How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships

Are you ready to stage your Epic Comeback? Then it’s time for you to meet Nikki Bruno, divorce coach.

Show Notes

Are you ready to stage your Epic Comeback? Then it’s time for you to meet Nikki Bruno, divorce coach.

“Get over your divorce before your divorce is over.” So says divorce coach Nikki Bruno in one of the programs she offers, guiding participants through the divorce process with a coach’s attention. And as a coach, she is dedicated to the internal work, the processing required to move through the grief of conflict, anxiety, fear, depression, and grief that comes alongside the legal separation.

This week on the show, Nikki walks us through the work of a coach and how the divorce coach can work alongside the legal process of the divorce itself.

About Nikki Bruno

Nikki Bruno is an empowerment coach and founder of The Epic Comeback™. Her experience of reclaiming her power after a high-conflict divorce inspired her to help others do the same. Bruno is a thought leader on high-conflict divorce, emotional abuse, intuition, and mompreneurship. She is also a 20-year veteran of the publishing industry and a published author. Bruno holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard Universities. She’s been featured on TV news channels worldwide and in Forbes, Reader’s Digest, Authority Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and other outlets. A single mom of two, Bruno loves scuba diving, traveling, salsa dancing, and helping women (re)discover how incredible they are.

Creators and Guests

Host

Pete Wright

Podcaster and co-host, Pete Wright brings years of marriage and a spirit of curiosity to the divorce process. He's spent the last two decades interviewing experts and thinkers in emotional healing and brings that with him to the law, divorce, and saving relationships in the process.

Host

Seth R. Nelson

Seth Nelson is the founding attorney and managing partner at NLG Divorce & Family Law. He is a Tampa-based family lawyer known for devising creative solutions to difficult problems.

Producer

Andy Nelson

Hailing from nearly 25 years in the world of film, television, and commercial production, Andy has always had a passion for storytelling, no matter the size of the package.

What is How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships?

Seth Nelson is a Tampa based family lawyer known for devising creative solutions to difficult problems. In How to Split a Toaster, Nelson and co-host Pete Wright take on the challenge of divorce with a central objective — saving your most important relationships with your family, your former spouse, and yourself.

Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships, from TruStory FM. Today, we're talking about something you should never be asked to split, your power.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm Seth Nelson, and I'm here, as always, with my good friend Pete Wright. And today, we're talking about coaching, with Nikki Bruno. She survived a tough divorce on her own, and now spends time helping others navigate the divorce process as an advocate and coach. She is the founder, I love this, Pete, of The Epic Comeback, and joins us today to tell us about her work as a divorce coach, what a coach does, and how someone like her might be just able to help you figure out what you really want to be after your divorce. Nikki Bruno, welcome to the Toaster.
Nikki Bruno:
Thank you, Seth.
Pete Wright:
Hey, Nikki.
Nikki Bruno:
Hey, Pete. What's up? I thought we were talking about toasters today.
Seth Nelson:
We can talk about toasters.
Pete Wright:
All day. All day long. I got to tell you, you've got this program on your website, and the title, it slays me. It's just perfect. The title is, Get Over Your Divorce Before Your Divorce is Over. My goodness. Now, I know it's a coaching program, and we can talk about all the details later. We'll let you pitch all you want. But what I have to know is where does this perspective-shifting campaign come from? We are mired in trauma, and it seems like telling people to just get over your divorce, is a heavy lift. How do you do it? It's awesome.
Nikki Bruno:
It came from the recesses of my soul, Pete, because we need to freaking get over it. We need to freaking get over it, not just for our sakes, but also for our children's sake. I want you to take a minute and picture this with me. I want you to picture millions of American adults who've gotten a divorce and who have ... Let's say divorced parents, just right now. We're just going to talk about parents, because there are plenty of people who get divorced and they don't have children, and that's cool. But think about divorced parents in the United States, and imagine that all of them have gotten over their divorce completely and quickly. Imagine what their lives are like, and imagine what their families' lives are like, and imagine what their children's lives are like, even imagine what their friends' lives are like. They're not talking about their divorce all the time, they're not bitching, they're not moaning, they're not kvetching.
Now, imagine a country where you've got millions and millions of adults and parents who are divorced, and who haven't gotten over it. Imagine the energy of that. We have a responsibility to get over our shit, especially when we have children, because if we don't, think about what happens; if we do, think about what happens. If we do and when we do get over our divorce, we are no longer being defined by the divorce process. We're no longer allowing ourselves and our children to be defined by a broken home or being a child of divorce or being, "Oh, I'm a divorcee." That is not a place that I want people to be in.
Seth Nelson:
It's also a choice.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
Right? I mean, you're going through a grieving process with divorce. We all understand that. We've talked about that, Pete, on the Toaster. But you have to take control of getting through that grief to get to acceptance, which is, in the grieving world, the end results. It's acceptance. The way you're framing that, much more, I think, eloquently, is, "Get over it."
Nikki Bruno:
Seriously. And I'm very compassionate about it. I'm a very compassionate person, extremely. That's one of the things that makes me a good coach. But another one of the things that makes me a good coach is that I'm like, "Yo, get over it. And how are these decisions that you're making, how are your values driving you toward getting over it?" We've all met, let's say, elderly people who have gone through something traumatic who never got over it. And that's sad. And it's really unfortunate. And I'm not being judgmental of those people, I promise. I'm not being judgmental. It's hard. It's hard to get over trauma.
But there's this thing that positive psychologists have defined as post-traumatic growth. It's almost like the opposite of PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder. It's almost like the opposite. It's kind of like trauma can put you in a really, really crappy place emotionally and psychologically. Trauma can also be, and this is posttraumatic growth, the springboard to an incredible future, to a depth of personal growth, to a depth of understanding of humanity and the world, to a sense of deeper connection with the people and humans around you, because you've been through something really hard and you know how to empathize and help them. And trauma also has a way of being a springboard to a future where the feelings of joy that you experience are even deeper and higher and more amazing because you've had those lows. So I consider it not only a possibility but a responsibility as an adult to be open to and proactive about getting over your trauma.
Pete Wright:
I love this so much, because it separates ... The choice you're making is to choose to separate your identity from the divorce process.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes, please.
Pete Wright:
It's not who you are. It's not who you are.
Seth Nelson:
When you were talking about the trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder, vets in our military, if they have a traumatic injury, they actually call it their alive day. It's the day that they survived. They focus on the positive: "I'm still here. And even though I have a lot of rehab to do, and even though my life is now different, based on the injuries that I suffered during a war and in a combat zone, it's my alive day." And that is what they celebrate. They celebrate the people that helped them stay alive, and not focus on the roadside bomb and what happened to them. It's just the opposite, and it's exactly what you're talking about.
And it does, Pete, as you point out, separate what happened to them versus who they are, and in our case, in divorce, the process of going through a divorce versus who you are as a person internally. And from very day one, Pete, you know I hate that questionnaire, when it says, "Married, divorced, single," what does it matter? I'm not defining myself as divorced. And Nikki, we so appreciate your thoughts on that.
Pete Wright:
It's fascinating. You bring up something that you're talking about the stages of ... It wasn't the stages of grief.
Seth Nelson:
But it's not like a step stage. It's up and down, it's all around.
Pete Wright:
Of course. No, it's practically a circle. There is a team of psychologists in California that are doing some interesting work pivoting that, calling it the stages of acceptance, right? There's denial: "Oh, I'm not a person who gets divorced." There is recognition: "Oh, it turns out I am a person that gets divorced, but I hate it." There's resignation: "I am a person who gets divorced, I hate it, but it's okay. I'm going to go ahead and be miserable for a while." And there's acceptance: "Oh, you know what? I can actually probably have an okay life, even though I'm a person who gets divorced and I hate that about myself." And then there's embrace. And embrace is the final, "You know, I'm a person who gets divorced, and I'm not a terrible person. I'm a better person because I was brave and courageous enough to actually do it. How can I help change the world by being this person?"
Seth Nelson:
And I think that language is so important, Pete. I rarely say that I'm divorced. I will say, "I was formerly married." And people look at me and laugh, and just like that. And I purposely say it that way, and they're like, "You mean divorced?" I'm like, "Yeah, but that has such a negative connotation." I was married, I'm not married. Now, part of the problems in my life, though, Pete, is I take this to the extreme, was when I was married, I would introduce my spouse as my first wife. And it would throw people off, and then she would look at me, and I'd say, "What's wrong? I'm your second husband." And then I'd get in trouble, right? But I take it to the extreme, but these are the things that when you change definitions, it hits people's ears differently, and that's the point, because we can look at this divorce process differently. We can look at our relationship with ourselves differently.
Nikki Bruno:
Language is so important. Language is so important. The way that we approach life has everything to do with the language that we use, 100%. And I'm a total language geek. I was a book editor for 20 years. I still am one. And just even something like the word opportunity, people tend to think of divorce as a tragedy, as something to mourn, as something that's awful, as a failure. People think of divorce as a failure. If you think of it as an opportunity, I don't care how hard it is for you, I don't care if you didn't initiate it and you hate the fact that you're going through one, divorce is an opportunity, period.
It doesn't mean you have to be happy about it, but divorce is an opportunity to start over in certain ways. Divorce is an opportunity to exercise parts of you and your personality that you haven't really gotten to. Divorce is an opportunity to redefine who you are as a person, what your values are. It's an opportunity to become a different and better and more evolved parent, because now you're the head of your household and you get to parent your children the way that you would love to. It's an opportunity to get a tattoo and cut your hair and do really dramatic, silly [crosstalk 00:10:10]
Seth Nelson:
Just don't get the tattoo of your former spouse's name. That's creepy.
Nikki Bruno:
Heck, no. Heck, no.
Seth Nelson:
But Nikki, to your point about an opportunity, when people call me and they're not ready to say, "Yes, I'm ready for a divorce," I will ask them, "Have you met with a counselor? Have you done everything you can do so when you lay your head on the pillow at night ... And you're the only one that can answer this question, have you done everything that you need to do to stay on this path with the person that you're married to?" I don't say, "To save your marriage," because I don't think that's what this is about. I think it's very easy: either it saved our marriage or it failed. And I don't like that dynamic that those words set up for people and how that makes them feel about themselves. And so, is this what you do in coaching? Because we don't want to lose sight of that.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I want to take even a step back before that, too, which is you made a pretty significant pivot yourself. How did you find a need for coaching in the world, and that you were a person to do it?
Nikki Bruno:
So, I'll take you back five years. Five years ago, I made two very big pivots. The first was to file for divorce. I was miserable in my marriage, and it was irreconcilable. The second decision I made was a career change. I had been working as an editor within the book publishing industry for 15 years, with a break to be a teacher, a high school English teacher. And I was feeling really isolated as an editor. I had my own business, so I was working from home and hanging out with my manuscripts. And I decided that I wanted to get back to doing something where I was having a more direct impact on people. And I thought about becoming a counselor or a therapist, and I was flirting with that. I wasn't really sure. I knew that I wanted to help people in a fundamental way.
And then I learned about the field of professional coaching. And the more I talked to coaches, the more that I researched the field, the more I felt called to do that. And I was like, "Wow, I'm going to pinch myself to have my job be to help an excellent person become more excellent and reach their goals." I was like, "Wow, that sounds amazing." Because my greatest superpower is that I see and intuit the superpowers in other people. I almost see them as almost an energy field around a person. And I'm really, really super good at that.
So I went to coaching school with the intention of becoming a leadership and executive coach. That same year, the shit hit the fan with my marriage, and I went through a three-year-long, high-conflict divorce. And it was traumatic and it was awful. And when I got to the other side, I was at the beginning of the other side of the awfulness, and I had gotten my feet back on the ground, I thought about, "Okay, it's time for me to open my coaching practice," and it no longer made sense to me to be a leadership coach. It made sense to me to be an empowerment coach.
So I am, first and foremost, an empowerment coach, and I call myself a divorce empowerment coach. And I was like, "Wow, what I really want to do right now I put all of what I have, all of what I have, my credentials, I attended fancy colleges, my passion and my personal experience, to helping people" ... Women, initially. I only worked with women, initially ... "Helping women to make ... not just to survive the divorce process," which some coaches do. There are divorce coaches who focus more on helping their clients be strategic during the divorce process itself, strategic and goal-oriented. My shtick is about the epic comeback. My shtick is about creating and building a life for yourself, and your children if you have them, that is better after trauma than the life that you had before versus worse.
And because I myself, it was incredibly important to me, and I decided that I was going to stage an epic comeback. I was like, "I have lost my joy. I have lost my mojo. And I'm going to freaking get it back. I don't care what I have to do, I'm going to get it back." So I not only started a coaching practice, but I also started to study comeback. I geeked out on comebacks. I am an expert, and I can say this confidently, an expert on how to make an epic comeback from a major low, from a life-shattering experience, because I have studied hundreds of real-life comebacks, not just personal ones, but also athletic comebacks, corporate comebacks, organizational comebacks.
Seth Nelson:
So there's a whole psychology and way that people, when they are at a certain point in their life, and now it's different and it's lower, how they actually come back.
Nikki Bruno:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
And it might be in a different way. It's not that you're going to go right to where you were, right? You might take a different path, but that's all part of the comeback you're talking about, is that right?
Nikki Bruno:
Absolutely. And it's not just psychological. I mean, I am not a psychologist, although literally this week, I'm starting a master's degree in psychology because I'm going to become a marriage and family therapist. But from a coaching point of view, it's a bit more about the mindset, so mindset, language we're using, what's our attitude, what's our mindset toward our future?
Seth Nelson:
How do you show up every day for yourself?
Nikki Bruno:
Yeah, exactly, because that's more of the realm of coaching, and I'll talk more about the distinctions in a second. But also, what are the steps people are taking? What are they actually doing? And so as I've studied, I continue to study epic comeback studies, because there are so many. I mean, in a lot of ways, humanity's legacy or job is to make epic comebacks. We're very resilient and we come back from some really, really tough stuff. So as I've been looking at these case studies, I have two main questions. One, what are the human qualities that it takes to make an epic comeback? And number two, what are the steps people are taking? What's the pathway? How do we get there?
And my methodology, upon which I base my curriculum for my coaching programs, comes from ... It's an abstraction of all of those hundreds of case studies into a 10-step process that nobody follows the same way, but the point is, that it's an abstraction. It's just like the stages of grief or something like that. They're all probably going to happen and they're well-researched and scientifically proven and shown, but that doesn't mean that they're going to all happen in the same way.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, they don't all look alike. At what point do you meet people in the divorce process? As we started this conversation with, start your recovery [inaudible 00:16:55]-
Seth Nelson:
Before it's over, right. Get over your divorce before it's over, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, before it's over, right. Right. So at what point are you meeting people with the divorce process? And walk us through how you get them into, out of, and beginning their comeback.
Nikki Bruno:
The short answer is they come to me when they're ready. And that could be when they're in the divorce process itself. That could be when they're just finishing the divorce process, and it could be two years after their divorce. It depends on when they're really ready to start building, really ready to start working toward their future.
Seth Nelson:
It's really important to hear that. It's not just when you're thinking about a divorce or in a divorce. A lot of what Nikki's talking about is the comeback after the divorce. So for a legal perspective, Pete, get the final judgment, divorce is over, send the closing letter, close the file and move onto the next one. My clients say, "Seth, you were great. Hope I never talk to you again in a professional manner," which I appreciate. But so just if you're out there and you're not ready to deal with this now, you have too much on your plate, but remember, there's people out there after the divorce to help you stage this epic comeback.
Nikki Bruno:
Especially people who initiate the divorce, who are really ready to start moving on before the divorce is over. I mean, you think about it, the legal process of a divorce and the emotional process of a divorce are, to some extent, different things. So it isn't necessary, especially if you're going through a divorce that takes three, four, five, six, seven, eight years, I'm sorry, but if the legal process of your divorce takes eight years and you're not over it by then or really close to being over it by then, something's up. And I know divorce is hard. Believe me, I know divorce is hard. I went through a traumatic one. I did. But the point I want to make is that there may be people who are ready, who have done, who've gone through multiple of the stages of grief before the legal process of divorce is over.
A lot of people ... I'll say this for me, by the time I filed for divorce, I had already basically gone through the sadness part of the grief process. I had already done the sadness part. I had already cried myself to sleep night after night after night in a marriage where I was miserable. It was awful. And I think a lot of people think about the divorce process as beginning when someone files. That's not-
Seth Nelson:
Oh, no.
Nikki Bruno:
... when the breakdown of a marriage happens. The breakdown of a marriage happens, often, years before that. So in the last few years of my marriage, I was doing a lot of the mourning. So my divorce process was terrible and traumatic and high-conflict, so it took me a while to get to a place where I was ready, but I have clients who ... I have one client who started working with me before she filed, because she had already processed a lot of what had been going on. She had a husband who was an alcoholic. And there had been issues for years.
Seth Nelson:
But Nikki, to do that, that person that you've just described has already taken stock in themselves. They figured out where they are.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
And they're looking inward. And I think that's just an important point today. This has nothing to do with your spouse or former spouse. This has everything to do with you and looking inward.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes. Your recovery and healing and epic comeback from divorce is not about your spouse. It's about you.
Pete Wright:
And in fact, I would imagine it starts as soon as you can say that, as soon as you can take ownership of your own recovery and stop talking about it or thinking about it in terms of your former spouse. What are you asking? Somebody comes to you to want to start a new relationship with you, what are you asking of them? What do they need to bring to the table in terms of their showing up?
Nikki Bruno:
I love that question. What they need to be bring to the table, as I mentioned before, is readiness and a willingness to tell the truth, a willingness to tell the truth, the full, brutal, hard truth of their experience, to themselves and to me. I mean, I'm a confidential situation here. I'm not going to be talking to anybody else, in the same way that a therapist is. I follow the same confidentiality regulations as a therapist in the state of California. And by the way, my business is global. I do not just work with people in California. But the beginning of the epic comeback process, so they need to be ready, they need to be able to pay me, and they need to be willing to enter the coaching relationship with positive intentions and in good faith. Ii mean, that's pretty much it. That's pretty much it. And then we take it from there.
In order to start working with me, you don't have to know exactly what your future's going to look like. You don't have to know what you're epic comeback is going to look like. You just have to know that you want one. You just have to know that you're willing to put in intentionality and work, inner and outer, to get there, and that's it.
Seth Nelson:
And I think the question ... I'm going to ask this as a question after I tell you this statement, is when people are struggling with whether to hire me or move forward with their divorce because of the unknown and what happens out there, I ask a simple question: "Do you want to feel the same way you feel today a year or two from now?" And if the answer to that question is no, well, then we have to take some steps to move forward. And is that really what you're saying, too? If someone comes to you and says, "I'm not happy where I am. I want to be in a different place a year from now, two years from now," if they can say those words, are they ready to start their epic comeback?
Nikki Bruno:
So as I was saying before, truth telling is a huge part of it to work with me, because one of the first stages of an epic comeback, and I am quoting my own methodology here ... The first real phase is what I call the turning point. The turning point happens inside, and only you know when you've reached a turning point, which a turning point is where you somehow know that you're ready to make things different. You just know. You know what you're ready. There's a turning point. For me, I had a very obvious turning point where I looked in the mirror and I said, "Bruno, this isn't funny anymore. This not feeling joy, this feeling depressed and anxious and living in survival mode, this isn't funny anymore and this is going to change." I literally was looking in the mirror. That was my turning point.
What comes after that, and what is common to epic comebacks in organizations, on athletic teams and individuals is a phase that I call reckoning. It's a time of assessment where you are taking your temperature and you are defining the status, what's the status of where I am? Now, keep in mind, people who are doing this are folks who are emerging from something that has been traumatic and life-shattering. So what you're doing during the reckoning phase is you're saying, "Okay, where am I right now? What just happened? What have I lost? What have I gained? What have I learned? Who am I right now?" It's not even about who do I want to be, it's, who am I right now? What's in my corner? What are the obstacles? All those kinds of things.
And you have to be willing to look in the mirror and tell the truth. You have to be willing to take some responsibility for where you are. That doesn't mean that blame completely doesn't matter, especially in cases of infidelity or cases of abuse or cases of domestic violence. I mean, there are some situations in marriages where really it's somebody's fault for doing a certain thing, and that's important, especially when you've been undergoing some kind of abuse. But yeah, in the reckoning phase, it's about really, really telling the truth of where you are. And a lot of people are tempted and have a tendency to really just look at the negative, to look at what they've lost: "Oh, my God, I've lost my life partner, I've lost half of my time or more with mt children, I've lost half of a family income. I've lost these mutual friends. I've lost this, I've lost that."
Seth Nelson:
Right. And Nikki, what they don't say is, "I got every other weekend off to go do what I want to do because I have a glorified babysitter in my former spouse, i.e., the other parent."
Nikki Bruno:
Yes. And that'll take a while. That'll take a while, and that's fine. But what they also don't say is, "What am I amazingly good at? What's the essence of who I am? What are my superpowers?" And the "What have I learned?" part is incredibly important. You're not going to make an epic comeback, you might have a mediocre comeback, if you don't integrate what you've learned and the power and strength that you've gained. People become warriors when they go through really hard, traumatic shit. And if you don't find a way to ... Well, I'll put it in a positive way. If you can find a way to harness that and to acknowledge in yourself that you have become stronger ... If you can get through a high-conflict divorce or if you can get through sort of divorce in general, you can get through a lot of other, really hard things.
And a lot of my clients also ... I have a podcast, and it's such a theme on my podcast. All of my guests are people who've made epic comebacks. And the theme is this, that people feel like they are so much more powerful and they can get through anything that life hands them once they've gone through something really traumatic. Like if you've gone through a terrorist attack and down the road, I don't know, someone in your family dies, and I don't say this to be funny, you're going to be more equipped to deal with that because you know what it's like to be on the floor. You know what it's like to be on your knees. You know what it's like, and you have more skills to do that. Your resilience has hopefully deepened, if you're open to acknowledging and understanding that that's the case.
Pete Wright:
That's hard to pivot from that point, but I need to go back just a little bit because I think one of the major themes that you have dropped several times and that we've talked about before is this idea of telling the truth, and not just in a specifically legal context, the way it is framed just right. I mean, we have a song in our family, when my kids, they're misconstruing the work they have to do for school or looking for colleges or whatever the case was, it's the, "I'm lying to myself." We get a little thing where we start going ... We make up choruses about all the reasons we're lying to ourselves right now. I wonder, Seth, if you could wax a little bit poetic on the idea of what it looks like when a client figures out how to stop lying to themselves in the divorce process?
Seth Nelson:
It is one of the pivotal moments in people's lives, and they don't even necessarily realize it's happening. Very rarely will I tell them, "You're lying to yourself," because that is a whole-
Pete Wright:
You can use my song, if you want.
Seth Nelson:
I might start singing it. [crosstalk 00:27:58] But I can't carry the tune the way you can, my friend. The way I frame those questions is I tell them very clearly, as you've heard me say before, Pete, "I'm not your friend. I'm your lawyer. You don't get your day in court. I get your day in court." And so, how we present your evidence, your information to a third party, that's where the magic happens. I'm like, "No, you don't get to play a victim. This is what happened. Here's how it plays out. This is how we're going to present this in court. We don't have excuses. We take responsibility for the things that we've done." And by way of example, there are clients that will be accused of being an alcoholic. And they'll go to court and say, "No, I'm not. No, I'm not." And they'll have all these reasons.
And I'm not saying that they are. But they go to the judge and they tell the judge exactly what that judge has heard every single case dealing with alcoholism, as opposed to saying, "Your honor, I'm not an alcoholic, but what I did is I went and got tested and have been alcohol-free for six months. Here's the testing from the testing facility. Here's how I got called in every week. This is what I did. And the reason I'm doing this is because I know my own self. I know my behaviors. And I understand that I'm going to have to prove that to you, and this is how I did it." That is much different than saying, "No, I was out with friends. I had two beers." So, that's where the truth telling comes in, but you have to be able to back that up for it to be the actual truth.
Or the reverse side is, "Yeah, judge, I suffered from alcoholism, and this is how I battle it every day, and I've been sober for six months. And this is what keeps me going. What keeps me going is I need to be here for my children. I need to be here to be at that baseball game or that hockey game or that extracurricular with my phone turned off, because in the one split second that my kid looks at me up from the field, if I'm looking at my phone, my kid thinks I've never seen what they did the whole time. So I'm going to be present, and that's what keeps me going." Those are dramatically different stories than, "No, just a couple beers."
Pete Wright:
That's important, I think, to recognize, because if you haven't come to terms with what it means, what it looks like to lie to yourself day after day, certainly, a terrible divorce is a thing that will help you realize what it takes. You will be forced to stand face-to-face with your truth. And so, I wonder how many folks come to this and realize when they are standing eye-to-eye staring at that truth, when they realize, "Oh, my God. I'm going to need more help. I need somebody like a coach."
Nikki Bruno:
That's kind of what I was going to say, is that a coach, and a therapist also will fulfill this role, will hold your hand and will give you compassion and will say ... I'm a huge fan of self-compassion. I'm sort of quoting myself in saying that self-compassion is the highest form of self-care, especially when you're going through something like divorce where you probably have been receiving a lot of really negative and harmful and even cruel messages about yourself. It's a time of extreme self-doubt, self-hatred, guilt for people. And that was definitely true in my case. I mean, my husband at the time, he was literally calling me a bad parent. He was saying all kinds of things and acting in all kinds of ways that suggested that I was a bad person. He called me evil.
And so, at a time when you're human and you're going through something hard, you're human and you probably are receiving a lot of negative messages about you, and you're human and you are looking into a mirror, which I'll tell you, the ultimate in sort of human courage that I see in my work is the courage that it takes to look into the mirror and tell the truth. And there's such a relief to that. I think a lot of people who are used to lying to themselves don't really know that. There's so much relief to the moment where you basically surrender to the truth and you say, "God, I really fucked that up."
Seth Nelson:
Right. But Nikki, some people are never going to get there.
Nikki Bruno:
Of course not, but they're not going to be working with me, because they're not going to be attracted to working with me, and I'm going to be telling them, when we have our very first conversation, "Are you ready? Are you really ready to open up the hood and take a look at what's inside?" So those wouldn't be my clients, and that's fine. That's fine. I'm not for everyone, and everyone isn't for me.
Pete Wright:
Well, let's talk about that. How does your role fit into the overall divorce process, in place of, in partnership with counseling? You alluded to having a few points about that earlier on. Let's talk about that.
Nikki Bruno:
A divorce coach can be intensely helpful and beneficial during the divorce process and beyond the divorce process. During the divorce process, the role of a divorce coach is to help you, the client, the person in the divorce process, to remain strategic and clear-minded and future-oriented during the divorce. So if someone is engaged with ... in the divorce process, and they work with an excellent divorce coach, they're going to have a clearer mind, which is going to benefit their relationship with their attorney and/or mediator, is going to benefit their relationship with their financial advisor. Anyone else that they're working with is going to love the fact that they're working with a good divorce coach, because it means that the divorce is going to be more efficient. It's probably going to be cheaper as well, because when you are in a good state of mind and you're going through a divorce and you're clear-minded and strategic and future-oriented, you want to get through the divorce. And so you're more likely to do your homework that your attorney gives you. You're more likely to come back [crosstalk 00:34:14]
Seth Nelson:
That was going to be my question, is how does this impact the attorney/client relationship? Help me help them, Nikki. Help me.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes. Oh, totally. So for you, Seth, your clients are going to come back to you and they're going to say, "Okay, I've done my homework, because my coach is on my back to do my lawyer homework and my financial homework and my this and my that. And I'm looking at if I want to establish a trust, or something like that." So the decisions are going to get made faster and they're going to get made with a clearer mind. So that's one really huge benefit. And what I love to say is that my clients, so far in my practice, it's been two and a half years, and so far, all of my clients are either in therapy while they work with me or they've been in therapy for a while working on healing, working on recovering, working on the emotional [crosstalk 00:35:07]
Seth Nelson:
I don't see a therapist saying, "Get your homework done."
Nikki Bruno:
No.
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nikki Bruno:
No, that's not the role of a therapist. The role of a therapist, this is a generalization, but it really holds, is being in therapy is more about emotion, and working with a coach is more about action. Therapists are more about the past and how it bears on the present. Coaches are more about the present and where the heck you're going to go and what you're going to do, the actions you're going to take, in the future.
So, I love working with clients who have therapists, and I do it all the time, as I mentioned, because I can say ... Let's say I have a client who has a pattern of getting involved with emotionally abusive people. I can say, "Okay, work on that pattern. Work on why that's the case and how you can understand that with your therapist. For my purposes and my role, I don't care why and I don't care how. What I care about with you is, what are we going to do about it?" That's the distinction. So a coach and a therapist are really powerful together, and I'm a huge, huge advocate of therapist/coach collaboration, which almost never happens, unfortunately. But there's so much potential in that.
Seth Nelson:
And I think also, to go back to the relationship aspect of this, Nikki, from what you're saying, it sounds to me that this will help this client save the relationships with their friends, because they're not bringing up their divorce at every moment. They have you as an outlet to help get through it and start working on themselves. It will help them with their family because it's not going to be this, "Oh, my God, talking about the divorce again," type mantra that people get into, because in your world, this is the most important thing. And it's happening to you every moment of every single day. And I tell people, which is very easy to say and very hard to do, "Live your life, not your divorce." If you have that moment with your kid or you have that book that you've always wanted to read or you're out with friends, go enjoy being out with friends. Why are you going to live your divorce and rob yourself of that precious time with friends? And a divorce coach seems to give people the steps to take those actions. Is that accurate?
Nikki Bruno:
It is accurate.
Pete Wright:
How long do you work with folks, Nikki? I mean, what is your just general length of engagement? If I come to you, how long would I expect to join your services?
Nikki Bruno:
A minimum of three months, I prefer six months, because in order to see if coaching is working well and in order to have real results. I mean, an epic comeback doesn't happen, generally, in three months. I mean, a lot can happen in three months, but yeah, so [crosstalk 00:37:48]
Pete Wright:
Well, I was thinking about, you said people join you when they're ready. And I imagine if I were somebody who was ready to talk to you, I wouldn't leave until I was damn well ready to leave. Who knows how long that's going to take, right?
Nikki Bruno:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So, a three-month engagement. And what I often do with people is because they want to get a sense of what it's like to work with a coach, because the majority of people never have ... And if they decide to engage with me for three months and then they're really enjoying it and they want to re-up for six months, I just take the funds that they paid me for the three months and I apply them to the six-month thing. My business model is very simple; you work with me for three months or six months.
Seth Nelson:
How do they know if they're talking to or interviewing a good coach? We had a whole, I think, episode, Pete, about interviewing a potential lawyer. What questions do you ask? How should that go? What about with you? Because, look, in all professions, there's good lawyers and bad lawyers, there's unethical lawyers, there's ethical lawyers, there's good coaches and bad coaches. How can they tell, especially if they're in this place of going through a divorce, and maybe their judgment if clouded? What should they be asking their divorce coaches, to get some feedback on that?
Nikki Bruno:
Number one, ask, "How did you learn how to be a coach? What are your credentials as a coach? How were you trained and educated in coaching?" Because believe it or not, coaching really actually is a thing. It actually is a method. It actually has a set of ethics, a set of practices. Coaching is a thing. And I'm not going to get on my soapbox and say, for any longer than this, how unfortunate it is that there are not barriers to entry for being a coach. But this is important for all of you all to know: there aren't any barriers to entry, meaning that anyone can put up a shingle and say, "I'm a life coach. I'm a divorce coach." Anyone can do that. There's no license required. There's no master's degree required. But there are a lot of coach certification programs.
So one indication would be if somebody tells you that they're a certified coach. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing, that someone has gone through a certification program. Find out how long the certification program was. Find out if the certification program was accredited by the International Coach Federation, which is a legitimate global body that accredits some coaching programs and not others. Also, ask about their experience. Ask them how many clients they've had, because someone can call themselves a coach and say that they've been a coach for three years and only have had three clients, or zero. A lot of people out there are calling themselves coaches, so find out about their education and preparation.
One good way to ask them about coaching and to sort of test whether they know their stuff is to ask them about the differences between coaching and therapy, or between coaching and mentorship, or between coaching and consulting. Because then, you'll get a sense of whether they really, truly understand what their role is, because there are a lot of coaches out there who are calling themselves coaches who aren't actually coaching. They may be doing fake therapy. They may actually be consulting or teaching. That's not pure coaching.
Seth Nelson:
Which all might have very valuable lessons to learn, but that's not their role.
Nikki Bruno:
Exactly, exactly. And also, ask them about what they sort of base their coaching philosophy on, or their coaching program. Most coaches have a program, as do I. And my program, one of the thing that distinguishes me as a coach is that my coaching programs are based on original research. I do have a methodology, and it's mine, and I've spent months developing it. I'm still developing and I'm constantly developing my methodology. It's a living, breathing thing.
Seth Nelson:
Well, because you're always trying to improve, and every client's different. And you got to go find them where they are and always adjust to the personalities. We do that in the practice of law. I need to meet the client where they are.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
I can't talk about the end if they're not even at the beginning.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes. And Seth, I also imagine this is true with attorneys, as well, how do you remain engaged in your practice area? How do you remain engaged in family law? So for me, it would be, how do you remain engaged in, let's say, the divorce industry or the larger divorce space? I am, in addition to being a coach and doing the work of coaching, I'm also a thought leader and an expert. I love being on podcasts like this one, because I'm very, very engaged in my field. And I have so many opinions and messages to send about what divorce and co-parenting and relationships look like. And I'm always reading and listening and consuming information. Coaches, they're not required to do continuing education. Well, there's a more complex answer to that, because if you're certified by the International Coach Federation, you do have to do some continuing education, but-
Seth Nelson:
Right, but I hear what you're saying. I mean, I'll tell my clients, "I'm a law nerd." Clients really like it when they know that I'm a law nerd, because that's what they're paying me to do.
Nikki Bruno:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
I read the statutes every year because it's an exciting thing to do over my winter holidays.
Pete Wright:
Let's just all take a minute. Everybody can take a minute and just let that sink in. I want you to picture Seth in his smoking jacket with a snifter of brandy-
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
... and the latest statutes.
Seth Nelson:
Chapter 61. It's bedtime reading. My son will say, "Dad"-
Pete Wright:
That is as sexy as it gets.
Seth Nelson:
... "Quiz me on equitable distribution."
Nikki Bruno:
Oh, man. Let's talk about parental alienation, shall we, Seth?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, I'm alienating myself.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. Well, I'll tell you, Nikki, this has been really illuminating. Thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us for the last hour. Can you tell us just briefly where people can go when they are so excited to go learn more about you and your services?
Nikki Bruno:
For sure. And I'll be really excited to learn about you, too. My website is theepiccomeback.com. That's the best place to find me, to schedule a complimentary consultation, if you're interested in coaching and you want to check it out and check me out. And I'm also active on social media. I'm really active on Facebook, Nikki Bruno, and I'm active on LinkedIn and Instagram, as well.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding. And we'll put a link to all of those in the show notes. And your podcast, yeah? What's the podcast called, again?
Nikki Bruno:
It's called The Epic Comeback Podcast.
Pete Wright:
I knew it. [inaudible 00:44:35] of times we can get you to say, "The Epic Comeback." We're just setting up this episode for its undoubtedly upcoming drinking game.
Seth Nelson:
Pete, what was the over-under on that, and how did we do?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. Right. Thank you so much, Nikki Bruno. We're so thrilled to have you on the show, and let's manufacture some reasons to have you come back sometime down the road.
Nikki Bruno:
Oh, I would love to do that. Thank you, Pete and Seth.
Seth Nelson:
Thank you.
Pete Wright:
Thank you so much, on behalf of Nikki Bruno and Seth Nelson, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you next time, right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Speaker 4:
Seth Nelson is an attorney with Nelson Koster 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 it not an attorney or employee of Nelson Koster. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.

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