What’s Conscious Uncoupling Anyway?

Emotional healing is often bypassed as something to be dealt with ‘later’, but in divorce, nothing could be further from the truth — in fact, it’s strategic

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Do you ever find yourself rolling your eyes as you hear the latest buzz word being tossed about?

Now, I’m not bashing the notion of conscious uncoupling, in fact, I think it should be the core tenet for navigating any life adversity. But I also feel that terms like this can be triggering and isolating during divorce.

The last thing a mama going through divorce needs is to feel more alone in her pain and shame.

Hey, if you could ‘consciously uncouple’ as a team, you likely wouldn’t be getting a divorce in the first place.

Now that doesn’t mean that couples can’t dissolve their marriages peacefully and with minimal conflict, but there is a big distinction that I feel needs to be made here.

The term implies that it is something meant to be done together when in reality, the only side of the street you can do anything about is your own — your house, your emotions, your motivations and your actions.

That in itself is massive and can be a gamechanger that will have trickledown effect. Your elevated consciousness will influence how you and your kids arrive at the other side of the divorce — and just may have a positive effect upon your partner. But even if it doesn’t, that’s OK mama because it is the right thing for YOU and your nervous system.

So many of the mamas I work with are working to detangle themselves from contentious situations with narcissists and bullies. The reality is that they have already become professionals at mitigating (i.e., dancing around) the anger and explosions of their partners, but in doing so have often lost pieces of themselves along the way.

Their continuous concessions have diffused their voices.

The women in our program are seeking heart-centered, intuitive, grounded choices — not revenge. They know that the dissolution of their marriage is about more than assets, legal docs and who gets the house. They are also women who want to do the ‘right’ thing. They want to be good people — fair and kind. But this is also where they get stuck.

Conscious uncoupling starts with honoring self and getting clear on your objectives and motivations. It does not mean that you sacrifice your needs, desires and beliefs for the loudest voice in the room or suddenly shrink in the corner.

What do you want to mirror to your children? They are watching. How do you want them to view conflict and navigate their own relationships? Like it or not, they are taking this all in and establishing their own belief system whether you talk to them about it or not — just like we all did growing up.

Everything within the Best Self Intuitive Divorce program runs through a filter of consciousness, self-awareness and reflection, but that is often misconstrued as ‘woo woo’ and not strategic. But they’ve got that wrong.

Consciously navigating divorce doesn’t mean you’re a doormat. It means you’ve made a commitment to how you want to show up in the world for yourself and your kids — and nothing is more powerful and impactful than that.

—Kristen Noel, Certified Intuitive Divorce Coach | Editor-In-Chief, Best Self Magazine