404. Divorce with less conflict: Co-parenting, emotion regulation, and supporting your kids with Katherine Miller

Katherine Miller (00:00):

The studies show that children of divorce are just as resilient and successful of children from so- called intact families, and that the key really is the level of conflict. So we need to find a way to get out of constant conflict, and we also need to find a way to not be a doormat.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:23):

Divorce is often talked about as something inherently high conflict, something where someone wins, someone loses, and everyone, especially the kids, end up caught in the middle. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if the real challenge isn’t conflict itself, but how we respond to the emotions underneath it? Hi, welcome to Securely Attached. I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. Today, I’m joined by Katherine Miller, a family lawyer, mediator, and founder of Miller Law Group. Katherine is also the author of the new book, The Emotionally Savvy Divorce: Spark Negotiations for a Clean Break, which helps people use emotional intelligence as a negotiation tool to achieve a healthier and more dignified separation with practical strategies for managing conflict, co-parenting, and finances, and reframing the separation process as an emotional transition that secures a better future outcome.

(01:44):

In this conversation, Katherine and I talk about what it actually means to have an emotionally savvy divorce, and why emotions like anger, fear, and anxiety are not something to ignore or push aside, but actually important signals that can guide better decision making. We also explore how to avoid getting pulled into repetitive cycles of conflict and how to pause before reacting in heated moments, and what it looks like to shift away from a win-lose mindset, especially when you’re co-parenting. By the end of this episode, my hope is that you’ll walk away with a clear understanding of how to work with your emotions rather than against them, so you can move through conflict and major life transitions with more clarity, intention, and compassion.

(02:26):

Hello, Katherine. It’s so great to have you here on Securely Attached. Thanks so much for coming.

Katherine Miller (02:39):

I’m so excited to be here, Sarah. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:42):

Yes. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. So to start us off, can you tell our audience just a little bit about the work that you do and your sort of unique brand of law and supporting families navigating divorce?

Katherine Miller (02:59):

Yeah. I always say that I’m a divorce lawyer on a mission to change how people divorce and help them divorce with dignity. And I came to that partly because I come from a family of therapists and I’ve always been interested in the intersection between the law and people where it meets them in their personal lives and partly because of my own personal and professional experience with divorce. After I got divorced myself, as a divorce lawyer, I quit my job. I was like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be in the role of helping someone just make things worse in order to make it better.” And then I thought, I took some mediation trainings and collaborative law trainings and I thought, “You know what? I actually think that there’s a way that I could help people change this to more of a life transition than a catastrophe.” And that is what I’ve spent the last, I don’t know, 20 something years doing.

Dr. Sarah Bren (04:00):

It’s incredible. I mean, you’re humble, but you are a massive pioneer in the world of collaborative divorce. Can you talk a little bit about, for people who aren’t super familiar, why that was a big pivot from maybe the divorce experience you had as the divorced person, like as the divorcing person versus as the lawyer?

Katherine Miller (04:21):

Well, I think I have to take you back in time, Sarah.

Dr. Sarah Bren (04:23):

Rewind the tape.

Katherine Miller (04:26):

Right. Yeah. So as I said, I went to law school because I was interested in justice. I realized in orientation week that is not what it was going to be about. So as I said, I’ve always been interested in this intersection between the law and people and their personal lives. And so I went into family law right out of law school, pretty much. And I’m fond of saying to people that I tried hundreds of cases in front of Judge Judy when she was actually a judge. So just to give you a sense of what it felt like in the courtroom, and she didn’t try divorce cases, she did other kinds of family law cases, but still, that was the tenor of the relationships between counsel, between attorneys, and between living as parties as they went through these really conflicts in the legal system, in the litigation system.

(05:14):

And a couple of years in, I took a mediation training and I thought, wow, there’s got to be a better way to help our clients resolve conflict than what we’re doing. And I started to try to integrate those ideas from the mediation training, which was basically trying to reach a resolution based on the priorities of the people rather than my priorities as a lawyer or a judge’s priorities about what the law dictates. I mean, the law is really just an instruction to the decider, the judge about how he or she should decide the cases that come before them. And so how should they decide custody? How should they decide a division of assets and liabilities? How should they decide child support and alimony? That’s what the law is. It’s just a set of instructions. So why wouldn’t it be better to have those instructions be about the things that really matter to the people?

(06:09):

So it was very frustrating. And for 10 years, I struggled with the same problem in every single case. And that problem was the other lawyer. Not that they were bad lawyers or bad people, it’s just that we could not get on the same page about what criteria we were going to use to help our clients settle. And just statistically speaking, in New York, 97%, 97% of people who are divorcing settle before a judge makes a decision after trial. And nationwide, that’s 95%. Those are pretty good odds that you’re going to sign a contract that settles the issues between you and not rely on a third party stranger really to settle those things. So it was extremely frustrating. And then as I said a few minutes ago, when I got divorced myself, I was like, “I’m done. I don’t want to do this anymore.” And there was a personal reason for that too, is my boss at the time, really a mentor of mine because the guy in his own words could talk a hungry dog off a meat wagon.

(07:11):

I mean, he had the gift of gab, like you would not believe. And he used to say to me, “You know, Katherine, to be a good litigator, you really have to have a mean streak.” And I thought to myself, “You know what? I do have a mean streak, but that’s not the Katherine I like. ” I don’t want to spend my career nurturing my mean streak. I want to spend my career nurturing the person I want to be who really is in alignment with my own personal values. So I was like, “Okay, I’m done. I quit my job. I moved. I got remarried. I thought about what else I was going to do with the rest of my life and I took another mediation training and then I took this collaborative divorce training and that changed my life because in the first 15 minutes of the training, and I’m going to explain what collaborative is in a minute, I felt like this was coming home for me professionally, emotionally, professionally, that in the collaborative process, the other lawyer and I would be working together to try to find a resolution that worked for the people based on their own priorities.

(08:17):

Well, huh, Eureka, this is what I’d been trying to do all those 10 years when I ran into the same problem, the other lawyer. So collaborative is a voluntary process. People have to decide that they want to do it and choose it. And in it, the lawyers are there to support the people reach a resolution, but they’re disqualified from litigating, means if this breaks down, then the people need to hire new lawyers. And what this does is it keeps everybody 100% skin in the game and honest about working toward a resolution in the collaborative process. And your listeners might be thinking now, “Well, but if it breaks down, then I have to start all over.” And I’m like, “Not so fast.” In a region where we’re not the only lawyers in town, it’s not like I stopped taking their calls, I’m going to make sure that my client has an orderly, reasonably comfortable transition to somebody who can handle litigation if that’s necessary.

(09:11):

It almost never is. And because again, let’s go back to the statistics. 97% or 95%, depending on your jurisdiction, you’re overwhelmingly likely to resolve your issues in a divorce yourself with help. And now collaborative at the time, I took that training and that was in January of 2003, so a few minutes ago, is now it’s an interdisciplinary training process so that it’s not just lawyers, but it’s financial professionals who can help people sort out the money issues and that person is a neutral person and mental health professionals who help people work through the parenting issues and the dynamic issue that of course happens at the end of the marriage. And the way that I like to think about it, Sarah, is that divorce is sort of like a knitting basket that a kitten got into and the kitten has been playing with all the different yarns and now the blue and the yellow and the green and the purple are all tangled up together.

(10:16):

So you start to pull in the purple and the yellow and the red come along with it. And so the idea of the interdisciplinary approach is that the people who are specialists in the red and the people who are specialists in the purple and the specialists in the blue help people unwind them or reknit them into a sweater or a blanket or whatever it is that they want to that really makes sense to them based on, “I’m going to really push it here, the fabric of their lives.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (10:44):

That’s a really helpful visual though. I think because what I am hearing you say is this is a messy process by nature, like this is emotional, it is complex, there’s financial issues at stake, there’s oftentimes like different roles like parenting and children and custody stuff all entangled. And when you have this team that helps, one, keep the temperature down, it helps regulate the temperature in the process. But then in this regulated state, we talk a lot about regulation in this podcast, like this feels very like coming home to me, like it’s this down regulating, co-regulating system, safety being a big part of it, creating a sense of safety, and then like, yeah, disentangling the different parts that … Because if you can figure out, oh, is this conflict? Let’s say we’re kind of arguing about this particular thing, right? This item on our list that we’re trying to divvy up or negotiate. Sure. If it’s a little bit about money, a little bit about power in the relationship, a little bit about who gets what kid, when, a little bit about your mom’s, your mother-in-law’s needs or summer house or whatever, all of a sudden it’s like, oh yeah, there’s all this colored thread to use your metaphor coming out, but really there’s probably one thing that’s really driving the conflict in this moment. If we could figure out what’s the thing that’s really causing the threat response here, we can tackle that more effectively.

Katherine Miller (12:33):

Exactly. And it’s never the thing that shows on the surface, right? It’s always … I mean, sometimes it’s a few things, but the thing that … There’s a confusion about money, for example, so that we negotiate a lot of things on the idea of money when it’s really not about money, because money in our culture is so much more than a way to pay the bills, right? It’s a way we measure success. It’s a way we measure power. It’s a way we compare ourselves to our families of origin, our neighbors and each other, right?

Dr. Sarah Bren (13:09):

And so- And it’s about access. You know what I mean? If really the fear is, I’m fighting over money here right now in this moment or arguing about money in this moment on this line item, but really the root of it is a fear that I’m going to have to move my kids to a different school and that’s what I’m really panicked about and that’s the thing driving my threat response and that high, we’re not actually talking about money, right? We’re talking about security and continuity for the kids. And if we can figure out that that’s the real driver of the rigidity or the intensity or the need to make this thing work, then we could solve that problem maybe with a different solution.

Katherine Miller (13:53):

Exactly. That’s exactly right. And it goes even deeper than … I mean, it’s about my identity as a good parent, right? And so if you recognize that whole trajectory of what shows at the surface and what’s underneath it, and then what’s really deep underneath it, that really allows us to reach a resolution that is truly works and probably better than one that if we just negotiated on the topic of money, that might not actually get to the school system or my identity is a good parent, right? And so if we’re willing to lean in a little to what it is that we’re fighting about and why, like what it is that’s going on and what we’re trying to accomplish, that is incredibly helpful.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:43):

Yes. And this feels like a perfect segue to talk about like the emotional element of divorce. You literally wrote the book on it. So can you talk a little bit about what you were trying to accomplish with your book, The Emotionally Savvy Divorce, and why was that the focus of the book on the emotional lens?

Katherine Miller (15:07):

Well, about 10 years ago, a client of mine said,” Catherine, you really need to write a book. “When we were at the end of her divorce process and I was like, ” Really? “And so it took me a long time because she was the one who thought I should do it and it wasn’t necessarily me. It took me a while to get to what it was that she was talking about and what it was I wanted to say. And I started and stopped writing this book a number of times before I actually got this idea, which is a lot of people would say to me, ” What do I do with the feeling? What do I do with the anger? What do I do with that? “And that sort of combined with this idea that the emotions, the feelings cover or point to your core values, the things where you feel threatened and the thing that is most important to you.

(16:03):

And if we just try to ignore that, then we’re just talking, just to go back to what we were saying a few minutes ago to that money conversation covering this wanting to be a good parent or where your kids go to school and feeling that you want that real stability for your kids, then we’re fighting about the money thing, not the important thing. And that’s what lawyers do all the time and it’s not their fault, right? So when they’re trained to do that, they’re doing what they think their clients are telling them to do. And the law of course is structured around the issue that money makes up for stuff like think about personal injury. You lose a leg and you get a million dollars. Is it really worth it? I mean, like a million dollars is not worth a lost leg. I mean, I don’t think.

(16:48):

And so I really wanted to help people think about processing the feelings, leaning into them in a way, not being afraid of what the emotions are, even though listen, anxiety, which is a huge emotion in the divorce process is very unpleasant. I was in my 40s before I realized that anxiety wasn’t going to kill me and I’m not really kidding about that. It’s really unpleasant. But if we could say to ourselves, and maybe not alone, but with someone like you or a coach or someone like that or even a friend, although don’t overdo it on the friend thing, because they’ll stop taking your calls.

(17:32):

“What’s up with that? What is it that’s really going on for me and that I think is really useful. So I wanted people to understand that there’s a lot of coaching advice out there. Divorce coaches will say,” Oh, you should set your feelings aside, set your emotions aside and treat the divorce like a business deal. “Well, there are two big problems with that. One is that we make decisions in the emotional part of our brain, so how are you supposed to do that? That doesn’t work physiologically. And two, business decisions are emotional, really, really emotional, right? So it’s just like, what does that mean? And I think what it means is that you can’t just be making decisions from something that feels good or feels bad. And I am not in favor of making your decisions based on something that just feels good or feels bad.

(18:21):

What I’m talking about is really thinking about why it feels good and why it feels bad. What is that about what that’s going on and does that actually work pragmatically? That’s the savvy part. It feels good because now he’s going to have to say he’s sorry. Okay, well saying is sorry might be a good thing, but does it really pay the bills? We have to put those two things together.

Dr. Sarah Bren (18:46):

Right. And I like that because what I’m hearing too is like, if we are using emotions to be the way we want to feel and that’s how we are … If our behavior is directed by,” Well, I want this feeling to go away, so I will do this behavior or I want this feeling to be … I really want to get closer to this feeling. I want to move to comfortable. I want to avoid uncomfortable.

(19:12):

And we’re using the behaviors that we’re choosing behaviors with the goal of changing our emotional experience, we’re going to be in a loop. We’re just going to be playing whack-a-mole and the behaviors then are really kind of like, I would say like a red herring, right? Like that’s not the point. Probably missing the point of what you’re seeking. But if we use the information coming from our emotions, if we flip it, it’s like, I’m not going to use the behavior to manage my emotions. I’m going to use the emotions to inform my behaviors to give me information about, well, why do I want to bite his head off right now? Why am I so angry? What is that touching for me that’s giving me information about what I want and what I want to do? And then I can make a choice on like, “Well, what’s the most effective thing?

(20:10):

I’m feeling threatened or I’m feeling like I’m going to lose something or I’m realizing I care about this thing way more than I realized.” Okay. Now I have something, I have insight. It gives you insight versus like just trying to change your feeling state.

Katherine Miller (20:28):

Yeah. And it gives you the opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive because when you’re reactive, you give overpower to the other person because you’re just reacting, right? Whereas if you really lean in a little bit and think about what’s going on for you, it gives you an opportunity to make a strategic plan to get where you’re much more likely to get to what you want. I’m sure you and the listeners can think of situations where you thought, “Oh, I could have said this. I could have done that. I have this moment I feel really activated and this thing happened and then later on when I calm down, I think, well, I could have handled that so much better.” And that’s what I’m talking about.

Dr. Sarah Bren (21:08):

It’s part of it too is like if we’re talking about emotions, it’s helpful to also talk about emotion regulation because if we have an intense emotion in the moment, one of the things that we’re really vulnerable to experiencing is for us to get flooded and for our thinking brain to go offline, right? I talk a lot about on this podcast about how, like we talk a lot about parenting, kids, tantrums. When anyone, a little kid or a grownup is in fight or flight, what happens is like the threat detector or the amygdala in our brain pulls a fire alarm and it moves us into this like reactive, self-preservative, survival mode stance, but that physiological state also does not need nor is benefited by the survival. We don’t really need to overthink that. If we see a bus running at us, we don’t want to overthink it. We just want to like jump back. We don’t want to be analyzing too much.

Katherine Miller (22:09):

How do I feel about that bus?

Dr. Sarah Bren (22:11):

Right? Should I step back with my right foot or my left foot? We just want to be super reactive. We want the amygdala to drive the car in that moment if there’s a real threat. But the problem is, is when we are in a threat state and we’re in fight or flight also, and we do need to think, we do need to strategize or problem solve or try to get what we want, negotiate, resolve conflict, preserve the relationship because we might want to maybe co-parent with this person amicably in the future. We need our prefrontal cortex or our thinking brain on. That’s where all of that stuff lives. And so we have to get out of fight or flight in order to be accessing that part of our brain. So we can use emotions to give us information, but frankly, in order to use that information, we have to first calm down, like move out of fight or flight, deactivate the threat response. So I would imagine to use the emotional information, we also have to learn how to self soothe, to regulate, to kind of do talk about how people can take their time, come back to something. Take a pause.

Katherine Miller (23:32):

Yeah. I mean, you said so much there. So I mean, one thing is, is in that moment where you’re flooded and your amygdala comes online, you need a way to get away from that situation before you react. So some strategies to say, “Let’s just take a break. We’re going to need to agree to disagree about this. ” But one thing that often happens is this happens by text. And if it’s happening by text, you have all the time in the world. I have a little rule for myself personally. I do not hit send and whether or not it’s an email or that little arrow on a text, if my heart rate is elevated. If my heart rate is elevated, I’m going to be like, “Take a pause on that because you want to think about that for a minute before you just send.” Also, less is more.

(24:23):

When you’re explaining all this sort of stuff and I’m like for people who are listening and not watching, I’m typing air typing with my thumbs, like I’m sending this stuff away and it’s like, “I’m so right and you’re so wrong.” That right, wrong paradigm is really a false narrative and divorce, right? We all think we’re right. And to try to convince you, Sarah, and I are in an argument about something, I think I’m right, do you think I’m going to be able to convince you that I’m right when you think you’re right? No, that’s not going to happen. And even if I know I’m right and I know everybody thinks they’re right, I’m always right when I have a fight. I’m always 100% right and telling you, God thinks I’m right. Even then, that’s not going to work. Has it ever worked? No, it doesn’t work.

(25:10):

So you need to be able to step back and say, “I’m going to try something different here and see if I can get to a different result other than just a big, gigantic argument that I know is going to fail.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (25:28):

If you’re listening to this episode, I imagine there might be a lot on your plate right now. I hope this podcast can be a good first step in helping you feel seen, guided, and held with psychologically and scientifically backed information you can trust. And for the moms who are looking to get additional support as you navigate a separation or divorce, I want to share a resource that might be helpful. At my group practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we offer a virtual support group specifically for women navigating separation or divorce. This is a space where you don’t have to carry the weight of this transition alone. Whether you’re still deciding what’s next, in the middle of legal proceedings, or working to rebuild your life on the other side, this group is here to offer support, community, and tools to help you feel more grounded and empowered.

(26:13):

Led by expert clinicians, the women’s divorce group is designed to help you process what you’re going through, find clarity around your needs and boundaries, and game coping strategies for everything from grief and guilt to co-parenting and identity shifts. To learn more about this group, you can visit our website, upshurbren.com, or just go to the episode description wherever you’re streaming the show to get links directly to learn more about this group or schedule a free 30 minute consultation so we can help guide you with suggestions for the best support options to meet your unique needs.

(26:50):

We have to remember the bigger goal is not always like resolving how mad we are in this moment, but like divorce is a long game. It’s a complex long-term dividing of lives in a way that hopefully keeps people feeling whole enough that they can continue to live in tandem with one another because especially if you have kids, even if you don’t have kids, you’re going to be divvying up relationships that are not going to … There are connectors that you don’t sever, whether you like it or not post marriage. And if you have kids, you may not be married anymore, but you are going to be parents together, hopefully for the rest of your lives. So you have to figure some way to cooperate and cooperate might not be possible, but certainly some way to parallel parent if you can’t collaboratively parent. And so can we talk a little bit about the parenting piece of this and like, because I think this really goes hand in hand with this idea of like, sometimes we want to win the battle and we sometimes forget that we have a much longer road ahead.

Katherine Miller (28:11):

Yeah. Well, you know, the studies show that children of divorce are just as resilient and successful of children from so- called intact families and that the key really is the level of conflict. So we need to find a way to get out of constant conflict and we also need to find a way to not be a doormat, right? And so it’s a little bit of a conundrum and a challenge to try to figure out a different way to communicate than the same ways that we used to communicate. And that’s a little bit of an experiment. And for some people, it’s easy. For other people, most people I’d say not so easy. And so I think that … And I just want to go back for people who don’t have children, even, and I know that those not really listeners to your podcast, but even if you don’t have children, and I think this is relevant if you do too, the time that you were married should not seem like a loss or a mistake.

(29:07):

It’s part of your life. It’s part of who you are. This marriage, this ending now, is part of who you are, part of what defines you, and it can define you for good or it can define you for bad. And I don’t think it’s particularly helpful for anybody to think my marriage is a mistake. It’s much more useful to think, what did I learn through this? How did I grow through this? What did I experience and where am I now and how do I want to move forward in my life? And that applies to parenting with someone also so that you can find a way to change the argument from what I call the conflict trap. So what the conflict trap really basically says, it’s a very familiar conversation. So I have a few conflict conversations with my husband, and even though I’m planning to keep him around, he says something, I say something, he says something, and then there’s something that I really want to say really strong in my head.

(29:59):

I’m really no I’m right. And I also know that if I say it, that I could script out the next 20 or 30 minutes and that we’re both going to walk away from that conversation frustrated and unhappy. And I know people are like, “Yeah, that happens to me too.” Because we all have it. It’s not just our spouses, it’s our parents, our kids, our neighbors, our siblings, our good friends. It’s just like, “Oh, it’s so frustrating.” Because we just have this over and over and over again. And if they just understood where we were coming from, then we might be in a different place. And so we yearn for that sense of being understood, but so does the other person. And so I just suggest that people try something different, try to express what you hear the other person be saying. See if you can agree with 10% of something they said, “I agree with you about this thing and I wonder how we can include some of the other things that we both think are important in agreeing on this thing.” But that feels really different because we always want to point out ways in which we don’t agree because it feels like we’re vulnerable because we’re not being heard, but everybody yearns to be heard.

Dr. Sarah Bren (31:10):

Right. And I think that speaks a little bit to what we were saying earlier, this idea that if you allow the emotion to drive the behavior in the context of changing the feeling, like I’m really angry and I really want to be validated right now. And so that’s going to drive my kind of persistent need to prove my rightness because I’m avoiding the discomfort of you aren’t going to agree with me. We’re not going to see eye to eye on this. I’m not going to get the validation that I really desire right now and feel really like I need. And so there’s a lot of distress tolerance and sitting in uncomfortable feelings for good conflict resolution to take place. So constantly trying to use the emotional cue to push us away from the emotion towards a … I mean, that’s really human nature, right? It’s very natural and very understandable and kind of instinctive to use emotions as like a repel or attract.

(32:18):

This feels good. I move towards it. This feels bad. I move away from it. But it’s counterintuitive what we’re talking about here, which is to say emotions are more deeper than … If we can use emotions on a more sophisticated level to say like, “I am not comfortable with this, but I can stay and lean in and not run away from this conflict, this uncomfortable feeling. I could sit in it. ” Then you kind of break through into this new area that you can work in where I can say, “I don’t like how I’m feeling. Your response is playing a big role in why this doesn’t feel good to me, but I don’t have to run away from it. I don’t have to fight it. ” It’s just a different space to be in with someone.

(33:06):

And frankly, the other person doesn’t have to have that skill yet. It’s pretty disarming for them too when you aren’t reactive and they’re expecting the reactivity and you’re not … Again, it’s really hard not to compare all these things to parent child fights and stuff like that, but it’s so similar. It’s like when you’re…

Katherine Miller (33:25):

Of course it is.

Dr. Sarah Bren (33:26):

Kid is expecting you to really yell at them and you just sit there and you say, “Huh, I’m really frustrated. I don’t like how this is going right now.” And they’re like, “Wait, what? I was expecting something totally different from you. Now I’m listening. You hooked me a little bit here and now I’m here with you. ” Guess what? We are connecting in this moment. It doesn’t feel great, but it definitely doesn’t feel the same way as pouring gasoline all over everyone’s fire.

Katherine Miller (33:53):

Yeah. And yeah, I remember I had a fight years ago with my ex- husband. He was really angry at me for being late and I spent a half an hour…

Dr. Sarah Bren (34:04):

I know that one.

Katherine Miller (34:06):

And I was like, “Well, so it feels like I’m disrespecting you as a parent and all this sort of stuff basically and half an hour just, and then at the end I said, Do you think I understand where you’re coming from on this issue?” He said, “Yeah, I think you do. ” I said, “Are you interested in hearing my perspective?” He said, “Not really. ” And he hung up, but you know what? It freed me. I was like, “He’s not interested in hearing my perspective.” So that completely changed what I was expecting from him, right? And so I’m like, “All right, well, we’re not going to have this kind of warm and fuzzy co-parenting relationship where we understand each other and all that going forward. We’re just going to do the best we can. And he’s going to dump all over me sometimes and I’m just going to let it roll off of me because that’s who he is and this is who I am.” And it just completely changed everything. And I did that myself. He didn’t do anything other than say, “I’m really not interested in hearing from you.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (35:05):

And would you consider that a little bit of radical acceptance of like, okay, this is where we are at and I can be not happy about it, but I don’t have to necessarily fix it.

Katherine Miller (35:22):

I can’t fix it. Yes, this is how it is and it’s not going to change. And the only person I can change is me, right? The only thing I can do, I can change my behavior. I can try to be more on time, fair enough, right? But I could also just acknowledge that he’s going to be angry at me for stuff sometimes that’s not my fault and I don’t have to take that. I mean, he can be angry. That’s his side of the street. My side of the street would be like, “You’re angry. That doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (35:51):

Right. I think this is kind of like rewriting a lot of stuff because I think a lot of times if we feel misunderstood, we feel like I have to write the narrative, otherwise I might think to myself, I’m being a pushover or I’m not standing up for myself, which can feel very disempowering. When you have a person who is not cooperative, who is not collaborative, right? You could do all this. I often will say when I’m working with people who are navigating interpersonal conflict, you can be the most skillful person in the world if you’re engaging with someone who can’t be skillful back. It might not be effective. It might not result in the outcome you want, but if you do the skills, if you keep your set of street clean, it’s empowering because you can say, if they can’t be skillful back or they can’t hear my boundary or respect my boundary or allow me to hold my boundary without spewing some lava at me, I’m not a pushover by saying, “Okay, I’m moving on to the next part of my day.

(37:02):

I’m not going to keep trying to win this battle. I’m going to move on because that’s my choice. That is me holding my power and my decision to say, I’m just not going to keep trying to fight this particular fight right now.” But I think some people think that that’s giving up or it’s losing or it’s … So it’s like I like this kind of reclaiming the power and this dynamic.

Katherine Miller (37:29):

Yeah. I always refer to those people as like rumble still skin. He has this complete hissy fit and then he dissolves into a pool of butter because nobody’s engaging with him with it, right? So it’s like, you know, you just like let the person do a little rumble still skin, that’s them and you are not going to be successful. There’s no point in trying because you’re not going to be successful in changing their narrative. And if you do, you’re much more likely to feel really bad about it because these impossible demands are going to be put on you and it’s just like, it’s just not worth it. And it’s like when people are bullies, I mean clients will sometimes say to me, particularly woman, “My husband’s a bully. Can you deal with a bully?” And I’m like, “Yeah, but it’s not going to be the way you think.

(38:15):

You can’t out bully a bully.” What you have to do is change the rules of the game and that’s the same with this kind of situation. You’re not going to win a battle with someone who is a not collaborative, not cooperative person or who’s really, really angry, but you can change the rules of the game so they don’t win.

Dr. Sarah Bren (38:35):

Can you talk to me more? How would that look? What rule might you change?

Katherine Miller (38:41):

Well, you could change the way you’re talking, right? So one thing is a bully is always going to win in a yelling, screaming argument, so don’t do those anymore. Find another way to communicate. A bully is always going to win and long, drawn out explanations about why they’re so right and why you’re so wrong. You’re not going to win that because you’re not going to have the energy for it, so don’t do it. You’re going to have to change what is successful, what’s not successful. Or you could do this little thing that I suggested earlier where you say, “Well, if you can find 10% of something you agree with, agree with them about something and see what happens then. Oh my gosh.” It’s sort of what you were saying a few minutes ago when you’re dealing with children and you don’t do what they expect. If you don’t engage them in their bullying, then they can’t bully you.

Dr. Sarah Bren (39:25):

Don’t pick up the rope.

Katherine Miller (39:30):

Right, exactly. Or we are going to be in a different place. I mean, sometimes some people require the discipline of the court. Sometimes if there’s a judge watching, okay, bully’s not going to do that, you let somebody else do it. Or there are so many ways if you think, how are we interacting as opposed to what are we interacting about? And you think about how it’s happening, can you change that how in a way that disempowers them without them even necessarily realizing it?

Dr. Sarah Bren (39:59):

Yeah. Which doesn’t like fight fire with fire.

Katherine Miller (40:02):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah Bren (40:04):

I’m curious too, because as we’re talking, I realize we’re sort of veering into this space of like high conflict divorce, right? Or really like challenging dynamics where collaboration and cooperation is really like limited. Does that have a place in collaborative divorce or is that really … How do people discern what type of approach is best for them when they’re looking at their options?

Katherine Miller (40:33):

Yeah. Well, I really think it’s a personal decision. And so in the collaborative process and in mediation, people don’t sit around holding hands singing kumbaya. It’s not like that, right? It’s conflict. People are angry at each other. They’re scared, they’re anxious, and they’re hurt, right? And so there’s a lot of feelings there that come up and they’re what the boot is called afflictive emotions, not necessarily the ones we all want. And so obviously a physical violence is a thing. We have to be super careful to make sure that people are safe, physically safe. But sometimes mediation and collaborative law actually work better with high conflict individuals because we’re able to adjust the process to meet the people where they are and address the things that make people high conflict. And a lot of people, people who have personality disorders are more likely to divorce than people who do not.

(41:34):

That may seem obvious, but I think we should say it. It’s true. And it’s not that both people necessarily do or something happens over time or something gets worse or something is revealed later on in a relationship. I’m fond of saying that I think that for every divorcing couple, if they think about it, the reason for the divorce is apparent on the first date, but they didn’t necessarily see it or they thought about it in a different way or they thought they could change it. That’s often happens, right? And so if you think this has been a dynamic that’s been going on for a long time, how can we support these people and find a process to help them reach resolution in a way that makes sense for them with the support that they need in order to do it as amicably as possible. And that’s what I love about the interdisciplinary approach of the collaborative divorce process because it really, if you have someone who really needs a little bit more emotional support, we can bring in a mental health professional to give that person or those people that level of support and nurture them to a place of being a little bit more cooperative.

(42:37):

But even when that doesn’t happen, if we’re just think below the positions, right, what it is that they want, to why they want it, that’s at least as important for someone who’s a more high conflict person than someone who’s not.

Dr. Sarah Bren (42:52):

And do you feel like both people have to understand and be on board with the collaborative process for it to work? Because I could see a situation where in a moderate, even high conflict divorce, maybe with somebody who has personality pathology, that getting everyone to the table in a place that sounds like it requires some level of like reflection and vulnerability could be really challenging. I could see the beautility of it for sure if you can get everyone in the room.

Katherine Miller (43:30):

Well, yes and no. I mean, that’s the best. It’s the best when people can do that. Is it required? No. It’s not required because the three things that are really required are this disqualification clause that I discussed, a commitment to this process. We’re going to work it out this way. That’s one thing. A commitment to a voluntary exchange of all relevant information, so that’s the money mostly so that we, instead of going through the formal discovery process, that’s what we lawyers call information sharing. We’re going to do it informally. And three, a commitment to work for a resolution that works for all people. Most people don’t want to hand over control of their lives to a stranger. And so no matter how difficult they are, most people want to stay in control of their own lives, right? And so, but I’m stuck in this conflict with you.

(44:26):

I can’t get out of this conflict with somebody else because I’m married to you, so how are we going to reach a resolution? And that’s pretty attractive for everybody. And so unless you cannot get someone to the table at all, I think it’s worth it for most people to consider a structured out of court process, but it has to be structured because if it’s just like, well, let’s just talk at Starbucks, that isn’t going to work for most people. I didn’t do it like that when I got divorced and this is what I do for a living.

Dr. Sarah Bren (45:00):

Yeah. What are some misconceptions then also about like collaborative law? Do some people think they can just do it themselves at Starbucks and call it a collaborative divorce? Because I feel like that would be risky.

Katherine Miller (45:12):

Well, there’s a couple of misconceptions. I think one is that you have to be all like lovey-dovey and just decide that our marriage has somehow come to an end. We’re going to be unconsciously uncoupling. That’s not necessary. There’s often a sort of conflation between mediation and collaborative. So mediation, there’s one mediator who’s a neutral facilitator and the parties usually have lawyers, but they often don’t come into the room. And so in collaborative, we have the commitment of the lawyers to work in that role to help find a resolution that works for all people. And then there’s this idea that it’s super expensive because earlier on when I said, “Well, you’ve got this person, this person, this person, this person,” a lot of my listeners might be thinking, “Well, that sounds really expensive.” But what that means is that you’re working with a neutral financial to work out the understanding of the economic reality that the family faces instead of two lawyers.

(46:06):

So it’s really actually more efficient. And another thing is that sometimes people will think, “Well, that’s for people who don’t have a lot of money or where it’s not that complicated.” And actually, in reality, it’s much better for really nuanced, complicated things, whether or not it’s complicated parenting plans or people want to nest for a while where the kids stay in one place and the parents go in and out, or where there are very complicated financial assets because we’re really able to come up with the creative solution rather than something that’s just a more ham-handed sort of way that this is how we always do it, which might or might not work for the particular family.

Dr. Sarah Bren (46:52):

Right. So, and I’m betraying my lack of inside knowledge on this, but are there ways that like a more standard cookie cutter judge handed down plan or like if it goes to court and the judge has to decide instead of the couple with the help of the collaborative lawyers, is there like, there’s one way, because you were saying earlier, like the judge has a rule book dictated by law, and so is it always the same?

Katherine Miller (47:29):

No, it’s not. A judge is going to make a decision based on how the judge applies the rules to the facts as they’re presented by the lawyers and who they believe and who they don’t believe and come up with his or her determination as to what he thinks the law of this case is, but a judge is never going to order nesting. So if you think it would be good for your kids to nest for a period of time in the house and the parents move back and forth, that isn’t going to happen in court. If you have a … Kids are skiers and you want to have a different parenting plan for ski season, then you have the rest of the year, a judge doesn’t care about that. If you want to share a beach house or a ski house, that’s not going to happen.

(48:13):

If you want to stay in business together, forget it. There’s so many ways in which the things that are details in people’s lives that they really care about are just a judge is not … Listen, hats off to them. I would not want to be in a position of making decisions for other people’s lives. I’m grateful that they’re there and that they do it and that they really do care, that they’re trying to do their best that they possibly can do, but they are way overworked. They have standards and goals that they need to meet. They need to move these cases along and they don’t have time to be counselors. They do not love your children and would be the first people to say that. They’re doing the best they can under the circumstances that they have and that requires a little less finesse than people are going to have when it comes to their own lives.

Dr. Sarah Bren (49:11):

Yeah. To go back to the metaphor that you were using about the yarn, and I’ve heard you describe this where it’s like, “Okay, so we have all these knots in this yarn, the choices really are someone’s going to come in with a scissor and cut them.” Exactly. Or we can sit and we can untangle them piece by piece. And in doing that, you’re preserving a lot more, I think, of the fabric of the family system. So I really see the beauty and the magic of this. I get why you were drawn to this. If people want to learn more about working with you or just like reading your book or collaborative law in general, where can we send them? What are some resources?

Katherine Miller (49:56):

Sure. Well, the book is available on Amazon or Barnes & Nobles or wherever you buy books, The Emotionally Savvy Divorce. You can learn more about our firm. And we have a tremendous amount of resources on our firm website, which is miller-law.com. There’s a podcast, there are videos, blog posts, tons of articles. I mean, it’s about a million pages. And you could learn more about the Collaborative Process Nationwide at the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals website, which is collaborativepractice.com.

Dr. Sarah Bren (50:30):

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share all this with us. I learned a lot. It was a really, really interesting conversation.

Katherine Miller (50:39):

Oh, it was so much fun and thank you for having me.

Dr. Sarah Bren (50:48):

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