Ep. 32 - How to work with a divorce coach on divorce

Jen Curtis: Today we're joined by Petra Brunzell, a divorce coach, with over 20 years coaching experience. With Petra, we'll be exploring the world of divorce coaching, what it is, what it isn't, and the role that it can play in supporting you through the transition of divorce or separation.

Tim Whitney: Petra brings a unique blend of professional insights and personal experience having navigated her own high conflict divorce.
She now works alongside law firms to support clients through the emotional and practical challenges of separation, court hearings, co-parenting, and rebuilding their life after divorce. Welcome Petra.

Petra Brunzell: Thank you for having me.

Jen Curtis: I wonder if we could start Petra just telling us a bit about your background , and what led you to become a divorce coach.

Petra Brunzell: Wow, let's make this really long story a little bit shorter, but it all started with, so I've been a coach for many years. I started in the fitness industry as an aerobic instructor, 5, 6, 7, 8, motivating people to get fit. And from that I got more interested in people's brains behaviours, confidence.

So I became a confidence coach, emotional coach, bereavement coach. And all of a sudden through this, my husband left me for a trainee at work. Classic. It was awful. It was a dreadful time and unfortunately it when led to many, many legal letters, lawyers forward and back, and hearings after hearings, court hearings, and in one of the hearings, my legal team said, you are coping with this amazingly.

And I thought, really, am I? On my own, from Sweden without my family? I thought that was quite a surprise, but they said, when this is all done, maybe you can come and work with us? And I felt like, whoa, what am I supposed to do? I'm not legally trained. And they said, as a divorce coach. At that moment, it didn't go well in the hearing by the way.

It was a terrible hearing. But I went home and Googled and I discovered that this divorce coaching, maybe all of this is happening, rather than happening to me, feeling like a victim, because I was definitely feeling the latter. It sort of changed, maybe this is happening for me, maybe this is happening so I can actually help others.

And in that moment, I started to study more and more about my own behaviours and my ex-husbands and so on. And here I am. Now I'm guiding people through it because, in the end of the day, I've been there, done that, and I am basically you in the future. So it's quite helpful for the clients to not just have the knowledge I've been there, but it's also quite motivational for them to see what can happen if I work on myself, because it can be a great job.

So that's pretty much how I ended up becoming a divorce coach.

Tim Whitney: Brilliant. Thank you. And I think that point you make about having walked in their shoes, it feels like that's an important one from client's point of view, so that they know that you understand not exactly what they're going through, because everyone will be going through something slightly differently.

But I think that authenticity must be quite important.

Petra Brunzell: It is important because in the end of the day, and I said this actually a couple of days ago, in. my social media. Even if I read about bereavement, so I've been a bereavement coach before I did this, but not until last week I lost my mother. Not until that moment I have felt what that feels.

All of a sudden now I have a deeper understanding. We can connect. There is that vulnerability. When you have a client and they say, they explain something, it might not be the same. Not say I can only coach people whose husband has left them, because that's my experience. But there is a bereavement process that you go through the, you know, the divorce as such.

And that bereavement process is similar to most people. You know, it's the first is a shock and then we have all these emotions coming. The guilt perhaps if you were the one who said it and so on, and you go through this bereavement process, in the end you have acceptance. If you haven't gone through that yourself on either side, if you chose to leave or if you've been left or whatever it is, you cannot relate in that vulnerability with another client.

So it's quite important that I've been there, you know, to guide them through, but also to say, Hey, I understand that this is awful, but what's on the other side? It's amazing. Come and join me there. Yes. It's kind of motivating them to shift their emotions, I guess. Does explain it? I think it does.

Jen Curtis: I think so. And I think it's really helpful to kind of get a sense that divorce coaching is very much a forward looking process from what you've said so far. I mean how do you work with clients? Is there a sort of a set of meetings that they would have with you? How do you work with them?

Petra Brunzell: So good point to say the difference between, and I have this question a lot of the time, what's the difference between me and a therapist or me or a counsellor?

So coaching, if you look at any coaching in the world, whatever coaching it is, you want to practice the swing better in golfing or skiing or it's goal orientating. I'm taking the climb from wherever they are and they tell me how they want to feel or how they, can perceive. Now, that's very difficult when you're in a bereavement process because everything is grey.

Everything feels like a big cloud, so I need to be helping them setting up a map of where we can go. It's like me being a SAT nav and we're on the M25 and the SAT nav is broken. I am supporting them with a new roadmap, if you like. The difference between that and therapy, for instance, in therapy, we go very much backwards and see why did I end up here?

Why am I struggling with certain things? So coaching is very goal orientated, very future thinking, where it can go. It's my job to take them from here to get an Olympic gold, if that's what they want and their personal best, whatever it is. Meanwhile, a therapist is trying to figure out what has happened in the past in order for you to feel like this.

Now, sometimes as a coach you might have to, or you might discover there is something in the past that's happened. You know, it might be child trauma or any kind of trauma, and we might have to unpack that a little bit, but we don't stay there for too long because that's not helping our process. We might just have to dissect that a little bit, maybe further down the line, but it's very much goal orientated.

Where do you want to go? How do you want to feel? So to answer your question, do I say, Hey, you need to have 10 sessions. It's very, very different to every individual. How we bereave, how we cope with things, how, what tools do I already have? And it's then up to me to tailor it completely personal for every single client, how I see them, how often I see it.

Tim Whitney: And, do you find that clients will be doing sort of base based processes at the same time? So are you often working with people who are also working with therapists? Or is there a order to it or does it sort of depend on a case by case basis?

Petra Brunzell: That's a very good question. Very often if I recognise within my clients this is something deeper than just a bereavement, there's something from the past that we might have to unpack. I can recognise that and I would suggest that this is not my forte. I don't have that many letters after my name for this, if you see what I mean.

But is this a good time to unpack old traumas from my past when I'm going through something quite horrendous physically here right now? Perhaps not. We can recognise it and say maybe. When we have got to the goal end when we're through the divorce, maybe I would like to choose to go back and unpack those things that happen to me as a child or whatever it might be.

Not necessarily would I advise someone to go dealing with a divorce and then unpack that your mother left you as a child back in the day. Those are two traumas and two bereavements in himself. But very often if there is something, that we can't shift. We kind of have a pattern, we go back to the same thing, so cognitive behaviour, for instance.

I have many other sort of therapists that I work with and say, maybe a few sessions on this subject could help the client moving forward because we are stuck. And so very often, you know, I work with therapists, I work with also relational therapists. So they had a couple for instance, and it's not worked out, then they come to me from a therapist. So it's kind of, you know, we move clients for their needs in the end of the day.

Jen Curtis: And do you find that you have a different approach sort of depending on where the client is in their sort of grief, bereavement cycle when they come to you?

Petra Brunzell: Yeah, of course you do, because. I always say to anyone who refers, the quicker I come into a client's journey. So the best, best opportunity is, I had a client the other day, she came to me, should I stay or should I go?

I haven't even made the decision yet. That's a really hard decision to make. For whatever reason I'm feeling like this. It's not for me to tell her this is what you should do. I can never do that, but I'm there to unpack why we feel like this and we can find a way if you stay or if you go. So I actually have clients who are not choosing to divorce.

They have chosen to work on themselves. So I'm working more within a life coaching sort of experience, and I have clients who have chose, I need to leave. For whatever reason. So if I come in at that stage, then I follow the whole journey. Very often though, I come in in the middle when everything is horrible and the client is struggling, or the legal team is saying, this person needs support.

And then I have to unpack everything that has happened, which we can do. But to answer your question, wherever they are in the bereavement, I have to meet their needs. And see how can I support? What is it that they need here? Is it just motivational? Is it changing or shifting your emotional, you know, from being very angry or frustrated, whatever it is, we need to shift that in order to move forward.

So very much you have to, as a coach, every single client I have are in different stages. I have clients who are out of it. I have a client who got divorced eight years ago, but she hasn't moved on. That's incredibly sad. But incredibly rewarding when you see that they start moving. And actually, you know what? Life was pretty good. So all those stages going through.

Tim Whitney: I suppose that's something that we've talked about previously is that the challenge and almost the sort of cruelty of this process is that you are having to make huge decisions, at a point where you are, you need, as you say, either in a grief cycle or this is a complete shock, or you are having to deal with litigation and lawyers and, actually for clients working with a divorce coach, I find it gives them the space to sort of help make those decisions because as the lawyers, we can sort of set out the legal position, we can set out the options, we can tell them what the chances are at court and, and things like that.

But these are decisions that they're having to make about their lives, and that might involve more decisions that aren't necessarily strictly legal, such as where should they live next or, or what should their house look like? Should it be a big house with a big garden, or should it be a smaller house with a smaller garden? And there's so many decisions that people find that they might be having to make.

I think that's where I've seen some real value from your work is giving them space to think about that before they then come back to us with some clarity to say, right, this is what I wanna do. Help me do it. 

Petra Brunzell: Very much so. I think, we have to understand when you're going through this bereavement, and now comparing it, having gone through a sort of death bereavement versus this, and I always said this bereavement of divorce is much tougher.

And the reason it is because there's so many bereavements within the bereavement. So number one, I have lost my identity. I used to be a wife. Who am I now? We used to have a unit as a family. Who am I now? I need to find a new identity. So there's bereavement of that. There is a bereavement of the future that I thought I had that I'm no longer gonna have.

There's a bereavement about the house that we built and made really beautiful, and now I'm not gonna have that. There is a bereavement of, I had children because I wanted to have a unit. Now I'm a single mom or a single dad. You know, there's so many bereavements within the bereavement that it actually is much harder to bereave something that just disappear.

The biggest thing that people struggle with is the why. I think if I could have a pound for every time my client go, but why is he doing that? Why is she doing that? Why, why? Why did this happen? Why, why, why, why? And my point of call, I sit and I listen and I simply say, let's take the why and just pause survey.

Let's change the word to how, because we might never find out why. We might never know the reasons X Y Z happened. Let's think of how I can move forward. So my job is to very often take a say, for instance, the house. Why do I have to live in a small house? Why is this happening? Why do I have to downsize?

Why, why, why? Well, we might never find out. How can I cope with a smaller house? What are the possibilities? How can I shift my feeling from feeling forced to sell a house, to feeling this could actually be really good for me. New, fresh start, new memories. Maybe this could be the best thing that's ever happened.

And when you start shifting that, instead of feeling forced to say yes to something, because that just straight away, we kind of go, uh, don't wanna feel forced and then we negative feeling, but we, if we start shifting in more to an opportunity, maybe moving away, I had a client who lived in Winchester for instance, and when she sold her house or the house was sold.

It was much better for her to live in London as a single woman. She is loving her life. She would never have thought about that. She was holding onto why she would sell the house, it's my house. There's a lot of emotions attached to these things, so yes, it is helpful to have a coach unpacking those emotions and then shift them because we are able to do that.

It's just when everything is so clouded and so great and so miserable, we are not really creative. To have then a coach to make you kind of a little bit more think, oh, I see what you feel. Have you thought if I like this, and they go, oh my Lord, that's a great idea. So it's kind of just helping them a little bit more creative, I guess.

Tim Whitney: I suppose just to help people think from a very practical point of view, I know that, I mean, we've had clients where we'll send them a letter from another side. We'll say, speak to Petra about that first, and then speak to us once you've spoken to Petra.

I assume you also have, more regular sessions, but just I guess to explain to people how might it work on a, you know, when do they see you? How do they communicate? I know that from conversations we've had before, it's, you know, emails, WhatsApps messages. It's all sorts of things, but could you just help give a bit of a sense of how that works?

Petra Brunzell: It's very important. I think that I am to all my client, I'm a bit of a sanity check. Okay? So I have had a letter from the other side when they read a letter, we are aware of this. It's gonna hit them differently because they're emotionally attached to what's said. So I always say to all my clients, just copy, send it to me.

I would read it through, I would analyse it if you like, and we'd talk about it. So I sat, only yesterday with a client reading a letter from the other side. I might do it in a voice that sort of lands better, you know, so she can then have a sign check, is that what I mean? Is that it? Before she speaks to her lawyers, instead of getting emotionally loaded and angry, we dissect it and then we read it again.

So that's one point. The biggest thing I guess, having me as a coach, you do have out of hours accessibility to me. So very often if you get a letter specifically, you know what it's like lawyers like sending a letters on a Friday afternoon. I'm not sure why you do it, but it really works. So when a client then has a letter on a Friday afternoon, your office is closed and they're sitting with us the whole weekend, they can text me.

So we can have a little WhatsApp conversation where I can, sort of, calm them down send them something to listen to. Just read something, it takes me two seconds. It's important that you have someone supporting you out of hours after five o'clock because that's where it normally happens. Or I had a aggressive text message from my former husband or for my wife.

What do I do with this? So I guess I'm a little bit like a, an alive ChatGPT. Someone you can kind of, you know, I love that my clients use ChatGPT, I think it's great. But sometimes, i'm not a bot. I have sit with knowledge and I can guide you in a sort of tailored way. I very often say, we don't need to respond to this, just give a thumbs up or message noted or whatever.

But so from a practical point, those are quite helpful for a client to have at hand with a divorce coach.

Jen Curtis: I would agree. I mean, I'll very often send out sort of quite a high level piece of advice at an initial stage to a client and say, look, file that somewhere that you can come back to in the future.

If you're sort of waking up in the middle of the night, can't remember what legal advice you've been given. And great, yes, they've got that there, they know where that is, but that still doesn't have that same, sort of emotional understanding. You know, they can say, oh yes, Jennifer advised me that you know, it is likely that the house will be sold, but you know, I will get enough equity from it to meet my needs.
Fine. But that is just so much more factual and legal than actually the interaction that they can have with you.

Petra Brunzell: Yeah, and I think something that I massively help with. I think for all my clients is that, so when you start the process through lawyers, the Form E, you know, that dreaded along really dull, you know?

But it's actually not that difficult. And the reason that people are struggling with this is because it's emotionally attachment to what I need to do. One, it's boring, two, it's draining, and you have to find all the information. The way to explain it that all my clients feel, it's like you are revising for to reset a GCSE exam and you haven't studied and you don't know the answers and you feel really silly that you don't know answers.

So if you were say for instance, a lot of my clients, if you're a wife and you've never done the finances, you might not know where the council tax is, you might not know where the electricity bill is, and it's actually quite difficult to sit there and do that on your own. So, very often I sit with my clients, I've gone through so many form E's, to just one, motivate them slightly, make it a little bit sort of almost enjoyable, and also make them feel less silly that they dunno their answers. In between us, we'll find an answer and in the end of the day we have a legal team that definitely know what to do at the end. But the process then is slightly better.

So sometimes having someone from an emotional support to do something that is so , I mean, it's a spreadsheet, you know, doing your budget. How much food do I buy every week? You know, what am I gonna do? It's quite overwhelming. So having an emotional coach to deal with that is very helpful.

Jen Curtis: Absolutely. 'cause I mean, I've lost count at the times that I've sort of seen clients almost freeze when you send them before me. They are just so overwhelmed that they don't even know, know where to start.

Petra Brunzell: Yeah.

Jen Curtis: And again, just someone who can look at it from a more practical perspective.

Petra Brunzell: I have clients who are, you know, I have a barrister who I worked with, with his form E. He's a very intelligent guy. This should be a dodo. In his head. He's going, why am I struggling with this? That also then makes you feel pathetic. Makes you feel I'm a terrible human being. You start questioning so many things, but the fact is.

He is an intelligent guy and he's amazing. Just because my emotions of making this much harder than he naturally should be. So if I can take that away and then actually when we sit, he only takes an hour and a half, you know, it's a little bit like going to the dentist. We're gonna have a root canal. It's gonna hurt a little bit, but I'm here to support.

Okay, let's do it. So, yeah, it is very helpful for those practical things. Definitely.

Tim Whitney: And then I suppose it, I'd just like to sort of talk a bit about children and parenting. When I was mediating last week with a couple who I've mediated for a long time and like you were saying earlier, they've reached the point where they're trying to get away from the why and they're actually trying to look at how do we get on, how do we stop this from happening? How do we function as parents? Because our relationship as husband and wife has finished, but our relationship as mom and dad goes on forever.

So can you talk to us a bit about sort of how you work with clients in that sense with maybe with co-parenting, what sort of tools you have or what sort of work you do with them?

Petra Brunzell: So, you know, the concept of co-parenting is wonderful and if that could be the case in any divorce, that's the ultimate dream to be able to co-parent. And we work alongside, we can talk, we text, Hey, you know, is it okay? Can you check in on this? Can you do this? That's wonderful. Now, in many cases, if you are dealing with a high conflict divorce, when communication is completely broken down.

Both sides hate each other. They're blaming each other. We have all sorts going on. We are not looking at aiming for co-parenting. We've gotta be realistic here, we are looking more for what we call parallel parenting. So what happens in mommy's house is this, what happens in daddy's house is that we don't talk, we just have parallel parenting, and we leave it at that.

Worst case scenario, when you have high conflict, you are looking at something we call counter parenting when one parent is going out of their way to make it really difficult for both children and the other parent to parent full stop. So for me, when I meet my clients, obviously my aim or the game I'm looking at the children in the middle, we need to look at what do we need to fix here?

What is not working? So if we can co-parent, if we can work towards that, that's my ultimate dream and goal. But if I realise that the communication is broken down, to the extent that that's not gonna happen, then we're looking at parallel parenting, making sure that the kids are okay. So what I do is helping my client to communicate in a better way, because a lot of people, if we have a high conflict, we then have high conflict messages, aggression, frustration, blaming, finger pointing, whatever it is that's gotta stop.

And it's for me to teach my client. I say this on a, I don't know how many times a week, if we have a person that we don't like and we can't block and delete them, okay, we just can't do that. 'cause we've got kids and we have to see them.

We have to think of this differently. It's like thinking of it like it's an annoying person in the office. You are the office manager. You can't get rid of them, so you have to manage them. It's my job to help my client manage themselves, but also manage the communication. So if we have aggression, we don't respond, we don't go into it.

We are keeping it on the level of focus on the kids, what is important. But also if we have that, maybe WhatsApp communication is not really gonna work because it's a quick fire thing. When I have clients who send emojis, you know the orange ones with the lines over it, you know exactly what I mean.

We don't want that. So then I teach them to maybe we're go to email instead. Calm the thing down. We don't have to respond straight away. So it's me coaching my clients to level up, be the better person, be the one who actually raises this game to an adult level. I am not doing the whole me, me, me, me, me. We are going away from that.

So co-parenting. Wonderful. I love that. If people can all strive for that, amazing. But unfortunately a lot of my clients are gonna end up with parallel parenting. If there is any counter parenting with some, another side for instance is going against. We need to work on that and we need to address that because that's really unhealthy for children.

Tim Whitney: And I think that's a very good point, and I think sometimes parents are understandably they set up co-parenting is a bar that they want to achieve. And potentially they have friends or they have family where they see, what they're able to do and they think, well, that's what we want to do 'cause we want the best for our children.

Or maybe one of them saying, that's what I want to do 'cause I want the best for our children. But they forget that actually the couple they're looking at, didn't just get divorced one week and the next week start functioning as co-parents. Without wanting to sound too, sort of Channel 4 reality shows, it's a journey, isn't it, to say, actually at this point in our lives, if we are also dealing with financial litigation or if we are also dealing with the divorce proceedings and the separation, what is realistic?

Is it that we need to start with parallel by parenting and then maybe next year. Or once the proceedings are finished and once we've, you know, we can then look to sort of, not just stay there, but then try and develop and it's a sort of. Before you can run for type point, isn't it?

Petra Brunzell: In my own journey, so I got divorced nine years ago.
I mean, I'm gonna be honest, I hated the guy. I mean, literally, I hated the guy for whatever, for the obvious reasons. We were not gonna be able to co-parent and talk every night saying, oh, you know, they're struggling with this, it's just not gonna happen. And he was very much counter parenting.

You know, you're doing this wrong, but now nine years on, when everything is in the past, I have grown as a human being. And if he's growing or not, that's for him to decide. But we have moved forward. So now it's very much more a co-parenting thing. So it is possible. So I don't want, if you're sitting out there and you're listening now and thinking, oh my gosh, that's me.

We can never parent. You can, but you have to somehow move away from those feelings you feel about the father or the mother, because in the end of the day, I can't change this. This guy is gonna be in my life. Like forever, whether I want to or not. So I need to move away from those feelings and focus on the task that I need to do.

And that's my kids. The better relationship me and Daddy have, the more calm and secure they're gonna feel. And the end of the day, that's my only job. So take away my own feelings and focus on what's important. But that's easier said than done. Like I said, nine years further in the future it can happen, but you have to work on it.

But in some cases it just, one person is just not gonna move. You know, I'm not talking to this individual and then we will have a parallel. And it's not bad to have a parallel parenting scheme, it's just that we don't really communicate much unless it's an emergency. You have your rules in your house, and the other person have that.

It's not bad, but at least we don't fight over things. Yeah. So there are ways of looking at it.

Tim Whitney: And I think it goes back to a early point, doesn't it? About goal setting is sort of setting appropriate goals, at appropriate times. And if you said, right, I want to go and climb Everest, you wouldn't just set that as your goal.

You'd set your first goal as, right, okay, what are we gonna do in order to make that happen? We're gonna get some fitness, we're gonna do some ude training, we're gonna learn to climb, or whatever it is. And there's a parallelism that's saying, okay, your overall goal might be this, but let's break that down into smaller short term chunks that we can make, get you there , at the, at the right time.

Petra Brunzell: But it's also a bit of shifting. If I want to climb Mount Everest, there are a few things I need to do. So I very often talk about upgrade in life. Okay? Because I see my life as being upgraded. But in order to have that upgrade, like if you go on a flight, you don't wanna go, right? Okay, you wanna go left?

Or maybe upstairs if you're, going on Emirates. So whatever it's, yeah, you're like, Ooh, I wanna upgrade. It comes at a cost. Either it's financial cost, but in this case, when I'm talking about it, I have to work for my upgrade. The upgrade is in me. If I want an upgrade in life, I have to upgrade within. And when you start doing that, it's a beautiful growth.

You, the sky is the limit, whatever you wanna go. But if you say, I want this and I wanna climb Mount Everest, but I'm not prepared to put in the training. I don't actually wanna buy an equipment. I just wanna do it and have the photo and put on Instagram. Well, the reality is you're not gonna make it.

Yeah. So you have to put the work in. So as a coach, and it doesn't matter what coaching it is, if you wanna lose weight and you have a fitness coach, you have to do the training. You are supported by a coach, motivated, given the tools, whatever it is, but you have to do the work. And that sometimes is a little bit difficult because if I could, I would give you a little pill and you wake up tomorrow on top of the man Everest, or in first class Emirates in the beautiful whatever it is, but life doesn't work like that.

So if you want an upgrade, if you are not feeling great at this moment, the work starts with you. It's not the other person, it's not anyone around you, it's within. And that is a little bit hard to deal with sometimes because you have to self-reflect quite a lot.

But if you do it, what's on the other side is incredible.

Jen Curtis: And I suppose the way in which you rely on a divorce coach in this example to be that motivator, that's got to have a bearing in terms of what anyone should be looking for when perhaps they're looking for their divorce coach. There's, I guess there's gotta be some, a level of connection there.

Petra Brunzell: Absolutely. I think if I were to guide someone, how do I find a good divorce coach? Meet a few. Yeah, don't just, it's like meeting a doctor or a hairdresser or meet a few, get what their thing is about. What is the unique selling point? Number one thing that I would love for them to have is that they've done the journey themselves.

That's number one. Because without being horrible, if you've never done this, you never felt it. It's very hard to relate, and it doesn't have to be exactly your story. But it's definitely helping, I think. Number two is also, it's hopeful and it's given me a massive hope to see that someone's on the other side.

That's motivating itself. But ultimately, like I said, there need to be a connection. More importantly, if I'm gonna be vulnerable with someone, I need to feel safe. I need to be in a safe environment. I feel that this person is gonna sort of, you know, hold me, or you know, if I cry all of a sudden, is this gonna be uncomfortable for me?

You need to connect with that other side, and that's pivotal. So meet a few people. If that is a coach or a counsellor or a therapist, whatever it is, make sure that that person is kind of getting you, you know, are they getting my vibe? I think that's the most important thing.

Tim Whitney: Brilliant. And just to finish, I suppose, is there, this might be quite a difficult question, I guess, but what would be your one bit of advice for someone who's starting out on the process of separation or divorce? 

Petra Brunzell: Oh. Only one. I would say even before you make the decision, so if you're the decision maker, I don't want this anymore, I want out, or if it's just happened to you, you have received, I don't want you, being rejected. In that moment, get your team ready. Your team is pivotal. Good team means good results. So look at it as anything else.

If I have the team around me, and that should be a divorce coach or a counsellor, someone who can help me with my emotions. If I need a legal team again, so I work with a lot of law firms, the client might come to me and I will send them to a great legal support. Find that team, because what people do, I have a great family, I have great friends.

I know that I get that, but they're also emotionally involved in this. Your family is emotionally evolved and connected to you. So are your friends, and they are brilliant to have, but they're not giving you perhaps completely neutral advice and they might even give you, oh my God, that's awful. Yeah, I can't believe he did that.

Which is then trigger you into a more of a negative spiral, so a divorce coach will listen and advise you. So get your team ready. Because the journey is a bit of a rollercoaster up, down, I feel great now. I don't feel great. Now I feel healed now I haven't. So having that team around you to make yourself feel utterly supported and secure. I think that's my best advice.

Jen Curtis: Thank you so much for that, Petra. And I think that almost brings to the fore why we've wanted to do these podcast episodes, speaking with other professionals, not just the lawyers, because it is very much a team effort when it comes to supporting someone through a divorce.

Petra Brunzell: No, I agree totally. I think it's super important and that's why I only work with law firms that's look at it like that because when we look at the individual as a whole, more from a sort of holistic point, if you see what I mean. Yes. In your case, you're dealing with all the legal stuff that's really hard, that I don't have any knowledge with, and point that out to my clients. I don't do legal stuff. I can listen. I can read a document, but I'm not giving advice on this.

Meanwhile, I am your emotional sanity kind of check, and I'm helping you here. So if you have all of those, you are more likely to come out with this in a better position, and you have hopefully grown through it, which this could be the best thing that's ever happened to you.

At the moment, you might feel it's the worst thing. But where I'm sitting nine years on is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I wouldn't have my business if it wasn't for it. I wouldn't have where I live, where I go on holiday, it's a total upgrade, but I did the hard work for that. So if that's how you want to feel, then get yourself supported.

Jen Curtis: Well, thank you so much Petra, for such an insightful explanation of the role of a divorce coach. It's been really helpful to understand some of the real life examples as well of how it can really make it such a difference.

We'll put a link to your website in the podcast description. And as always, if any of our listeners have any questions or suggestions for future topics, then please contact us through the usual channels.

Petra Brunzell: Perfect. Thank you so much for having me.