#090: How’s Your Parents’ Divorce or Broken Family Affecting You Today?
How is your parents’ divorce or your broken family affecting you today?
If your answer is “I don’t really know” or you don’t understand the depth of it, you’re not alone. That’s actually very common. But in the words of one therapist, “When it comes to experiencing healing, naming how you’ve been harmed is about 70% of the battle.”
In this episode, we unveil a new tool that will help you name and diagnose your brokenness, so you can heal it and build the life and relationships you desire.
Links & Resources
Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!
To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.
Previous Episodes:
Enjoy the show?
To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.
As a bonus, you’ll receive our free guide, 7 Tips to Build a Thriving and Divorce-Proof Marriage!
TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
For those of you come from broken or divorced families. How is your parents divorce or your broken family affecting you today. And if your answer is, I don't really know or you don't understand the depth of it. You're not alone. That's actually very common. I've heard that a lot. It's a trickier question to answer than it might seem. But in the words of one therapist, when it comes to experiencing, healing naming how you've been harmed is about 70% of the battle. So in this episode we unveil a new tool that will help you name and diagnose your Brokenness. You can heal it at its roots, not just the symptoms and build the life and relationships that you want. Keep listening. Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents, divorce, separation or broken marriage so you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joy Pontarelli, thank you so much for listening. This is episode 90. My co host today is actually a restored teammate, our director of content Miranda Hinkle and Miranda a little background on her. She was born in Caracas Venezuela, although she spent the majority of her childhood in North Carol When she was 10, her family moved back to Venezuela where her life was changed forever when her parents divorced a year later and shortly after that, she and her younger sister moved with their mother back to the United States and settled in Charleston South Carolina Miranda graduated with a psychology degree from Clemson University in 2015 moved back to Charleston where she met her husband and married him in 2020? They now reside in florida where her husband is stationed with the U. S. Navy. She works for restored to help other Children of divorce heal and grow Miranda enjoys the beach beer, trying to understand poetry and poking fun at her husband. So with that, let's dive into the show. This is such a common problem that we hear that people like us who come from divorced or broken families, they don't recognize or at least don't fully understand how their past trauma affects them today. And that's I think a big problem and to take a little bit further, they might recognize symptoms like, oh I struggle with anxiety or depression or I'm addicted to, you know, alcohol or pornography, but they might not understand the root cause. So they don't understand like that their family trauma stuff that's happened to them in the past is actually contributing to that struggle today. And if I think the danger to not recognizing that is that we might be tempted to merely treat symptoms instead of addressing the root cause. And if you do that, what I've seen at least is that you're just always going to be treating symptoms. You know, we see that a lot in the medical world whether that's like popping pills or going on this or that program that never actually gets you a result for the root cause. It just like treats the symptoms. And so I wanted to hear from you though, like what um what happened in your past, that kind of woke you up to realize that a lot of, you know, your struggles were some from at least the breakdown of your parents, marriage and the family trauma that you had been through. Yeah, I think what you're saying is so true and we see that over and over again in our work, just how we, a lot of us, you know, from broken families walk around without understanding how our parents divorced or how our broken family has affected us and then we don't know, we can't connect the symptoms to the issue. And so it kind of puts us in a really tough position to find healing. And so awareness is a really key factor. And for me personally, it wasn't until I was in my first dating relationship that I started to really notice the symptoms of distrust and anger and just a lot of dysfunctional habits when it came to romantic relationships. And so the symptoms became just really acute and um that prompted me to look for help, which came in the way of counseling. Really excellent counselor, I do advocate that for everyone if they can. Um and I know that that is part of our mission with restored is to connect people to to high quality counselors. So, through the work of our counselor of my counselor, I I was able to make that connection because, you know, she was wise enough to see that I was struggling, you know, relational e especially, and she kind of could see how those wounds came from my parents divorce years before. And so through our conversations, you know, it definitely took a while for me to truly believe that that was true. But I think over time in our work together, I began to see the connection and with that awareness, I was able to work on really treating the symptoms at their root. No, that makes so much sense, and I'm really glad that you had that experience. I mean, it sounds like a painful thing to go through, but at the end it turned out to help you help he'll help you grow to help you become a better stronger person. It shocked you though, didn't it? Like it just didn't occur to you before that, or maybe sharing this with me, Like it didn't occur to you before that that that would be a possibility, like you said, it took you time to kind of wrap your head around that. Um is that right? Absolutely, yeah, I was, I think, you know, many of us are just reluctant, you know, we don't want to revisit painful memories. So there's kind of that protective element, a lot of us block uh those things out because it's painful and uncomfortable to consider. So there's that and then I think we we as Children, you know, we don't want to put our parents in a position where we're blaming them for anything. And so where there's kind of that protective instinct and so there's a lot of factors that can work against us recognizing how our families have, you know, led to us dealing with these symptoms. And of course there is not a matter of blame. It's just a matter of acknowledging the truth. And you know, jesus said like the truth was that you free, we know that that's true. And so from there, from that point of honesty is where you can start to truly finding healing, you know? Yeah, that's so true. And yeah, I think a lot of people feel like they're somehow hurting their parents are not honoring them or you know, not loving them if they're honest about the ways in which they, you know, maybe decisions, they made one or both parents made affected them. And I, yeah, I definitely, we definitely push back against that saying that you could still love and honor your parents while at the same time being honest about the ways in which your family negatively affected you. And and the point by the way is not to just like stay there forever. We want to like move past it and heal those relationships and just like move on with our life. Like we're not supposed to be and I hope people don't get this wrong impression about restored. Like we want you guys to like move on, move past this stuff, not to perpetually be wrestling with, you know, these wounds and the struggles in your relationship with your parents. It is a process and that's something that happens overnight. But um, but that's the end the goal of all of this. So Amanda, I was curious, you know, once you kind of had that recognition, you were aware of, you know, your struggles and the root of them on a deeper level. What did you do with that knowledge? Like how did that understanding benefit you? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know with any problem, you really can't address it until you acknowledge that there is a problem. And so seeing that you know, I had some serious, you know, trust issues and just unhelpful mindsets when it came to relationships and things like that, it allowed me to then address them and I think especially you know with the help of the counselor, it was extremely fruitful to break down what I was dealing with why I was dealing with it and from there be able to find healing. So I think the process of understanding, you know, how my past had affected me and then addressing each symptom in turn, you know, allowed for healing to happen. I really don't think that I would have been able to kind of develop better habits growing virtue nearly as much as I hadn't first kind of come to terms with the fact that my past had affected me and was still affecting me even at that point in time, years after the divorce. So I think it was absolutely a very fruitful process even though like you said, it is a little, you know, it can be a little painful. It's a lot of work, but I think it's absolutely necessary if we want to have healthy relationships and a big part of our mission here restored is to undo the cycle of divorce. And I think we all want that for our culture, but we also want that individually. Like we don't want to repeat our parents mistakes. And so I think it was absolutely essential for me to work on those issues so that I could undo the cycle of divorce in my own life. Okay, that makes so much sense. Now before we move on, I'm just curious if you're open to sharing, were there any like more specific examples of like, this was a problem? I know you mentioned anger and some other, you know, struggles in your dating relationship. So I'm curious if there was anything in particular that was like, okay, this is a struggle. I didn't see I was connected to the breakdown of my family. Then I realized it was and I did this about it and I was able to get this outcome. Just curious just so we can kind of tie that together for everyone listening. Yeah, I think one of the most kind of helpful parts of, you know, especially cognitive behavioral therapy is you kind of change, you know, the goal is to kind of change your thought processes and so for me, the way my therapist described it and I hope I can make this analogy make sense, but it was kind of like being in a building and all your all your fire alarms, you know, are going off and so you're like, wow, like something's really wrong, like I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here and everyone outside the building is like saying no you're fine, you're good, everything's fine. Like what there's no problem here, but you're, you know, internally, like everything is is like a mess and you're like, I have to I have to escape and that's kind of how I felt with relationships was like they're constantly red flags going off in my head. There's a lot of anxiety of getting close to people and intimacy and all those things and I was constantly um riddled with these just intense, intense anxieties. And so those are like the fire alarms going off and so what therapy and coming to terms with with my past and things like that allowed me to do was to question those fire alarms. And so instead of running away or you know, avoiding the situation or you know, self sabotage, etcetera, it allowed me to like actually create space between the anxiety and my response. And then to intern question, you know, okay, is this where is this coming from? You know, why? Why? What are the reasons for it? Are the reasons valid? And then, like, you know, is this something I should talk to someone else about? Like, a peer mentor or or my therapist, or is this something I need to pray about first, It's just allowed me to kind of question those anxieties instead of just automatically assuming that it was true. And so um with that became a lot of courage to confront those fears and to work on relationships despite them, instead of kind of being their victim, if that makes sense? Yeah, because it can be easy to just go off the emotion and think like, well I feel super anxious about this relationship, you know, in your analogy of the building, I'm in this relationship, I'm in the building, I feel super anxious, it feels like all these fire alarms are going off, Everyone else says, it's like fun, but I feel like it's not. And so the temptation could be, like you said to just like maybe leave the relationship or to not resolve some conflict that came up and said you kind of were able to just avoid going down that path, which wouldn't have solved anything and instead kind of engaged, like the feelings that you're having and then, you know, deal with the conflict or instead of, you know, just listening to your anxiety, you're able to keep loving in the relationship and go beyond just the emotion portion. Is, is that right? I'm hearing, right? Exactly. So it was, it was really helpful for that. Exactly what you're saying, awesome. Yeah, so on my end, just to share a little bit, I was aware from a young age how my parents separation and later divorce had affected me, but obviously wasn't aware to the full extent. I always knew that man, like, that was a big deal was really painful and, you know, it still affects me to stay, but I slowly realized that the root of so many of my struggles over time, you know, into high school into college because just for everyone's sake, I was 11 years old and my parents separated, they later got divorced and so in the years that followed that there's just a lot of pain and a lot of problems that came along with that, and so did some things that really helped got new friends got into my faith, those things were really good, but I still felt broken. And so I realized over time that man, so much of this Brokenness, whether it was loneliness, anxiety, depression, you know, being some symptoms, a lot of anger for me, you know, as a young person struggles in my relationships, like all those things kind of started bubbling to the surface and I was able to tie it back, at least on a basic level, like, okay, this has something to do with my family, but it really didn't hit me until even after college when I was on a flight from philadelphia to Chicago. I was just visiting my now wife when we were dating, now I visit her and her family and I was heading back and I don't even know what happened that weekend when I was visiting her or you know, why I had this thought, but something happened in the relationship, There was some struggle there, whether it was like me struggling to be vulnerable and open up or some trust issue, I'm not quite sure what it was, but I remember sitting on the plane, I was in like a window seat. I'm looking out the window into the night sky and I was just thinking like, why in the world do I struggle so much in relationships? Like why do relationships feel so much harder for me than, you know, for my friends or other people that I've met. And then as I was reflecting on it more, it just hit me that man, like I, this was never really taught, you know, I didn't see a great example of what a healthy relationship looked like in my family and more than anyone else. And as you and I know that's like our school, that's our school of Law, that's how we learned how to love and build relationships within our families. And so it just started to click for me. Like it made so much sense that I didn't know how to do this thing that I was never taught to do. And so I just saw the need to like learn that and at a deeper level to to heal a lot of the wounds that I was dealing with. And so that kind of set me on a path personally to like seek out the healing which I began years prior. Didn't just start at that point, but it really kind of hit me in the face then. And that was actually the impetus for resort. I I just had to realize man, like I cannot be alone in this. In fact, I knew a lot of other people who are struggling with similar things. And so eventually led to creating restored building this podcast and the other resources that we've developed. So, you know, I can relate to what you're saying Miranda and uh we're certainly you and I are certainly not alone. Isn't that right? And uh, and we've heard a lot of, you know, stories of people who've, you know, dealt with similar things. Um, did you wanna talk about that? Yeah. So, you know, we've kind of looked at a lot of the research that talks about how, you know, Children of divorce are affected and also Layla Miller came out with a great book called Primal Loss and we've talked about that on the show. I know several times and it covers the stories of a lot of Children divorce as adults and how they came to the realization that their parents divorce affected them. And I think they, the the hard part is for them to realize looking back why they struggled so much and they see it especially in their relationships and marriages and sometimes failed marriages and for them to realize and to make that connection is so powerful. But also I think there's kind of a especially with people who are, you know, maybe older, there's almost like this regret of like man, I wish I had known earlier and made the connection earlier and worked on this sooner and so of course, you know, it's never too late and that's like the great news, but I think it's also very helpful, you know, for them to put their experience into words and you know, we have on our blog, the story section where people can submit their stories and I think that that's really helpful because it's very cathartic for us to just kind of talk about our experiences in that way because a lot of times there's really never an invitation for us to do. So, you know, it's kind of one of those things that we carry around um sometimes, you know, unaware, but even when there's a level of awareness, we have very little opportunity to talk about it because we don't want to hurt, you know, our family, we don't want to shock our friends or um you know, be vulnerable in that way and um it's just not something that's kind of discussed a lot. I think divorce is kind of a taboo subject in a sense, like we don't want to feel like we're condemning anyone and so we really don't get the opportunity very often to discuss our experience. And I think for, you know, people who participated in books like Primal Loss or who submit their stories on our website or things like that, it's like very cathartic for them to to experience, to be able to put their experience into words. And I know that, You know, we did some research on the power of writing and how that can be so conducive to healing. And for me personally, I wrote a post called your divorce that helped me, you know, and we talked about that in an earlier podcast episode two, that helped me come to terms with how the divorce affected me, and it was just very, just helpful to put it into words and there's kind of a sense of closure with that. So, anyways, we we've done a lot, we've read a lot of the research and we've seen over and over again, people, you know, tell their stories and even as adults who, you know, maybe have been married for a long time, they notice that they are affected by the breakdown of their family and so there's kind of a a sense of camaraderie or there should be a sense of camaraderie because we are, there's a lot of us and we've all kind of been impacted by the breakdown of our family and um healing is possible, but I think it's important for us to know that we're not alone in the suffering and in the healing journey. I remember interviewing gen it was episode 11, the title of the episode was um I thought my parents divorce didn't affect me and it was a fascinating episode and she told me in the episode, if you guys want to go listen to it, you can that she honestly thought like, for years of her life, I forget exactly when her parents divorced, but it was like earlier on, and uh you know, then years later she honestly thought that just didn't affect her until she was like in her mid twenties and she had an emotional breakdown. She was on a mission trip actually in Central America, and she still actually didn't make the full connection then, but it was not long after that, because she just kind of woke up to this fact that like, man that, you know, the struggles I've had with my emotions, the loneliness that I've dealt with, like all these other issues and relationships, they had the root and the breakdown of her family and so there was this like, thawing out period or waking up people talk about different ways, you know, connecting the dots, putting the pieces together if you want to talk about it, where she realized like, oh, you know, my struggles aren't random, you know? And truly not everyone is affected the same. Like we wouldn't say that. Um there's just cases where it's like you're more likely to struggle in this way if you come from a broken family. But you know, we can say almost always from the research we've seen in the stories we've heard that going through your parents divorce coming from a family where there's a lot of extreme dysfunction that that's traumatic and it has very real effects and we don't always recognize those effects and if we do, we might not, you know, again trace them back to their route. But the good news is we have a tool to help you guys identify how you were affected so you can heal those wounds. But first man, I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, why do you think it's such a challenge for us to recognize how we were affected by the breakdown of our families by our parents divorce because it seems like it shouldn't be that hard and some people listening maybe like this isn't that hard, but it truly is like we've heard that for this from a lot of people kind of like yeah, I don't think it was affected. I don't know how it was affected then you start digging into their life and you realize like actually there's all sorts of struggles that you're dealing with, you just didn't recognize that it came directly or indirectly from this trauma, from this experience that you had. So why do you think it's such a challenge to recognize that it's a good question? I think one of the answers to that is the cultural um dilemma we're facing, which is just a very, you know, large percentage of marriages do end in divorce. So it's extremely common. We see it all the time and it's portrayed, especially the media sometimes as either neutral or positive event. And so there's kind of this um subliminal subliminal lesson, we're taught that divorce is really, it's okay because of X, Y, Z, you know, different reasons, you know? And so we see it very frequently, we've kind of been taught, again not maybe not overtly, but at some level we're kind of communicated that it is acceptable that it is, you know, some a lot of times a very good thing. And so it kind of makes it difficult for us to um make that connection because we're in this mindset of, well, you know, divorce happens all the time, like how how can this be a traumatic event if it happens all the time. You know, how can this be a negative thing if people say that it's it's good and that it's healthy and etcetera, etcetera. So I think there's just a lot of challenges that comes with when you're kind of culture is telling you that this is okay, that it's normal, that, you know, in fact it might be even good. And so we're kind of facing that at odds with our own experience and at odds with the symptoms that it's almost like, I think we talked a lot about this how we can be gas lighted sometimes. So I think that's one of the main reasons that that it's so hard for us to recognize this as negative and that's something that has a severe impact on us. Yeah. And for anyone who isn't familiar with that term gaslighting, you might not just expanding what we mean by that. Yeah. So I believe it was like that had to do with actual lights where people, like people were like slowly dimming the lights and you know, someone's like, oh, the lights are different and they're like, no, no, they're not, they're fine. You know? And it was like, um, I think that's kind of the origin of the term gaslighting, but basically, you know, we use it as a, as a, as a word for making normalizing something or saying like there's no problem when there really is. And so it's, you know, it's essentially we're being lied to, but it's, it's very subtle. So it's hard to pick up on, it's hard to combat because of that, okay. No, that makes sense. So it's basically like a form of manipulation where someone is kind of saying like, you know, you're like, hey, you know, my foot hurts and you know, you might be like bleeding and someone's like, no, actually you're fine, everything's great. Maybe that's an extreme example, but it gets the point across. So that makes so much sense. I think another reason why it can be so hard to just like connect the dots between our struggles today and what we went through in our families is that often divorce itself is promoted as like this great thing. You know, there's this whole line, our culture that, you know, the if you're unhappy in your marriage, just get divorced and go seek, you know, happiness elsewhere. Like with another person for example. And so what can happen to us as the Children is that we, you know, since it's being promoted as it's a good thing and people might even say things like, well everyone's happier and that we feel like, well if everyone's happier, then I have no right to be damaged by this. I have no right to feel badly about it. Like do I not want my parents to be happy? Like it's such a tricky question to navigate when people, you know, throw that to you, like, don't don't you want your parents to be happy. It's like, yeah, I do, but not, you know, at any cost, we've used this analogy before, but it's like if if someone's happiness and found is found in doing something like super immoral or illegal, it's like, well, no, we're not going to promote that in a similar way. I'm not saying, you know, divorce is legal or anything like that, but in a similar way, if you know something that's truly bad for the Children is being promoted as this great thing, then we end up with this really difficult situation where the Children again think that, oh, gosh, I'm hurt by this is painful for me, I'm affected by it, but they're told that no, it's actually a great thing and it puts us in this spot where we just kind of like, don't do anything about it. We feel like we have no right to be damaged by it. What else would you add? Why? It's hard to recognize this? Well, at one point, I want to add about your what you said with our parents happiness, I think it is very difficult, you know, when people when that our parents happiness is kind of brought into the question because of course we love them and we want them to be happy. But I think what a lot of people don't know is that actually a lot of the research kind of shows that people after a divorce, there may be a temporary uptick in personal happiness, but a lot of, most of the time it goes back to where it was before or lower. So I think to that's also a lie that we've been told a lot is that like, oh, this is gonna make your parents happy and it's like, well maybe in some cases there is an overall increase in our parents happiness, but I think a lot of the times, it's actually very temporary fix and people go back to where they were before, but I think another issue is we get really comfortable in dealing with the symptoms, so it's in the sense that we're used to it and it's just our normal and it's just our, yeah, it's just, it's all we know and so I think it's hard for us to believe that there's a problem when we've gotten so good at coping with the problem and it's just for us it's it's normal. And so I think a big part of it is, especially for us who maybe experienced our our parents divorced at a younger age, you know, and we just grow up dealing with coping in the best way we know how, which unfortunately is a lot of times very unhealthy, but we grow up doing that, we can become really accustomed to it and so it becomes very difficult to see our coping mechanisms as what they are, which is coping mechanisms and a lot of times very unhealthy coping mechanisms. So I think time, you know, build those habits, which makes them hard to recognize as unhealthy or dysfunctional, Yeah, we just get comfortable, we're comfortable in our wounds, even if things are like, you know, really mess up. I'm trying to think of a good analogy, one might be like your room could be like a total mess and yet it seems normal because it's always been that way. Um and so to you, it's not messy, but if someone else were to come into your room and see like, oh your room is actually like a complete mess, there's clothes everywhere, you know, papers on the ground, like chairs flipped over, your bed's not made, like all that stuff. It's like, no, this is actually everything I knew, I never even knew, you can like organize the room then you wouldn't know what to compare it to, sort of thing. So I don't know if that's the best analogy, but I hope that makes sense. Everyone. 11 thing I wanted to add on this too, I saw a real on instagram the other day by Adam Young. If you guys aren't familiar with him, he hosts the podcast called the place we find ourselves great, great podcasts, we love it. He was sharing a story about how when he was in high school, he asked his dad, he had known a lot of friends of his that were getting, you know, their parents were getting divorced, they came from really broken families, maybe one of their siblings was like hooked on drugs or whatever, just really sad dysfunctional situations. And so Adam asked his dad, he's like dad, you know, why are all these families so messed up? Those were his words in our families, like so good and so healthy. And one of the points he made was that he up to that point. He had been physically abused by his dad, his dad like really terrorized him, he said and he actually was sexually abused by his mom and yet he just felt like their family was good and healthy when in reality it's like, no, no actually there's some like really unhealthy things going on but he didn't know any better. That was his normal that that was what he was used to. And so I think it's similar here like we can go through life dealing with you know, maybe intense anxiety, We can go through life dealing with depression, just kind of feeling lifeless all the time, struggling with some sort of injection, whether that's a substance like drugs or alcohol or maybe sex or porn and it's just kind of learn to live with it that we think its like not weird, it's it's normal for us, even even if it's not even if it's not healthy, it's not good. It's not what we're you know, made for, meant to be. So I thought that was like really eye opening. I think another reason too, you you already touched on this a little bit Miranda is that we we avoid exploring that the damage that was maybe caused by a broken family because we don't wanna hurt our parents, because if we, you know, go into that on a deep level, we might start feeling like some sort of anger or abandonment or even rejected by mom or dad, even if even if mom and dad didn't intend that in any way, which is often the case, they don't intend it, it's just what happens. Um, it might be really, really difficult to kind of bring up those feelings because we feel like if we, you know, go there, we're damaging our parents. So we did touch on this a little bit before, but I just wanted to bring light to it again, saying that this is, I think why it can be so challenging. It's almost like we kind of block out this connection again between our struggles today, these symptoms that we've experienced and the breakdown um, of our family, but anything to add to that and anything else that, I mean, I think we probably touched on this already, but I think just to emphasize that it is very painful to, to think and talk about it. And um, I think, you know, very strong instinct that we have as humans, is to avoid pain. And so it's like, why would I why would I try to, you know, feels like almost inflict pain on myself by revisiting these wounds and these painful experiences if I can just keep doing what I'm doing and not experience that pain, and so, um, it's a very, you know, kind of counterintuitive process, because, you know, we've kind of been trained to avoid pain at all costs, and so to confront these painful memories and events in our, in our past can feel redundant at best and very painful and, and, and, and difficult. So, I think it's just important to remember that, like, there is a type of pain that is fruitful in a way, which is a necessary part of healing, you know, but it but it is possible to work through it. Yeah, no, it's, I mean, there's so many analogies, like going to the dentist when your tooth is, like rotting, you know, getting a cavity filled or getting a surgery on your broken ankle, like, it's going to be painful to go through that healing, but in the end you're going to be better off. And I think that's what I would challenge people to do here, and I'm sorry if we're gonna beating a dead horse here guys, but we really want to make this point clear and just talk to this problem, because we've seen it so often, you know, if you think that you're getting by in life, if you you're comfortable where you at, where you're at, like, I get that, there's nothing wrong with that in particular, but if you want better, right, then, you know, digging into some of your past, digging into the symptoms that you're currently currently experiencing is necessary? And so if you want to become the best, you, if you want to thrive, if you want to find the love, the happiness, the freedom that you truly long for. If you look, you know, on a deep level inside yourself, if you want to avoid repeating, you know, your parents mistakes, if you want to avoid repeating the dysfunction, the divorce in your family is going to avoid hurting the people that you love the most that then you really have to heal, healing is not optional. It's required. And again, just like with physical wounds, healing is not possible until you first recognize and inspect and diagnose the woman, like a doctor cannot treat an illness that he first doesn't diagnose and understand. And therapist Adam Young, who I mentioned before, he said when it comes to experiencing healing, naming how you've been harmed is about 70% of the battle and that sounds super simplistic. It's like, okay, I can like put a name to what I've been through or the ways in which I was wounded, but it's so true. And another example of that is like if you've ever had some sort of um an illness that you couldn't diagnose or you maybe you've known someone who has like somewhat of a mystery illness, whether it's cancer or something else, it can be agonizing to be like why in the world do I feel this? Why? Why in the world am I struggling with this? And there's so much power in just knowing like, oh, this is the disease, this is the problem because once you've recognized and put a name on it and diagnosed it, then you can see, oh now I can seek out the tools, the treatment to overcome this, to heal this, to become healthy, whole to gain full function of whatever. Like you break your arm to get your arm healed so you can use it again um and just move on in life to not stay stuck and stay there. And so to, to help you guys do that to diagnose your wounds you can heal. We built a tool, an assessment and Miranda, would you tell us about it? Yeah. So we, you know, over the past, I don't know, a year or so we've been looking a lot very closely at the common struggles that Children of divorce face and we kind of came up with all these different categories, emotional problems, relationship problems, you know, spiritual kind of challenges. And we came up with an assessment, a survey to help us identify like those problem areas. And again, this is based on the research that we've seen based on the trends, you know, because of the hundreds of stories that we've heard about it. So we were able to come up with, I think what is a very comprehensive survey about the emotional problems, the struggles with coping the romantic relationship issues, the problems with the with your parents, um and the struggles in your relationships with God and then a few other areas and we just came up with questions about all those different issues for you to kind of evaluate where you are with those different areas and how you may still be affected in those areas. Um, and I think a lot of us we may feel like we may have some awareness of like, yeah, you know, my my parents divorced, I think it may have affected me in this way or I I do struggle with relationships, but we haven't maybe sat down to really consider it in in depth. And I think this survey will help you have so much, so much better understanding of how you're being affected and therefore, you know, open the door for healing in all of those areas. I just, I just think it'll give so much more self awareness to everyone who takes it and who maybe wants to grow, grow in virtue and have healthy relationships and undo the cycle of divorce and dysfunction in their families. So it is free. It is, you know, confidential, it doesn't take too long and that time is an excellent investment into you. Just growing as a person. It's not, you know, we're not psychologists, we're not, you know, medical professionals, but it will give you a good idea of how you were affected, how you're being affected. So you can actually take steps towards finding healing because I think without awareness of the problem areas, I just think it's very hard to work on those problem areas without first knowing what they are. And I think one of the benefits too is you kind of get it all in one place, you know, at the end of this assessment, you'll get a report of, you know what you answered basically and then you'll be able to go back and see like, oh you know, this is kind of like all of my struggles are all these different things that I've struggled with that are in one spot, one report. And so you can see, oh this is how I rated my anxiety, this is how I rated this aspect of the relationships I've been in my relationship with my parents, my relationship with God, like all these different things, you'll be able to see it in one spot because I think often um when we go through life and we recognize like an area that we struggle in um if we do tend to think about it, it's always in isolation, it's never like kind of this comprehensive, like okay these are the areas I'm strong in these areas on weekends, so it kind of gives you this sort of assessment of, okay, this is you know, in these areas that I haven't struggled in these areas that I have struggle and you kind of see it comprehensively altogether at once in that report. So there's a lot of benefits to it Miranda already mentioned. Some of them. Are there any other benefits that you would add to? You know, investing the time into taking this free assessment? I would say, even if you think you're fine and maybe you are, you know, maybe you are doing really well. I think there's always room for improvement. So I think as people who want to be the best versions of ourselves, I think this survey can help us do that. Even if maybe you feel like you weren't affected by your dysfunctional family or maybe you feel like your family wasn't, you know, broken in any way. I think there's always room for us to grow. And I think this tool will help you kind of combat complacency in your life, especially in your relationships and take it to the next level. So I think it's, you know, not necessarily just about fixing what's broken, but also improving what maybe is already good. Nice. No, I like that. And like you said, you know, it's a tool to help you diagnose your Brokenness. You can heal it. Um It also is just going to save you a lot of time from needing to research this yourself because you could, you could read a bunch of books, you can do the research that we've done. Um you know, the studies we've looked at, but it's gonna take you a long time. And so we're essentially saving you time saving you money by going through this assessment, then you needing to research all this yourself. And I've also, you know, we've seen this with the blog like you mentioned before where when people share their stories, there's this sense of just like not really feeling as alone, which which I think is powerful. So I think once you go through this and recognize like man all these questions that they're asking, I can relate to and if this is based on research and stories of a lot of other people, then they must struggle with this stuff too. Then I'm not as weird as I thought I was, I thought I was alone. I thought I was the only one who struggle with it. I'm not strange. I I, you know, I'm just like all these other people and so I think, I think that's really helpful. One thing I would add too is once you go through this, you can even bring the results, the report to your counselor or to your spiritual director and even a mentor and get their advice on, you know, how to heal and how to grow it again, it gives you kind of like Snapchat, an assessment of where you're at in life and the areas that maybe you need to work on. So I think there's a lot of good good there and kind of summarizing to one of the main things when it comes to any sort of healing and growth that we've learned from the 12 step programs like alcoholics anonymous. That helps men and women who are struggling with an alcohol addiction. The first thing in the 12 step program is really to admit the problem and our ability to admit the problem really rests on our ability to just recognize it to begin with and understand it. And so that's what we're helping you guys do in this assessment. So to close out if you want to take the assessment, it's really simple. Three steps, just go to my broken family dot com. My broken family dot com. You'll just answer the questions and the assessment. Again, you can be anonymous if you want to. It's a confidential thing. We're not going to like tell, you know, everyone in our audience that you in particular answer, you know, these questions, of course we can take that very, very seriously and we'll keep your particular individual answers private. And then you get to see your results. So you get to see the snapshot of of what you answered. Again, go to my broken family dot com or you can just click on the link in the show notes and again, you might be very surprised by your results. You might think that you're kind of in, in one place in life and then you realize, oh, I'm in a different place than I thought I was and that can be really empowering, really helpful to uh to grow. And so again, we've heard stories of people just kind of listening to our content or consuming some of our resources using them, who say, wow, I just, I never realized that, you know, people from broken families typically struggle with this or that, and I've heard people even who shared with me in their sixties and or fifties and sixties, let's say, who just never had the words to use to say, like, oh, I didn't realize this was like the way I could talk about this problem that I had, like, coming from a broken family and it's like extremely helpful for them, or, you know, again, like I said, I didn't realize that other people who came from broken families as well struggled in this way. So, again, go to my broken family dot com, my broken family dot com. And you can take that assessment if you know someone who comes from a divorce or a broken family who could benefit from this tool to go ahead and send them that link, or you could just send them the link to this podcast episode. So, in closing, thank you so much for listening Miranda. If you have any final thoughts, I love to hear them, thank you so much for coming on the show as well. Again, No, I, I'm excited for this tool. I think it's gonna be really helpful to a lot of people and I just encourage anyone who's listening to take advantage of it because I think it can actually be the catalyst for some really big and positive changes. So I just encourage people who might be considering to take it to go ahead and just make that investment um time wise and do it for yourself in your future relationships or current relationships. And I think you'll be really surprised at how how helpful it could be to just get started on your healing journey and to understand where you are and where you could be. I'd like to leave you with this to reflect on how were you affected by your parents force or your broken family and most importantly, how are you still affected today answering that question? Might honestly be the key to begin healing and building the life and relationships that you want to help answer that question. You could take our new assessment by just going to my broken family dot com or just click on the link in the show notes again, It will help you diagnose and name your Brokenness so you can heal it. Thank you so much for listening. If you know someone who's struggling from their parents, divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them and always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in your own life
