The wisdom teeth came out. One parent paid her half. The other did not, and told the child he had. Now the child is angry at the parent who paid, and correcting her would put the two of them on opposite sides of a story neither of them chose.

Jeanine Mouchawar is a parenting coach for parents of preteens, teens, and young adults. Her work is about helping a parent become their child's go-to person, the one the kid actually brings things to, and roughly a third of her clients are single mothers, many out of contentious divorces. This was a first meeting: she and Lisa had never spoken before the recording, and it opens with Jeanine pointing out that co-parenting friction is not exclusive to divorced couples, since married parents disagree about how to raise children too.

The rest is for people whose situation is further down the scale than that. Jeanine's starting point is expectation. The thing draining her clients is the assumption that the other parent will eventually put the children first, and the energy that assumption costs every time it turns out to be wrong. Her redirect is toward the house you control: safe, calm, consistent, clear. She walks through what to say when a child brings home a lie about money, why stating your own truth beats disputing theirs, and gives a plain sentence structure for validating a feeling whose cause is fabricated. The feelings are real even when the facts behind them are not, and that part cannot be argued with.

She also gets into the situations Lisa raises from client work. A therapist who appears to be taking the other parent's side, and why validating a child's distress is not the same as agreeing with what caused it. A teenager who has started using the ex's tone and vocabulary, and how to redirect that in the moment without treating your own child as the enemy. And the child who is afraid of the other parent, where Jeanine's first move on re-entry day is not the usual how was your weekend, what did you do, but something slower: I'm glad you're home, and then, how are you feeling. She closes with a free guide of five questions built to open a conversation with a kid who has stopped talking.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Where your power actually is when you can't control what your ex tells the kids
• What to say when your child repeats something untrue about you
• A one-sentence formula for validating a feeling that was caused by a lie
• Why asking a curious question beats correcting the record
• Why validating a feeling isn't the same as agreeing with the story behind it
• What to do when your teenager starts sounding like the person you left
• Why "how are you feeling" beats "what did you do" on the day they come back

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Co-parenting friction isn't exclusive to divorce
3:00 Jeanine's work with parents of preteens and teens
5:00 The expectation that drains you
9:00 When your child repeats your ex's lies about money
13:00 When the therapist seems to be taking the other side
15:00 A one-sentence formula for validating a feeling
19:00 Getting curious instead of defending yourself
21:00 When your teenager starts sounding like your ex
25:00 The scared child, re-entry days, and what to ask first

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
🔗 Jeanine Mouchawar's website and free resources: https://www.jeaninemouchawar.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.

In the middle of a contested case, social media stops being a place to vent and becomes a source of evidence, for both sides. Investigator Jacqy Dougherty explains what that actually looks like from the desk of the person doing the searching.

Jacqy Dougherty is a business development associate with XG Consultants Group, a global investigations firm founded in 2001 and led by a retired FBI special agent. She joined roughly five years ago as a social media analyst and moved through international fraud and money laundering investigations before taking on her current client-facing role. The firm's work spans due diligence and background screening, surveillance, asset searches, litigation support, and a cybersecurity division, with resources in most countries.

Dougherty starts with how social media contradicts a sworn statement: the claim of no money alongside posts from an expensive trip, the alibi undone by a location check-in, the pattern that emerges from what other people say in your comments. She also covers the abuse side of the same tool, including exes who run fake profiles to monitor a former partner and send threats from accounts that look like strangers. Her advice for anyone in an active case is unglamorous and correct: lock your profiles down, including the payment apps that publish who you paid, and know that data brokers are selling your address and phone number to anyone with a subscription.

The second half is about hiring. What surveillance costs per hour, why the firm requires two investigators on it, and how often it does not produce what the client hoped for. The case where nothing turned up on a husband for weeks, and the counter-surveillance sweep that explained why. A custody case built on what a parent did for work, and the judge who was unmoved by it. What investigators legally cannot do, from hacking to wiretaps to pulling financial records without consent. And what a serious background check involves, which is court searches in every county someone has lived in, civil records as well as criminal, and a look at far more than the five platforms an automated screening tool covers.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• How social media contradicts sworn testimony in a family law case
• Why the comments on your posts can matter as much as what you wrote
• Fake accounts and burner profiles used to monitor and threaten a former partner
• The payment apps and data-broker listings that expose you without your knowing
• What surveillance actually costs, and why it takes two investigators
• What a private investigator legally cannot do, and why that protects your evidence
• Why a cheap nationwide database check is not a background check
• Why civil court records deserve the same attention as criminal ones

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How social media shows up in family law cases
3:00 Contradicting testimony, fake accounts, and burner profiles
5:00 Jacqy's background, and what a global investigations firm does
9:00 Why social media stops being a place to vent mid-case
11:00 Payment apps, data brokers, and locking your profiles down
13:00 What surveillance costs, and why it takes two investigators
17:00 Doing your own due diligence first
19:00 Weeks of nothing, and the sweep that explained it
21:00 A custody case built on a parent's job, and what the judge did
23:00 What a private investigator legally cannot do
29:00 Choosing an investigator, and what a real background check involves

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
🔗 XG Consultants Group: https://xgconsultantsgroup.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.

Label a misbehaving child and the label sticks, and before long the child is living up to it. Sue Donnellan sees that loop start with parents who are trying to help, and she wants them to slow down before naming what is wrong with their kid.

Our guest this episode is Sue Donnellan, a parenting coach, author, and the founder of Ask Mom Parenting, where she works with parents of children from about two to twenty. She is a mother of four: her first child, and then triplets. Going from one to four overnight is how she describes being thrown into the deep end, and she is straightforward that she did a lot of yelling before she found anything better. She now coaches from what she calls a leadership position, and she also hosts the Ask Mom Parenting Podcast.

Sue and Lisa start with why parents misdiagnose their own children and what a label does to a kid who then wears it. From there they move to accountability, which in Sue's practice always comes before behavior plans. What did you experience growing up, and what are you carrying into this relationship? Is ego in the room? Are your boundaries for sale? When a child is packing a bag between two houses, what are you doing to steady the part of their life you do control? Sue is careful to say she is not blaming parents, and equally clear that the adult is the one who can change the pattern.

The practical stretch covers the phone standoff that Lisa hears about weekly, where a device the other parent bought becomes the thing a child refuses to hand over. Sue's answer is that you own the culture of your own home, that role modeling comes first, and that the real work is investing in the child as a person so the screen has competition. She talks about keeping that time one to one, the intentional one-on-one dates she made with each of her four, and why she never leaned on other families to help raise hers. It closes on decision-making, and why the wisdom you want to pass on only travels across a relationship that already has trust in it.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why diagnosing your own child's behavior can hand them a script to follow
• The accountability questions Sue asks parents before touching the child's behavior
• "Are your rules for sale?" and what happens when boundaries move to match other families
• The phone standoff: why you set the culture of your own home, even with different rules at the other house
• Why role modeling your own screen use has to come before the demand
• Investing in a child as an individual so the device has real competition
• Why one-to-one time beats bringing their friends into the plan
• Why your wisdom only transfers across a relationship that already has trust in it

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why parents misdiagnose their own kids
3:00 Labels, self-fulfilling prophecies, and taking your autonomy back
5:00 Accountability first: what you bring to the table
7:00 When behavior is a symptom of the environment you built
9:00 The phone standoff, and who owns the culture of your home
11:00 Investing in your child instead of fighting the device
12:30 Surly teenagers, connection, and celebrating a tiny win
15:00 Why one-to-one beats involving their friends
16:30 One child, then triplets, and the one-on-one dates
18:30 Building trust early so your wisdom lands later

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
🔗 Sue Donnellan at Ask Mom Parenting: https://www.askmomparenting.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.

Nothing has to be said out loud. Your child mentions a good weekend at the other parent's house, and there is a pause, or a sigh, or a look. You did not say a word, and your child now knows that subject is not safe here.

Adam Barta is a licensed clinical social worker who founded Head in the Right Direction Counseling Services in 2008, the year his first son was born. It has grown to roughly twenty-two therapists across seven offices in New York State, with clinical supervisors, licensed mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and a strong intern program. He deliberately credentialed the practice with Medicaid, Medicare, and the insurers, on the view that mental health care should not be limited to people who can pay several hundred dollars an hour. Much of his high-conflict work has come through the family courts.

He starts by pushing back on the request he gets constantly, which is fix my child. Treating the child's behavior on its own risks telling a kid who already blames themselves that they are the problem, when a trauma-informed reading is the reverse: what looks abnormal is often a normal response to an environment that is not safe. Building an accurate picture takes time, because every person in the family hands the clinician the puzzle pieces they want seen. He is honest about the limits, too. Where both parents carry a high degree of pathology, the work needs a program with multiple therapists and real accountability to a court, and those programs need funding and county support that most places do not have.

From there he lays out the drama triangle, where someone who has been through significant trauma stops assessing a conflict and instead casts the roles: the one being wronged, the one doing the wrong, and the rescuer, with a child or an outside agency pulled in to fill the third part. He names two misconceptions worth the price of admission. That your divorce can be kept separate from the children, and that your child should see your ex the way you do, which he says removes their ability to individuate, from a peer group later and from a partner later still. He is careful throughout to set aside genuine abuse cases. Then he makes the case for humanizing the other parent, not out of generosity but because dehumanizing someone is what allows a person to act outside their own character. Lisa matches it with the exercise she and Chris run before an evaluation or deposition, naming two real things your ex does well, and offers her own example about a shared love of reading and who her son got it from. He closes with a free roadmap he built out of his family court work, and one instruction for today: look at your child, and think about the adult they are going to be.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why treating the child's behavior alone can tell them they are the problem
• Trauma-informed reading: normal behavior in an abnormal environment, not the reverse
• What is still possible when the other parent refuses to take part in anything
• The drama triangle, and how a whole family gets cast into fixed roles
• The nonverbal signals that teach your kid the other parent is unsafe to mention
• Why the story you tell yourself about your ex drives behavior you never chose
• Why fear with no evidence behind it can hurt your case, and what to do with it
• How to name two genuine things about your ex, and why an evaluator will ask

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why sending the child to therapy isn't the fix
3:00 Adam's practice, and normal behavior in an abnormal environment
5:00 How a clinician works out what a family actually needs
7:00 When one parent refuses to take part
11:00 Accountability, court orders, and the co-parenting plan
13:00 The drama triangle, and the roles everyone gets cast in
17:00 The misconception that your kids are separate from this
21:00 The sigh, the eye roll, and the story you tell yourself
27:00 Fear without evidence, and what it can cost you
29:00 Naming two genuine things about your ex
33:00 The roadmap, and what to do today

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
🔗 Adam Barta at Head in the Right Direction Counseling Services: https://www.headintherightdirection.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.

In most marriages one person ends up holding the financial knowledge and the other one does not. Kelly Todd says that arrangement, on its own, is where financial betrayal becomes possible: control comes first, then the rationalization that the money was really theirs all along, then the deception. She includes her own marriage in that description.

Kelly Todd is a forensic accountant who has spent her career investigating suspected fraud for corporations and for individuals, and who works through the firm Forensic Strategic Solutions. Most of that work has been reactive: someone already suspects money is gone, and she is brought in to trace it. She talks in this episode about deliberately shifting some of her focus toward awareness and prevention, on the evidence that people who know fraud can happen to them are the people who notice it earlier.

For anyone still in the relationship, Kelly's advice is to be in the know rather than cynical. Know what the household costs to run, what your spouse earns, and where the accounts are. Ask from curiosity rather than accusation. Then she gets specific about signals: an income that should leave money over but never does, transfers in round dollar amounts, transfers into accounts you do not recognize, and the newer routes through payment apps and cryptocurrency that add a step between the account and the destination.

Her most practical suggestion is a financial journal, a written chronology of what has happened with money in the marriage. It removes emotion from a story that is genuinely emotional, it costs less than narrating it to a professional billing by the hour, and, as one of her cases showed, it can surface a question nobody had thought to ask even when the sequence itself is wrong. She and Lisa close on discovery: downloading records while access lasts, why a suspicion about an offshore account needs a trace to hang on, how something missing from a bank statement can prove another account exists, and the settlement language that lets support be reopened if income turns out to have been understated.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a household where one spouse holds all the financial knowledge is the setup fraud needs
• Red flags inside a marriage: solid income and never any cash left over
• Round-dollar transfers, and why ordinary life almost never produces them
• Payment apps and crypto: how an intermediary step hides where money ended up
• The financial journal: a written chronology that works even when the dates are off
• Download what you can while you still have account access
• Why a missing mortgage payment can prove an account you were never told about
• Settlement language that lets support be revisited if income was understated

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The fraudster mindset, and why divorce is financial warfare
3:00 What a forensic accountant does, and why she shifted toward prevention
5:00 Awareness as prevention, and the trust that gets exploited
9:00 Red flags: no cash despite the income, round dollars, apps and crypto
13:00 The financial journal, and the four million dollar loan it surfaced
16:00 Discovery: finding the nugget that proves another account exists
21:00 Protective language in the agreement, and Lisa's modification clause
24:00 Where to start when something does not add up

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
🔗 Kelly Todd at Forensic Strategic Solutions: https://forensicstrategic.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.

Two people co-sign for a mortgage, a couple of cars, and their kids' student loans over the course of a marriage. Then the marriage ends, one of them stops paying, and the other one's credit takes the hit for a debt a court may have assigned to the person who walked away from it.

Angela Kim is a senior credit consultant and a founding member of her firm, with more than eleven years spent helping people rebuild credit after identity theft, hard times, and divorce. She goes by the Credit Repair Boss, and her focus is education: understanding how credit actually works before it turns into a problem. She joins Lisa here to walk through the part of divorce finances that tends to ambush people, college costs and the loans that pay for them.

Angela explains why one child's four-year degree can appear as at least eight separate student loans, one per semester, and how the Parent PLUS loan works: borrowed by a parent rather than the student, and reported only on that parent's credit. Her core advice is preventative. Do not hold these loans jointly with an ex. Divide the years so each parent carries a defined share, which keeps one person's default from sinking the other. She and Lisa also talk through why a six-figure loan is a bad first entry on a young person's credit, how a parent who stayed home and has thin credit can still qualify in time for the fall, and the after-graduation trap where one missed autopay becomes eight late payments on each of the three bureaus.

Underneath the specifics is Angela's larger point about financial independence. Credit is a parachute you want packed and ready before you need it, especially when you are starting the next chapter of your life on your own.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why divorce can damage your credit even without a difficult ex, through jointly held debt
• Why one child's four-year degree can appear as at least eight separate student loans
• How a Parent PLUS loan works, and why it lands only on the parent's credit report
• The prevention move: split loan years between parents instead of borrowing jointly
• Why co-signing a six-figure loan is a poor way to start your teenager's credit
• How a parent with thin or damaged credit can still get ready in a few months
• The after-graduation autopay trap that turns one missed month into eight late marks

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How divorce damages your credit, even without a difficult ex
3:00 What student loans do to your credit report
5:00 Parent PLUS loans, and splitting the cost fairly
7:00 What happens if your ex stops paying
9:00 Co-signing for your child, and building thin credit
11:00 Why you don't need years of lead time
13:00 After graduation: the autopay trap
15:00 Where to reach Angela

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
🔗 Angela Kim, the Credit Repair Boss, on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelathecreditboss/

🎧 More with Angela Kim on this podcast
Ep 239: Protecting Your Credit From Financial Abuse

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.

The filings, the evaluator, the judge, your ex: none of it is yours to decide. Susie Pettit says there is still a real list of things you do decide, and the first item on it is how much of your thinking your ex gets to occupy.

Susie Pettit is a mental health coach based on the east coast of Australia, originally from outside Boston. She holds a master's in education and taught high school English before becoming a coach, and she now hosts the Love Your Life Show podcast and runs the Love Your Life School, a membership where members get live coaching and accountability. She also teaches a parenting course on raising confident, resilient kids. She was married nineteen years, in the relationship for twenty-six, to someone who controlled what she read and who she spent time with. Her own family backed her ex through the divorce. She talks openly here about ending up in the hospital during that period, and about deciding not to fight in court when the money on the other side was effectively unlimited.

Susie and Lisa work through expectations first: why the sentence "he should not have done that" keeps you in the fight long after the fight is over, and what changes when you can say instead, of course he did that, that is the person he is. Susie describes a written exercise she gives clients for getting there. They talk about the habit of over-explaining and over-defending, which she frames as a behavior that kept you safe inside the relationship and costs you outside it, and about why chasing the question of why your ex behaves the way they do spends energy you need elsewhere.

Then they turn to children. Susie describes stepping out of the God role, where you carry personal responsibility for outcomes you cannot reach, and what she puts in its place: keeping the kids safe, holding boundaries, and teaching them how to feel a feeling and do something reasonable with it. She explains why she coached her sons through difficult conversations with their father and then deliberately never followed up, the difference between empathy and codependency, and why a kid who comes back from the other house and pushes against you is usually showing you that your house is the safe one.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What is actually inside your control during a high-conflict divorce, starting with your own thinking
• Why arguing with what already happened keeps you stuck, and what to do instead
• A written exercise for describing your ex plainly, so the same behavior stops blindsiding you
• Why over-explaining and over-defending are survival habits, not character flaws
• Stepping out of the God role: what you are responsible for, and what you are not
• The three jobs a parent has, and the two jobs a child has
• Why your child pushing back at your house can be a sign they feel safe there
• The difference between empathy for your child's situation and codependency with it

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 A last-minute guest from Australia, and what stress does to the body
5:00 What is in your control, and how Susie got here
14:00 Expectations, and why lowering them is not giving up
19:00 Describing your ex plainly instead of resisting who they are
20:30 Why "why did they do that?" is a dead end
23:00 Kids in the middle: this is the parent they have
27:00 Empathy vs. codependency, and grieving on your own time
30:30 A parent's three jobs, and a child's two
34:00 Regulating yourself first, and why the pushback lands on you
37:30 Where to find Susie

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
🔗 Susie Pettit's Love Your Life Show starter roadmap: https://smbwell.com/roadmap
🔗 Susie Pettit's parenting class: https://smbwell.com/parenting

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.

Anxiety is not only an emotion. Dr. Rebecca Vazquez teaches it as a physiological event running through one nerve, and she says learning how that nerve behaves lets you work smarter rather than harder at every hard moment you cannot avoid.

Dr. Rebecca Vazquez is a trauma clinician of about eighteen years who teaches at Rutgers and runs a private practice in New Jersey. Her clinical work has centered on survivors of interpersonal violence, including trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault, and she has also worked as a legal advocate, which is where a lot of her courtroom-specific advice comes from. She describes herself as a trauma therapist with a passion for neurobiology, and she is careful to say that everything she covers here is public, searchable, and learnable at your own pace.

The nerve in question is the vagus nerve, which touches every major organ and exists to prepare the body for threat. Rebecca explains where people tend to hold that activation, teaches a three-part physical cue for releasing it, and describes the small sensory objects she has clients carry into hearings. She explains why smell is the sense wired most directly to the brain's fear center, and how that cuts both ways. Then she lays out the window of tolerance, the three states the vagus nerve moves between, and why trauma narrows the range in which a person can feel something difficult and stay grounded.

The practical list includes box breathing, sensory kits planned in advance, and using temperature, including cold on the sinuses, which triggers a reflex shared by all mammals and slows the heart. She also covers bilateral stimulation, the left-right rhythm behind EMDR, and the everyday versions of it available without a therapist: walking, running, dancing, playing an instrument, crocheting, even reading and writing. Along the way she reframes anger as usable rather than shameful, redefines trauma in a way that includes what was absent rather than only what was done, and closes on why saying your story out loud is part of getting your power back.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why anxiety is a physiological response, and what the vagus nerve is doing during one
• "Drop three": the jaw, shoulders and hands cue for the moments you can't leave the room
• What to bring into a hearing to stay present without anyone noticing
• Why smell reaches the brain's fear center faster than the other senses
• Box breathing, and using temperature to trigger a reflex that slows your heart
• The window of tolerance, and why healing stretches it instead of avoiding it
• Anger as a brick: the three rules Rebecca gives clients for using it
• Trauma as too much too fast, or too little for too long, and why that includes neglect

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Where anxiety lives in the body, and the vagus nerve
5:00 "Drop three," and what to hold in your hands in court
7:00 Smell, memory, and the fear center next door
9:30 "What's wrong with you?" vs. "What happened to you?"
11:00 Anger as a brick, and three rules for using it
13:30 Too much too fast, or too little for too long
15:30 Why the emotional side is often the harder part to heal
17:00 The window of tolerance, and how it narrows
19:30 Sensory kits, box breathing, and temperature
25:00 Bilateral stimulation, and doing it without a therapist
28:30 Voice, saying it out loud, and writing your story

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. Rebecca Vazquez at Sana Counseling & Consulting: https://www.sanacounselingconsulting.com/drvazquez

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 why people stay and the honest answer is usually arithmetic. The finances were pooled, the other person controls them, and the hours you were allowed to work were the hours that suited them. Shanay Fulton walked out with ninety dollars and a car that died shortly afterward, in a state where she had no family.

Shanay Fulton is an advocate on housing, homelessness, and children, an author, and an elected official in Middletown, Connecticut. She was first elected to the planning and zoning commission and now sits on the city council; she also runs an organization supporting single-parent families, which she first joined as a parent volunteer, and she serves on the governor's workforce council. She holds a master's in public administration. She and Lisa first crossed paths years earlier, both giving testimony in support of Jennifers' Law, Connecticut's expansion of the legal definition of domestic violence to include coercive control. Her book is Peace. Happiness. Love: A Journey to Healing.

She walks through the housing myths first: that a shelter is easy to get into, that a shelter leads to housing, that a family with children is prioritized. Families are harder to place than single adults because there are fewer family shelters, and Lisa raises the specific problem of teenage sons and of pets, both of which limit where you can go. Shanay ended up in a homeless shelter rather than a domestic violence shelter, and she describes the reality of it: entering past the men's floor, three flights of stairs with a child in her arms because the elevator was off-limits, eight or nine family rooms sharing a handful of bathrooms, assigned cleaning duties, and eviction if you missed yours. She was there from January until the end of June, then six years in transitional housing.

The rest of the conversation is what she wishes she had known and what she now tells families. Call 2-1-1 at the start, which she says would likely have produced a pro bono attorney and other assistance years earlier. Report utilities being cut off when there is a child in the home. Ask whether your city will pay for an emergency hotel stay. She also talks about being pro se against an ex with counsel, filing fee waivers and what happens when one is denied, and the way a court fight functions as a method of keeping you broke. She has not seen her younger son in about two years. She and Lisa close on how sharing her story led to a board seat, then a panel, then a run for office, and on the day she surprised her children with a house she had bought, which is the moment that ended up in a PBS documentary about housing in Connecticut.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why housing, not resolve, is where leaving most often breaks down
• What getting into a shelter actually takes, and why families are harder to place
• Who shelters cannot always take: teenage sons, pets, and what to plan around
• Why utilities shut off with a child in the home is something you can report
• Calling 2-1-1, and the help she found out years later she could have had
• Emergency hotel assistance through your city, and how to ask about it
• How a court fight against a represented ex becomes a way to keep you broke
• Fee waivers, motion costs, and what pro se really demands of your time

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why housing is where leaving breaks down
5:00 Shelter myths, and what getting in actually takes
9:00 Teenage sons, pets, and who shelters cannot take
13:00 Leaving with ninety dollars
15:00 Utilities cut off, and the right she did not know she had
17:00 Hotels, and the night he was waiting in her room
19:00 Inside the shelter: the stairs, the bathrooms, the floor duties
23:00 Pro se in court, and what her children watched
31:00 Legal abuse as a way to keep you broke
37:00 Call 2-1-1, and the resources nobody tells you about
42:00 From sharing her story to running for office

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
🔗 Shanay N. Fulton: https://shanayfulton.com/
🔗 Peace. Happiness. Love: A Journey to Healing on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Peace-Happiness-Love-Journey-Healing/dp/B0C9S7PHQ8

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.

Nobody pushed P into coming back to her mother, and she says that is exactly why she came. If her mother had pressed while the sisters were not ready, P would have read it as proof of the story her father had told her for years: that her mother wanted them back for her own reasons rather than because she loved them.

This is the second of two conversations with sisters who were kept from their mother for roughly eight years and then reconciled. Lisa calls this one P, and she stays off camera by agreement, so no names, places or identifying details appear anywhere in the episode or these notes. P is the older sister. She was seven when her parents divorced and fourteen when her father took her, and she agreed to talk because she wanted parents in this position to hear how it looked from inside.

P opens on a question family courts get wrong: whether someone abusive toward an ex can still be a fit parent. The court in her case knew about alcohol and about abuse toward her mother, and concluded he would be different with the children. He was not. She describes the control that transferred straight onto her and her sister, the calls all day, the permission required to leave the house, and the sense that her life was not hers. She describes the guilt that arrived the day her mother was taken away in handcuffs, the belief that her mother now hated her, and telling the court exactly what she had been instructed to say. She talks about isolation, about harming herself, about a father who was angry rather than concerned about it, and about three separate professionals who heard about it and could not act.

The last stretch is the part parents ask for. How it actually started again, with her sister's tattoo and a question about how their mother would have reacted. Her mother's own account, which gave her sister the first sense of being believed. The crisis that followed, and the apartment door her mother opened. P is roughly a year into living with her again and describes the relationship as thriving, while being honest that it took work from everyone. Her advice runs to three things: keep children out of the court material entirely, listen without judgment, and make it known that you are there without forcing it.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a court finding someone abusive toward an ex can still call them a fit parent
• How control transfers from an ex onto the children once they are living with it
• Why a child who triggered the crisis carries the guilt for years afterward
• The threat of foster care and sibling separation, and what it buys the parent using it
• Why children should be kept entirely out of court material and court conversations
• How the reconnection actually started, and what her mother did right by doing nothing
• Why pushing before a child is ready would have confirmed the other parent's story
• What P wants a target parent to do while they wait: listen, and stay reachable

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Can someone abusive toward their ex still be a fit parent?
3:00 The control that moved from her mother onto the kids
6:00 The day at fourteen, and the restraining order that followed
8:00 The guilt, and being sure her mother would hate her
10:00 Saying in court what her father told her to say
12:00 Isolation, and three professionals who could not act
16:00 The foster care threat that kept both sisters silent
18:30 Neglect, nutrition, and working at sixteen to buy her own food
21:30 How the reconnection started, and the door her mother left open
26:30 The roles they were put in, and the pattern he had run before
34:30 Is there still hope, and why waiting was the right move

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

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.