A man asks Tatiana Tsoir what financial abuse even means. She gives him the version he will recognize: a spouse who stepped out of a career for the family and cannot walk back into it at the same level years later, and who therefore cannot leave. She says she has had to explain this more than once, which tells you how invisible it is to people who have never been on the receiving end.

Tatiana Tsoir is a CPA, an author and speaker, and the founder of the nonprofit Society for Financial Independence. She arrived in the United States as a first-generation immigrant, passed her CPA exam within a year of graduating into a recession, took an MBA in taxation, and started her own firm. She is also a survivor of an abusive relationship roughly twenty years ago, and she is candid about the fact that the people who ask why you did not just leave have no idea what they are asking.

She and Lisa start with why money is not an ordinary practical problem. In Maslow's terms it belongs to the security level, so when it is threatened, everything above it stops being available to you, and that effect multiplies when children depend on you. Tatiana walks through the tax mechanics people get caught by: the 2018 change that ended the deduction for the paying spouse and stripped out the incentive to be generous, creative accounting done to suppress income for alimony and child support, and why she will not do that work no matter who asks. She tells the story of a client whose structure of entities and transfers was found anyway by the other side's forensic accountant, and what it cost him.

Her argument through all of it is that not knowing is the vulnerability, and that women in particular are steered away from learning how tax and money work until the day they need it. The second half is what she built in response. The Bookkeeper Project runs through her nonprofit and offers scholarship-funded training to women, teens, first-generation immigrants, and abuse survivors, in a skill that is portable, works from home, has no emergencies in it, and does not care how old you are. She addresses the objection she hears most, that the applicant is bad at math, and explains why the actual requirements are logical reasoning and time management. She and Lisa close on how to apply.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why money sits at the security level of Maslow's hierarchy, and what that explains
• What financial abuse looks like when there is no obvious incident to point to
• The 2018 alimony tax change, and how it altered the negotiation
• Hidden assets, forensic accountants, and why the structures usually come apart
• Why learning the basics of tax before you need them is the real protection
• The Bookkeeper Project, who it is for, and what the training covers
• Why bookkeeping suits a parent rebuilding an income, and what it actually requires

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Biohacking, and what it has to do with money
3:00 What financial abuse looks like in a divorce
7:00 Why money sits on Maslow's security level
9:00 The 2018 alimony tax change, and creative accounting
11:00 Hidden assets, forensic accountants, and educating yourself first
13:00 The Bookkeeper Project: a skill you can use from home
17:00 Her own history, and who the scholarships are for
18:00 But I'm bad at math, and why that is not the barrier
23:00 How to apply, and where to find Tatiana

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
🔗 Tatiana Tsoir: https://tatianatsoir.com/
🔗 The Bookkeeper Project, Society for Financial Independence: https://www.soffind.org/

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.

Aggression from your own child carries a specific kind of shame. Parents hide it, decide it is proof they failed, and stop telling anyone. Tosha Schore's answer, when Lisa asks how common it is, is that she runs an entire business helping families with it.

Tosha is the founder of Parenting Boys Peacefully and the creator of a course called Out With Aggression. Her background is in women's studies and feminism, and she frames supporting struggling boys as a feminist act, though she works with parents of kids all along the gender spectrum, teenagers included. Her four-part frame is care deeply for yourself, connect deeply with your child, set limits lovingly, and play wildly, and she is firm that the order matters.

This conversation is aimed squarely at post-separation households. A child comes home from the other parent hitting, name-calling, or repeating an accusation, and the other parent is on the phone explaining that this is what you get for how you parent. Tosha stays out of the blame argument entirely. Her question is what the child needs in order to release the hurt somewhere it is safe to release it, and what shape the parent has to be in to hold that.

Tosha and Lisa also talk through a phone a teenager was told nobody can take away, and why that is a house rule between parent and child rather than a fight with an ex. She compares parenting a teen to dating, in that it is mostly rejection, and says the parent's job is to keep showing up regardless of how the teen shows up. She describes how a preschooler parrots language they do not understand, and why getting playful with it works better than holding a four-year-old accountable for a phrase they inherited. The through-line is a shift from parenting by control, which stops working the moment a child is bigger than you, to parenting by connection, which does not.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why setting a limit first, before connection, is what makes the limit collapse
• Tosha's four moves in order: care for yourself, connect, set limits lovingly, play
• What to do when your ex tells your child that your parenting caused their aggression
• Why the reason behind the behavior matters less than what you do next
• The phone your ex gave your teenager: whose boundary that actually is
• Why parenting a teen means being rejected repeatedly, and showing up anyway
• How to respond when a preschooler comes home parroting language about you
• Moving from a control model to a connection model before your child outgrows you

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How common child aggression is, and the shame around it
3:00 Parenting Boys Peacefully: care, connect, set limits, play
5:00 Teens, and why parents who feel they started late are not out of time
6:00 When your ex uses your child's aggression against you
9:00 Why the "why" matters less than what you do next
10:00 Getting into good enough parenting shape first
13:00 The phone the other parent gave, and whose boundary it is
16:00 Teenagers, rejection, and showing up anyway
19:00 The preschooler who comes back parroting, and getting playful with it
22:00 Disrespect, and moving from control to connection
26:00 Why doing this alongside other parents changes the outcome

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
🔗 Tosha Schore: https://www.toshaschore.com/
🔗 Parenting Boys Peacefully: https://parentingboyspeacefully.com/

🎧 More with Tosha Schore on this podcast
Ep 167: Aggression in Boys, and What Actually Helps
Ep 352: When Your Child Comes Home From Your Ex's Enraged

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.

EFT stands for emotional freedom techniques, and the part most people have seen is the tapping. Cindy Fritze names the issue out loud, taps a sequence of points on the head and face where meridians cross, and keeps going until the feeling drops far enough that the situation can be looked at differently.

Cindy Fritze is the owner of Healing Shores, where EFT is the core of what she teaches. She came to it as a skeptic, tried it because she had failed repeatedly to stop smoking, and stopped within about two weeks. Her earlier career was in coronary intensive care, which gives her the comparison she uses for what tapping does: in her first weeks on that unit a cardiac emergency left her barely able to function, and by the end she could work the sequence calmly. The emergency was identical. Her ability to think through it was not.

This conversation is built for people who have a court date coming. Cindy walks through prepaving, which means working on the feeling before you go into the situation you know is going to be difficult, and being specific about the feeling rather than reaching for positive statements before anything has been released. She describes the nine gamut point in the groove between the ring and little fingers, which can be used in a deposition or a courtroom without drawing any attention at all, and she pairs it with three questions from the Sedona method: could I release this, would I release it, and when.

Lisa ties it to what Been There Got Out tells clients about presentation. Being calm on the stand is a strategy, and a lawyer telling you to calm down is not a technique. Cindy also covers what to do when it does not seem to be working, why she says you cannot do it wrong, what physical sensations to expect when something releases, and what she offers for anyone who wants to learn the basics, including a free consultation.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Prepaving: working the feeling before you walk into the room you are dreading
• The nine gamut point, and how to use it without anyone noticing
• The three Sedona questions: could I release this, would I, and when
• Why to go at the problem first instead of reaching for positive statements
• What being calm actually does for your ability to remember and speak in court
• Practicing when you are not stressed, so it is available when you are
• What it feels like when something releases, and why that is normal

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Can tapping work on immediate stress and on older trauma?
3:00 What EFT is, and what the tapping points are doing
5:00 Prepaving: working the feeling before you walk in
7:00 The nine gamut point, and the three Sedona questions
9:00 Courtroom calm, and being able to speak for yourself
11:00 A nervous teenager before a driving test
12:00 "It is not working": going at the problem before the positives
14:00 Practicing when you are calm, and where to find Cindy

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
🔗 Healing Shores: https://healingshoresllc.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.

Someone calls a child therapist and says: we have just come out of an abusive relationship, we are in court, please see my child. Edel Lawlor's answer is that she will meet with the parent, and she will not take the child. It is not a small thing to say to someone who is asking for help. She has reasons, and they come from twenty-five years of children telling her what happened to them afterwards.

Edel Lawlor is a child and adolescent psychotherapist and play therapist based in Ireland, specializing in play therapy and running the practice Expressive Play. She spent ten years working directly with children in a women's refuge before moving into private practice, she now also prepares voice-of-the-child reports for the Irish courts, and she works online with families well outside Ireland, including in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Lebanon. Her TEDx talk is called Unconditional Kindness towards Children. She describes children as the whispers of domestic violence, because in a house or a refuge full of adult accounts, the children are the ones nobody hears.

In this episode she explains why children's therapy and live litigation do not mix. A child is told the room is private. Later a solicitor discovers the child attended and asks for a report, and the promise is broken retroactively by adults the child never met. Lawlor has seen that turn teenagers off help entirely. She has also seen children arrive coached, repeating a good weekend they did not have, which makes the session something other than therapy. What she recommends instead is therapy with the report requirement removed, and she explains why a court order saying the child's therapist can never testify is protection rather than a loss.

She and Lisa also go through what she calls the stretch: two parents pulling in opposite directions until a child has to let go of one hand. Why children already know far more than parents believe, down to recognizing the solicitor's number on a phone, and why naming it plainly lowers a child's fear instead of raising it. Why being questioned after a handover, which children call being grilled, produces answers designed to please rather than anything true. The coached phone call, with one parent out of frame giving directions and someone else recording, and what that does to an eight-year-old. Teenagers, who do not cope better despite the assumption that they do. And Dr. Bruce Perry's work on trauma healing through relationship, which shapes how she runs a playroom.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a child's therapy and an active court case work against each other
• How a later request for records can turn a child's therapy into a betrayal they remember for years
• What a voice-of-the-child report is, and why children handle it differently from therapy
• Why a court order barring your child's therapist from testifying protects your child
• What to say to a child who can see you are upset, instead of insisting you are fine
• Why questioning your child after a handover gets you less truth, not more
• How to make it safe for your child to talk about the other parent at all
• Why teenagers do not cope better with a parental court case, and what shows up instead

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 "The whispers of domestic violence"
3:00 Ten years in a refuge, and what she promised on the way out
5:00 Why she will not take a child into therapy mid-litigation
7:00 The voice-of-the-child report, and why children know the difference
11:00 What kids already know, and why naming it lowers the fear
15:00 Being grilled after a handover, and the book at both houses
19:00 Coached phone calls, the child who freezes, and teenagers
25:00 Bruce Perry, safe fights, and healing through relationship
29:00 Protecting the therapy room, and putting the folder down

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
🔗 Edel Lawlor, Expressive Play Therapy and Training: https://www.facebook.com/edellawlor123/
🔗 Edel Lawlor's TEDxTralee talk, Unconditional Kindness towards Children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEiQdQbzXQQ
🔗 Edel Lawlor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edel-lawlor-9771a352/

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.

Text the accuser. Call your family. Get ahead of it before the story spreads. Evynne Fair has both investigated these reports and defended against them, and she says those first few hours are where people talk themselves into a far worse position than the accusation itself ever put them in.

Our guest is attorney Evynne Fair of Oakmont Law Group in Englewood, Colorado. Her background is unusual for this subject: two years as a caseworker with Washoe County Child Protective Services in Reno, Nevada, investigating allegations of abuse and neglect, eight years as a part-time reserve deputy sheriff in Carson City, a clerkship with Denver juvenile court, and practice in criminal defense, juvenile law, and family law before she moved to personal injury. She was trained to conduct forensic interviews with children, which is why her critique of how they are often run carries weight.

Evynne walks through what she saw change once she was inside the system: reports made by a parent or a relative in the middle of a custody fight, filed because the stakes are a child rather than money. She talks about accusations against fathers, stepfathers, and in one of her cases a grandfather, and about the restraining-order tactic some attorneys apparently recommend as leverage. Lisa adds the pattern from the coaching side, where clients of every gender arrive accused of things they say they did not do.

The rest of the conversation is about evidence and procedure. How a forensic interview with a child should be set up, why someone should be observing it live or reviewing the recording before charges are filed, and what borrowed scenarios sound like when a child uses vocabulary that is not their own. Why a child who recalls nothing about this morning but everything about an event seven years ago is a reason to investigate further rather than to charge. Why reports come back unfounded, including legitimate ones. What recourse exists for repeated false reporting, and why the reporting party's identity stays sealed. And what Evynne tells people to do from the moment child protective services arrives.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why an allegation raised during a divorce gets flagged as possibly vindictive, and the catch-22 that leaves honest reporters looking opportunistic
• What panic makes people do in the first hours, and why contacting the accuser backfires
• The restraining-order tactic some attorneys coach clients to use for custody leverage
• How a child's forensic interview should be structured, and who should be watching it
• Borrowed scenarios and memory testing: what a coached interview actually sounds like
• Why vivid recall of a seven-year-old event alongside a blank about this morning is a reason to keep investigating, not to file
• Why reports come back unfounded, and where care standards and legal standards part ways
• What to do from the moment a caseworker knocks on your door

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How common vindictive reporting really is, and Evynne's background
5:00 Fathers, stepfathers, and allegations raised mid-custody-fight
7:00 The restraining order used as leverage at the start of a case
10:00 Negative advocates, and attorneys who mirror their client's emotions
13:00 What fear and panic make people do in the first hours
18:00 Mandated reporters, and AI-doctored recordings as evidence
20:00 Inside a forensic interview that should have stopped the charges
26:00 Borrowed scenarios, memory testing, and body language
30:00 Why reports come back unfounded, and what legally counts as neglect
33:00 Repeated false reports, the sealed reporting party, and access-time bind
37:00 What to do the day child protective services knocks

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
🔗 Evynne Fair at Fair Squared Injury Law: https://fair2law.com/evynne-fair/

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.

Jenny Acurio's answer to someone who thinks leaving an abusive marriage will cost them their children and their status in the country is not a legal opinion. It is that they have not yet met anyone who could tell them their options.

Jenny Acurio is based in Connecticut and works with clients across the United States. Her career started in international business, import and export, in Ecuador. She moved to the US 19 years ago, went through the language barrier and the search for resources herself, and later had the chance to work with an immigration attorney whose passion for the work she carried on after he passed away. She opened her own office to do what she wishes someone had done for her: help people fill out forms correctly, translate documents, understand what an agency is asking for, and get to the right attorney when a case needs one. She works with a partner who covers professional translation in more than 40 languages.

Lisa opens on the fear itself, which Jenny describes as a fear of asking anyone at all: afraid of the attorney, afraid of the agency, afraid that raising the question makes things worse. Her approach is to sit with someone, write down the questions they should be asking, including what happens if the application is denied, and send them into the meeting knowing what to expect. Lisa connects it to the chapter in the BTGO book on hiring an attorney: the questions to ask, what the relationship should look like, and the warning signs.

The part to take seriously is about signing. Jenny will not let a client sign what they have not understood, and she is blunt that a retainer is a contract with contract law behind it, in a language you may not read. Lisa draws the same line through family court, where people sign parenting plans and settlements they never read and are held to them.

Jenny also points people to what is already available. USCIS publishes the requirements for VAWA, the immigration remedy for people who have suffered domestic violence, and it covers men as well as women. Her closing advice is short: educate yourself, and talk to somebody.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the information you need is usually public, and what actually blocks people from it
• How to prepare for a meeting with an attorney, including what to ask if a case is denied
• Why a retainer is a contract that binds you even in a language you do not read
• What VAWA is, and that it protects men as well as women
• Where professional translation fits into an immigration or custody matter
• What taking strategic oversight looks like when the system is not in your language

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Married to an American, and afraid of losing everything
3:00 Taking strategic oversight when you do not know your options
5:00 Jenny's story, from Ecuador to opening her own office
7:00 Translation in more than 40 languages
9:00 The questions to ask an attorney, and what to watch for
11:00 Signing what you do not understand
13:00 Educating yourself, and reading up on VAWA
15:00 Where Jenny works, and how to reach her

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 Acurio, Acurio Services: https://acurioservices.net/

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.

A parenting plan is only as strong as the gaps it closes, and in a high-conflict divorce every vague line is an opening. In this episode, New York and New Jersey family law attorney Leona Krasner gives Lisa a concrete playbook for writing an agreement that actually holds up.

Leona explains why you should start before the separation is final, detail everything from holidays to hand-offs, and keep the emotion out of the document. She breaks down the real difference between sole and joint legal custody (and the "final decision-making authority" option most people miss), how the right of first refusal actually works, what courts will and won't enforce about new partners, and what it takes to act when one parent starts turning the kids against the other: proof, a documented pattern, the right expert, and a Child's Bill of Rights written into the plan.

This is strategic education, not legal advice for your specific situation.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ When to start your parenting plan (earlier than you think) and what to put in it
 ✅ Why keeping emotion out of the document makes it far more enforceable
 ✅ Sole vs. joint legal custody, and the "final decision-making" option most people miss
 ✅ How the right of first refusal really works, and why judges look for a pattern
 ✅ What courts will and won't enforce about introducing new partners to your kids
 ✅ How to build tiebreakers so disagreements don't send you back to court
 ✅ What it actually takes to act on non-disparagement and alienation violations
 ✅ Why a Child's Bill of Rights belongs in a high-conflict parenting plan

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 Why a parenting plan lives or dies by its details
 3:40 Start early, and leave nothing vague
 7:30 Sole vs. joint legal custody, and "final decision-making authority"
 10:35 Building tiebreakers so you don't end up back in court
 13:58 The right of first refusal, and why one missed hand-off won't win
 16:53 New partners, nannies, and what a judge will actually enforce
 30:35 When a parent turns the kids: proof, experts, and a Child's Bill of Rights
 35:20 Where to find Leona (NY & NJ)

CTA (spoken): Facing a high-conflict custody fight? Book a free discovery call at beentheregotout.com.
 Books: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Out-Against/dp/1967674183 · Been There Got Out — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Relationships-Circumstances/dp/194627495X/
 Tags: parenting plan, legal custody, joint custody, right of first refusal, co-parenting, custody agreement, non-disparagement, parental alienation, high conflict divorce, family law

Leslie Miller keeps meeting people who have become experts on their own situation. They could write the book. They understand the pattern, the diagnosis, the strategy, and they still cannot sleep. Her question is what comes after understanding.

Leslie Miller has practiced as a therapist since 1998, working extensively with trauma, domestic violence and court-involved clients, and drawing on her own experience of trauma and of vicarious trauma. Before therapy she taught exercise and dance and briefly ran a studio, and she has now brought that back into her practice as mindful movement and embodiment coaching, including trauma-informed yoga and classical Pilates, intuitive movement and eating, and building a daily mindfulness practice. She works virtually and in person around Boston, and she has appeared on the show before.

She opens by drawing a line under what trauma-informed means. It is not therapy and it is not treatment for trauma. It means the person leading the room has studied trauma and knows that a darkened studio, a supine position or an unasked-for physical adjustment can each land badly, and that fitness generally runs one-size-fits-all. Then she and Lisa get into recognition: physical pain with an emotional component, a jaw and shoulders that never come down, chronic fatigue and small infections that will not clear, and the difficulty of noticing fight-or-flight once it has been your baseline for years.

The rest is practice and pattern. The ACE research linking childhood adversity to later health outcomes, and Leslie's insistence that this is information rather than a sentence. Vicarious trauma among helping professionals, and among parents absorbing what their own children are carrying. Why a sustainable daily practice does more than a fitness kick, what classical Pilates gives a nervous system through predictability and spinal contact, and what yoga gives through self-compassion. Why the thought "I should have known better" is often the trauma talking. And a grounding exercise she leads in real time, short enough to run while you are waiting for your case to be called.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What trauma-informed actually means in a movement class, and what it does not mean
• How to notice you are still in fight-or-flight after years of it being normal
• The physical signals that carry an emotional component, from the jaw down
• What the ACE research says about long-term stress and later health
• Why the people who end up in these relationships are so often natural helpers
• Why a small daily practice outlasts a burst of fitness
• What classical Pilates and yoga each offer a nervous system, and how they differ
• A grounding exercise short enough to use in a courthouse hallway

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What "trauma-informed" actually means in a yoga or Pilates class
3:30 Leslie's path from exercise into therapy and back again
6:00 Getting stuck: knowing the problem and still feeling terrible
8:00 How to tell you're still carrying it, from the body up
10:30 The ACE research, chronic illness, and what years of stress cost
12:30 Why self-care goes last, and a grounding tool for the courthouse
14:30 Vicarious trauma, empaths, and holding other people's weight
22:30 Why a daily practice beats a fitness kick
24:30 What Pilates and yoga each do for a nervous system
29:00 "I should have known better," and why logic can't reach it
33:30 A live grounding exercise, and where to find Leslie

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
🔗 Leslie Miller at Pilates & Mind: https://www.pilatesandmind.com/

🎧 More with Leslie Miller on this podcast
Ep 73: Why Family Court Retraumatizes You
Ep 133: Healing Trauma After Narcissistic 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.

Almost everyone in your life is telling you to fight. Brook Olsen, founder of the High Conflict Diversion Program, has spent years showing parents why that advice so often makes things worse, and what to do instead.

Brook has a name for the people pushing you to escalate: negative advocates. They mean well, but the "don't just sit there, fight back" instinct they hand you tends to feed the very war you're trying to end. The alternative isn't going quiet or giving in. It's parallel parenting: you run your home, they run theirs, and communication stays brief, factual, and strictly about the kids. In this conversation with Lisa, Brook covers how to be the proactive problem-solver a judge respects, where parental alienation really begins, and why staying engaged and strategic beats disappearing.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ The difference between a "normal" divorce and a genuinely high-conflict one
 ✅ What a "negative advocate" is, and how to spot one in your own circle
 ✅ Why fighting back the way friends and family urge you to usually backfires
 ✅ How parallel parenting works when co-parenting isn't possible
 ✅ The "brief, informative, factual, firm, and friendly" rule for every message
 ✅ How to walk into court as the proactive problem-solver, not the complainer
 ✅ Where parental alienation actually starts, and why that matters
 ✅ Why staying engaged beats going silent, even when it's exhausting

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 What makes a divorce genuinely "high-conflict"
 10:52 Negative advocates: the people pushing you to fight
 17:20 Parallel parenting and business-like communication
 23:11 How to be the proactive problem-solver in court
 29:28 Where parental alienation really begins
 37:54 Parallel parenting vs. co-parenting
 39:38 Where to find Brook and more support

CTA (spoken): Co-parenting with someone who thrives on conflict? Book a free discovery call at beentheregotout.com.
 Books: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Out-Against/dp/1967674183 · Been There Got Out — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Relationships-Circumstances/dp/194627495X/
 Tags: parallel parenting, high conflict co-parenting, negative advocates, brook olsen, parental alienation, custody, co-parenting with a narcissist, protecting your kids, high conflict divorce

What does a hidden crypto account actually leave behind? More than most people expect. A wire to an exchange, a recurring card charge, a taxable event on a return: cryptocurrency runs on a system that sits alongside the ordinary one, but the two keep crossing paths, and those crossings are where a hidden asset becomes visible.

Raphael Meyer was born in Paris, has a background in computer science, and has spent nine years in cryptocurrency as an investor and author. His book, Keys to Bitcoin, explains how the technology works under the hood. He came on as a favor after one of Lisa's clients asked how to prove an ex was hiding money in crypto, a problem that turns up again and again in high-conflict divorce, where full financial disclosure is exactly the thing an abusive ex refuses to give.

Raphael explains why timing decides so much. During discovery your ex is at least somewhat inclined to cooperate; once the judgment is signed, that cooperation can vanish. He describes the trail crypto leaves on bank and credit-card statements, the way a public ledger records every Bitcoin transaction from the beginning, and the small hardware devices, cold-storage wallets from companies like Trezor and Ledger, whose purchase can itself be a clue. Because the IRS treats crypto as property, nearly everything done with it is a taxable event, so an ex who hid coins and never reported them has a credibility problem waiting to surface.

He and Lisa also work through the money math: why a two-hundred-dollar purchase from years ago could be worth far more or nothing today, why it is smarter to state a value in dollars on a set date than to agree to split volatile coins down the road, and how to decide when a crypto investigator is worth hiring and when the amount is too small to bother.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the discovery phase is the window to ask about crypto, and how cooperation drops once the divorce is final
• The traces crypto leaves: wires and card charges to exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini
• How a public ledger keeps most crypto transactions traceable, even after a transfer to a private wallet
• What a hardware wallet (Trezor, Ledger) is, and why buying one can signal hidden holdings
• The discovery questions to ask: list every account and external wallet, and pull all the statements
• How unreported crypto shows up (or fails to) in tax returns, and what that does to your ex's credibility
• Why you should value crypto in dollars on a set date instead of agreeing to split the coins later
• When hiring a crypto investigator is worth it, and when the amount is too small to chase

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What cryptocurrency is, and how it runs alongside the banking system
5:00 Raphael's background, and why exes try to hide money in crypto
7:00 Where to start: catching it during the discovery phase
9:00 The traces: wires to Coinbase and Kraken, and buying with cash
13:00 Why the public ledger keeps most crypto traceable
17:00 Hardware wallets, cold storage, and the Ledger clue
19:00 What to ask for in discovery, and the tax-return angle
23:00 Volatility: why to set the value in dollars on a fixed date
27:00 Crypto investigators, cost-benefit, and when it is worth it

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
🔗 Raphael Meyer's book, Keys to Bitcoin: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1734773324

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.