Sarah McDugal is back on the podcast, and this time we’re talking about what it actually takes to protect your children inside a family court system that often reframes abuse as “mutual high conflict” and makes the protective parent look like the problem.
Sarah is a clarity coach and founder of Freedom Navigator and Wilderness to Wild, where she works exclusively with protective parents navigating high-conflict divorce and custody battles. In this conversation, we talk about why the ways most of us instinctively respond—explaining, defending, and trying to get people to understand the truth—can actually work against us in court.
We also dive into Sarah’s High Conflict Court Risk Index, an assessment designed to help parents understand early how likely their case is to become a long, drawn-out legal battle. The earlier you can see the terrain you’re walking into, the more strategically you can move through it.
And we talk about the kids. One of the most powerful reframes Sarah offers is that protecting our children doesn’t always mean shielding them from harm. Sometimes the greatest protection we can give them is helping them learn how to navigate difficult realities with clarity, resilience, and support.
If you’re deep in a high-conflict case and feel like everything you do somehow gets used against you, you’re not imagining it. The family court system is not what most of us think it is—and fighting it the way we naturally want to can sometimes make things worse. This conversation offers a different playbook.
What you’ll hear about in this episode:
- Why what family court labels “high conflict” is very often an abuser-victim dynamic, not a mutual conflict situation (5:28)
- How you can shift the dynamics in court by changing yourself, not by trying to change the other person or the system (11:10)
- The High Conflict Court Risk Index, what it assesses, who it is for, and why taking it early means you can start the right conversations sooner (12:28)
- Why an interdisciplinary divorce team saves you time, money, and unnecessary damage (24:28)
- What to do when your high conflict court risk comes back moderate to high, and where to go for support (23:30)
- Why protecting your kids from all harm is not the goal and how to start teaching them to navigate tricky people and tricky situations instead (31:30)
✨ If you’d like to watch the video version of this episode, you can find it here.
Learn more about Sarah McDugal:
Sarah McDugal is a clarity coach and founder of FREEDOM Navigator and Wilderness to WILD. She works exclusively with protective parents in high-conflict divorce and custody battles.
In addition to a master’s degree, Sarah holds certifications and training in: Master Certified Professional Coach (MCPC), Certified High Conflict Legal Dispute Resolver, High Conflict Institute, Certified Assessor: Danger and Lethality Assessment, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, Deceptive Sexuality and Trauma Treatment (DSTT) Training, Dr. Omar Minwalla, and APSATS Model for Multi-Dimensional Partner Trauma (MPTM) Training.
After surviving nearly a decade of custody litigation herself, Sarah equips her clients with trauma-informed tools, court-ready case prep resources, and strategic battle plans to fight smarter for the long haul — without losing their sanity, their kids, or their voice.
Known for her blend of ethical precision and empathetic strength, Sarah empowers protective parents to transform survival into strategy — guiding weary warriors to rise with endurance, resilience, and courage.
Resources & Links:
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The Divorce Survival Guide Resource Bundle
Phoenix Rising: A Divorce Empowerment Collective
Kate on Instagram
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Kate’s Substack Newsletter: Divorce Coaching Dispatch
The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast Episodes are also available YouTube!
Seven Step Mindset Reset for Divorce
High Conflict Court Risk Index
Freedom Navigator Website
Sarah on LinkedIn
Sarah on Instagram
Sarah on YouTube
Episode 109: DSG Abuse Mini-Series: Escaping Toxic Relationships and Abuse in Faith-Based Communities with Sarah McDugal
Show Transcript:
Kate Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back. I have with me today Sarah McDugal, who has been on the show before, but it’s been a while and we were catching up last week and realizing just how long it had been since we had,
Sarah McDugal: it’s been like five years.
Kate Anthony: It’s been,
Sarah McDugal: I went and looked back.
Kate Anthony: That is,
Sarah McDugal: it’s been five years.
Kate Anthony: That is not okay. So we are rectifying that today. Sarah is a clarity coach. She is the founder of Freedom Navigator and Wilderness to Wild. She works exclusively with protective parents in high conflict divorce and custody battles. Now, Sarah and I. The last time we spoke, we were talking about religious abuse and or domestic abuse in the confines of the church, which is a huge piece of work that you have actually moved away from. Do you wanna give a little update on that?
Sarah McDugal: I would. I would say [00:01:00] yeah. I started Wilderness to Wild from within that context, right? A former clergy spouse who had lived through this series of, life journeys, twists and turns focusing on betrayal trauma and seeing really I love the term moral. Experienced when we go for help to church leaders, community leaders, religious leaders for safety, and then we are retraumatized re reed for seeking help from relational harm. And then we experience a second layer of relational harm in the community. That secondary harm is. Often even more painful than the first,
Kate Anthony: right?
Sarah McDugal: Because we believed, hey, okay this one person [00:02:00] may have been not a good actor, but all of these other people are supposed to be the people of God and they’re supposed to come in and help the vulnerable. That’s the whole,
Kate Anthony: that’s the whole
Sarah McDugal: thing. It’s the whole thing. And then they didn’t, and they surrounded my abuser and lift uplifted and supported them.
And now what do I do? And the wrestling with faith and betrayal trauma that comes not only in a marital or relational context, but in that community context. So that was really where Wilderness to Wild began. Years. And over the last few years, I have realized that my niche of who I end up working with the most has really narrowed down into that of protective parents.
I did are walking through an extended, eternal and everlasting kind of protective custody battle where they’re trying to keep their [00:03:00] children safe. They are not understanding the court system. They’re getting twisted around, turned upside down and inside out as they are trying to tell the truth about what’s going on.
But whatever way they’re doing it in keeps making them look like the problem, and the real abuse is being covered up and not seen. It’s disguised behind this idea of mutual high conflict. And you and I both know that what the court terms high conflict is very often, not 100% of the time, but very often abuser and victim.
Exactly. But that contrast has not been clearly made visible to the court. So I work now with those high conflict cases, knowing that more often than not, it is an abuser victim situation. And I work with the Protective Parent, wilderness to Wild is [00:04:00] still there. It still operates and runs, but my main focus is Freedom Navigator.
And Freedom Navigator is the new suite of tools and services specifically for those parents that are in this slice of the divorce and custody world.
Kate Anthony: Yes. Today we’re really talking about that aspect and obviously a lot of crossover in Wilderness to Wild and Freedom Navigator, right?
Yes. A lot of that is the same.
And a lot of the people that come, you and I talked about this the other day Kate, that the usually mamas that come to us are very often outta conservative Christian. And often neurodivergent family backgrounds, they often have kids that are on the spectrum or a medically complex or medically needy child or more than one.
They may not realize that they’re neuro neurodivergent too, and a lot of times I [00:05:00] find that the mamas that are really driven by, we must expose the truth. They have that intense justice gene. That’s actually because they’re on the spectrum.
Kate Anthony: Oh, interesting.
Sarah McDugal: They don’t know it.
Kate Anthony: Yeah.
Sarah McDugal: But very often there’s this overlap.
Now I’m not a diagnostician, don’t come to me to get a psychological diagnosis. That is not what I do. But I see a lot of overlap.
Kate Anthony: Yes.
Sarah McDugal: Between those who are blunt, honest truth tellers, and who find it almost physically painful on a cellular level to live with. The fallout of and move on from the fallout of all of the manipulation and the gaslighting.
It hits some clients different than the rest of the population. Interesting.
Kate Anthony: I think that’s a really fascinating framing of it and analysis because right when all, not all cases right, but one of the, a common trait in people on the spectrum right, is this, there is this sort of, there is a [00:06:00] black and white, there’s a right, there’s a wrong, there are rules to follow and it, these are the way you do things.
And when. Their world or the world diverges from that. It’s not just frustrating, like you said, like on a cellular level it doesn’t make sense.
Sarah McDugal: It’s morally destabilizing.
Kate Anthony: Yeah.
Sarah McDugal: And it’s shattering to the nervous system for this category. Of protective parents in a different way than just the baseline trauma of going through divorce, right?
Or working out a parenting plan,
Kate Anthony: right? Yes. Very interesting. We are going to talk about high conflict. Risk factors for high, a high conflict divorce today. And you and I are both very careful to understand and to point out, as you said, that high conflict is a term that’s used by the [00:07:00] courts.
So we’re gonna use that term knowing. It’s usually a one-sided thing, which means that it’s not really high conflict. It’s often domestic abuse, post-separation abuse, coercive control. Coercive control, all of those things. And I think framing it in the lens that the court. Uses is important because we are working inside that system.
Sarah McDugal: Yes. And a huge challenge that I get with clients over and over again is a deeply rooted fixation on what should be. And I get it. Yes. I was like that in the beginning too. This is not right. It’s not right. The truth needs to be seen. It shouldn’t be this, and they’re right.
They are correct, but you can be right or effective and you usually can’t be both on something like [00:08:00] this. So shifting from this isn’t how it should be to this is what it is. How do I work to be effective for my case with what it is? First you have to know what is
Kate Anthony: right.
Sarah McDugal: Then you have to work on that radical acceptance of what is.
So a lot of times I find that those in high conflict cases, they’re responding. In the same way that they were conditioned to when they were trying to manage the world to keep from pissing off their abuser,
Kate Anthony: right?
Sarah McDugal: They’re trying to manage the other partner, the ex, and they’re trying to manage the lawyers, and they’re trying to manage the outcomes of the court system.
And what the court ends up seeing is an apparently controlling person.
Kate Anthony: Yes,
Sarah McDugal: who’s hovering and micromanaging and they don’t see the victim side of everything. So shifting all of that, learning to engage in ways that may be counterintuitive but are [00:09:00] far more effective is really key. Yeah. You can shift the outcome to a better outcome in a case where you are the victim of post-separation litigation abuse, coercive control, simply by shifting how you respond.
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: Now, that does not make you responsible for their abuse. I’m not saying that. I’m saying you can change the dynamics in court by changing yourself.
Kate Anthony: That’s right. That’s right. We can’t change the other person. We can’t correct change. But we can be responsible for our own behavior, and when we’re sitting there screaming for justice, it’s completely justified.
It is 100% correct.
Yes.
Kate Anthony: Like we, and
Sarah McDugal: valid
Kate Anthony: valid, and ineffective, and it’ll more often backfire.
Sarah McDugal: Yep. It’s a fabulous way to lose custody. Yes. To try to change the court system and make it what it should be while you’re trying to fight your own case. [00:10:00] Yes. Wait until your youngest is 18 and then go change the court system,
Kate Anthony: right?
I say that to all my clients, like we, you can be activists when you’re done. We welcome you into the fold, into the activism fold, and. Not until you’re done. Yes.
Sarah McDugal: Yeah. Yeah. Use this time to learn, to read, to research, to improve yourself, to stabilize yourself, to work on your nervous system, be with your kids but don’t go trying to lobby for legislative change.
While you’re still in a court case.
Kate Anthony: All right, so let’s talk about you have created something. I took it, I took the assessment.
Sarah McDugal: Yes.
Kate Anthony: I got my results. They were spot on. I took this. So you’ve created an assessment. It is a high conflict court risk index. So this is four people who are considering leaving.
About to leave, maybe preferably before leaving.
Sarah McDugal: Ideally take it before you get out, but Right. But better [00:11:00] late than never.
Kate Anthony: Exactly.
Sarah McDugal: Get out. If you’ve already left, that’s fine, but yes.
Kate Anthony: But so it assesses the risk based on some very, I would say. Quick but thorough assessment. Like it doesn’t take very, it’s not like you’re not having to write novels here.
Sarah McDugal: It’s 20 questions and it takes four minutes.
Kate Anthony: Yep. It’s very quick and it’s very thorough to assess the risk that you are in of your case, becoming high conflict in court. That’s what it does. I took it, I think most people know. My divorce was not remotely high conflict in terms of, we didn’t fight about a lot of stuff.
It was fairly straightforward. Like my ex is the kind of guy who was gonna be like father and divorce dad of the year. So once the Gotcha. Once the. Know there was a lot of [00:12:00] emotional abuse and infidelity and everything inside the marriage, but once the marriage was over, he was gonna be like the best div, the best guided divorce in the world.
Because that’s the brand of narcissism that he has. He is gonna show the world that he’s amazing and the assessment got that right. Just got it and nailed it. And I had some indicators. I had a low. I think it was like low to moderate. I think a lot of people feel that, and I’ve said this a million times, you don’t always know.
You don’t know who you are divorcing until you divorce them nec, right? But this assessment, I think makes that less. Less of a crap shoot.
Sarah McDugal: Yeah, less hidden. A lot easier. And that’s my goal. So I created the high conflict court case risk index for the purpose of [00:13:00] helping two audiences. One, the protective parrot, the person who’s getting ready to divorce or he is in the middle of divorcing and is wow, this is not going the way I.
And for helping providers who work with clients who are in or considering divorce. So that would be therapists, counselors domestic violence advocates and attorneys and so on. So those two audiences. In both cases, the client themselves is the one.
Whether you are taking it on your own for your own information or you’re taking it because one of the people in your life, one of the professionals in your life is saying, Hey, I want you to take this. Yeah. So that we can discuss it. It’s there for both types of situations.
Kate Anthony: Yeah.
Sarah McDugal: And the whole point is to give you a data-driven objective.
[00:14:00] Assessment, how high that risk is. Yeah. That this will be long drawn out difficult. And that is not to scare you. It is to empower you. That is not to say, oh wow, this is going to be a challenge, so you should probably not leave. That’s not the point.
Kate Anthony: No.
Sarah McDugal: If it comes back as. Moderate or high, or even very high in one of those upper categories, then what follows is a series of supports so that the provider that you’re working with or you yourself, if you’re taking it on your own
Kate Anthony: yeah,
Sarah McDugal: can have a better idea of what you need in order to get a safer outcome so that you don’t go into it.
Now, I know years ago when I started, I was so naive. Wasn’t a lawyer, right? I was a mom. I [00:15:00] was a pastor’s wife. Now, I knew a whole lot about my area of expertise. I had a degree, and when it comes to branding and marketing, that was video production. That was my thing. That was my jam.
But, I love to write, but navigating the legal system. I thought, you show up, you say this is what happened. He did this. And then they’re like, oh, we can’t have that. Let’s protect you. That’s awful.
Kate Anthony: That’s awful, right? Ha.
Sarah McDugal: I had no idea until I was beyond upside down and was being viewed as the problem.
And as many of our clients know, when you disclose abuse, when you, when your children disclose sexual assault, physical assault, much less. Emotional, verbal, psychological, non-physical forms of manipulation and control or harm.
Kate Anthony: Yeah,
Sarah McDugal: it can be next to impossible to prove it. And the more that you push that this is happening, the more suspect you become because you’re not trying to support the other [00:16:00] parents’ relationship with the children enthusiastically.
When we don’t know what the court values, we assume, especially if you’re coming from a conservative Christian background, we assume that the court actually cares if dad’s watching porn, right? We assume that the court actually cares if there’s been infidelity. We assume that if the other parent is letting your 7-year-old watch.
PG 13 or oversee r rated movies because you’re watching one, that the court will think that’s bad parenting. They don’t
Kate Anthony: care.
Sarah McDugal: Care.
Kate Anthony: They do
Sarah McDugal: not. The court also we walk into the court thinking I’m gonna get justice. And we don’t realize that family court is not criminal court and there is no justice in family court.
Oh, wait, what isn’t truth? Doesn’t truth matter? Yes it does, but the court doesn’t care what is true. The court cares what you can [00:17:00] improve,
Kate Anthony: and court doesn’t care about bad parenting.
Sarah McDugal: It’s not illegal to be a complete jerk.
Kate Anthony: It’s not illegal to be a bad parent. It’s not illegal to break. It’s not illegal to have your kid play, inappropriate video games.
Sarah McDugal: It’s not illegal to leave them unfiltered on the internet. It’s not illegal in many states to spank them to the point of bruising. As long as you don’t break anything and they don’t end up in the er, there’s so much. That is not illegal. A protective parent deeply wants, like you gave your life for these kids.
You, they’re your whole world. You want them to be okay, and you’re focusing on things the court doesn’t care at all about. Instead of focusing on things that can actually get you a good outcome, and you may not have gathered any evidence and documentation in the first place because it wasn’t cool. Maybe theologically, you were taught not to keep a record of wrongs or not to talk to anybody about anything, never to call the police.
So now what you’re supposed to do,
Kate Anthony: right? Yeah. Or maybe you did call the [00:18:00] police and they didn’t deem anything worthy of of a record
Sarah McDugal: exactly.
Kate Anthony: Also true. Or you didn’t call the police because you knew that there would be repercussions and you ha you’re weighing, do I need evidence or am I gonna.
Killed.
Sarah McDugal: Will they hurt the kids worse
Kate Anthony: when they get out? Would it hurt me worse if I call the
Sarah McDugal: police or me? Yes.
Kate Anthony: Yes. And the other thing that the court doesn’t care about, which is a very, I’m not gonna say they don’t care about it, but when it comes to custody of your children, the court, most courts in most states don’t look at how they treated you so he could have abused you horribly.
But he never hurt the kids.
Sarah McDugal: So just because there was domestic violence between spouses does not mean that they’re not a good parent, is the baseline assumption.
Kate Anthony: Now, you and I both know, just to be clear in this conversation, we know that’s absolute [00:19:00] bullshit. We know that.
Sarah McDugal: Yep.
Kate Anthony: We’re not saying that’s not that.
That doesn’t matter because it does. We are saying if you go into court alleging. Domestic abuse and how he treated you, but there’s no evidence of him abusing the children. The court will not care,
Sarah McDugal: weigh that heavily. It’s unlikely to weigh that heavily.
Kate Anthony: Better
Sarah McDugal: said. And that goes back to that what it should be versus what it’s
Kate Anthony: Right.
Sarah McDugal: And we’re not saying that it shouldn’t be better. That’s right. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t call high conflict cases post-separation abuse or coercive control cases, but we do have to operate to get the best outcomes in the world. That is,
Kate Anthony: that’s
Sarah McDugal: right. So
Kate Anthony: That’s
Sarah McDugal: right. We can acknowledge that it should be different and then say, Hey, here’s advice about how to.
In the framework of what actually exists.
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: And that’s what the Ritz Index is for? [00:20:00] Yes. Is to empower you for better planning toward that. That’s what it’s for.
Kate Anthony: You take this. The risk index, right? It comes back and it says, oh girl, you in trouble, girl. And
Sarah McDugal: you got a top score you
Kate Anthony: gotta take you. Yeah, right?
Sarah McDugal: You aced it,
Kate Anthony: you aced the test. Now what? So now you know, this sort of points to one of the conversations that you and I have, often and that we have a lot on this podcast, right?
It points to the need for an interdisciplinary team
Sarah McDugal: Yes.
Kate Anthony: To help you, right? Because this is, your attorney isn’t gonna get this necessarily. You’re gonna go to your attorney and be like he did this and he did this, and he did this, and [00:21:00] they’re gonna go. Whatever they’re gonna say. It’s not gonna be what Sarah and I would say to you, which is, yeah, that sucks and.
We have to look at this in a different way and let’s think of how this works strategically. An attorney might just brush you off or not take that seriously or not explain to you why it doesn’t matter. You need to have a place that is safe to process, to hold what actually happened to you.
I always talk about how we, in order to. Really be able to think and act strategically. In these cases, we have to process the trauma. When you are in a trauma response, you can’t physiologically, you cannot think strategically. The prefrontal cortex that is responsible for that is hijacked when you are in a trauma response.
So we [00:22:00] gotta get you to a place where you’re not spending. Tens of thousands of dollars calling your attorney hysterical because of shit that he did.
Sarah McDugal: I have seen clients go through attorney after attorney simply because they wanted their attorney to treat them like a therapist. Your attorney is not there to be your therapist, and that can be really hard if you don’t have a therapist that you’re talking to.
And also, just to add on to that, and you know this too from, because we both work as coaches. Your therapist and your attorney don’t know how to coach you strategically. They’re not a coach. There is nowhere. There is no module that I’m aware of in counselor licensure training, in therapy, licensure training on how to understand and navigate the court system or how to navigate a.
Contested custody, ex extended battle with somebody who will not co-parent.
Kate Anthony: There’s also no module [00:23:00] on recognizing domestic abuse.
Sarah McDugal: If you wanna get really simple case,
Kate Anthony: which is why you want a therapist who has advanced training in
Sarah McDugal: yes,
Kate Anthony: this arena.
Sarah McDugal: But even a therapist who has advanced training is almost never.
Very rarely will you find a therapist who also understands strategic coaching and who also understands that. So you need more than one person. You need a really good primary care physician who’s staying on top of what’s happening in your body because your body is getting beat up with your nervous system.
With all of this, you need a good counselor who gets, has that advanced trading and gets the trauma side of things and can help you untangle that You need a strategic voice. Is not just your attorney, not giving you legal advice, but helping you manage yourself and your own strategy and parenting your kids through post-trauma stuff.
Yeah. And that kind of thing. And you need an attorney and [00:24:00] you need to be able to let your attorney stay in their lane. Otherwise this will cost 10 times what it might have to.
Kate Anthony: That’s right. I was thinking about this from, you said, primary care physician, you need to have a primary care physician.
When you have a primary care physician they just take care of, the basics. But if you have a diagnosis, you also need. I don’t know. An endocrinologist or a rheumatologist or, and if you have those, you also might need a dietician or some, somebody else.
And it’s a lot, that’s how we manage something complex, is that we, it’s not just one, you’re not gonna keep going to your primary care physician. For the specialty things. And when you have a specialty, you’re gonna go to your oncologist, you’re gonna go to a support group If if you have cancer as you well know, right?
Sarah McDugal: Ask me how I know.
Kate Anthony: And when it’s your health, you have health insurance. Right now a coach is not covered by insurance,
Sarah McDugal: your health insurance,
Kate Anthony: your therapist who is covered by your insurance is probably not [00:25:00] somebody who is, has extra specialty training in all this stuff. And so yes, it’s expensive and if you are relying on your attorney to be all of these things, it will be far more expensive.
Sarah McDugal: You know what, girl? If I had someone like me
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: In the first 18 months of my divorce process I was divorced in less than 18 months. Nearly a decade long custody battle. But if I had someone like us, like the person I eventually found a few years into it, in that first 18 max 24 months, I could have saved over a hundred thousand dollars.
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: And it would have felt like a big expense. It would’ve been a big expense. At the time, my kids, part of that time, we were homeless. We were qualified for all of the food benefits and the Medicaid and the, what is it? Food stamps and SNAP and all the things. But if [00:26:00] I had known. How much money over the next decade, it would’ve saved me.
I would’ve found a way to borrow the money. I would have found a way to get someone into my case who could help me think long term, pull back from that collapsed trauma window where there’s the trigger and the instant amygdala hijack response and get some space back into that, where I could stay more stable emotionally and know what was expected of me.
An obscene amount of money, in legal fees over the years, it might’ve saved me cancer too, because the traumas ended up causing that.
Kate Anthony: The number of women I work with, and I’m sure you find this too, who have complex autoimmune disorders that clear up. Magically, yeah. After divorce. Over the years now, obviously not all, but [00:27:00] cortisol and stress hormones contribute significantly to these things. And when you are actually out of that I’m not saying coaching is gonna cure your cancer or clear up your
Sarah McDugal: big promises there.
Kate Anthony: Yeah. No, I’m not saying that, but I’m, I am saying that, like you said, when you have somebody to help you through the stress and the trauma and to as a touch point, every time something happens to bring you back down and let’s add this to the strategy funnel.
Okay. Or. This is awful and it doesn’t matter.
Sarah McDugal: Yeah, just that blunt truth. It’s terrible. It sucks. It shouldn’t be this way. And also it’s not gonna make any difference. Don’t waste energy on it.
Kate Anthony: That’s right. Let’s really, let’s get it out like it is. It is absolutely unfair. It is absolutely shitty. It is absolutely all of these things, and do not bring this to your attorney because it absolutely has no [00:28:00] bearing.
Your 7-year-old is watching, is playing Grand theft auto. Doesn’t matter.
Sarah McDugal: It’s annoying, it’s wrong.
Kate Anthony: Sucks
Sarah McDugal: you and that’s where I work with clients on here’s how you empower your child to make better decisions for themselves. Let’s talk about navigating people in and we’re gonna use Finding Nemo as your baseline, not dad, not mom.
Grandma that you hate. We’re gonna use things that you can pull from normal kids movies or TV shows, or interactions at the playground. Stuff at school, and we’re gonna teach them lifelong lessons because guess what? Even though you wish you could spare your child from having to learn these lessons because of the abuse of the other parent.
They’re still going to have really God awful, that one God awful roommate in college. They’re going to have a professor who doesn’t treat them well. They’re gonna have that toxic boss or the boss who won’t keep their hands to [00:29:00] themselves and should be turned in for sexual harassment lawsuit. They’re going to have bullying classmates in seventh grade because middle school, they’re going to have things where they need to navigate awful humans.
All throughout life. So if you can zoom out from the fact that it is so sucky that the other parent is the one causing them to need these lessons early and just say, Hey, this opened my eyes to the fact that my kid needs tools that I wish I had learned by the time I was seven. So now I’m going to get them tools and I’m never going to mention the other parent.
I’m just gonna give them tools and my kid is super sharp, they’re gonna figure this and they’re.
Recognize it. Can you imagine, you know how we felt when we first realized that the things we were experiencing were actually a thing? Like it was a thing. It had a definition. There was an encyclopedia for this. It’s called the DSM five. But, there was, [00:30:00] there are terms for these, there are definitions for these.
I’m not the only one. Other people have seen this too and experienced this too. Wow.
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: What if your kid, by the time they were 12, had the language and the recognition power for patterns to be able to start seeing these things in anyone, anywhere around them? That’s right. Classroom afterschool, job dating, while teenage relationships, whatever.
Just give them the gift of empowering the next generation to recognize tricky people and not be jerks.
Kate Anthony: That’s right. That’s right. I mean it really is a, it is a gift. Our, when it, we wanna be protective parents. We, and I think that sometimes the protective parent. Feeling is I wanna build a, a castle and a moat and protect my child from all adversity inside of that,
Sarah McDugal: that isolationist
Kate Anthony: [00:31:00] bubble wrap the like.
Exactly. Let me just protect. Whereas I think our greatest protection is exactly what you just said. It is not protecting them from all harm. It is teaching our children how to. How to face adversity, how to navigate, be and navigate. How to navigate difficult people, how to be in con, high conflict situations, which as you said, are gonna come up the rest of their lives.
So the conversations we have with our children are not, trying to keep them away from the parent or whatever. It’s more I’m so sorry that your dad said that to you. How did that, how did you feel about that?
Sarah McDugal: Asking questions instead of giving answers is a big one.
Kate Anthony: What did you wanna say?
Like, how would you wanna respond to somebody if it wasn’t your dad who said something like that to you? Or
Sarah McDugal: what could you do next time?
Kate Anthony: Yeah.
Sarah McDugal: Why don’t you plan ahead If this happens again, what would you do?
Kate Anthony: How did you feel about that? And would you feel [00:32:00] comfortable saying that to your dad? Would you feel comfortable saying that this really hurt my feelings?
And the answer might be no. Okay.
Sarah McDugal: Sure.
Kate Anthony: But rather than protecting them from all harm, right? How do we navigate harm in this world that is
Sarah McDugal: right.
Kate Anthony: So incredibly harmful.
Sarah McDugal: Yeah. Exactly, and I think that, we keep looping back around to the risk index.
Kate Anthony: Yes.
Sarah McDugal: When you have a heads up.
Kate Anthony: Yes,
Sarah McDugal: you can start having those conversations sooner.
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: You don’t have to wait until it’s beyond the crisis breaking point to start having those conversations. You can start initiating and shifting the way you respond to things that your kids tell you sooner. Later and the right time to do that is always now
Kate Anthony: Yes.
Sarah McDugal: Wherever you’re at in the process, wherever you’re at, let’s just say you’re looking back and you’re like, [00:33:00] oh man, I wish I’d known this three years ago.
Okay, just do it today. Don’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t know.
Kate Anthony: That’s right. That’s right. Learn now.
Sarah McDugal: Yeah just start now. I wanna bring up something that we, you alluded to it right in the beginning, and then we trailed off of it. You were saying something about how.
The other person is going to react. You don’t know how they’re going to be when you divorce them until you divorce them, and you shared your story that, there was a lot of unfaithfulness and traumatic stuff in the marriage. But then on the other side of it, once that part was like, decided the co-parenting part was not the same kind.
High conflict that we are talking about in this way.
Kate Anthony: The divorce itself wasn’t, there’s a, there was a
Sarah McDugal: lot of other
Kate Anthony: stuff. Yeah. It, yes. Yeah.
Sarah McDugal: I’m not presuming to know all [00:34:00] of the details here.
Kate Anthony: I don’t
Sarah McDugal: wanna details down
Kate Anthony: another rabbit trail of
Sarah McDugal: all the details,
Kate Anthony: but Yes.
To make your point, to your point, yes.
Sarah McDugal: What I was leaning toward is there are times when it has been really awful in the marriage. And we think that the divorce and the co-parenting is probably gonna be equally awful. And then it turns out not being so much
Kate Anthony: yes.
Sarah McDugal: It’s better than you thought it might have been based on how bad the dynamics were in the marriage.
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: And there are other times where when the victim in the dynamic starts to pull away and the manipulator in the dynamic. And the victim is confident that this will go smoothly. They said it can be amicable. He said that we’ll be able to do it without lawyers. He said that we’ll be able to figure it all out.
You and I know whoa, honey. Whoa,
Kate Anthony: those,
Sarah McDugal: that’s red flag
Kate Anthony: right there.
Sarah McDugal: But very often, depending on [00:35:00] the type of manipulator that we’re working with, the profile of what kind of personality we’re talking about, the victim. To prepare that needed to prepare a certain, been experiencing that. Love bombing grooming prior to filing for divorce to reduce their guard and to drop their guard.
So it is possible for you to think that it’s gonna be easier and then suddenly it explodes like a shrapnel grenade in your face. Absolutely. And you’re like, where did this come from? I thought they promised it was gonna be easy, simple, straightforward. They were gonna do the right thing. So what the risk index does is it assesses your perception of past behavior patterns.
Not just what’s happening right now, not what they’re saying in the moment, [00:36:00] but the past behavior patterns. Like how true does this feel to you over the past? And it’s not just what the other person has done, it’s how you have felt. What has the feeling been inside you? Because before we get all the language for this, our bodies internalize a lot of this.
We compensate, we mask, we manage everything around, and our bodies may be the only ones picking up on how bad it’s, but our brains haven’t clued in yet. So some of the questions, and you were talking about it being really thorough. Some of the questions are, how have you felt in the past? This, and those are the real indicators of how high your risk is of it getting nasty.
Kate Anthony: Yes.
Sarah McDugal: Yes. In court.
Kate Anthony: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that’s a really important distinction. And one of the things that I found really fascinating, ’cause I was also like, when I was taking it, I was like trying to remember back 20 years.
Sarah McDugal: So
Kate Anthony: there’s that. And also so much of what I felt [00:37:00] was so much dissociation.
I was so dissociated. ’cause I didn’t have words for things, no language. I didn’t understand, I didn’t know there was so much trauma. I felt. I wasn’t heard. I felt like I was misunderstood. I felt like I, because there was so much gaslighting and I was, I felt. I just felt mis like I, I’m just here trying to love you, and you’re accusing me of all of this awful stuff, right?
But because the reality of what I was feeling and what was being mirrored back to me and reflected back to me and things I was being accused of, and all of those things, didn’t match up. I just, I had to dissociate in order. Function. So I was trying to remember 20 years back oh my God, how did I feel?
Yeah. Yeah. And there were a couple questions I had to go back on, but I did find that actually to be very like, how did you feel? How did you, how do you feel in your body? Dissociated, [00:38:00] yes. But oh, but even that’s a clue,
Sarah McDugal: right? That’s a clue, yes.
Kate Anthony: That I’m
Sarah McDugal: just, ’cause your body is managing a really unhealthy, unsafe environment.
That’s a clue.
Kate Anthony: That’s exactly, yes, exactly. So when you get a high, let’s say a high risk moderate to high risk, what do we do then? What does someone do when they get, they take this quiz, maybe they don’t really know. They take the assessment and they’re like, oh shit, what do they do?
Sarah McDugal: This, I’m over my head.
What am I supposed to do next? There are several potential steps forward. Some of it depends on whether you’ve already started or you’re like a little ways down the road and you’re doing this as it has been so far, and you’re like, oh my goodness, I wish I had known. Ah, what do I do? Ideally, if you have that interdisciplinary team, my desire is for you to take those results to your provider therapist.[00:39:00]
Attorney if you have a relationship where you can bring something to your attorney, but definitely to a counselor. If you have a domestic violence advocate or a crisis center advocate, family justice center advocate, take it to them and say, Hey, this is what this is showing. And when you get your results, ’cause it spits out.
To you immediately, and it breaks them down so you can take the results in the different domains, different areas of life, and how you rated it to the it’s not just a final score. You can take the whole results to your provider and talk to them about it. Say, this is what this is saying. How does this.
If they have any background or training in this, yeah, then that is gonna be a good place for you to have some very informative, very [00:40:00] bras tack conversations. If they don’t have any training in this, you can tell them to get the provider. Toolkit because I have a provider toolkit that goes with it for providers to use, to have an interpretation and scoring guideline.
So I do have that available for providers. If you’re a provider that is watching or listening to this right now that is available, I, you’re gonna put those in the show notes, right? Yes. We’re gonna have those available. Yes,
Kate Anthony: absolutely.
Sarah McDugal: And then you can use this with your clients, and I have client scripts and I have reflection prompts, and I have a lot of gentle supports to help your clients, not catastrophize or be over alarmed, but to feel empowered and informed.
If you’re doing this, you get something that says, Hey, you’re gonna need help, or You do need help, and maybe it’s preparing you for the future, or validating what you already know in your gut you’re already experiencing. My first step would be to take it to the provider. You already have trust established with.
And discuss it with them. Let them work with you [00:41:00] and plan things out. If you have no one or you don’t trust the providers that you have, then we have tools. I have a protective parent support group that has weekly clinic calls. And a whole series of tactical guides to navigate the core system and has templates for documentation gathering and tools for all of that all built in.
So that’s called Basecamp. With Freedom Navigator, we have that. We have battle plan one-to-one text coaching if you really need to. Amp it up and have direct personal access. You can talk to someone like Kate. You can talk to someone. There are a number of good, reputable people who are coaches.
Yeah. That can help you with that. Or you can take the information and maybe you have the kind of personality where you understand systems and organizations. You’ve got the education. Maybe you’ll run your own company [00:42:00] and you’re like, okay, this gives me the information I need to know. I think I know what I’m gonna do with this, and it just validates what your gut is already saying.
You now have objective support and validation for that, and you may say, Hey, I, I think I can handle this. This is what I’m gonna do going forward. So whatever that pathway is, your local provider, getting a coach or joining a support group through Freedom Navigator or something else that you trust.
Just invalidating and informing your own plan. Yep, absolutely. I think the support network, the group work is really, it is so important. We heal in community Yes. Of people who get it. That’s, I have a group program. You have a group program. So we. The, is one of, I think, the most healing aspects of this
Kate Anthony: ial. [00:43:00] The gr, how the group healing process is the most effective. Because when you’re surrounded by a bunch of women who go, yep, I get it. I’ve been there. You’re not crazy. I’ve had this too. You feel seen, you feel witnessed, you feel validated. All of the things that like in a minute. Can bring your nervous system down to a baseline.
It’s, it really is, I think, the best way to do. I
Sarah McDugal: agree.
Kate Anthony: For sure. Okay, Sarah, where can everybody find the high conflict court case risk index and. Take the and everything that goes with it, right? The, if you’re for the providers, everything else. We will put all of this in the show notes, but I like to say it out loud too for people who don’t remember to go back to the good memories
Sarah McDugal: for people who just don’t wanna do all of that.
I totally understand. The website [00:44:00] link is www.myfreedomnavigator.com/hce I. That stands for High Conflict Court Risk Index, and you will immediately get an email with the results as soon as you’ve hit submit. And it will be sent directly to your inbox. Make sure that you use a private, secure email address.
Kate Anthony: Yep.
Sarah McDugal: That’s always helpful. Especially if you’re not out yet.
Kate Anthony: Always set up a separate safe email account for all your divorce stuff. Say it all the time.
Sarah McDugal: So right there @myfreedomnavigator.com.
Kate Anthony: Amazing. Anything else that you think we should know before we wrap up?
Sarah McDugal: I just wanna say if you’re a protective parent and you are losing sleep, living scared.
Wondering if you’re gonna be able to parent your kids. Get through to the other side of this, not lose your mind or your custody. You can do it. [00:45:00] It’s possible. I have lived through it. Kate has lived through it. You can make it through to the other side. You are not alone in this. You may think your case is the worst thing that the court system has ever seen.
It may be really bad. But I guarantee it’s not the first really bad one. And even years in, it can shift dynamics. You can turn things around if you’re willing to look at things strategically and prepare differently and interact differently. And it’s okay if you didn’t know. The only thing that counts is what you choose to do from here on out.
Kate Anthony: Absolutely. Sarah, thank you so much. Everybody, go check out Sarah, all of her work and resources. Super, super helpful, informative, brilliant, all the things. I so appreciate you.
Sarah McDugal: Thank you, Kate. Thanks. It’s been wonderful. Love hanging out with you.
Kate Anthony: Yeah, me too. We gotta do it more often.
Sarah McDugal: Yeah. [00:46:00] Let’s do this again before five years goes by.
Kate Anthony: Yeah, for sure.
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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY, COACH, OR THERAPIST IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN ADVICE WITH RESPECT TO ANY PARTICULAR ISSUE OR PROBLEM