Discovery is the part of divorce where each side gets to ask for what the other one has, and in a high-conflict case that reach is wide: bank statements, tax returns, recordings, text messages, even journals from before the marriage. Florida attorney Heather Quick says the reach cuts both ways, and understanding how it works is how you avoid signing a settlement blind.

Heather Quick founded Florida Women's Law Group in Jacksonville, a divorce firm that represents women only, and she has practiced family law for twenty-five years. She also hosts a divorce podcast of her own. Her starting premise is simple and useful: in these cases, assume most people will not be fully honest, then use the rules of procedure to protect yourself anyway.

Heather and Lisa go through the objections you will hear to a discovery request: overbroad, burdensome, irrelevant, attorney-client privilege, and the stronger protections that now cover medical and mental-health records. They talk about instant poverty syndrome, where a spouse's income mysteriously drops the year of the divorce, and why a picture built from several years of income tells a court more than a single bad tax return. Lisa adds the pressure many people in controlling relationships feel: an ex who insists that hiring your own attorney is the aggressive move.

The back half turns to a stalling ex. Rather than send request after request and wait out the extensions, Heather subpoenas the bank, the employer, and the credit-card companies directly, and uses a deposition to put someone on the record under oath. The throughline is informed consent: you are allowed to walk away from anything, as long as you understand what you are walking away from, because most financial terms cannot be reopened later.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What discovery covers beyond finances: recordings, messages, journals, even what your child has written
• Why a wide "blanket" request is usually a standard form, not a personal attack on you
• How attorneys answer discovery: overbroad, burdensome, irrelevant, privilege, and medical-record protections
• Instant poverty syndrome, and why several years of income records beat one bad year
• How to respond when your ex frames your right to full financial discovery as being difficult
• What to do when your ex stalls: subpoenas to the bank and employer, and depositions under oath
• Why "you can always change it later" is wrong for most financial terms of a settlement
• How to break a paralyzing discovery request into smaller pieces you can actually finish

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What discovery is, and why it's rarely optional
3:00 Meet Heather Quick, and what discovery covers
5:00 Blanket requests, and why they aren't personal
7:00 Overbroad, burdensome, and irrelevant objections
10:00 Instant poverty syndrome and looking back years
13:00 Informed consent and skipping your own attorney
17:00 Strategic oversight: read before you sign
21:00 Why "you can change it later" is a trap
27:00 When discovery paralyzes you: smaller pieces
31:00 When your ex stalls: subpoenas and depositions

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Heather Quick at Florida Women's Law Group: https://www.floridawomenslawgroup.com/about-us/our-attorneys/heather-quick/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Therapists draw a line between two things that look alike from outside a relationship. One is an argument that escalates when neither person wanted it to. The other is one person who believes they have the right to punish the other. Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky says the second is what most people mean by domestic violence, and treating it like the first gets the response wrong.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky is the owner and founder of Communicate and Connect Counseling, with offices in Virginia Beach and Fairfax, Virginia. Her practice specializes in military and veteran couples, a population with a high rate of intimate partner violence, and she also hosts the Communicate and Connect Podcast. Clinically she works in emotionally focused couple therapy, currently the best-researched approach to couples work, and in cognitive processing therapy for PTSD.

In this episode she and Lisa cover the range of betrayals a relationship can contain, from infidelity to financial deception to violence, and how differently each one lands depending on the person and the relationship. Elizabeth explains the pursue and withdraw pattern that sits under most couple conflict, how it escalates, and why the partner who pushed someone away to protect themselves is so often the one who gets named as the aggressor. Lisa brings the term the audience already uses for that, reactive abuse. They also work through the client who has spent fifteen years blaming herself for a partner's affair, and how to hold two things at once: nobody caused another adult's choice, and the relationship may still have had problems worth understanding.

The second half is for people who are already out. Elizabeth explains why PTSD responds well to treatment and which therapies have evidence behind them, including cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, and EMDR. She describes the trust star, a way of rating trust in separate categories rather than as one verdict on a person, and how it clarifies what you actually need from a partner versus what you can live with. And she explains titrating risk: giving a new person small opportunities to earn trust before larger ones, and treating a failure at any level as information rather than a verdict on yourself.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The trust star: rating trust category by category instead of all at once
• Titrating risk, so a new person earns trust in steps you choose
• Pursue and withdraw, and how an ordinary conflict pattern escalates
• Situational couple violence versus coercive, punishing abuse
• Why the person defending themselves often ends up labeled the abuser
• Why nobody makes another adult cheat, and where context still belongs
• Why PTSD responds well to treatment, and which therapies have evidence behind them
• Prolonged exposure, and taking gradual steps back toward dating

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How common betrayal is, and the range it covers
4:00 Elizabeth's practice, and emotionally focused couple therapy
6:00 Situational couple violence versus coercive, punishing abuse
8:00 Pursue and withdraw, and how a conflict pattern escalates
10:00 Reactive abuse, and who ends up carrying the label
13:00 Blaming yourself for a partner's affair
17:00 When there is no healing as a couple, only individually
19:00 PTSD is treatable, and the therapies with evidence behind them
22:00 The trust star, and rating trust category by category
27:00 Titrating risk, and gradual steps back toward dating

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Communicate and Connect Counseling: https://www.communicateandconnect.com

🎧 More with Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky on this podcast
Ep 322: The Seven Types of Affairs

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Davina Hehn explains anger to her own children as armor: the protective layer sitting over everything soft. When a parent asks her how to stop a child from raging, she asks them a different question first. What is the armor covering.

Davina is a trained therapist who moved into mental health coaching to work in a more action-oriented way. She is certified in anger management, conflict resolution, and mediation, she hosts the SHIFT Talking podcast, and she runs a group program built around nervous system regulation and communication skills. Her practice is A Steady Space.

Lisa opens with what she hears from this community: parents whose children have broken their fingers and their noses, and who will not tell anyone because the household already has one secret in it. Davina's response is that aggression in these homes is close to expected. A child either turns it outward or swallows it, and the ones with no behavioral tools have no third option. Her test for whether it has gone past ordinary adolescence is whether the size of the reaction matches the size of the trigger. If it is hysterical, it is historical.

The conversation is unusually practical. What happens in the brain during an explosion, why reasoning with a child in that state fails, and what brings them back: ice in the palm, a cold cloth, the five senses, sour candy, a walk looking for colors. Why sending only the child to therapy tends to make things worse, and why the outcomes change when the parent does the work alongside them. What sending a kid away teaches them if nobody explains why. Why timeouts can teach a child that big feelings have to be handled alone before they are allowed back. What mobile mental health crisis lines offer that a police call does not, especially when an ex is standing by to use that call in a custody fight. And what Davina says to the parent who has decided their child is past helping, which includes her own husband's history.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why anger is a secondary emotion, and what it is usually protecting
• If it is hysterical, it is historical: telling ordinary temper from something deeper
• Why reasoning with a child mid-explosion cannot work, and what to do instead
• Getting a nervous system back to baseline: cold, the five senses, sour candy
• Why sending only your child to therapy tends to make the household worse
• Mobile mental health crisis teams as an alternative to calling the police
• Building a care team and a safety plan before the next incident, not during it
• Guilt vs. shame: naming the behavior as the problem instead of the child

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How common aggression is, and why families keep it secret
3:00 Why kids act out when they have no tools to say it
5:00 Red flags: when the reaction does not match what happened
8:00 Why sending only the child to therapy makes things worse
10:00 Isolation, and finding your kid a mentor instead
12:00 Shipping a kid off vs. saying "we have a problem"
15:00 Timeouts, attachment, and sitting with big emotions
17:00 The amygdala hijack, and why talking to them does not work
19:00 Getting back to baseline: cold, the five senses, sour candy
21:00 Police, mobile crisis teams, and building a care team first
26:00 "My kid is a lost cause," and where to actually start

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Davina Hehn at A Steady Space: https://www.yoursteadyspace.com/
🔗 A Steady Space on Instagram (@asteadyspace): https://www.instagram.com/asteadyspace/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Two children get dropped back at their mother's house after time with their father. They do not talk. They lie on the floor and cry, and it goes on long enough that she has no idea what to do with it. This happens after every exchange. The mother in that story is this episode's guest, and the answer she was eventually given was a bathtub.

Dinalynn Rosenbush is a speech-language pathologist with more than thirty years of experience, most of it in schools, working with children whose communication did not come easily. She left that role to build a coaching practice for parents and to host the podcast The Language of Play, where she teaches parents how to teach their own kids at home. She has also been through a divorce with young children, one of them with ADHD, so the material here is not theoretical for her.

She and Lisa start with the assumption that a child protected from the details does not know what is happening. Rosenbush's answer is that children register the change in a household's energy long before anyone explains anything, and that they tend to sort it into right and wrong. That matters more than it sounds, because a child sees themselves as made of both parents. Tell a child that one parent is bad, and some part of the message lands on the child.

On special needs, she declines to generalize, and the reason is useful: the label covers everything from a brilliant kid with unmanageable ADHD to a child who is tube-fed and nonverbal. What she offers instead works across the range. Explain the separation with objects rather than sentences. Draw the two houses. Walk the stuffed animals between them so a child can see the shape of what happens next. Say the factual parts without emotion attached, and choose language that gives a child something rather than imposing it.

The last stretch is about the transition itself. Rosenbush describes the daily bath she instituted: swimsuits, no conversation until everyone was in the water, toys for pouring, and a rule that she would not speak first. She scripted the few phrases she allowed herself, wrote them on the counter, and practiced before the kids walked in, because her actual feelings about the weekend were not something they needed. She saved those for a phone call from her car after bedtime. She then adds three more sensory routes to the same result, including the handful of snow that stops a grandchild's meltdown, and closes on the question underneath all of it: what do you exude when your child tells you they had a good time.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why children register a separation through your energy before they hear a word of it
• Why calling one parent bad lands on a child who sees themselves as made of both
• How to explain a separation with toys and drawings instead of sentences
• Why the factual parts should be delivered flat, and how word choice changes the message
• The daily bath routine that settled her kids after every handover, and the rules inside it
• Why scripting your own phrases in advance beats trusting yourself in the moment
• Three more sensory resets: wind, sand, and a sharp temperature change
• What your face does when your child says they had a good time, and what it teaches them

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why kids know even when you think you have shielded them
3:00 Black-and-white thinking, and why "bad parent" lands on the child
5:00 Special needs is a range, and what that changes
7:00 Teaching without words: toys, two houses, and showing the plan
11:00 The prop effect, and why moving eyes settle the nervous system
13:00 The bathtub, and the four months of it
15:00 Scripting your own words before they walk in the door
17:00 Wind, sand and temperature, and what you exude

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Dinalynn Rosenbush at The Language of Play: https://thelanguageofplay.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Take two toddlers to the same playground. One is a girl, one is a boy, and both of them fall over and run crying to a parent. Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst says you can predict the difference in what happens next, and that the difference repeats often enough to teach a lesson that lasts for decades.

Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst is a psychologist with fifty years in private practice, licensed in Maryland and Washington, DC, and now working entirely remotely with adults, couples and individuals. She started with preschool boys and has worked every age range since. She is also a court-appointed parenting coordinator, which means she spends her working weeks with separating and post-divorce parents trying to build something workable, and she has seen both the hostility and the cases where it comes right.

Her position is that boys are steered away from the low and high ends of the emotional range before they can articulate anything, and kept there. She gives the playground version, where a boy's distress has to justify itself before it earns comfort, and a harder one from her own social life, where a friend's toddler cried and was knocked down for it, with the message attached. What is left available to a boy, she argues, is irritation, hostility and anger, and then we are surprised by where that leads.

She and Lisa follow it into adult relationships and into the divorce itself. Vanderhorst is clear that it is not one-directional: in the couples she works with, the man often cannot reach for the tender emotions and the woman is not comfortable when he does. She turns that into a challenge for anyone who says they want a sensitive partner, which is to watch your own body when he shows you sadness, and notice whether you answer with "it's all right, honey" or with "tell me more." Lisa names it as the counterpart to mansplaining, the female version of not listening.

The practical payoff arrives in the negotiation section. Vanderhorst does not believe anyone can fake empathy, and does not think anyone needs to. Ten percent of something real reads as real, and lands better than zero or contempt. She also covers the expectations we never question about boys and men, what she sees with children exploring gender and the accusation that a parent is pushing it, Rosey Grier singing It's All Right to Cry, Bessel van der Kolk's work on what the body holds, and the reason a parenting coordinator wants you to know your own needs before the meeting: without them you end up fighting against the other person instead of for yourself.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• How boys get steered away from the softer emotions before they can talk about it
• The playground difference, and why a boy's distress has to justify itself first
• Why anger becomes the one emotion left available, and what follows from that
• Why the pressure runs both ways in a marriage, and what women can check in themselves
• Why you cannot fake empathy in a negotiation, and why ten percent of it is enough
• The expectations nobody examines about boys: the sports field, dating, and physical danger
• What crying releases physically, and what happens when you hold it in the body instead
• Why knowing your own needs first is what makes you an effective negotiator

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What intimacy actually means, and fifty years of practice
5:00 How boys get trained out of the high and low ranges
7:00 The playground test, and the boy who was told not to cry
11:00 Divorce: when neither side lets the softer emotions in
13:00 Empathy in negotiation, and why ten percent beats zero
17:00 The expectations nobody examines: the mound, the date, the street
21:00 Kids exploring gender, and letting a child show you who they are
24:00 "It's All Right to Cry," and what held tension costs
27:00 What your own body does when a man shows tenderness
30:00 Fighting for what is pro-you, not just counter to them

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst: https://drvanderhorst.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Same stomach ache, every school morning. The pediatrician finds nothing. The parents separated eight months ago. Dr. Karalynn Royster says that stomach is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is tell somebody that this child is carrying more than they can hold.

Dr. Karalynn Royster is a child psychologist based in the Colorado mountains. She runs a clinical therapy practice and a separate co-parenting coaching business, Learn with Little House, built around a program she calls Kids First: more than a hundred video lessons she teaches herself, plus weekly group coaching calls where parents bring the week's problem and get answers from her and from each other. Her practice is with mothers of young children in high-conflict situations, and she is direct that fathers deserve the same support and that she refers them to people who specialize in it.

In this episode she and Lisa go through how to tell a normal adjustment from a child in real trouble. Royster describes the research finding she works from, that children take roughly two years to return to their baseline after a separation, and says the question is not whether there is a reaction but whether it is getting bigger, lasting longer, or no longer responding to anything you try. She covers the under-the-radar signs, including sleep, regression, separation anxiety in kids far older than parents expect, school problems, and physical complaints with no medical cause.

They also work through the co-parenting decisions that carry legal weight. Why co-sleeping with an anxious child, which Royster might otherwise support, becomes something to avoid while a case is open. What to say when your child comes home repeating an accusation about you, and why the fact that they brought it to you at all is worth noticing. The grief that resurfaces when a parent starts dating or remarries. Parallel parenting, and how a predictable home builds something the child carries into the other house. And two workable answers for the stuffed animal that never comes back.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The under-the-radar signs a child is struggling: sleep, regression, school refusal, and separation anxiety in older kids
• Why stomach aches and headaches with no medical cause are worth taking seriously
• What the research says about how long children take to return to baseline after a separation
• Why co-sleeping with an anxious child can be used against you while a case is open
• What to say when your child repeats something untrue about you, without badmouthing your co-parent
• Why silence about the other parent can hurt a child more than a careful answer
• How new partners reopen a child's grief, and why they are not on your timeline
• How to build stability at your house that travels with your child to the other one

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Is stability possible when your ex isn't stable?
3:00 Signs a child is struggling, the obvious and the missed
7:00 Stomach aches, headaches, and stress landing in the body
9:00 Separation anxiety in older kids, and the co-sleeping trap
15:00 The mistake: going completely silent about your co-parent
19:00 What to say when your child repeats something about you
23:00 The wish they'll reunite, and new layers of grief
27:00 New partners, timelines, and a threatened ex
31:00 Building stability at your house when you can't control theirs
35:00 Transitional objects, and the Kids First program

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Dr. Karalynn Royster, Learn with Little House: https://www.learnwithlittlehouse.com/
🔗 Learn with Little House on Instagram (@learnwithlittlehouse): https://www.instagram.com/learnwithlittlehouse/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Talia Bombola came across a line she calls painfully accurate: people harmed by domestic violence are the only ones who have to keep communicating with the person who harmed them, weekly or daily, and are then judged on how pleasant they managed to be about it. She points out there are only two timelines where that stops. The child ages out of the system, or the other parent dies.

Talia Bombola is a licensed marriage and family therapist and relationship coach specializing in confidence and assertiveness. She has been a professor, has hosted three podcasts, and works with clients on the assertiveness skills she says most people never get taught. She has also been through family court herself as a single mother, and is direct about how that felt professionally: she did for herself what she would have told a client to do, and it did not work, and she felt foolish. Her conclusion is the one she now gives clients, which is that the adult logical part of you is not the part that chose the relationship.

In this episode, Talia separates assertive from aggressive, and makes room for what she calls respectfully aggressive: emphatic, protective of something you consider just, and not trying to make the other person afraid. She explains why she starts by asking where someone learned to please people and what it protected them from, and why the goal is retiring that part rather than shaming it out of existence. She and Lisa also work through why an absence of arguments is not peace, and why pushing a controlling partner toward an equal footing is the thing that usually breaks the arrangement open.

The middle of the conversation is a genuine professional disagreement, and worth the listen. Talia points people toward canned responses; Lisa explains why BTGO teaches against them and what strategic communication does instead, including anchoring the other parent in a statement nobody will disagree with in writing. Talia adapts on the spot. From there they cover court-ordered mediation and what to expect from it, why an agreement worked out privately beats a template handed down from the bench, the attorney's rule about being held to whatever you write into a plan, and why filing again too soon costs you credibility for the time you actually need it. Talia closes on projective identification, the question of how old you feel in a given moment, and working the betrayal somewhere other than at your ex.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Assertive, aggressive, and respectfully aggressive: what actually separates them
• Retiring the people pleaser instead of trying to cut it out of yourself
• Why having narcissistic traits healthily integrated is just a working ego
• Why "we never fight" can be the sign, not the reassurance
• The case against canned responses, and what to use instead
• Court-ordered mediation: what to expect and how to prepare differently
• The parenting-plan rule: if you write it in, be ready to be held to it
• Projective identification, and the question "how old do I feel right now?"

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Assertive versus aggressive, and being respectfully aggressive
4:00 Meet Talia Bombola, and retiring the people pleaser
8:00 Narcissistic traits, healthy ego, and the fear of becoming like them
10:00 Why "we never fight" isn't peace, and where coercive control begins
13:00 Canned responses, and why BTGO argues against them
17:00 Universal agreements, the invisible audience, and texting like a judge reads it
24:00 Mediation, and why a plan built outside court beats the bench's template
30:00 Lisa's hundred court appearances, and judges who want your help
33:00 Being held to your own terms, and not filing too soon
37:00 The over-resourced team, the marathon, and how old you feel right now
45:00 Betrayal, radical acceptance, and detaching them from the ally role

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Talia Bombola, coaching: https://taliabombola.com/
🔗 Therapy with Talia (California residents): https://therapywithtalia.com/
🔗 Talia Bombola on Instagram (@taliabombola): https://www.instagram.com/taliabombola/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Nothing your ex is doing here breaks a court order, which is part of why it is so hard to raise with anyone. The messages are affectionate. The sleeping arrangement gets described as closeness. Every move available to you carries a cost: report it and you are the parent making allegations mid-case, address it with your child and you are the parent badmouthing. So you say nothing, and your child watches you say nothing.

Jenny Hornby is a licensed professional counselor based in Virginia, trained in play therapy and in EMDR, and she brings art, music and storytelling into her work with children and families. She is the author of the children's book Made for This, about a young otter who cannot bear to separate from his mother, and she is a parent herself, which shows in how she talks about all of this. This episode was originally booked to be about emotional regulation, and it opens there, but Lisa redirected it because three clients in the same week had described a parent treating a child as a stand-in partner.

Hornby starts with regulation because everything else depends on it. Regulation is not calm, she says. It is noticing what you feel rather than being inside it, staying in what Dan Siegel calls the window of tolerance, and owning the feeling as yours rather than handing it to your child as something they caused. From there she takes on the instinct to clear every difficulty out of a child's path, and asks the question that reframes it: what does a child conclude about themselves when a parent keeps removing things they were never allowed to attempt. She offers what she calls the future forecast as an alternative, which is deliberately picturing the visit going well, because whichever version you hold, your child reads it off you.

On the enmeshment question she is compassionate without excusing anything. The parent doing it is usually lonely rather than calculating, and the child rarely has language for it, only discomfort. She walks through what to say when your child raises it, in order, and why validation has to come before any plan. She is also direct about the cost of skipping it: a child who senses that speaking up upsets their parent will manage the parent instead, and she spends a lot of her adult caseload helping people take that wall back down.

The last third is practical. Transition days, and why questions at the door produce less than silence does. Why telling a child how much you missed them adds a burden they will carry. The handoff arrangement she recommends, where whoever has the child finishes their time and delivers them, so nothing is interrupted. Return-night rituals, protected downtime, and being available without hovering. And separation anxiety, where she wants you to talk about it in advance, get curious about what your child actually fears, give them every detail of the plan, and then leave without drawing it out.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What emotional regulation actually is, and why being upset does not mean being dysregulated
• Why removing every difficulty teaches a child they are fragile
• The "future forecast": how the visit you picture is the one your child picks up on
• What emotional incest looks like, and why the parent doing it usually has no idea
• Exactly what to say when your child brings you something about the other parent
• Why a child who senses you are upset will manage you instead of telling you the truth
• Transition-day mechanics: the handoff, the ritual dinner, and the questions to skip
• Why lingering at a tearful drop-off makes your child's adjustment take longer

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What emotional regulation actually is
3:00 Owning the feeling as yours, not your child's
5:00 The urge to shield your child, and what it teaches them
7:00 The future forecast, and how you picture the next visit
9:00 Success stories, and "we'll figure it out"
13:00 Emotional incest: when a parent treats a child like a partner
17:00 The shared bed, and what to say when your child tells you
21:00 Why a child puts their own needs aside to steady you
23:00 Transition days: the questions to skip, and the handoff that works
25:00 Rituals, downtime, and house-plant parenting
29:00 Separation anxiety: turn toward it, then actually leave

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Jenny Hornby at Ms Jenny Books: https://www.msjennybooks.com/
🔗 Made for This: https://www.msjennybooks.com/book/made-for-this/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Ask a room of divorced people what they would do differently and you expect to hear something about lawyers or money. Josh the Derelict interviewed a couple dozen of them, including friends, coaching clients, attorneys and therapists, and the same answer came back first from all of them. They got into the next relationship too soon.

Josh the Derelict coaches men through and out of divorce, and he chose the name on purpose. Derelict means abandoned, cast aside, unattended to, which is how he describes feeling during his own contentious divorce: six figures in attorney fees, years in court, returns to court whenever his kid's mom decides to file, and the loss of family, friends and his church community along the way. He also runs a financial planning practice he has had for nearly twenty years, which shows up in how he thinks about divorce settlements. He is the author of The Five Traps Men Face When Going Through Divorce and How to Triumph Over Them, and of a newer book, The Derelict: Fight, Fail, Find Manhood.

He and Lisa go through the traps in order. Rushing the process once the decision is made, which Lisa pushes back on and Josh sharpens: BTGO clients almost always waited too long to leave, then treat the filing as an emergency. Trusting the wrong team, where Josh explains why an attorney is not a financial expert, works through a retirement account split that looks even until you apply two different tax brackets to it, and separates what a therapist does from what a coach does. Setting your own maintenance aside, whether by medicating the pain or by disappearing into work. And turning a blind eye to the kids, where his advice is presence over spectacle.

The conversation also spends real time on why men do not ask for help, the fact that emotional and psychological abuse leave no physical evidence to point at, and what Lisa and Chris see in their own weekly legal abuse support group, where male and female clients are deliberately in the same room. She tells the story of a woman in that group handing a male client a specific line to use, out loud, the next time his ex cornered him at the school playground.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the rush starts after the decision, not before it, and what the pause is for
• Why having an attorney is not the same as having a team
• The retirement account split that looks even on paper and is not, once taxes land
• The line between what a therapist does and what a coach does, and why it matters here
• How men set aside self-care, either by medicating it or by disappearing into work
• Why presence beats spectacle with your kids, and the Disneyland dad trap
• Why everyone Josh interviewed said they started the next relationship too soon
• Swapping "my ex" for "my kid's mom" or "my kid's dad," and what it changes

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why "Derelict," and the divorce behind the name
5:30 Trap one: moving too fast once the decision is made
11:30 Trap two: trusting the wrong team
14:30 The retirement split an attorney calls fair, and why it isn't
18:30 Why men don't ask for help, and what it costs them
21:00 A support group where men and women back each other up
23:30 Emotional abuse and the evidence problem
25:30 Trap three: medicating the pain, or burying it in work
31:00 Trap four: Disneyland dad, and what kids actually want
35:00 Trap five: your ex, the next relationship, and "too soon"
42:30 The new book, and where to find Josh

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Josh the Derelict on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshthederelict/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.

Michele Locke became a judge at thirty-one and spent years presiding over a domestic violence court, handling roughly nine out of ten of her county's protective orders along with the custody and family cases that came out of them. She has since returned to private practice, and she talks about family court as a second battlefield, one that can retraumatize the very people it is supposed to protect.

Michele Locke is a Texas family law attorney and a former associate family court judge. Her jurisdiction and its rules are Texas specific, and she says so throughout, but the instincts she describes travel: this is a conversation about how a parent should carry themselves so the person on the bench can actually help them.

In this episode, Locke and Lisa start with the corrupt-judge fear and the real path if you believe it, which runs through the state judicial commission rather than through despair. She explains why court time is brutally short, so you condense your case and lead with what you want and why, and why you will not get the pound of flesh or the closure you feel owed. She lays out written-communication discipline, from treating every message as a future exhibit to never hitting send while you are angry, and the way a grey-rock approach can be recast as alienation if you go silent on things that matter to the kids.

She closes on protecting yourself: that seeking therapy or taking anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication during a divorce will not cost you your children, and a small habit of labeling your private journals for your attorney so they may fall under privilege rather than open discovery. She hedges that last point herself, and so do we: confirm it with your own lawyer in your own state.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The corrupt-judge fear, and the real remedy: a complaint to the state judicial commission
• Why court time is short, so you front-load what you want and why you're entitled to it
• Why the system won't give you closure, an apology, or the pound of flesh you feel owed
• Everything you put in writing can become exhibit A, so write for the judge who'll read it
• Don't ask "why" and don't engage every point: high-conflict personalities want the engagement
• Why a grey-rock approach can be spun as alienation if you go silent on the kids' needs
• Why therapy or medication during a divorce won't cost you your children
• Labeling private journals for your attorney so they may fall under privilege, not discovery

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 "What if my judge is corrupt?"
3:00 From attorney to judge at thirty-one, and back again
5:00 Court as a second battlefield
7:00 Short court time, and front-loading your case
9:00 No pot of gold, no closure, no apology
15:00 Things said in court you can't take back
17:00 Everything in writing is exhibit A
21:00 Grey rock vs. an alienation claim
25:00 Protecting your mental health, medication, and journaling
27:00 The "Dear attorney" privilege habit

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Michele Locke: https://www.michelelocke.com/

🎧 More with Michele Locke on this podcast
Ep 295: What Celebrity Custody Cases Teach Us About Alienation

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.