Andrea Rappaport (00:00)

Alright, we're starting right out with an unpopular opinion. The affair may have destroyed your marriage, but it cannot destroy your divorce strategy.

How Not To Suck At Divorce (00:11)

If you're going through a divorce or you're thinking about going through a divorce, then this is the podcast that you've been waiting for. Hosted by Morgan Stogsdill, the head of family law at the largest family law firm in the country, and comedian Andrea Rappaport, we are gonna help you avoid the biggest divorce mistakes with our expert guidance, So let's go.

This is How Not to Suck at Divorce.

Andrea Rappaport (00:38)

Okay, so today we're talking about one of the most emotionally explosive things that can happen in a marriage. An affair. Blech. I know.

If you're going through a divorce because of one, then you already know that the pain and anger is really overwhelming. You don't need us to tell you that. And what you are probably also experiencing is that pain and anger can start to cloud your judgment. The problem with that is that leads to some really big mistakes that you can make with your decisions that'll actually really hurt you in your divorce process.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (01:13)

I unfortunately see this all the time and I feel bad even talking about it because if you've listened to our podcast, I'm the logical, straight to the point kind of a person and I don't want to minimize how you're feeling and we have a therapist that's going to talk to us about that today. But I want to get straight to the point, which is if you are mired in your feelings from the affair, you are not going to make the best decisions in your divorce.

And we always talk about making business decisions. If you are letting that affair creep into every part of your life, you are not going to be able to make a business decision. And that's what we want for you in this process. And so I want to give you a story. There's a case that I have that, and this is kind of like the quintessential story And let's just say that I represent Chad in this case. And if you know our podcast, we always talk about this fake couple, Chad and Brenda.

Okay, so Chad is the cheater. I'm representing the cheater. Chad stepped out of the marriage, has a younger girlfriend, and it really kind of sucks because Chad's ex is a really good mom, was probably a really good wife, but it just didn't work out. And I'm not minimizing what Chad did because that's my client, but what Brenda has done is more detrimental in my opinion than the affair itself.

Brenda is so upset, rightfully so, with Chad's behavior, that Brenda now wants to hurt Chad. And that's totally normal. But what Brenda is doing is basically running up huge legal bills, running up huge credit card bills, because she knows Chad's going to be pissed about that. But guess what? At some point, that affects Brenda. And at the end of the day, when you're dividing out assets,

The best business decision isn't to implode your entire marital estate. The best business decision is to get as much money in your pocket as possible for Brenda to move on. Bring your feelings with you, but have money in the bank. And that's where people go really wrong when they're upset.

Andrea Rappaport (03:05)

Yeah. And obviously, while you're all listening to that, part of you are probably thinking, well, go for it, Brenda. Burn that fucking house down. Yeah. Yeah. And while she's in the process of burning that house down, which feels great for like how many minutes, how many seconds versus how much money she's losing. And I think that's what's so hard is it's hard to see the forest through the trees because we are hurting so much. We want to just go.

to Neimans and buy something wild, right? Or we want to just, we want to even do the shit that we know we're not supposed to do, which is say shit to the kids, right? Today, we're joined by Amy Neufeld. Amy Neufeld is a therapist based in Laguna Beach, California. And she is, she's like such a unicorn. She's wildly unique.

and how she practices therapy. And that's likely the reason why people will hop off and on private planes to go and see her. Amy is also the host of the brand new podcast, Now What? And Amy is in the midst of launching a revolutionary approach to therapy. It is such an honor to have her on today. Amy, hey, welcome to How Not to Suck at Divorce.

Amy Neufeld (04:17)

Hi, Yeah, I will be honest, hearing just the story of these fictitious people going through divorce, I'm activated. This is real stuff. So I've been through my divorce for quite some time now. I've processed it out as things bubble up as they do. I help people going through divorce in my practice and I'm feeling it all right now.

This is a lot. I'm just going to dive into the why really quickly because I want to help people out there listening. You know, one thing that you said, Morgan, was, and both of you, we need to get money in your pocket. And that is the role that you play. I'll tell you, when I was first starting out, when I first learned about the betrayal, my ex-then husband, my then husband,

I didn't care about the money. didn't care. wanted not even revenge. I'll tell you, the first thing I did was I got us a therapist and I'm like, all right, there's some sort of rupture in this unit we've got here. Let's figure this out. And then I saw the clearer picture and I just cared about surviving. I couldn't breathe. I felt like I wasn't going to live. And that sounds really dramatic.

and it's not, and I'm going to tell you why. It's not about the sex, it's not about the woman or the man that they were with. It's this lie, and what the lie does, it's actually, it's attachment trauma. So infidelity is attachment trauma. It's neurobiological. Our brain registers social pain the same exact way it does physical pain. So we're feeling all of these things.

When someone says, feel like I got punched in the gut, that's because their brain is registering it the same way. The brain does this because, can I geek out for one moment? Okay, thanks. we have evolved as humans, whether you think we come from fish or an apple tree, we can all agree that we were once humans a long time ago and we were in these tribes.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (06:04)

Please.

Andrea Rappaport (06:04)

Go

geek.

Amy Neufeld (06:17)

and we survived because we were in a group of people. If we got excluded from a tribe, knew then that it meant we could die. It was survival. So that's what happens to us. When this bond gets broken between this partner, that was our primary attachment.

We go right into hypervigilance like we would if we were excluded from this tribe hunting. We can't hunt alone or we'll die. So we go right into this mode of, my gosh, I'm out here all on my own. We can't sleep. We can't eat. I remember going into my therapist's office when it all first hit the trauma. I'm like, I'm not eating. I was emaciated. I would say maybe the one good thing that came out of it.

Andrea Rappaport (07:00)

I was about to say, how small did you get?

Amy Neufeld (07:02)

And I said, I can't eat. And she said, This is real trauma. Your body is going to survival mode. You do not need your digestive system to run from a tiger. We always use the tiger reference, but you don't need it when you're in that survival mode. Take a smoothie and sip on it. That is where my whole idea of,

You can help me, you can regulate me, and please just tell me one thing that I can do." And she did, and it was just keep your smoothie next to you. Take three sips. I don't care. Just get something in your mouth. Eventually you'll start eating. So we do. Our system goes into this mode of how can I survive? We don't eat, we don't sleep, we go into hypervigilance, and it is just our bodies reacting under threat.

Andrea Rappaport (07:43)

Sounds like a great time to make some really major decisions. mean, Morgan, after what you just heard Amy say, does this like register on your end from what you're seeing walk in your office?

Amy Neufeld (07:46)

Yeah.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (07:54)

Absolutely, and I think it depends on when the affair has happened, right? So I have clients that come in that the affair has happened to them right before the divorce is starting and they're just shocked by it. And it really is a timing issue. And I'm curious to talk to you, Amy, about what you see timing wise, because I see that people are pretty much unable to make any decisions or they shouldn't be making decisions for weeks, if not a few months after the divorce while they're processing.

And then I have the clients who are in the middle of the divorce. They don't quite know some of them why they're divorcing. They might have a suspicion that something else has been going on. And then we get the documents and the documents prove what we are thinking and the documents prove there's an affair. And so then you have this client going through it having this horrible trauma in the middle. So it all depends on when they're learning about it and what the circumstances are.

Andrea Rappaport (08:44)

And then the other option is somebody who's known for years. She or he has been having multiple affairs for years and years and I have, I've ignored it, right? They always say, I've just ignored it, but your body has not ignored it. Something has been going on with you while you've been pushing this away. So, okay, we threw a lot at you, Amy. Help us understand these different scenarios.

Amy Neufeld (09:06)

Okay, so there's a couple of things. happens, what comes in my office are the people that are so distressed and more in shock, like, my gosh. And oftentimes it is back to back. They found out about infidelity and then in comes this person, their partner wants to leave, wants to separate. That's a lot of time, this big trauma comes in. When it is more

I'd say delayed when you've got a couple that comes in where either they've known about for a while a lot of times what I'm getting is the person that the partner is saying I'm The woman will come see me. The man will come see me in distress. And it's a lot when it's delayed, there is a little bit more of the anger comes out. The attack comes out.

When it's right away, what I often see is more of either the detachment or despair. And either of those three things happen. We get either this real aggressive attack or the protest, I call it, or you get the despair, which is the depression, or again, the detachment, which is different than depression. Detachment and depression are very different because detachment is complete shutdown.

Depression is a more emotional story you bring to something and detachment is a real survival place.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (10:23)

So, Annie,

I wanna know, because I kinda see this and I wanna know if you buy into this. I see different stages of what people are calling grief or maybe it's trauma. So I see people kind of going through this continuum when they're in the divorce process and there's an affair. And it can range from like apathy to almost looking like depression to not being involved with kind of decision-making or day-to-day or shutting down. Then it can go to anger.

⁓ I usually find as a divorce lawyer, when we're in the anger phase, that means it's a good thing. We're kind of turning that corner a little bit. We're kind of getting our legs under us. What do you think about all of that? Are you buying into that?

Amy Neufeld (11:02)

Well, when you say anger, we look at anger as this secondary emotion, right? So sometimes it works. It actually works in our favor, like you're witnessing, where you get some action. Anger's got a lot of energy to it. So there's always something that somebody is doing instead of shutting down. Still, it clouds our judgment. So anger is still a place where we'll need support. We'll really need to rely on our lawyer.

When we've got these different stages, yes, anger seems more productive, but it does still cloud. Again, it's secondary. Underneath of that is whatever that primary feeling is of sadness or worry or fear. So our judgment is still clouded. So even though it looks very active and we're using words and we're in fight mode and you're probably maybe as the attorney representing, you're like, okay, we've got someone here now.

still need to rely on help for decision-making because our judgment is still very clouded. Whenever we're flooded, whether it's anger or depression, our frontal lobe goes offline.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (12:00)

So how does, because, and we're gonna get into this because we are a show about action steps. So we're going to help you if you're listening and you're like, well, what should I do? I'm in a complete mess. Like, what do I do? We'll get there. But how does somebody know, because I see a lot of clients coming into my office. they're like, I'm ready now. And I don't know if it's anger or just wanting something better for themselves, but how do they know if they're in this like trauma?

that maybe they should kind of take a step back or a breather if they can in the divorce process a little bit.

Amy Neufeld (12:29)

Mm-hmm. The trauma is happening, right? Whenever there's this rupture in attachment, a bond that was like this, it's happening. So the response to this trauma can look different. It can look like anger and rage. It can look like sinking down. You keep moving through. Again, I like how you said we will get to the action step. So we can tell you what to do. But really, some of this understanding put the right people in place.

Know for you as the attorney, know that whatever you're doing, you stay the course and let the reactions happen and the responses happen. And somebody doesn't have to know they're in trauma. They're going to feel it. this is what it felt like for me and what I talked to a lot of my clients about.

You're in ocean and you are feeling like you don't have control of the water and you're flailing a little bit. And this raft that was next to you that you always grabbed onto and held you up has a hole in it. So you go to grab it and it doesn't hold you up. And what happens?

You flail more and you go into panic mode. And that's what this is. It's attachment panic. And so that is happening, whether it looks a little softer some days and you look together or not. You're weathering this storm for a while. This is again, neurobiological. This is happening to your system. So those days of clarity, take it in. And of regulation and calmness, great.

but you're still working through it. Your system has to get steady and stabilized. And it will eventually through all the things that we tell them to do as lawyers and therapists and friends and through time.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (14:06)

I want to give one unpopular opinion, if everyone's ready for it.

Andrea Rappaport (14:10)

I'm not.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (14:10)

Here it is, because I've had this happen probably a little, few times in my career, and it never ends well. So I want to give the listeners a view into what could happen. So you're in a really tough spot. You have a spouse that has cheated on you.

you are upset, you're being traumatized, you're trying to get through it, and you're in the divorce process because the train has left the station, however it got there, right? You're in the process. What I've seen too many times is that the client, because they're angry that they're in this process, they're angry about the affair, and instead of making good decisions and focusing on what's next, they basically are turning on their lawyer.

So what they're doing is every time that there's a proposal from the other side, I've had this happen, let's do this again, Chad and Brenda. I represent Chad, Brenda went off the deep end, cheated on Chad, basically turned over the kids to Chad, got hurt, went with her boyfriend for a while, and now all of sudden, Brenda's back on the scene and wants parenting time with the kids. Chad's pissed. Chad is so pissed. So every time a proposal comes over from Brenda, whether it's warranted or not,

Chad loses it on his lawyer, loses it on email, loses it on the phone. You can't kind of get him into a place where we're going to make a decision. I've had too many times where unfortunately I have to part ways with Chad because we're not getting anywhere. So you have to be careful about who you're putting your anger on from the process and from the trauma. We understand you've been through a lot, but remember divorce lawyers can fire clients too.

Amy Neufeld (15:43)

Yes, and I have a client that has, she's on her third lawyer. It's a tough situation and that's what has to be done until eventually, hopefully, a client seeks help, seeks somebody that can help regulate because that's what's going on. They're dysregulated and you don't know what you're doing. There was anger management courses for a reason, right? and oftentimes,

people use legal decisions for emotional comfort, right? They try to use the court to soothe or that revenge and courts not where you process betrayal. That's my office. It's where you divide its logistics, right? You divide everything. That is

Morgan L. Stogsdill (16:11)

Yes.

Amy Neufeld (16:24)

I think what feels morally just seismic to you might be legally neutral, right? And so it's mind blowing and we try and convince or the clients try and convince the lawyer like, wait, this is really bad. This person did this and it doesn't matter in what you guys are doing. And that's mind blowing

I often would go into my lawyer. My lawyer gave me sound advice and said, after I went in to tell her my story and to see if we were going to be a match, she said, I don't want you to call me or do anything for 30 days. I was like, what are you talking about? And she gave me one month because she thought that I needed to just clearly I was off.

the rocker. I was. It was a tough time for me. And she said, contact me in 30 days. I think this is a fit. Here's what I want you to do. Do these things first and we will reconnect in 30 days. And she made me feel so solid and secure by telling me exactly what to do that it was really helpful.

Andrea Rappaport (17:24)

So I want to know more from Morgan about has Morgan ever told somebody to wait 30 days. And before we get to that, I want to be the voice of the people for a minute, because you've heard two experts giving you a lot of information on what they see. And I know that you all out there, you're not dumb. You know that the legal system isn't there to take care of your feelings. And it doesn't fucking matter.

We still have these needs that like want to be met and they're not being met. Yes, Amy's about to tell me something. I can feel it. You are.

Amy Neufeld (17:59)

I'm exploding.

I will tell you. So now I'm going to put the hat on of me going through it. I see it in office, but I'm going to give you an experience. We will tell anybody we can and especially the person that might be in this room with us. I have a dry cleaners that is a stone's throw from where I live and an errand that should take about

Andrea Rappaport (18:05)

Okay.

100%.

Mm-hmm.

my God, where is this going?

Amy Neufeld (18:26)

I don't know, 90 seconds if the credit card doesn't read your thing correctly the first time in and out. 35 minutes later, I'm sobbing. I have not gone back there yet. Now I drive to the other side of town. The grocery store, you'll stop anybody.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (18:39)

The dry cleaner.

Andrea Rappaport (18:44)

And we're all wired differently. we all have these different places where we are more comfortable going. Like some people access anger really quickly and a lot easier. I'm a freezer. I'm a freezer and then I run. I don't think I've fought in my life. It was really hard for me to fight during my divorce.

I know, because I've experienced infidelity and betrayal, that it rocked my world in a way that just had me stunned and nauseous and completely in the middle of the ocean without a life raft. And I can imagine that there are probably people listening to this that are thinking, OK.

Yes, Andrea, that is exactly where I am. I want to throw up every day. I feel paralyzed and I'm in the middle of the divorce. My attorney is looking at me saying, what do you want to do here? What do you want to do there? I'm still in that spot of not being able to sleep. My brain is hijacked. I'm getting visual images. I'm imagining the worst. I'm imagining

my wife or my husband with this person whom they had this affair with. And I'm wondering, did they cuddle? Did they laugh together? What else did they do? I'm picturing them having sex and it is taking over my life. I don't give a shit about financial discovery right now. What do those people do? Because I don't know.

Amy Neufeld (20:13)

You want me to tell you what I tell my clients to do? Do we go right in? Well, I will bring you to, you know, one thing that is really important and you mentioned it too, Morgan, action. What can we do? And the type of therapy that I do is we do understand it's really important to regulate and to validate. Validation.

Andrea Rappaport (20:16)

Yeah.

Amy Neufeld (20:34)

helps steady. It is the, got you, I'm here. That raft gets blown up and you get to hold on to something and you can breathe. So all of that's really important. Now what? And that is why my podcast is called Now What? Because what are you going to do with all of this? Yes, we feel awful. I mean, look, I came onto this show just knowing I was going to talk about all this gets me activated.

I need to regulate and then because I have the tools, I know what to do now. now what? Should I go into my action steps of what we have people to do? A lot.

Andrea Rappaport (21:07)

Yeah, like how the fuck do you regulate? Like you've said regulate and it makes me think

of that song from the 90s like regulators, round up, was a clear black night. But like, you know, but we all hear people say that, right? What does that mean?

Amy Neufeld (21:14)

my God. ⁓

All right, let's do it. Okay,

so we're going to regulate through routine. When we, we're going to regulate through routine. Really, we're just stabilizing your nervous system. We're getting our ground steady again. When we're dysregulated, it's that feeling of, can't really, and we're flooded and we're not thinking, not making decisions. When we're regulated, our bodies feel calmer. We can think, we can communicate.

Andrea Rappaport (21:24)

There's that word again.

Amy Neufeld (21:45)

when betrayal blows up your life, your brain loses predictability. I have to say this. It's so uniquely different than any other trauma because this cognitive dissonance that's going on, this was my person, my steady, and this is what caused me to feel this unsafe. It can't make sense of it.

So this predictability has gone away. I want you to feed that back in and we're going to do that through routine. Take a walk, wake up at the same time every day, eat regular meals. I want routine to be. So if it is you do the same coffee routine every morning, you have the same mug every morning, it can be tiny. I want your body to register routine. It's bigger than you think. So just going to bed at the same time every day.

That to you might not mean anything to your system. It does. It is setting a clock so that your body starts to go from frantic 10, ⁓ my gosh, down to maybe a four. We can function at a four.

Andrea Rappaport (22:45)

That sounds so doable and I love the way, like the insight behind it is that something really unpredictable happens. So give yourself something predictable, like every day. That makes total sense.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (22:56)

I would even suggest to listeners because sometimes you're like, okay, the coffee routine is going to take four minutes, right?

we do next? I would almost break your day up into chunks, like break it up into chunks. The first two hours when I wake up, I want to be up at this point in time. Here's what I want to accomplish in the first two hours. What do we do the next three hours? And actually write it down because if you have a plan, this is the same with divorce lawyers and your divorce, if you have a plan and you feel like you know what you're doing, your whole day and your mind is going to be so much clearer, even if it's a stupid plan, even if it's from

noon to 1 30, I'm going to walk and talk whoever you're talking to. Hopefully it's not we always joke about loudmouth Sally from the bar. You don't want to be talking to her about your divorce or anything related to infidelity. But those are just little ideas that you can do.

Andrea Rappaport (23:48)

Hey, while you're walking, I've got two great podcasts you can listen to. Listen to our show, listen to the new Now What podcast. Here's a cheap plug.

Amy Neufeld (23:57)

Morgan, you're exactly right. Writing it down helps. I will tell you, depending on where you are, how dysregulated, there you go, Andrea, another, uh-huh, depending on where you are, small steps. Remember, your routine might look like brush my teeth, wash my face, make my coffee. And you can chunk your day, but we are,

Andrea Rappaport (24:04)

What?

guys have said the word chunk more time than I just have to say. That is one of the grossest words. Like to me, chunk is my moist. I can not say chunk, but I love what you said. And I also think we have to not judge that we need a tiny step because I know when I was in that place, Amy, I was like, Andrea, you are so pathetic. The fact that taking a shower is a victory for you, this is embarrassing.

Amy Neufeld (24:32)

Okay, you can.

And you are a warrior. People going through this are warriors. I do not say that lightly. I swear I'm going to start to get emotional. Going through something this traumatic is huge. If you know, know. So the person that doesn't get it, they don't get it. You're in survival mode. You need a list that says, next I am putting on my sock. Fine. The bite-sized pieces of your doing in your day are going to be what gets you through it.

Andrea Rappaport (25:01)

Mm-hmm.

Amy Neufeld (25:15)

So segment your day. How's that instead of chunk? Okay, good. The next action step is going to be, I like when words have fun together. So contain the pain, right? This is, I know I can't help it. I am a teacher and a therapist.

Andrea Rappaport (25:18)

Okay, I like it better. Okay, what's the next action step?

Morgan L. Stogsdill (25:18)

I it.

⁓

This is so therapist like these are words and phrases of a therapist.

Amy Neufeld (25:34)

You

Andrea Rappaport (25:35)

This

is like the schoolhouse rock therapist episode. I'm waiting for a song.

Amy Neufeld (25:38)

It is, but I'm also,

I'm also cool. I could break out in song right now. We can make one up for contain the pain. We're just not going to let it ruin your day. When we're dysregulated, what do you want me to say? A mess. When we're a mess. There we go. When you're a hot mess, we need to contain it. My little dry cleaning story, which I can never go back to that shop again.

Andrea Rappaport (25:51)

Hi, then.

Amy Neufeld (25:59)

we've got to contain it. have to find, we're not eliminating the pain. You can't, I'm not asking you to do that. I'm asking you to structure it. So I want you to give yourself time to process. I want you to get that journal out. I want you to cry. I want you to lay down in your bed and kick and scream for a moment. I want you to talk to somebody, not the dry cleaner person, but you've got to put edges around it because the pain without structure, becomes rumination and rumination makes

every decision feel urgent and catastrophic. So when we're containing it, you regain a little bit of mental clarity. So see, I've taken you from body and now we're going up into brain a little bit. By containing that, I'm allowing you the space to feel the shit. Can I say shit on this? Okay. Okay. You're not suppressing it, you're managing it.

Andrea Rappaport (26:47)

can definitely say shit.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (26:47)

Please.

Andrea and I always, and Andrea is a big proponent of this, is we're not saying to you hide your pain. We're not saying to you don't feel it at all. We're saying to you wrap it up in a bow and when you can do it. Because if you allow yourself to do it all day, every day, that's when you're not going to be making good decisions in your divorce. So what I'm hearing from you, Amy, is like, listen, you know that you have the ability to ruin your entire day, all day, if you let it.

We're not saying don't feel, we want you to feel because as a divorce lawyer, if the feelings don't come out, you can't move forward in your divorce. It's the reality. If you are so buttoned up and going through all this, it's either gonna explode during the wrong time in the divorce or you're not making good decisions. So what I'm hearing from you is set aside during your day. This is my hour for laying in shit and get it out if you need that.

but then you're gonna have to compartmentalize. always say change the channel. We're changing the channel or returning the page because that hour is up.

Andrea Rappaport (27:47)

That is so hard for people wired like me to do. I would love to schedule. I'd love to have the like hour of being a mess in my schedule. when I have that hour like to go to therapy, I am notorious for canceling therapy because I don't want to do the breakdown or I show up to therapy and it's like,

Hey Andrea, how's it going? I'm fine. What happened? Not a thing. Cause I avoid it. Amy's looking at me with like eyes of daggers. Like if you were my client, I would fire you.

Amy Neufeld (28:21)

I want you

in. You know, Andrea, you're right. There are all different walks of life out there. And so to the person that retreats, that goes in, we talked about routine. I'm going to assign you five minutes in your day. Remember bite size? We're not going to go, we're not going to start with hour. I'm going to start with five minutes and I want you to take out a piece of paper and write down 10 words of what sucks right now.

That's it. And then I want you to close that back up and you put it away. Because you're gonna get close to those feelings because they're there. Your brain is not online if you're flooded with emotion and you need to start to get your thinking part back on and this will because it'll alleviate some stuff. We've worked with your system in regulating, but now we've got to get that brain back on and you have to make friends with that pain.

and you have to let it out a little bit,

Andrea Rappaport (29:15)

I'm literally crying right now because just hearing Amy say, take five minutes and look at what's going on, I don't want to. I don't want to take five minutes. And I'm not crying about betrayal right now, just in case anyone's like, fuck, she's really messed up over this. But no matter what it is.

Amy Neufeld (29:24)

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Rappaport (29:32)

There are people like me who will avoid and avoid and avoid, and clearly that's why I have panic attacks. I will, I promise you, I am going to do that. And I want everybody who's listening right now to hear the power in taking that time to address it, because I promise you, my friends, it will find a way to catch up to you. And the last place you want it to catch up to you is sitting at the mediation table.

is when your attorney is saying, okay, Andrea, we got to do this. That is a very expensive meltdown, my friends. do this step. Take the time. So, so far we've got have a routine. Give your body something predictable because something really unpredictable has rocked your world. Chunk, chunk, chunk. Then we're going to talk about

was taking five minutes, the micro step, to dedicate time to just even writing it down. If you're not able to take an hour and schedule your panic attack, because I really don't know who is, then at least get it out. And maybe whatever you write down, that's a great diving board to bring to your therapist. If you're at all like me and you show up and say, everything's fine, ignore the burning building behind me.

Am I right? Like, that be helpful?

Amy Neufeld (30:52)

Absolutely. I actually do that in session. If somebody comes in just like that, I don't talk. I don't pry. We break out a journal or a piece of paper. We put it on the table and they write. We write whatever you want. And now I want five good words. I want five bad words. And I teach them how to get it out because I will tell you, if you don't let it out, it stays in. That makes sense, right? You're pushing down. You might not think you feel it, but it's there. The only way.

to rid yourself of these feelings is to go through it. You cannot go around it, you can't go under it, you can't go over it, you can't push it down. You have to experience it and then it releases. That is how you process feeling by actually, it's counterintuitive. We think if we don't think about it, it goes away. The exact opposite is true. When we give it space, then it goes away.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (31:40)

Yeah, and I also feel from a divorce lawyer's perspective that that is when you're the most, you know, to use a therapist term, grounded, to make and discuss, make decisions and discuss those issues with your lawyer. You're also saving yourself money doing it that way because it's not vomit of the mouth. You're not using your lawyer as a therapist unless you want to pay the high rates. You are getting to the point. If you don't deal with your shit for lack of a better term in that day,

It's gonna come out with your lawyer in some respect and you don't want that.

Andrea Rappaport (32:09)

That's also one of the reasons why on our show, we're very careful about who we will recommend that someone who's in the thick of it see. You got to see a therapist. This is not the time to bring your life to a coach who doesn't have the clinical training and the real insight to really help you. This is your life, you guys. You get one of these. Be really careful whose office or Zoom call you jump on.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (32:37)

And that's what I want to say too. So you want a therapist like Amy, who's credentialed. You want a divorce lawyer like me who is creative and at the top of their game. But what I will say to you is if that trauma of the divorce is continuing to bleed into the divorce process, there are options, depending on where you're at, depending on what kind of assets or income you have to add somebody to your divorce team. And at times we will add what we call in Illinois, a coach.

But it is not a coach like you see on the internet, on Instagram, saying I went through a divorce and now therefore I am certified as a coach, pay me dollars to talk to you about I don't even know what. A coach in a divorce process that's credentialed, I would never hire a coach unless they were a licensed therapist, a licensed psychologist, a licensed psychiatrist. They join the team because what they do, if, and it's not in a lot of cases, but sometimes we need it.

It's managing emotions during the divorce process, during the negotiations. They're there basically to jump in as a therapist to kind of walk the clients through those emotions so that we can move on to the decisions.

Amy Neufeld (33:43)

It's so important. really is. It's so big and having somebody that is trained in dealing with trauma. So to have somebody on your team helping you through this, you need somebody that knows what they're doing.

Truly. I'm gonna go into my third action step here because it's important. so we see now we're bringing it up to more clear thinking, which is separate your facts from your story. And this is a really neat thing that we do in office and I often ask them to do it outside. When something this painful happens, the brain immediately creates a story.

Andrea Rappaport (34:12)

Love this.

Amy Neufeld (34:23)

Again, it's going into survival. How can I make sense of this? So we've got these facts. Maybe there was an affair, there were lies, the marriage is ending. Whatever facts that you have, there's story we put to it though. I wasn't enough. My life was taken from me. I'll never trust again. I'm too old to meet anybody.

Your nervous system reacts more to the story than it does to the fact. And I want you to hear that. Your brain doesn't glob on to what, Morgan, you're helping them with. Your system is globbing on. to the story you're telling it. So learning to separate the two gives you back a little bit more control of your thinking. Again, I get real concrete. We get visual.

You my office, it's projected up so we get to see what we're doing. And I help the person through and I use my laptop and it goes right up on the screen there for everybody to see. And it's projected what is fact and what story are you telling yourself? And I can help deal with the story. I can help ground you as you said, thanks Morgan. And then they can see that the lawyer is going to help you deal with the facts of this case.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (35:33)

Also, the story can get kind of out of hand at times and cause rifts in friendship groups, cause rifts in families. There's collateral damage that comes with the story. And this isn't really a legal brain that I'm talking to you about, but I just went through this with two friends that broke up and.

there was infidelity in there. And I don't know what extent. One side says that the infidelity was just online chatting and the other side has kind of put the story together. Well, if it was online, it must have been more, all these things. both sides had a lot of friends mutual together. And those friends really liked both sides. But what happened with the person we'll call Chad, who had the story just kind of get out of hand, he started going to the friends, all the friends

and putting this humongous story out there. And so after a while, the friends were like, Chad, just don't, we don't want to, we don't, we like your ex. We like you. We don't, this story feels gross. Stop bringing us into this story. And now we're seeing the friends walking away from Chad because they don't want to be involved with the story. So the story is best dealt with with your therapist and maybe a few close friends or family that you really rely on.

Amy Neufeld (36:46)

Absolutely.

Andrea Rappaport (36:47)

And that is so

difficult to do. I think, of course, that makes logical sense. And again, the voice of the people, you're going to fuck up. You're going to do it. You're going to do the exact opposite because we're not perfect. We're human. And going back to Amy and the dry cleaner, you're going to tell anybody who's going to listen. And there's one other area that I think it's really important to mention that we don't let the story take over.

Going back to the legal system and what we're talking about here, which is getting a divorce, just because she had an affair or he had an affair, that does not mean that the judge is going to say to them, wow, you're a piece of shit. You are not going to get any custody. You are. You owe this, the other person, everything. Don't let that story start feeding you unrealistic expectations.

because then you're almost like, you're gaslighting yourself in a weird way. You start to tell yourself that all these things are gonna happen and then they're not gonna happen. And then you're gonna get caught in this cycle. And I cannot tell you, this is rampant in our private community. People are always talking about this.

Andrea Rappaport (37:58)

And speaking of custody and kids, this happens all the time, is that the story of the affair bleeds into the story that now you've created about this person being a total shit parent. And look, sometimes they kind of are a shit parent and they've had an affair. The two can coexist. Give yourself

some tools, give yourself some guardrails so that you're just not raw dogging life over here. The tool that we talk about all the time on this show is using our family wizard. And just like how a lot of people hate that the affair is like a part of their story and like, God, I can't believe this happened to me. I never imagined that she would have an affair, he would have an affair, and we got divorced. A lot of people have that same feeling about our family wizard.

I never thought that I would need a co-parenting app. You guys, it's not that big of a deal. It's not a punishment. It's something that's here to help you. You use it as much or as little as you need, but give yourselves that protection. Put that little bumper in place between you and the person whom you're divorcing that's inflaming your day. And if they are truly a total shit parent, guess what?

Our family wizard is the best way to track that stuff so you can have some kind of change.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (39:20)

And that's what I want you to remember too. Andrea said it best. So many people are looking at our family wizard wrong. It's not a punishment. It's an accessory to your divorce and to your co-parenting going forward. Also, it could be a way to get your control back. When people are experiencing affairs and divorce, they're feeling a lack of control.

Andrea Rappaport (39:38)

check it out. We'll have a link in the show notes, but like we said, it's important that we mention that there are things in place that can help you do this.

Amy Neufeld (39:46)

that making sure you give time and space to deal with your pain because the legal system isn't the place.

My lawyer would tell me often, hey, doesn't matter. This doesn't matter. For my work, this part doesn't matter. Do you know how hard that was to hear? So it was painful and she did her best to honor that, but she wasn't my therapist.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (40:11)

And you know, we want it to matter, but the law is the law. if you're in a no fault state, you need to know what matters if there is an affair and no fault states. doesn't matter. I always say you could have 10 girlfriends. That's the awful part because we want you to feel better. We want you to feel like you've got your control back, that you're getting something because this jerk cheated on you. But the fact of the matter is a good lawyer is going to tell you this is the law.

Amy Neufeld (40:13)

Mm-hmm.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (40:37)

This is where the affair matters, if at all. And if we can't do anything about it, don't spin your wheels and waste your money. And that's what we want you to kind of perk up and listen. It's not fair. It's not what we want, but we are operating under a legal system.

Andrea Rappaport (40:51)

And the divorce doesn't heal you. The process of a divorce is not meant to be healing. A divorce is a business transaction. You heal with your therapist. You heal by when you listen to this episode and when you listen to other episodes and Amy in general. That's where the healing happens. Don't have the unrealistic expectation that you will heal by getting a divorce.

Amy Neufeld (41:14)

want to add one last thing if I can. An affair is an event. The story you build around it, it determines the next decade of your life. So the real question that you would ask is, now what? I mean, that's what I do. And I'm getting super emotional, I guess, because it is true. What happens in this

process, the story you give it is going to determine your next decade. So the now what is very important.

Andrea Rappaport (41:45)

There is no stronger place to wrap this conversation, Amy. Wow. I think that this has been heavy, but it's been so important. Before we go back to our busy days and I pull out a sheet of paper and write five things that are wrong with my life, in a nice chunk, tell everybody where they can find you about the podcast.

Amy Neufeld (42:09)

You know, this is all so exciting and has been brewing for so long. Everything that we need out there in therapy is beautiful and wonderful and working, except it's missing what I think is one of the more crucial parts. I believe, I'm a therapist and I love it and I've gone to it and I do it. Therapy, what my type of therapy, I've created intentional action therapy. What is that?

is at the intersection of therapy and coaching. It's not a coach that's good at therapy or a therapist that's good at giving some good coaching advice. It is where those two meet because the insight and the why, all of the understanding of our behavior is so important because

it gives and provides the relief that is needed to be able to start to change. But once you do that, how do you change? What am I going to do to actually change? And when I look at the why, together with my client, we focus on pattern because understanding pattern is huge.

But if I don't give you something to do that is different from that pattern, you're going to go right back into that. So we work with understanding your pattern, with attachment, with all of the things that you get probably in therapy maybe right now. And then we tell you what to actually do to create new patterns and change your life for good.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (43:38)

I'm going end on this.

you changing the way that therapy is done is so necessary because one of the things that drives me crazy in therapy is that at times it feels so circular. It's like you talk, know, let me talk all the time and I talk and talk and talk and talk and then I'm like, but what do you think? Like, what can I do better? And so many therapists don't give an action plan. So I hope for you, for me, for Andrea's sake and Divorce World's sake that this just takes off because I think that could be so much better and more helpful for people going through something like this.

Andrea Rappaport (44:07)

So friends, there'll be a direct link in the show notes to learn more about what Amy does. You can go to amynewfeldtherapy.com. We'll also post a direct link to the new podcast, Now What? And this was so amazing, Amy. Thank you, thank you so much.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (44:23)

That was a long episode because the information was fantastic. If we didn't like the information, we would have cut this episode down But here, she kept talking about fantastic nuggets of information that anyone can use in their divorce process to feel more, I'm going to say it, in therapist land, grounded.

Andrea Rappaport (44:40)

I'm just happy that you use the word nugget and not chunk. So that's a win for me. And you're right. I mean, that was a lot. I feel like it was not I feel like I know that that was so valuable. And just like we tell you with the brand new Divorce Crash Course that we are in the process of getting out to the world, but you'll hear us talk about this a lot on the private podcast is don't

Binge listen to things that feel overwhelming and hard. After you listen to a heavy episode like this, you need a break. Get outside, go move your body, go do something else because this can bring up a lot of stuff. And that is not the best time to make decisions.

Morgan L. Stogsdill (45:23)

Our hope with this episode is that you have three takeaways, whether it's the takeaway sheet.

laid out very clearly for us, the to-do action steps, or maybe it's just something you heard that made you feel a little bit better for what you're going through. Just have three simple takeaways. You can write them in your notes or your phone, whatever it is, cross-reference it when you're feeling crappy and you are going to do better. The whole reason we do this is so that you don't suck at divorce, or at least if you're going to suck, which we joke all the time, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to suck a little bit less. And that's why we do this show, because divorce is a marathon, it is not a sprint.

Every day is not going to be a good day. Sometimes it's day by day, other days, let's be honest, it's hour by hour. But the bottom line is you're doing it. You have got this.

Andrea Rappaport (46:07)

And we, my friends, have got you.

How Not To Suck At Divorce (46:12)

The How Not to Suck a Divorce podcast shall not be copied or rebroadcast without consent. This podcast does not contain legal advice. The information heard on this show shall not and should not be used as legal advice.