Pete Wright:
Welcome to How To Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, it's time for your toaster to get vulnerable.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright. Today, we're talking about failure. Specifically, we're diving into the often-overlooked topic, healing after divorce trauma for men, from redefining love to overcoming adversity into finding purpose.
We are exploring the recovery experience in a way that fosters understanding, empathy, and growth. Furkhan Dandia is a therapist, speaker, and coach. He is also the author of Pursuit of Self-Love: 30 Uplifting Messages and Reflections. He's here today to share his story from engineer to therapist and over the hill of divorce. Furkhan, welcome to the Toaster.
Furkhan Dandia:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Pete Wright:
Okay, Furkhan, so you were an engineer, and you are now a therapist, and we're going to talk all about your approach to divorce trauma. I just want to know, was it your divorce that instigated your career change, or was there something else in your journey that drove you away from engineering?
Furkhan Dandia:
A bit of both. I mean, I'm still an engineer. Unfortunately, you can't give that up, and I'm still working as an engineer, believe it or not. But I would say when my son was born 10 years ago, I really started questioning my purpose in life, but I just didn't know where I wanted to go with it. So I tried different things, and then five years later, I separated from my ex-wife and was going through a divorce, and I really, at that time, relied on therapy to get me through.
And then, as I was going through therapy, I realized how much shame I was carrying as a man just going through divorce and talking to other men, recognizing there's so much shame amongst men, not only with divorce but other things. And for some reason, I felt this calling to become an advocate for men's mental health and started pursuing this degree in psychology, which... So I started doing some undergrad courses. I really enjoyed it. And then, during COVID, I applied for a master's and I'm just in the final stages of finishing that up. I am working as a student right now in a clinical setting. I have clients. But then, December, I'll be finished, and then I can start working full-time as a therapist.
Seth Nelson:
Well, it's awesome because there's not a lot of male voices in the divorce space. There's amazing amount of information out there generally on divorce and a lot on women helping women. So it's nice to have a brother in the room, man.
Furkhan Dandia:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Well, and that's what I really want to get to here because I... when we talk about divorce trauma, right, the post-divorce experience, I'm sometimes surprised at the gendered conversations that we have around these things and sometimes not. And in this case, I'm wondering what we have to learn about post-divorce trauma and how it manifests uniquely for men. Is this all about just questions of ego and masculinity and testosterone? What do we have to learn?
Furkhan Dandia:
Well, I think it goes beyond that. I mean, there's that huge financial aspect. Just through experience and talking to other men, a lot of men don't seek out divorce because they're worried about the financial aspect of it. So then they stick in those marriages. And I mean, Seth and I have talked about this on my podcast, but a lot of the times, you just go along with it, and then your kids grow up, and they move out, and then maybe you're ready for a divorce. So there's that piece.
And then there's a piece that I alluded to earlier around shame. And for me, it was a bit more pronounced because of my cultural background, and I can't speak to other cultures, but my parents immigrated from Pakistan. So there's this whole East Indian religious tradition in the family, and I felt that pressure from my parents when I told them, "Hey, I don't think this is working. I'm not happy. I want to go ahead with this."
And even though my dad understood, my mom was very hard on me, and for rightful reasons. She just didn't want me to break the family and then having my son growing up in a broken home. So there's that additional pressure that I felt and shame that came with it. So those are some other things that I've experienced myself but also noticed in other men that we don't necessarily talk about, at least from what I've seen.
Pete Wright:
I want to jump on a phrase that you used, and I think we need to talk about it because it's this idea of what it is to have a broken family and a broken home that jumped out at me right away. I'm wondering, Seth, what your angle is on this as a divorce attorney who, by that definition, breaks homes every day.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, I don't break them. I just make sure they never get built... rebuilt, right. No, I think it's just such a bad term, and it's very historically accurate. That's what a lot of our parents' generation and the generation before them would say, where I really believe that children can live in two separate houses and still have one home.
And what I mean by that is if the parents are doing a very good job of understanding what family is, that the children still have two parents that the parents aren't in conflict. Yes, you have Dad's house and Mom's house, right. That's just a way of identifying a location. It has nothing to do with the home, but I think that's a common, common phrase that I hear less and less over time. It's more like, "I can't imagine I'm not going to see my kids every day." So I think it's an old-timey phrase if I can use that type of terminology.
Pete Wright:
And that's what I hear, Furkhan when you're talking about shame. A broken home is a term of shame, right. That's part of the cultural baggage we're trying to shake.
Furkhan Dandia:
Correct. And I think there's another element here. For me growing up in a Western culture, which is more individual based versus my parents coming from a collectivistic background, that was also a bit of a disconnect, right, where the individual is a family unit.
Whereas for me, where I'm looking at it as like, "Well, I'm not happy. I don't feel fulfilled. I'm not being the best version of myself," that did not land for them, right. Because they're like, "Well, what do you mean? What do you mean you're not fulfilled?" Right.
Seth Nelson:
"You have a good job. You have a nice wife. You have a child. What else is there, you idiot?"
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. Right.
Furkhan Dandia:
[inaudible 00:07:10]. Yeah, absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Okay, so I dropped ego and masculinity earlier. I wonder if you can comment a little bit on that because when we're talking about the uniquely, but possibly uniquely sort of male experience of experiencing trauma post-divorce, at what point are we striving to just get out of our own way?
Furkhan Dandia:
Well, that's a battle I fight every day, and it's become more and more aware to me as I've grown through this experience. There was definitely a lot of ego, and I realized that the ego's always there, and people have different views on this, that you should kill your ego and do this and that. But I think the ego's job is to be an ally if you can look at it that way.
And for me, as Seth touched on just a few moments ago, I had a good job. I had a wife. I had a kid. We had a beautiful home. So, naturally, that led for me to have this sense of pride and arrogance. And then, going through that experience, it just shot out at me that how much of my humility I had lost and how I needed to regain that through that process. I looked at it as an opportunity to become more humble and not let my ego run me, but rather let my ego point out when I need to bring it in check. As far as masculinity goes-
Seth Nelson:
Hold on. Before you get to that, is there anything that physically happened to you when you thought your ego was getting out of check? Did you bulk up somehow or get tense or get short with people? Is there anything that might trigger yourself to be like, "Wait a minute, this is now happening?"
Furkhan Dandia:
Yeah, I think there was a sense of entitlement that came with it too. And I think that was more... I think for me, that was more from a spiritual perspective too, where I had the sense of entitlement that, "Hey, I'm a... I believe in a God, so good things should happen to me." And so when all these experiences were happening, I wasn't getting short, but I think it was being really hard on life in general, where I was just questioning things and doubting this higher power that I'd always believed in my entire life. So there was a lot of realizations through it.
There was also a moment where I was kind of almost going through depressive symptoms where I was starting to get down on life, and I was starting to see I had some dark days, but then something, I don't know whether... I mean, I do consider myself fortunate, but something clicked in my head that this is an opportunity for me to come out of this and take all the lessons I can and do something about it, do something positive with this, whether it's improving myself, but at the same time also helping other people that may be struggling in similar ways. And then that's where the whole being an advocate for mental health came through as well.
Pete Wright:
I want to drop... This might surprise Seth that I know some things about some things, so just hang on.
Seth Nelson:
I know... I will say that you know everything about movies, and I know nothing. Okay.
Pete Wright:
Well, I'll tell you where this came from. I've been doing a lot of research on the states of optimism. What it means to reframe your mind in and around an optimistic mindset, right. Free yourself from limiting beliefs. And I was reading up on Martin Seligman's Theory of Learned Helplessness, and in particular, explanatory style theory. And just for people who haven't heard about it, I love these three sort of spectra. Personalization. When bad things happen, do we blame ourselves, or do we blame external forces?
Permanence. Do we see the situation as unchangeable or changeable, something that we can... we have agency over? And pervasiveness. Do we see it as affecting all aspects of our life or just one specific area of our life, like this experience? And I read this, and I could not help but apply it as a layer over the divorce experience. And I'm curious how you as somebody... Now, as a student and therapist, how you relate this to your experience going through divorce? Do you have thoughts on this? Is this something you can jam with a little bit?
Furkhan Dandia:
Absolutely. I mean, I think, there... like I said, when I was going through those depressive symptoms, there was, I would say, again, I'm fortunate, but there were times when I had that victim mindset that, "Why is this happening to me, right? Why is the law not seeing my side of it? Why do I not get to see my son?" And all of it, all of it. I mean, it was a pretty nasty process.
Seth Nelson:
And that's all personalization, external outside forces just raining down on you.
Furkhan Dandia:
Correct. Correct. And what I noticed was, and as you kind of alluded to it, Pete, the days where I was in the victim mindset, nothing was going right. Everything would piss me off. It was like when Seth asked me, being short with people, getting off in traffic, getting off at work.
And I've been the type that I've always pushed through things, so I was able to fall back on that. But then, as I had this dance with the victim mindset, I started realizing that, "Okay, I can choose to be a victim and let things happen to me, or I can get my agency back and look at this opportunity happening for me." So yeah, I mean, I can relate to a lot of those things that you touched on based on that theory.
Pete Wright:
Well, and this is the thing, I think that's really important. If you're going through a divorce because I imagine the experience is, "This is my fault. It's something I'll never be able to shake." Or even if it's her fault, "This is something that is happening to me, and it's permanent, and because of this, I'll never find myself in a new healthy relationship again.
This is something that is... that I'll just exist in as the divorce guy, and now I don't want to be the divorce guy, but I don't have any choice." But what you described is an experience of being able to recognize, "Hey, wait a minute, I can push through this." And I wonder what strategies we can employ to help recognize when we're in that space because when we're compromised is historically not the best time to recognize we need help.
Seth Nelson:
Well, Pete, that's a great question. This is actually something that we work on here at the firm to help clients get through this because they usually feel that this is affecting globally all aspects of their life. Reasonable thing to feel, "I might have to sell my home. I don't know, I have to go get a job now, or I have to cut back on finances. I might not see my kids." It feels very all-inclusive and global on everything that we deem important to us. One of the things I try to work with clients on is get to the specifics and say, "This isn't impacting everything in your life.
And if it is, some of it is positive." So one thing I will say to them is, "Is there a restaurant that you like to go to that your spouse? You can go anytime now." And that's a very specific example, right. The other thing that I say, which is an inappropriate joke, and they all laugh at it, is when they're going through the whole thing, "This is horrible. This is terrible. None of this is good." I look at them, and I say, "You never have to have sex with her again." And they're like, "That is a positive."
Pete Wright:
That's the one. That's the anchor. I needed that.
Seth Nelson:
[inaudible 00:15:25]. Okay.
Furkhan Dandia:
[inaudible 00:15:26]. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
So it's really how you look at it. You now have a choice of how you spend your weekends, where maybe you didn't have that before, but that gets into the global verse the very specific. But I think also so many people find it's outside forces. Naturally, when they talk to a divorce attorney, they actually talk about the wrong person. The guy will come in and bitch about his wife, and I'm like, "I don't represent her. I need to know about you, your goals. How can we make this situation changeable? What are we going to do in that whole analogy we're working from here?"
Furkhan Dandia:
Yeah, and I just want to add a little bit around the permanence piece because that is crucial too, right, as we're talking about because it's so easy to get stuck in the frame of mind that, "Oh, this is going to kill me, or my life is over, and how am I going to get out of this?" For me, it was just as tough as things would get on certain days. It was just reminding myself that, "This is not my forever. This is going to end one day. I don't know when, but I just need to power through."
And I know that for some people, I'd be like, "Well, that's kind of like wishy-washy, and you're kind of deluding yourself," but it really works because I would convince myself that, "Yes, it is going to end." And it's true. It did end. I did make it through, but it's hard to see that light at the end of the tunnel when you're stuck in it.
Seth Nelson:
Well, part of permanence understanding is nothing lasts forever. And sometimes, when you're on a big high, and everything's great, I like to be more even-keeled. So sometimes, I'll say, "I'm not always going to feel this good."
Furkhan Dandia:
Mm-hmm.
Seth Nelson:
And right when you say that, it brings it down a notch. But when you're feeling bad, and you're like, "I'm not always going to feel this bad about this," it raises you a notch. Just articulating that what you're going through isn't going to be permanent helps you kind of stay in that even keel, and you're not tacking back and forth all the time and having highs and lows.
Furkhan Dandia:
Absolutely. Yes.
Seth Nelson:
I don't journal it, Pete, but I say it.
Pete Wright:
I just love hearing it, and I'm going to make that play on a loop as I go to sleep every night. Just Seth Nelson talking you to sleep. I want to talk about, when you think about your work as a male sort of advocate, you're anchoring on vulnerability. Let's talk a little bit about vulnerability and why that's important to moving through process like this.
Furkhan Dandia:
100%. So what I've learned, because I've started facilitating men's groups and the power of vulnerability, what I've learned, it starts with one. A lot of these circles I sit in or groups I sit in, I'll try to put something really vulnerable on the table, and I can just feel the pressure just release from that room. Other people will then just feel really comfortable. They're like, "Okay, this guy has just opened up this huge box. Now there's not much I can say that is going to be worse," or whatever... however they look at their situation.
But yeah, vulnerability starts with just one. And then, for me, it also helped just being open with my friends and talking through these things. Because, at the end of the day, if I kept it all inside, I was just going to kill myself, so being open and sharing it. And I think for me, telling myself that I want to be an advocate for men, put that additional responsibility on myself where it was like, "Okay, I have to walk the talk, so if I'm going into this field, I need to be able to back it up through my actions."
And that required me to open up and be vulnerable. And I felt like the more I started being open about the process and some of the things I was going through, it made it also... it made it a lot easier for me to deal with because then it wasn't some disastrous thing that was happening in the background. It was very real, but very similar to what I said earlier, that permanence aspect was gone because I was like, "Okay, this is going to end. I'm going through this obviously, but I'm not the first person, nor am I going to be the last person going through this."
Seth Nelson:
And I'm thankful for that.
Furkhan Dandia:
Yes. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Need clients. Took you a second on that one, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Always selling, Seth. Always selling.
Seth Nelson:
I was quiet when he said, "I wasn't the first one to go through."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. Right. I guess I'll give you some credit. But back up a little bit. So vulnerability starts with one. What is it? Can you describe what... For those who are listening who are like, "I don't know. I don't want to join a men's group" for some reason, whether it's fear or again, ego or whatever, what does it look like to go through the process of exploring vulnerability if that's new to you?
Furkhan Dandia:
I can only speak to the men's groups that I've been a part of and the one I co-facilitate here locally in Calgary with a friend of mine. We've had a lot of new men come through, and a lot of them, you could tell they're nervous, but either they've been told they need to attend something like this, or they were told by a friend, "Hey, this is really working well for me. You should come check it out." So when they're coming in, first time, a lot of the guys look like deer in headlights, and they'll observe. The first couple of sessions, they'll just sit there, they won't share anything. We have... We go around the table, we kind of do a check-in, and they'll keep it very brief.
And then you could tell as soon as we get into the raw, deep, vulnerable stuff, they're just like, "Oh my God, I can't believe these guys are talking about this stuff." And then, as they attend one or two more sessions, they start getting comfortable because they sense the safety there. They sense that it's not judgmental, and we're all just there supporting each other and recognizing that all of our issues are fairly common, and through that dialogue and conversation, we're learning from each other. So then they start opening up. But yeah, it's not easy. The first time, it wasn't easy for me. It wasn't easy for me going for therapy.
Seth Nelson:
But Furkhan, when you're in that situation, you're talking about you and your experiences. I can see some people thinking, "Well, are they just about their wives, or is it more, 'Hey, this is what's going on in the court system. This is how I'm dealing with it. This is what was happening in my life, but this is how I'm deciding to deal with it.'" So it's more introspective than just, "I can't do anything about this."
Furkhan Dandia:
I would say it's on a spectrum. What I remind myself when I'm doing therapeutic work, you have to meet your clients where they are. It's the same thing. A lot of the guys coming in are in that state where they're giving up their agency, or they're blaming the system, or they're blaming their partner or their employer, whatever it is. They're externalizing the problem, as we talked about earlier. And then there's guys who are introspecting or reflecting, and they're doing it out loud. They haven't had the opportunity to do it in isolation, so they're doing it in front of everyone else. It varies, but for us, at least again, in the groups I've been a part of, we're meeting everyone where they are.
There's no judgment. If the person feels like bitching about their ex. Sure. But as some of the experienced guys, our responsibility is also to ask introspective questions, to ask questions where they reflect and recognize what's their responsibility, what's their role in it, what can they do? Not all groups are the same, so I can't speak for all of them, but that's the idea. And I think safety for us is very crucial. And a lot of the groups I've heard about, the safety aspect is crucial. So that's why it's important to make sure you're giving a safe space to everyone, no matter where they are, in terms of their thinking and their mindset.
Pete Wright:
Again, you talk a little bit about your journey outside of therapy. And I'm speaking, I think specifically about your sort of vulnerability or mindfulness practice to keep your head on straight when you don't have the group.
Furkhan Dandia:
That's taken me a while to build together, and it's still evolving. I think for me, the way I hold myself accountable and outside of the group is giving myself enough time and solitude. That's been one of the biggest learnings I've taken through this whole experience because I never really took that time to reflect and meditate, for that matter. Or, like you said, being mindful. So I start every morning where I take two hours of just focusing on mindfulness. So it's breathing exercises. It's taking... It's doing cold exposure. It's prayer. It's journaling, and then I'm ready to go out into the world.
But the reason why I do that, because I learned previously that I would be just carrying all this stress from the days prior and not taking the time to work through it. And that mindfulness time that I spend now, I'm able to regulate myself and really focus on my breathing and have this internal state where I'm just calm and more aware of whether I'm carrying tension in my body, and if I am, where is it coming from? Just reflecting and constantly in that sense of contemplation. The prayer really helps me to remind myself of being humble and keeping that ego in check. I speak about it openly. When I pray, I'm asking for humility, for patience and for strength, and that gets me through the day as well. So those are things that I've really embedded.
Seth Nelson:
Two hours, you do this.
Furkhan Dandia:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
I do not know how to find two hours of my day. If I do, Pete would make me podcast an hour of it. Okay.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. You'd be podcasting an hour of it. No, there's no lie.
Seth Nelson:
That's amazing. I get up early, and I'm very thankful that I get up early, and right when I get out of bed, I literally take the dogs for a walk for about 20 to 30 minutes. And in that time, I'm very peaceful. I walk along the water. We're very fortunate to live where we do.
Pete Wright:
I don't want to tell you, Seth, that's your mindfulness practice.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
You can be mindful and meditative no matter what. You don't have to be on a zafu and in lotus position.
Seth Nelson:
I appreciate that. But that's like a 30 minute, 20, 30 minute walk. This guy's talking two hours.
Pete Wright:
You just need 90 more minutes.
Seth Nelson:
I'm walking across the Brooklyn Bridge how many times to do that? I don't know. So do you get up at three? Do you get up at four? Is it five to seven?
Furkhan Dandia:
I get up at five, and I'm fortunate I live less than a 10-minute walk from work, so I save on the commute, obviously. But yeah, those two hours I found, and like I said, it's evolved over time. Initially, it was half an hour, and then I kept adding things that I felt were really serving me. But those two hours are really an investment into my entire day.
And with the cold exposure, what I found is because I'm able to shock my system and regulate myself immediately and breathe through it. When I encounter the daily stressors that we all do, I'm able to just come back into myself and breathe through it. Now, obviously there's certain outliers where, yeah, I need more time to work through it when those stresses come up. But for the most part-
Seth Nelson:
Can we talk about this cold therapy first.
Furkhan Dandia:
Sure.
Pete Wright:
You have to understand Furkhan, Seth's in Tampa.
Seth Nelson:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
Going from Calgary to Tampa is a very different perspective.
Seth Nelson:
And one of our attorneys, Paul Phipps, who's been on the show, he does cold therapy, and he says, "Oh my God, I don't feel the arthritis anymore, and I can..." He does all this stuff, and I hate being cold, but people keep talking about these cold plunges that they do-
Furkhan Dandia:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
... and it sounds absolutely miserable. So talk me through it because obviously this is a blind spot for me, and people are doing it. And I've gotten into cold water because I was training for a triathlon. It was open water. I had my wetsuit on, and literally I got in, and I couldn't breathe. And I'm like, in the pool, I can swim a mile and a half, two miles, no problem. I'm not going to swim 10 yards in this fricking cold water. And how long are you in it for? What does it do? When you first did it, how was it? Talk us through this a little bit.
Furkhan Dandia:
Sure, sure. So when I first started, I did a plunge, and I lasted 30 seconds, and then I slowly worked myself up. So I first heard of Wim Hof, I'd say three or four years ago. A couple of years ago, I read his book. So I started slowly experimenting, and then I've been able to expand on that too. So the first year, I was doing cold plunges once a week at my local gym. They've got a cold tub there. So I was doing anywhere between five to 10 minutes. And then, last year, I started boxing, and my trainer told me about doing cold showers.
So I listened to the Huberman Lab podcast, which is great. And he talks about if you really want to get a good handle on your mental health and stress, doing five days a week of cold showers and once a week of plunges. So that's what I do now. So every morning, I'll take a cold shower for three minutes, and with the cold shower, what I found is my tolerance has improved significantly. So now when I do plunges... In the summer, I was going to the local rivers and jumping in after I finished my hikes. I've got way more tolerance.
So my plunges last anywhere between seven to 10 minutes. Now, it is hard. Like yourself, I did not enjoy the cold whatsoever, but with time, I've been able to build that tolerance, and it's really helped me manage my breathing because that's all you can focus on when you're exposed to the water or however you expose yourself to cold. And, like I said, it's helped me regulate myself. And anytime I'm stressed, I just go back into that breathing mechanism that I am employing when I'm exposed to cold.
Pete Wright:
Okay, this is it right here, and I'm right with you. And I think that Huberman Labs and his bestie, Peter Attia, are fantastic resources on this.
Furkhan Dandia:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I'm pretty new to cold plunge myself, but I think you get to something that we were talking about earlier, which is if you are building up your physical tolerance to finding... to being able to find your calm through these extreme exposures, then you find yourself, when you are emotionally compromised in a heated moment like going to court and having to listen to your former spouse in a trial situation, you are able to find peace there easier. What you're doing, it seems like, is armoring yourself for later conflict that you may not even see coming-
Furkhan Dandia:
Correct.
Pete Wright:
... by finding this sort of practice. I really love that frame.
Seth Nelson:
And that kind of brings some other stuff in together that we were talking about before. Because if you're doing that, then you're not going to feel like the situation you're in is unchangeable. You're not going to feel like it's going to affect every aspect of your life. You're not going to feel like it's just external source or forces reigning down on you. It's just a way to manage every single thing we've been talking about-
Furkhan Dandia:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
... to say, "Look, I can handle this." Now the cold plunges sound to me like, look, you get up, you eat a frog. That's the worst thing that's going to happen all day. So you get up, you do your cold plunge, you're going to be better for the rest of the day. Just my take. I can be wrong.
Pete Wright:
If that's the way you got to look at it, Seth, whatever, it's we're going to do to get you into that 40-degree tub.
Furkhan Dandia:
It's true, though. It's the voluntary exposure, right. There's something about it.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Furkhan Dandia:
It's you're doing it to yourself. Actually, I read a couple of years ago the stoics did that too, like the Roman emperors back in 2000 plus years ago. So this isn't something new that a Wim Hof or Andrew [inaudible 00:32:10]-
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, but when you say that, "I think haven't we evolved since then?"
Pete Wright:
They did some other crazy shit too, the Romans.
Seth Nelson:
That's not really a selling point for me.
Furkhan Dandia:
Fair enough, fair enough.
Pete Wright:
Well, I think Furkhan, that's really it. And what this whole thing buttons down for me into, what is it going to be to refine and reclaim agency in your own emotional health? And that's what this does. And I love the way you put it. You're doing it to yourself, man. You're getting in that tub of your own power and authority, and I think that's really great. I think that's great. Man, I had no idea we'd go this route on this conversation. Furkhan, you're the best. Thanks for doing this with us.
Furkhan Dandia:
No problem. Thank you.
Pete Wright:
What do you want to tell people? You got the book. You got the podcast. Share some plugs.
Furkhan Dandia:
The podcast really started with having these vulnerable conversations. I was talking to buddies when I was going through the divorce, and I was like, "Hey, there's a lot of material here that other people could listen to and perhaps at least not feel alone in their adversity or struggle, but even learn something." So that's how the podcast started, and it's evolved from there where not only am I talking about mental health adversity, but even some of the societal issues we're seeing.
And Seth came on, and we talked about divorce and how people can be mindful around that and some of the strategies they can employ with respect to co-parenting as well. So that's the podcast. It's called EZ Conversations. And the book was a result of me... So I started the therapy, and then I jumped into another relationship, and I hadn't really healed myself. So when I came out of this other second failed relationship as [inaudible 00:33:58] call it, I started to look inward and I was like, "Okay, well this is two in a row. Common denominator is me, so I need to do something here." And I went into what I call the modern solitude and started reflecting on myself.
I started reading. I started learning more about myself and really doing a lot of healing work. And a lot of the reflections I had I put into this book with the hopes of helping other people reflect on their lives. And it's a bit of a coffee table book that allows people to journal as well. So my hope was to provide these prompts to people that they can use in their journaling practice. And yeah, I do offer coaching as well as the therapy work that I will be able to offer on a full-time basis in January. I'm fairly active on social media, primarily on Instagram at UnoiaZen, but that's about it. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We'll have all links in the show notes. Bouncing into another relationship unhealed from the first, I think the Romans even called that a rebound relationship, 2000 years old. Amazing. Have we learned nothing?
Seth Nelson:
Okay, so I like the fact we haven't evolved that much.
Pete Wright:
Furkhan Dandia, thank you so much for hanging out with us. At this point, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for us to turn our attention to the listener question, Seth, our listener question today comes from the anonymously titled Father. It's a great question, though. Here we go. "I have a 14-year-old son who is on the spectrum and gets violent sometimes. He lives with his mom, and I don't see him very often due to alienation. He wants to reconnect and visit with me, but I don't feel safe around him.
So I tell him I'm sorry, but I can't do it without trying to hurt his feelings. His mom doesn't know how to handle him either, but she is demanding that I take him for visits to give her a break. By the way, I have other children come for visits." I'm not entirely sure what the specific question is here, Seth, but when you hear this with your attorney's ear, does this give you any insight on how you might recommend father to proceed?
Seth Nelson:
It's not really a legal question, right. It's, "Hey, I'm going through this really tough time. We're divorced, or we're never married. We have a child together. We're not living in their same household, and we have a special needs child who, unfortunately, can be violent." Scary times for everyone. He doesn't seem very often due to alienation. I'm just going to make one comment on that. You have a mother who's saying, "Please take him." Now, her motive might be, "Because I just need a fricking break."
But that doesn't sound like alienation when she's asking you to take the child. I don't know what happened previously. Maybe there was alienation that makes it more difficult for your son to get there. I know kids on the spectrum really need really just detailed things to be in order, right. They need to have their routine. So couple things to do here. You can certainly always hire... These are kind of extreme examples, but this is kind of an extreme fact scenario. You can hire an off-duty police officer to be there with you.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
Because we're worried about safety.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
And so if you have someone there that has an authority figuring and maybe can do something about it if something happens and then it's not a he said, she said, or he said, and your child said, right. And I would do a one-on-one for a short period of time in a public place. You don't want to necessarily have confinement, right. I would start slowly. I would make sure like, "What time of day is he at his best? Can we do it then so you can get a break, but maybe I don't have a breakdown with him when he's with me?" So this would take a lot of communication between the parents. It would take a lot of coordination. It would take a lot of pre-planning and to have also plans in place if things go wrong.
"Let's not figure out what we're going to do if he gets violent the moment he gets violent. Let's have a plan in place of what we're going to do if he gets violent." Extremely difficult situation. But I would start with this on a one-on-one. So if there is violence, we're not getting other children involved. And I would carve out some time. In short, I don't think it's a legal question. I think there's some practicalities here that you really need to talk to him. Maybe he's in mental health counseling. Maybe talk to the mental health counselor and get some professional help on how to set up the transition, the time, what to do if things go bad, and how he transitions back.
Pete Wright:
Thank you, Seth. And thank you, Father, for reaching out to us and giving us an opportunity to weigh in on that question. We sure appreciate it, and we would love to hear from even more of you. Head over to howtosplitatoaster.com and tap that little button that says, submit your question. And it'll come right to us, and Seth will answer it in an upcoming episode.
Seth Nelson:
And Pete, we got a list of questions that people have sent, and we're going to get to them, so keep sending to them. Don't feel like we've lost you in the shuffle. We try to match them up with the show, and so sometimes they're not on the back burner, but we're really waiting for the right moment. So thanks for sending them in.
Pete Wright:
And thank you for downloading and listening to the show, too. We sure appreciate your time and attention, and we appreciate you hanging out with Furkhan Dandia today. On behalf of Furkhan and Seth Nelson, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you next week right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to Split a Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson, music by T. Bless & the Professionals, and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce & Family Law 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 NLG Divorce & Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
