A father of two daughters is asked by his wife about a third child. He tells her he needs a couple of months first. Not to think about money or logistics, but to make sure that if it is another girl, there is nothing in him that is disappointed, because a child should never arrive into that.

Oscar Pena is the host of the Daughtered Podcast, a show about fathers and daughters built around three ideas he keeps coming back to: stronger, more mindful, more present. He has served on active duty in the military for more than eighteen years, has been married for twenty-two, and has three daughters, thirteen, nine and five. The podcast came out of the youngest one. She was born during COVID, he was home with her constantly, and what that showed him was how much of his older two he had not been there for. He started talking about it with a friend who also had daughters, and the two of them worked out they could not be the only ones. Lisa was the first woman he interviewed, about her own father, and this conversation is the reverse.

Pena is candid about where he started. His first instinct on learning he would have a daughter was that his job was to be the barrier between her and the world, and he says that has changed through several years of interviewing people: the work is to be a guide and to hand a child the tools to protect herself, from physical dangers and from emotional ones. He also describes how fathers find help, which is rarely by joining a circle and talking. For him it was books first, then podcasts, hearing another man describe the same problem and realizing he had not asked anyone for anything. He is now part of a group of fathers doing exactly that in public, including the parts where they get it wrong.

He and Lisa also talk about the difference between his role and his wife's. He is the loud, playful one, and he thinks of himself as representing what life outside the house is going to be like, which he admits tips into being too hard for a child's age. His wife tells him when it does, and he says learning to nurture from her has been the harder skill.

The last stretch is the reason Lisa wanted him on. Chris's biggest fear when his own boys' custody schedule was set was losing his identity as their father, and Pena, who says plainly that he has not been through this, does not pretend otherwise. What he offers instead is what he has learned from being away for work, and what he tells separated fathers he knows: you matter whether you are in the room or not, your children are already thinking about you, and the only variable is what they are thinking. His answer on presence, learned the hard way from his own job, is the line worth taking away.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why being home but checked out registers with a child more than being away
• The shift from protecting your daughter to handing her tools to protect herself
• Why most men will not join a support circle, and how they actually find help
• What a father contributes that is different from what a mother contributes, and where that goes too far
• Why a father's identity takes a hit when a custody schedule is set
• What to say to the assumption that children should be with their mother most of the time
• What separated fathers can do in the hours they do get
• Why your children are thinking about you either way, and what decides which way

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Lisa on the Daughtered podcast, and her own father
3:00 Why he started the show, and what he missed with his first two
6:00 Finding out you are having a girl
8:00 The couple of months he asked for before their third
10:00 From protecting them to handing them the tools
11:00 Why men do not join support circles, and what they do instead
15:00 Books versus contact, and where information alone stops
18:00 The playful parent, and "the representative of life"
23:00 Losing your identity as a father inside a custody schedule
27:00 What he would say to a parent who assumes she should have them most
29:00 Stronger, mindful, present, and why home-but-absent is worse

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
🔗 Oscar Pena, the Daughtered Podcast: https://daughteredpodcast.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.

Couples therapy carries an assumption that both people in the room want the same thing. Suzanne Taluy says that assumption is where a lot of harm gets done, because when one partner is abusive and the other is reacting to it, joint sessions can make the situation worse rather than better.

Suzanne Taluy is a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of a group practice in Norwalk, Connecticut, where the clinicians work with children through older adults and specialize in trauma and life transitions. She is EMDR certified and trained in emotionally focused therapy for couples. She and Lisa met in person over lunch, which is part of why this conversation goes where it does.

Suzanne opens with the range of reasons people arrive at couples counseling, from newlyweds wanting a foundation to one partner dragging the other in hoping the therapist will take their side. She describes how she screens: a consultation before anyone books, direct questions about substance use and physical or emotional abuse, and a willingness to pause the work and send both people to their own therapists. Her comparison is to treating someone whose trauma is ongoing, where stabilizing is close to impossible while the source is still active.

Lisa then describes her own experience of couples counseling with a therapist who had been her ex's individual therapist for years, and being told to set her own feelings aside. Suzanne names the ethical problems in that plainly. They also cover why therapists are trained not to tell a couple whether to stay or go, and the situations where a clinician is obligated to speak up anyway. Toward the end, Suzanne gives the questions to ask any therapist before you commit, and Lisa raises what happens to a child in court-ordered therapy who knows their words are going back to the court, so nothing in the room is really private.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why an abusive dynamic makes couples therapy unsafe, and what a therapist should do instead
• How a good clinician screens for abuse and substance use before taking a couple
• Why the person who arrives second to their partner's longtime therapist is at a disadvantage
• The questions to ask in a consultation: training, years with couples, and what they aim for
• Why therapists are trained not to tell a couple to separate, and when they speak up anyway
• How a manipulative partner works on the therapist, and why training is the defense
• Why trauma sits on a spectrum, and who to look for if you are the one seeking help
• What court-ordered reporting does to a child's ability to trust their own therapist

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why people come to couples counseling, and who gets screened out
5:00 How Suzanne screens for abuse before she takes a couple
7:00 You cannot stabilize someone while the harm is ongoing
10:00 What to ask a therapist in a consultation
12:00 "Process consultants," not fixers
14:00 Lisa's experience: her ex's therapist as their couples counselor
19:00 Why therapists rarely tell a couple to separate
22:00 How a manipulative partner works on the therapist
24:00 What to do instead, and finding a trauma-trained therapist

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
🔗 Suzanne Taluy at Embrace Psychotherapy: https://www.embracepsychotherapyllc.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.

Holidays in Torie Wiksell's childhood ran on a schedule nobody explained: her mother came first, and her father waited outside until she left. Torie remembers being a kid and thinking that was not normal, and also that no adult in the room seemed to agree with her.

Our guest this episode is Torie Wiksell, a therapist and boundaries coach who has practiced for roughly twelve and a half years and spent much of that time working clinically with people who have personality disorders, including borderline, narcissistic, antisocial, and histrionic presentations. She also grew up with a narcissistic mother, which is the reason colleagues started sending her the cases that fell outside their comfort zone. She runs a membership community for adults with toxic parents, built an app called Confident Boundaries for cycle breakers, and hosts the weekly podcast You're Not Crazy. Her parents divorced when she was a teenager, and her father's family aligned with her mother completely, so the dynamic BTGO clients describe in court is one she lived in.

Torie and Lisa map the roles that show up in these families and why they matter to a parent in a custody fight: the enabling parent, the scapegoat, the golden child, and the black-and-white worldview that makes them possible. They talk about why oversimplified healing advice adds shame rather than relief, why not every parent loves their child in a way that means anything, and why a child who already senses the truth may not be able to say it while they still depend on the person they would be saying it about. They also cover the gendered assumptions that get people believed or disbelieved, and how black-and-white thinking about abuse ends up protecting the person doing it.

The last stretch is for parents whose kids have already pulled away. Torie describes what shifted when she left home and met people whose families worked differently, why the early attachment you built is not erased by an estrangement, and how to build a support system when your own relatives have taken your ex's side. She also names the red flags in the recovery space itself, starting with anyone who tells you it is simple.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• The roles in a family with a toxic parent: enabler, scapegoat, and golden child
• Why the scapegoat is often the healthiest member and still the last one to leave
• Why five-step healing advice adds shame instead of relief
• Why a child can know the truth and still be unable to say it out loud
• What tends to change once a child gets out from under the other parent's daily control
• Why the attachment you built in your child's early years still counts later
• How to build a support system when your own family has sided with your ex
• Red flags in the recovery space: who is selling, and who is teaching

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The myth that everyone else has a healthy family
3:00 Growing up with a narcissistic parent who looked like the perfect mom
5:00 When your ex's family lines up behind them instead of you
9:00 Gender, the cycle of abuse, and men who are not believed
11:00 Scapegoat, golden child, and the enabling parent
15:00 Why five-step healing advice makes the shame worse
19:00 Why a child cannot say out loud what they already know
25:00 Growing up in a cult, and what happens when a kid gets out
31:00 Why the early years you had with your child still count
35:00 Building a support system, and red flags in the healing space

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
🔗 Torie Wiksell at Confident Boundaries: https://www.confidentboundaries.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.

The wait is often what wears people down most. A child protective services investigation can take weeks to resolve, and every day of it can feel like evidence is stacking up against you, even when nothing is actually happening. Bailey Payne, who used to run reunification services for CPS, says that wait is just how an overloaded system works, not a signal about your case.

Bailey Payne worked in child protective services, primarily overseeing reunification after a child had been removed or separated from a parent during an investigation, and later became a board-certified behavior analyst. She now consults in schools, provides private behavioral therapy in homes, and teaches future educators at the university level. She's also a single mother and wrote a book, Behavior Breakthrough, drawing on both her professional background and her own experience parenting through crisis.

Bailey and Lisa talk through what reunification actually means, why it remains the goal even after real abuse or a parent's incarceration, and why family courts push so hard to preserve a relationship with both parents: kids who lose contact with a parent in childhood very often seek that parent out again once they turn eighteen, whatever happened before. They cover what to actually do when CPS calls or visits (behave normally, don't over-clean, don't perform) and address false allegations honestly: Bailey acknowledges the system fails people, but says most false claims get dismissed within a few visits and calls, and an unsubstantiated report reflects on the person who filed it, not the parent it named.

The second half of the conversation moves into Bailey's current work: practical ways to work on a difficult or aggressive child's behavior, why giving yourself grace as a parent matters as much as any technique, and why noticing what your child is doing right changes their behavior faster than only managing what's going wrong.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What reunification actually means, and why it's still the goal even after documented abuse
• Why family courts push so hard to preserve a relationship with both parents, even a harmful one
• What to actually do when CPS calls or visits: behave normally, don't perform, don't over-clean
• Why most false allegations get dismissed within a few visits and calls, not months of investigation
• Why the wait during an investigation is a symptom of an overloaded system, not a signal about your case
• The mindset shift that changes a child's difficult behavior faster than any single technique
• Why giving yourself grace as a parent matters as much as any parenting skill

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What reunification means, and why it's still the goal even after abuse
5:00 What a reunification plan actually includes
9:00 Why courts push so hard to preserve both-parent relationships
11:00 False allegations: what usually happens, and who it actually reflects on
13:00 What to do, and not do, when CPS calls or shows up
15:00 The long wait, and why it isn't a signal about your case
17:00 From caseworker to behavior analyst: giving yourself grace in crisis mode
19:00 The mindset shift that changes a child's difficult behavior

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
🔗 Bailey Payne: https://www.baileypayne.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.

You are already parenting differently than you were parented. That was the promise you made yourself. Then the case started, and there are days when you have nothing to give anyone, and you can feel yourself becoming somebody you did not sign up to be.

Dr. Sasha Reiisi is a licensed professional clinical counselor and a doctor of education, practicing in California with adults, couples and families. His specialty is early childhood trauma, and he built it the long way round: years of clinical work with children from birth to five, much of it with low-income families and single-parent households. What changed his direction was noticing that the difficulties he was treating in a three-year-old showed up almost unchanged in a thirty-year-old, still unrepaired, still shaping decisions the adult could not trace back to anything.

He and Lisa start with what trauma actually is. Not the event, he says, but what the nervous system does during it, and the conclusion a child draws afterwards. He gives the small version that carries no obvious incident at all: the parent who is late to the school gate most days while every other child gets collected, and the belief a child assembles out of that about whether anyone shows up when they say they will. He also takes apart the idea that damage is permanent. Repair is possible at any age, in either direction, and adults keep giving their parents chances to get it right long after it looks reasonable to.

The practical half covers what to do when the person who hurt you will not acknowledge it, and what reparenting means in that case. Why healing is relational and community matters alongside therapy, plus a straight answer to Lisa's question about support groups that keep people circling the same grievance instead of moving. Why the body is half the work, what bilateral movement is, and why he takes teenage clients for a walk rather than sitting them in a chair. And his answer for anyone with no time: healing happens in the pause before you go out the door, and in the apology after you snapped, and children need roughly ten minutes of real attention a day.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why trauma is what happens in the nervous system, not the event itself
• How trauma builds with no single incident, and what a repeatedly late pick-up teaches a child
• Why repair is possible at any age, whether your child is four or thirty-four
• What healing looks like when the person who hurt you will never acknowledge it
• How to tell a support community that helps from one that keeps you circling
• Why talking is only part of trauma work, and how movement reconnects you to your body
• What bilateral movement is, and why hard conversations go better on a walk
• How to make real progress in small doses when you have no time to spare

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 "I want to do better than my parents"
5:00 What trauma actually is, and where it happens
9:00 Trauma that builds: the late pick-up, the empty fridge
11:00 Why repair works at any age, even decades later
13:00 When the person who hurt you will not acknowledge it
15:00 Talk therapy, community, and getting back into your body
17:00 Bilateral movement, and hard conversations on a walk
19:00 Which support communities heal, and which keep you circling
24:00 Healing in small doses when you have no time
27:00 Micro-progress, and moving from automatic to aware

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. Sasha Reiisi on Instagram (@dr.sashareiisi): https://www.instagram.com/dr.sashareiisi/

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.

Before Mia Poppe agrees to run a motion, she opens a spreadsheet. One column for what the motion will cost each side, one for the odds it actually pays off, one for the months it will add to your life. Then she asks the client whether it is worth it.

Mia Poppe has practiced matrimonial law in the New York metro area for 18 years, with her office in Midtown Manhattan and a niche competency in high-conflict matters where custody is contested. She is also a member of what she calls the club: she went through a litigated custody case of her own, with young children, and came out the other side. That combination shapes how she talks to clients, which is directly, and as partners rather than dependents.

Mia and Lisa work through what it means to treat your case like a business. She describes the old, patriarchal model of lawyering, the one that tells a frightened client to sit down and say nothing, and why it costs people dearly. She explains the levels of client involvement, when it is fine to lean fully on your lawyer at the start, and why that has to be temporary. And she connects the financial waste in a high-conflict case to its hidden costs: more drama, more angst, and the toll a nervous system stuck on high alert takes on your health.

There is practical ground here as well. Why questioning a line on your invoice makes you a better-served client. How to find the trial-retainer clause most people skip. Why Mia refuses to walk a client down what she calls the parade of horribles. She and Lisa also talk about children, and why letting kids sit with hard feelings, supported by their own team, builds a resilience no parent can hand them.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why going passive with your attorney can repeat the same power dynamic you just left
• The quarterback approach: your lawyer runs the field, you call plays with the information only you have
• How overusing even a great attorney drains money meant for your kids
• Running the numbers: putting a dollar figure on each motion, and weighing the price of peace
• Why reading your invoices and questioning charges makes you a better-served client
• The trial retainer buried in your retainer agreement, and why to read it before you sign
• How the stress of a long case shows up in your body, and why managing it is strategy
• Why you cannot shield your kids from all of it, and what actually builds their resilience

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Strategic oversight, and empowerment at your most powerless point
3:00 "I work for you," and why you can't step off the field
5:00 The old patriarchal model of lawyering, and why it fails
7:00 The quarterback and the sideline: who calls the plays
9:00 Levels of involvement, and the cost of overdepending on your lawyer
13:00 Why you can't save your kids, and building their team
19:00 The A+ client, and mitigating cost to mitigate drama and stress
25:00 Reading your invoices and pricing out a motion
31:00 The price of peace, the trial retainer, and the fine print
35:00 Plain English, your exhaustion, and refusing the parade of horribles

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
🔗 Mia Poppe: https://www.miapoppe.com/

🎧 More with Mia Poppe on this podcast
Ep 64: A Family Lawyer's 3-Year Custody Battle, and the Turn
Ep 245: Managing Your Reactivity in Family Court

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.

Most treatment for a child's anxiety puts the child in the room. SPACE does the opposite. It is an evidence-based intervention for pediatric anxiety and OCD, developed at the Yale Child Study Center by Dr. Eli Lebowitz, and it works on the child by working with the parents. Twelve to fourteen sessions, and the kid may never attend one.

Our guest is Emma Kate Freatman, a licensed professional counselor with a private practice in Wilton, Connecticut. Before going into practice full time she worked at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, where she was intensively trained in dialectical behavior therapy and cognitive processing therapy and ran intensive outpatient groups for adults and adolescents. She still contracts there doing trauma and PTSD work in the transitional living program. Earlier she worked for Kids in Crisis, in outreach and in their safe haven shelter, and as an in-school teen talk counselor at a Connecticut high school. She is licensed in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Emma Kate opens with what a parent should actually watch for before deciding a child needs help: changes in sleep, appetite, and mood that outlast the stressor that caused them, headaches and stomachaches, and a social withdrawal that does not resolve in a couple of weeks. She talks about the teenager who does not want to be there, why she spends the first several sessions building rapport instead of teaching coping skills, and how she handles confidentiality so a child is never surprised by what gets shared.

Then she and Lisa get into the part that matters here. Anxiety produces avoidance, and a frightened parent accommodates it, which is a reasonable instinct that ends up feeding the thing. Emma Kate walks through protecting versus demanding, the mental health day that was sometimes the right call and sometimes a dodge, and what happens when a child is anxious about going to the other house and can feel their parent is anxious about it too. They also cover therapists in custody cases, requests to testify, and what a parent gets out of the training even though the outcomes are measured on the child.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• What SPACE stands for, where it came from, and why the parent is the one in the session
• Anxiety defined simply: overestimating the threat, underestimating your ability to handle it
• The changes in sleep, appetite, mood, and friendships that mean a child needs support
• Protecting vs demanding, and why neither response builds your child's confidence
• How accommodations you never noticed end up feeding your child's avoidance
• Why a child in a custody fight reads your regulation as the answer to whether they are safe
• How a therapist handles confidentiality when parents are in conflict, and requests to testify
• Why SPACE can be a route forward when your ex will not agree to therapy for your child

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What SPACE stands for, and meeting Emma Kate Freatman
3:00 Signs a child needs support: sleep, mood, appetite, pulling away
5:00 The kid who refuses to be there, and building rapport first
9:00 How much a parent gets to know, at ten and at seventeen
13:00 Confidentiality, and never surprising a child with what you share
15:00 Parents in conflict, and being asked to testify in court
19:00 How SPACE differs from CBT: treating the child through the parent
23:00 Protecting vs demanding, and accommodations that feed avoidance
25:00 School refusal, and the anxiety around going to the other house
29:00 What the sessions look like, and where to find Emma Kate

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
🔗 Emma Kate Freatman, LPC (clinician profile, Silver Hill Hospital): https://silverhillhospital.org/clinician/emma-kate-freatman/

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.

Group healing gets recommended constantly and explained rarely. Karen Robinson's version of why it works is the collective wisdom in the room: working with one professional gives you one perspective, and a room of survivors with different histories gives you all of theirs.

Karen Robinson has been a therapist for 27 years, with an LCSW, and works as a coach as well so that geography does not limit who she can serve. She runs healing retreats and four summits a year, and she has built the business as a mother-daughter operation, with her older daughter editing and her middle daughter handling design. She describes herself as a complex trauma survivor: a childhood with domestic violence, child abuse, poverty, and food insecurity, being stalked by a boyfriend after running away from home, and two marriages before her current one that involved power, control, and emotional abuse.

In this episode Karen and Lisa talk about how to choose a community rather than fall into one. Karen curates hers around survivors who are working on their healing, using the principle of naming the trauma but not claiming it, alongside accountability for your own recovery. Lisa describes how the same idea plays out in BTGO's weekly legal abuse support group, which combines male and female clients on the grounds that abuse is a human issue, and which stays on strategy rather than on the system being broken.

Karen also lays out what to look for in professional help. She distinguishes a trauma informed therapist, which can mean a class or two, from a trauma competent one certified in the evidence-based modalities. She covers the holistic pillars she works across, spiritual, emotional, energetic, relational and mental health, and the bottom-up practices that sit underneath them. Her advice on fit comes down to trusting your intuition, asking a therapist directly what training they have done, and giving yourself permission to keep looking until you feel heard.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why people tend to recover faster in a group than in one-to-one work alone
• Naming the trauma without claiming it, and taking accountability for your own healing
• Red flags for a group that keeps its members circling the same story
• Why a support group that mixes male and female members can work in your favor
• The difference between a trauma informed therapist and a trauma competent one
• The holistic pillars: spiritual, emotional, energetic, relational, and mental health
• The questions to ask a therapist about their training and certifications
• The simplest test of fit: do you leave the session feeling heard

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Coach or therapist, and why Karen wears both hats
3:00 Karen's own story, and the case manager who got her wrong
5:00 Why people heal faster in a group
6:00 Red flags: groups that keep you circling the same story
7:00 Naming the trauma without claiming it
8:00 Trauma competent, not just trauma informed
9:00 The holistic pillars and bottom-up practices
10:00 How to tell if a therapist is the right fit
11:00 Where to find Karen

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
🔗 Karen Robinson at Heal Thrive Dream: https://www.healthrivedream.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.

People walk into family court expecting it to work like the courtrooms they have seen elsewhere, and then feel blindsided when it does not. Attorney Dina Ovsepian describes it plainly: the rules of the game are different, and approaching it the way you would a civil lawsuit puts you at a disadvantage before anything is filed.

Dina Ovsepian is a California-licensed attorney practicing civil and business litigation, with enough family court work behind her to speak to the contrast between the two systems. She also creates content breaking down complex legal issues for a general audience, including analysis of well-known cases, and connects that work to a broader interest in self-worth and personal empowerment. This conversation came about because more of our clients are in California, particularly Los Angeles, than anywhere else.

Ovsepian's first target is the belief that a contested case calls for aggressive representation, the more combative the better. In her reading, family court is oriented toward resolution, and that approach pulls attention away from it while raising the temperature between two people who still have to deal with each other. Where a history of abuse exists, she treats that escalation as a safety question, not a strategic one. Her alternative is the assertive attorney: someone who holds a position, recognizes a bullying tactic and stops it, and keeps the case on the narrow set of issues the judge will decide.

That leads into the relationship itself, which she and Lisa treat as the real subject. Why an attorney needs to communicate in a way an overwhelmed client can actually take in. Why clients coming out of emotional abuse can read a busy lawyer's silence as the same treatment they just left, and where the genuine line is on responsiveness. Whether changing counsel mid-case looks bad, and to whom. Setting billing terms and expectations at the outset, including the client who was given a written estimate for a three-day trial and used it to change strategy. And why a working relationship where you hold the wheel is worth practicing on now.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why family court runs on different rules than a civil case, and what changes because of it
• The difference between an aggressive attorney and an assertive one
• Why answering every accusation in a letter weakens your position and raises your bill
• How narrow the issues actually are, and what a judge is deciding
• Where the real line is on attorney responsiveness
• Whether changing attorneys mid-case looks bad, and to whom
• What to settle at the outset: billing, expectations, and cost estimates
• Why the relationship with your lawyer is a chance to practice holding the wheel

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Presentation, and how family court differs from a civil case
5:00 The aggressive-attorney misconception, and the safety cost
7:00 Aggressive vs. assertive, and narrowing the issues
10:00 The opposing-counsel letter, and the cost of chasing red herrings
13:00 Keeping the focus on what the court will actually decide
15:00 Communication, and reading a busy lawyer as the old dynamic
17:00 Handing off your fate, and keeping the wheel
19:00 Not repeating the old power dynamic with your attorney
24:00 Changing attorneys: does it look bad to a judge
27:00 Setting expectations and billing terms from the outset
30:00 A trial estimate in writing, and what it let one client decide

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.

Ask an adult whether they are doing what they thought they would be doing at twenty, and the answer is almost always no. Joel Mounts's point is not that plans change. It is that the years between the vague idea and the correction get spent anyway, along with the tuition, and almost none of that is necessary.

Joel Mounts works with teenagers on direction, career planning and the skills underneath both. He was homeschooled until ninth grade, which he says is where he first noticed how much of a school day is not learning. He went to college for pre-med, worked in a hospital, worked out he did not want to be a doctor, and by then was too far into the degree to stop. He then went to Asia and spent eight years teaching, three in China and five in Taiwan, which is where he found competitive debate. That has been most of his career since, and it is the foundation of how he coaches now.

Lisa invited him knowing he had nothing to say about custody, and he says so himself in the first minute. What he does have is the mechanics of critical thinking, which this community needs for a reason unique to it: children in these families are handed a version of reality by an adult who wants them to accept it whole. In the debate format Mounts teaches, seven topics a year, students must argue both sides, including the one they came in certain about. Before that comes source evaluation. Who wrote this, what do they have to gain, how is the bias running, and the separate question of whether an argument holds up logically even when the person making it has no credentials at all. He describes it as a muscle, which is the encouraging part: it strengthens with use.

From there they get into persuasion, which maps onto what BTGO teaches its clients almost exactly. Turning facts into something a judge will accept. Reading the individual judge in front of you, because they are all different. And a thought experiment about approaching a stranger at a party that lands on how much of persuasion is carried by tone and bearing rather than the words themselves.

The last stretch is for anyone with a teenager. Mounts is not against college and says so, but he wants a real reason behind the decision rather than a default, and he walks through what he watches in the numbers and in the trades. His alternative is concrete: pick a problem worth solving, find the people already working on it, and email them, because they have public addresses and they like talking to young people. Then school stops being arbitrary. He explains how to coach a shy kid through the first cold email and the first phone call, and describes the ambitious version, one recorded conversation a week from sixteen through college, which adds up to a few hundred professionals. He closes with the free version any parent can do this month, which he did with a twelve-year-old who had wanted to be a pilot for three years and had never met one.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• How to evaluate a source: bias, credentials, and whether the argument holds without them
• Why arguing the side you disagree with is the exercise that builds the skill
• Why a child who questions sources has something in place when the story arrives
• How facts become an argument that actually persuades the person deciding
• How much of persuasion is carried by tone and bearing rather than words
• Why college needs a real reason behind it, and what to ask before committing
• How a high schooler can get fifteen minutes with a leading expert, for free
• The one thing any parent can do this month with a kid who says they want a career

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why most teenagers have no idea where they are going
3:00 Homeschool, pre-med, and eight years teaching in Asia
6:00 Why debate, and what a bored, bright kid does with it
10:00 Arguing the side you disagree with, and judging a source
13:00 Building an argument that persuades a judge
15:00 Tone, bearing, and the cocktail-party test
17:00 Is college still the default answer?
20:00 The reason that makes college worth it, and emailing the experts
24:00 Teaching a kid to send the email and make the call
26:00 Turning screen time into a few hundred interviews
30:00 The free version: take your kid to meet someone doing the job

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
🔗 Joel Mounts at Daobloom: https://daobloom.io/

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.