Anthony Bompiani spent more than twenty years as a family law attorney watching clients come apart in divorce and custody fights, and he believed he understood their pain. Then he went through his own divorce, and, in his words, it finally clicked. That is where his coaching came from.

Anthony Bompiani is a retired judge and family law attorney who now coaches parents through high-conflict custody under the name Judge Anthony, drawing on a background in psychology and more than two decades in the system. He co-parents three sons after an amicable divorce of his own. He returns for the second half of a conversation with Lisa about how family court really treats parents, and what to do when it feels rigged against you.

Anthony is blunt about how custody court can exploit ordinary parenting, the bruises kids get from play, the imperfections that make people human, and how a manipulative ex often accuses you of exactly what they are doing. He explains how judges weigh expert witnesses on competency and credibility, why a treating professional carries more weight than a paid expert who never met your child, and how a criminal record becomes relevant through the content and the timing of the offense. He also names the pattern so many listeners live in: the paper abuse used to drain and exhaust a former partner through repeated filings, and why he believes honest attorneys could shut most of it down.

The through-line is where your power actually sits. Answer false allegations with a flat denial and starve them of your attention. Refuse the hatred that keeps you attached. And when you draw a judge who avoids deciding, the one Anthony calls a can kicker, stack the record politely on each appearance until the history forces a ruling. His coaching program and a free masterclass carry these ideas further, both on his site.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• The alienation-or-protection line, and why the timing of a first abuse claim works against you
• Why, without signs of harm to the child, a court is unlikely to cut off the other parent
• How to answer a false allegation: a flat "that's not true," and nothing that feeds their attention
• Why "up your game as a parent" beats going low, since kids learn from what they see
• Why you don't have to hate your ex, and how hatred keeps you attached instead of free
• How judges weigh expert witnesses, and why a treating professional beats a paid one
• How a criminal record becomes relevant through the content and the timing of the offense
• What to do with a "can kicker" judge: stack the record out loud until it forces a ruling

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Recap, and where his empathy came from
3:00 Alienation or protection, and why the timing looks like motive
7:00 When you can't keep your kids from the other parent
11:00 Adversity, resilience, and upping your game as a parent
15:00 Does encouraging the relationship help? The abuse spectrum
17:00 Expert witnesses, competency, and credibility
21:00 Handling false allegations with a flat denial
27:00 Why you don't have to hate your ex
31:00 Vexatious litigation and legal abuse
41:00 Criminal records, and the "can kicker" judge

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
🔗 Judge Anthony (Anthony Bompiani): https://judgeanthony.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.

On this episode of the Been There Got Out Podcast, we welcome superstar coach, author, and podcaster Matt Phifer (Instagram @mattphifercoaching), who talks about trauma bonding and its impact on making a separation or divorce much more difficult, why knowing your rights is IMPERATIVE, and why it's essential to cut all ties other than with the kids during the court process.

Remember, if you are struggling in a high-conflict relationship, divorce, custody battle, or co-parenting hell which requires PERSONALIZED attention, let us HOLD YOUR HAND along the way, while providing EXPERT, STRATEGIC guidance based on one's years of success (representing myself in court!), coupled with the other's High Conflict Divorce Coach certification.

Recorded August 4th, 2022

Mediation keeps getting written into parenting plans as the step you take before going back to court, and it keeps getting dismissed by people whose ex has never cooperated with anything. Barb Hughson's position is that a signed agreement is not the only useful outcome. Sometimes the conversation itself, and the more specific language that comes out of it, is what changes the next two years.

Barb Hughson is a family mediator based in Colorado. Before that she spent more than twenty-five years as a family and child therapist, in both Colorado and New York, working with kids whose parents were separating. For close to two decades she has taught Colorado's mandatory parenting classes for judicial districts around the state, and she also does parent coaching, including one-on-one work with a single parent when the other one refuses to mediate at all. She is a returning guest on the show and a colleague Chris and Lisa knew before Been There Got Out existed.

Barb and Lisa work through the terms that reduce contact rather than manufacture more of it: a fixed monthly figure for extracurriculars so nobody has to ask permission or chase receipts, handoffs at school so the two parents never stand in the same place, and a written split of who attends which event. Barb explains why she keeps attorneys out of mediation, and why shuttle mediation, with each party in a separate room, tends to widen the divide it is supposed to manage. She works in two-hour blocks and describes what people come back with after a week to think, compared with what they sign at hour seven of a marathon session.

The other half of the episode is about children being heard. Barb describes meeting each child in a family separately before a summer schedule was set, and the parents agreeing in advance to go with what the kids told her. She talks about a sixteen-year-old who wanted to read his own letter to a judge, and the questions she asked him instead of editing it. Lisa raises what happens when someone has already signed an agreement under pressure, and Barb answers with the thing you can actually say in the moment. The last stretch is about your own regulation, including Dan Siegel's flipped-lid model, and why decisions made while you are flooded tend to be the ones you live with for years.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why mediation can still be worth it when your ex has no interest in cooperating
• Terms that reduce contact instead of creating it: fixed monthly amounts, school exchanges, split events
• Why a day-long mediation backfires, and what two hours plus a week to think produces
• How a child's own preferences can reach a parenting plan without a custody evaluator
• What makes an agreement durable, and why the schedule can differ child by child
• What to do when you signed under pressure, and how to ask the court for more time
• The Froot Loops question: running your own house instead of policing theirs
• What a memorandum of understanding does, and how it can keep you out of court

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Barb's background: child therapist turned family mediator
3:00 Why mediation still works when your ex won't cooperate
7:00 What you can control, and clauses that limit engagement
15:00 Mediating without attorneys, and why old plans stop working
23:00 Bringing the children's voices into the schedule
33:00 A teenager writes his own letter to the judge
35:00 When your ex takes back what they already agreed to
37:00 Preparing for mediation, and having skin in the game
47:00 Froot Loops: running your house, not theirs
51:00 Signing under pressure, and calming your own nervous system

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. Barb Hughson's mediation, coaching, and parenting classes: https://www.courtparentclass.com/

🎧 More with Dr. Barb Hughson on this podcast
Ep 2: Trauma-Informed Mediation
Ep 106: Will My Kids Be Okay?
Ep 113: Kids, Boundaries, and Trauma
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.

Maryann Petri was a registered nurse with a family and a steady life. Years later, she was fending off accusations, losing her children through a family-court process she describes as rigged, and fighting to clear her name. In this episode, she tells Lisa her story.

Early on she draws a key distinction: advocates treat "parental alienation" with caution because it's so often used to deflect from abuse claims in court. The term Maryann uses is "abuse by proxy," when an abuser weaponizes third parties, including CPS and the courts, to harass and control a target. She walks through how things unraveled, how a false abuse indication cost her her job and nursing license, and how a child was coached. But the heart of it is what she did next: facing fees and jail threats, she went pro se, appealed to Superior Court, and reclaimed a victory she calls life-saving.

This is Maryann's personal account, shared for education and support, not legal advice or a statement of fact about any named third party.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ What "abuse by proxy" means, and why advocates use it instead of "parental alienation"
 ✅ How institutions like CPS and the courts can be weaponized against a parent
 ✅ The warning signs that a custody fight has become something darker
 ✅ How a false abuse indication can cost you your job and license
 ✅ What coaching of a child can look like from the inside
 ✅ Why going pro se is terrifying, and how Maryann survived it
 ✅ The "little victories" that kept her going
 ✅ How she appealed to a higher court and reclaimed her life

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 Meet Maryann Petri: nurse, mother, and survivor
 1:53 "Abuse by proxy" vs. "parental alienation"
 3:55 How a well-meant favor unraveled everything
 6:11 The first emergency petition
 9:18 When CPS got involved
 14:39 The caseworker at the door
 19:00 Losing the kids, and a courtroom that felt like a circus
 25:58 Going pro se, and the fight over child support
 33:06 Little victories, and taking on the system

CTA (spoken): Fighting to protect your kids or your name in family court? 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: abuse by proxy, family court, cps, pro se, custody battle, coached child, parental alienation, survivor, high conflict divorce

Two parents sign a parenting plan. Three years later they are back in front of a judge, and the fight is not about custody. It is about whether winter break starts on Friday when school lets out or on Monday when the school calendar says so.

Our guest this episode is Brian Pakpour, a family law attorney based in Davis, California, who many people first found through his TikTok as @brithefamilyguy. He drafts parenting plans for a living, including for high-conflict cases, and he argues that the vague clause is the expensive one. "Reasonable" is the word he wants out of your order. What he wants in is the specific day, the specific hour, and the specific handoff.

Brian and Lisa cover the decisions that come back around: relocation cases and the factor California judges keep returning to, which is which parent is more likely to encourage the child's relationship with the other one. Why a parent who will not give up any break time is often building the other side's case for them. Newborns and step-up schedules. What a court does when parents cannot agree on a therapist or a medical decision. Why right of first refusal has fallen out of favor in his area. And how to respond, in writing, to a parent who keeps missing their parenting time.

The conversation closes somewhere Brian had not gone publicly before, with what he was told about his own parents' separation, and what happened when he found out years later that it was not accurate.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why "reasonable" is the word that sends people back to court, and what to write instead
• Relocation: how refusing to share summer and holiday time can sink your own move-away case
• The factor judges keep returning to: which parent encourages the child's other relationship
• Why 50/50 does not work for a newborn, and how step-up schedules handle infants
• What a court does when parents cannot agree on therapy or medical care
• Right of first refusal: why it often creates more conflict than it prevents
• What to put in writing when the other parent repeatedly no-shows for parenting time
• Non-disparagement clauses: easy to order, hard to prove, and what evaluators look for

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Catching up and early viewer questions
5:00 Relocation parenting plans and looking reasonable to the court
19:00 Newborns, breastfeeding, and step-up custody schedules
25:00 Video visits with toddlers during COVID
27:00 Modifying an old parenting plan without opening the can of worms
35:00 Right of first refusal and splitting extracurricular costs
39:00 Who decides on therapy and medical care
47:00 When a parent stops showing up for their time
51:00 Proving parental alienation and disparagement clauses
59:00 What alienation costs, and Brian's own 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
🔗 Brian Pakpour at Pakpour Banks LLP: https://pakpourbanks.com/brian-pakpour/
🔗 Brian Pakpour on TikTok (@brithefamilyguy): https://www.tiktok.com/@brithefamilyguy

🎧 More with Brian Pakpour on this podcast
Ep 112: Parenting Plans for Babies and Infants

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.

When you're leaving someone dangerous, "just be careful" isn't a plan. Steve, a personal-protection professional with executive and government protective-detail experience, joins Lisa to talk about what real safety planning looks like for ordinary people.

Steve starts where professionals start: with a danger assessment, the screening questions that separate a bad breakup from a genuine threat. Many of the warning signs aren't physical, and he's clear that you should never build your plan around the hope that yours is the better-than-average case. He and Lisa get into advanced safety planning and why the window around separation is statistically one of the most dangerous. He's also emphatic that this happens to people of every gender.

If you're in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. In the U.S., the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ How professional protection thinking applies to a dangerous ex
 ✅ What a danger (lethality) assessment actually screens for
 ✅ The coercive-control warning signs that aren't physical but still predict risk
 ✅ Why you should never plan around the "exceptional," best-case scenario
 ✅ How to build a real, advanced safety plan
 ✅ Why the window around separation is statistically the most dangerous
 ✅ Why this affects people of every gender
 ✅ The one safety message Steve wants everyone to remember

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 Meet Steve, and his protection background
 10:00 The danger assessment: screening for real risk
 16:00 Coercive control: "he doesn't hit you, but..."
 27:00 Building a real safety plan
 41:00 Why separation is the most dangerous time
 46:00 The one message to take home
 51:00 This happens to men and women alike
 61:00 Where the law is changing

CTA (spoken): Worried about your safety leaving a dangerous relationship? 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: personal safety, safety planning, dangerous ex, domestic violence, coercive control, danger assessment, leaving an abuser, separation safety, high conflict divorce

Seven levels of energy, and conflict keeps you standing on the first two. That is the framework Chris Jackson uses with clients, and the reason this episode is worth an hour if you are worried about what a high-conflict parent is doing to your kids.

Chris Jackson is a professional coach and the owner of Kinetic Life, and before that he played professional football for ten years in Germany. He grew up in the tri-state area as the oldest of three, with a father whose behavior he spent decades trying to understand and a mother who held the family together financially while working as a nurse. He works with what he calls heart-centered high performers, helping them find their voice and leave their mark, and he brings what Lisa calls radical empathy to it. He is also a husband and a father of three, with children spanning twenty-four years to twenty months.

Lisa invited him on because he is the outcome her clients are afraid they will not get. He describes when he put a label on his father's behavior, in his thirties, and argues that you do not need a clinical diagnosis to name a pattern for your own sanity. He talks about disordered thinking, about the fear he believes sits under the entitlement and the pride, and about the moment he stopped trying to reason with someone who was not reasoning back.

The section Chris and Lisa both flag as the one people need is about anger. Their clients keep saying the same thing: I am the safe parent, so why is my child screaming at me? Chris Jackson answers it from the inside. He explains the difference between checking in with the introverted kid who has decided not to make your life harder and the extroverted one who is showing you everything, and he tells the story of the day, watching television with his siblings, that he lost respect for his mother and never told her. He then walks the full ladder, level one through seven, with what winning and losing mean at each stage, the three pillars he builds a new life around, and a working list of what is in your control and what never was.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What it took to see a parent's behavior for what it was, decades after childhood
• Why naming a pattern can start forgiveness, without claiming a clinical diagnosis
• Why your kids need permission to be angry at you, the parent who stayed
• How to check in with an introverted child who has decided not to add to your load
• The Ladder of Liberation: seven levels, and where high conflict pins you
• What winning and losing look like at each level, and why level three is the first exit
• Aristotle's test for anger, and why it is too much to expect from a child
• A working checklist of what is in your control while your case drags on

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meet Coach Chris Jackson
3:00 Growing up with a father whose behavior never added up
5:00 Putting a label on it, and why that started forgiveness
9:00 Disordered thinking, the fear underneath, and your own control
13:00 Why kids get angry at the safe parent
15:00 The day he lost respect for his mother
19:00 Aristotle on anger, and leading your kids through theirs
25:00 The Ladder of Liberation, level one through seven
41:00 Deep intimacy, joy in the journey, significant mission
45:00 What's in your control, and what never was

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.

One of the most disorienting parts of leaving a narcissist is watching them rewrite the story, to your friends, your family, sometimes the court. Narcissistic-abuse expert Tracy Malone joins Lisa to explain how smear campaigns work and how to keep your footing when the lies start spreading.

The cruel trick is that a smear campaign forces you to defend yourself, and the more frantically you defend, the guiltier you can look. Tracy walks through the false narrative, the "flying monkeys" who carry it, and the isolation that is the point. She and Lisa get specific about false allegations in custody and family court, and why calm, boring documentation does far more for you than an emotional denial. It's honest about the toll, and hopeful about the way through.

✅ WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
 ✅ What a smear campaign is, and why narcissists run them
 ✅ Why frantically defending yourself can make the lies spread faster
 ✅ How false allegations show up in custody and family court
 ✅ Why calm, consistent documentation beats an emotional denial
 ✅ What "flying monkeys" are, and how to handle the people carrying the story
 ✅ Why the isolation is the goal, and how to start breaking it
 ✅ The real physical and mental health toll of a sustained smear campaign
 ✅ How survivors come out the other side with their reputation intact

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (+1:00 for the bumper)
 0:00 Intro
 1:00 What a smear campaign actually is
 7:00 How the lies start, and why they spread
 13:00 False allegations, and how they show up in court
 20:00 Why documentation matters more than you think
 27:00 When the people you need don't believe you
 34:00 Flying monkeys and isolation
 40:00 The toll, and finding your way through

CTA (spoken): Caught in a smear campaign or facing false allegations? 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: smear campaign, narcissist, false allegations, tracy malone, flying monkeys, narcissistic abuse, documenting abuse, custody, high conflict divorce

Intermittent reinforcement is the reason a relationship can be frightening on Tuesday and warm on Wednesday, and why the warm day is the one that keeps a person there. Rebecca Ishida describes the devaluing as a slow boil, with the love-bombing dropped back in at exactly the moment someone starts to drift.

Rebecca Ishida is a licensed marriage and family therapist based in California, licensed for over twenty years, with a master's in clinical psychology and internships across community mental health. She worked in the field of compulsive sexual behavior in the early 2000s, before much of that work was understood as narcissistic abuse. She also performs stand-up comedy, a lot of it about toxic relationships, and she is candid that her clinical training did not stop her from staying too long in her own.

Rebecca and Lisa start with lying by omission, and Rebecca draws the distinction that makes it usable: intention. Concealing something to keep power over a partner is abuse. Concealing something because honesty would be punished is self-protection. The same distinction separates a silent treatment, which is a punishment, from no contact, which is protection. From there they move through gaslighting, blame shifting, and self-gaslighting, where a person minimizes their own experience and romanticizes the relationship until leaving stops seeming reasonable.

The back half is about compulsive sexual behavior and why it travels with narcissistic abuse. Sex functions as supply, novelty gives a hit that a familiar partner cannot, and none of it responds to being a better partner. They also cover trauma bonding and intermittent reinforcement, the lines that arrive at the discard, the cycle waiting for whoever comes next, and what a person can do while still inside the relationship, including documenting what happened so they do not talk themselves out of it later.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Lying by omission, and why intention decides whether it is abuse or self-protection
• The difference between a silent treatment and no contact
• Self-gaslighting: how minimizing your own experience keeps you in place
• Why professional training and intelligence do not protect anyone from manipulation
• Why compulsive sexual behavior and narcissistic abuse show up together
• Novelty as the point, and why the cheating was not about what you gave
• Intermittent reinforcement and the trauma bond, and why one kind moment resets it
• The three C's: you did not cause it, cannot control it, cannot cure it

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Lying by omission, and why intention decides what it is
7:00 Silent treatment versus no contact, and self-protective lying
9:00 Comedy, therapy, and getting an identity back
13:00 Post-separation abuse, and an ex who simply disappears
17:00 Gaslighting, blame shifting, and self-gaslighting
21:00 Why trained, capable people still get caught
29:00 Why people defend abusers, and why the reasons do not matter
34:00 Compulsive sexual behavior as supply, and the double life
41:00 Novelty, and why it was never about what you gave
51:00 Intermittent reinforcement, the trauma bond, and the discard lines

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 on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rebeccaishida/
🔗 Rebecca Ishida on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rebeccaishida

🎧 More with Rebecca Ishida on this podcast
Ep 56: When Friends Take Your Ex's Side
Ep 109: Lying by Omission and the Double Life

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 posts that life keeps being unfair to them. You reach out, you offer something real, and within weeks there is a new reason things are unfair, and then another. Chelsey Brooke Cole describes it as pouring support into a place where nothing is being built.

Our returning guest this episode is Chelsey Brooke Cole, a licensed psychotherapist, certified partner trauma therapist, author, coach, and speaker whose work centers on narcissistic abuse and relationship trauma, and who also works with introverts and empaths. Lisa asked her on after seeing a post of hers breaking down how narcissistic behavior shows up on social media, a topic the show had not covered. Chelsey's starting point is that once you have learned to recognize the pattern, you cannot stop seeing it, which she frames as the reward for doing the healing work rather than repeating it.

She walks through four post types. The entitlement post, built to produce envy, which is where the picture-perfect family photos live. The poor-me post, which reads as pitiful and leaves you compelled to reach out, and where fundraising asks often sit. The contemptuous post, passive-aggressive and cruel, wrapped in humor and a laughing emoji so that any objection becomes your failure to take a joke. And the ranting post that begins mid-sentence, aimed unmistakably at one person who is never named, so the poster collects sympathy from everyone who missed the context.

The line between that and ordinary posting is what Lisa keeps pushing on, and Chelsey's test is pattern rather than any single post: how often, in what tone, whether the person ever engages with anybody else's life, and what you feel after reading. They move into the custody-case version, where the kids appear as proof of a perfect parent or as the poster's emotional support, and then into smear campaigns, flying monkeys, and cherry-picked screenshots on a platform with no fact-checking. Chelsey's advice is to block, to tell your own people to come to you directly, and to stay out of a public fight the other side wants. It closes on intuition, body scans, and checking in with yourself before you check in with anyone else.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why social media hands someone seeking constant validation an unlimited supply
• The entitlement post, and why it is built to produce envy
• The poor-me post, the money ask, and why your support never changes anything
• The contemptuous post, and the laughing emoji that lets it be walked back
• The ranting post that targets one person and names nobody
• The real test: pattern, tone, whether they engage with others, and how you feel after reading
• Smear campaigns, flying monkeys, and what to tell your friends instead of arguing publicly
• Fake profiles in support groups, and why blocking beats keeping watch

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why social media is built for narcissistic supply
5:00 Where ordinary posting ends and the pattern begins
6:30 The entitlement post
8:30 The poor-me post, and the money ask
12:30 The contemptuous post, and "I was just joking"
15:30 The ranting post that names no one
18:30 Fake profiles, closed groups, and why blocking is the move
20:00 Smear campaigns, flying monkeys, and what to tell your friends
24:00 Using the kids: the perfect-family post and the emotional-support post
26:30 How you feel after reading it, and listening to your body

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
🔗 Chelsey Brooke Cole: https://www.chelseybrookecole.com/

🎧 More with Chelsey Brooke Cole on this podcast
Ep 137: Mindset Shifts for Healing From Abuse
Ep 224: Who's Safe to Tell About 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.