Don’t Be a Loser

By Lynne A. Santiago, PhD, LMHC


We have all heard about at least one “nasty divorce”.  It could be happening to a family member or a friend.  Maybe, right now, as read this  it is happening to you.  Our Twitter and Facebook feeds are cluttered with stories about nasty Hollywood divorces.  Courtroom battles that seem to go on forever, as each ‘ex’ and their outrageously expensive lawyers try to ‘win’.  Win what, really?  A bank account, a house, monthly alimony payouts that the average person could live on for 6 months?  And, of course, we can not forget the children—who are sadly caught in the middle.

 You don’t have to be wealthy or famous. Nasty break-ups happen to anyone.  

There are no winners—only losers.  

What is lost?  The answer is simple.   A valuable piece of one’s life line, just wasted away.  Life that no amount of money can buy back.  What is gained? Months, and more likely years, in a state of tension, uncertainty, anger and FEAR.  

We have to wonder why any one would choose such a thing.  

It doesn’t have to be that way.  Conscious Partings are based on principles that can help you avoid a nasty break-up, helping you to move through the relationship-ending process more quickly, with less fear, anger and grief.  

The Principles of Conscious Partings is based on the beliefs that:

• Individuals and couples who are in the relationship-ending process can end their relationship peacefully, from a place of respect and even love.

• Ending a relationship does not have to be hostile, intentionally hurtful, destructive or emotionally damaging.

• There is a difference between “being in love” and “having love for”, and that it is possible to end an intimate relationship even if you still ‘have love for’ your ex- partner regardless of being the one left or the one doing the leaving.

• You can maintain and improve  emotional, mental and spiritual wellness as you move through the relationship-ending process by working to increase awareness of your  fears,  anger, beliefs, assumptions, needs and the potentially hurtful actions that can occur.

• When there are children involved, It is important to have a ‘child-centered’ approach, making it possible to keep what is best for the children the top priority.

• The relationship-ending process is an opportunity to learn important lessons that will enrich your life, develop personal empowerment, heal old wounds and prepare your for a healthier relationship in the future.

All of this is possible if you follow the Conscious Partings steps either as a couple together or as an individual.  And doing so will keep your INTEGRITY intact.  

Begin to practice a Conscious Parting

Follow this blog for more about Conscious Partings.  These blog posts include Lessons Learned—real stories about how others like you have moved through the relationship-ending process in a way that brought healing and growth.  These blogs contain exercises you can do that will help you part with consciousness, helping you to keep your integrity intact while you go from “we” to “me”. 

Need more guidance?

I offer Conscious Partings Coaching Programs for individuals and couples in either of my two Tampa Florida counseling offices.  And if you live outside of Tampa, Florida or in another State, you can still participate in the coaching programs through my online  video conferencing platform.  What is great about this is that you and your ex can participate together without having to be in the same room..

Get a life time discount

Refer a friend and you will receive a life-time discount of 15%  on your coaching if, in the future, you find yourself faced with the end of an intimate relationship.  

You can talk to me personally by calling 877-540-3632
Or email me at lynne@lynnesantiagolmhc.com

I look forward to working with you.

Dr. Lynne

Is Your Friend Ending a Relationship?  

Eight ways you are making it worse!

I just watched the two minute trailer of the new HBO series “Divorce”.  Sarah Jessica Parker (Frances) and Thomas Haden Church (Robert) play a couple who are going through a long, drawn out divorce.  It has to be pretty drawn out to make a successful series, right?  But this trailer shows us another reason why real-life divorces and breakups can be drawn out unnecessarily -- good friends get in the way.  And you may be one of them!!!

In this brief trailer for the first episode, we can see how well-meaning friends fuel the fires of anger and fear.  When Frances’ talks to her friend about wanting to end the marriage peacefully especially for the children, the friend tells her that Robert is a “monster”, which makes Frances’ children “half monster” needing to be raised by a human.  I wonder how France's must have felt after hearing that.

When Robert  talks to a friend about his troubles, the friend tells him, “As bad as the marriage was, the divorce is going to be much worse.  You are going to be cock-fucked with this Robert.  I’m worried about you”.  Ouch!!

You want to help 

If you have a friend or family member going through a break-up, you may be worried too.  You may be angry about how your friend is being treated and you may be fearful about what may happen to your friend as he or she moves through the relationship-ending process.  You may have your own bad experiences with a break-up and believe you can spare your friend some misery.  You may want your friend  ‘learn from your own mistakes”. 

You are not being a bad friend, just not being very helpful.  Your own anger and fear is fueling your friends pain, anger and fear which can serve to only lengthen the process needlessly.  Is that what your really want?

Eight signs you are not being helpful:

1.  Your friend vents to you, telling you of all the horrible things the ex is doing.  You respond by calling The ex every nasty name in the book.
2. You remind your friend of all the bad things the ex did in the past.
3. You take you friend out, get him or her drunk, then encourage him to hook up with some random person at the bar, while saying “it will help you get over him” or  “See, there are a lot better looking fish in the sea”..
4. You tell your friend all about your own nasty break-up, telling him how ‘all’ women are gold-diggers, or her how ‘all’ men are dogs. 
5. You get on FaceBookand publicly declare your alliance to your friend and make comments about what a terrible person the ex  is.  Worse-- you tag the ex so your declarations spread even farther to his friends and family. 
6. You send accusing or even threatening  private messages or texts to the ex.
7. You offer your friend the number to “the best divorce lawyer in town”, who will make the ex ‘pay’ for every thing he or she is doing. 
8. You devise a plan of attack, telling your friend what ‘must’ be done to insure the ex doesn’t have the upper hand.

Stop putting fuel on the fire

If you have done even one of these things you were not being helpful.  Think about it.  You may actually be sending a message to your friend that he had been pretty stupid for even letting the ex into his life to begin with or she was such a fool for staying in the relationship too long.

But even more damaging is rather than providing comfort and support to your friend who is going through a difficult time, you are using your own anger, worry and fear as jet fuel, keeping the fire burning, and your friend suffering,  much longer than necessary.

Be conscious of what you are doing and saying.  Become aware of your own feelings of anger, worry and fear, or even unresolved wounds from your past break-ups.  Then you can be the kind of friend your friend really needs.  You will be able to act in ways that are loving, caring and compassionate.

When all is said and done, your friend will thank you for “just being there”.  And that is enough.

Is Your Friend Ending a Relationship?  

Eight ways you are making it worse!

I just watched the two minute trailer of the new HBO series “Divorce”.  Sarah Jessica Parker (Frances) and Thomas Haden Church (Robert) play a couple who are going through a long, drawn out divorce.  It has to be pretty drawn out to make a successful series, right?  But this trailer shows us another reason why real-life divorces and breakups can be drawn out unnecessarily -- good friends get in the way.  And you may be one of them!!!

In this brief trailer for the first episode, we can see how well-meaning friends fuel the fires of anger and fear.  When Frances’ talks to her friend about wanting to end the marriage peacefully especially for the children, the friend tells her that Robert is a “monster”, which makes Frances’ children “half monster” needing to be raised by a human.  I wonder how France's must have felt after hearing that.

When Robert  talks to a friend about his troubles, the friend tells him, “As bad as the marriage was, the divorce is going to be much worse.  You are going to be cock-fucked with this Robert.  I’m worried about you”.  Ouch!!

You want to help 

If you have a friend or family member going through a break-up, you may be worried too.  You may be angry about how your friend is being treated and you may be fearful about what may happen to your friend as he or she moves through the relationship-ending process.  You may have your own bad experiences with a break-up and believe you can spare your friend some misery.  You may want your friend  ‘learn from your own mistakes”. 

You are not being a bad friend, just not being very helpful.  Your own anger and fear is fueling your friends pain, anger and fear which can serve to only lengthen the process needlessly.  Is that what your really want?

Eight signs you are not being helpful:

1.  Your friend vents to you, telling you of all the horrible things the ex is doing.  You respond by calling The ex every nasty name in the book.
2. You remind your friend of all the bad things the ex did in the past.
3. You take you friend out, get him or her drunk, then encourage him to hook up with some random person at the bar, while saying “it will help you get over him” or  “See, there are a lot better looking fish in the sea”..
4. You tell your friend all about your own nasty break-up, telling him how ‘all’ women are gold-diggers, or her how ‘all’ men are dogs. 
5. You get on FaceBookand publicly declare your alliance to your friend and make comments about what a terrible person the ex  is.  Worse-- you tag the ex so your declarations spread even farther to his friends and family. 
6. You send accusing or even threatening  private messages or texts to the ex.
7. You offer your friend the number to “the best divorce lawyer in town”, who will make the ex ‘pay’ for every thing he or she is doing. 
8. You devise a plan of attack, telling your friend what ‘must’ be done to insure the ex doesn’t have the upper hand.

Stop putting fuel on the fire

If you have done even one of these things you were not being helpful.  Think about it.  You may actually be sending a message to your friend that he had been pretty stupid for even letting the ex into his life to begin with or she was such a fool for staying in the relationship too long.

But even more damaging is rather than providing comfort and support to your friend who is going through a difficult time, you are using your own anger, worry and fear as jet fuel, keeping the fire burning, and your friend suffering,  much longer than necessary.

Be conscious of what you are doing and saying.  Become aware of your own feelings of anger, worry and fear, or even unresolved wounds from your past break-ups.  Then you can be the kind of friend your friend really needs.  You will be able to act in ways that are loving, caring and compassionate.

When all is said and done, your friend will thank you for “just being there”.  And that is enough.

Ending a Relationship? Why not do it right?

Ending a Relationship?  Why Not Do it Right?

If you are ending a relationship, whether you want to or not, you can choose to ‘end it right’.  So many of us have experienced the heartbreak of goodbyes.  It may be the hardest thing you ever have to go through.  So much loss, so much uncertainty, so much fear, so much anger.  Because it can feel so insane, we wind up acting insanely!!

Don’t deny it.  You feel you that are being ‘pushed’ into acting crazy, forced into behaving in ways that you are truly not.  I know.  I experienced it too.  

But what if it doesn’t have to be that way?  What if, among the hurt, anger and fear, you can still hold on to the true person you really are at your core. A respectful person.  A kind person.  A compassionate person.  A loving person.  Under all that hurt, bitterness, anger, fear and craziness, trust me--you are still there.

I know that you don’t want to be that person.  You genuinely don’t want to be hurtful, disrespecting, nasty, mean, or even vengeful.  But your feelings, distorted beliefs and destructive actions seem to push you there.
  

To Part Consciously                      

Conscious Partings means to part ways with an increased  awareness of who you truly are and who, definitely, you are not.  It means to become aware of what is driving your hurtful, destructive actions and make the conscious choice to act more accordingly to who you really are at your core.  It is about becoming more mindful of your feelings, more aware of your distorted beliefs, take calming breathes and quiet the mental noise so you can reclaim your true Self.

I write these blogs to help you as you move through the relationship-ending process.  To help you do it right. Whether you are the one doing the leaving or the one being left, you can do your parting from a place of love.

LOVE FOR YOUR SELF.

Lessons Learned: Danielle's "same kind of guy"

Lessons Learned:  Danielle’s ‘same kind of guy’

Lynne A. Santiago, PhD, LMHC

“Why do I keep choosing the same kind of guy?”, Danielle asked during one of her earlier sessions.  I hear that a lot.  It is possible to be in one very long term relationship—just the partners change.  This is when the same things keep happening time and again, no matter who you are in relationship with.  We may say “I’ll never date someone like that again”, or “next time around it will be different”. Yet there you are in a new relationship and you find yourself facing the same type of challenges.

When this happens, I can assure you, you have not learned some valuable lesson, so you have been ‘left back’ in the University of Life, to take the course again until you get it right.

This was the case for Danielle.  She was 42 years old, divorced for 10 years and had a life long history of at least five relationships with the ‘same kind of guy’.   Lucky for her, she learned some things in her last relationship that helped her see the pattern repeat in the current one a lot quicker.  She recognized her own familiar behaviors, thoughts and feelings bubbling up once again.  Though she was still a bit stuck on blaming her boyfriend for all the things he was doing that caused their problems, she was able to see through it all and acknowledge that she was back to trying to get her partner to change—a common theme in all her past relationships.

So Danielle got to work in her therapy.  She started to peel away the onion one layer at a time.  She learned to become conscious of when she felt anxious—a sure sign  that she was obsessing over something she had no control over.  Rather than try to ignore or self-medicate the anxiety, she choose to view the discomfort as an opportunity to learn more about her need to control. It was an opportunity to sit with the anxiety, become more aware of the story she was weaving inside her head, and consciously take a different approach.  

Danielle did some incredible things during her time in therapy.  Her willingness to become more conscious helped her understand the roots of her need to control, heal from past wounds, and finally see her true worth.  Something that will make her next relationship a healthier one. 

You can learn more about Danielle’s incredible journey by following the Conscious Partings blog.  

Lesson's Learned: Liz's Anger

Liz’s Anger
Lynne A. Santiago, PhD, LMHC

I recently had a client say “I had been so full of anger there was no room for love”.  She had come to realize that this happened during the relationship—long before her ex asked her to leave.

This client, who I’ll call Liz, started therapy because she was devastated that her lover of 10 years ended their relationship, claiming it was Liz’s anger that she could no longer live with.

Thankfully, rather than blame her ex, Liz listened and decided to understand more about the anger she had carried into the relationship and let spill out on the very person she loved.   

We all carry baggage into our relationships.  We can either help each other unpack the contents or we can throw the contents at our partners without any awareness at all while usually blaming the other for “pushing my buttons”.  But then we are left with a big mess to clean up along with two broken hearts.

The end of a relationship is intensely painful.  As creatures of comfort we rather find ways to avoid the pain rather than sit with it.  Yet it is in the sitting with it that we can learn so much about who we are and what may be driving behaviors that harmed and weakened our relationship.  There are always valuable lessons contained in loss, especially when the loss is a relationship and the person we had shared our lives with.

For Liz, one of the areas she came to realize was that she did not have effective ways to manage and express her anger.  She could even see how this was true in her other relationships to include family, friends and her co-workers.  As she continued to work on understanding herself, she gained insight into the things she tended to get angry about—the common threads that would trigger her.  She also learned that she had a tendency to hold on to anger because she believed if she expressed it there would be conflict. Though often times she had valid reasons to be angry, she held back saying any thing about it.  She was very afraid of confrontation.  But the anger would eventually come exploding out and conflict would happen any way.

It was so important for Liz to learn these lessons, and fast, because she was pretty angry about the break-up and angry that her ex “abandoned” her.  She  genuinely did not want to do anything more to hurt her ex.  They still had to communicate.  They had shared responsibilities to their children and their financial obligations.  There was no getting around it.  They had to talk.  They had decisions they needed to make together..  And they would still have disagreements.

What was great was that Liz decided to start counseling just days after the break-up so as issues came up she could talk them out in her sessions.  For the hour, she could sit with her pain and her anger.  She could step back and explore how she had responded in the past to similar situations and what the results had been.  She could then choose a different approach.  She learned that her past anger reactions were rooted in the fear that if she expressed the things that bothered her others would disapprove, reject or abandon her.  She learned that she was actually depriving herself of love because of this.  Love not only from others, but love for herself.

 And in becoming more conscious of her feelings she was able to ask herself “For this situation, how can I respond from a place of love rather than a place of fear?”.

There is more to this story.  Please subscribe to this blog to learn more about Liz’s lessons.

Collaborative Divorce: What a Surprise and a Relief

Collaborative Divorce:  What a Surprise and a Relief!

Lynne Santiago, PhD, LMHC

A couples of weeks ago I attended a two day training on Collaborative Divorce.  My co-attendees were a mix of lawyers, financial advisors and mental health professional.  The training really opened my eyes.  And I was so relieved to learn that there was a better way for married couples to un-couple.

I had no idea what a Collaborative Divorce was until I recently met a family lawyer based out of Tampa, FL  who provides the service.  Joryn Jenkins was eager to educate me.  To my surprise, I learned that the Collaborative Divorce model  fits perfectly with ideas I speak of about Conscious Partings.  



As a Relationship Counselor, my number one goal is to help couples heal, rebuild and strengthen their relationships.  But unfortunately, and even despite genuine efforts, some relationships can not be saved.  And when the relationship was bonded legally through marriage, it takes legal actions to undo the bond.



We have all heard the term “nasty divorce”.  You probably know someone—perhaps even yourself—who had a divorce that fits that description. Didn’t you think “What a shame!!”.  Two people who once loved each other, worked to create a life together, maybe had children together were then in a battle as they fought to win the money, house, cars, and the children.  It becomes who can out do the other.  Once loving, they become mean and vengeful.  Some will spend outrageous amounts of money to have a lawyer do the battle for them.  And the divorce process drags out over months and even years.

I already knew it doesn’t have to be that way if each person is  able to become aware of how fear hijacked them and made them act in ways that were unloving and destructive.  But now it is great to learn that there are lawyers who believe this as well and choose not to engage in a competition to see who can win the case.  



If you are wanting to end your marriage in a peaceful way and avoid a ‘nasty’ divorce I urge you to look into the Collaborative Divorce model.  You may be just as surprised as I was.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COLLABORATIVE DIVORCE MODEL VISIT THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONALS WEBSITE

Click for International Association of Collaborative Professionals
https://www.collaborativepractice.com/

LEARN MORE ABOUT JORYN JENKINS, ESQ
Joryn JENKINS - Open Palm Law