Jann Glasser

Mom and Dad, Here’s What I Need During Your Divorce

February 27, 2017 By CDSOC

by Jann Glasser, Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT), Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Coach/Psychotherapist, Collaborative Coach

For children, divorce can be stressful, sad, and confusing. At any age, kids may feel uncertain or angry at the idea of their parents splitting up.

As a parent, you can make the process and its effects less painful for your children. Helping your kids cope with divorce means providing stability at home and attending to your children’s needs with a reassuring, positive attitude. It won’t be easy, but these tips can help your children cope.

A Child’s Wish List During Their Parents’ Divorce

I need both of you to stay involved in my life. Please communicate with me. Make phone calls, send texts and ask me lots of questions, but respect my right not to answer all the time. When you don’t stay involved, I feel like I’m not important and that you don’t really love me.
Please stop fighting and try hard to get along with each other. Try to agree on things that have to do with me. When you fight about me, I think that I did something wrong and I feel guilty.
I love you both and want to enjoy the time that I spend with each of you. Please support me and my separate time with each of you. If you act jealous or upset when I am with my other parent, I feel like I need to take sides and love one of you more than the other.
Please communicate directly with my other parent so that I don’t have to send messages back and forth. I don’t want to be your messenger.
When talking about my other parent, please say only nice things, or don’t say anything at all. When you say mean, unkind things about my other parent, I feel like you are expecting me to take your side.
Please remember I want both of you to be a part of my life. I count on my mom and dad to raise me, to teach me what is important, and to help me when I have problems. Please choose not to be another one of my problems!

It’s normal to feel uncertain about how to give your kids the right kind of support through your divorce. It may feel like uncharted waters, but you can successfully navigate this uncertain time—and help your kids emerge from it feeling loved, confident, and strong.

Your patience, reassurance, and a listening ear can minimize tension as children learn to cope with new circumstances. By providing routines kids can rely on, it reminds them they can count on you for stability, structure, and care.

As you establish a working relationship with your co-parent, you help your kids avoid the stress that comes with watching parents in conflict. During this transitional time, you can’t be without some feelings of uncertainty and stress yourself, but you can greatly reduce your children’s pain by making their well-being your top priority. Put them at the center of your interests – not in the middle of your battlefield.

A Divorced Parent’s Holiday Gift Guide: Your Child’s Wish List

December 14, 2016 By CDSOC

by Jann Glasser, Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT), Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Coach/Psychotherapist, Collaborative Coach

Holiday season is here again. If you are divorced with children, the season can be challenging as you attempt to coordinate two households and extended family, trying to meet everyone’s needs simultaneously. As you begin to review your child’s wish list for the season, there is something more precious every child wants that you won’t find in any store or even on Amazon.

It’s time with both parents during the holidays, the kind of quality time that helps your children feel reassured that while their parents might not be living together anymore, your relationship with your child remains the same.

If your child could write out their wish list for the things to make it easier, the list would look like this:

1. Help me shop for or make a gift for my other parent, if I’m not old enough to do it myself. It feels good when I can give you each gifts that you like.

2. Don’t make me feel guilty about the gift I got or what fun I had with each of you.

3. Let me celebrate family traditions that are fun and important to me. Don’t make me give them up because they’re inconvenient to you or interfere with the parenting plan schedule. People first!

4. Let me be free of drama, bickering, or fighting about holiday plan scheduling, or other details of the season.

5. Please remember that I’m not property to be divided up. I have my own needs and feelings about my family and the holidays.

6. Ask me what I might like to do with each of my parents during the holiday season that is special to me, and help make it happen.

7. Please avoid asking questions about what I did while I spent time with the other parent.

8. I don’t want to rush through opening my presents or eating a meal or visiting with relatives because I have to be at my other parent’s house. If all we’re doing is hurrying, the holidays will be ruined for me.

9. Support me making my own decisions about when I will be staying with each of you when I’m home from college so I don’t get stressed out about it when I ought to be studying for finals.

10. Please enjoy time with me while I’m with you rather than complaining that you didn’t get the exact times or amount of time with me that you wanted. There is no scorecard that keeps track of the amount of my love for you. Relax. Love me back. Let go of the details.

Wishing you and your family peace this holiday season.

5 Steps to Overcome Divorce Anxiety

September 1, 2016 By CDSOC

Divorce can create anxiety in many ways. These tips can help you find ways to cope. Photo: Marinadel Castell, Creative Commons

by Jann Glasser, Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT), Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Coach/Psychotherapist, and Collaborative Coach

Fear of an uncertain future can stop us from doing great things, and it can keep us holding onto things and habits that are hurting us. The majority of people occasionally wonder what the future will be like. Whether we will be happy, whether we will have enough money, whether we will be healthy. But when you are contemplating, going through, or coming out of divorce, your anxiety over the future can be overwhelming and unbearable.

For some, future fears are about their children: whether their children will cope with or forgive them for the divorce.

Others question whether they will adjust to living alone, have enough money, or meet someone special who they can share and enjoy life with.

Some are concerned about how family, friends, colleagues, business partners and others will react to the news and whether their relationship with them will change.

Finally, there are those who are still in grief, dealing with the loss and questioning whether the pain, stress, frustration, guilt, sadness or resentment will ever pass.

The common theme among them is the desire to know if they will be happy again. Some anxiety over an uncertain future is natural. But constantly thinking about it is draining and damaging..

Concerns are often based on “mights” — things which might or might not happen.

Left alone with your thoughts, you can feel exhausted, anxious and overwhelmed. Recognize that you don’t have to make all the decisions now. One by one you can address those decisions as they impact the uncertain future.

Before we enter into embracing the uncertain future, letting go of relationship baggage is an essential first step. Only after you free yourself from past bitterness, anger, and sadness can true peace of mind and happiness be achieved. After divorce, many still suffer unresolved frustration, disappointment and guilt with the way their marriage ended.

These thoughts can consume you. The stress, anxiety and tension you still feel can take a toll on your health, sleep patterns, and feelings of being constantly on edge. Divorce Coaching is one way of helping you to let go of the past so that you can move forward to deal with future uncertainty, enabling you to feel stronger, happier and more confident.

5 Steps to Embracing the Uncertain Future

Let go of expectations

When you expect things, you set yourself up for disappointment. You can take actions to influence your future, but you cannot control outcomes or others. If you expect the worst, then you can get trapped into a negative closed minded outlook that will prevent you from seeing and seizing opportunities. If you expect the best, and things don’t go exactly the way you wanted, you have to deal with this disappointment.

Instead of expecting the future to give or not give you something specific, focus on what you’ll do to create what you want to experience.

Create options for different possible outcomes

The hardest part of dealing with uncertainty, at least for me, is the inability to plan and feel in control. This is how many clients feel. Until they know what the outcome of their divorce will be, such as their financial situation or even how they will feel living alone, they can’t makes plans about until they have more clarity. But they can create and plan for possible outcomes.

Try to make lists of options and their possible outcomes. For example, what would you do if you get more or less money than expected? Explore different housing options, and consider different parenting arrangements for your children.

To achieve peace of mind, it can be useful to list plans for different outcomes. Making rough plans can be reassuring and lessen anxiety. Many also find after talking it through with someone, uncertainty no longer played on their mind. So get together with a friend, family member or coach and talk through your options and outcomes.

Grow confident in your ability to handle any situation

Start by reminding yourself of difficult times in your life you survived and got through: a difficult childhood, bullying, a previous break up, challenging work situation or perhaps another major loss. The chances are at the time it seemed unbearable, but looking back you coped and got through it.

Another method to help with managing anxiety is to ask yourself, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Whatever that worst is, then ask yourself, “What could I do to cope if the worse did happen?” Or “How would I handle it?”

Become an observer and advisor

It is not the unknown that bothers some people. Everything in life is unknown, we all know this. But what bothers some folks most is finding themselves getting lost in a repetitive cycle of thoughts: about what may and may not happen in the future, rather than being able to just deal with it when it comes and not think about it all the time.

Try sharing every single thought with yourself. Then ask yourself what advice you would give a friend, family member or colleague who had the same thought. You may find yourself telling him or her not to be “ridiculous,” a pointless exercise or a waste of time thinking that way. Examining each and every minute detail of life can be exhausting! You gain perspective by becoming an observer and advisor to yourself. You can now use this to prevent getting wrapped up in your own thoughts.

Try this suggestion: write down, share, and where possible find humor in any escalating thoughts. Ask yourself. “If a friend or family member were facing this situation or having these thoughts, what advice would I give them?”

Manage and reduce stress effectively

Built up stress and anxiety affects breathing rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, muscle tension and every organ in our bodies.

Finding a way to reduce stress, as well as letting go of that stress, is essential to maintaining a healthy life. When we go through a painful break up and divorce, this is particularly true. Different strategies work for different people. It could be a relaxing bath or massage, physical exercise, deep breathing, simple laughing or meditation.

One activity which helps some people de-stress is cooking. You may love creating and trying new dishes, as you find yourself switching off from everything else. Don’t buy into the lame excuse “It is pointless cooking for one.” It’s great fun experimenting! You can freeze almost anything. Cooking and giving food to others can be really rewarding. Plus, it’s an excuse to invite others over.

Find a healthy way of de-stressing, that works for you and do it regularly.

Let me close with words from a special prayer. Many people regardless of religious or cultural background and beliefs find them helpful in difficult times.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change , the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Tracy McKenney named President of Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County

August 4, 2016 By CDSOC

New board named to serve 2016-2017 term August 4, 2016 Contact: Gayle Lynn Falkenthal, APR
619-997-2495 or gayle@falconvalleygroup.com

(Irvine, California) – Tracy McKenney, CDFA, CFP, has been named President of Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County for the 2016-2017 term. McKenney is a Certified Financial Planner and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst in private practice based in Irvine, California.

Joining McKenney on the 2016-2017 Board of Directors are:

President-Elect: Therese Fey
Vice President: Patrice Courteau
Secretary: Diana L. Martinez
Treasurer: Leslee Newman
Advertising and Marketing Chair: Yaffa Balsam
Membership Chair: Marvin L. Chapman
Training and Education Chair: Suanne Honey
Speakers Bureau Co-Chairs: Carol Hughes and Bruce Fredenburg
Website Chair: Sara E. Milburn
Member at Large: Jann Glasser

“It is important to me to be involved in an organization like Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County. Collaborative Divorce represents a significant advancement in resolving divorce respectfully,” said McKenney. “Going through a divorce is in some ways harder than dealing with the death of a loved one. It worsens when the process is dragged out through contentious, time-consuming and costly litigation in court. In so many cases, couples can avoid the damage of a court battle, even when they aren’t sure they can cooperate. Our approach makes it possible.

“Collaborative Divorce keeps decision-making in the hands of the couple. It spares them and especially their children the duress from an acrimonious divorce, preventing lasting harm, and preserving the family relationships for a healthier future,” said McKenney. “In most cases, it is less expensive than a litigated divorce.”

“Our goal for the coming year is to make more couples in Orange County aware of Collaborative Divorce,” said McKenney.

About Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County

Collaborative Divorce Solutions of Orange County (CDSOC) was founded in 2003 to advise couples in Orange County about out of court options to traditional divorce litigation. Our group consists of experienced family law attorneys, licensed mental health professionals, and credentialed financial professionals, all of whom are specially trained in Collaborative Practice, mediation, and conflict resolution. Working under the Collaborative Practice model, the result is a divorce guided with respect and compassion in a non-adversarial way so families can make the best possible decisions about their future.

CDSOC is online at https://cdsoc.com/, and Facebook.

Your Brain on Divorce: How to Take Charge

June 20, 2016 By CDSOC

by Jann Glasser, Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT), Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Coach/Psychotherapist, and Collaborative Coach

During your divorce, you may find your heart pounding and your thoughts racing as if you were driving in the Indy 500. An email, text or voicemail from your attorney, accountant or spouse in your inbox may result in fear and dread as immediate reactions. This is one example of the brain on divorce; easily triggered, distraught and overwhelmed. You are trying to function while stressed, sad, and sleep deprived, reacting as if under attack.

Divorce is one of the most significant losses and stressful life events people experience. Unlike other losses, there is no bereavement leave from work, no sympathy cards, and no rituals that bring your friends and family around you to acknowledge the loss. Life goes on without skipping a beat. You are expected to go on.

Not only are you expected to go on, but you are also expected to gather all financial paperwork, other information, make time in your schedule for additional meetings, phone calls, emails, help your kids cope, and be prepared to make major parenting and financial decisions that have long term consequences. No wonder you’re exhausted and overwhelmed!

Being such a stressful process, divorce can bring someone to their knees even if they generally cope well at other times, turning a well-adjusted, reasonable person into a raving maniac. When you understand what’s going on in your body and mind under stress, it can help you have compassion for yourself and also choose effective coping strategies.

Your brain is responding to the divorce as a threat. The part of your brain that manages emotion and the fight-flight-freeze response (the limbic system or mid-brain) kicks into high gear. We commonly refer to it as “the right brain.” This part of your brain is essential to keeping you alive. It looks out for threats and is quick to react.

However, it is not helpful for planning, making decisions, and considering consequences of your actions. The part of the brain that takes control when you are upset, angry, or scared (during much of your divorce!) is responsible for your racing heart, tight chest, and flushed face. It contributes to your confusion and indecision. When your brain is preparing for a fight or to run for your life, it has shut down access to the “thinking, reasoning” part of your brain (left brain). Unfortunately, it is this part of your brain that needs to be in charge when negotiating your divorce settlement, making financial decisions, working with your co-parent, parenting, and planning for your “new normal” and future. Suzanne Segerstrom, Ph.D. of the University of Kentucky, aptly describes this part of the brain as controlling the “Pause and Plan” response.

Coping effectively during your divorce involves shifting from the “Fight or Flight” emotional “right brain” responding to threat and putting the “Pause and Plan” within in your “left brain” in charge. This part of your brain executes a plan after evaluating information and considering consequences. When you are able to do this, you increase self-control as well as your ability to manage emotions, evaluate information, make decisions, and make plans.

How can you access “Pause and Plan” when your brain is locked down in threat mode? The following options help strengthen your “big brain” and promote resilience:

Make sure you have the energy needed for your brain to optimally function. A healthy diet, regular exercise, and adequate sleep are essential to your body having the energy it needs.
Excess sugar and alcohol are not your friends now. Drowning your woes in a gallon of ice cream or a bottle of booze won’t help you cope for long..
Pause. Your emotional “right brain” is lightning fast. Your body and mind need time to slow down the reaction and realize your current situation, while stressful, is not life or death. Breathing slowly is a great way to use your body to send signals to your brain that you are not in mortal danger. Meditation, or daily mindfulness exercises can be a huge help here. It also gives you time to begin to think, engaging your “left brain”
Heighten your awareness. Observing yourself and your situation is a function of the left brain. When you pause to observe what’s going on, you activate that part of your brain. This opens up options for you to consider and the opportunity to be less reactive.
Seek support from others. Believe it or not, there is “good news” in how our body responds to stress. Not only does our body release adrenaline to help us jump into fight-flight action, but it also releases oxytocin (sometimes called the bonding, love, or cuddle hormone). This hormone encourages us to seek out support and physical contact from others. It also seems to help heal and regenerate heart cells! Our body and mind, in its’ infinite wisdom and complexity, is actually built to help us manage stress and heal a “broken heart.” Seeking out supportive relationships as well as receiving and giving hugs can help you calm down, pause, feel protected from attack, and as a result, be able to access your thinking brain.
Change your mindset. Stress itself is not the main problem that creates the negative impact on our health and well-being, but it’s how we perceive the stress that is the problem. Instead of interpreting the stress in your life, the divorce, and your reactions to it as harmful to you, you have another option. If you interpret this hard time in your life as a difficult challenge; one that you have the courage and strength to rise above, you can emerge stronger and better. You will also be less negatively impacted by the stress!
Practice self-compassion. Exercising this part of your brain not only can help you feel better about yourself, it can also contribute to self-control and motivation towards long-term goals. Next time you feel like getting down on yourself, try a little tenderness instead.
Beef up the parts of the brain you want working for you during this difficult time; don’t keep them in hibernation or overcome by volatile emotions. Emotions are faulty navigational tools when used as the primary source of decision-making.
Be open to new information and experiences. By definition, many aspects of your life change in response to divorce. You probably will have to take on some new roles, behaviors, and skills. You may even want to try something new.

New experiences, even those we don’t want, create opportunities for growth. Considering new perspectives, trying new things and being open to new information literally helps your brain grow. This can contribute to making better decisions, being more motivated, exerting more self control and being more compassionate. These not only are keys to well-being and resilience, but a new, improved you and a life well lived.

If you are struggling with the stress of divorce, consider this knowledge about the brain and what you can do to optimize your resilience and essential brain functions during this difficult time. You might find the outcomes of your efforts are the silver lining in the divorce cloud, and the light at the end of the tunnel.

Divorce is painful. There is no way around it. The good news is that your mindset about it has a great impact on how damaging this stressful event will be to your mind and body. Attitude is everything!

The Role of a Collaborative Divorce Coach

May 7, 2016 By CDSOC

by Jann Glasser, LCSW, MFT

Divorce is just as much a life transition as marriage. Divorce is not about the division of property; it is about the division of lives.

Closure rarely comes with the decree of dissolution issued by the court. Closure can come more easily through Collaborative Divorce, where a team of Collaborative professionals helps you to facilitate peacemaking in a private, respectful process out of court instead of waging war in a courtroom.

Depending upon the needs of the transitioning couple, various professionals are selected to be part of the team assisting spouses in a healthy positive transition from their lives together into two separate households. One of these professionals is the Divorce Coach, a licensed mental health professional who is a specialist with clinical experience in human behavior and family systems. We help families learn new skills in conducting themselves in times of stress during the Collaborative Divorce process.

Our role as Divorce Coaches during a Collaborative Divorce is assist people through the transition process, to provide a soft landing spot for clients to deal with the range of emotions that are inherent in any marital breakup. Coaches can help you to determine what is truly important in the divorce process, for both parents and children. Coaches can also help you release the negative emotional energy that can be part of any divorce, by helping you to develop skills in open communication, self-management and creative problem-solving.

As coaches, we help our clients focus on questions about their personal ethics and conduct, rather than winning and losing. After more than 30 years in the field of professional counseling and mediation, I have learned that divorce is one of the most painful emotional experiences most people can endure in their lifetime.

As a part of your Collaborative team, a Divorce Coach will assist you in separating highly volatile emotions so they do not interfere with sound decision-making. Together, we will create goals to address each area of concern, highlighting strengths as well as identifying challenges.

One of our most important and lasting goals as coaches is helping couples who are parents create co-parenting agreements that will work by helping to focus on the real issues of the future, not past angers and disappointments. Coaches guide couples to turn their issues into mutually shared interests, as they learn new problem solving skills for conflict resolution and post-divorce parenting for the restructured “family apart.”

By choosing to embark upon the road of Collaborative Divorce, and with the assistance of a Divorce Coach to guide you along the way, my hope is that at the end of this journey, you can embrace the spirit of these words found in Genesis 13:8-9: “let there be no quarrel between us for we were once family; let us separate gently; if one goes north, may the other go south; if one goes east, may the other go west. May your house be your house; and may my house be my house, and may strife and contentions not rule our hearts.”