You get the text. Before you even finish reading it your jaw is tight, and you have somehow already typed half a response you are absolutely going to regret sending. It happens so fast that it does not feel like a decision. It feels like who divorce turned you into.

It is not who you are. It is a pattern, and patterns can be studied.

Tara Scott has spent twenty years walking into organizations all over the world asking one question: what is actually driving the behavior here? Then her own divorce took that question and made it deeply personal. In this episode she brings behavioral science all the way down to the level of a single text message from an ex.

Tara and Angie get into what amygdala hijack actually is and why your thinking brain has such a hard time staying online when your phone lights up. They talk through the Responsibility Process, a framework for noticing whether you are sitting in blame, justification, or shame before you fire off a response. They get honest about what it costs to keep pushing when your tank is already empty, and about the grief that shows up on a wedding anniversary that no longer exists.

You will hear why Tara keeps a note stuck to her phone that says give yourself time, why she is certain nobody else is ever going to hand you that time, and how to build a practice that gets you back to steady faster each time instead of expecting to never get knocked over at all.

Tara's book, Breaking the Permission Loop, releases in October.

Connect with Tara:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/taralyonscott/
https://www.tarascott.net/

This is Episode 19 of the Divorce Discussions Podcast by the Divorce Support Collective, where we seek to reimagine the process of divorce through collaboration and support. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Find out more at https://www.thedivorcesupportcollective.com/.