Divorces stall for reasons that have nothing to do with the law. One spouse isn't ready to be divorced. A lawyer bills the fight instead of ending it. The paperwork sits untouched on a kitchen table because the person who has to fill it out is too overwhelmed to start. Raiford Palmer has seen all three, and he has a fix for each.

Raiford Palmer is the managing shareholder of STG Divorce Law in Chicago and has practiced law since 1994, more than twenty years of it in divorce. He is the author of I Just Want This Done, a bestseller Chris and Lisa recommend constantly, and a divorced father of two who has since remarried. He and Lisa have recorded several conversations together; this one is about pace: why a case slows down, and how to speed it up without becoming the problem yourself.

Palmer starts with the lawyer. The attorney who treats every dispute as a war, who files motion after motion without ever telling the client the realistic odds or what it will actually cost,will stretch a case for years, sometimes while the client keeps writing checks. He describes the bridge people cross toward accepting a divorce, and how a spouse who is far behind on it will drag their feet, or fight, because they are not emotionally ready to be done. He is honest that addiction, or a target frozen by overwhelm and unable to face an eight-page financial affidavit, can stall a case just as effectively. He also talks about how his own firm changed once he learned that most of the job is listening, not interrogating.

The back half is practical. Give your own financial documents to the other side early, before they even ask, so the case never slows on your account and the judge can see who cooperated. When the other side won't produce records, a motion to compel or a subpoena sent straight to the bank goes around them. A deposition puts a checked-out spouse under oath and forces their lawyer to take the case seriously, and Palmer says depositions often settle a case in the room. When the opposing lawyer won't move their own client, he writes a settlement letter that lays the realistic range of trial outcomes and its cost side by side, and lets the other party read it, because their lawyer has to share it. All of it comes back to the cost-benefit analysis at the heart of his book.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• The lawyer red flag that guarantees a longer, costlier case, and what to look for instead
• Palmer's "bridge" idea: why a spouse who isn't emotionally ready stalls the whole case
• Why freezing on discovery paperwork can become the reason your case waits, and how to break it
• Why to hand over your own documents early instead of matching the other side's games
• Motion to compel vs. subpoena: two ways around a spouse who won't produce records
• How a deposition forces a checked-out ex to engage, and why it so often ends in settlement
• "Showing them over the cliff": using a settlement letter to reach an ex whose lawyer won't move them
• The cost-benefit analysis at the center of getting a divorce done

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why people watch for the real story of family court
3:00 Hiring the wrong lawyer: the "swamp creature" and the pit bull
7:00 How a lawyer can drag a case out and call it zealous
11:00 The bridge: why a spouse who isn't ready stalls everything
17:00 Freezing on discovery paperwork, and how a good firm helps
21:00 Why most of a lawyer's job is people, not law
23:00 Moving from investigator to listener in the first meeting
35:00 What to do: get realistic, and a red flag about second opinions
39:00 Don't stoop on discovery: produce early, compel, or subpoena
45:00 Depositions, showing them over the cliff, and the cost-benefit analysis

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
🔗 Raiford Palmer's firm, STG Divorce Law: https://stglawfirm.com/
🔗 I Just Want This Done (Raiford Palmer's book): https://ijustwantthisdone.com/
🔗 Raiford Palmer on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raifordpalmer/

🎧 More with Raiford Palmer on this podcast
Ep 11: What Family Court Is Really Like
Ep 199: Divorce Strategy and the "Meta Case"

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.

Ordered into supervised visitation, most parents assume they have been branded unfit. Diana Canas, who has supervised these visits for 25 years, spends much of her time undoing that assumption.

Diana Canas is a parenting coach and supervised-visitation provider in Connecticut, where she runs an agency called Connecting Families. She started as a parent educator and moved into supervision, and alongside it she runs recovery groups and does self-esteem work with people rebuilding after hard seasons. She and Lisa met locally, and this conversation is an uncommon look at supervision from the person actually in the room with the parent and child.

Diana's core message is that a neutral witness works in your favor. In high-conflict cases where accusations run both directions, a supervisor can tell the court what really happened, which is why she frames offering to be supervised the way you might offer a drug test: as a way to prove yourself and shrink the allegations against you. She describes supervision done well, casual outings in the community instead of a sterile visitation room, actively coaching a parent to feed, change, and manage their own child so they can move toward unsupervised time, and increasing visits in length and setting because two hours of good behavior tells a court very little about real life.

She is protective of the children above all. She meets a child before the first visit so they are not sent off with a stranger, sets up a safe word so a child can end a visit without feeling they betrayed a parent, and steps in when an adult badmouths the other parent or uses tears to load guilt onto a kid. She and Lisa talk through the questions BTGO hears constantly: what happens when a parent doesn't show, why a relative rarely makes a good supervisor in a high-conflict case, and what a CPS or DCF investigation actually involves, where the wrong move is to hide and the threshold for removing a child is much higher than terrified parents believe. Diana also makes a case Lisa hadn't considered: supervised visitation belongs before reunification therapy, as a way to test whether a parent can handle the hard, ordinary moments of a day.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why supervised visitation is not a punishment, and how it can protect you from false allegations
• Why offering to be supervised, like offering a drug test, can strengthen your custody case
• How a good supervisor works: community outings, coaching you to parent, building toward unsupervised time
• Why anyone can behave for two hours, and how visits step up to reveal real life
• Preparing a child, and yourself: rapport before the first visit, and a safe word for the child
• What a supervisor won't allow: badmouthing, aggression, or guilting a child with tears
• Why a family-member supervisor works only in low-conflict cases
• What CPS involvement really means: why hiding is the wrong move, and how high the bar for removal is

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meet Diana, and what supervised visitation really is
3:00 Why it's not a punishment: minimizing false allegations
5:00 How a good supervisor works, and coaching you to parent
7:00 Why anyone can behave for two hours, and stepping up visits
9:00 Teenagers, and blending in with a safe word for the child
12:00 What a supervisor won't allow, including guilting a child
16:00 Offering supervised visitation as a strategy, and staying neutral
19:00 When a parent no-shows, and finding a good supervisor
23:00 Preparing your child, and why a family member rarely works
29:00 What CPS involvement really means
33:00 Supervised visitation before reunification, and Diana's other work

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.

Rebecca Ishida asks the question that stops a lot of people cold: if you had known, would you have chosen differently? That is what lying by omission takes from you. It is emotional abuse, and Rebecca argues emotional abuse is domestic violence, however hard that remains to prove in most courtrooms.

Our guest this episode is Rebecca Ishida, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in California who has been in practice since 2000. She works with addiction, trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery, alongside couples work and problematic sexual behavior, and she has been a guest here before. She also speaks from twenty years inside a marriage whose parallel life she pieced together only near the end, and she is candid that being a therapist did not shorten that by a decade.

In this episode Rebecca widens the definition. Most people hear double life and think second family. She includes hidden addiction, gambling that is taking the house, secret work, and a whole online life running under the shared one, and she explains why the underlying mechanic is identical: secrecy, deception and lies, which is also what sits under any addiction.

She and Lisa go through the markers. Travel and long unexplained absences. Meeting always somewhere neutral rather than at the person's own home. Devices guarded, histories and messages deleted, and privacy invoked as the accusation when something surfaces. Refusing conversations about finances or the past. Stories that do not add up, because someone in their truth does not have to keep track. Withdrawal used as punishment rather than as genuine space. They also talk about how these patterns form, including hyper-idealized children raised without accountability, and about the trap of believing that loving someone harder will heal them. Rebecca's closing point is that healing is your responsibility whether or not the harm was your fault, and that the same rule applies to whoever hurt you.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What lying by omission is, and why withholding the truth is a transfer of power
• Why a double life covers far more than a second relationship
• The markers to watch: unexplained gaps, guarded devices, deleted histories, meetings somewhere neutral
• Why stories stop reconciling, and what that tells you
• When taking space is healthy and when it is punishment
• Why heightened empathy makes you stay and keep supplying the explanation
• The three C's: you did not cause it, you cannot control it, you cannot cure it
• Why loving someone harder does not make them better

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Rebecca's practice, EMDR, and what narcissistic abuse does to the nervous system
6:00 Lying by omission, and why emotional abuse is domestic violence
9:00 Being disbelieved by your own friends, and minimizing what happened
11:00 Relationship education, and what films taught us to expect
16:00 Taking space: when it is healthy and when it is punishment
19:30 Defining a double life, from second families to hidden addictions
23:00 The markers: travel, neutral meeting places, and gaps in time
25:00 Rebecca's own story, and what compartmentalizing means
35:00 Guarded devices, deleted histories, and privacy used as the accusation
37:00 Stonewalled conversations, stories that do not add up
43:00 Healing is your responsibility, and why loving harder does not work

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
🔗 Rebecca Ishida, LMFT: https://rebeccaishida.com/

🎧 More with Rebecca Ishida on this podcast
Ep 13: Sex Addiction, Gaslighting and Narcissistic Abuse
Ep 56: When Friends Take Your Ex's Side

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.

Six months is how long Rudy A spent at the bottom of it. His parents were not speaking to him, old friends had stopped returning calls, and the meetings he used to be invited to had stopped appearing on his calendar at work.

Rudy A is a creator who makes content about marriage, divorce, and rebuilding, mostly for an audience in their twenties and thirties who have not been married yet and want to hear what it actually looks like. He was with his high school sweetheart for twenty years, married for sixteen, and he grew up in a Hispanic Catholic family where divorce was not on the menu and the shame of it landed on his parents at their church before it landed on him. He found Been There Got Out through one of the community's own followers.

In this episode Rudy walks through what happened after he filed. Four years of couples counseling that clarified rather than fixed, and his comparison of it to joining a gym and then eating the same way at home. Three months of silence from his parents. His ex-wife's account reaching their mutual friends before his did, and what that did to friendships that went back to sixth grade. The same story arriving at the company they both worked for, and his standing there shrinking meeting by meeting. Shingles at thirty-eight, and nerve damage he still feels under stress. Lisa connects it to something BTGO tells clients constantly, which is that the account that lands first is the one people tend to believe.

The rest is how he got out of it, and none of it is grand. Comedies when he needed to laugh. Walks outside and saying good morning to strangers. Going to a movie by himself, which he says taught him more about who he was than the previous decade had. Movie reviews on a YouTube channel with a few hundred subscribers, which turned into interview work at a convention. A smaller and healthier circle of two or three friends. And the conversation with his kids on the day he told them, where he said they were going to prove everyone wrong, which he credits for the co-parenting relationship he and his ex-wife have now.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What a smear campaign does to friendships, family, and standing at work
• The physical cost of a long low period, and the point at which he got help
• Why he credits therapy with the turnaround, in his own words
• Rebuilding a circle from two or three people instead of a crowd
• Doing things alone on purpose, and what he learned from it
• The conversation with his kids, and how it set the tone for co-parenting
• Why staying together for the kids models the thing you do not want repeated
• Confirmation bias, and why the account that lands first tends to stick

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 A 20-year relationship, and a community where divorce carries shame
3:00 Parents who stopped speaking for three months
6:00 Couples counseling, and what four years of it settled
9:00 Deciding to prove everyone wrong about divorced families
12:00 The kids were always listening, and what they copy
15:00 The day he told them, and setting the tone
17:00 The smear campaign: friends, family, and standing at work
20:00 Shingles at 38, and six months at the bottom
23:00 Getting out of it: walks, movies alone, saying hello to strangers
27:00 Learning who he was outside a marriage

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.

No lender will count child support or alimony toward your loan on the strength of a court order alone. They want to see the money arriving, month after month, in an account with your name on it. Liz Reese says that one fact decides who gets to keep the house, and most people learn it far too late.

Liz Reese, known to a lot of people as Loan Lady Liz, is a mortgage broker based in California and licensed in California and Utah, with a professional designation in divorce mortgage guidance. She also specializes in reverse mortgages, which she explains is unexpectedly relevant in later-life divorces where splitting assets and buying a new home is hard to qualify for. She grew up in a divorced family herself, and she works deliberately as a neutral party rather than an advocate for one side. This is her second appearance on the show.

She and Lisa start with the mechanics. Why a divorce buyout can often be structured as an ordinary refinance instead of a costlier cash-out loan, and the strict limit on that. Why monthly alimony is easier to qualify on than a lump sum. The six-month deposit history a lender wants, and why you can start building it before anything is signed. What a stay-at-home parent can do to qualify, including the difference between a salaried job, which counts immediately, and hourly work, which does not. Liz also lists the team she thinks people need alongside the attorney, and notes that a conversation with a mortgage professional costs nothing because the fee comes out of the transaction.

The second half is judgment rather than mechanics. One accountant's blanket advice to sell everything you own jointly, and the client who kept a rental property and inherited a forty thousand dollar tax bill she should have split. Why Liz pushes people to inspect the house before buying an ex out, with a story about eighty thousand dollars of water damage found under a home nobody suspected. And the part that is not about money at all: what a house represents when everything else is in motion, what house poor really means, and how to give a child some control over a bedroom in a place they did not choose.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a divorce buyout can often be a regular refinance instead of a pricier cash-out loan
• How to set up alimony and child support so a lender can actually count them as income
• The deposit history lenders want, and why you can start building it before the decree
• Qualifying as a stay-at-home parent, and why salaried and hourly jobs are treated differently
• Why to get the house inspected before you buy your ex out of it
• What "house poor" means, and how to weigh stability against affordability
• The team beyond your attorney: a divorce-literate CPA, a real estate agent, and a mortgage professional
• What helps kids settle into a new home when the move was not their choice

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meet Liz: divorce mortgage guidance and reverse mortgages
3:00 How a loan changes in a divorce, and the buyout refinance
4:30 Setting up support payments so a lender can count them
8:30 Your team, and why the mortgage conversation costs nothing
10:00 What the house represents, and what "house poor" means
13:30 "Sell everything": one CPA's advice, and a tax bill nobody planned for
15:30 Relocation, school districts, and living near your ex
19:30 Helping kids settle in, and the case for staying put
22:30 Qualifying as a stay-at-home parent: salary vs. hourly
25:30 Why you inspect the house before you buy your ex out
29:30 Getting through it, and where to find Liz

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
🔗 Liz Reese (Loan Lady Liz) on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loanladyliz/

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 psychologists get asked the same question by every parent in a high-conflict case, and one of them answers it inside the first few minutes. The short answer is yes, your kids can be okay, and the whole episode is about the word that follows it, which is if.

Dr. Barb Hughson is a family mediator based in Colorado and was a family and child therapist for twenty-five years before that, in Colorado and New York State, much of it with children going through their parents' divorces. For almost twenty years she has taught the parent education classes for Colorado's judicial districts. Dr. Wayne Benenson has been teaching for fifty years, across elementary, middle, and high school and then college, and was Barb's doctoral advisor decades ago. Her dissertation became the book they wrote together. For the last several years his focus has been teaching mindfulness, much of it to children and parents. Chris and Lisa know Barb personally and count her a colleague from before Been There Got Out existed.

The condition attached to yes is that a parent can hold two selves at the same time. You are allowed to be undone by what the case is doing to you. What your child needs is that the other version of you still shows up, because from their side you have always been the source of security, and right now you are mostly absent. Dr. Wayne's method for getting back there is not a heart-to-heart. It is the ritual that predates the separation, and it can be five minutes long. He also shares what happened in his own divorce, when his seven-year-old stopped eating and talking, and what she said when they finally asked her. Barb's addition is that the parent is the foundation of the house, so a parent with no support of their own has nothing to steady the rest of it.

The second half is practical. Barb explains how she opens teenagers up, using questions that cannot be answered in one word and reading the nonverbals in the room. They make the case for car talk, where nobody has to hold eye contact, and for any steady adult, a grandparent, a neighbor, a therapist, who can be there when the parent is stretched too thin. Dr. Wayne explains why schools measure cognitive learning and mostly leave emotional learning alone, and describes a face-awareness exercise he uses to get kids discussing feelings without having to name them. Barb points to Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart on building an emotional vocabulary, and they close on the line between letting your child see you as human and handing them what belongs to an adult.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• The one condition that makes "yes, your kids can be okay" true
• How to be two people at once: undone by the case, and present for your child
• Why a pre-divorce ritual reconnects you faster than a conversation about feelings
• What shame does when you're stuck in fight, flight, or freeze, and how to sit with it
• How to open a teenager up: questions with no one-word answer, and reading the room
• Why a grandparent, neighbor, or therapist can hold ground you can't hold right now
• Car talk: why the hard conversation goes better when nobody makes eye contact
• Where the line sits between being real with your kid and downloading on them

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How Dr. Barb and Dr. Wayne Benenson came to work together
3:00 Both guests introduce themselves
5:00 "Can my kids be okay?", and the one condition
9:00 Being the foundation, and getting your own support in place
11:00 Dr. Wayne's own divorce, and what his seven-year-old said
13:00 Shame, freeze, and going back to the bond that predates all this
15:00 Teens: open-ended questions, and reading the nonverbals
21:00 Car talk, grandparents, and any steady adult who will listen
23:00 Emotional intelligence, and why schools don't teach it
29:00 Screens, emotional vocabulary, and vulnerability without losing authority

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
🔗 Great Masters: Dr. Barb Hughson and Dr. Wayne Benenson's coaching and Quest program: https://www.greatmastersinc.com/

🎧 More with Dr. Barb Hughson & Dr. Wayne Benenson on this podcast
Ep 2: Trauma-Informed Mediation
Ep 19: Mediation and the Child's Voice
Ep 113: Kids, Boundaries, and Trauma
Ep 121: When Your Child's Anger Turns Physical
Ep 143: Steadying Kids in Divorce

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.

Lisa picked up a novel, put it down partway through, and thought: this is my life, and it is our clients' lives. Then she emailed the author. That is how this episode happened.

Julie Clark is the author of The Lies I Tell and The Last Flight, both New York Times bestsellers, and of her first novel, The Ones We Choose. Her books tend to follow women in situations that would flatten most people, written deliberately with agency rather than helplessness. The Last Flight is about a woman married to a nationally beloved political figure who is abusive in private, and who assembles a whole new identity in order to vanish. The Lies I Tell follows Meg Williams, a con artist who works under assumed names and targets men who have used their power against people who could not fight back. Julie built both books on extensive research, including conversations with people who had lived through severe abuse, and she has been through a divorce herself.

She and Lisa spend most of the conversation on the mechanics of manipulation, which the novels lay out with unusual clarity. Mirroring, and why it registers as having met a soulmate. The way a skilled con artist identifies a deep want and then positions themselves as the only source of it. Why Meg's targets give her the money rather than having it taken, and what that does to any hope of prosecuting her. And the sideways approach, where she befriends someone in the target's circle first so that a real person will vouch for her.

The rest is the part that lands closest to home. Financial abuse as the engine of Meg's origin story, and as the pattern BTGO calls legal abuse when an ex hides assets and drags a case out until the other side gives up. Why people conclude in advance that they will not be believed. Malcolm Gladwell's default to truth, and Julie's view that ignoring a red flag is not a character defect. Where blame actually sits. And what she says to anyone still in it, which is to stop looking at the whole knot and do the next thing on the list.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What mirroring is, and why being mirrored feels like meeting a soulmate
• How someone identifies a deep want and then positions themselves as the only source of it
• Why a con artist's marks hand money over willingly, and what that does to prosecution
• The sideways approach: getting vouched for by someone already in your circle
• What to think twice about posting in a private group during a litigious divorce
• Malcolm Gladwell's "default to truth," and why missing red flags is ordinary
• Where blame belongs after abuse, and why it is not with the person it happened to
• The difference between what a person wants and what they actually need

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why Lisa reached out, and Julie's two novels
4:30 The research behind the abuse, and a system open to exploitation
8:30 Financial abuse, and the origin story behind Meg
10:30 Why people decide in advance they won't be believed
12:00 Mirroring, and why it feels like meeting your soulmate
14:30 Hunting a private Facebook group, and going in sideways
19:30 "Default to truth," red flags, and where blame belongs
22:00 Want vs. need, and writing a morally grey character
26:30 The pull of a gifted con artist, and love bombing
30:30 Where to find the books, and doing the next thing on the list

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
🔗 Julie Clark's website: https://julieclarkauthor.com/
🔗 The Lies I Tell: https://julieclarkauthor.com/books/the-lies-i-tell/
🔗 The Last Flight: https://julieclarkauthor.com/books/the-last-flight/

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.

"I'll stay until the kids are grown." Chris and Lisa both believed a version of that once, and both now spend their days with people wrestling with the same line. This episode is their case for why, when a relationship is abusive, staying for the kids usually costs the kids more than it protects them.

This is a founders episode, no guest, just Chris and Lisa working through the material from their own "dangers of staying" workshop. Lisa, a state-certified domestic violence advocate, was married for eighteen years and stayed two more after she knew it was over, in part because her ex kept telling her that leaving would break up the family and it would be her fault. Chris, a certified high-conflict divorce coach, says his ex leaving him may have been the thing that got him out at all. They bring both the female and the male side of getting out.

They describe how living inside abuse affects children, and they deliberately keep it grounded rather than reciting frightening percentages: the stress that shows up as physical symptoms, the anxiety and jumpiness, the complex PTSD that comes from trauma layered on trauma, and how often a struggling child at home gets labeled with ADHD when the real driver is what is happening between the parents. Their reassurance is real: the question they field most is whether the kids will be okay, and the answer is usually yes, as long as the safer parent does the extra work and the child gets support.

The rest is about the decision itself. A toxic co-parent will often block a child's therapy, which tends to backfire because courts generally want kids in therapy during a separation. Leaving carries its own risks, so knowing your rights and having a parenting plan and an exit plan first matters as much as the decision to leave. And there is a upside they have both watched in their own kids: children who learn boundaries earlier, and carry them for life.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why "staying for the kids" is often the manipulation that keeps a target in an abusive relationship
• Why the "I can be the buffer" belief breaks down, and what kids absorb even in a home without loud fights
• How witnessing abuse, not only being hit, shows up in kids: stress in the body, anxiety, and complex PTSD
• Why an abusive home can get misread as ADHD, and how trauma mimics it
• The question BTGO hears most from parents, "will my kids be okay?", and the honest answer
• How to counter the other parent's gaslighting by validating what your child sees, without disparaging their parent
• Why a toxic co-parent blocks a child's therapy, and why that usually backfires in court
• Why knowing your legal rights and having a parenting plan before you leave matters as much as the decision to leave

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why parents stay "for the kids," and when it's manipulation
3:00 The "intact family" line, and both founders' own exits
6:00 How a toxic home shows up in kids' bodies and brains
9:00 Complex PTSD, anxiety, and sound and touch sensitivity
12:00 We model relationships for our kids, like it or not
14:00 The ADHD misdiagnosis, and trauma that mimics it
15:00 "Will my kids be okay?" and doing double duty
19:00 An abuser is an abuser: what family court misses
21:00 Blocking a child's therapy, and validating what kids see
25:00 Know your rights before you leave: safety and exit plans
29:00 Leaving is hard too, and the upside of stronger boundaries

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.

Finding a therapist for your child is one problem. Knowing what to ask before you hand your kid over is a different problem, and almost nobody hands you the list. This episode is that list, from someone who has been the therapist on the other side of it for twenty-two years.

Sara Mathews Dixon is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Darien, Connecticut, and she also works by telehealth with clients across the country. She chose social work as a high school senior after a conversation with a teacher, and her twenty-two years since have run through psychiatric hospitals, substance abuse clinics, group homes for boys, and five years on an adolescent unit working with teenagers and their families. Her practice is adolescents now. She is also available to her clients around the clock, on the reasoning that ten minutes on the phone at three in the afternoon can keep a panicking teenager's whole week from coming apart.

Sara works psychodynamically, which she explains as treating the person as a puzzle: not only what is happening this week, but the whole life story that produced it, including the trauma that runs down through a family before anyone recognizes it as trauma. That is why she will tell you up front that she does not do six sessions and out. She and Lisa compare notes on the no-magic-wand conversation they both have to have, and on who turns out to be a good client, including the person who only came because their spouse insisted.

The rest is what a parent in a custody fight actually needs. How to describe coercive control without the clinical words. Why a therapist who is lied to daily is harder to charm than your friends were. How she builds rapport by telling a teenager she is not the expert on their life and they will have to teach her, and what it meant when a fifteen-year-old who had not cried at her father's funeral cried in her office over a game of Jenga. What confidentiality does and does not stop you from asking about your own child. What she says to a parent who is undermining the plan from the other house. How she walks a child back to the facts without ever accusing the parent who fed them the story. What she requires before she will agree to reunification therapy, and why a name that came from your ex's attorney is not automatically the wrong name.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• The questions to ask before you hire a therapist for your child
• How to describe coercive control to a clinician when you don't have the vocabulary
• Why a therapist who is lied to every day is harder to charm than your friends were
• How rapport gets built with a teenager who does not want to be in the room
• What confidentiality does and doesn't stop you from asking about your own child
• What she says to a parent who is undermining the treatment plan from the other house
• How to respond when your child repeats something untrue: ask about facts, don't accuse
• What has to be finished before she will agree to take on reunification therapy

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Sara's background: 22 years across hospitals, group homes, and private practice
3:00 Available around the clock, and a psychodynamic approach to the whole story
11:00 What to ask when you're hiring a therapist for your child
15:00 "My ex will charm the therapist": why clinicians aren't fooled the same way
17:00 Building rapport, and the 15-year-old who cried over a game of Jenga
23:00 Confidentiality, and how a parent can still ask how their kid is doing
27:00 Counter-parenting, and the line she takes with the parent doing it
29:00 When your child repeats a false narrative: facts, not accusations
37:00 Reunification therapy, and what has to happen first
43:00 Testifying, hearsay, guardians ad litem, and where to find 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
🔗 Sara Mathews Dixon, LCSW at SMD Psychotherapy: https://www.smdpsychotherapy.com/

🎧 More with Sara Mathews Dixon on this podcast
Ep 60: Choosing the Right Therapist for Your Family

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.

Vanessa Dimitropoulos spent eleven years as a working actress, with roles in The Walking Dead and The Big Short. Then a relationship with a man studying to be a therapist unraveled her life, and taught her how psychological abuse works when almost no one can see it.

In this conversation with Lisa, Vanessa describes how her openness got used against her, how the groundwork for a false allegation gets laid in advance, and what reactive abuse looks like from the inside. She's candid about the fallout and just as candid about the practical lessons: how to stay calm when police arrive, why the composed person is usually believed, and why your lawyer can't be your emotional support. Then she turns it into hope, through The Escaped Goat and her push to make psychological abuse a recognized crime. This is her personal account, shared for education and support; the charges against her were dismissed.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ How an abuser can weaponize therapy and your own vulnerabilities
 ✅ What "reactive abuse" is, and how it gets staged and filmed
 ✅ Why the calmest person in the room is usually believed
 ✅ How a smear campaign follows you long after you're out
 ✅ What to expect, and how to carry yourself, if police show up
 ✅ Why your lawyer is not your emotional support, and who should be
 ✅ Why psychological abuse is still so rarely taken seriously
 ✅ How one survivor turned public humiliation into advocacy

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 From "The Walking Dead" to advocacy
 6:00 How a therapist ex weaponized her own words
 15:00 Reactive abuse, and a staged arrest
 27:00 A story that ran on Christmas Eve
 34:00 How to stay calm when police arrive
 41:00 Why psychological abuse should be a crime

CTA (spoken): Facing false allegations or a smear campaign? Book a free discovery call at beentheregotout.com.
 Books: Been There Got Out — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Relationships-Circumstances/dp/194627495X/ · When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You — https://www.amazon.com/Been-There-Got-Out-Against/dp/1967674183
 Tags: reactive abuse, psychological abuse, vanessa dimitropoulos, the escaped goat, false allegations, narcissistic abuse, smear campaign, coercive control