So today I wanna talk to you about divorce and what I call the divorce victim mentality and what that looks like. I wanna start here because I know that you’re dealing with so much and I know that you could get stuck in this victim mentality mode, and I just don’t want you to stay there. You know, this is gonna require you to do some soul searching and some really hard work.
But anything that you want in life, you know, if you really want it, you gotta work hard to get. You got that. Remember, you have the ability to change your thoughts and create an amazing life after divorce. What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could happen to you?
I’m Doreen Yaa, marital and family lawyer and certified life coach. I’ve been coaching and consulting women for over 26. I’ve seen it all. Now I’m sharing my expertise and my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time into your amazing divorce. I want you to know that just like me when I went through my own divorce, you’re gonna be in a good place.
It just is gonna take you some time. My goal for you is to hurry up that time to help you along, to give you the tools that I’ve learned going through my own. Being also a child from a divorce and dealing with thousands of clients, you know, as a divorce attorney practicing for over 26 years that I’ve seen where you are right now today.
And then I see them like a year later and they’re doing okay. They’re doing great. But why is it that some do really well and some of you don’t? What I’m gonna teach you throughout these podcasts is gonna help you to uncover that, to reveal that so you can start to really work on whatever you want in your life.
One of the most rewarding things for me is seeing people like you blossom and be at such a different place than where you are right now. Because you know what? Although you’re perfect the way you are right now, I know you want something more for yourself. I really do. And I know you know that too. You don’t wanna be stuck in your house every day hiding feeling like a victim.
What is that gonna get you? Nothing. Right? Let’s be. So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk about the victim mentality. We’re gonna talk about what it is like, how you’re gonna identify it, and how you’re gonna get out of it.
If you have the victim mentality, you’ll catch yourself complaining a lot. I see this all the time with the thousands of people that I’ve helped both before, during and after divorce. So much complaining. And what is amazing is from the outside, all we hear is a lot of blame being thrown around about your ex.
It sounds like a lot of he said, she said, and on and on, and, In reality, that’s what the courts hear. I hate to say it, but it’s true. So you don’t wanna go there, you don’t wanna be there. You know, I know someone is in the victim mentality as they are always the victim of their own story. What I mean by that, it’s a lot of like what my ex did to me, what he did to them.
You know, it’s always about how it hurts you as well. That’s how I want you to understand it and see your story. Do you wanna be the victim of the story or do you wanna be the person that moves on and gets out of that? So if your ex doesn’t bring your child home on time, or he is late with a support payment, it might sound like he did that to you.
If he’s not communicating clearly about access with your child or post-judgment issues, he’s just not clear. He doesn’t know how to communicate. But truth be told, he probably wasn’t a very good communicator during your marriage. In fact, that might be some of the reason why you got divorced in the first place.
Now, let me tell you, most women who have this divorce victim mentality tend to cycle in it for years, and I don’t want that for you. I know you don’t want that for yourself, right? It’s so super unproductive and why I’m speaking about it with you today.
You’ll realize that you are in a victim mentality when you spend a lot of time thinking about how he wronged you or how the divorce process wronged you. So the divorce victim mentality is what is known as past focused thinking. It involves looking to the past to find evidence as to how you feel. For me, it was my parents’ divorce and how my dad treated my mom and actually treated me and my sister, and it always left me identifying as a victim.
And that happened when I was five years old. And I carried that all the way through to my first marriage. And let me tell you, it’s probably part of the reason why my first husband and I divorced. Now I’m onto my second marriage, and I was able to clean up all that victim mentality thinking, and I’m in such a better relationship.
I know that has a lot to do with getting past that stale victim mentality. In my own circumstance, I just kept blaming my parents’ divorce for everything that was going on in my life, which when you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. Like my parents’ divorce was so long ago, but if I was to speak to you about how bad my dad was to my mom, how he cheated on her for years, how he even took my sister and I to visit with this new person in his.
You would join me in being a victim, you would say, oh my gosh, Doreen, that’s just horrible. I can’t believe you went through that. And a lot of people in your life are gonna help you to stay in victim mentality, so be aware of that.
The problem with being the victim of your divorce is that you give all your power to your ex or the legal system or whomever, or whatever else you are blaming as to your divorce. It in turn creates feelings for you, and I know you’re feeling this of helplessness, disempowerment, anger, fear, and oftentimes your ex who you identified as the perpetrator, Doesn’t even know this is going on in your brain.
I hear my clients so often saying things like, I’m just so pissed off or hurt that he did this to me. That he did this to our children, that he ruined our marriage. So when you think about your ex that you have qualified potentially as a perpetrator, I ask you, would you delegate your emotional life to your.
Would you let them choose how you’re gonna feel today? I suggest that you would never consciously let your ex control your emotional state, but as a victim, that’s what you’re exactly doing. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you go to an event for one of your children and your ex is there at the event.
Your ex says something derogatory to you in front of others, like, Hey, you look really tired. You could immediately go into this place of feeling hurt and project hate and frustration and anger. Then you could go home and you could dwell in it for a while and you could call your best friend and spend a lot of energy speaking about how Rudy was and what he said to you.
Think about all that time and energy. He just spent on one little comment that he said, you look really tired. The reality is, maybe you did look a little tired today, but see how much energy and time you spent there in that place of being a victim. Alternatively, look, you could go to the same event. Your ex could say, you look really tired today.
And you could be like, you know what? That’s your opinion. And just let it roll right off of you. Not spend a lot of time or energy on it. Just like move. You get to decide in that moment how you wanna feel about that comment that your ex just made In those situations, I want you to consider choosing not to be the victim, not to use it to your disadvantage, to gain control of your emotions, to be the bigger person to move on.
It was just an unnecessary, stupid comment. Nothing more, don’t make it into anything. So you might consider saying something like, can we move on now? Or, that’s interesting that you just shared that with me. And you know, that’s all it usually takes. Just shut it down right there and it won’t go any further.
He won’t say anything more and you can move on.
I personally attempted to always take responsibility for how I feel in my life. Well, let me be honest about that. After I did the hard work that you’re doing today, learning about how not to be a victim of my divorce. For me, I always wanna take responsibility for the way I feel and not let anybody else.
Remember your thoughts. Create a feeling that create an action or an inaction that create the results you have or don’t have in your life. If you want great results in your life, you’ve got to change your thoughts, and that includes not being a victim. Now often when I introduce his concept to women in divorce, they say, but don’t I need to stand up for myself?
I mean, if my ex can just say whatever he wants to say to me and I don’t get upset, or I don’t say something back to him in anger, I’m just letting him get away with it. But I strongly suggest that the opposite is true. Think about it. You wanna be an emotional adult, not an emotional. I think that when your ex or anyone for that matter, because remember all of what I’m teaching you, you can use with anybody in your life, not just your ex does or says something and you allow it to devastate you.
You’ve given all your power to that other person. You have identified as the victim, and that is so much. Than if you would just allow people to be who they are, say what they’re gonna say, even when what they’re doing suck. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to say something back. It just means that you don’t say something back out of anger or out of negative emotion.
I mean, you know this already. Like if someone says something to you that is derogatory, let’s say, and you just blow them off, or you’re just like, yeah, did you really say that? And it doesn’t affect you. It changes the whole. Versus if you coward down and like lash out and start to attack them, then you are the person that’s acting like an emotional child instead of letting that person be the person that they’re gonna be anyhow.
In fact, when you’re able to handle situations like that, you stay in your integrity, you stay in your emotional happiness, and the person acting like an idiot appears to everyone else as just being an idiot and being in a negative. Think about it. When you are happy and you’re in a positive place, you don’t talk negatively to other people.
Just doesn’t go, you know, if you are having a great day, you’re probably not gonna come down on somebody in a negative way. So remember that.
Here’s the key. The reason why you’re experiencing a negative emotion in the moment that somebody does something is because of thought in your brain. I cannot emphasize that enough. It’s not the statement that your ex makes, it’s not the act that he does. It’s the thought about what he did or didn’t do, and I can’t emphasize that enough.
Remember, thoughts create feeling. Create action, create results, or lack of results in your life. If you give the credit for feeling negative to your ex, then you just handed him all your power and you don’t wanna be in that divorce victim mentality. Until next time, love yourself. Be kind to yourself. Hold.
For yourself without judgment and know that you are absolutely a hundred percent perfect and amazing just the way you are. Thanks so much for listening. Get further information and some free secrets on how to make your life amazing after [email protected]. And remember, my. Yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce.
See you there. Views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Yaha Family Law Group or your Divorce Law Center, their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, or representatives. The content of your amazing divorce is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
None of the content on your amazing divorce should be considered legal advice, nor does anything herein create an attorney-client relationship. As always, consult a lawyer for your legal questions.
