One of the things I see so often with women going through divorce, especially high conflict divorce, is this instinct to explain yourself, to clarify, to defend yourself, to make sure the other person understands what actually happened. But here’s the problem: in a high conflict divorce, explaining yourself is often the very thing that keeps you stuck in the conflict. In this episode, I walk you through why the communication playbook that works in healthy relationships completely backfires when you’re dealing with a high conflict personality, and what to do instead.

Here’s the thing: high conflict dynamics operate like a fire. Explanations are oxygen. Every time you write a long response or try to defend yourself, you’re actually blowing air into the flames. Every explanation keeps you in the engagement. Every defense keeps you in the arena.

You don’t have to keep exhausting yourself trying to explain the truth to someone who has already decided not to hear it. You get to step out of that cycle and you get to move forward with a playbook that actually works in high conflict divorce.

What you’ll hear about in this episode:

• Why explanations don’t resolve conflict in high conflict dynamics, they extend it
• How your words become fuel: long texts, clarifying emails, and attempts to correct the narrative all give the other person material to twist, screenshot, and weaponize
• The difference between the explanation mindset and the documentation mindset
• The BIFF method (Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm) and how to use it
• Why silence isn’t capitulating and why not every accusation requires a response

✨ If you’d like to watch the video version of this episode, you can find it here.

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Show Transcript:

Kate Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back. One of the things that I see over and over again with women going through divorce, especially high conflict or abusive divorce, is this instinct to explain yourself, to clarify, to defend yourself, to make sure the other person understands what actually happened.

And of course that makes total sense, right? It’s such a human instinct. If someone is accusing you of something that isn’t true or twisting the story or rewriting history, the natural response is no. Wait, hold on. No. Let me explain, right? You want the truth to be clear. You want the other person to understand you.

You want the record corrected. But here’s the problem. In a high conflict divorce, explaining yourself is often the very thing. That keeps you stuck in the conflict. It’s part of the cycle [00:01:00] and sometimes it makes things a lot worse. So this is like one of those dynamics that feels completely backwards when you first hear it, because most of us were raised to believe that if we’re misunderstood, the solution is to communicate more clearly.

We take courses on it. We go to couples therapy and we learn how to communicate better, right? If there’s conflict, you talk through it. If there’s confusion, you clarify. If someone believes something untrue about you, you explain the facts. And in a healthy relationship that works it. It works with reasonable people.

It works in a system where everyone is acting in good faith, but when you’re dealing with someone who thrives on conflict, right? Someone who is not seeking to clarify and understand and come to consensus, this is somebody who is [00:02:00] compulsively thriving on conflict creating it because they get off on it.

Or someone who just uses control, manipulation, and distortion as a strategy, then your explanations become something else entirely. They become fuel. So this is one of the hardest shifts for people to make when they get into this high conflict divorce, because for years, sometimes decades, you have been conditioned to believe that if you just explain it the right way, then they’ll understand you.

Then things will calm down. And like maybe they do for a moment. If you say it just clearly enough, then he’ll get it. If you just provide enough context. The courts will understand. If you just show how reasonable you are, the truth will prevail. What I wanna offer today is a different perspective, and this might feel really uncomfortable, but I have seen it change the entire [00:03:00] trajectory of a divorce for so many women.

And, it’s this. In high conflict dynamics, explanations don’t resolve conflict. They extend it. Because when someone is invested in misunderstanding you, your explanations become part of the game. Now are they invested in misunderstanding you? They’re invested in continuing conflict with you and they use misunderstanding as a tool to do that.

And the more you try to explain, the more leverage they have. Lemme give you some examples, right? When you send a long text explaining your intentions, he’ll find one sentence and he’ll twist it around. To somehow fit his narrative about you. When you write a long email clarifying what actually happened, he ignores the point and argues with one tiny detail, and then you’re down this rabbit hole of talking about that one little detail.

And [00:04:00] you are, the narrative is completely gone. When you try to correct the narrative, he escalates the narrative and suddenly you’re in this endless back and forth that feels like you are trying to nail jello to a wall. You think you’re resolving something you like. In good faith, you are intending to resolve something.

And with a normal person who was also interested in resolution, you would have some clarifying consensus. Oh shit, I didn’t mean that. Oh no, I thought you meant, no, I didn’t mean that. Oh, okay. But when you’re dealing with someone who is high conflict, who is abusive, who is controlling, and. You’re going in this back and forth that you think is trying to resolve something, the conflict is actually being fed.

You’re giving the ammunition because high conflict personalities don’t experience communication the same way most of us do For them. Communication [00:05:00] isn’t about understanding, it’s about engagement. Engagement is the goal. It’s about power and control. And keeping you engaged is control because every explanation keeps you in the engagement.

Every defense keeps you in the arena. Every attempt to correct the record creates another opportunity to argue, distort, accuse, escalate. It’s fucking mind bending. And this is why so many of my clients will say some version of, I don’t understand why this keeps getting worse. I am being so reasonable. And of course you are.

You are explaining, you are clarifying, you’re trying to solve. You’re using the playbook that works in healthy conflict or a healthy relationship, and high conflict dynamics follow a completely different [00:06:00] set of rules. So one of the biggest mindset shifts that I will work on with clients is moving from the explanation mindset to the documentation mindset.

Explaining explanation is about trying to convince someone. Documentation is about recording reality, and those are two very different goals. So when you’re explaining, you’re trying to change someone’s understanding of what happened, when you’re documenting, you’re simply creating a record of what happened.

So here’s why that distinction matters so very much at this juncture. In high conflict divorce, the person you’re trying to convince is often the one person who has the least interest in understanding you. You can write the most beautifully reasoned email in the world. You can provide timelines, context, emotional insight, good faith intentions, and if the other person is committed to [00:08:00] misunderstanding you, none of that will land.

None of it will matter. What it will do is give them material to argue with material, to screenshot material, to reframe material, to weaponize. And so instead of asking like, how can I explain this better? The more strategic question becomes what actually needs to be said here. And sometimes the answer is very little.

Sometimes the answer is a single sentence. Sometimes the answer is no response at all, and this is where it can get really uncomfortable because silence sometimes feels like you are capitulating you, like you’re losing. You’re letting the lies that are being spread about you stand. Silence feels like you’re allowing the narrative to go unchallenged.

But what I want you to understand is that not every accusation requires a response. Not every distortion requires a correction. Not every message deserves [00:09:00] engagement. In fact, sometimes the most powerful move that you can make in a high conflict dynamic is stepping out of the cycle entirely, which basically is what divorce is saying, right?

When you get divorced, you are saying, I am no longer engaging in this relationship. I can’t do this anymore, and then we continue to do this throughout the divorce process. So what I’m saying to you is if you can no longer do this, stop doing it. And if it looks like or feels like that, they win. So what.

I wanna be really clear about something. I’m not saying that you should never respond. I’m not saying that you should ignore legal matters or threats or parenting issues or logistical communications. Of course not. I am saying. [00:10:00] That the goal of your communication shifts, you’re no longer trying to convince someone of your reality.

You are simply communicating the information that is necessary. That’s it. Clean, brief, factual. This is the Biff method of communication, brief, informative, friendly, and firm. They’re gonna send you a novel, all sorts of threats about whatever, and you’re gonna say thanks for your message. I look forward to seeing you on Friday at four o’clock at the pickup.

That’s it. I always have this sort of metaphor about them lobbing grenades, and then they just hit you and roll off, and then they’re just sitting on the floor and they don’t even go off. And when you start doing that. Something really interesting happens. Sometimes conflict loses momentum because the back and forth that was fueling it isn’t there anymore.

Another metaphor, [00:12:00] right? High conflict dynamics operate like a fire. Explanations are oxygen, so every time you write a long response or you try to defend yourself, you’re actually blowing air into the flames. Fire. Requires oxygen to exist. And when you step back, when you shorten your responses, when you stop defending yourself, the fire doesn’t have any oxygen, and over time it just burns lower and lower.

And very often this is where they seek a new supply. They’ve gotta have oxygen from somewhere. But if it’s no longer you, they might actually shift. Now, does this mean the other person suddenly becomes reasonable? No, unfortunately, that’s not how it works. But it does mean that you stop participating in the part of the cycle that keeps you exhausted, reactive, and constantly trying to [00:11:00] prove something that should never have required proof in the first place.

So here’s something else that’s really important. Another really important piece is that when you stop explaining yourself constantly, you also start protecting your energy because explaining and defending is emotionally expensive. You’re thinking through every word. You’re trying to anticipate how it might be twisted.

You are rewriting paragraphs. Putting things through cha GPT, who will probably take all of the explaining out of it for you. But that’s another story, right? You’re rewriting everything. You’re just, you’re reading the response and you’re feeling your stomach just fucking drop because the entire thing got dis distorted anyway, you worked so hard to try to make it distortion proof, and yet they managed to do it anyway because that’s what they do.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and [00:14:00] over again and expecting a different result. So stop. ’cause it’s fucking exhausting and it keeps you psychologically tethered to the conflict. One of the most liberating moments for many of my clients is realizing that they don’t actually have to keep doing that.

They don’t have.

They don’t have to keep explaining their intentions. They don’t have to keep defending their character to someone who is determined not to see it. And by the way, they do see it, and very often they’re threatened by it. But instead, you can focus on something that is much more powerful, which is clarity.

Clarity about what needs to be communicated, clarity about what doesn’t. Defending your humanity is not. Something that you need to engage in clarity about when engagement is necessary and when it’s simply feeding a dynamic that is not going to resolve through explanation anyway. And when that shift [00:15:00] happens, you start stepping out of the emotional arena.

This is when I say that. We forget to get emotionally divorced. I’ve said this many times on the podcast in earlier episodes that, we get financially divorced, we get legally divorced, we get physically divorced, but we forget to get emotionally divorced. We still perpetuate the same cycles we’re fighting in the same way that we always did.

Then what’s the point? So when you step out of the emotional arena, you are divorcing yourself emotionally. From this person that has been exhausting you for decades. When you’re engaged in this cycle of explaining yourself and defending your humanity and all of the things, you’re still fighting for the other person’s understanding, and that’s not what we’re doing anymore.

We’re not trying to win that battle anymore. We’re moving forward. And it can be really hard, right? It can feel unfair because there’s a part of you that still [00:17:00] wants the truth to be seen, that you still want the other person to see who you are. You want them to be like, oh, I see what happened.

You want the record corrected. You want the narrative fixed. And look, sometimes that happens, but more often than not, the real power comes from realizing that you actually don’t need your ex to understand you. You don’t need the record corrected. In order for to move forward, you don’t need their agreement.

You don’t need their understanding. You don’t need their validation. You don’t need their acknowledgement of the truth. What you need is strategy. A strategy for how to communicate in a way that doesn’t keep pulling you back into conflict. A strategy for protecting your energy while you’re navigating the legal process strategy for recognizing the traps that high conflict personalities set so that you stop walking straight into them.

This is the work that we do inside of [00:18:00] Phoenix Rising, and it’s so powerful because sometimes it’s so much clearer to see it in somebody else’s story, right? When someone is telling their story and it, and you’re like, oh my God. She keeps walking into this same trap. She keeps walking into their narrative and then you realize, oh, fuck, that’s what I’m doing.

You can see it when you hear it in other people’s stories, right? That’s why community is so important. That’s why women’s, can women thrive in community for this reason? ’cause we can see this in others sometimes more easily and quickly than we see it in ourselves. And then we turn that mirror around, we’re like, oh that’s where I’m doing it.

In Phoenix Rising, we’ll work through exactly these dynamics, how to respond without escalating, how to stop feeding the conflict, how to recognize manipulation tactics when they happen, and how to move through your divorce with [00:19:00] clarity instead of constantly reacting to the chaos and then having this group, this room full of women go, you’ve got this, you’ve got this.

I did it last week. You can do it this week. So if you’re listening to all of this and you’re thinking, oh my God, this is exactly what I’ve been doing, just know that you are not alone. And almost everyone starts there. Somehow we think that once we drop the divorce bomb, that like everything’s gonna change now.

And usually that’s just not the case. There is another way to move through this. You don’t have to keep exhausting yourself trying to explain the truth to someone who has already decided not to hear it. You get to step out of that cycle and you get to move forward with a playbook that actually works in high conflict divorce.

So you can find that playbook in all of my, previous and future [00:20:00] podcast episodes in my coaching programs in Phoenix Rising, in particular in my private coaching work. This is such an enormous piece of the work that I do with my clients. So if you’re hearing yourself in this episode, you’re not alone.

I’m here. I have got you. I promise. Head over to my website, kate anthony.com to find out more for yourself and how I can support you in this because you do not need to be doing this alone. All right, I’ll see you next week. Bye.

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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.

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