Rebeccah Silence, a love and emotional healing coach, explains how to keep divorce from turning bitter. She frames angry outbursts as trauma responses and teaches a five-emotion framework to process anger, fear, grief, joy, and excitement. Her free "Emotional CPR" masterclass shows how pausing conversations and setting boundaries can lead to graceful divorces.
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It's a Mental Wellness Wednesday, Mix 102.5 with Big Papa in the Morning. TheUnsilentWoman.com is where you can find the world's leading love and emotional healing coach. She is Rebeccah Silence. Rebeccah, good morning. How are you?
Hello. I'm excited to continue our conversation from last week about ugly divorces.
Yeah. Last week we talked about when divorces get ugly and the follow-up question that I had for you, and I figured we could do a whole segment on this, is controlling your emotions. And what I mean by that is if you're going through a divorce, someone that has been in your life and so intertwined with you, for months, years, decades, however long it is, they know exactly what to say and what buttons to push to elicit an emotional response from you. And if you're trying to take the high road, if you're trying to be the best version of you, if you're trying to set an example for kids that are watching, your kids that are watching you go through this, controlling your emotions is so, so integral to this whole process. How can we help people, like, take a deep breath and not react emotionally? Or, you know, I forget, I don't even know the word, but just reactionary. That's the word I'm looking for.
Well, you don't want to be a jerk and then regret later how you showed up in this process. And so let's look at it like, how do you make sure you have no regrets and not let the part of you that wants to throat punch this individual that you once loved, and the part of you that wants to shut down and just put your head under the covers for the next maybe 50 weeks, and maybe you'll pop back up next year, or the part of you that just wants to escape into work, alcohol, substances, another person, right? What— whatever it might be, there's a part of us, every single one of us, that goes into fight. Oh no, you didn't. There's a part of every single one of us that goes into freeze and can feel like a victim to circumstances and just wants to shut down and be saved by anybody else and not have to be the responsible one. And there's a part of us that goes into flight that either tries to take over everybody else's life to avoid dealing with you or makes choices to escape that are really harmful, especially long term, whether that's workaholicism or an affair or alcohol or drugs or whatever it might be. So we want to make sure the part of you that wants to default to your trauma responses and survival mode— fight, flight, freeze— doesn't win out. Your emotions, we actually want to express, but not in a way where we're emotionally vomiting all over everybody we see and just perpetuating The trauma cycle that feels like crap. So I know many of you would never identify as being somebody who's in survival mode. But if you're in fight, flight, freeze, you're in survival mode. And all that means is heartbreak, trauma, all trauma is heartbreak. And there's no way we can't have a conversation about controlling emotions in divorce and not talk about trauma, okay? Because you're in a trauma response when you feel out of control with your emotions and when you feel like the situation is bigger than you. And even high achievers and very highly successful individuals like you have trauma that needs to heal and that doesn't get to win. I wrote Coming Back to Life, which has won awards, because I wanted to teach us how to use trauma to our advantage and how to have the love we always imagined. So if you're getting divorced, and I've been divorced and Gary's been divorced, and it really feels like life is over. Or at least that was true for me. And I've coached hundreds upon hundreds of couples. They almost always end up, after they work with me, staying together. But even if they don't, it's a graceful divorce. It isn't an ugly divorce, and trauma has healed, and they're closer to themselves and each other even though they're not staying together. And that's possible. But love isn't hurting you here and wanting to hurt the other person as much as you're hurt right now. That's not the answer. I want you to get support. So whether it's me, and you can DM me at Rebeccah Silence CPR, and I'll give you my free emotional CPR masterclass helping you heal through your anger, heal through your grief, heal through your fear, let it be safe to be joyful and excited again. I teach there's only 5 emotions. Anger, fear, grief, joy, and excitement. You've got to process those emotions well. But when you go into fight, you're avoiding it. And when you go into flight, you're avoiding it. And when you go into freeze, you're avoiding it. And trauma won. And I'm saying, in Coming Back to Life and in all of my work, trauma doesn't get to mean less of a life, and it's not bigger than you. You're bigger than what you're going through. So divorce is hard. No question. And it could be the perfect next step to give you your life back and for your family to have a shot at being a healed family. And I commend you for being brave and moving forward.
One of the things when people come to me about what they're, what's going on in their life, something that I always, I go back to is if you're, you know, in the heat of it and they're throwing daggers, you know, verbal daggers at you. Take a breath and realize that they're just trying to say anything to hurt you. It's not that it's necessarily true or not. They're just trying to get under your skin to elicit an emotional response from you. And once you realize that it's— that's what they're doing, and it's not necessarily what's coming out of their mouth, it's just what they're trying— what their objective is.
Yeah, and I love the line, "I love you too much to have this fight with you. I'm not going here. We can press pause as many times." Okay, I love you too much to have this fight with you. I'm not going here. We can press pause on this conversation as many times as we need to until we can both be respectful. Okay, I don't honestly care what their objective is. I shut it down if it's inappropriate, toxic, or dysfunctional. I love you too much to have this fight with you. I'm not going there. We can press pause as many times as we need to and then come back respectfully. And that's the only time I'm available for this discussion is, is a really, really powerful and important line. But what I want you to get also is if it stings, you believe it, so you have healing to do there. If it stings, you believe it, so you still need to hear it. And relationships are for your soul's evolution. They're not there for just happiness and orgasms. They're there to show you where you're healed and where you're not, okay? So, right, you controlling your emotions in a healthy way is you making sure you're focused on the part of you you have control over, knowing where you're healed and knowing where you're not, and processing emotion that will be stuck and make you sick if you don't in a healthy way. You've got to learn how to have a healthy relationship with the part of you that goes into fight, the part of you that goes into flight, the part of you that goes into freeze, and with all 5 healthy emotions: anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement. And I love you enough to tell you that. And that's how you make sure your divorce isn't ugly, part 2. You make sure you're emotionally clear and healed.
And you just dropped a bunch of truth bombs and a lot of stuff that people can use, um, not only if you're going into divorce but in so many different aspects of their life. So check Rebeccah out, theunsilentwoman.com. It's a Mental Wellness Wednesday. The world's leading love and emotional healing coach, it is Rebeccah Silence. We'll talk to you next week.
I love you all. And DM me CPR @RebeccahSilence, and I'll send you that emotional CPR masterclass for free.
