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Cyber Monday 2019 – Couples Bundle

Cyber Monday 2019 – Couples Bundle

by | Dec 2, 2019 | Relational Spaces, Relational Spaces - Family

Couples Session Bundle

Are upcoming holidays putting stress on your relationship? Are there undercurrents in your relationship that are creating disconnection? Why not commit yourself to some time to engage your experience in a safe, neutral environment?

Here’s what the couple’s bundle includes:

1. One (1) 90-minute Clinical Assessment
A 90-minute clinical assessment will give two partners a chance to hear and be heard.
– 15 minutes will be spent with the couple together
– 30 minutes is for each partner to be seen individually
– 15 minutes will be used to recommend treatment options to the couple.

2. Two (2) 75-minute couples sessions

*This offer is currently for Utah residents only

Change is inevitable, Growth is optional

Change is inevitable, Growth is optional

by | Nov 24, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces

Every story is rooted in change. Mine is no exception. As I’ve taken time to consider my career as a social worker for the last 20 years, I knew I wanted my practice to reflect my diverse experiences and professional skillset.

Identity, Growth & Change have been the keywords I used to anchor my work around facilitating connection for individuals, families, groups & communities.

It only seemed right to expand the way I talk about my work as efforts in relational change where connection matters most.

“Change is inevitable.
Growth is optional.”
John Maxwell

Welcome to Relational Spaces w/Dr. LaShawn! I’m excited to expand and articulate the next phases of this journey!

My website is being redesigned and launching just in time for 2020.

Stay tuned!!

It’s been 3 years.

It’s been 3 years.

by | Nov 16, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces, The Divorced Therapist

November 14th & 16th are my divorce-aversary (divorce-anniversary) dates. 

November 14th because that’s when my divorce was finalized but I didn’t realize it. 

November 16th because that’s when I got an email from my lawyer that the decree I thought I was reviewing was actually the finalized decree. 

A friend commented “Congratulations on your nupiticide” and I quipped “I need that on a shirt!” I still think that I do, even thought it’s been three years. 

 

Nupticide: he destruction of a nuptial union.

It was November and I’d actually just moved into the home I would rent as I sold my house aka “the marital home.”

I made another withdrawal from my 401k to cover expenses, as I’d just started a new full time job in August and was trying to “get back on my feet” as they say. At some point during the moving of the things that I needed and sorting through the things he’d left behind and finding out how many more things were lost or destroyed during the divorce process, I told myself: “I’ll give it three years to get back on my feet. If I have to drain my 401k to get by paying rent here and my mortgage until the home sells, I’ll do it – as long as me and the kids are taken care of. They need as little disturbance to their lives as possible considering what they’re too little to understand they’re going through right now.”

And I did drain my 401k that I’d had after 10 years of working for the state, just to get through the divorce.

Then I got equity from the home sale, too. It took me 2 years of full time work plus the equity from my home sale, to realize that raising a family of 4 between two homes with $100 in child support from the kid’s dad (aka TKD) every month and only one job was a significant struggle. 

And then I fell in love in year 3…. with a house. 

After the divorce was final, the kids said they wanted their own house. I felt like I did too. Maybe it was to prove to myself that I could do it again. I’d bought my first home before I was married and i bought my second home while TKD was unemployed (he will always say that it was his credit that got us the home, although he wasn’t ever on the mortgage loan or the deed and couldn’t qualify to buy the home from me in the divorce). Something about having a home of our own kept coming up. We liked our neighborhood and our neighbors. And the kids wanted a two story home. Everything we saw was a one-story rambler or very old and dated and would need more money put into it to bring it up to date. 

And then…. 

We were driving to the store and saw a home for sale. It was a two-story home. I texted my realtor (who became like a sister to me during the sale of my home during the divorce as she was also divorced) and asked her to get us a showing. She told me it was above my price point and asked if she should increase it for my search. I said no, we’re just gonna walk through it, not buy it. 

And then we did our showing… and i had the same feeling in this house that I did in my second home. I walked in and said “this is my house.” Except this time I said “oh no.” and “uh oh.” as I walked through the house and fell in love with each room, the layout, the shower, the closet, the basement, the backyard & the kitchen.

It was my home. 

After the walk through, I had to talk to myself and my Self said, “…but it’s almost been 3 years. And you said ‘2-3 years to get yourself together and back on your feet.’ and here is a home… together and here you are with feet, so???” And it really was a lot like falling in love because I didn’t feel like I was ready for what I deserved nor did I feel that I necessarily deserved it. 

But I was ready on the inside and I do believe I deserve it.  

The home that stole my heart

This is my third home purchase in almost 15 years.

Oftentimes people will hear my divorce story and praise me for getting this purchase “without a man” and then i look back at the 3 properties I’ve owned in my life and I’ve always done them “without a man.” My only co-owned purchase was acreage with TKD that we’d planned to build on – had plans drawn up and everything, but then the divorce happened instead and the land was a short sale. 

But here I am 3 years later, from a process that truly drained me emotionally and financially. 3 years later and I know that it’s time to rebuild, to truly build with intention and purpose in ways that I have done before but didn’t realize it when it was happening. Divorce isn’t easy and I can’t say that divorce is necessarily worth it when there are kids involved. It was worth it for me and it’s very difficult helping them navigate their reality inside of my own, but this is where we are. 

I look at how hard I work and how hard it really is to try and do all of this like a Pinterest-perfect person. My own life story is as much of an impact on my present circumstances as my divorce is. The divorce just highlighted it to a place that I could see it and make sense of myself and the life I want for my family and my kids.

I intentionally try to create and provide and sustain for my kids. That is the only truth I hold right now. It is my start and my finish line. It is my one true thing. We talked yesterday about what our reward would be when I get a promotion at my job in two years. We set a reward for when I finished my dissertation back in 2017 and it helped us cope with the stress of it all (aka during the divorce) and we will do it again as we enter another busy year preparing for promotion and tenure.

So we’re going to set some intentions and plan our life and expectations with each other for that time period this weekend. I look at the last three years and think that it could be worse (and it has gotten close more than I have time to write about in this moment) but it can and is and will get better. I love the quote “God didn’t bring you through a storm to drop you in a puddle” because none of this has been easy, but it has taught me to invest in rain boots just as much as sturdy umbrellas. 

And to look forward to the next 2-3 years because it’s time to bloom. 

Cycles in the aftermath of divorce

Cycles in the aftermath of divorce

by | Oct 19, 2019 | The Divorced Therapist

I’ve been divorced for almost 3 years.

I was married for almost 10.

The last 18 months of that 10 years was the divorce process – so, actively married, say 8.5 years. My divorce was final about 40 days before what would have been our 10 year anniversary.

I hesitated to call my marriage relationship abusive, but I did notice how suffocated I felt over time. It felt safe to discuss my experiences in those terms instead of saying it was abusive. But it was abusive… emotionally abusive, psychologically abusive, relationally abusive… all of the invisible and intangible ways that show up in anxiety and depression symptoms. I had, and still have, those symptoms. That’s a story (or series of stories) for another day.

Today, I’m deciding to share my story. It’s not my “divorce” story, although that will surely come, it’s my story now as it happens and evolves and develops. It’s my realization that a divorce involving children and attempts to effectively co-parent with another person can, at times, make divorce a wound that never heals. It’s less of surviving a living death (a la Daphne Kigma’s “Coming Apart”) as it can be more of enduring an illness and its injuries and trying to heal an open wound as a result of the illness, over and over.

In my experience, it’s a wound that needs time to heal that it never fully receives. Not because the time isn’t there, but because the illness is treatable but not curable.

Every flareup is another injury. Every flareup is generally manageable but so annoying to have to live with. Every flareup won’t kill you but the process can be so thinly veiled with violence that you’re almost worried it will.

Today’s been one of those days.

A day where I had to ask myself how long it had been since he’d had a meltdown where I felt worried for my safety. I was able to think back to the last time (the weekend of July 28, 2019 – that story will come) and said to myself “oh… it’s been about three months, almost exactly, since the last time the kid’s dad has had a triggering event that results in him telling me how awful I am.”

So, here we are again.

What was said as a joke to survive my attempt at a family vacation with him for our kids – “he usually only lasts three months before he remembers that he hates me, we’ve been cordial since May – I give it til the end of July. As long as we make it to the end of the family vacation and the kids got to ride roller coasters, he can get pissed off and leave us in St. George like he did the first time we went to Disney and I’ll be fine.” – has become a reality. Every three months, he hits this low and I bear the brunt of his anger that seethes under the surface.

This is the open wound of divorce.

The heavy paradox of taking the high road when he consistently uses the low route. The reflex to guard for my safety, limit my interactions with him, try not to do anything that would provoke or feed this frightening undercurrent (like speak up for myself, argue against his attacks on my character or match his comments on my failures with my own comments/perceptions of his failures), and in all of this, probably most painfully, watching the manipulation happen with my three kids whose reality, relationship & experiences with their dad do not match my reality, relationship & experiences with their dad and-plus-also….  knowing that “a good mom” doesn’t pit her children against their father by showing them what he says and pointing out what he does as harmful (even when he did it to them in July).

I wish divorce was truly an ending to tolerating abuse for the sake of your children. Many of us stay in awful relationships because of our kids. We wish our spouse would hit us, cheat on us, do something visible that makes divorce acceptable. What do you do when your spouse is “just” mean to you and blames you for their actions?

Divorce isn’t really an escape from the same awful relationship. What divorce offers is a separate physical location that provides a general refuge. For the refuge, I’m grateful. Managing the abuse for the sake of my kids having as neutral a relationship with their father as possible is the part of my reality that I hate the most.

This is the cycling aftermath of divorce.

Journaling the Junk Away… 

Journaling the Junk Away… 

by | Jun 30, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces

If you find yourself struggling with emotions that feel paralyzing and limiting (or getting close to it!) to your ability to function on a daily basis, you may benefit from a journaling method that consists of a good ol’ healthy brain dump. No theme. No prompt. No order or structure. Just dumping the words in your brain onto paper. 

Why? 

Well, as I’ve learned more about how our bodies understand and hold on to energy, I’ve started to approach thoughts like tiny particles of energy and if they build up and build up in my head (or other places in my body) they start to cause pressure. I don’t know about you, but some of my thoughts contribute to some of my most annoying headaches.  So what do I do with other things that build up and cause clutter or pressure? I decide how long I can tolerate it and then when I can’t, I start moving the junk. 

That may mean moving the junk “out of sight, out of mind” or it may mean sorting through it and putting it into functional piles or it may mean throwing everything into garbage bags and hauling it to the street for garbage day. 

Whatever the final method, it all starts with a brain dump. 

One of the best brain dumps I was ever introduced to was by a fellow therapist who introduced me to the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The book had an option to come with a journal and she encouraged me to pursue that option. I opened the book and the journal and eventually got to work writing the “morning pages.” 

The morning pages are a brain dump that is an investment into your clarity of self and recovery. 

Here’s what Julia Cameron says about them after describing her own morning pages journals she’s created over the years. 

“The journal you hold in your hands is first and foremost intended as such a companion. Through it, you will be contacting yourself: your hopes, fears, dreams, aspirations, and the simply daily flow of life. Through it, you will find privacy, a sort of portable “room of your own” where your opinion is off the record, except to your own eyes. Although you may have kept a journal previously, you are asked to keep this one in a very specific way: through the daily use of morning pages. Note the words daily and morning. What, exactly, are morning pages and why should you use them? Put simply, morning pages are three pages of longhand morning writing. They are to be written strictly off the top of your head. (No “real” writing please!) Pages may sound whiny, grumpy, even petty. Occasionally, a brilliant idea may sparkle through, but more often it will be “Need to do the laundry, forgot to call my sister, wonder how Dad is.” When I am in a puckish mood, I call morning pages “Brain Drain.” they are used to siphon off whatever nebulous worries, jitters, and pre-occupations stand between me and my day… Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes. We are more honest with ourselves and others, more centered and more spiritually at ease. For this reason, I often say that morning pages are a form of meditation. You are writing down the “cloud” thoughts that drift across your mind. In writing them down, you clear them. 

I alluded to this process a bit in my earliest post about the therapy process being like a fizzy drink of soda. Morning pages help us clear the fizz. 

Why do I have to write? Can i just talk and record myself? 

If that’s a question you have, I wouldn’t say that talking is off limits or prohibited. What I will say is that writing involves a bit more of your body in the physical process of moving emotional energy from your thoughts to sheets of paper. The goal is the same: clear you head so that you can see your self and your life clearer. There is no wrong way to do it as long as you keep writing, 

The words are yours and yours alone. The activity is excellent for creating a connection with yourself and your identity. Once you are clearer about who you are, you’re better equipped to understand ideas for how you want to grow and eventually create sustainable change in your life as well. 

Give yourself the gift of connection through authenticity in your writing. 

Give the morning pages a try and tell me what you think in the comments! 

Dr. LaShawn
Identity, Growth & Change, LLC