Ep 217: Expanding Yourself to Live Fully After Divorce

Have you ever noticed how society teaches women to shrink, stay small, and remain quiet? From childhood, we're conditioned to take up less space physically and emotionally, to soften our opinions, and to prioritize everyone else's comfort above our own. After divorce, this pattern often intensifies as uncertainty looms large.

But what if divorce actually offers something revolutionary? What if, instead of further contraction, divorce presents the perfect opportunity for expansion?

This episode dives deep into why I proudly declare myself "pro-divorce" – not because I think everyone should end their marriage, but because I've witnessed how divorce can catalyze profound personal growth for women who've spent years diminishing themselves. We explore our tendency to stay small, examining how the amygdala (our brain's fear center) works overtime to "protect" us from the perceived dangers of speaking up, taking space, and trusting ourselves.

Through personal stories and practical insights, I share my own journey of expansion after divorce, including a recent situation where I refused to shrink myself to make my current partner more comfortable. You'll discover the power that comes from recognizing when fear is protecting you from genuine danger versus when it's simply limiting your growth. Most importantly, you'll learn how to trust that you're already handling uncertainty every single day – you're just not giving yourself credit for it.

Ready to step outside the small box society has placed you in? Ready to expand into your fullest self? This episode offers both the permission and practical guidance to bloom unapologetically after divorce. Because you deserve to live without constantly apologizing for being who you are.

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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.

Featured on this episode:

1. Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.

2. Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.

3. Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.

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Full Episode Transcript:

This is Becoming you Again, the divorce podcast for women. You are listening to episode number 217, and I am your host, karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world. Where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming you Again, and I am your host, karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. My lovely, lovely ladies, I am, as always, so happy that you are here Today. I'm going to be talking about expanding yourself so that you can live fully after your divorce.

This is one of the reasons why I have proudly declared myself so pro-divorce. If you check out my Instagram page, that is in my bio, it's not to say that I think that everyone should be divorced if they're married. I think that there are people who work very well in marriages and in relationships, but that isn't the case for every married person, and I especially understand that it is not the case for many, many, many married women. And if you are in a relationship where you are carrying the mental load, you are doing most of the household work on top of raising the children and bringing in income and running the house and managing the home and trying to manage everyone else's emotions and putting yourself last every time, that is not a happy marriage, that is not a great relationship, that is not a nice place to be and it's for those relationships that I am so pro-divorce over. If you have the privilege of getting divorced, I totally understand that divorce is a privilege and it is not possible for everyone to get a divorce and I totally understand that. But if you're in a situation where you have the opportunity and the privilege to be able to get divorced and it feels like the right decision for you, that is why I am pro-divorce. And it is literally based in this reason of women being able to expand themselves and live fully into who they are as humans and as individuals that I think divorce can be the catalyst for that, and I have seen it in myself and I see it in my clients all the time. That is why I am pro-divorce.

For years we as women have been taught to shrink ourselves physically and figuratively. We have been taught that it is better if we are small Small as in size, small as in weight, small as in stature so that we can be protected by the big men in our lives, because we're so little and we need protection. Right, that's what society tells us. But we've also been conditioned to shrink our voices, our opinions, our choices, our boundaries, and much of this was put in place by the system that we live in. That was created by men and that is a fact. It was created by men.

Women have had the right to vote, and not all women, but a lot of women have had the right to vote right, you know, that was put into place in 1920 and women of color weren't given full access to voting in the US until 1956. Women in the US weren't allowed to open a bank account or apply for a credit card without a male cosigner until 1974. That was 50 years ago. That is not that long ago. That is relatively recently, especially if we're talking about the scheme of how long humans have been around right and to realize that it's only been within the last 100 years or so that women have been gaining more and more access to having a voice and to being able to actually use it. That is not an understatement. So we can take some understanding that, yes, our shrinking ourselves has been conditioned in us from the beginning of our lives because we live in this patriarchal system that has been set up. However, there's also another part of us that comes from the evolutionary biology that has been passed down to us through our DNA and that is the part of us that wants to keep us safe and wants us to survive right?

I talk about this a lot in my podcast because I think it's really, really important to understand the science-y part around why we do what we do, why we act the way we act. And then, once we have that understanding, that's when we can decide to change if we want to, if that feels right to us, if it's something that we desire, because you're totally capable of change if that's what you want, right. So let's get a little science-y for a minute. We're going to talk about the amygdala, and I'm not ever going to stop talking about it because I think it's so important in helping each and every one of us understand ourselves better. So the amygdala, it is the part of our brain that kicks in when we feel threatened. It's the fight, flight, freeze nervous system response. It's the part of our brain that's always scanning, kind of in the background. It's like if you did like a, you know on your computer, if you just did like a virus scan or something, and you can still work on your computer, you can still type documents and get on the internet and do all the things that you need to do to run your computer. And that virus scanner is just like scanning in the background. This is what your amygdala is doing While we're just out there living our lives. It's just constantly scanning everything in the background, scanning for danger, because its job, its number one job is to keep us safe. Its number one job is to make sure that we survive another day. So it's really important for it to constantly be scanning for something that might be dangerous to us.

And as women, we have been part of a world where we are constantly reminded that we are always in harm's way, like, for example, I remember one of the very first things that my dad taught me right after I got my driver's license was how to hold my keys in between my fingers when walking to my car at night, like if I'm coming out of work. I used to work at a grocery store when I was 16. That was my very first job, and so he was like, okay, when you walk out to your car at night, when you get off at like 10 o'clock or whatever time I got off, make sure you walk with your keys sticking out in between your knuckles so that if anybody tries to come after you or grab you, you can use it as a weapon. Like I grew up in Provo, utah. You guys, it is a relatively safe city. It is coined literally Happy valley.

And yet my dad, who knew more about the world than I did at 16, he knew, he understood how the world worked. Right, he guided me to be on the lookout for harm. He understood that the world is not always a safe place for women and from that moment on, my amygdala, in that way, in that sense, was on alert. Now it was probably already scanning without my knowledge, in other things, in other ways, but from then on I had a better understanding of okay, now that I'm 16, I'm out and about, I'm living more of my life, more independently, more away from my parents. These are things I need to start watching out for and my amygdala was right on board with that right. My amygdala was always on alert, and yours is too on alert and yours is too.

And this protection from harm, for women especially, it shows up in a lot of other, different ways. Right, it's? We don't want to dress too provocatively Like this is what we're told in society. We don't want to dress too provocatively, we don't want to walk alone at night, we don't want to wear too much makeup or be too loud with our lipstick or too bright with our colors, because that might attract attention and that might put us in harm's way. So we've been taught these things, and our amygdala has picked up on these teachings that if I did any of these things dressed too provocatively, walked alone at night by myself, wore too loud of lipstick or whatever, right. If I did these things and then I was harassed, or then I was assaulted or I was followed or I was yelled at or I was attacked, then that was my fault. That's what society tells women. Right, it's your fault. We victim blame the hell out of women for all kinds of things. And so we learn. Our amygdala teaches us. We learn and we stay small and we shrink ourselves and we be as unnoticeable, as unopinionated, as benign as possible in an effort to keep us safe.

And so all of this is to say that we, as women, we are conditioned from the time we are little kids little children to shrink, don't expand, don't live fully, do not take up space, do not listen to your intuition, because your intuition is crazy, your intuition is guiding you in the wrong direction. That's just too. That's the emotional part of you that you shouldn't be listening to because you're too emotional. And I am here to call bullshit on all of it. And I'm not the only one who's calling bullshit on this. There are lots and lots and lots and lots of other women out there who understand this, and I have this little tiny platform that some women listen to, and I am here to say it's time, if you're ready to open up to it, it is time to expand yourself, to step into full living, voiced opinions, break through the constraints and the limits that you have previously held onto that box that you have been put into, limits that you have previously held onto that box that you have been put into and open yourself up to live the version of an expansive, full, complete, whole life.

And here's where the nuance of living this way comes out, because our amygdala is a very important part of our biological system. It is it truly is there to keep us safe, to keep us alive, like to keep us safe from actual physical harm. So we don't want to just be like fuck it. Fear is never going to rule my life again and I don't care. I'm going to walk down all the dark streets all by myself every time I get the chance, like okay, that maybe you could do that. That could be a way of like living full right. It also could physically because we know the kind of, because we know the kind of world that we live in put you in harm. We don't want to do that right. We don't want to just say fuck it to our amygdala, because sometimes that fear is real and it truly is prompting us to react from fight, flight or freeze to actually physically keep us safe. So we don't want to fully reject that part of us. It is an important part of us. What we want to do is find some sort of balance or equilibrium from when the amygdala is trying to protect us from real threat, real danger, or when that fear is coming from emotional danger. That's where we want to find the distinction.

Florence Given wrote a book and it's called Women Living Deliciously. Florence Given wrote a book and it's called Women Living Deliciously. If you haven't read it and you are pro-women, you just really want to live fully into yourself. I recommend reading it. It's amazing, it's very inspiring, it's very like, enlightening, and it will make you feel so good to be a woman and so proud of who you are. Right. But she said in this book, and I quote this fearful voice is like an overprotective parent who loves you so much that they want to keep you out of any possible danger or rejection. But being wrapped in protection doesn't allow you to make mistakes, learn or build a sense of who you are and what you are capable of. End, quote by learning to expand beyond the constraints that society and our biological, evolutionary voice has placed on us, we are able to step more fully into our capabilities that are far beyond what we actually believe is possible for us. Us and you know what that takes self-trust. That takes intuitive guidance, meaning you're going to listen to your intuition, because your intuition knows it always knows what is best for you. This takes listening to our brain and our body and knowing how to align those with our intuition so that we can live into our integrity and into our wholeness.

Hi, it's me Karin. I just wanted to pop in real quick and say that, as you know, I have been through the divorce process and I know that, even though you have tons of tools at your fingertips to give you the mental and emotional support you need, doing it alone is tough. So often we want to feel cared for, we want to talk about what's going on for us, we want people to see us and hear us and understand, but we don't want to feel like a burden to our family or friends. We don't want to always be questioned about what's happening or how things are progressing, but we also want space to be able to talk about it in certain moments, without feeling pressure and without feeling judged. That's where I come in. I'm a life coach who specifically works with women going through divorce. When we work together, that means that you don't have to rely solely on yourself to know what tools to use every time a sticky situation arises. You don't have to feel like a burden to your friends and family every time you want to feel cared for, while also wanting your space. You don't have to do your healing, your emotional processing or your decision-making all by yourself. I will be there to walk you through this healing process every step of the way. I offer a free 30-minute Zoom call. This call is a safe, comfortable space for you to show up and be heard and understood in a way that your family and friends just can't offer you right now. It's also a way for you to see that you don't have to do it all on your own. One of the things that we'll talk about on the call is what it would look like to work together further, and even if you decide you're not ready to continue working together, you will leave this call feeling supported, valued, comforted and seen. You will leave this call feeling transformed in some way, even if that transformation is that you feel emotionally a little bit better and more supported than you did before the call started. Schedule your free 30 minute call today by going to KarinNelsonCoachingcom. That's W-W-W dot. K-a-r-i-n-n-e-l-s-o-n. Coachingcom.

Staying small, shrinking ourselves and living from this fear prevents us from believing that we are capable of handling uncertainty. But the truth is, we already know how to handle uncertainty. We do it every single day. We just don't give ourselves credit for living with uncertainty every day, because our brain uses the past to predict what's going to happen in the immediate, and sometimes not even immediate, future. Our brain is always believing that what we predicted from the past is going to happen and we just believe that it's always certain, that we always just knew what was going to happen next. And then when something doesn't happen the way our brain predicted it would, we get scared and we believe that something has gone wrong, because we're like, oh no, uncertainty. I thought I knew how things were going to pan out here, and then it didn't. So I got to be afraid of the uncertainty. But that's bullshit Again. I'm going to call bullshit on it. Every second is uncertain. We just pretend like it's not. We don't give ourselves credit for owning living in uncertainty and so we're afraid of it. But the reality is we never knew. Our predictions are just that they're predictions. They're not knowledge, they're not truth, they're not certainty. So when we can accept that we are actually really really good at living with and handling uncertainty, we can begin to trust ourselves on a much deeper level. We can trust that we can handle the shit that comes our way. We can believe that we are capable of doing the stuff that seems hard and seems scary and seems impossible. We're doing it every single day.

I want you to think about this in relation to your divorce. What if the only option that you had was to believe that you were fully capable of handling and dealing with every single thing that was thrown at you as you went through your divorce? What if that was your only option? Like there was no other thoughts that came that crept into your brain that were like you can't handle this, you're not capable, you don't know what to do. What if that wasn't even a thought that you could have and so your only option was just believing that you were capable, that you could handle it? You'd figure out how to deal with it. How would you feel about yourself? How to deal with it? How would you feel about yourself? You would be so powerful in your own life. You would just be like hard thing comes, okay, I got this, I'll figure it out, I can, I'll know what to do when the time is right. I can trust myself. I got this.

Like you might feel other emotions, like sadness or grief or frustration, right, but you wouldn't feel afraid of trusting that you can figure it out and that you know what to do, like, how would you feel about your capabilities? You would feel amazing, right, and it doesn't mean that you would just be like living your life out there, not feeling scared about anything. Like, yeah, you still might feel some fear, but you would have courage attached to every single time you felt fear, and decision-making would be like a freaking breeze. It'd be so easy because you'd be like, yeah, okay, I know what to do, I know what decision to make, because I can trust that I'm going to make the decision right for me, no matter what, and I'm not afraid to change my mind if I decide that's what's right for me. Right, it's not like wishy-washy, like, oh, should I, shouldn't I? I don't know, no, you would know I got this, I will figure it out, I can do hard things. That is the attitude that you would have going into every single situation, just knowing like, yeah, it might be hard, I got this. Still, it would feel really good to be able to trust yourself and know that you would show up for you in every situation that came at you.

So I had this experience recently in my current relationship with my partner. Like we've been having a lot of political discussions and maybe that's surprising to you Maybe not. I think, in this political climate that we're living in, it probably shouldn't surprise most of you, because we talk about things that are happening in the world and in this country. So sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't, and some of our conversations we are truly at odds. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen because we are different people and we have different thoughts, right? No-transcript. But during one of these conversations it was a while back my partner had voiced to me that he was feeling lately that I was much more like angry at the world and especially what was going on in the United States. That's where we live, and so, of course, we were talking about the United States, and I want to underscore here that he was not saying he felt like I was angry at him and I'm glad that he didn't, because I'm not angry at him, right but he felt like my anger was fueled by things that were happening in our country, and his opinion at that time was he felt like I was more angry and because of that, I was showing up differently in our relationship, in my life, in the home life, like whatever, whatever he was thinking, he felt like I was showing up differently, right, and the truth is I have been.

I have definitely been more audacious in my life, especially this year. It's for a lot of different reasons, but I have been more vocal on my social media platform for my coaching, but also for the things that I believe in and that I support and that are important to me. I have been calling my congressman very regularly. I've been going to protests, I've been writing letters to my congressman, to the White House, to like all of these different things that I find important. I've been really making my voice known, making my opinion known, educating myself in ways that maybe I hadn't done previously. Right, and I have been more loud and more vocal when we watch television shows and I'm calling someone out for doing something that I don't agree with, or doing something that I think is racist or homophobic or you know, just whatever. It doesn't even matter. It could be like literally anything.

And if I voice my opinion, he has noticed that I am more vocal about these things and all of this was making him feel very uncomfortable. He felt a shift in my presence and my energy and that was something he was not used to, and when he told me this, my initial reaction was my amygdala response kicked in like right away, and my amygdala was like uh-oh, this is threatening. We feel threatened, my survival is threatened. This could be the end of the relationship. This could mean death. Right, death is upon me. That's what my amygdala felt like and I felt my nervous system heightened, like immediately.

When he's telling me these things, right, I definitely recognized in that moment I had a nervous system response. I was in fight or flight, which makes sense, right. We don't like hearing things from our partner where they're like this makes me feel really uncomfortable. You're acting like a different person, I'm not sure who you are. You act really angry, right. We don't want to hear those things. So during the initial conversation I had that initial fight flight response and I felt it immediately in my body.

And while we're having this conversation, he we were kind of interrupted. He had to go run an errand, he had to go pick up one of the kids or something, and so he left, which gave me some space and it gave him some space too, right. But in my time while he was gone, I used that space to re-regulate myself. I used that space to calm my nervous system and to understand and listen to what was happening in my body and to remind myself guess what? In this moment or in that moment, my survival actually is not threatened. I am very safe. I am feeling emotions, but I am safe. My survival is not threatened. And I reminded myself of that several times and I calmed my nervous system.

Before I was able to do that, like right after he left and our conversation was kind of put on hold, my initial thoughts that I had were oh I better be different, like I better be more quiet, I better not voice my opinion so much. I probably should apologize for the way I'm feeling about what's happening in the world, because I don't want him to think that I'm angry and I don't want him to think that I'm outspoken or that I'm being too much. But here's the thing I have been doing so much work on myself and on reconnecting with me and on listening to my intuition and living into my integrity and not making myself small and not going back to who I was when I was married, when I didn't allow myself to have an opinion, when I didn't take up space. I've been working very hard on not being that person any longer, because I don't want to be her. I want to expand into me more authentically. I want to be more aligned in my integrity with myself. I want to be able to use my voice when I feel like it's important.

And because I am in that place of self-connection and self-love and self-trust, almost immediately, like those thoughts came in and literally almost immediately, I reminded my brain. I talked back to my brain. I teach my clients this all the time Talk back to your brain, Because the things that it offers you aren't always going to help you and it's not even always in your best interest or what you want to be thinking. So talk back to your brain. And I did that because I've been practicing it a lot. I'm not saying it's like so easy to just talk back to your brain. You've got to practice this stuff. I got divorced like eight years ago. I have been doing this work for a long time and I am not perfect at it.

But in this moment, in this moment, in this conversation, right after he left and those thoughts came in, I reminded my brain, which reminded me right, because I in my brain. It reminded me that I am no longer that person who shrinks to fit in. I don't apologize for something that I do not need to apologize, for I don't make myself feel bad so that someone else can feel comfortable in my presence. That version of me used to feel bad for feeling my emotions or for having emotions. I used to shrink to fit in or to make sure everyone else was comfortable, but I'm the one who's like sitting there so uncomfortable. I used to do that all the time. I used to be that person who didn't allow myself to feel and process through my anger in healthy ways.

That was definitely an old version of Karen. That was the version of Karen that was in a people-pleasing marriage. That was the version of Karen that put my needs and my wants last on the list and sometimes not even then. And I have moved and grown so far beyond that version of Karen in so many ways. I've still got more growth to go, but in so many ways she's so far in the past and I knew immediately I am not going back. I am not going back to that version of me. Now. I might touch it in moments, but in this moment I was not willing to accept shrinking myself again and my partner got back.

It was about 20, 25 minutes probably, and during that time I had definitely had the space that I needed to reconnect with me, to realign my nervous system and to recognize I am not threatened in this moment. But you know what I really have to give my partner credit. He also took that space and that time to realign himself in the ways that he knows how to do that and support himself. And so we came back together to finish our conversation, because we never want to leave it right. That just turns into festering and resentment and it's never good. But we do want to take space to realign ourselves.

And so I voiced my opinion and I reminded him listen my anger that I'm feeling sometimes, my powerlessness. It's coming out in these ways where I feel like I might actually be able to make a difference in some way, and it's never directed at you. And I reminded him I wanted him, I really wanted to make sure that he understood that, and then I really wanted to reinforce to him that just because I'm feeling some sort of way about the country that we live in and the things that are happening in this country, it doesn't mean that he also has to feel that way, like if I'm angry about something that's going on outside of our relationship, he doesn't have to agree with me. He doesn't have to feel that way, and I would never expect him to mirror me in that way. And I also wanted him to understand that I heard him Listen. I hear you.

I understand that it makes you feel uncomfortable, but also I'm not in charge of your emotions and my opinions are valid, and that he ultimately was the person who taught me that, before I met him, I was in a marriage where I didn't believe that I had an opinion that was valid or valuable or even like that. I was allowed to have an opinion. He taught me that it was okay for me to have an opinion and I really wanted to reinforce that. That is something so beautiful that he has. Like it was a gift that he gave me to help me realize I'm allowed to have an opinion and I'm allowed to voice that opinion. And so, to his credit, he also voiced that while he was out. You know we separated for a few minutes. He'd use that time and that space to think, and he told me that he didn't want to be the kind of person who told their partner that they were being too much or too loud or too opinionated. He didn't want to be that kind of person. He felt icky about that and he realized that it was not my job, as his partner, to help him deal with the emotional discomfort that he was feeling around me showing up differently in the world, me behaving in ways that like truly aligned with my integrity and my knowing, and it's not my job to make him feel comfortable with that. He totally understood that and he totally voiced that to me and that would be something that he would be working on. That to me and that that would be something that he would be working on, is working on his own discomfort when I'm showing up in the world in a certain way Listen, knowing yourself and trusting yourself and believing that you as a human, as an individual, were put here in this world, on this earth, to expand, to grow and create in many ways and in many general.

You are allowed to live a full life after divorce. You are allowed, you are allowed to bloom and grow continually. You are allowed to believe that you are capable of handling all of the things that come at you without having to shrink yourself, without having to fit yourself in a box, without having to constantly apologize for being you. Believe in your capabilities, trust yourself more, step outside of this small box that society has put you in and step out of it and expand yourself in ways that feel true and right for you. I love you, you are incredible and you deserve to live a fully expanded, blooming, beautiful life. That is what I have for you today. I will be back next week.

Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to karinnelsoncoachingcom. That's wwwkarinnelsoncoachingcom. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description you.