Pete Wright: Welcome to how to split a toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships
Seth Nelson: Welcome to Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm Seth Nelson, and I'm here as always with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today on the show, we have Erica Ann England, who is in increasing order of importance, chief of strategy at support pay, a former divorce attorney turned mediator, and usually happy co parent, and top of the list, a paddle board yoga enthusiast. We have a list of 1500 things to talk to her about today, but we'll try to keep it to just 4. Erica, welcome to the toaster.
Erika Anne Englund: It is a delight to be here. And I should clarify off the bat, I I attempt paddleboard very poorly. So while I am enthusiastic, I would not like anyone to get the wrong impression that I am any good.
Pete Wright: I stand by our comment. You can be enthusiastic and terrible.
Erika Anne Englund: Alright. Great. I love it. Safety first.
Seth Nelson: Just, wear a life jacket.
Pete Wright: No. You're gonna be you're gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine. Paddle hard. It's gonna be great.
Seth Nelson: Okay. Let me get this straight. Former divorce attorney, then a mediator, and now you're chief of strategy at support pay. So I've got one quick question for you. Are you hiring?
This sounds good to me. I've had a rough week already, and it's only Tuesday.
Erika Anne Englund: Yeah. Divorce is a rough world, isn't it? You're you have to deal with a lot of difficult energy and you're working with people during one of the hardest times of their lives, working with the most important things in their lives and that's a lot to carry for years years. So after 15 years, I just jumped ship and headed into legal tech where, apparently, you can do anything you want as long as you do something else. We call it AB testing.
And there's really like very few rules. It's so the opposite of law. And, I recommend it. Get through your week first and then we'll talk.
Pete Wright: Seth, I see a real future for you.
Seth Nelson: Alright. I know. I'm like, you put see, she at the very end, she was like, get through your week and then we'll talk. I thought, like, she wasn't even gonna answer my question.
Pete Wright: No. She had one in the pocket. I've
Seth Nelson: got hope here.
Pete Wright: There was that was great. Yeah. I Ready
Seth Nelson: to go.
Pete Wright: You, you've you sent us this this note, as we were kind of talking about the kinds of things we wanted to talk about in the show, and and you sent us this note with a a provocative subject that, we thought we might use to kick start a set of conversations that I I know Seth and I are gonna have over the the coming months around the holidays. The holidays are tough for a lot of people. You know, seasoned co parents and new co parents alike, it's it's hard to make it through this season. And your subject was don't survive the holidays, co parenting through the season with a new perspective. It sounds potentially horrifying, and I hope you, can shed a little light on what you've what you're thinking about how to how to get through the holidays, as a co parent yourself.
Erika Anne Englund: I would love to. Yeah. I got divorced when my children were 13, and they are now 810 at my last check. So we've had a lot of holidays together. But just aside from that, something that's always been important to me as an attorney and a mediator is using language with precision because I believe it very much shapes our world and our inner being, how we're speaking and words that we are using.
And as soon as we get into the holiday season, won't we all see 25 articles at once on surviving it? And it really is supposed to be a joyful, for some people, a deeply religious time. And I think for anyone, just the whole word of survival implies it's something that we have to get through, not something to enjoy. So what I mean to say if I don't survive the holidays, and this is your first divorce especially or if this is the first one where someone's remarried or custody schedule is different and you're looking ahead going, okay. I just have to survive it.
There's a different point of view, and I would be happy to give your listeners a couple of tips on how to shift into a healthier point of view.
Pete Wright: So And let me just let me just ask you this. David, how long how many holidays did it take you to figure this out? Like, did you just go into your 1st holiday and think, oh, I I nailed it?
Seth Nelson: Well, let's let's back up. Was the first holiday was the first holiday from home
Pete Wright: to stay? To Arbor Day as they all are, you savage.
Erika Anne Englund: You know, interestingly, the very first holiday that came up after my husband my former husband and I split was our anniversary. And my 3 year old daughter, who didn't know had no way of knowing that was our anniversary, said,
Seth Nelson: mama,
Erika Anne Englund: I was at your wedding. It was outside, and there were flowers, and there was sunshine. And I have no idea where that came from. She wasn't there. And she said that on that day
Seth Nelson: because she wasn't invited or because she wasn't born yet? I'm just trying to be a little you know, language, you need to be precise, I heard on this show.
Erika Anne Englund: She feels like she was there. Like, she thinks she gate crashed because she believed she was living in my heart before she was born, and she saw everything that happened before she was born, which secretly horrifies me because I did get into some trouble. You know? I hope she didn't see that stuff. But she thinks she saw the wedding.
So I realized, oh my gosh. It's on our anniversary. We can't celebrate an anniversary anymore and how sad that is. But also, if we didn't have that day we got married for our situation, we wouldn't have our children and our family. So we started celebrating familyversary.
And every year, we all get together, and we have the same cake that we had at our wedding. And we have champagne for the kids. And, for the adults, we have sparkling soda. No. I said that wrong.
We have champagne for the adults.
Seth Nelson: No. No. No.
Pete Wright: I'm I'm totally we're abs no. We're absolutely leaving that in the show.
Seth Nelson: Yeah. And and now we know the things
Pete Wright: that we didn't want her to see. Right. Yeah. They're drunk. Calls you and says, like, hey, mom.
Do you remember that time in Poughkeepsie in 1995? You'll know she really she was really watching the whole time.
Erika Anne Englund: They're just they're easier to manage when they're drunk.
Pete Wright: That is a really heartwarming, tradition.
Erika Anne Englund: And they do it every year.
Pete Wright: There.
Erika Anne Englund: So that was that this is one of those things that came about through pure serendipity. And so by the time we got into Christmas, I wanted to make sure that we could do it in a way that made it special for our children. I have a good coparenting relationship, and not everyone does. So for me, it's easier to, quote unquote, survive the holidays than maybe someone who's going through a very difficult and stressful parenting time. But nonetheless, my advice applies.
So can I give you some tips?
Seth Nelson: I was about to say, I've got a list of tips I give my clients, so I wanna see if ours line up. So fire away.
Erika Anne Englund: Okay. So first of all, get rid of the word survive and replace it with anything else that suits how you imagine you want your holidays to be. So picture what's special. Picture why you love your holidays. Are they reflective?
Are they joyous? Is it the family? Is it the time off? So for me, it would be, I'm going to have a relaxing holiday full of family. And then that's the thing I tell myself going into it.
Seth Nelson: See, that just seems to me like an oxymoron. True. Like relaxing time with my family.
Erika Anne Englund: Agree. That Okay. Just Yes.
Seth Nelson: That I'm not using that one. I don't know about you, Pete.
Erika Anne Englund: It's usually not happening at the same time.
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Erika Anne Englund: Like, I'm either relaxing or with the family because I'm one of 8 children. So at no point are we all relaxing together.
Pete Wright: 888. Yeah. You said you said 8.
Erika Anne Englund: It's chaos.
Pete Wright: I'm an only child, so I just went through
Seth Nelson: a clock. 1500 in yeah. Pete, we just went up to 1501 things to talk about on this
Pete Wright: show. Okay. Go ahead. But it well, I will pivot back to this. I guarantee it.
Erika Anne Englund: I'm I'm here for it. So if we just stop using the word survive and start thinking about what do we want our holiday to look like and then begin talking about it in that way. So anything that you see, any article that says surviving the holidays, just don't read it. Anyone who talks about surviving, don't listen to it. You don't have to thrive through the holidays.
It does not need to be your best holiday ever because you're probably not in that place if you're recently divorced, but you can get through it in the way that you want to. And here are some things that you can do. First of all, you can start a new tradition. How whatever age your children are, this is the perfect year to do something you have always wanted to do. For my children, it is that we make French hot cocoa and then we go on the walks around the neighborhoods with the fancy lights.
Pete Wright: Sure. Sure.
Erika Anne Englund: And it's like it's like a silly thing and we added it to our Christmas tradition repertoire. It doesn't have to be done on a certain night and there's this long period of time that you have to enjoy it. And we started that on the very 1st year when they were teeny tiny and we've done that ever since and it provides this excitement.
Seth Nelson: Erica, let me jump in on that.
Erika Anne Englund: Yeah,
Seth Nelson: this isn't just a Christmas thing you're talking about. Let's be clear about this. Because this is something I tell to my clients all the time. I usually advise clients, unless there's a birthday or something in the middle here that mom gets Labor Day every year and dad gets Memorial Day. And people like, well, why don't we switch?
I said, one, I've lived this, similar to you. My child my child was very young when I got divorced. He was 2a half. He's now 17 as people know. But with Memorial Days in May and so is Mother's Day.
So, one, you're gonna be always looking back, like, did I have them last year? Did I not have them last year? So when you know you have them every year, you can start a tradition. So starting a new tradition is something that I highly recommend, because it's kinda yours, it's yours with them, and then you're kind of building this new wonderful thing. And it might have been something as simple as making cocoa and going on a walk, or we always go to the movies, or we always go to the beach, or whatever the case may be.
But it's so simple, it's a 100% in your control. And you can start doing it every year. Hence, the word tradition. So I am so far, we're 1 for 1.
Erika Anne Englund: I love it. And it's also affordable. But, tradition can be completely free.
Pete Wright: That's a point that that I think we come back to because we've we've talked in the fairly recent past about the stereotypes, like, the stereotype traps that we fall into that once you're divorced, like, once it happens, that suddenly everything gets expensive because now you don't even know it before you wake up, and you've bought way too many Christmas presents, and you've started new expensive things just to to, like, I don't know, try to fill some fantasy allegiance between your kids and make sure everybody's happy through compensation. Feel bad that they're indifferent.
Seth Nelson: Right?
Pete Wright: So I think
Seth Nelson: that's So That that actually is a very good point because people do that. We've talked about it, Pete. I got a little lucky. When my kid was little. He did the math and being Jewish.
He says, so dad, I'm gonna be at mom's for the first 5 days of Hanukkah. So I got a question. When I come here on the 6th day, am I getting 6 gifts? And I'm like, first off, love the math because you're little. Right?
But, no, you don't get 12 days of Hanukkah because your parents don't live under the same roof.
Pete Wright: Yeah. Yeah. This is also a kid who, when he was, like, I don't know what, 10 years old, took me for a $100 in a street corner card trick. So, like, you wait. He's he's a special kid.
Erika Anne Englund: Oh, you must be proud.
Seth Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. And you should've seen what we did with that $100,000,000. It's like 1,000,000 now. Thanks, Pete.
Pete Wright: Okay. So point the the point is you don't have to spend to create traditions, and let's let's start on the the things that you can do with your family that are that are special because family doesn't necessarily have to go away on a separation. Okay. Where where do you go?
Erika Anne Englund: Absolutely. My next favorite thing to do is create a journal for the children or a photo book. And there are a couple of ways I'll tell you to do this so that they can create a comprehensive record of their holiday even though they're going back and forth between 2 homes. So again, in in my house, we celebrate Christmas and we got the children one of those little Fuji cameras that's like the Polaroids we all had growing up. And they took the camera to all their special little Christmas events, whether they were with me or with their dad or at school, and pasted all the photos into a scrapbook from the 99¢ store.
And they had my Christmas 2018 and it didn't have any delineation between mom's house and dad's house. It was just a record of their Christmas and I thought a lovely way to preserve the continuity and the centrality of their lives in any kind of co parenting situation. So some things you can use if you don't have a camera that has, like a Polaroid type camera is it's super easy to create a Shutterfly account and just put all your children's photos in there and print them out at Walgreens for it's like 5¢ for a photo.
Pete Wright: And Super cheap.
Erika Anne Englund: Yeah. And then if your children are writers, they can take a journal and write back and forth of what they did at every event or minor at this age now where they're really into graphic novels, Can't say I love it. I liked the age where they were reading children's Shakespeare, but Yeah. Because they're
Pete Wright: drawing like children's Batman, horrifyingly capturing, the Joker on Christmas. It's great.
Erika Anne Englund: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. They were drawing, like, a graphic novel of me making breakfast, and my head explodes in the novel. And, I mean, that's not wrong, but still so so my children, that's what they'll do this year.
Pete Wright: Yeah. That's perfect. And I I gotta we we do that, just around our house. We got we stopped giving each other cards, right, for holidays, and instead, we have a book. And everybody takes turn writing the messages to each other in that centralized book.
So I really like that idea because now every time you write somebody a new card for whatever holiday is, maybe it is Arbor Day, you get to go back through and look at all of the messages that have come years past. And once you get a couple years down the road, it's there's a lot there's a lot of heart in there, and it's a a good way to kinda remember those those transitions.
Erika Anne Englund: I love that. Yeah.
Seth Nelson: I gotta tell you, I think the the brilliant one is having these kids Yeah. With the cameras and just taking photos. I I think I've never heard of that. I've never advised anyone to do that. I'm gonna start doing that.
Erica, that's brilliant.
Erika Anne Englund: And they will look bad. Right? These these photos tend to be completely blurred. You have no idea what's going on or the child's drawing a picture. It's it's not at all about creating something that looks Instagram worthy.
It's just them documenting their own experience and looking back.
Seth Nelson: I was picturing a whole lot of thumbs and fingers in the in the picture. That's and and I get it. I you can tell when the when you have a grade schooler, and they bring the project in whether they did it or the parent did it. So I love it that it's just the kids' stuff. That's just amazing.
Erika Anne Englund: Yeah. We we shoot to underdo it in this household, which is a great tip for people going through divorce. But very finally, the last thing I will say for people, don't don't survive the holidays. If you want to enjoy your holiday, this is the year that you ask for help. It's very hard for highly functioning people to ask for help, and it's quite hard if you've already asked for help earlier this year because you had a custody dispute or your you got a divorce.
But it's so important, and Christmas is a time or Hanukkah, these are times where family wants to help. People wanna be generous with their time and their money and it is a great chance to give someone to do something nice for your children. So ask quite specifically for somebody to bring you dinner or to drop you off things to make cookies or if they can help you get this special gift you'd like to get your child or babysit for a night so you can get away. But give yourself the gift of allowing to ask for help and taking somebody up on that, and you will seriously make their day as much as it makes yours.
Pete Wright: You gotta have you gotta have your time for your paddle board yoga. Am I right? Like, you gotta how do you do that with kids? I don't know how you do that.
Erika Anne Englund: Yeah. I know. They, you should see 3 of us try to fit on a paddle board. It it looks like an ill fated Viking voyage.
Pete Wright: You should just lash them to the side and paddle out to sea.
Erika Anne Englund: Yeah. You know, if someone falls off, at least there's 2.
Pete Wright: Yeah. And Right. Right. So I
Erika Anne Englund: bet back up. Exactly.
Pete Wright: Smart smart parenting. Okay. I I think these are I think these are terrific, and I I think the whole idea of asking someone for help, I just wanna pivot on that because it's what I think you might hear is asking, like, ask another family member or a family member of your former spouse. It's really you're asking anybody. You're asking friends, family.
Right? You're not you don't you're not really closing the door on certain people because I think people have a hard time asking for help right now. They have a really hard time reaching out, especially in, you know, gestures broadly. The times we are living in, it's hard to ask for help.
Seth Nelson: I'm terrible. That is the one thing I'm really, really bad at is asking for help. And sometimes I get frustrated because then when I actually get up the courage to ask for help and I don't get it, I'm like, really? I never asked for help.
Pete Wright: It, like, reinforces you not asking for help after you have those experiences.
Seth Nelson: Exactly. But I'm gonna kind of just kind of tune the dial in a little bit on asking for help. You can also ask to change the way you interact with your friends. And what I mean by that is I was divorced, my son was 2 and a half. I had some friends that were single, that I used to go out with.
But now it's a weekend when I have my son and what I would ask them to do is like, come over to my house before you go out. I'll have a drink with you, Kai will be watching a movie or we'll sit there and feed him or whatever, it's not gonna be all kid time, come just have like one drink with me before you go out, and I'm gonna be happy because I get to hang out with you guys a little bit, I'm still spending time with Kai, he was gonna watch his movie anyway or whatever the case may be, or and I'm not asking you to spend all night, I'm not asking you, like, to ruin your evening plans, you're gonna be having a drink when you're getting ready anyway, like, you so I think you can also try to ask people to not conform to your new world, but just have you involved in different ways. And if they're true friends, they're gonna be like, yeah. That that's great. Or, hey.
How about if we do this instead? Or, like, I so there's different ways to still maintain those connections and those relationships.
Pete Wright: That's really that's really smart. And I I think that's probably another thing that if you're and, you know, check me when I stop start lying. But when you are recently divorced or separated, you probably haven't taken a lot of time to think through new ways of engaging socially to keep your keep your brain and your that sort of social engine firing. And that's that's one that that seems really smart to me. It just says, here's a new hole in my schedule that I can fill with these relationships in a different way.
Erika Anne Englund: And I love it for two reasons. 1st, because Seth seems like a guy who would have really good bourbon at his house.
Pete Wright: You see what you did to his face just now? Know me
Seth Nelson: a little
Erika Anne Englund: bit And then
Seth Nelson: better than I anticipated.
Erika Anne Englund: 2nd, because, oh, your friends want to help you
Pete Wright: Yeah.
Erika Anne Englund: When you are going through a divorce, and if they haven't been through a divorce, they have no idea how to do it. And so giving someone something that explicit of a direction is often it's it's an honor to them to be able to do that for you because they've been wanting to see you. They've been wanting to jump in and assist, and they just haven't known how to do it.
Pete Wright: Yeah. That's smart. I it'd be that as somebody who hasn't been divorced, I can tell you I don't know how to help somebody through a divorce beyond, like, ordering pizza on moving day or something. Like, that's I'm really terrible at that. But having like, knowing how to be asked, I like, I'll be there.
I'll be there. Bad news and all. I'll help whatever you need.
Seth Nelson: Right. And literally when and and people do appreciate it. I I I mean, I've mentioned this before. My girlfriend will call people when they're going through a divorce and say, no one understood it when I was going through it. I've been through it.
I'm calling you because I've been there. Right? I'll jump in that hole with you because I know the way out. So, but it's so hard and people wanna do the right thing. They don't know whether you wanna talk about divorce, don't wanna talk about what's going on, you know, you know, all this stressful stuff, or they just you look terrible, do they acknowledge that you look terrible?
Do you wanna have that conversation or not because it's so horrible? And or do you just say, hey, I'm here for you, but they don't really know. So when you're the one needing something and you can say, this is what I could really use, I'd really appreciate your help. Now look, it's open, it's honest, it's vulnerable. At a time in your life when things are pretty raw, I'm not saying these are easy things to do, but give it a shot, especially with your close friends, And I think that Erica is right.
They they're honored to that you're the one they call. Yeah.
Pete Wright: Yeah. How how do you address some of these needs when because everything that we're talking about is is really sort of it feels to me like we're talking about the ideal divorce. Right? Everything is everything between you and your former spouse, like, you're able to to talk about calendars and everything. Is that
Seth Nelson: No. I'm saying if things are terrible with your former spouse.
Pete Wright: Okay. It doesn't matter.
Erika Anne Englund: Okay.
Seth Nelson: I'm talking about the time that you have and you need help.
Pete Wright: Okay. Alright. So it doesn't yeah. I mean, all of this stuff, all of our, you know, if we even if we back a little bit further into our new traditions, like, really approaching, when you are when you're mired in recent bruising conflict with the person from whom you just separated.
Seth Nelson: Let's say let's say things are so rough I'm making this up now. Good. You are you just moved in. It's after Thanksgiving, you just moved into a new place because you had to get out of the house, you got a small apartment, all your Christmas stuff is back at the old house. You have a choice, you can run out and buy the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, right, and see what you can do, or you can start a new tradition and say, you know what, I'm at my wit's end, it's Christmas Eve, and we're ordering pizza.
And then all of a sudden, you have pizza every Christmas Eve, and everyone else thinks you guys are crazy, and you're like, you know what, we did it, we went and got a couple little gifts for each other, and we played with the boxes, and it was the best Christmas Eve ever because we just we just owned it. Like, this is it. We're together in like, what is it really about? Right? It's about spending quality time.
And I am a big believer. The most precious thing we have is time. And none of us know how much we have left. So think about the time that you have in that even if you're alone this Christmas, that is time that you get to spend however you choose to spend it with yourself, which for me was very hard at first. But I appreciate my my alone time where I can do what I want to do, whether it's go for a run or, or hang out with friends, or watch our game or whatever it is.
That's time that you're never gonna get back. So use it wisely.
Pete Wright: It gets to the I didn't mean to
Seth Nelson: get on the soapbox about it. Yeah.
Pete Wright: And I get It's looking great. How's it looking from way up there? It it's, it's an important thing because I don't think and and I I I wonder how much in the recency of a divorce you stop and think, how am I gonna want my kids to remember this moment? How am I gonna want my kids to remember this month? Because the decisions you make now will determine the conversations you have in 10 years, 20 years.
Right?
Erika Anne Englund: I imagine it's very hard to do that particularly around holidays because they are steeped in tradition. And for some people, they're steeped in trauma from the holidays they experienced as a child or they had magical holidays and put themselves under incredible pressure to recreate that for their children. So this may be the 1st year that they're looking at all of the things that they have lost and focusing instead on how to make it enjoyable experience for your child is just not a natural thing to do for the best parent. But the sooner the sooner in any co parenting situation that we can get child centered and put them at the beginning of every discussion, the easier it will be. And you will begin to notice that you can do things completely differently and still have an amazing time.
So the pizza at Christmas and the Charlie Brown Christmas tree makes a child just as excited because they're not thinking that you normally serve an 8 course dinner on China. Children get excited on holidays anyway, no matter what you're doing. You could say, new tradition. We're gonna vacuum the stairs, and my children would be like, yes.
Pete Wright: Wait. Can we trade? Oh, what? I'm like, are you renting
Seth Nelson: them out? What is going on?
Pete Wright: What you learned in your family of 8 siblings? What?
Erika Anne Englund: It's really just like the excitement as a parent that we can put into it. And so if you can't put excitement into something big, put excitement into something small, you know, say, like, let's go get the fanciest dessert that they have at the bakery. That's a $5 thing. And and, you know, eclairs make everybody feel better. There's no wrong time to eat one.
So since
Seth Nelson: Especially with bourbon.
Erika Anne Englund: Everything's better with bourbon.
Pete Wright: I got just a, just a closet full of household cleaning products I'm gonna put Bo's on this year and just see if I can gear up some real enthusiasm around some new new traditions.
Seth Nelson: I got a question about this. I I got a question because we're spending a lot of time on holidays, but there's other times during the year. Yeah. So let me let me Pete always says this. Let me pivot.
I'm trying to be more like Pete.
Pete Wright: That's my Noted.
Seth Nelson: That's gonna be my New Year's resolution, Pete, when it's coming up. I'm letting you know right now. Alright. Because divorce can hijack your brain. Right?
It really can change the way you think when you're in the middle of it. And that happens whether you're in the holidays or not. So talk to us about what you think about that, Erica.
Erika Anne Englund: Oh, the amygdala hijack is the new favorite topic in my household. And I speak about this to divorce care groups. I lecture on it to MBA students and law students and conflict resolution programs because in my years as a mediator so this was maybe about 10 years I spent as a mediator and probably 10000 hours in divorce negotiations. I learned a lot about conflict and saw a lot of people experiencing conflict. And I realized that the the fight, flight, or freeze reaction we've all heard about, we imagine that that happens in emergency situations.
Like, you're on the freeway and you see police lights behind you. All of a sudden, your stomach drops and you have that visceral reaction. Or
Seth Nelson: Flee. I always flee in that scenario. I'm just letting you know.
Erika Anne Englund: Which is maybe not recommended, but if you're a better driver than they are, you know, godspeed.
Seth Nelson: Have at it.
Erika Anne Englund: For sure. Or or if the middle of the night somebody bangs on your door, you're going to have that fight, flight or freeze reaction. We imagine that it comes into play in emergency scenarios. However, there's another scenario where it comes into play, and that is when our brains are perceiving threat. And almost entirely throughout a divorce process, even a good divorce
Pete Wright: You're under threat.
Erika Anne Englund: The people getting divorced are under threat.
Seth Nelson: Yeah.
Erika Anne Englund: Yeah. And that may not be explicitly the other person saying, I'm gonna take you to the cleaners. It is everything you held and imagined for yourself and is most important to you is now up in the air. Right? So you don't know what your parenting schedule is going to look like or whether you have to sell your house and move.
You you've no idea how your life will look, and you've just lost the life that you planned. So each person in the divorce is feeling, whether or not they can articulate it, threat. And when your brain is under threat, what happens in a in a very, nonmedical way you know, I went to law school for the two reasons that one does, which is I don't like blood and I don't like math. So did not go to medical school.
Seth Nelson: This is
Erika Anne Englund: a very nonmedical description.
Seth Nelson: Right. But then you went to be a divorce attorney, which is all about the blood and the milk.
Erika Anne Englund: Right? Little did I know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Pete Wright: So far, I got 2 new t shirts out of this thing. I've got fight the amygdala hijack, and divorce is all about the blood in the mouth.
Seth Nelson: I don't know.
Erika Anne Englund: So, so basically, what happens is your brain is scanning around at all times, and it's it's under threat. And when your brain is under threat, your amygdala takes over as the decision maker instead of your prefrontal cortex. What this means is rather than your thinking rational brain making the decisions, your irrational, reactive emotional brain is making decisions. Even if a person looks quite calm, maybe even feels calm, if they are perceiving threat, then right away, the decision making channel goes to their amygdala, which has hijacked their prefrontal cortex, and they are at that point capable, really, really capable of fight, flight, or freeze.
Seth Nelson: And it look, Pete, I see this all the time. I see it in court. I see it in mediations. I see it when I'm talking to my clients Because when they have that perception, so I get that this happens all the time, and not just back in the day when we were in the jungle, and a tiger is coming at us. And one of the things as simple as it sounds, and sometimes people say this is silly.
I'll tell my client, just breathe. Right now, let's just breathe. Because if you picture a tiger coming out you, and you're gonna either freeze, fight, or flight, none of that involves right? When you breathe, your amygdala is like, woah, I'm not under attack. Because that is not something that you naturally do if you're under attack.
So something that simple can actually change the way you think. Now Erica's gonna tell me why I'm wrong.
Erika Anne Englund: Actually, I was going to tell you why you're completely correct. If
Pete Wright: yes. Another one. Pete hates that.
Erika Anne Englund: And God. And, Pete, you are also totally right all of the time.
Pete Wright: Well, I appreciate it. It doesn't matter. Only matters when Seth's wrong, but I appreciate you trying.
Erika Anne Englund: But if you think of this example, you're driving along on the freeway to somewhere you love to go, the weather's great, the radio's on, you know you're going the speed limit, it's a beautiful day, and a police officer comes zooming up on you with the lights and the sirens, right away, you have that physiological reaction and then they zoom past you. So you know they're going after somebody that's not you and you know you're safe, how long does it take your body to calm down after that?
Pete Wright: Way too long. Way too long.
Erika Anne Englund: And in in divorce, they're having those experiences multiple times a day every single day for weeks or months or years.
Pete Wright: Yeah. A challenge to your adrenal system, a challenge to your respiratory system, a challenge all around, and nowhere has it written fight or flight or solemn reflection. Like, that's never a thing. So it it does take intention and practice.
Seth Nelson: Now have another T shirt.
Pete Wright: You now have another T shirt. Or solemn reflection.
Seth Nelson: I
Erika Anne Englund: I said the press is a great idea.
Pete Wright: Yeah. It's a no. It's a great idea. I'm glad I thought of it and not set. I I I do I, you know, I I like this I I like the amygdala hijack concept, and and it's if only because I I had an opportunity to to, do an interview with a psychologist who who talks about the amygdala reprogramming, which is the other side of the it's been hijacked.
Now how do you reprogram it? And we we go into a rather extensive discussion on on the introspection that comes with what you're experiencing right now. Like, it it's it's easier, I think, maybe to put it into the concept of, a context of something that that like a universal phobia, like, afraid of heights. Right? You know, how do you conquer your fear of heights?
You expose yourself to increasingly, you know, challenging experiences, where you are put at a height. And in the case of the psychiatrist, he said, I decided I was going to try low parasailing and I got on I strapped in and I white knuckled it through a very low maybe he had me 20 feet off the water and then we got down and I was fine. And I thought, well, I'm still terrified. My heart is still beating like crazy. What's that about?
I'm just gonna be curious about that for a second, and then I'm gonna go get on the boat again, and I'm gonna try and go to 30 feet. And before long, he's at a 100 feet or more, above the water, and he's having a blast. You can reprogram your amygdala. You can do it. And you can
Seth Nelson: It starts, Pete. It starts because you have to recognize it.
Pete Wright: Yes. Absolutely.
Seth Nelson: I think that's the hardest thing for people to realize at the time because when it's going
Pete Wright: You don't even know you've been hijacked when you're hijacked because you're not so
Erika Anne Englund: high. Had people saying you're not emotional, and and your clients are are saying, I'm I'm not emotional. I'm fine. And then you've had your client say the next day, I I am sorry, but I don't remember anything we discussed in your office or I don't remember anything that happened in court because they were emotional. And the whole point is, know it's happening.
Don't be afraid of it. And it's happening all the time because we're programmed to do that. Right? Like, that's what your body is programmed to do. So what what else does it do to you when your amygdala is hijacked?
If you're in court, you can't fight, flight, or freeze. So you can breathe, but some of the things that your amygdala is doing is, first of all, it is you're incapable of empathy when your amygdala is hijacked. So it's very hard in a negotiation with 2 stressed people to get them to empathize with the other, and this includes understanding someone else's position because their brain is not operating in that channel. Also, your amygdala fills in information based upon your own experiences. So we don't know this, but we're making all kinds of judgments and assumptions and immediately making decisions based on that.
Because we our brain knows we don't have time to do a lot of research because we're under threat. So our brain's doing the best assessment possible at that moment and it's filling in. You've probably seen clients make all kinds of crazy assumptions. And then the other person says, oh, no. I can I have a piece of paper to show you that?
That's that's not what happened. And that's your brain.
Seth Nelson: Erica. Yeah, let me jump in on that. And and this is something that I think that I know that I've learned over my many years of practicing law in this very difficult area is the more you understand about what is physically happening to your clients in these different situations. And the grief process that they are going through in a divorce makes me a better practitioner. Because
Erika Anne Englund: some
Seth Nelson: of our clients are like, well, you can just relate to what I'm saying, and sometimes they say they can't. And I I can't get through their amygdala hijack. Right? I try to. I try to use all the tricks of the trade and things I've learned over the years and the things that I've read and studied and psychologists I've spoken to and all that.
But when you can identify it and have techniques to get them to get out of that and to focus in another manner, then it can really help move the process forward. In one trick that I have when I mediate cases, and even if I'm dealing with a client, let's say we're doing a lot of parenting stuff, and it's getting very emotional, I might say something of, let's take a break. You're gonna hate this next part, Erica. Let's do some math. And they're like, what?
And I'm like, well, I wanna look at the child support of the alimony numbers, and I will actually ask them to do the math. Like, here, I brought an extra calculator. And the reason I do that is once you start doing mathematical calculations, which we all know are not emotional, it's a different side of your brain, and it helps keep that other part at bay, and it just gives them a break. And so we'll come back to parenting in a minute, or they wanna still focus on parenting, and I'll say something like, alright. Let's count up the number of holidays and days because I'm having them do the math.
That's all I'm doing. And I'm getting them to calm down, and it works.
Erika Anne Englund: That's every time. Because you're pulling them out of their amygdala, and you're pushing them into activating their thinking brain. You said breathe earlier. So what that is doing is it's not actually the breath. It's thinking about breathing that pulls people into their prefrontal cortex because, typically, that's a function we don't think about.
So both of those things, math and thinking about breathing, are really lessening the hold that the amygdala has on decision making. And something else that mediation really is great at doing is asking open ended questions, particularly about what people want to see happen because then you get them looking at a future and picturing what they want happening, you know, what summer's coming up. Well, what would be ideal for you? What what do you want your summer to look like?
Seth Nelson: But, Erica, here's the thing that you just said in that sentence or that question. What do you want for you? Because when you ask the open ended question, what do you want this summer? I want him to understand that I've been the parent and I want him to him. When it's focused on the other person, you're losing that battle.
It's what do you want for you? So at mediation, I'll tell my clients, I want you to be selfish today. I want you to do something that's really hard for you, focus on you. We're not worried about the other room. We are paying a mediator good money to go in the other room and deal with them for us.
You, at some levels, don't care how that mediator does her job. You just wanna know what the deal is. You don't care if she's in there flipping a coin, and it turned out that it was heads, and boom, you got what you wanted, because it's all about you today. And it's really hard to have people do that. But when they do that, the amygdala is not firing because they're not feeling attacked from the other side.
And it makes it a higher likelihood of success. By success in a mediation, I mean, you get a deal. I'm not saying you're gonna love the deal, but you're gonna avoid going to a trial.
Erika Anne Englund: Absolutely. And you're back in your thinking brain. Are you were you just born a psychologist, or is it ultra well he's training?
Pete Wright: What are you what are you doing to him right now? I mean, I know you're a welcome guest, but I need you to slow your role on his ego right now because it's too much.
Seth Nelson: But here's the problem here's the problem, Erica. This is the problem in the world that I grew up in. My mom was a civil rights attorney, and my dad taught psychology at University of South Florida, PhD out of Columbia. Okay. These people, brilliant.
And I did not have good grades in high school, and I came home with a report card, and I had an a in law and a b in sight. And my mom looks across the dinner room table to my dad and said, see, he's gonna be a lawyer. And my dad doesn't miss a beat and says, well, of course, it's easier. That's the world I grew up in. Okay?
So Pete, it is not an ego boost, man, at all. Wow.
Erika Anne Englund: Okay. Well, for what it's worth, I was raised by a preschool teacher and, the head of the probation department in Placer County. So
Seth Nelson: Which was actually the same person.
Erika Anne Englund: Like, really, these are skills that one uses on a daily basis working in the divorce field, talking to people like they are children or like they are prisoners. And I mean this in the in the nicest possible way. But, man, did that come in handy.
Seth Nelson: People say the the nicest possible way. Sometimes it's just not a way to be nice about that.
Erika Anne Englund: I will say exactly the same phrases to my children when that I say to my mediation clients. Exactly. So, you know, still have a conflict, I say, how'd you try to resolve it? Yeah. And it actually is a great way to be a lazy parent and make your kids more independent, and it, you know, looks good.
Pete Wright: New teacher.
Seth Nelson: You wrote it down. I saw you.
Erika Anne Englund: When they when they were little, they could just, like, really sadly walk out of the room. Like, they just give me this Charlie Brown face and walk out of the room. Sometimes they come back and they're like, oh, we can't we couldn't resolve it. And I just say, like, oh, try again. And I can sit there with my glass of wine after dinner reading Slate Magazine and, you know, they're they're in the backroom talking about their feelings on Legos.
I love Our
Pete Wright: whole thing was always, like, are you did you I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry for what I did. Are you ready for a hug? Yes. I am.
And then they would give each other a hug, my kids together, and it was really great. And I sometimes try and do that with Andy, and he never hugs me for some reason. I just I get so frustrated. I know.
Seth Nelson: So And because
Erika Anne Englund: Andy is our awesome
Seth Nelson: producer behind the scenes, gets
Erika Anne Englund: none of the street cred.
Seth Nelson: He does all awesome producer behind the scenes, gets none none of the street cred. He does all the hard work, but he's, you know, he's like in this cave,
Pete Wright: he doesn't really like He's also present. He
Erika Anne Englund: was of great help to me yesterday. Even though I work for a tech company, I have a very low level of technological knowledge. In fact, my company is here's another t shirt. My company's rule is if Erica can't work it, we can't sell it. And so poor Andy had the task of teaching me to adjust my settings to get ready for this today.
And, if if I sound eloquent and the sound is nice and it comes together beautifully. That's entirely due to Andy. So thank you.
Pete Wright: If you can hear it at all, it's probably because of Andy. Hey. You know, speaking of your company, can we, can we hear a little bit about you you came on to this show, and I don't know what we were thinking. We didn't talk about what you do at all. So give us a plug for, SupportPay.
What do you do over there and and, tell us why it's cool?
Erika Anne Englund: Absolutely. Well, it's cool because it's the first child support app designed to help parents organize, manage, and transfer child support between each other. I'm sure, Seth, you've had a 1,000,000 clients say, I just wish I never had to talk to my ex about money again, and this is a way to make that happen. They use all their child support. Payments go through the app, so you can pay your base payment and receive it, your commission, your bonus.
But more than that, because I have children, if yours are anything like mine, they cost money all the time. Right? They're they've con little little Oliver Twist.
Seth Nelson: Erica, I'm not dad. I'm an ATM machine.
Erika Anne Englund: For sure. Right?
Seth Nelson: And the and he knows the code. Let's just be honest about it.
Erika Anne Englund: So for parent parents don't know this before they get divorced, but after they get divorced, they have to go and talk to each other about reimbursement for all of these expenses on an ongoing basis. So there's a doctor's appointment. There's soccer cleats. There's art class. There's childcare.
And it creates a lot of conflict, particularly because people almost always have very different money values and money management styles. Money and communication are the two things that lead to divorce. So when they have to communicate about money constantly post divorce, it is incredibly high stress. It creates a lot of conflict for the family. It's bad for the children.
A lot of support goes unpaid because people just can't handle even dealing with the other person.
Seth Nelson: So it all goes through this app. So just talk me through I know technology is not your thing even though you're with a tech company, but I have to pay my former spouse child support. How does that work on this app?
Erika Anne Englund: You have your bank account connected, and she has hers connected just like with Venmo. Mhmm. And just like with Venmo, you go in and you put in the amount and you put transfer. If it's an expense, you can just scan the receipt. It uploads everything, and you send a request for her to reimburse.
Or if it's too
Seth Nelson: So I go to the doctor for my kid and it's a copay. They don't really have a receipt. I just type in, you know, $50 looking for, you know, copay for doctor's appointment.
Erika Anne Englund: Yep. And maybe you have an agreement that says you pay 50% of doctors, but you pay 80 per 80% of the ortho. And so what the app does is it will automatically calculate the share that your former spouse owes, and it sends her a notification.
Seth Nelson: Look at that. Erica doesn't have to do math. You don't even have to do the math. Oh my god. It's awesome.
Erika Anne Englund: This is why it works, and neither does anyone using it. And then the notification comes from the app. So it's not you don't have to walk around all day wondering when your ex is gonna send you another text message telling you that you owe them money. And this is you can log in whenever you're ready, see your dashboard, see what you owe, see what they owe you, make payments. And probably the 2 most important components that parents don't even know are really, really important going into it is that it keeps records of every single payment, every expense, every reimbursement, every dispute, every support payment.
And if parents ever need to go back to modify support or there's any kind of dispute over whether what was paid, all they need to do is push a button and they've got all of the records there.
Seth Nelson: You just saved 100, if not 1,000 of dollars in attorney's fees. This is great.
Erika Anne Englund: People come in with, like, shoe boxes and of receipts and spreadsheets.
Seth Nelson: Erica, I would I would love a shoe box worth of receipts. It'd be something to actually go through.
Erika Anne Englund: True.
Seth Nelson: Usually, what I'm getting is bank accounts, Venmo accounts. Oh, I think I paid on cash that time. I'm not gonna track that. You know, it's all over the place. In fact, one of the, pieces of advice I give to my clients is at the end, I actually say set up a new bank account, to receive your child support payment, and to buy in those those types of expenses, co pays or tuition or extracurriculars.
And the reason for that is then I I only have to look at one bank statement when I'm going through all the transactions. If you and if you wanna use a credit card, get a credit card that you only swipe for your kid. I'm not talking about when you go to the grocery store and you buy kids stuff for sure stuff. I'm talking about, oh, I'm making a payment for an extracurricular, swipe the credit card, but you pay that one credit card that only has those types of expenses from one bank account. And the other beauty of that, you're saving time and money on attorney's fees when you have to look at it all.
2, you can actually see what you're spending on your kid because it's all in one account. 3, if you have to go to court, then you just bring those account in that one credit card in. And when the judge is looking at your bank statement, you know, and I'm not saying this is you, Erica, it might be Pete, probably it's like, yeah, it's probably like, oh, we have, guitar lessons for the child. Then we have, supermarket. No problem.
Now we have the co pay for the child. And now we have exactly after we took the child to the doctors for the co pay, stopping at the liquor store and spending $1,000. Like and that's right in the bank statement. And now I'm gonna have to explain it even though Yeah. We're objecting to it.
Yeah. I'm Like, you just don't want the judge to
Erika Anne Englund: see that stuff. In court that your young child has a drinking problem. It's True. It's not going to look good for you. And the beauty of support pay is it does that, but for both parents and unifies the record into one legally admissible support history.
Touch of a button. Boom. And it's completely confidential because it's built on a financial platform. So this is not a co parenting app that has an expense tracker. This is a finance app.
And that means you don't have to share your bank account information, write checks, any information about your location. So it's fantastic for anyone who has a narcissistic co parent. Anyone experiencing domestic violence actually gets our product for free, the victim and the abuser. Anyone that has a restraining order, both parties get our premium product for free.
Pete Wright: Wow.
Erika Anne Englund: But it's the because they need that confidentiality or they don't have a way to pay support. So what I see as the biggest benefit is it takes away we talk about that amygdala hijack. We're we're feeling threatened all the time and a text message comes in at just the wrong time that says, now you owe me $50. This can set a parent off, and all of it impacts more than anything the life of the child. So support pay's goal is to make sure that children get the support they deserve, but really, it's to lower the conflict and preserve relationships between the families, which I know is something that has always been a goal of how to split a toaster as well.
Anybody can check it out at supportpay.com. It's domestic violence awareness month, I should mention. So if you're interested in our domestic violence program, you can go to the landing page there and get information about how to get support pay premium for free for your family. And we also have, like, a 1000000 great resources. Our favorite toys, books, programs, software for kids and parents going through divorce, and all kinds of support, and a list of the best professionals in the country to help you out.
Pete Wright: This is really cool. I'm just going I'm not I don't have any reason to use it myself personally, and I'm already thinking maybe maybe my wife and I should just use it together to pay each other stuff. It's it's that cool.
Erika Anne Englund: We actually have people that got together during COVID. They got a COVID pet, and then they broke up. And now they're sharing their pet expenses through COVID or or through SupportPay. And I Through SupportPay. Yeah.
Only know this because people called our help desk to say, we don't have a child, but we have a pet. And so we've set up accounts just like the pet is It would
Seth Nelson: have been so much better if they would have said, we have a child named Spot. Oh, heck that just would have been better. Erica, this has been amazing.
Pete Wright: Truly. Thank you, Erica, for sharing a little bit about PetPay and SupportPay. Absolutely. It's a fantastic resource and service, and thanks for your insight on all this other stuff.
Seth Nelson: You come you you bring a, a wealth of,
Pete Wright: understanding and experience, and we're sure we we're sure appreciative of you, sharing with our audience. So everybody check out supportpay.com, and, you know, Tell America sent you.
Erika Anne Englund: It has been absolutely a delight to be here with you on how to split a toaster. And if this is the first time anyone's hearing one of your podcasts, please go back and check out the archive because there is an amazing selection on all kinds of things, amazing everything to force.
Seth Nelson: Alright. I know. Pete, she's just looking for us to send her kids bourbon to put under the tree. That's what's happening there, brother. We gotta go.
Erika Anne Englund: Remember, they're champagne drinkers.
Pete Wright: That's right. That's right. They're posh. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We sure appreciate you, hanging out your time and your attention.
On behalf of, Erica England and America's favorite divorce attorney, Seth Nelson. We'll catch you next next week right here on how to split a toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro: Seth Nelson is an attorney with Nelson Coster Family Law and Mediation with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, how to split a toaster is not intended to nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of Nelson Coster.
Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in
Erika Anne Englund: Florida.
