Enlightened Coparenting
 

A coparenting approach that aims:
to improve the relationship between coparents,
to deepen the relationship between parents and children, and
to help parents begin the process of healing and improving their relationships with themselves.

Children don’t need perfect parents or perfect lives to be healthy.  The goal of Enlightened CoParenting is to work to maximize family and individual strengths while minimizing family and individual risks.

Dr. Jodi Peary

In Enlightened CoParenting the emphasis shifts from who is at fault for the dissolving of the marriage and toward the degree to which parents are able to minimize the risk factors associated with negative outcomes in children while maximizing protective factors.

Relationship Between Parents

Divorce is a complex process involving a chain of marital transitions, family reorganizations, altered roles and relationships, and different stages of individual adjustment. This makes coparenting...

Dr. Jodi Peary joins me to discuss Supporting Families Through Divorce. As a psychologist and former family lawyer, Dr. Jodi shares her thoughts on how to navigate the complexities of divorce, ways to lessen the impact on families and help people become enlightened co-parents. Dr. Jodi opens up about what her own relationships taught her about marriage and divorce.

Dr. Jodi Peary is a psychologist and former family lawyer who helps individuals and families emerge from divorce happy and whole and helps them to co-parent in a way that promotes the well-being of all family members.

Highlights

How to handle high conflict co-parenting sessions
Answering the Question “are we messing up our children”
How to share news of a separation/divorce with children
How Dr. Jodi’s own experiences shaped her understanding of divorce
The impact of the extended family on the divorce
Using rituals to help children navigate divorce

Dr. Jodi’s programs Breakup to Brilliance and Empowered...

Their relationship began brilliantly and Samantha and Tom went on to be married for 15 years.

They met in London while they were both participating in a fall semester abroad their senior year. Samantha attended college at Smith and Tom at Villanova.  Their universities held classes on the same campus and they met when they had both shown up at the wrong lecture hall for the first lecture in a series on life in London and found noone there but the other. By the time they found the correct location, the lecture was over and the two had already discovered they shared a love of fish and chips and so they had lunch together.

The two fell quickly in love and shared an extra week at the end of their term  traveling to the Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini.

Arriving back in the states, just in time for the winter holidays, they met each other's families. Once the Spring semester commenced, they took turns visiting each other on the week-ends at each other's college...

When we're feeling overwhelmed by divorce we freeze and see far fewer options for action and agency.

The house, the finance, legal issues,  coparenting; holding all of these challenges inside leaves us with feet in blocks of cement and a heart that is heavy. The holding weighs down the optimism we need to experience the alchemy of drawing lessons from our divorce and building a good life.

When we're feeling afraid and uncertain in the face of divorce, how can we lower our defensive posture and connect with possibilities for self-expression and creativity?

Do you love to paint? Do you find keeping a journal therapeutic? What dismisses your inner critic and quiets the critical voice inside?  What is the portal to  you? Go there! Do that!

For example, if you find you can lose the critic while journaling, plan to sit down, not to write anything in particular but to allow everything from your mind to pass down past your heart, down your arm and into your writing. No...

During challenging times we may want to be too busy to think about things. After a substantial loss, taking time to reflect can spark pain and feelings of emptiness.

Dissociation involves a continuum of experiences, ranging from a mild emotional detachment from immediate surroundings, to a more severe disconnection from physical and emotional experiences.

All levels of dissociation involves a detachment from reality. That is different from the   loss of reality as occurs in psychosis.

Dissociating is to separate our mind and thoughts from what's happening in our reality.  Our heart's voice may be muffled during difficult times in a relationship. We may fear we do not have the strength to hold the pain ourselves.

Victoria was devastated when her husband of 20 years chose to leave the marriage and began living with another woman. Victoria felt she could not cope with thoughts of the reality of her life in her mind.  With evidence of her loss everywhere and three...

I will answer this question by posing 4 critical questions.

First question:

Will you give yourself permission to experience the opportunity for transformation divorce uniquely positions you for?

Cut to a typical afternoon at work.

New clients look at me as if I'm BONKERS when I share that divorce is an opportunity for transformation. 

"Are you kidding?" MaryAnn asked "This is the absolute worst time of my life!"

I understand.

Having been divorced, been a divorce attorney, and a psychologist who specializes in helping people get through divorce, I absolutely get how torturous and heartbreaking divorce can be.

Divorce affects every nook and cranny of our lives! 

Not just affects but scrambles or smashes it all into pieces.

That is precisely why I call divorce a "LIFE QUAKE" which might as well be an earthquake if you happen to be caught in one.

Let's Be Clear: I take heartbreak very seriously.

It's because I do that I know divorce can do more than torture; it can be a...

There are 6 things you must lay down the law on with family & friends offering to star in the Drama of Your Divorce

Here, I will respectfully call family and friends by the loving acronym "F&F."

Divorce is a difficult process for everyone involved, including F&F.

However, you can not imagine how swiftly they can:

Make divorce and divorce recovery more complicated,

Make  the process even more stressful and difficult than it already is (It is possible!) and

Increase the level of conflict.

If you’re dealing with divorce meddling F&F, insist that they refrain from these activities in order to avoid the disaster.

1. Choosing

A common method of F&F meddling in a divorce is to choose sides. School them on the inevitable consequences.

F&F who choose sides in a divorce actually:

Make the process more difficult;

Prevent or delay conflict resolution, and

Keep the couple from reaching a settlement.

Insist that you will not condone the outward...

Hey there!
I want to answer one of my most frequently asked questions:
Is it worth it for me to learn enlightened coparenting if I am coparenting with a narcissist?

Parents with pathological narcissism tend to engage in behavior that is damaging toward the other parent and children. It is not so much the loss of contact with the child that triggers them as their experience that that person should be available to them and is  not. They experience the loss of what the child provided to them.

These are the characteristics I see in these situations.

See if you recognize any of these characteristics:
Treat child as an extension of themselves, not as a unique individual with their own needs and feelings different from the parents.

Fighting over issues big and small.

Overreaction and drama to imagined slights.

When threatened with the loss of control over their own children, they look to the child to have their own ego needs for love and approval met.

Self absorbed and unresponsive to...

"One of the hardest parts of healing from past relationships, is learning to trust ourselves again."

When we subconsciously play out patterns in adult relationships that we learned from growing up in our families of origin, subconsciously hoping to heal the pain from those early days, and these adult relationships have led to heartbreak and pain - it makes us afraid to trust ourselves again.

Do you remember the last time you felt certain that you were doing what was best for you?

After a painful break-up we have an enormous opportunity to dive deeper into connection with our authentic selves  and regain trust in ourselves. 

How can we learn to trust ourselves again?

Through forgiveness and self-compassion.

Remember that every path you’ve walked, every choice you’ve made has provided you lessons that you can now use here, now, today!

The amazing fact that you notice your doubt in yourself means you are in the process of waking up to the patterns that are no...