Welcome to Divorce Dialogues on Katherine Miller. DeWorse Dialogues brings expert guests to the airwaves to talk through your divorce questions and fill in the gray areas about separating. From thinking about divorce, to have a behavior divorce, to what to do after, this is DeWorse Dialogues. Welcome to DeWorse Dialogues, I'm Katherine Miller.
I'm the founder of the Miller Law Group and a trainer at the Center for Understanding in conflict, and I am on a mission to change how people divorce and help them divorce with dignity. And my guest today is Tricia Sanders. Tricia is a licensed clinical social worker with nearly two decades of experience in helping children, families, and couples navigate complexities of trauma and transition, including divorce. Tricia's specialized approach integrates expressive therapies and immodgo relationship therapy, focusing on fostering emotional intelligence and effective communications to heal and strengthen relationships.
Welcome, Tricia Sanders to the show. Thank you so much, I'm so happy to be here. So with the background that you have, the extensive experience as a licensed clinical social worker, especially specializing in the areas of trauma and transition, can you share how these areas intersect with the challenges faced by families going through divorce? Oh, yes, well, I think the definition, or part of the definition of trauma is when things happen to us and we don't have the ability to control them, and so we don't have the ability to act and protect ourselves.
And the process of divorce, as it commonly stands, is often very traumatic for all of the members, or many of the members going through it, of course, both of the divorcing partners, but also children, even extended family, because they're so commonly a feeling of lack of control. And so also the experience of transition, there's so many unknowns, they're heading to somewhere they haven't been before, and that can also be a very difficult experience in all of that has a tendency, certainly to impact our nervous system and elicit fear responses, and it can be very difficult to navigate. And it's a very isolating experience as well. So, yes, all of that is very connected.
So I have an opinion, I'm going to let that ask you, but I'm curious as to yours, right? So this says that being out of control, do you think that whether or not you're the person choosing to divorce or not choosing the divorce, that is a factor regardless? I think it certainly can be, I think, and very commonly is, because even the person asking or initiating for the divorce, a lot of the time it's not necessarily what they want to do, it's often they're at a place where they don't know what else to do, and so they make this decision often, sometimes from a very well-informed place, but it's not an easy decision to make, and often it comes from a place of helplessness. So I think a feeling of out of control can be even present when you're the one initiating divorce, absolutely.
I mean, it could sound like it's kind of a desperation. This is not, you know, I've had many people sit in my office and say, listen, I'm not the kind of guy who gets divorced, but there's nothing else to do here. This relationship is never going to work. We've been through countless therapies.
We've tried this, we've tried that, and it's just not changing. And so, you know, it's one of the things that I come from a family where I was the first person in my family to ever get divorced, you know, and when I got married the first time, just to give you a sense, my grandmother said to me, you can never get divorced. And I was a divorce lawyer at the time, so it was kind of ironic. And I was like, well, I'm not going to stay married if I'm not happy.
Thankfully, she passed away before I did get divorced. I didn't have to explain that to her, but I totally understand that it's, you know, in my family, not the first go-to. And so it was a huge decision to do it, and I felt that I really had no choice about that. But speaking of other people who really are not in control, that is the kids, right?
And so how do you work with sort of expressive therapies or whatever kinds of nodalities that you use to help children, I'm not talking like little kids, through the divorce, and also with their parents, for the parents to get a sense of where their kids really are and what really matters. Yes, I have worked with divorcing and separated families for really the entirety of my career. And as a play therapist, and I also do stand-tray therapy, and those are two of the primary modalities that I use with young children, although they really work quite well through the whole lifespan. But when you use play, and with divorce, it's very common to do dollhouse play or something like that where the family can be recreated.
And it's quite striking, because even an adult who's not trained, if they were sitting watching, which parents are not in the session watching, generally speaking, but if they were a lot of the time, it's so clear that children will pick up whoever dolls are in their family and start having conversations that are mimicking what they're hearing. And it's not always exactly one to one, but even an untrained professional watching could conceive when a child is given a safe world of play to express themselves in, and that is a child's natural language is through play, that they just start to process in this world. And the same thing in sand-tray, I use miniatures, and the simple direction I usually start almost every sand-tray is just build a world in the sand. And you don't have to give more than that, and people put themselves into their play again, at any age, which children certainly do.
And I think it's a wonderful space for children going through divorce because it does allow them to process a lot of the time, parents, very well-intentioned, very educated parents will try to talk to their young children about what's happening. And while communicating to children is very, very important through this process, kind of connecting to that idea of trauma and lack of control and transition to the unknown, the way we communicate with children, especially young children through this process of divorce is often very unhelpful. A kid can't connect, they can't understand, they sort of zone out because it's a little bit overwhelming. So being able to have a therapeutic space where that's connected and that safe environment that's familiar to children of play is utilized for communication for processing.
And there's a lot of really good books as well, like storybooks where you can really have conversation in the metaphor of the book or in the metaphor of the play that's actually much more helpful than talking directly to a young child about what's going on. Not that they're, to be very clear, not that there's never a time to talk directly about what's happening in our family, but the actual processing of it is often through play. And that's what I usually do. That's how I support children, and then I would have separate parent sessions, oftentimes individual parents, not together, sometimes the parents request coming in together.
I will honor that, but unfortunately that is not, in my experience, that is not the way that it goes, or the most productive way for things to go. You know, Tricia Sanders, one of the things I don't often talk about in my introduction of myself is that I'm a trainer at the Center for Understanding and Conflict, and we teach a lot of mediation, collaborative on negotiation skills, and those programs. And part of the program is role play, and the people are playing both the mediator, or the collaborative attorney, or the collaborative coach, or whatever, but they're also playing the parties, right? The people in the scenario that we're giving them to, you know, Harry and Sally, or whatever it is that's going on.
And one thing that I often say to my colleagues in the training world is that when people are doing role play, they give you a window into their soul that they never realize they were giving. You know, they show you how they are attaching to the scenario, the fictional conflicts that are happening, and they're often people getting divorced, or even if they're not, even if it's an employment situation, but they really show you how they are organizing around the conflict that's being pretend worked on. And I think that what you're talking about is with kids would have even less guile about that, right? That they, the kids are not worried about showing you that.
They're just showing it to you. And through that showing it, they can process what's happening and kind of shift them, emotionally shift their selves to a place that's better for them, and that you as a therapist can help them with that transition, is that right? Absolutely, and that's absolutely true. And sort of there's a couple of different processes, depending on what age you're talking about, someone playing or bodying an experience in that way, because talking is a cognitive experience, and young children developmentally don't have that ability as well as adults.
And so for young children, it's just, they're developmentally not able to communicate in a way, even, and this can be very tricky, because there are some children who seem very, very verbal, and their parents say, oh, my child's so smart, they're so verbal, we can talk about anything. And that may be true, and they may be exceptional in many ways, but a three, four, five, six year old is still just that age, and they really haven't been able to develop to a point to understand things through words. So that's part of why Play is so helpful for children. And then what you're talking about is role plays for adults.
So much unconscious information comes through in expressive therapies, in art therapy, in play therapy, in sand, and so what we've attached narrative to as adults, what we need children do the same thing, we attach meaning to our experiences very automatically. But when we talk about an experience, we share what we, the meaning we've attached, the interpretations we've made, but there's so much more under the surface, and being in embodying Play, being in a moment like that without sort of thoughtfulness, or as we think about it, what's my answer to that question? Let me think about that, as opposed to being in the experience where it's really a more of a natural flow, you get a lot more information. So that is what you're talking about.
And the unconscious certainly comes out in children as well. So what they're experiencing, but not able to attach meaning to or cognitively understand yet. So switching our attention then, from away from young children to teenagers and young adults, how do you think that divorce affects those people, differently the younger children, and what strategies can parents use to support them as they go through the divorce process? I think that it can be very complicated, and there's a very wide spectrum of how it affects older children and young adults.
I myself was 16, and my parents got separated, and so I have a very personal connection to seeing that age and going through that experience. But I think, and I've worked with so many kids where they came into my office, not because their parents are divorcing, but children I was already working with, and then their children ended up divorcing. And it's very interesting how many different versions of the scenario I've seen. Some kids that are older or young adults take the perspective of, oh my goodness, I'm so happy that my parents are divorcing.
And not to say that they're all completely happy about it, but if you've been living in a house filled with tension or you've been watching your parents be miserable for years, there can be quite a sense of relief for a lot of older children, young adults and teens. Again, not to say that it's 100% happy about it, there's still transition, there's still loss in the process. But you definitely hear that. I remember many, many years ago, a client saying to me, do you want me to be sad about this?
And I was like, well, I certainly wasn't my desire to have them be sad. I was just exploring how they felt, but there was such a strong sense of, I want this for my parents, it'll be better for all of us. But that is certainly not always the case, even if there has been years of arguing in the household and a lot of tension, there is a huge amount of loss in the process. And I think that sometimes parents can make the, I'll call it a misstep of identifying and using children of that age and young adults as friends in this process, which I think is something that I would really encourage parents to be aware of because it can feel like this bonding experience, but it can really put a lot of pressure on a child to choose sides and to hear things that are not really appropriate or comfortable for them to hear.
So I think that communicating with your child and remembering that even if your child is not so little anymore, there's still the child in the experience and the parents have to maintain some boundary around that and not making the assumption that the child is happy about it or that the child is really devastated by it, really showing curiosity, giving open space for communication and also that idea of not being negative about the other parent, not criticizing the other parent, not shaming and blaming, regardless of whatever feelings and thoughts you hold as a parent going through the divorce, you have a very different role as a parent in that situation, even when the kids are older. I'm Katherine Miller and you're listening to divorce dialogues, a podcast dedicated to educating people about divorce-related topics so that everyone can divorce the dignity, subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to be sure that you don't miss an episode. And I'm talking today with Tricia Sanders about the transition of divorce and that emotional impact that it has on families, particularly on children and young adults right now. And Tricia, one of the things that you are experienced with is a Margo relationship therapy.
And when I have a couple of coming to mediation and they've been in a Margo therapy, I think to myself, oh, thank goodness, because at least they're gonna be able to talk with each other better. And so I love the idea of using it to help parents develop better, more effective communication techniques. So can you talk a little bit about what a Margo therapy is and how it does actually develop better and a more effective communication? Sure, absolutely.
One of the foundational tenets of Margo therapy is that we aim to help people connect beyond their differences. And so the way that we do that is by using a structured communication style, we call it the Margo Intentional Dialogue. And there are very clear steps, there's clear roles, there's a sender and a receiver, essentially a speaker and a listener, but there's responsibilities that are attached to those different roles. And it really creates safe space for two different perspectives to be heard and held, even when there's a complete lack of agreement.
So as you can imagine, this works very well within situations where the two people involved are getting divorced because you could, I tried not to make assumptions generally speaking, but when people are getting divorced, I do at least lightly hold the assumption that there's some things they can't agree on. And so being able to use the structured conversation allows everyone to say what they need to be able to say. And like I said, without the goal being agreement because two different people may not agree on something and it doesn't mean that either of them have less of a right to be heard. And so that really is a beautiful process in Amago.
And the tools that we use, I mean, we use mirroring, empathy, validation, which are very, I would say the very therapisty things to do, very therapisty tools, but they can be very vague for, they're not always user friendly. So Amago is able to operationalize what that means to be able to mirror, to be able to validate, to be able to empathize with somebody. And then it can be very, very effective in supporting the communication when tensions run high. Well, for the benefit of our listeners, can we talk about an example?
Like what is mirroring or something like that, you know, one thing that somebody could listen to this and take away and be able to do a little bit differently? So an example that I often use when describing it is, if you can imagine a conflict between, I'll just say, between for ease myself and my husband, for example, perhaps I've told him many times in our life that if he's running late coming home from work, please call me and just, I get anxious when he's running late, I don't hear from him. And let's say one afternoon or one evening, he's running late and he walks in the door, I haven't heard from him, he didn't call, I feel really frustrated because here he is and I've told him so many times and maybe we get into a little conflict and I get frustrated and maybe I'm a little snippy with him or something and he just had no idea what he walked into. If we were to address that conflict through an Amago lens, first I would ask, or maybe he would initiate and say, hey, something's going on here, we dialogue about this and hopefully if I can regulate myself enough, I would say, yeah, sure, I would say give me 20 minutes and we'll dialogue a little bit later.
And if I was the sender or the speaker first, I might say I felt really frustrated when you walked in the door because I've asked you so many times before, that I've expressed before it's important for me to call when you're running late and marrying would just be repeating that. So marrying would just be, I heard you say that you really felt frustrated when I walked right through the door and running so late because you express so many times before that you get anxious when I don't call and you really express the desire for me to call you from running late from work, did I get you? And the beauty of this process, if I were to go, I won't go through all the steps now, but if you went through the entire, what we call it, the first half of dialogue would be me speaking and me sharing my experience, then we would switch roles. And so my husband then would have the chance to be able to share his experience and his experience and then I would mirror him.
And his experience might be something like, you know, I was walking out the door, I was about to call you to let you know that I was heading out late and my mom called me. And she talked to me the entire ride home about something going on with my dad. And then I would have the chance to mirror him and say, okay, so I heard you say that you were actually about to call me when you walked out the door and you realized you were behind schedule, but then your mom called you and she talked to you the entire ride home about something that happened with your dad. And then he would be able to share as much as he wanted to share and we would continue mirroring.
There's also the validation step and the empathy step validation is a way of communicating that you make sense, even if I don't share your perspective and empathizing is really imagining how your partner feels given this wealth of information that they just shared directly with you. So it is a guest still, but it's a very informed guest. And so being able to mirror it prevents the urge that kind of we're wired this way when we're listening in regular conversation that we only hear a few seconds of what somebody else is saying and we're then preparing our rebuttal. Well, that's not what I said or that's not what I did or what you think that's what I did, what about what you did last week?
And none of that is effective communication. And so mirroring slows down the communication process. It really helps us to be able to tune in and listen and in addition to be able to hear the information. Mirroring is also very helpful for the speaker, for the sender because then they get to hear back what they said when someone says, oh, did I get you, which is to check in after the mirroring?
They would say, well, you know, I might say something like, well, you know, I did say I was frustrated, but actually I wasn't frustrated when you walked through the door. I actually felt an immediate sense of relief because you were okay. And then I felt really angry that you were okay. And then he would come in and my partner might have one mirror me on that.
But it actually gives me the ability to process what I'm saying. And then when the two sides of the dialogue with each person completing their own sentence, being heard, then we start to get much richer understanding of what the conflict is actually about and what the needs are for each person because the conflict is usually different for both people and what people want. And this is true in divorce as well. The unmet needs for each partner are different, what their wants are, that are very often two different things.
Some of the core things might be similar, they might wanna be heard or feel valued and those are basic human needs. But the dialogue experience helps to sort of bring those all to light in a much clearer way than our regular conversations, which tend to be simultaneous monologues, as we say, where two people are having two very different conversations at once. You're listening to the Divorce Dialogues Podcast and I'm Katherine Miller. Divorce Dialogues has been educating people about divorce and relationship issues for over 10 years.
Subscribe to the podcast and don't forget to check out our previous episodes on the podcast website, divorcedialogues.com. And I'm talking today with Trisha Sanders about divorce as a transition and the emotional impacts on families and on kids. And Trisha, people are interested in learning more about your contacting you, how can they do that? Yes, my website is wholefamilynj.com and you can also find me on Instagram at trish.sanders.lcsw.
I'll say those are the, I'm on LinkedIn and some other places too, but those are probably the easiest places to find me. You know, one of the things that I realize is that we all think about divorce and communication issues all around the time of the divorce itself. But parents are kind of stuck together, co-parenting their kids for a long time and a lot of conflict can come in the future years. And so all of this advice about don't talk to your kids and don't involve them and don't let them think it's their fault and you know, all of that sort of stuff.
I don't think we really think about what that's going to look like in the future. Oh, you can't do soccer this year because your dad won't pay or no, you can't go on that trip because your mom won't agree. Like how do you recommend people who have been divorced for a few years who are not necessarily on the same page about how to raise their kids or how to pay for and how they explain that to those kids? That is a wonderful question and a very tricky one because it really does depend on how well the parents can communicate with each other because really the recommended answer would be to not say, not to give that level of information to your child because again, it really is a criticism of the other parent.
Now that does put the parent who wants to pay for soccer or the trip or whatever in quite a position because it can look like them just them being the one that's saying no, you know, like they're not giving any context around and the kid might say, hey, well, why don't they don't understand why their parents saying no? But ideally being able to sort of have, I usually say like a standard answer of this is something that the parents have to figure out and we're going together and we'll get back to you, even if you are aware, you know, well, the odds of my ex saying yes to this is not good but really kind of still try to maintain a sense of alignment even if your ex part is not really so much in partnership with you and then you can still present a united front, even if it's a bit of an illusion to your child, again, because the criticizing and the blaming and shaming and the negativity and also the parent not being sort of the one that is in charge and being able to make decisions, it could be very difficult for kids to receive that. Well, excuse me. And I think that the reality is that as kids get older, they will gain more clarity and whatever that means and clarity still to be clouded or skewed, but they will have more questions.
They will say they will start to notice things and giving them that space to talk to you is important. And when you can to be able to align with your ex partner and a lot of the time, I do think that this, that is a place where therapy and having a therapist is very helpful, having an outside party for the child and that's been a role that I've taken on in many cases because then the place for processing is not between the parent and the child. The child has their own space. You know, I think that there are really good parent coaches, for this exact reason, a lot of the time, I'm aware that people, that both partners are not always in agreement about utilizing that kind of service, but realizing that this is a lifetime commitment and communicate, there is trying to get some little bit of vested interest in being able to make this smooth and trying to keep the child as a priority.
The child's wellbeing as a priority is important. And sometimes there's a lot of reasons with finances, you know, why, if it was withholding is it really an ability to pay? So it gets complicated, but the best shortest answer is to really be able to have the parents kind of be in some type of alignment or at least in the eyes of the child, even if there's not a lot of cooperation going on. You know, this is a parent thing, we're gonna figure it out, we'll do the best that we can and we'll get all that, you know, as soon as I know.
That is a really tough spot to be in, I think, when you want to get something to your child and your ex is uncooperative for whatever reason to sort of not throw that person under the bus. And you know, we don't have a lot more time, but Trish Sanders, I'm really, what happens when your teenage child comes to you and is really struggling with the other parent? And you agree, you know, that person is a narcissist, that person is kind of me, I mean, you divorced that person for a reason. And so I think that if you deny it, you create a kind of crazy making situation.
But on the other hand, if you really overemphasize it, then you're going into this criticism of the other parent. So what is your advice to the person and to the parent, the divorced parent and those shoes? Yes, so there is a very big difference between sharing with your child, your own frustrations with your ex, right? Like I can't believe it again, you know, they're not giving me money for this and versus hearing your child's frustration about the other parent, it is a tricky situation, absolutely.
And it is very easy to kind of cross-align and go into joining and criticizing. But this is actually where skills like mirroring and validation come in really beautifully. Because if your child says, you know, oh, I talked to dad and he won't pay for the soccer camp. And I don't know why, he's always like, he's always saying, no to me about stuff like this.
That's a mirroring, which is to be like, oh, so you talk to dad about soccer camp and he's not on board with paying, huh? And your child still can feel very heard and you didn't join in any criticism. And you can still validate, like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense that you're frustrated. It's really hard to be in a situation again and again, where something's really important to you and your parents have to pay.
And you know, dad's not able to pay or you know, is not an agreement on whatever the activity is. And so there is a real art, I think. And it's very, very hard because I should also say that mirroring and validation done well, I guess, can really only be done well when you're regulated. And so these are situations that are very disregulating.
There's a lot of threats of danger. There's a lot of history that complicates us and can kind of set us into a reactive state. And so if your child is coming to you and you notice inside of you that bubbling up, you know, feeling and the volcano is about to blow, then the first step would actually be to say, you know what, I really want to talk to you about this. I want to just sort of settle myself about it first.
You know, that dad and I have had trouble over the years around some of these things. Let's talk about it after dinner and sort of get yourself into that regulated space. And then like I said, mirroring and validation are really powerful tools because they let children feel heard. They do not make them feel crazy, but it also doesn't, you know, you also don't get into the role that's not helpful of criticizing and blaming your ex.
Yeah, one thing that I advise people to do, and it's really because I've done it myself, is that rather than respond substantively to the thing that the other parent is doing or saying, work with your child on techniques for them to handle it. Like to kind of make it sense if it's you're focusing up more on the how, you know, I'm sorry, dad said that. And I think he's really coming from a place of love. So let's see if we can find a way for you to respond in a way that feels, you know, like that.
So like when it's not saying, I can't believe what an ask, you know that he said that, you know, and you're really sort of focusing on learning the techniques for dealing with the difficulty of that particular situation. Yes, absolutely. And I think that's true for all ages. I always have a little bit of a, I guess maybe I'll call it awareness for particularly younger kids that it can be hard to learn, to give young children skills, to be able to deal with that kind of a typical personality.
But if you have a teenager or an older child dealing with difficult personalities, even when they're one of your parents is a valuable life skill and supporting kids and being able to express themselves in an appropriate way, ask their needs to be met, even if the answer will still be no, and things like that are extraordinarily valuable. Fisher Sanders, thank you so much for being my guest and divorce stylized. This has been a really terrific conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.