Ron Platt spent years in insurance, business, and real estate, and time as a foster parent, before he built a membership group aimed squarely at single and divorced families. He argues that when you search for help with a divorce, you scroll past pages of attorneys before you reach anything that actually supports the family going through it.

Ron Platt is the co-founder of NASDF, the National Association for Single and Divorced Families. He describes it as a not-for-profit membership association built on the model people know from AARP: you join, and a single organization gives you access to a pooled set of products, services, discounts, and support instead of hunting for each one on your own.

In this episode, Platt lays out what the membership is designed to bundle, including mental-health sessions, real-estate referral rebates, and career re-entry help for a parent who stepped out of the workforce. He focuses on the piece he built first, an insurance product he calls Support Insured, meant to keep child support or alimony flowing if the paying parent dies, becomes disabled, or loses their income involuntarily. He distinguishes that from a parent who simply refuses to pay, which he says is already handled by the courts and the IRS.

This is more of a product overview than a strategy conversation, so the details here are Ron's own account of what his organization offers. If it sounds useful for your situation, the current terms and coverage are on the NASDF site.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What a membership-association model for single and divorced families is trying to bundle
• The idea behind Support Insured: continuing support if a paying parent dies, is disabled, or loses income
• The line Ron draws between involuntary non-payment and a parent who simply won't pay
• How a group discount model (his "Costco" framing) is meant to lower costs at scale
• Where mental-health sessions, realtor rebates, and career help fit into the membership
• Why a lower-earning spouse can fall into a gap: too much income for free help, too little for a retainer

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How "insurance for divorce" came up
1:45 What NASDF is: the AARP model
3:00 Mental-health and daycare benefits
3:40 Real-estate referral rebates for members
5:00 Career help for a returning stay-at-home parent
6:30 The retainer gap, and a planned legal-costs card
7:40 Support Insured, explained
11:40 Where to find NASDF, and the foster-care mission

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
🔗 NASDF, the National Association for Single and Divorced Families: https://www.nasdf.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.

One of DBT's core assumptions is that people are doing the best they can with what they have, and that they are capable of learning new ways of responding. Psychotherapist Marisa De Sa treats that as the working answer to a question this audience asks constantly: whether a person with a personality disorder is capable of changing at all.

Marisa De Sa is a psychotherapist with over twelve years of experience across hospital settings, community mental health, and schools. She is now in private practice at the Cognitive and Behavioral Care Center in Greenwich, Connecticut, working with children, adolescents, adults, and families, and she sees clients virtually as well, so she is not limited to one area. She specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy, has training in internal family systems, and runs what DBT calls middle path sessions for a parent and teenager who have dug in on opposite sides.

She starts by taking apart the assumption that a personality disorder is intractable, which she describes as an unfair narrative that adds stigma and hopelessness to people who already feel plenty of both. She explains what these disorders are, why they tend to surface in adolescence or early adulthood, and the environmental and attachment factors that appear to feed them. Then she gets to the harder question: how anyone gets into treatment when the defining feature is not wanting to be told what to do. DBT builds commitment strategies into its pre-treatment phase for exactly that reason, including acknowledging out loud that the patterns have been serving a purpose, which moves a resistant person further than pushing against the resistance.

The back half is about communication. Marisa walks through DEAR MAN, DBT's structure for making a request, using a co-parent who shows up ten minutes late for pickup: describe the facts with no judgment attached, express how it landed using I statements, ask for the specific change, and reinforce what is in it for the other person, all delivered mindfully and with some give and take. She covers David Burns's five secrets of effective communication, and why agreeing with someone you are in conflict with feels backwards and still works. Lisa maps it onto the strategic communication Been There Got Out teaches, and they compare their language for the same goal: lowering the temperature, disarming the other party, and negotiating from the thing you both want.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What a personality disorder is, and why clinicians don't treat it as a life sentence
• How DBT builds buy-in with someone who doesn't believe they need treatment
• The four DBT skill modules, and which one high-conflict co-parents use most
• DEAR MAN step by step, worked through with a real co-parenting example
• Why validating the other person lowers their defensiveness even when you resent them
• Universal agreement: finding the one thing you both want and negotiating from there
• How CBT differs from DBT, and what each one is good for
• Walking the middle path when a parent and a teenager have polarized against each other

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Is a personality disorder a life sentence? What DBT was built for
4:00 Where these patterns come from, and how someone ends up in therapy
7:00 Building buy-in with a person who doesn't want to be controlled
8:00 What DBT actually is: individual therapy plus a skills group
11:00 The time commitment, and what progress looks like
13:00 How CBT differs, and what it's good for
15:00 Applying both to a high-conflict divorce
17:00 DEAR MAN: a script for asking without starting a fight
20:00 The five secrets, validation, and finding universal agreement
24:00 Middle path sessions, teaching kids to negotiate, and staying hopeful

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
🔗 Marisa De Sa at the Cognitive and Behavioral Care Center: https://cbcarecenter.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.

Physical injuries are visible and the body has a process for them. Emotional abuse has neither, which is why Alexa Sasha says it can be so much harder to address. You may not know which parts of your life it reached: your self-esteem, your finances, your ability to trust your own read on a person.

Alexa Sasha is a results coach and narcissistic abuse healer based in Brooklyn, and the founder of Your Higher Self Actualized. She draws a distinction between life coaching and results coaching, which she describes as goal getting rather than goal setting. She began her career teaching high school special education in Brooklyn after studying psychology in college, and that training shows in how she teaches: concepts broken down, made visual, and tied to what a person can actually do next. She also runs a weekly creative writing circle called From Ink to Evolution.

In this episode, Alexa explains overt and covert patterns and why the covert version is harder to name: entitlement covered by pity, and behavior calibrated to whoever will tolerate it. She and Lisa work through the childhood-trauma explanation that so many people are handed about their ex, and why an explanation is not an assignment. Most people had something happen to them, and most people do not do this.

The second half is about getting out of the loop when going no contact is not available to you, which is the situation for anyone sharing children or caring for a parent. Alexa argues that support has to be layered: someone who understands this specific experience rather than teaching from a textbook, nervous system work like breathwork, yoga, and trauma release exercises, and a creative outlet. She says talking through the layers without ever being asked where your power is can send you further down, which is what happened to her. Lisa describes the mosaics she made on her porch at the end of her marriage, and the seed bombs that recently scattered across her yard.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• A plain definition of narcissistic abuse, and why the damage is so hard to locate
• Overt and covert patterns, and why someone can be one way with you and another with everyone else
• The childhood-trauma explanation for an ex's behavior, and where your responsibility ends
• Why criticism lands so hard on someone with no established self-esteem
• The signals people miss: waking up exhausted, ruminating, the conversation that gets flipped on you
• How to reduce the drain when going no contact isn't possible
• Why support has to reach your body, not only your talking
• Creativity and play as a path back, and what talk therapy alone can miss

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Results coaching, and Alexa's path from the classroom
4:00 What narcissistic abuse is, and why it's harder to see than bruises
6:00 The colleague who told her his diagnosis
8:00 Overt and covert patterns, and who gets to see which
10:00 The trauma explanation, and where your responsibility ends
12:00 The signals: exhaustion, rumination, and the flip
16:00 When going no contact isn't an option
17:00 Layered support: the right helper, and nervous system work
19:00 Creativity as the way back, and Lisa's porch
22:00 From Ink to Evolution, play, and your highest self

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
🔗 Alexa Sasha Marshall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexa-sasha369/

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.

Insurance fraud, workers' compensation claims, background checks on a new partner, and yes, occasionally a missing cat. What a private investigator gets hired for runs wider than the obvious. Ken Childs has been doing surveillance since two weeks before his twenty-first birthday, and he has clear views on when a family case actually needs him.

Ken Childs is a licensed California private investigator and the founder of Paramount Investigative Services, based in Los Angeles. Surveillance is the core of the practice, with insurance and workers' compensation fraud making up much of the work, alongside custody and infidelity matters, witness interviews, and litigation support. He has testified as an expert witness, and his cases have been covered in national media. This is his first appearance on the show.

Childs is useful here because he does not oversell. Infidelity, in California, rarely moves a case on its own, but a spouse who denied it under oath has created a credibility issue an attorney can work with. A background check on the adult who is suddenly around your children runs a couple of hundred dollars and can settle a question that has been keeping you up. And when nothing turns up, he treats that as the good result it is.

The section on choosing an investigator is the one to replay. Read the site, read the reviews, and pay attention to whether the person is listening or selling you fear. Childs's view is that an investigator who tells you the situation is desperate and you need to move right now is the one to walk away from, and he extends the same test to hiring an attorney: skip the name brand, read the references, and look for the ones who say this person fought for me. He and Lisa also talk about what to photograph before you file, why he wants a conversation with your attorney, and why an investigator who impersonates you to a bank is handing the other side a reason to exclude everything they found.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What a private investigator is genuinely useful for in a divorce or custody case
• Why infidelity may matter less than the lie told about it under oath
• When a background check on a new adult in your child's life is worth the money
• How to vet an investigator, and the warning sign of someone selling you fear
• Childs's test for hiring an attorney: references over name recognition
• What to photograph and document before a divorce filing if assets may be moved
• Why an investigator who impersonates you to a bank makes the evidence unusable

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What people actually hire a private investigator for
3:00 How Childs got into the work, and what keeps him in it
5:00 Infidelity, credibility, and where it lands in a California case
7:00 Background checks on the adults around your children
9:00 Choosing an investigator, and spotting one who sells you fear
13:00 Twenty-seven years of surveillance, and what he says makes the difference
15:00 Hiring an attorney: references over name brands
17:00 Working with your attorney, and catching order violations
18:00 Financial fraud: photograph everything before you file
19:00 Where investigators cross the line, and why it ruins the evidence

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
🔗 Ken Childs at Paramount Investigative Services: https://licensed-investigator.com/ken-childs-private-investigator/

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

In 25 years as a cop, what wore Doug Fifer down was not the physical danger. It was hostage negotiation: hours on a phone line with someone whose next move could end a life, where one wrong sentence breaks the trust holding everyone in place.

Doug Fifer was born in Homer, Alaska, and spent 25 years with the Anchorage Police Department. Over that career he moved through units most officers never touch, including the forensic crime-scene team, before settling into hostage negotiation for most of his years on the job. He has since written a true-crime book built from cases he worked himself. He joins Lisa to translate what he learned across a phone line with barricaded suspects into something a person negotiating custody and safety with a difficult ex can actually use.

Doug's throughline is that the fundamentals are the same for almost everyone. Build rapport, find the hooks you can both speak to honestly, and stay off the triggers that collapse a conversation. He explains why he taught his negotiators never to lie, and walks through the moment a serial killer holding two hostages asked whether he was going to jail, and how a truthful, careful answer kept the line open. He talks about how ego drives people, and why a sincere compliment can keep a combative ex engaged rather than heading to court. And he covers the domestic-violence realities he saw on hundreds of calls: mandatory-arrest laws that can catch the wrong person, why recording an incident on your phone is legitimate evidence, and why leaving, even for one night, beats staying in a house that has turned into a time bomb.

His plainest advice is the one he says every target he interviewed already knew in their gut and talked themselves out of. When something feels wrong, step back and protect yourself. It holds in a dark parking garage at two in the morning, and it holds in a relationship you already know is not going to change.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the same negotiation fundamentals work on almost everyone, a difficult ex included
• The hook-and-trigger method: steer toward common ground, stay off what makes them shut down
• Why you should never lie in a negotiation, and how to answer a hard question truthfully but carefully
• How ego drives behavior, and why a sincere compliment can keep a combative ex at the table
• Why any physical act in front of police can trigger a mandatory arrest, even of the non-aggressor
• Why recording an incident on your phone is fair, useful evidence in a he-said, she-said
• Why leaving a volatile household, even for a night, beats staying to prove a point
• "Follow your gut": the warning every target he interviewed knew and overrode

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Alaska, isolation, and why violence runs high
3:00 From Homer to a 25-year police career
5:00 Becoming a hostage negotiator
7:00 Rapport, hooks, and triggers
9:00 Never lie: the serial killer who asked if he'd go to jail
13:00 Playing to ego to keep someone at the table
15:00 Domestic-violence scenes, mandatory arrest, and getting out
17:00 When the target is the one arrested, and documenting evidence
19:00 The barricade story, and believing people until disproven
23:00 Protecting your kids, following your gut, and Doug's book

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
🔗 Doug Fifer's website: https://dougfifer.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.

Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard Schwartz, asks each person to look inward at their own parts rather than at the relationship in front of them. Jane Frumberg says that inward turn is what makes it useful when two parents cannot be in the same room, which is most of the families in this community.

Our guest this episode is Jane Frumberg, a clinical social worker who owns her own practice, Light Within Therapy. She specializes in trauma and works in internal family systems, EMDR and dialectical behavior therapy, with teenagers, parents, postpartum mothers, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. Trauma, she says, is the umbrella, and everything else sits underneath it. Lisa went looking for her because Bill Eddy keeps recommending internal family systems therapists for children in high-conflict custody cases, and nobody had explained to BTGO's clients what that actually means.

Jane draws the line between internal family systems and reunification therapy, then explains the parts language: the anxious part, the protector that avoids because avoiding feels safer, and the younger version of a person carrying the original hurt. The instruction is not to get rid of a part but to get curious about it. In a high-conflict case she would start people separately, the child with a therapist trained in the model and each parent on their own, so that the language exists before anyone tries to use it together. It also gives a parent a way to hear a child's hostility as parts doing their job rather than as a verdict on them.

For a target parent whose child has pulled away, Jane's position is that consistency does the work: children push against limits and feel safer inside them, and they want to know you will still be there when they come back. She has watched clients' children start questioning the story as they get older and see things for themselves. The rest of the conversation is how to find the right person, from what to ask in a consultation to why you should choose for your child's temperament rather than your own, plus Lisa's trick of asking a kid what they liked about a favorite teacher or coach and shopping for those qualities.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• The difference between internal family systems therapy and reunification therapy
• What parts and protectors are, and why the goal is never to get rid of one
• Why individual work usually comes before any joint session in a high-conflict case
• How the parts language helps a parent hear a child's hostility differently
• Why consistency matters when the other parent will not participate at all
• What to ask in a free consultation, and how to judge emotional safety fast
• Why you choose a therapist for your child's temperament, not your own
• Red flags: subtle invalidation, not being heard, and vague answers about training

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Internal family systems therapy versus reunification therapy
3:00 Parts, protectors, and the younger version carrying the pain
6:00 How it works when you cannot be in a room with your ex
8:30 When one parent will not participate, consistency does the work
12:00 Why children start questioning the story as they get older
15:00 Choosing a therapist: the consultation, safety, and the energy match
19:00 Red flags, and the question to ask about their actual training

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
🔗 Jane Frumberg at Light Within Therapy: https://www.lightwithintherapy.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.

Every employee assistance program Agape Garcia has come across has something for alcohol problems, gambling, and pornography addiction. She has yet to find one with resources for the employee walking into work from a violent home. That gap is what she is trying to close, and California's SB 553 is the lever she is using.

Agape Garcia is the founder of Confronting Domestic Violence, a nonprofit built around getting real resources to people in real time, including relocation assistance when a family has a safe place to go and no way of getting there. Her background is unusual for this field: alongside advocacy she has worked in human resources and as a corporate security consultant specializing in access control, and she has volunteered for over a decade as a pro bono advisor to California legislators, identifying loopholes and reporting them to the people who write the fixes. Her own story is a double attempted homicide about twenty years ago while eight months pregnant and far from home, and then, years later, a car accident she was not expected to survive. The organization was decided on from an ICU bed.

She and Lisa start with why resources are so hard to find when your emotions are running ahead of your logic, and she describes the more than eight hundred calls it took her, most of them producing another number, some of them disconnected. Her shortcut now: find a domestic violence advocate, and if your local resource center cannot point you to one, ask the attorney general's office. They cover the difference between financial abuse and economic abuse, and why minimizing shows up in almost every group room, including from people describing extraordinary things.

The second half is the workplace. Agape explains what SB 553 requires, that it goes beyond a written policy into drills, communication plans, and knowing how to respond before emergency services arrive, and that Cal/OSHA enforces it. She describes the two industries she says are exempt because they already have their own standards, why an inspector showing up for any other reason will still ask for the plan, and what she tells employers about using the training they already have rather than starting over. For anyone listening who is not in HR, she gives the sentence to say to your own HR rep, and the two ways to reach her organization directly, one of which is a confidential form and the other a searchable directory by zip code.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why finding resources, not deciding to leave, is often where people get stuck
• The difference between financial abuse and economic abuse, and how each one works
• How to find a domestic violence advocate when the local search comes up empty
• Why minimizing is nearly universal, and how status adds shame instead of protection
• What SB 553 requires of California employers, and who enforces it
• Why work is often the safest place a target has, and what that means for employers
• How to ask your own HR department whether a plan exists
• Two ways to get help directly, including a directory searchable by zip code

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why finding resources is where people get stuck
3:00 Financial abuse and economic abuse are not the same thing
5:00 Her own story, and the calls it took to find help
7:00 Finding a domestic violence advocate, and who to ask
8:00 Mine isn't that bad: minimizing in a group room
13:00 Shame, status, and why targets are chosen for their strengths
17:00 Work as the safe place, and what COVID took away
19:00 How abuse spills into the workplace
21:00 SB 553: what California employers now have to have
31:00 Asking your own employer, and how to get help directly

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
🔗 Confronting Domestic Violence: https://confrontingdomesticviolence.org/
🔗 Confronting Domestic Violence professional services and SB 553 training: https://confrontingdomesticviolence.org/professional-services/

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.

Coming out of an abusive relationship, the instinct is to hire a fighter, someone who will finally make the other person answer for what they did. Attorney Renee Bauer sees where that goes: a lot of motions, a lot of billable hostility, and a case no further along than it was a year ago.

Renee Bauer is the founder of Happy Even After Family Law, a firm practicing throughout Connecticut, and she is an author and speaker as well as a lawyer. She is also twice divorced, and she talks openly about the shame that came with that and about deciding to make the conversation about divorce her work. That combination is why this conversation moves easily between courtroom strategy and what it takes to make decisions again after someone else has been making them for you.

Bauer's first red flag is the attorney who guarantees an outcome. What a good consultation sounds like, she says, is a range: including the honest version where your best realistic result is still one you will not love. She uses Bill Eddy's positive and negative advocate distinction as the frame, and she is direct about the economics of the aggressive approach, where the intensity tracks the retainer balance rather than the case.

The practical half covers how to hire. Meet more than one attorney so you have something to compare. Pay for a consultation when the alternative is a rushed free one. Ask about communication style and expect a response within a day. Set two or three goals and measure every decision against them. Take ownership of your own paperwork, which she argues is where clients save themselves real money. And on resolution: Bauer and Lisa both come down on the side of an agreement over a trial, including the cost of trial preparation, the number of sessions a real mediation takes, and the option of mediating most of it and leaving one contested issue for a short hearing.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a lawyer who promises an outcome is telling you what you want to hear
• Positive and negative advocates, and how an attorney becomes the second kind
• What the aggressive approach costs: motions that go nowhere and a retainer that runs dry
• Questions worth asking in a consultation, and why you meet more than one attorney
• Why a paid consultation often gives you more than a free one
• Setting two or three goals, and using them when the case drifts toward vengeance
• Organizing your own documents, and why it changes how your lawyer works your case
• Why an agreement you negotiate covers your family better than a judge's order

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What a "pit bull" attorney sounds like in a consultation
3:00 Promises as a red flag, and setting real expectations
5:00 Pop culture, vengeance, and what family court is for
7:00 Renee's own story, and the shame that comes with divorce
9:00 Grit and perfectionism, and how they work against you
11:00 What the aggressive approach costs: motions, retainers, no progress
14:00 Positive and negative advocates, and setting goals you can hold to
17:00 Making decisions again, and building a team around you
19:00 What she wants from a client, and the patterns people repeat
24:00 Organizing your own case, and the client lawyers work harder for
28:00 Agreement vs. trial, mediation timelines, and the cost of trial prep

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
🔗 Renee Bauer at Happy Even After Family Law: https://familylawyerct.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.

There are days in a long custody case when the paralysis wins. You know the email is there, and you cannot make yourself open it. Kristin Cogan's first move is to take that off the list of things you are failing at, because a shutdown state is your body doing something very old and very deliberate.

Our guest this episode is Kristin Cogan, a licensed professional counselor and coach based in Houston and the founder of Imperfectly Wonderful Counseling, a practice built around anxiety and grief work with mothers and teens across Texas. She is a mother of five, and the thing that drew Lisa to her work is her focus on small wins, which maps directly onto a group of people whose big wins are controlled by a court calendar and an ex.

Kristin walks through the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise step by step, with Lisa doing it in real time, and explains why it works: connected to your senses, you are in the present, which is the one place the rumination and the catastrophizing cannot follow you. She covers rating your distress before and after so you can see the shift, adapting the exercise for insomnia when there is nothing to look at, reframing the 3am thought that you will never get back to sleep, slowing everything down as a signal to the body, and the acupressure mat some of her clients keep in the bed.

From there they get to what counts as progress. Pausing before responding to a triggering text. Three breaths before you open the email so you read it grounded. Setting the phone down and walking away, which is allowed. Kristin is warm about the people who cannot do any of it yet, and specific about how to start: two seconds is longer than a millisecond. She shares the affirmations she anchors a morning with, including one Lisa stopped to write down. And she closes on why this is not self-indulgence: children absorb a nervous system from the adult in the room, and that is where the cycle either continues or stops.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the freeze response is your body protecting you, not you failing
• The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise, step by step, and how to rate the shift
• How to adapt grounding for insomnia when there is nothing to look at
• Reframing the 3am thought that you will never fall back asleep
• What a win looks like when the big outcomes are out of your hands
• Micro wins: three breaths before the email, and putting the phone down
• Affirmations that anchor a morning, including the one Lisa wrote down
• Why regulating yourself is the part your kids inherit

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Overwhelmed as the baseline, and what freeze actually is
4:00 The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise, walked through live
7:00 Adapting it for insomnia, and reframing the 3am thought
9:00 Slowing everything down, and the acupressure mat
11:00 What counts as a win when the big ones are out of your control
12:00 Micro wins: three breaths before you open the email
13:30 When you cannot stop yourself from answering
15:00 Affirmations that anchor the day
17:00 What your nervous system teaches your kids
18:30 Spending everything on your kids and nothing on yourself

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
🔗 Kristin Cogan at Imperfectly Wonderful Counseling: https://www.imperfectlywonderful.com/
🔗 Kristin Cogan on Instagram (@imperfectlywonderfulmotherhood): https://www.instagram.com/imperfectlywonderfulmotherhood/

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

The message sat unread in a Facebook folder for two months. It said, roughly, that they could tell she was a good person, that they held nothing against her, and that if she had questions about the man she was seeing, she should call. Eventually she did.

Deana and Lizzie were married to the same man, Deana for twenty-seven years and Lizzie for six after her. They met when Deana's son asked his mother to call the woman who was leaving his father, because she was going to need to understand what she had been living with. That call turned into hours, then into a friendship, and eventually into the Surviving Toxic Relationships podcast, which they have now hosted together for roughly two years alongside a YouTube channel and a private group for women who do not want to be public about any of it.

In this episode they retrace the whole sequence. What Lizzie was told about the ex-wife, and how much of it was true enough to believe. The accounts that started locking her out. The retreat he went on to work on the marriage, and the week she packed. The cards she found in a drawer that turned out to be from a third woman, and what the dates on them proved. Finding that woman, and the phone call where a red coat, a motorcycle, and a gift from a trip he supposedly took alone all stopped adding up.

They also talk about the parts that outlast the marriage. Credit ruined without her knowing, a retirement account drained while his sat untouched, being denied a studio apartment with nowhere to go. Why they never held it against the woman who came next, and why they think an ex-wife who reaches out is worth hearing. Lizzie explains why she now aims her teaching at people who are not in an abusive relationship at all, and tells the story of the friend who told her she had found a place to live, and was killed by her husband that night. Deana closes on what she left nine times before she left for good, and what the years after actually felt like.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why warning your ex's next partner so often goes wrong, and when it is still worth doing
• How admitting to a smaller wrong can make someone seem more trustworthy, not less
• The gaps that gave it away: dates on cards, a trip taken alone, a coat that was not a gift
• What financial abuse looks like in a second marriage: credit, retirement, a denied lease
• An annulment for fraud, and how fast a restraining order can follow
• Why neither of them ever blamed the woman who came next
• What real accountability looks like, and what it looks like when it only lasts until they have you back
• Why educating people who are not in it may matter as much as reaching people who are

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Two women, the same husband, and the friendship after
3:00 The warning Deana decided not to give
5:00 What Lizzie was told about the ex-wife, and how she got out
9:00 Cards in a drawer, and a third woman nobody knew about
12:00 Finding her, and the phone call that unravelled it
18:00 Credit, retirement, and being denied a place to live
21:00 The annulment for fraud, and what happened with wife four
24:00 Why admitting fault made him seem more trustworthy
29:00 Why they never blamed the woman who came next
33:00 The podcast, the matadora, and teaching people not in it
45:00 Not knowing it was abuse, and what healing actually feels like

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
🔗 Surviving Toxic Relationships Podcast with The Matadoras: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1709167

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.