coach who learned about the hardship and pain of high-conflict divorce through her own divorce that lasted over 12 years. She has first-hand experience with high-conflict personalities, Cluster B personality disorders, and post-separation abuse, and even parental alienation. Through these huge challenges, Trish bounced back, arming herself with the knowledge to help others who are walking the same journey.
Barbara La Pointe: She is a certified New Ways for Families coach through Bill Eddy’s High Conflict Institute, and she has been featured in the Universal Women’s Network as part of the Driving Change campaign, and as the Top 100 Women of Inspiration in 2021. So welcome, welcome, Trish.
Trish Guise: Thank you, Barbara and Andrew. Nice to be here.
Trish Guise: I appreciate the invite.
Barbara La Pointe: Well, fantastic and important work that you’re doing, and we thank you for that.
Trish Guise: Well, thank you. I feel it’s an honor to be able to help others that either can’t help themselves or just don’t know where to turn. It’s something that gets me up every day.
Barbara La Pointe: So I’d like to begin today with your story, because you do have your own personal story, and I think it might be valuable to just begin there with your own story of divorce and your own journey. So just open it up to you, Trish.
Trish Guise: Sure. Yeah. I honestly wouldn’t be here talking to you if it were not for my adventure.
Trish Guise: Just like everyone else, I entered the relationship not expecting to be here, but I’d known my husband for quite some time. We were quite young when we started dating. And looking back now, I see the red flags, but at the time, I knew we were different, but I didn’t see any red flags. We married, we had children, and issues started to occur with financial issues and relationship issues.
Trish Guise: We ended up separating, and right from the beginning, there were problems, just in terms of even the way my ex-husband notified the children without me. He had told the children... And this can be typical for a lot of high-conflict individuals, where they make it about... They triangulate with the children very early on, and he had said to the children that, “Mommy doesn’t love us anymore.”
Trish Guise: Not me, but love us anymore, and it just went from there. So my divorce essentially lasted for about three or four years, but the actual process was about 12 because every step of the way my ex-husband unfortunately would counter parent or counter propose. It was such a struggle because, of course in any divorce there’s some kind of adversarial nature, but I really tried to give as much as I could because I just truly wanted peace.
Trish Guise: And so I knew there was anger, but I thought if I give him what I think he wants or give into some things that were important, that would give us ultimately the peace. And in fact, what ended up happening, what I learnt later on that with high-conflict individuals, sometimes that gives them the sense that that’s your weak spot, and then they can manipulate you further.
Trish Guise: So I was constantly manipulated with money, financially abused from, well, prior to the divorce, but also afterwards. Not following court orders, constantly not following parenting orders, and he did start to alienate the children when they were older. They were about 15 sorry, 14 and 15, which is kind of atypical. It usually happens a little earlier it seems. But as I found out later, he had been doing that much earlier, many, many years prior to. We had a parent coordinator involved, because we were high-conflict, and we had one of the best parent coordinators around, and even he couldn’t force my ex-husband to behave.
Trish Guise: And that’s one of the issues that a lot of people have, is it’s great the law is as strong as it is, it’s great that we have these strong court orders, but where the problem is is the enforcement. You can have the great people working with you. So we have to try and do our best to, at the very beginning, try and communicate differently with these people, I find, because to expect them to follow court orders, I think, is a pipe dream.
Trish Guise: It just doesn’t happen. So I’m finally now free from all of that. Finally, now that my children are past the age of 18, I decided to cut ties in terms of any child support, and have gone no contact. And above all things that I’ve done for therapy, that was probably the best therapy that there was.
Trish Guise: And granted, my children are still working through some things and we have a great relationship, and I’m helping them heal, and it could be a lifelong healing process, but it’s been quite an eye-opener, not only for divorces and marriages, but for communication with people overall for me, in terms of really understanding the dynamics especially when there’s personality disorders involved, and not assuming that they’re just angry and just being uncooperative. There’s some really difficult situations you can find yourself in, and a lot of people don’t understand that, and you end up finding that you get people giving well-intentioned advice, but it tends to blow up in your face.
Trish Guise: It doesn’t work out well when you’re dealing with high-conflict people.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s a really good point. That’s kind of a different game that requires different strategies. Now, you mentioned that your process was 12 years. Could you define that? Like, not the legal process, but just...
Trish Guise: Well, I honestly thought that the divorce process, if you’re separated for a year in Alberta, then you can become divorced, but my ex-husband dragged that out, and the only reason he did sign the papers eventually is because he was getting remarried, so that was great.
Trish Guise: But then it was the co-parenting process. I think a lot of people think, “As soon as I’m divorced, great, I’m free from it,” and... as did I. Why wouldn’t you think that, right? Even knowing that you have children and that you have a relationship, and you will have a lifelong relationship with this individual.
Trish Guise: But I did not anticipate the difficulties of co-parenting. And it’s funny, I should have, because prior to divorcing, our parenting relationship wasn’t great. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time, but I was primarily responsible. He wasn’t as involved, and we didn’t see eye to eye on parenting, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Trish Guise: But the true counter-parenting, I couldn’t... At first I didn’t know how to deal with it. It was very difficult, and so that process was more difficult than the divorce itself. It wasn’t about the dividing assets, and it wasn’t about the child support issue. It was about how do I manage these children who are told by him that you cannot bring items from one house to the other, so much so that they would have to remember the clothes they’d wear over here to wear them back to his house.
Trish Guise: All sorts of things that I knew were damaging to the children, and trying to navigate that without infuriating him, which would then in turn be a consequence for the children because he would take it out on the children. That process was the most onerous and stressful process I’ve ever experienced.
Trish Guise: And so when I say 12 years, that was mostly just trying to co-parent and trying to help my children deal with their very difficult parent.
Andrew Folkler: On that note, in one of your articles you mentioned a concept called nesting. Basically where the children would have the one home, and then the parents would do the switching instead.
Andrew Folkler: Could you speak on that then, as far as why you feel that would be a better approach than...
Trish Guise: Right. Yes. And I don’t think it’s for everyone, but the reason why I suggested and we did it was because I just thought the children didn’t want this, the children didn’t choose this.
Trish Guise: Why should the children have to be the ones? And that’s naturally our tendency, is we think, “Well, we’ll just ship the children back and forth. They’re resilient, they’re fine.” And I just think no. I think that... And I talk to a lot of people about this, and people are always aghast, “How could I stay in the same house as my ex?
Trish Guise: How could... Well, that’s so inconvenient.” And I think, exactly, but we’re asking our children to do this, and their life has already blown up in their faces, everything they knew to be true. The one thing I wanted to do was at least this house that we had was the only house my children knew.
Trish Guise: I thought if I could just give them one tiny corner of their world that’s the same while all this other chaos is going on, I felt like it could at least ground them, and I just couldn’t stomach the thought of now saying, “And now Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to live together anymore, and not only that, you are going to have two homes.”
Trish Guise: And like I said, it’s not for everybody, but it worked really well in our situation. Prior to separating, my husband would work mostly out of town during the week and would come home on weekends, and so we stuck to that schedule. So in essence, not a whole lot changed for the children. I mean, they understood we were separating, but Daddy was always gone during the week anyways and came home on the weekends, and the only thing that was different was on the weekends Mom wasn’t around, and it was only two days.
Trish Guise: But it also gave me a real window into what it was like for the children so that when my ex-husband decided to move out and get his own place and then we had to switch the children, I was always very cognizant of how difficult it was for the children, particularly remembering all your items because knowing if you forgot something, you couldn’t come back.
Trish Guise: If they forgot something here, I’d have no problem them coming home, but my ex-husband wouldn’t allow that. So many pressures just on top of the fact that now you feel displaced. You’re constantly living out of a suitcase. Like I said, it’s not for everybody, but I think the concept itself or other similar concepts are something that people should look at.
Trish Guise: When divorcing, when you have your children, you need to find pockets of their lives that you can keep the same, in my opinion, just to give them a stable ground. You need to be that stable, loving parent to give them that stable ground, but also tiny little things. Don’t change their schooling schedule.
Trish Guise: Don’t change their sporting schedule if possible. Try and keep as much the same as possible until they get used to the new environment. It can be very distressing just knowing that their family is splitting up, let alone everything else changing. I mean, as adults, most of us can’t handle that, but as children, that’s asking a lot of them.
Barbara La Pointe: So with respect to nesting as an opportunity for some families, I think it might be worth pointing out that it might be hard to nest with a high-conflict personality, and it wouldn’t be advisable in an abusive situation.
Trish Guise: Absolutely not, no. And it also, in some cases too, there’s also the money aspect and some people do do this because they can’t afford two different homes, so they share both domiciles.
Trish Guise: But that was back when I did not know my ex-husband was going to be high conflict, and so you’re 100% correct. When I talk to any of my clients, regardless of what the situation is, the first and foremost is the safety factor, and we don’t discuss anything else until it’s... I’m convinced that they are safe, and we still have a safety plan for them, in the event that something does become unsafe.
Trish Guise: And you’re right, in some cases it may not work because there’s privacy matters, and it’s just sometimes both of you in the same home would not be feasible because of the anger involved. But I guess the point is that it did work for us, and some people it does work. Some people also find areas, like I said, in their lives to keep those areas stable for their children, because we’ve gotta be really cognizant of it, because we don’t the children always seem to be fine at some point, but I think we see what we want to see, and oftentimes we feel that while they’re not breaking down, they’re not having outbreaks or breakdowns, so they’re okay, but we don’t know about the turmoil going on in their minds. And sometimes we don’t see that until they’re later on, in their teenage years, and they either turn inward or outward with aggressive behaviors or suicidal behaviors and that kind of thing.
Barbara La Pointe: So I guess maybe we could talk about New Ways for Families because it kind of applies a little bit to your concept of nesting if that was a workable option for a divorcing family. And one of the principles of the New Ways for Family is this flexible thinking, and I was just thinking that flexible thinking could be applied to nesting if that could be a flexible option for a family.
Barbara La Pointe: So you’re certified in New Ways for Families with the High Conflict Institute, and maybe you’d like to share about what is that program and what can it offer families?
Trish Guise: Sure. Yeah, interestingly enough, when I first was certified, it was originally just for families, and now they’re branching out into workplaces and other relationships, and I think because it’s just a communication tool essentially, and it’s a new way for people to communicate with anyone, whether they are high conflict or not, in essence.
Trish Guise: Because I think it’s normal for us to become emotional, particularly in divorce, whether you’re high conflict or not. There’s so much at stake. And that happens in the workplace as well, too. What ends up happening is we don’t hear the message, of course. We just focus on what’s... how it’s being said, or focus on feeling, being attacked, and that kind of thing.
Trish Guise: And when you’re dealing with high conflict people, so often I find in divorces that inadvertently, we want to be right, and we know that person that is arguing is wrong, and so we want to kind of drill it in their head, “No, this is the way it is.” When in actual fact, what you really want to try and do is sometimes have to be manipulative in a good way, and direct your message towards an area that they understand so you can get what needs to be done.
Trish Guise: And so what you want to do is... there’s a concept BIFF or the acronym BIFF. So you want to make your messages brief. Because with high-conflict people, it’s very easy to get into a very long, drawn-out fight and discussion, and back and forth, which goes nowhere. Turns into a big word salad, and turns into an it’s where you have gone so far off the topic now that you don’t even remember why you were talking in the first place or fighting in the first place. And so when you, either verbally or through email or text, the best thing to do is to be very brief, and you stick to the facts, and you only write what you need to write.
Trish Guise: No extraneous, no editorializing, no accusations, no feelings, nothing like that. And then the next letter, I, is for being informative. You want to give as much information as possible because with high-conflict people, there’s always the issue of control, and you want to make sure you’re not withholding any information from them because that will make them defensive.
Trish Guise: So you want to give as much information as necessary, but only about the situation. Keep it about the children, not about yourself, not about the relationship. Just keep it about the children. And I’m talking, when you’re co-parenting. And you also, the last two Fs, you want to keep it friendly and firm.
Trish Guise: So as much as there’s a lot of emotion and you might get angry, it is really best to take the emotion out of it and stay calm. You want to be the one that’s in control. Two reasons. You don’t want to escalate the conflict, but also, you don’t want to give that person an indication of what your trigger points are because I guarantee you they will store that, and they will use that in future communications.
Trish Guise: They seem to get a real charge out of poking the bear, and you don’t want to give them that satisfaction, and it’s just not worth having all that cortisol running through your body because it will not, no matter what your tone, no matter what your level of voice, does not matter, they will not change the louder you become or the more aggressive you become.
Trish Guise: But you also need to be firm, because I find in dealing with high-conflict people tend to end up with people who are very agreeable, and they seem to gravitate towards people like ourselves, where we’re empathic, we’re very accommodating. And even more so when in a high-conflict divorce. And we can tend to find ourselves walking on eggshells all the time.
Trish Guise: And I literally tried everything. Tried being angry and tried to give up almost everything just to appease him, and that’s part of the abuse process. But you need to stand firm and have your boundaries. And even simple things like, “If I don’t receive a response from you by tomorrow at 5:00, I will assume everything’s okay,” and not get into a big back and forth.
Trish Guise: It’s just, “Here’s the issue. Here’s my request. This is when I’d like the response by. If not, then X will happen.” And we tend to find that that doesn’t change the person, but it does de-escalate or at least doesn’t add to the conflict, and it keeps everything on track. And the other person may still go off and try and word salad and bring other issues in, but you just stick to what your focus is for that email or for that conversation.
Barbara La Pointe: Yeah. I really like what you’re saying, because we know that BIFF strategies can avoid a lot of collateral damage as you’re going down the divorce road. So great points there, Trish. And they’re a lot of fun too, because you can use them in every area of your life once you master how to actually write an effective BIFF statement.
Barbara La Pointe: That’s pretty...
Trish Guise: I actually even use it on my dogs too, because I tend to rationalize with my dogs and talk with them too much. And I have to be firm and brief and friendly, and it seems to work.
Barbara La Pointe: I’m not biting on that.
Barbara La Pointe: And so, with BIFF strategies, that’s part of the New Ways for Families program. So if I was getting a divorce, how might I connect with you to explore New Ways for Families, or how might it benefit my family and me as the woman getting the divorce?
Trish Guise: Well, you can reach me through my website, trishguise.com, or you can also go through the High Conflict Institute and apply for the program, and sign up for the program, register for the program, and then I can coach you through it.
Trish Guise: And what we really like to see is both family members, both parents actually work through the program. Sometimes it’s only one parent, and that’s okay. Research shows that if children have at least one stable, loving, secure parent, they will fare much better in divorce. So it’s not a waste if it’s just one individual.
Trish Guise: So don’t fret if the other individual’s not willing to. That’s okay. It’s going to help you not only in your divorce, but also communicating with your children, because it’s so key, in my opinion, to show emotional regulation towards your children. You don’t have to pretend.
Trish Guise: You don’t want to use your children as an emotional crutch, but you also don’t want to pretend that everything’s okay when it’s not, because that does not teach them how to regulate themselves. But you want to show that despite what’s going on, yes, things are tough, but mom or dad is able to handle it and this is how I’m handling it.
Trish Guise: And you want to show them, and emulate for them, how to properly communicate with somebody, being respectful regardless of how they are handling things. It doesn’t mean being someone’s punching bag. It doesn’t mean taking disrespect. And you can make another person accountable, but it does mean that you still need to stick to the topic, and you can still be respectful of other people, as opposed to common things that high conflict people do is cut people off entirely, the all or nothing thinking, that kind of thing.
Trish Guise: And we get away from that when we’re in New Ways for Families. It’s a matter of looking at the behavior, not at the individual. So this is inappropriate behavior, and we can address it, but it’s not about cutting the individual off or they’re a bad person. It’s just poor behavior. And I really think that that is something that can help families, intact or otherwise.
Trish Guise: Because the assumption is that these things don’t happen, I guess, if you’re not divorced. We always talk about... But I try to talk about these issues even in intact families, because I don’t know of a family who doesn’t have co-parenting issues. Just because you’re living together my parents still even... This is how old we are. We always differ, and that’s okay. It’s just a matter of how you communicate that. And you want to emulate for your children, because they’re going to go off and have their own families and relationships, and you want to show them how to properly deal with differences and disrespect, and how to respect yourself by expecting others to respect you.
Barbara La Pointe: So, I have to ask, Trish, because you’ve talked about being calm, using BIFF strategies, and sometimes I even suggest waiting 72 hours or 48 hours and then implementing a BIFF strategy. But if we’re not calm, and you spoke about triggers and how high conflict personality might know your triggers and then exploit them on you. What do you do?
Barbara La Pointe: If you really can’t self-regulate. Because we can say it’s important to self-regulate, and it is essential to embody calmness. But what if you’re just bawling your eyes out and shaking from your core? And what to do in a situation like that, which probably is not uncommon in the storm of divorce.
Trish Guise: Right. It happens quite a bit. I was at a conference a while back, and Dr. Steven Miller talked about this, in talking about with parental alienation, and how, when you’re trying to prove certain things or trying to deal with certain things, it’s just a simple fact. You need to present well.
Trish Guise: You just have to. Because typically the other side presents very well. They’re able to compartmentalize and look calm, look regulated. Whereas most of us who have been through the abuse find it very difficult to, because we’re suffering from PTSD, because we have been triggered. Oftentimes we’re not we feel we always have to justify our positions and things like that. So I have two answers to that. There’s some things we can do, but we as professionals can do something as well, too. As individuals, I strongly encourage people to, from the very beginning, from the get-go, to try and access therapy as quickly as possible.
Trish Guise: It can be talk therapy, CBT. I found EMDR very helpful. I found ART, Accelerated Resolution Therapy, very helpful. Body psychotherapy. I mean, it’s something different for everybody, but I really feel you need to connect again with your body. I was even just discussing with my husband this morning, I still pay attention to my body because for years when I had a certain feeling in my gut, I felt like I was nervous.
Trish Guise: You just label it. And so I was feeling that over the weekend, and I was saying to myself, “What is it you’re nervous about?” So I actually had to have a conversation with myself to say, “What is it you’re really worried about?” I finally recognized it was something that I had learnt long ago in my childhood and just mislabeled it.
Trish Guise: And I thought, no, there’s really nothing to be worried about. And so that’s a key skill to have, but that came through after a lot of therapy, and that’s why I really encourage people to do is you need to address the fact that you’re going through... Divorce is stressful enough, but if you’re going through abuse, you need to label that.
Trish Guise: This is truly abuse that you’re going through, and your body and your mind react in ways that it feels like you have no control over. You’re in constant fight or flight or fawn mode, and you need to recognize that. And also give yourself permission to, if you can’t control yourself at that moment, you need to, I would say, extricate yourself from that situation if possible, and to allow yourself to feel those feelings.
Trish Guise: The more we push them down, the more they come back up, just like weeds. But I think part of the problem is the professionals in the system. I’m a big believer in lawyers and judges and everyone else, we need more compassion but more understanding of the abuse dynamics. It’s great that we have the new Divorce Act changes this that came upon this year, including coercive abuse and that kind of thing.
Trish Guise: However, I don’t feel there’s enough education yet for lawyers and judges that understand the actual dynamics of what it looks like, but also what it does to individuals, and how we can behave a certain way and it may make us look like ineffective parents, but that’s because of the abuse.
Trish Guise: And to not penalize individuals for that, but to recognize the dynamics and understand that, because that just re-victimizes and re-traumatizes victims. Hope I didn’t go off on too much of a tangent there, but I truly feel that it’s not just up to us when we’re feeling these emotions. We need to, as a system, be much more supportive of victims, because I don’t feel that we are right now.
Andrew Folkler: No, you’re absolutely right on the mislabeling of emotions and things like that. Even with couples that are still intact, I mean, it’s ironic to me whenever I hear coworkers for example, they talk about how they work 50, 60 hours a week, sometimes more, just so that they can always stay out of the house and not be in direct contact with their partner, and that had always kind of struck me as kind of funny, and not the good kind of funny for that matter.
Andrew Folkler: But with respect to that, I know a lot of couples unfortunately got hit by the surprise of COVID-19, forcing them into a home with somebody that they were, or maybe unconsciously knew that they weren’t quite in love with anymore, and now, well, we had probably at least, depending on which country we lived in, anywhere from eight to 12 months of just being, working at home, being told, some countries even longer, being told that we can’t really leave anywhere else except to do necessary shopping or whatever.
Andrew Folkler: How do you think that will impact divorce moving forward, or at least what we can expect in the divorce area or divorce statistics within 2021, maybe even up to 2022?
Trish Guise: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it’s interesting, I saw an article, I think it was last week, about the surge of resignations that Canada and the US are expecting, and I liken that to divorce.
Trish Guise: I think what COVID seemed to do was whether you were stuck in a home with someone that you really didn’t love anymore or not, I think it gave people the opportunity to reevaluate their lives, reevaluate their priorities, and say, “Is this working for me?” Because we get on this treadmill and so many of us will think, “Oh, I just can’t do this anymore,” or, “This is so difficult, I wanna change jobs,” but when is there time?
Trish Guise: You talk about people work 50, 60 hours, there’s no time to make change, and it’s difficult. I find in life, oftentimes we want to make change, but when it occurs is when we either hit rock bottom or life forces us to change. It’s the whole people don’t change their eating habits or their lifestyle until they have a heart attack.
Trish Guise: You need that kind of wake-up call, and that’s what I think COVID was. And I fully expect... I know there was talk that divorce rate has increased over COVID. I think we will see quite a surge over the next... maybe not in 2021, but 2022. People have to get their finances in order.
Trish Guise: I think it was a real wake-up call for people to say they actually saw their spouse in close quarters. Everything’s magnified. And even if it wasn’t an acrimonious thing, some people just thought, “this is not the way I want to live anymore.” And that’s okay. I mean, that’s what life’s about, is i think kudos to the people who actually took that as an opportunity to reevaluate and make changes in their life, whatever that is. Some took up hobbies, some are changing their living arrangements. That’s fine. But I think people also started to recognize what they want in life. So with resignations, people are recognizing, “You know what?
Trish Guise: I want some more work-life harmony. I don’t wanna work 50, 60 hours even if that gets me the promotion. I really want to live.” I think people really recognize life is pretty short and precious. And so many people... I know of quite a few families who waited until their children were out of the home to divorce, and I think that’s such a shame because it doesn’t do the children any good because then they feel a lot of guilt.
Trish Guise: They think, “Wow, did you just stay together for me?” But also you’ve spent a lot of years together unhappy, and that also doesn’t bode well for the children because you’re not teaching them anything good. You want... Everyone deserves to be happy, and I think you need to seek that out, whether that means divorce or not.
Trish Guise: And I think COVID was a great opportunity, as you said, for people to realize this is not or is working for me. In some cases, like in my case, I mean, I couldn’t be happier, but it does make you prioritize. There’s some things that I’ve shelved now because it just doesn’t matter anymore.
Trish Guise: And honestly, I feel like something like this, of this magnitude, if we don’t see changes in people’s lives or the way we do things, I think that we’ve just missed a great opportunity. When everyone talks about getting back to normal, and I think, yes, in some cases, getting back together with our families and our friends and things that we’ve all been craving.
Trish Guise: But I hope that we don’t all revert back to everything that we used to do because I don’t know if normal was working that well for us as a society, but also as individuals. I hope we really don’t just snap back like an elastic. I hope people are really deliberate about what they go back to or how they continue to live their lives.
Trish Guise: And a lot of people too, the concern was that, we talk about high-conflict or abusive situations, that was still is very much a concern, what those families were like. Because an abusive situation, at least you get some reprieve when your partner goes to work or leaves the house.
Trish Guise: But when you’re quarantined, that worried me, especially with children. We found here, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with YouthLink in Calgary, and they work, this is the police service. They have a museum for children and for adults to discover elements of the policing service and that kind of thing, and they were researching it, and they’re finding that a large percentage of abuse was not being reported or recognized because of quarantining.
Trish Guise: Teachers would notice that their students were not in class, or they couldn’t be in class because mom and dad were off doing whatever, and they had to stay home or they had to, instead of being in class, look after their baby brother or baby sister. Or there was abuse going on, they weren’t in class.
Trish Guise: And at least it’s... When kids are at school, there is that reprieve, there is that safe zone, and really it probably hit home with a lot of people too, that if they were ever waffling about whether or not they should leave the situation, I think COVID probably made them realize that we can’t do this anymore.
Trish Guise: It’s not safe.
Barbara La Pointe: So maybe we’ll switch gears and go back to your practice, ‘cause you have a really nice sentiment that really resonates with me in your practice, and it’s called Divorce Without Destruction.
Barbara La Pointe: And I know that you offer a message of hope to your clients. So invite you to just open up about that.
Trish Guise: Sure. Well, and that’s where I think my story comes in. I try not to make too much of the practice about myself, but I find the people I work with like that I’ve been there, done that, for two reasons I think, because they don’t feel they have to justify what they’re saying. They don’t have to convince me.
Trish Guise: They know I get it. I can see it as they’re saying it, and sometimes I can pick it out before they do. Because so many other people you work with in this profession, if you haven’t been through it, it feels like you have to convince them that this is really in fact was happening. Because sometimes it seems so surreal that people have a tough time believing it.
Trish Guise: But also, I hope, and according to some clients, it gives them some hope that, A, I’m still standing, I have a life, and life is good. Yes, it has been... There were some points in my life where I truly did not know, and I look back now and I don’t know how I got up in the morning and worked through my day, especially after I received that email from my ex-husband saying, “You’re not going to see the children anymore.”
Trish Guise: I was so blindsided. The only way I could describe it was my biggest fear as a mother, and I’m sure most parents’, is to ever have your child abducted or killed. I thought, “I don’t know how that could be any worse than this.” It was that bad. I felt like I had just been told my children died.
Trish Guise: And I think anyone that’s ever had their children taken from them feels the same way. So there are many, many moments that I thought, “How am I going to live the rest of my life like this?” So I hope in seeing me and hearing a story, and also hearing that there are tools that I didn’t have that I’d like to share, or perspectives that I’d like to share or techniques or strategies, that will hopefully mitigate those things.
Trish Guise: Because I didn’t have any of that, but somehow I managed to get through, and I really strongly feel that no matter who you’re dealing with, you can divorce without destruction. How I describe it to people is I like to be like a tornado warning. So I will not promise you that it won’t be difficult.
Trish Guise: I promise you it will. It has to be. There’s so much that’s changing. Your life is changing. Just like if you change jobs or go back to school. But I want to warn you, I want to give you tools and techniques to kind of mitigate, and also warn you as to what to expect so at least you can prepare.
Trish Guise: You can board up your windows and go down into the basement, take the family, and when the tornado passes by, because it will come regardless of what you do, you can come back up and at least have some structure to deal with and do some repairs, as opposed to being totally decimated and being totally so that’s what I mean about divorce without destruction, is that there still will be strife, there’ll still be conflict, there’ll still be stress, but you’ll still have something left at the end of the day to work with and to mold into what it is that you want to be, and hopefully mitigate the internal damage so that you can try to emotionally regulate as possible, put things in perspective so that you don’t have to, after the divorce is over, spend years of trying to get yourself back or trying to get back on your feet.
Trish Guise: You can actually start living your life.
Barbara La Pointe: I think that’s such a powerful metaphor. And really, I mean, ‘cause I think so many women do feel like it’s a storm or a tsunami. I used to feel like it was a tsunami, and I would have dreams for years of a tsunami rising. And what a great motivation to invest in your support as a divorce coach.
Trish Guise: Well, thank you.
Barbara La Pointe: To mitigate damage. I like that so much, Trish.
Trish Guise: Yeah, ‘cause I know so many people want to know what they’re going to look like, and want to... I did, too. We’re looking for answers and wanting reassurances. I have the misbelief that we have a justice system, and I thought, “This just isn’t right, so this can’t continue to happen,” not realizing it’s a legal system.
Trish Guise: I just had a discussion with a lawyer on the weekend, and she said exactly that. It’s not a justice system. And the law is what the law is, but we don’t necessarily have a system whereby we can right the wrongs. And sometimes the one thing I had to learn was radical acceptance, and I learnt that when I was getting some education on personality disorders, particularly bipolar.
Trish Guise: And it’s simply radical acceptance. There’s some things you just have to accept, and there’s really no trick around it. People have asked me, and you just simply have to say, “It is what it is,” and you have to accept. For instance, I had to accept the fact that at one point in time my children may never come back into my home and live with me again.
Trish Guise: I may never go on holidays with again, that kind of thing. That was hard, but I had to keep repeating that to myself. And then it dawned on me one day that you know what? Eventually they’re going to move out of the home anyways. So I just was an empty nester earlier than most people.
Trish Guise: You don’t always get those epiphanies, but that actually helped, radically accepting the fact that, you know what, I can’t change that. And will that kill me? No. Yes, I’ll miss out on certain things, but I also remember that I had great memories before, and I will continue to, but it will be different. I spent too many years before that trying to change things, and felt decimated and destroyed because no matter despite my efforts, nothing changed. And so some things you do have to radically accept. And I tell you, that was one of the most important things that I’ve learnt how to do in life, is just accept certain things and move on, because not everything has to be a battlefield.
Barbara La Pointe: May I just jump in to confirm and clarify that?
Barbara La Pointe: Sure. Did that happen to you or was that something that could have happened to you?
Trish Guise: No, it happened to me. My children were taken from me. My ex-husband sent me an email saying, “They don’t wanna live with you anymore. You’re not going to see them.” And I didn’t see them at all. And we had 60/40.
Trish Guise: I had them a majority of the time. Didn’t see them at all or speak to them for a month, and then we had our parent coordinator involved, and we forced time. So that was 2017. Up until just recently, they hadn’t lived with us. They would come spend time here, but hadn’t lived with us.
Trish Guise: And it took a few years for me to accept. It was so strange, because I was the primary caregiver. And even things like going to my son’s hockey game, these feelings would come up where I’d look around at all these other families that we’ve known for years, and I would feel this extreme jealousy. Because how nice it must be for you to be able to be normal family and take your son home after the game, whereas we could never, because my ex-husband would take him back to his house.
Trish Guise: I felt like I was an aunt all of a sudden now, and I was displaced, and I didn’t know my place as a mother. And that really threw me for a loop. And so there’s certain things I had to radically accept. The fact that just because they don’t live here doesn’t make me less of a mother, and things like that, in order to get my mind to a place where I could accept other things and not be laying on the couch all day long, right?
Trish Guise: If you kind of sink into some of these feelings, you could potentially not get out of those feelings and wallow in it too long. So I had to radically accept some things that... And then as luck would have it, my daughter started living with us again.
Trish Guise: And there’s a few reasons why I think, and then some reasons... She’s just 20, and it just felt like the right time for her. And it’s like we haven’t lost any time.
Barbara La Pointe: I remember watching an interview with you when you were explaining when you got that email from your husband. But maybe a little bit of a Freudian slip, I didn’t actually think that had manifested.
Barbara La Pointe: So what a powerful example of resiliency you are.
Trish Guise: Well, thank you. Yes, I wanted to show that for the children too, because I had truly, I can’t stress it enough, when I had children, I thought I was still going to continue to work, but we decided, I wanted to stay home, and I invested for many years in my children.
Trish Guise: And I’m kind of an all or nothing person, so I didn’t work at the time, and they were my everything, as most kids are to parents. And it would be different if the other parent I knew was doing this for the right reasons or just wanted to spend more time with them. That’s different.
Trish Guise: But it was done in such a toxic way, and there were lies being... my children were being put through the wringer, and that bothered me even more than not seeing them. I just thought, “I can’t protect them,” and it’s really... It was devastating. But also dealing with the legal system, it doesn’t move quickly enough, and all I would do every day is panic, and I would count the days as to how many more days they are without me and how many more days they are suffering through this abuse.
Trish Guise: That sent me through a tailspin, so I had to start kind of getting some perspective in that, because you can go crazy if you focus on that as opposed to, Andrew, what you said at the beginning of the podcast of problem-solving. And that’s what I had to start doing, is just focusing on little areas that I could problem-solve and kind of putting out small fires instead of trying to fix the entire thing.
Trish Guise: That’s where I think I got a little bit of my resiliency from, ‘cause you have these small wins and you think, “Okay, I’m not having everything taken away from me, and my kids are okay. They’re still playing soccer and hockey. Okay. They’re still doing...” Sorry. We were lucky. My earpiece just fell out.
Trish Guise: We were lucky because so many kids turn to drugs, alcohol, self-destructive behavior. Both my children ended up suffering from some anxiety and depression and some other ill effects, but overall, it could’ve been much worse, and I’m so grateful that it didn’t become even more of a disaster than it was.
Trish Guise: And so I had to focus on that, the small wins. It’s amazing how small your life can get sometimes when a trauma happens. You have to take the tiniest little things, and I learnt the art of gratitude. I know everyone talks about it, and I think it’s probably used too often, but I tell you, some days I was just happy just to sit with my dog, and happy that he was happy to see me.
Trish Guise: You have to just take those small wins whenever you can to boost yourself and get your resiliency, and feel a bit of resilient buoyancy any moment you can get in any situation that you can get, ‘cause you need to build that back up to kind of counteract some of the trauma that’s going on in your life.
Andrew Folkler: Absolutely. I definitely wanna highlight that part when you were talking about small wins and the power of small wins. We as, like you’ve said before, divorce, alienation, even just abuse in general, it feels like this overwhelming problem, and it can leave us frozen. And in previous episodes, we’ve discussed with trauma experts that trauma’s basically the byproduct of being frozen in place when in a situation of a life could be taken or even... And that doesn’t have to be physically taken, but even just the emotional erasure of the person or the spiritual erasure of a person. So in that instance, breaking down that giant overwhelming problem into those small little baby steps and taking those steps so that you have those small little wins, that’s an action.
Andrew Folkler: That’s not being frozen in place, and that in itself helps you not only work through that problem, but it also prevents you from feeling powerless and being lost in the downward spiral of trauma. There’s a pretty famous idiom that goes around in this instance. Don’t eat an elephant for lunch.
Andrew Folkler: The idea that no one’s got a stomach as big as an elephant. But if you were to maybe chop him up into a few pieces and go one bite at a time in a decent amount of time, depending on your caloric intake. Yeah. I’m sure you could eat a whole elephant.
Trish Guise: Yeah. I like that one.
Trish Guise: I do use that, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Sometimes, with the social media and we’re bombarded with information, it’s great, but I think sometimes we just get too much of the impression that everyone’s got their stuff together, and that we feel like we need to take it all in and we need to get a handle on everything and as opposed to one bite at a time.
Trish Guise: I love when I see people that are fully transparent or even this happening. I’ve been on podcasts where people are so apologetic because the sound was off or something. I think, God no. I like it when bloopers or mistakes happen. We need to start being more real with people.
Trish Guise: There’s too much pressure to be perfect, and we’re teaching our kids you need to be perfect, and then we’re shaming and guilting ourselves, and I think no. And if you focus on that one small bite at a time, and something happens, a mistake happens. Don’t catastrophize it. And I think we need to normalize divorce.
Trish Guise: We need to normalize relationships breaking up, normalize even trauma and things like that that brings about a hope in that everyone else is going through something too, and you flub up or something happens or you didn’t see the signs. Everyone’s doing the best they can in that moment, right?
Trish Guise: Hindsight’s 2020, and I really think we just need to start being real and not always feel we need to be so polished and so perfect. That’s not life. And divorce, life’s messy. Divorce is messy. But you try your best only when you know better, and that’s what I hope to do, and people like yourself in doing the podcast, is that we’re just trying to provide information for people.
Trish Guise: Not to shame, not to guilt, not to tell you you’re not doing a good job, but just to give you the tools. I mean, you don’t send people to reno a house or renovate a house without the proper tools, right? We have the proper tools, the proper computers and things, and that’s what we’re just trying to provide for people so that even the tough stuff can just be a little bit easier to get through or to problem solve through.
Barbara La Pointe: So fast-forward to today. You’re a divorce coach. You’re helping women. What are some of the top three ways, for example, that you really empower divorcing women in your practice?
Trish Guise: Well, one of the ways is to teach them to advocate for themselves. If I had to label myself other than a divorce coach, it would be an advocate.
Trish Guise: Ever since I was young, I always saw myself as an advocate. If I saw someone that couldn’t speak for themselves or was having a difficult time... I think that comes from my family and the immigrant background. For men and women, but I have more women, more female clients, but I really.
Trish Guise: Especially ones that have been abused or in conflict situations. For so many years they’ve been groomed to stay small, and to be small, and to be quiet, and to capitulate. And really trying to get them to see their value again, get them to also remember how far they’ve come. You’re sitting here talking to me today because you want to make a change.
Trish Guise: You have decided that you can’t live like this anymore. So how I read that is you know you deserve more. You are of value. You want more. So you’re taking a step. You don’t choose that, I’ll say to them. That is huge, especially when you’re caught in an abuse situation. It gives me goosebumps even talking about it.
Trish Guise: I can think of one client in particular. She just was stunned when I said that. She’s like, “You’re right. I...” You often minimize everything you’ve done up to this point ‘cause you’re constantly in survival mode. But you look at what you’ve done so far, you can keep going.
Trish Guise: And that was another strategy I used too when I was going through mine is sometimes you have to look at what you’ve done in order to spur yourself on to continue going on. I think that above all, that’s what I try to do most with my clients. But also helping them pick the right team. Because people’s knee-jerk reaction is, “I have to get a lawyer right away,” and I’d say, selfishly I say no, I would get a divorce coach.
Trish Guise: But I would say that do your homework first. Your lawyer is probably the most, well, is the most important part of your team, can make or break your case at times, and you really need to research it. Some people research their vehicles, their homes, their vacations. We don’t spend enough time researching that.
Trish Guise: You need to interview them. You need to vet them. How much experience do they have in high-conflict cases? How many do they have currently? Because it takes a lot more time than a normal divorce, so you need to know how often or what is their response time. You should be looking for a 24 to 48-hour window.
Trish Guise: You shouldn’t have to wait a week to hear from your lawyer, things like that. So I try to give them the advocacy skills and boosting them a bit, but also the practical skills on how we can move you forward, and also how to not only communicate with their ex-spouse, but document, document, document how to organize so that you can provide your lawyer with the best information so they can provide the best service for you.
Trish Guise: But also how to protect yourself, and your assets, too, but more importantly yourself and your children. I spend a lot of time with clients debunking myths that they’ve heard of. “My friend said this. They’ve lost custody here. They’ve done this. Will I lose custody if I leave the house?” and things like that.
Trish Guise: I spend a lot of time debunking those... I’m sure they’re well-intentioned, but I find it’s like when someone’s newly pregnant, people come out of the woodwork telling these poor women about their horrible birth stories, and I think, “Oh, my gosh. Please don’t scare this woman. She has no choice but to give birth.”
Trish Guise: So why do you keep telling these horror stories? They never give the pleasant stories, and I liken that to these divorce stories. You never hear of anyone saying, “Oh, well, mine went smoothly.” It’s always, “I’ve lost this and lost that,” and so I give them context and try to translate what their lawyer is saying and to what they’re trying to tell their lawyer because oftentimes there’s a gap because lawyers speak lawyese, and I try to get the clients to emotionally regulate enough and know what information to provide the lawyer so that we can expedite things and be more efficient.
Trish Guise: So it’s a bit more of a well-oiled machine as opposed to just casually sending them every single email you’ve ever had from your ex and them having to wade through that. So I’d say in short form, advocacy as well as the practical skills because hope is one thing, but I find you need to do a couple of things to give you hope, otherwise you have false hope.
Trish Guise: So if you don’t learn to stand up for yourself and create boundaries and know what you want and what your goals are, and if you also don’t know how to attain that and you don’t have the tools, I think it is false hope because you’re just hoping for a unicorn. It’s not gonna happen necessarily.
Trish Guise: You can’t wait for things to happen.
Barbara La Pointe: I think all those incredible ways that you support women, advocacy and feet on the ground, those practical skills really speak to why it’s important to invest in a divorce coach. I often say it’s great to have two teams. You have your legal team, and then to have an emotional support team. You actually need two teams, ‘cause your lawyer can’t do everything for you, so I really believe in what you’re saying.
Trish Guise: 100%. As I was saying on the weekend, I was talking to a lawyer and so many lawyers feel that too. They almost go, “Ah, yes, thank God.” As much as they care for their clients, that’s just not what they’re there for is the emotional support. And it can be very draining, but it also detracts them from the legal avenue. It detracts them from what they are paid to do and to be a lawyer and work in the legal field. They can’t be the shoulder to cry on. And I think some people, like myself even when I was going through it, I tried oftentimes to be just pick up my boots and just trudge on through and that didn’t work out so well for me.
Trish Guise: So you’re so right. You need an emotional support team, and family and friends are great, but unless they’ve been through it, I find, and unless they’re trained in certain aspects... and I think they’re too close to the situation, that you need someone external. It’s a lot safer and a lot healthier for you and can give you a better perspective.
Barbara La Pointe: Absolutely. It’s so nice to connect with someone that has that neutral space. And lawyers really, they’re there to lawyer as and not provide emotional support, and they really often just are incapable of doing that just because they’re very logical, highly intelligent people, and they’re focused on doing their lawyer job.
Barbara La Pointe: Some lawyers don’t even have a sense of humor ‘cause it’s very serious business.
Trish Guise: So true. That is so true.
Barbara La Pointe: So true. It’s just very... What?
Trish Guise: And so you need that, especially in... I’m thinking of a couple lawyers in mind. You need that, especially in these really tense moments. You need someone that is.
Trish Guise: ‘Cause to me, if you don’t have a sense of humor, it’s difficult for me to believe that you’re human. And I can’t connect necessarily, and you need that sometimes especially when you feel like your life is falling apart.
Barbara La Pointe: It definitely can help. Awesome. Well, let me just ask you quickly, do you help your clients or support your clients in terms of self-representation, or do you recommend that is actually a better way for me to reframe that question.
Barbara La Pointe: What are your views on that as a divorce coach?
Trish Guise: Well, it’s funny, the topic of it comes up a lot in lawyers and judges’ arena, and I know a lot of judges really admonish it and don’t like it. And I imagine it’s difficult to have self-reps, the pro ses in their courtroom because they aren’t adept as lawyers are at process, and I just think, too bad.
Trish Guise: I think the only way to fix that is, when you’re a lawyers, the common fee per hour is $400 an hour, what’s the option for most people? They don’t have... Even people with means, at some point, you run out, and you have to just, “Do I pay my mortgage? Do I pay my legal bill?”
Trish Guise: And the way things are drawn out, especially in high-conflict divorces, I shudder to think, I still don’t know the total amount of what we spent, and I don’t think I ever want to know because that’s a common financial abuse tactic, and legal abuse is dragging things out so that you... I was told, “I would rather pay my lawyer than pay you a dime, and if we both go broke, we go broke, right?”
Trish Guise: So what is the alternative for people? And so I think what we need to do is, no, I don’t necessarily recommend you self-represent, but I also recognize the fact that it is a reality. I think most provinces have about 50% of the people going through divorce are self-rep. I think Ontario’s upwards to 60%, and that is a function also of lack of faith in the legal system, and not enough, in my opinion, lawyers that, in these high-conflict cases, that are as adept as they need to be in terms of the abuse dynamics.
Trish Guise: But I think there has been a new publication that’s sent out, I believe it was from, I have to look it up, but Canadian Judicial Council, I think. A whole publication on self-representation and all the different things that you need to be aware of to try and educate people. I think, if I could say one thing, that the smartest thing to do is if you have to self-rep for whatever reason, by all means, find yourself a divorce coach if possible.
Trish Guise: They are much cheaper than lawyers. However, I also think what you need to do is keep in mind, at least in Alberta, you will still need to get some independent legal representation when you do your divorce judgment or your separation agreement. Otherwise, it won’t be legally binding. So at some point, even if you do it a la carte, you only pay them an hour or two, you don’t have to pay a retainer, you need to do that.
Trish Guise: Also, I would do that with your parenting plan to make it legally binding. And if you ever have any child custody issues, if at all possible, please find legal representation because that is so difficult to self-rep on. So the smartest thing might be to do is to do as much as you can individually or with a divorce coach or other or through mediation, whatever, but those elements that I’ve mentioned, that’s when you bring in a lawyer.
Trish Guise: And they don’t have to be with you the entire time, but those are absolutely key.
Andrew Folkler: Absolutely. I guess on that note, what would be the best way to vet a lawyer then, as far as identifying what would be the right person for your case?
Trish Guise: Well, I think just like anything, personality fit is good, but I recommend most of.
Trish Guise: I know I did, I just did over the phone, but I would recommend if you can, meet in person. I think a lot of people just get referrals from friends, family. I refer people. I would check out a few, and I would be very pointed about my questions. First thing I suggest is before you meet with them, you send them an email about your background, your goals, your obstacles, so they have.
Trish Guise: And stress they need to read that before you go in, so they have the background. They know what they’re up against. If you’re in a situation where there is a conflict abuse, that, to me, would be one of your first questions, “What has been your experience? How many cases do you have that are high conflict?”
Trish Guise: Not only in terms of their experience, but how many high-conflict cases do you take on at a time, because you don’t want to be fifth in line, because every single one of them is very, very time consuming. And a lot of the lawyers that I work with, when they do high-conflict cases, they only take so many at a time.
Trish Guise: That’s what you wanna hear. You also want to look for red flags. Are they distracted? Are they insinuating that you’re both contributing to this and high conflict? You also don’t necessarily want somebody that wants to, as Chris Voss says, split the difference. You don’t want them to split the difference. You want someone that will advocate for you, and in some cases you may be able to negotiate and do other, that’s fine. But too many times I’ve seen the recommendation for the reasonable one to just, “Why don’t we just be okay with this? Things will work out eventually.
Trish Guise: We’ll just wait and see.” There’s too much of that reliance on the one that’s not ranting and raving, and then that person ends up giving up a lot, and that’s not fair. You want someone who also, in high-conflict cases, I know mediation is definitely preferred, and it can happen in high-conflict cases, absolutely.
Trish Guise: But I caution you at when your lawyer is, that’s the only way to go, because oftentimes in high-conflict cases, why mediation looks successful is because we don’t really know, did the abuse victim capitulate to everything? ‘Cause the success rate of mediation is, did we get an agreement? Sure, we’re getting an agreement if one of the parties says, “Okay, fine, I just give up.
Trish Guise: Just you can have whatever.” But there’s no follow-up. We don’t know how this family did. So is that really the best form for people in high-conflict situations? I’m not convinced yet. But I don’t think court is either. But the point is that if things don’t work out well, your lawyer needs to be ready and willing and able to litigate, and that’s where I think in high-conflict cases you need to, and they’re hard to find, but find a family lawyer that is a good litigator and has experience in that, so in case you do need to go to court, they can do it, ‘cause not everyone can litigate.
Trish Guise: It’s very different than actual other lawyering.
Barbara La Pointe: All very good points. All very valuable points, too. Would it be okay if I spoke to a couple of those points?
Trish Guise: Absolutely.
Barbara La Pointe: Maybe I’d add on something that’s valuable, maybe not. But one thing I’ve found is if lawyers, family lawyers, can know and utilize that BIFF strategy, that’s very.
Barbara La Pointe: Helpful to your legal bill, and helpful to decrease conflict. And there aren’t very many family lawyers that I know of that can effectively utilize and leverage a BIFF strategy. So not only are you using it, but you’d want your family lawyer to use it. And then I really appreciate what you said in terms of high-conflict files.
Barbara La Pointe: However, just bearing in mind that lawyers sometimes, not all, because we’ve had some incredible lawyers on this podcast with deep integrity, but some lawyers, just to be top of mind, make a lot of money on high-conflict files. So they will have a lot of conflict files. So that is a red flag that you brought forward that I think is incredibly valid. And then to have a family lawyer that is informed about trauma and abuse is extremely helpful if that’s relevant to your case. So great, great points. I mean, I could see having you as a divorce coach because if you’re strengthened, you’re not gonna wanna give up or split the difference as you and Andrew said. But to not split the difference, you need to be rooted in your strength, or else you will just throw it out the baby with the bathwater and split the difference.
Barbara La Pointe: And I think also it’s lovely, and not always possible to feel supported by your family lawyer. You should feel like your family lawyer has your back. And if you don’t, that is a huge red flag. So I like to feel that way when I’m with a family lawyer, so.
Trish Guise: You’re so right.
Trish Guise: One time early on in my situation, I actually had to say to my lawyer, “Whose side are you on?” Because it got to the point where, “Who’s paying you here? Because I don’t feel like you’re advocating for me.”
Barbara La Pointe: And you definitely wanna have that feeling that there’s some kind of aligned partnership with your lawyer.
Barbara La Pointe: We should do an episode, Trish and Andrew, just on family lawyers. It’s a passion of mine.
Trish Guise: That’d be great. I could bring a couple lawyers on who actually have the same opinions we do, and they’re actually lawyers.
Trish Guise: Interesting.
Andrew Folkler: That’d be wild.
Trish Guise: Yeah, and they’re right.
Trish Guise: They’re great. There’s so many out there that are great, and it only takes a few bad apples, right, to taint the rest of the pool. But I think my concern is that, and it is for judges as well, just with the course of abuse and the different elements change, the changes in the Divorce Act, I think it’s fantastic, but I think we’re giving false hope.
Trish Guise: I don’t know where the stop gap is here, but the government knew they were bringing in this Divorce Act the last year. They delayed it. So I’m not so sure why there has been a delay in providing training for people. I’m not sure, just because the Divorce Act is here, it’s assuming that lawyers and judges are now going to know how to handle all these things, and that concerns me, because we cannot put the onus on our victims to say, “Hey, this is how we should do it.”
Trish Guise: We’re coming to a lawyer who’s the expert, who should be able to handle this situation and provide the information to the judge, who will then see it as such and act accordingly. And to my knowledge, there isn’t a lot of support on that yet. And so I feel badly for lawyers who really truly wanna do a good job, but there’s not a lot out there yet in terms of.
Trish Guise: ‘Cause they don’t learn it in law school, I know that for a fact. And so we have to do a better job to provide that support, but also that education for the experts that we all go to.
Barbara La Pointe: Couldn’t agree more with you. Couldn’t agree more. It’s a gap in the system that’s so backlogged.
Barbara La Pointe: And as you said, judges and lawyers are not learning about abuse, how to recognize the signs of abuse and trauma. And so really, honestly, the sooner you can step in and get support from a divorce coach, the sooner you might be able to self-regulate so that you do look collected. I think you said that at the beginning of the podcast, that bottom line is you have to look how did you put it, Trish? Collected or together? Present well, I think is what.
Trish Guise: Present well. Yeah.
Barbara La Pointe: Present well.
Barbara La Pointe: How fascinating.
Andrew Folkler: All righty. Well, we are coming up to that one-hour mark. Trish, was there any last pearls of wisdom that you would want to share with the audience, or anything that you felt that maybe just went unsaid that you would like to just toss out there real quick before we wrap up?
Trish Guise: Well, I think just one thing that’s near and dear to my heart too is that one thing that I like to do as a divorce coach, and I’m sure you do too, Barbara, and many of us, that there’s a lot of support for children, and I know most parents are there for their children, and that’s one of my roles is to make sure that parents can be the best parents for their children.
Trish Guise: But my primary concern is to be there for the parent so then they can parent their child. I think we throw our parents to the wolves. So much expectation is placed on them to, I know you’re going through this horribly traumatic life event, but you had better be the best parent ever. God forbid you make a mistake like every other normal parent in the world, intact family or otherwise, but then everything’s catastrophized, and then it’s seen as evidence as being a poor parent, and then it’s used against you.
Trish Guise: We better stop doing that. Also to our exes as well too, we have to understand that our parent, the co-parent is going to parent differently, and unless there’s abuse or alienating behavior, abusive behaviors, we have to start being okay with the fact that when you lived together, I can guarantee you mom and dad did not parent the same way, so do not expect that afterwards.
Trish Guise: Get a better mindset. The kids need both, irrespective of abuse, and they need different parents. There are different qualities, and we need that. And to not bash the other individual, whether you’re a lawyer, judge, or the other co-parent, for doing things differently. Like in my situation it would be like my ex-husband would let the kids go to the dump with him, and I’m sure I had visions of, oh, God, they’re probably out playing in all the garbage and whatnot.
Trish Guise: Let it go. He’s not going to parent the way I’m going to parent. Silly things like that, that not everything is a battlefield. Yes, they may go to bed later at your house, and I’d prefer to see rules and schedules the same, but at the end of the day, it’s not worth it. It’s the fundamental things that you need to worry about.
Trish Guise: Let them be a dad. Let them be a mom. Moms are overprotective. Get over it. Who’s judging them for that? Someone has to be, and dads sometimes are a little lax. Get over it. You just have to let people be people, and let the kids enjoy the parent they were, and chances are they are the same afterwards.
Trish Guise: But let’s not have that be the battleground that you wanna be fighting in.
Barbara La Pointe: I love that. One thing for sure is that change is inevitable.
Andrew Folkler: Well, Trish, I know you said it earlier in the podcast, but just as a formality, what would be the best way for listeners to reach out to you?
Trish Guise: I would say either through Instagram, Trish Guise, divorce coach.
Trish Guise: Facebook, same thing, or my website. I have my link tree there and you can email me as well, trish@trishguise.com. Those are the best ways, I think, to get a hold of me. And you can either email me or you can just book an appointment, whichever you like. Pretty easy to get a hold of.
Andrew Folkler: Right on. And it looks like that is all we have time for today, everyone. Once again, thank you for taking the time to be with us. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our channel, either on YouTube or to our podcast through the various podcasting platforms. Don’t forget, we include a downloadable document below.
Andrew Folkler: It’s gonna be on barbaralapointe.com/podcast to help you and your loved ones deal with these challenges, and it’ll have all these other relevant links as well. Barbara, if listeners wanted to reach out to you, what would be the best way to do so?
Barbara La Pointe: Feel free to reach out at barbara@barbaralapointe.com.
Andrew Folkler: And if you wanna reach me, you’re welcome to email me at startnow@andrewfolkler.com. As always, thank you for taking the time to be with us at the Broken Families podcast, where we discuss and help you find solutions to divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships. Have a wonderful day...