One of the challenges people face in divorces, typically in cases with abuse, is that there can be very legitimate conflict between one’s instincts and their logical decision-making. For example, I might get an abused spouse who comes in. Some part of her knows that her husband has abused her, and that the conduct is hurting her and the children. She may even understand that there are legal procedures available to her that could assist her in getting out of this environment.
For some reason, however, she cannot make the decision to go through with a divorce or a protection order. Her instincts are screaming at her not to.
Instincts are powerful and tricky things.
I spent a lot of my time telling people to trust them.
Those instincts are often the product of enormously powerful and sophisticated subconscious information processing.
For example, you might see a person and have your instincts say, “That guy is trouble.”
What really happened is that you saw the person’s physique (physically neglected but powerful), their physical demeanor (a belligerent posture, paired with bloodshot red eyes and a stumble which would indicate impairment and reduced impulse control), their clothing (a tee shirt with obscenities, indicating a disregard for social norms), their location (walking out of a bar in the early afternoon), and cross referenced these data points with life experience to determine that this person exhibited many indicators of what, in the past, has made a person likely to cause trouble and seek conflicts.
You’d rarely ever consciously run through these factors, but your subconscious mind connected the data points and made a good prediction in a matter of seconds. This amazing ability is one of the things that has kept our species alive for so long.
The problem with people who suffer trauma is that their trauma can drive them towards irrational and destructive behaviors. These traumatic cues often present exactly like those instinctual powers you have. Ignoring them feels like you are ignoring the “gut wisdom” that has kept you alive your whole life.
When clients such as our hypothetical abused spouse express their instincts to stay in an unhealthy situation, I have an exercise I often do with them.
We chart everything out.
Going back to our belligerent drunkard at the bar, your normal person may not have consciously thought about all the data points, but if we sat down and started asking questions, the person would very quickly be able to list all the things that informed their “gut.” We could write all the data points out, and when we compared them with the “gut” response, that response would make perfect sense. If anything, the exercise would likely make the person feel that much more confident about their assessment, knowing that their conscious and subconscious minds were moving in lockstep.
With our hypothetical spouse, I might give her a legal pad and ask them to list out all the different dangerous or abusive behaviors the spouse has exhibited. I ask detailed questions to make sure that all the relevant information gets on the page. If it seems like something is getting glossed over, I keep asking questions until we have all the data. I do correctly call it “data” because I am not asking for thoughts or feelings. I am literally asking the client to write down external facts - what happened, when, how many times.
Once the client has written down all the data, I have a couple of different exercises I might do at this point.
In the most basic version of the exercise, I ask the client if they feel like our hypothetical assessor of the belligerent drunk. Does the data make the client feel more or less confident in what her “instincts” are telling her? If the answer is anywhere between “no” and “I’m not sure,” that is a clue we might be dealing with something other than healthy and sound human instincts.
In another variation, I might ask a client to pretend that another totally uninvolved person had come to them and confided all the data on the list about their spouse. I ask the client what she might advise that person to do about their spouse. When the problem is suddenly about two other people, the answer can become clear as day. From there, we might explore why it is not so clear in the client’s own life.
One of the deepest and most powerful variations of this exercise would be to then ask the client to explicitly write out what their instinct is telling them. Instincts can be powerful “feelings,” but they are often dreadfully vague. Writing them out explicitly can help people get a much better handle on these sorts of feelings and exactly what they are pushing the person to do.
I have had clients write things like this:
“He will never get better if I leave.”
“He will torment me and the kids forever if I leave.”
“I am a bad person if I leave.”
“I am giving up on the family if I leave.”
We then have to take those supposed “instinct” directives and cross reference them with the actual data on the page. Often we will learn that these traumatic thoughts (which masquerade as instincts) are at sharp odds with the actual factual data.
These types of exercises can be really helpful in making big decisions because they can reveal if your decisions are coming from healthy parts of your mind. In many instances, people have to take “leaps of faith” and trust the data and the recommendations of several caring professionals. They may have to purposefully ignore these false “instincts” for quite some time. In many instances, those nagging traumatic thoughts keep tormenting the client for months or years until they can see that ignoring them actually made their lives better.
Dealing with those disruptive thought patterns stemming from trauma is outside the realm of a legal professional. I can help people make decisions and assist in identifying where they have some hang-ups, but ultimately this exercise leads people to realize that they are going to need the help of a skilled therapist to detangle traumatic thought patterns from healthy instincts. These exercises are often paired with a referral to a therapist.
If you are struggling on whether or not to take action, try these exercises. They work better with guidance, but even on your own, you can find a startling amount of clarity and insight from sitting down and making yourself take a look at the hard data.
As always, I hope this helps.
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