Sol (00:01)
Welcome back to Co-parenting Beyond Conflict. I'm your host, Sol. Today I'm joined by Stephanie McPhail, co-founder of the Divorce Support Network, a certified crisis counselor and a love and life success coach. Stephanie brings her extensive background with a double master's in health and education and a degree in psychology to her mission of helping people navigate divorce, avoid repeating past mistakes, and ultimately build the lives they love.

Now before we dive in, I want to offer a quick trigger warning. Stephanie courageously shares her personal story, which includes some themes of physical abuse. If that might be triggering to you, feel free to skip ahead about five minutes. I'm really excited about the practical tips and thoughtful insights that Stephanie offers here for anyone navigating a high-conflict co-parenting situation. Let's dive in.

Sol (00:50)
Hi Stephanie, thanks for joining us here today on Coparenting Beyond Conflict. It's so good to have you.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (00:56)
Thank you so much for having me, I'm excited.

Sol (00:58)
So How did you become who you are and why are you in this field?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (01:04)
I used to be really good at choosing really shitty partners and trying to make it work. I don't know if that resonates for anybody who's listening, but I grew up in a family that there was definitely a lot of conflict. There was a lot of and that's what I thought love was. So when I found those types of relationships, that's what I gravitated towards. When it felt uncomfortable, when it felt like I had to prove myself. Those were the relationships that I tried harder to be. And those were the people that I wanted to be in more intimate relationships with, strangely.

And I think by the time I was 28, I had been in all these unhealthy relationships that when I met my first husband, there were a lot of red flags and I ignored them. I didn't pay attention. I pretended like everything was okay, because I was 28, I was getting older, I wanted to get married, I wanted to settle down, I wanted all those things. And again, I hadn't experienced anything really healthy before. So I genuinely just settled.

And so we got married, he kind of pushed me into that quicker than I really wanted to. He wanted to move in more quickly, all those things. And he wanted to get married at Oheka Castle in New York. And if you're familiar with that area, it is literally a castle and it is beautiful. And I felt really weird about the fact that I didn't want to get married at a castle. I wanted to get married on a beach. And I felt a little like princess me, like, don't want to get married to the castle, what's wrong? And he made me feel bad about that.

We got married at the castle and then that night we went up to the honeymoon suite and he strangled me until I thought I was going to die. And I stayed. And for anyone who maybe has experienced anything like that and people will say, well, why would you stay? Why did you allow that to happen? And I understand those questions. I really do. But when you have your family that's come from Europe, that's come from all over the country to come and see your wedding and you're the one that supposedly has it together, people don't know

what you're dealing with in the background. My minister is the one who married us. I didn't want anyone to know that that had happened. So when he promised me it was never gonna happen again, I of course wanted to believe him. And within three months, he was doing it all over again. So the entire relationship I spent trying to explain to him, educating myself, kicking him out, letting him back in, getting in therapists,

creating a team, trying to do all these things to get him to understand that being physically and emotionally violent was not okay, which obviously we all know that's not okay, but he was doing it and the more that he did it, the more I would tell him that it wasn't okay. And I would explain it to him, but that only just enabled that bad behavior to continue. And so that did last for a while. And I realized after several years of doing that, that I couldn't continue, finally got a divorce. And after that, I went through this dark night of the soul

where everything that could go wrong went wrong. I thought that once I got a divorce, everything would just be okay, but we find that that's not actually the case. I actually ended up in the emergency room, again, after my grandmother passing away, blood clots, like all these major health issues that could possibly go wrong. I end up with a sprained ankle. My ex-husband gets called into the room because he was my emergency contact, which hint, hint, if you have not taken your ex off of your emergency contact yet, go ahead and do that because that was not who I wanted to see in the emergency room.

But the doctor told me that I had a sprained ankle and I laughed at the same time and started crying. But I heard a voice that said to me, you need to be your own knight in shining armor. You have to stop waiting for someone to come and save you and you have to save yourself. And that is the long version of why I started down this path. Because once I heard that voice, I realized I can't do this by myself. It's not because I'm not smart. It's not because I'm not successful. It's not because of any other things.

I need other people to help me because I obviously don't know what I'm doing. And that literally started my journey of growth and healing where I came to a point and I said, you know what? Two years later, things started to get better, I have to tell everybody that things can change, that you can create something different, that you don't have to stay stuck. And so that's been my mission for the past really 13 years, pretty much is just trying to help other people see that there's something else for them. It's possible to create a new life for yourself.

Sol (04:52)
Wow, what an incredible journey. Thank you for sharing that with us.

You know, it's interesting when we go through an experience like this, when we go through having a relationship that it sounds like you had an extreme case of physical abuse as well as emotional It's weird almost to look back at that relationship and to say, gosh, how did I think that was okay?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (05:16)
Yeah. It's weird. And the person that I am now being called bitch, the C-U-N-T word, whore, like all of those things, those were so commonplace. I was used to being called those names. And my husband now, he's like, I could never imagine even calling you a bitch. I was like, because if you did, I'd still walk out. We've been married almost 10 years. But it's like that.

They always give the example of the frog in the pot where the water boils and you just allow yourself to boil. You just get so used to those little things that over time, all of a sudden you're in this place that you could never imagine being because all of these boundaries have been crossed over and over again that you're in a whole different realm. And now I would never let those things happen.

Sol (05:57)
Yeah, and you almost start making excuses for that abusive partner, believing that they'll change. They'll learn how to love me. I'll just tell them and they'll get better.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (06:07)
Well, they have those sob stories, right? For him it was, well, my parents didn't get along well and my dad was abusive and I ran around the wrong crowd growing up and the school was mean to me because they kicked me All of these things where there was all of these excuses for why he was behaving that way. One of the things that I learned in my healing and this happens actually to a lot of us is that when we are those empathetic souls,

when we do really fully understand what someone's going through, where instead of us hearing those stories and saying, ooh, that's not someone I wanna spend my life with, we hear that and say, ooh, I can help them. I wanna show them and prove to them that life can be better, that love can be a wonderful thing. And so we get into this place of let me fix help support, instead of saying, ooh, that's someone that I work with

but not someone that I wanna be in a romantic relationship. It's really learning those boundaries. One of the stories that I share a lot is that when I was in my dating process, where I call it "dating for educational purposes," and I met a guy who was super sweet. He was so kind and wonderful. he starts telling me about how his mom died, his brother died, his father died, his sister, like everyone died in this family. It was like drugs and all these things, murders. I horrible things.

My first instinct, I could feel my heart reaching out to him and wanting to, my instinct was I can help him. And as soon as I felt that, I thought, my gosh, I can never go on another date with this guy because I'm gonna fall into the same patterns. And I learned, I realized it. And in that educational phase, I was like, my gosh, this is what's happened. Is that before I wanted to save and fix, I didn't even realize that I wanted to do that.

It was a really great learning experience to see like, wow, this is something that I've done before and that I almost could have done if I wasn't paying attention.

Sol (07:57)
Yeah, and you you mentioned about sob stories. Who here doesn't actually have a sob story, right? If we're here, we're talking about this, having these sorts of relationships, we had a sob story growing up too. Maybe we don't recognize it, but we do.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (08:12)
Well, and we are not the abusive people. We had a sob story, but it made us empathetic and caring, poor boundaries. But it came out in a positive way, where they, they use their sob story to manipulate and get what they want. And so, you know, even I was talking to someone the other day and she's like, well, thing is, is that I understand him.

I get him, I get where he's coming from. And you can be understanding without allowing or enabling that kind of negative toxic behavior in your life. You can understand and empathize, but that doesn't mean you need to date them or stay in a relationship with them when they are hurting you. Because again, you wouldn't do that to them. They can turn around all day long and say, well, you're messed up too. The reality is that we all have things that we need to work on, but we are not hurtful people.

We are caring people and so therefore there are other caring people that have been through some terrible things that are willing to take responsibility for themselves and not also be hurtful.

Sol (09:09)
oftentimes when we care for others, we're not caring for ourselves first. We're not loving ourselves first.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (09:16)
And that's important to realize. We can't put ourselves on that back burner in order to make somebody else happy. As soon as we're not a priority, the other person will see that we're not making ourselves a priority. That's why people that are empaths without boundaries tend to be doormats. And they also tend to be great victims or partners for the narcissist.

If we are natural givers and we have no boundaries, the takers are going to take advantage of that.

Sol (09:44)
Now, many of our listeners find themselves in co-parenting dynamics that are high conflict, maybe with a co-parent that they would call a narcissist. What is the first piece of advice that you'd give to someone who finds themselves navigating this type of situation?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (10:01)
Well, the first thing I would say is, first of all, my heart goes out to you because that's a really difficult position to be in. But I will also say is that what a lot of us do is we become expert researchers. That's what I did. A lot of clients I work with, they're really, you too, right?

Sol (10:20)
Guilty.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (10:22)
We're like, if I can figure out the problem, then I can have a solution for the problem. So again, makes us really good in our careers and in other areas of our life. But here it's actually not super helpful because we can become experts in narcissists, but that doesn't make what they're doing okay. So the thing that I always like to say is, is look at how you feel around someone. If you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed,

and you're constantly feeling like you have to prove yourself, you have to explain yourself, you're feeling like they're attacking you. Those are people that you want to stay away from. It actually doesn't matter if they're a narcissist, a psychopath, a sociopath, borderline personality, whatever those labels are. We don't have to become experts in those labels. We have to be experts in ourselves because honestly, some people are just assholes. And some people...

just don't work well with each other. Sometimes our personalities don't work well with other personalities and we bring out the worst in each other.

You have to really look at how you feel as opposed to what is wrong with them because then it's, actually comes from more of a place of empowerment because if we say, Hey, I'm responsible for my happiness, then we can look and say, Hey, this makes me not comfortable. I'm going to spend less time with this person or this person. I feel a better version of myself when I'm around them. I'm going to spend more time with that person.

That's going to enable us to have a healthier life and allow us to be a better version of ourselves, where the other people, might be stepping on eggshells all the time wondering, are they mad at us? Or did we offend them? Whatever other things that we're thinking about them, but it's really just draining our energy. my big ask for all of you is to put a little like bookmark on all of those different researching spots that you have out and start just going within and feel your body.

is your heart pounding? Is your stomach hurting? Does it feel good in your heart? there's different areas of your body on where you're gonna feel the stress or the excitement. And is the excitement because, hey, this is always what I've had that relationships are hard and stressful? Or is excitement like, my gosh, I met someone that actually truly understands me? Start to differentiate how those feelings are and how your body feels when you're with people and when you're away from them.

Sol (12:28)
That's such great advice, Stephanie. I want to underline that for the listeners, especially me five years ago sitting in my therapist's office for the first time. I remember her saying, where do you feel that in your body? And I'm like, what do you mean? It was almost as if I had no idea how to feel what my body was feeling. And that journey

towards feeling those feelings physically in my body and connecting those with emotions was a huge part of my healing process. And then applied to interactions with other people. I think when we interact with people that are more of an abuser or a bully, we tend to sometimes, if we have that trauma history, we tend to feel activated,

which we get confused with being excited. There's an Being able to learn the difference between those two can be really helpful, especially when we start dating again, to make sure we don't fall into the same patterns.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (13:24)
Yes.

Sol (13:26)
As a co-parent myself, I know how difficult communication can be. That's why I created Best Interest, the co-parenting app that uses advanced AI technology to automatically filter out all negativity, promoting positive communication and helping you create a healthier environment for your family. Try it now and get 10 % off with code Beyond10. Link in the show notes.

Sol AI (13:49)
And now, back to the show.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (13:51)
wrote a book, it's called Being Loved Shouldn't Hurt. And there's a very good reason why there's that title. It's not just because of physical abuse and everything else, but because of what you're talking about, that feeling inside of your body. And so I remember being actually at a concert with some friends of mine who had been together since they were like 16. They've been the love of each other's lives, super sweet, romantic. I remember being at this concert with them

and all of a sudden feeling just this overwhelming feeling of calmness come over me. I turned around to my friend and I said, I think I finally understand what love feels like. And she looked at me like, what? We're in middle of a concert, what's going on? And I said, it feels calm. She looked at me and she said, yeah, it does. And it was such a pivotal moment for me because before that, love never was calm. Love was always

the butterflies. And realistically, that's just anxiety, the proving yourself and all that other stuff. And that shift made me realize that when I met my now husband, I did have a calmness. I was like, if we aren't good for each other, we can end this relationship right now. Like I was totally okay with that, because I was so calm and felt so easy,

and good and comfortable with him that I could be myself and not have to be anything else. I was okay with just being me. And in fact, he even said, I wanna be with you, but if that's not what you want, I'm not gonna try to force you to do that. Which was also a calm feel like, whoa, that feels really good. No one's trying to force me or like get me to just be with them and commit and all that kind of stuff. I never experienced that before. But old me would have seen

that feeling of calmness and been like, this is boring or maybe he doesn't really like me, or having all those negative thoughts because I had not associated love with that calmness. So if you can start to really feel that in your body that calmness, you can shift the way that you look at and perceive love.

Sol (15:40)
I wanted to ask you the importance of having boundaries. Can you tell us more about that in terms of especially a co-parent and how they might navigate that challenging relationship?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (15:50)
I didn't know what a boundary was till I was 34 years old. When I was sitting in my therapist's office and they were talking about boundaries, I had to read a book about boundaries. I didn't get it. Like, what is a boundary? I don't understand. And then when I did get it, I was like, holy crap, this is really amazing because, growing up in a family where your wants and needs didn't matter and they had to be put to the side

I can actually have opinions and feelings on things and I can actually hold onto them. And I always said, we have to be really careful because boundaries are not about us trying to control someone else. And I think with co-parenting, it becomes difficult because we're like, we want them to behave in a certain way, but they already didn't do that. That's why we ended that relationship. So we will be wasting our time and energy if we keep wanting them to be something that they're not.

So what are your boundaries? I have a client right now where her son is an alcoholic and her soon to be ex is an alcoholic. And he's trying to manipulate this whole situation to say, well, our son is worse than me. I'm doing way better.

And all it is is really to get her into a conversation so that she'll go back and forth and that she'll lose her temper. Like it's all such manipulation. So for her, the boundary that we've been working on with her is when he starts to get you sucked into that back and forth, end the conversation. And I think this is what like with Sol with your app, like I think this is so important to talk about because they can start pushing our buttons. And then the problem is, is now we're all riled up.

And now they get to screenshot and share with everybody how crazy you are. So instead of doing that, you have to have your own boundaries. What are the things that, I know that I'm feeling, and again, you're feeling, so, hey, I'm feeling this in my body. I can feel myself get a little sweaty. My heart's increasing. That's a sign to you that your boundary is being broken. So what do you do with that? You don't keep continue going back and forth.

Sol (17:20)
Totally.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (17:40)
You can say to yourself, when I start to get sucked into this types of conversation, instead of trying to prove myself to them, I'm going to just end the conversation. I'm not going to continue. Or you could say something to the effect of, I will only speak with you about issues with our child and I will not bring up anything else. If you continue to bring up X, Y, Z, I will not continue this conversation with you. And you have to really hold onto that.

If you've ever seen the movie Jurassic Park, the first one, they talk about how the velociraptors are very smart, because they go around the park and they look for the areas of the electric fence that aren't electrified. And so they throw things at that fence to see like, what is their spark? And that's literally what you have to imagine your toxic ex being. They're the velociraptor.

They're throwing things to see what's gonna get you to explode this time. What's gonna get you to be manipulated for them to get a reaction out of you. So know that that's what they're doing and don't get sucked in. Hold those boundaries for yourself and don't allow them to suck you into them.

Sol (18:43)
And what's crazy is they all do this. So the more you talk with other co-parents, you realize they're all functioning on the same playbook. They are the velociraptor testing the fence.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (18:46)
Yes! ⁓

Yes! Yes!

It's like there's a book. We've all had similar experiences with different stories in that we can all sit down with each other and say, when my ex did this and my ex did that, the same thing happened to me. There's a playbook. I said to a client the other day where she's like, he's been super nice, but I think he's gonna get angry. a hundred percent.

They go from the super nice to angry and sometimes depending on how the relationship has been in the past, they might start with angry to intimidate and then they turn into super nice, which throws us off completely. And then we try to, we may be given a little bit and they're like, I'm gonna go back to being super mean again. And they all do it. So you have to keep reminding yourself, this isn't about me. And so the more we realize this isn't about me, this is about them trying to manipulate me. This is about them trying to get what they want from me.

We can more easily not get sucked in to their back and forth that they are trying to do with you. So don't fall for it, because it's not really about you. They can say all the mean, nasty things about you. It's not about you. It's about how they feel, and it's about them manipulating you.

Sol (19:54)
And it's such a good reminder that you should set those boundaries, even write them down and always keep them. Even if your co-parent is being nice or the court conflict has ended, keep the boundaries you've set. Because once you start dropping those boundaries, then it will avalanche.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (20:13)
Then you have to look at what are the things that are important to you.

You have to be open to changing a little bit because you want it to be good for you too. Like I had someone recently there, they didn't want their ex to start dating again. And I get that that hurts. I get that you maybe don't want the new person, with your child and all that, that that makes sense to me. So maybe the boundary is date, but I don't want the child involved. But the thing that we have to be careful of is

if we're saying that to them, then we have to be ready for them to do that to us. Do we want to put our life on hold because of the ex?

Sol (20:43)
Yeah, it's really, it's a tricky thing navigating co-parenting, especially in this type of dynamic, because you maybe see things that you don't agree with. They're parenting in ways that you really don't like, but any amount or attempt to control or dictate ends up being a game of engagement. And so in many ways, I often advocate attempting to just let it go,

and parallel parent as much as you can and just trust that everything will be okay. What are your thoughts on that?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (21:14)
A hundred percent. actually did an interview with someone who specializes in high conflict divorce. She was saying that the weird positive outcome of this is that you are teaching your kids how to deal with difficult people. And that's something they're going to need for the rest of their life. It sucks that they have to learn it from their mom or their dad, but they're going to need to learn that at some point. If you can learn how to deal with this in an effective way,

you're giving them a gift that they will use for the rest of their life. So if you can say, Hey, you know, this, there are some things that I can be more open to change with. There are some things that are super strict boundaries that I'm not willing to navigate away from. but I am going to be that constant for my I know that I can't make them be who I want them to be. Again, that's why their relationship didn't work. We already know that's how they are.

So your job is really to be the best version of you and to be that constant for your child and not speak negatively about the ex because what ends up happening is that then we become the bad guy. So if we just keep allowing them to come to us, talk to us about what's going on, obviously if there's a dangerous situation, let's make sure everyone is safe. But in those parenting practices that we might not agree with,

let them do those things because that child, it's their relationship with that parent and your relationship with them. And so if you can have that solid relationship with them and give them the tools to deal with a difficult person, they're all by themselves are going to figure out, I don't know if I want to be around mom or dad on their own terms, but that can't be you putting that wedge in between. It's gotta be on the child's terms.

Sol (22:51)
And what a beautiful lesson to teach our kids of how to deal with a bully.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (22:56)
And again, it's terrible that it's their parents. It sucks. And then we feel bad, like I chose this person to be their parent, how terrible this is. However, when they're in, their business in their thirties, and they can say, this is a narcissist, I know exactly how to deal with that. That's gonna make them successful. If they're at school and someone is nasty is how you talk to someone who speaks to you that way. Again, they're gonna have that leg up that other people don't have.

Sol (23:02)
Yeah.

On our podcast, we often talk about technology, especially AI and how it can aid in reducing conflict. Have you seen technology come into play in your work and do you have any tools that you are aware of that you can offer our listeners?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (23:34)
Obviously like Chat GPT is helpful. especially if you get sucked in easily, but I think, what you offer is really great because we often, when we have those high emotions and we're used to being defensive and trying to prove ourselves, it's so easy to say the wrong thing. Like it's so easy

to go and try to prove ourselves to the other person. But you're, you have to remember it's falling on deaf ears. If you don't trust yourself to keep your temper in check, definitely download, your app, download something that's going to help you.

Make sure that you have that in place. And if you're not sure, then at least go to Chat GPT and like just write it in like how to calmly respond to this text and let it give you a suggestion because sometimes even just writing it in there and giving yourself a second is enough to calm you down and for you to see other perspectives before you go and respond.

Sol (24:26)
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's sometimes so difficult to get out of our own triggered response. And it's nice to have a non-emotional machine take a look over something before we get involved in that 30 message long interaction. It's not good for anyone.

Stephanie McPhail, MS (24:43)
Yeah, and if it's not AI, then a coach. because I have clients that they'll before they send the message, they'll send it to me. And I look at it, I'm like, no, let's not do it that way. Or like the long email that's like four pages long, let's make this much more concise and keep to the points, not the feelings of what happened 10 years ago and how you always do this

because we're, you know, attacking them. We might not even realize we're doing it, but to really have somebody else have other eyes on there, have whether it's AI or your coach, Our brain kind of shuts off when it comes to relationships and we say and do things without thinking, because we're coming from heightened emotional space that we don't think clearly. Like I always say, you can't read the label from inside the bottle.

Having that outside perspective is really helpful.

Sol (25:26)
Now Stephanie, your journey started off in a really dark place. And if you could go back and whisper a message to that earlier Stephanie, a word of encouragement, what would you offer her in that moment?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (25:39)
You deserve so much more, that it's possible to create something different. You don't have to prove yourself. I was definitely brought up with thinking that once you get married, you stay married. There was a lot of shame and embarrassment about realizing that I had made the wrong choice. I think that instead of trying so hard to figure out what already I knew deep down wasn't working, if I would have given myself permission to say, it's okay

that you made a mistake. You're not letting anybody down. You're letting yourself down more by staying and you're not going to live fully if you stay. But leaving is the right thing to do. And you the amount of people that you can help and the life that you can lead is so beautiful, but staying here isn't going to allow you to do those great things.

Sol (26:22)
That's beautiful. Now for our listeners that would like to connect with you and learn more about your offerings, how can they reach out to you?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (26:29)
Sure, well, we actually created something really cool. It's called Divorce Support Network. And if you go, you can do a search, it's on Facebook, it's on all the different social medias. have a private Facebook group that you can join and it'll also be location specific. So if you are in New York City, we'll actually have professionals in New York City that can help you. I recommend to join Divorce Support Network. And if send me a message, Stephanie at Divorce Support Network.

You can get me directly or go over to our website, divorcesupportnetwork.com and you can find out more information about us and joining our group and getting that support at any stage that you are, whether you're thinking about it, going through it, or you're on the other side and you want to heal and create something better for you and your children, reach out. We can help support you through that journey.

Sol (27:11)
That sounds like a great program. Before we end our interview, is there anything else you'd like to add?

Stephanie McPhail, MS (27:16)
The biggest thing is no matter what you've experienced, no matter how long things have been bad, it is possible to create something new. And you you do yourself and the world a disservice by not being the best version of yourself. So maybe you listen to this and it gave you that little glimmer of hope that maybe something can change. Take action on it. Take that little glimmer and realize that you have the power to create an amazing life for yourself and you deserve to have that life.

Stop playing small, step into your power and do the world a great service by being the best version of you.

Sol (27:49)
So inspiring. Thank you, Stephanie.

Sol (27:52)
Thanks for joining us on the Coparenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on appear in our show notes or on CoparentingBeyondConflict.com. See you next time.

Sol (28:10)
The commentary and opinions available on this podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and not for the purpose of providing legal or psychological advice. You should contact a licensed attorney, coach, or therapist in your state to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem.