71: Navigating High-Conflict Divorce: What's Best for the Kids?

Guest: Athena McCullough, LPC, LMFT

When families are caught in high-conflict divorce—battling in courtrooms and struggling to communicate—Athena McCullough steps in. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in the complex intersection of family therapy and the legal system.

What We Cover

In this conversation, Athena shares her expertise on helping families navigate high-conflict divorce, the real impact of parental conflict on children, and practical strategies for maintaining healthy relationships during difficult times.

Timestamps
[0:00] Introduction - Who is Athena McCullough?
[1:30] Attorneys vs. mediation: What's best for divorcing couples?
[4:45] Do therapists go to court?
[6:15] The big question: Should unhappy parents stay together for the kids?
[10:00] How high conflict affects children
[13:30] Triangulation and emotional parentification
[17:45] When kids become their parent's emotional support
[21:00] Communicating with teens during conflict
[24:15] Active listening: Hearing what's underneath the anger
[26:30] Managing your own reactivity as a parent
[29:15] What is reunification therapy?
[31:00] Athena's journey into high-conflict divorce work
[32:00] Final advice: Slow down and listen

Key Takeaways

• Slow down and listen
  • Ask more questions than you give advice
• Behavior is communication
  • Problematic behavior means your child is trying to tell you something
• You can only control yourself
  • Focus on your own reactions, not controlling others
• Kids say important things in difficult ways
  • Look past the tone to hear the message
• "There's no traffic jam on the high road"
  • You don't get to keep misbehaving just because someone else does

About Athena McCullough

Athena is a licensed therapist based in Littleton, Colorado, who owns a group practice specializing in high-conflict divorce and court-ordered family therapy. She works with families navigating complex court systems and provides reunification therapy for disconnected parents and children.

Connect with Athena:
McCulloughFamilyTherapy.com | Serving clients throughout Colorado

Learn more about Jason's practice: Colorado Relationship Recovery

Transcript

0:00

Hey everyone. Today I have a special guest. She's a colleague, a friend, an amazing couples therapist. So when families are involved in high conflict divorce, fighting in court, and struggling to communicate Athena McCullough steps in. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Littleton, Colorado, and she specializes in the complex intersection of family therapy and the legal system helping parents and children reconnect. There's a lot of great advice in here. Check it out. But first I'm going to introduce the show. Welcome everyone. This is solving disconnection and creating connected relationships for couples and parents. My name is Jason Polk, and I've worked this exclusively with couples as a therapist and coach for over 10 years. On this podcast, I share my experience professionally. Personally and those of our amazing guests. So Athena, uh, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. And, if you could just tell the listeners, what you do. A little bit about who you are, that would be great. Great. Thanks so much for having me. This is fun to do. I'm Athena McCullough. I am a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist here in Littleton, Colorado. I own a group practice and we specialize in couples and families, uh, and in particular high conflict divorce, so families navigating court systems and uh, legal issues,, with their families. This is a quick side. I hear people sometimes say that attorneys, will kind of like pit each other against each other, and I guess pessimistically say in a way they can make more money. Do you have a recommendation if couples are gonna get divorced to attorneys or mediation? I was, just curious. Yeah, that's, that's a big question. Okay. Uh, a lot goes on there. When we're working with attorneys, attorneys are trained to be more adversarial. Uh, and so there's a group of collaborative divorce attorneys that are, have extra training in how to do collaborative divorce. And there's some things that they do, like they have to maintain. Both parties have to maintain a collaborative divorce attorney, and if one person gets rid of their attorney, the other attorney has to leave. So there's some structures set in place to help. Maintain it and incentivize staying collaborative in that space. So attorneys who aren't trained in that, um, tend to follow that more adversarial. I'm gonna fight for my clients. I'm gonna do everything I can to help them win. It puts it in that win-lose situation, which as therapists, we work to avoid those win-lose. Uh, we would like as much of a win-win in working with our couples and families as possible so it can., Sometimes it's really beneficial and you need that attorney that can really fight, if there's some really problematic stuff going on. It often does drag it out. It makes it really hard sometimes to do therapy with the family while they're in such an adversarial court process because they're always looking to gather evidence and fight the other party, and it's really hard for them to become self-reflective and engage in therapy in a, okay, how am I contributing to the problems in the family? Way of looking at things. So attorneys can be really helpful or really hurtful. And some attorneys, whether they're collaborative or regular, can be on in any of those camps. Okay. I got it. Well, do you ever have to go to court? Does and how does that work? Being a therapist, maybe that's important for people to know it, if on the brink of divorce. Yeah. Right. Can you elicit your therapist to court or is there a confidentiality thing? Yeah. Most therapists will have, information in their paperwork about mm-hmm. Whether or not they'll go to court if there are cost to it. Mm-hmm. Um, some therapists have really high. Fees for that to try to dissuade their clients from mm-hmm. Subpoenaing them and calling them into court. Uh, we intentionally do go to court., We set all of our paperwork is set up. We know our clients are involved in court proceedings. Mm-hmm. Often have court orders. We're doing the court ordered family therapy often, or reunification therapy. And so we are trained in it. And yes, we do go to court. I don't go very often. I try to provide treatment summaries or things to the attorneys to help them. Stay out of court. Um, and so it doesn't have to become so adversarial. But yeah, maybe once or twice a year I'll get subpoenaed and actually go into court and testify for the clients. Well, so the question, and we talked about this earlier, what is best for the kids? For couples parents to be together and be miserable, or for couples parents to separate, be divorced. Yeah, that's a complicated, complex question. Uh, there's not really a straight cut and dry answer. If you're together, you're a family is intact. If we call it like that. And there's so much conflict, so much misery, so much stress in the home. The kids feel all of that. Kids are sometimes active participants in it. Mm-hmm. Sometimes they're trying to act up, they distract the parents from their own conflict. Uh, they're sometimes they're just trying to get out of it and get out of the house and stay away from all of it. So it does impact the kids. Just like it impacts the parents. Nobody's really happy. There's a lot of stress in the home. Sometimes separation can calm things down, get a little space from each other. You can minimize the amount of things you have to talk about and go back and forth on. Sometimes that intensifies the. Uh, if you're separated or divorced is, kids can play parents one off the other, whether it's an intact family or divorced family even really good kids will learn to play parents off of each other and to get their way and get what they want. So it, it's not a yes or no. It's a how can we reduce the conflict? So can we best do that within the family system as it is and learn some new skills and develop some new habits and routines or. Do we need to separate and then learn that on our own? And how are the kids gonna respond to that? Kids either way will, will have issues they have to work through, whether there's too much conflict in the home, they'll have to deal with how that's impacting them. If there's divorce, they have to go through some identity, issues of, okay, now I have two homes and where do I really belong and who am I? And, um, loyalty structures can be called into play of which parent do I want to spend more time with or do I get to choose, especially'cause they're older teens. So it can, it can be a really complicated process. Yeah. Well I was hoping for like a nice and neat answer. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Well. Of course, the true answer is don't know for sure. And it depends to this question. Mm-hmm. But how does couples parents who argue a lot high conflict? Can you say a little bit about this, your experience, how that affects the kids? Yeah. Kids are trying to figure out what they need to do. Kids are brilliant at keeping themselves safe and getting their needs met. So whether it's intact or divorced, family, kids,, if their parents aren't emotionally responsive to them, they get creative. Um, working from attachment theory, which we do a lot of is, they might withdraw and meet their own needs and try to be self resilient that way, or they might become a bit more anxious and pursue other people to make sure that they're watching and getting their needs met. So divorce is similar. There's all these, issues that come up with divorce and, kids learn to, to get their needs met. So they might learn that they have to. Okay. Talk bad about the other parent to one of their parents, and they can bond over that and get love from the parent that way. Or they might learn that they can't say anything bad about the other parent, ever. The other parent can do no wrong. They have to be the good parent. Um, maybe there's some abusive, dynamics at play that can come up there., They've gotta figure out mm-hmm. How to get their needs met. What's gonna go on. A lot of times there's increased anxiety and depression mm-hmm in kiddos. And just learning some of those, what we call maladaptive or unhelpful, long-term, unhelpful ways of coping with relationships. Kids learn how to be in relationships from birth. Mm-hmm. What I love doing as a marriage and family therapist is assessing that in my clients. How did you learn to be in relationship with people as a child? And that has lasting implications for how you continue to be in a relationship. And so they're learning all of this and picking up on it and surviving it Sometimes, sometimes they're thriving in it. If divorce can be really amicable and supportive mm-hmm. Kids can weather that really well. If it's really high conflict, they're gonna learn to survive in that high conflict. And the skills they learn might not be helpful for them once they become adults and are out of that high conflict. Yeah. In, relational life therapy. Terry Real says it was adaptive then. A maladaptive now. Yeah, exactly. And like, so in a way adaptive then maybe, I don't wanna say like triangulation or I don't know, getting very angry. Is that kind of some of the things that yeah, it can definitely be, triangulation is something we see a lot of and triangulation is. When you move to another person to get your needs met, you said maybe you team up against a third person mm-hmm. Or you, the person you should be going to, to get your needs met. Let's say. The parents should be going to another adult to get some of those adult needs met, but maybe they triangulate with the child. Mm-hmm. And try to have the child meet some of those, they start confiding in the child. When that should be an adult conversation, either with their partner, their co-parents, a new partner, another adult should be filling that role and not the child. So kids have to learn what are they gonna do with that? Mm-hmm. If they become their parent's emotional support person. Uh, that's not quite the role a child is supposed to fulfill in a family. So that adaptive, they learn what to do with it there and then what does that look like when they're an adult? Yeah., Can you say, this is hypothesis or a theory a a better word when a adult parent confides into a kid? I guess it depends on how old they are, right? Yeah, it's. I guess, let me finish, what, what was your full question there? I guess like how does, how would that affect someone later in life? So you're a kid, your parents overly con confide in you. My experience and I don't know if you agree, is that, they can feel I don't wanna say engulfed, but it's like the energy is going, you know from the parent to the kid or no, no, no. From the kid to the parent. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so it should be going from the parent to the kid and so they can feel used. Yeah. Um, and so naturally they may have like a reflex to kind of withdraw or mm-hmm. Or not share or relationships mean obligation. Yeah. Also, they can maybe be falsely empowered, right? Mm-hmm. Hey, you're my little person. Mm-hmm. But I don't know your experience, like your thoughts about that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just like little kids go through different experiences, um, we, we as humans can internalize things differently. So we might go through the same experience but react a little differently to it. So, yeah, one option is for the kids to withdraw and put up a lot of barriers around relationships because they feel used and. Don't get their own needs met. A lot of times I see that it kind of becomes more of a compulsive caregiving, um, with kids, uh, where they're the ones having to take care of everyone else because they never learned how to advocate for their own needs. Ah, got it. They never had a parent who was asking them how they're doing, what do they need? They always had to be ready to meet the parents' needs. They couldn't have any of their own needs because they had to. Put their parent back together after whatever was going on. So it's helping them learn that they have needs and how to ask for those to be met in a healthy way with a healthy relationship. Mm-hmm. Um, so it's that relearning all the, all those developmental stages. As therapists, we learn about navigating those developmental stages. Well, and if we don't navigate a certain stage, well, we're kind of stuck. And have to eventually at some point relearn that stage, relearn what to do. So, if we don't learn how to, advocate for ourselves and how to get our needs met and what an appropriate healthy parent should be doing to help a child get their needs met. We get creative with that and we learn how to do things differently. And then as an adult, we go into therapy and we're like, Hey, my relationships aren't working. And we as therapists go, oh, because you're still trying to do what you did with your mom or dad back then. Mm-hmm. And that doesn't work between two adults. Um, it, it didn't work really well back then, but that's what you grew up with. That's all you had to work with. And so now we gotta teach you how to do the healthy things between two adults that's more evenly balanced. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I know you work a lot with, parents communicating with teenagers, and this is a very general question, but there's conflict or going through a divorce, obviously we can't forget our kids, right? Can you speak a little bit about, like approaches parents have with their kids, during times of conflict or possibly divorce. What's a good approach yeah. It's a very general question. Yeah. It kind of depends on what's going on. Uh, a lot of my answers are, well, it depends. Yeah. Um, of course. Yeah. Something that we coach a lot of our parents through are just basic active listening techniques. Teens and kids are often trying to communicate things to parents and they're saying something doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel good, and they're usually saying it in ways that are really hard to hear. Mm-hmm. They have a nasty tone of voice. Mm-hmm. Um or even with little kids, they might be clingy or screaming or yelling or angry or hitting or but they're trying to tell us something and so if parents can just slow down. And get curious about, okay, there's been a behavior change, or my teen is saying something in a really nasty, mean way. Can I kind of ignore the behavior for a minute and go, what are they really trying to communicate to me? What are they really trying to say?'cause in, in our work with kids and teens, kids and teens have really accurate perceptions about what's going on in the family. Oftentimes when I first sit down with a family, I can turn to the teen and go, Hey, so what do you think is going on? Oh, and they might say it in a really nasty, mean way. Mm-hmm. But they nail it. Mm. They nail what's going. They have a really good assessment of what's going on in the family. But like I said, they say it in ways that are really hard to hear. They have a snotty tone of voice or nasty. And a lot of parents come in and say, they're just being disrespectful. I'm like, well, yes, the behavior comes off as very disrespectful, but what they're saying is valid and true, and so can we slow down? Get curious with them, tune in, listen and kind of go, okay, I get that you're a teenager and you don't quite know how to communicate this yet. You're still learning those things. Most adults are still learning those things. Mm-hmm. And, but what are you really trying to say under all of this? And then we can have some really good conversations and back and forth about how they're doing, about whether it's just the conflict at home or the divorce, and we can really tune in and find out how it's impacting them. Hmm. You slow down and listen to what's underneath the anger of what your kid's really trying to communicate. In theory, there's gonna be less behavioral issues. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes, it, I mean, most of us, when we feel heard mm-hmm. We're not trying to do all these maladaptive ways of getting someone's attention. Mm-hmm. And so they've learned, and a lot of relationships learn this, like the louder I get, he or she doesn't listen until I'm screaming at them. Mm-hmm. Um, and so if we learn that we don't have to scream. And feel heard. Then the screaming stops. We don't have to yell at each other. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. So a lot of times the kids, kids pick up these active listening and communication skills really fast. I mean, they're sponges. They're learning all the time. That's why we do all of our education and schooling while our brains are still developing. Mm-hmm. And so I have kids come in and I can teach them some how to initiate conflict and how to do active listening and how to name your emotions. And they pick it up really quick. Mm. So they can learn these things. And when they don't feel like they have to do the old thing to get the parent's attention, then they just do the new skills. Mm-hmm. And it's beautiful. Yeah. Well, and I assume they feel heard. Mm-hmm. Right? They're calmer. Yeah. And so they can, develop appropriately. I don't know. That's a, a good way to put it. Yeah. They engage more appropriately. Mm-hmm.'cause they, they're not trying so hard to say something doesn't feel good and you're not changing it. And it still doesn't feel good. Mm-hmm. It's kind of like when you get, um, a splinter or something, and it's just irritating all the time. Mm-hmm. Like, you're, might not have as much emotional bandwidth. You might have a little bit more of a temper, um, or when you don't get as much sleep and you're tired and you're maybe a little more grouchy because you're tired, there's always this nagging thing going on that's making you a little bit more irritable. Mm-hmm. And when we take that away. Yeah, you can, you can perform better. Mm-hmm. You can engage in a healthier way, in a calmer, more pleasant way. Mm-hmm. How do you coach parents to, I don't wanna say not be reactive, right? I mean, of course we're gonna react. Yeah. If our kid is, talking back to us or getting upset. There is coaching, right? I don't know like how you would work through a parent. Yeah. With, that's the biggest thing that parents struggle with is their own reactivity. Yeah. To their kids' behavior. So a lot of slowing down, if you talk to any therapist mm-hmm. Most of our work is slowing people down. Yeah. And noticing what's really going on. What, what's actually happening between us. Not just the words that are being said and how we're feeling about them, but going, okay, my kid said this to me. And it brought up this really big reaction. I got really angry at my kid. Why did I get angry? So we slow it down for the parents and we're going, okay, makes sense that you feel angry about that? Why? What is that tapping into for you? Why? Mm-hmm. Why does that in particular, make you angry while they're being disrespectful? Or whether, and they start describing the kid and I'm like, okay, but. For you, what's part of your own relational story from when you were a kid? And oftentimes it's tapping into something from their childhood, a way their parent treated them, or a trauma that they have, or a repeated theme of experiences in their life that it's tapping into that's causing a maybe bigger than we would normally expect to that one instance kind of reaction. Mm-hmm. Uh, and when they understand that, they can go, oh. Yes, my teen is currently being disrespectful and we can address that behavior, but I can do that in a calm way. Mm-hmm. I don't have to react and get angry and upset about it. I can just name that, Hey, I know that you're trying to tell me something important. And the way you're doing that is really disrespectful. Mm-hmm. Can we try that again? Mm-hmm. Um, and that's a very different reaction than, don't talk to me like that. Yeah. Like, anger comes out and uh mm-hmm. Go to your room, you're grounded. No, I'm taking your phone. And these instant like consequences come out Yeah. That the kids weren't even prepared for. And so it can be a very different conversation, but helping parents slow all that down, understand that about themselves and be able. To choose how they're responding to their kid instead of just reacting to the behavior. Yeah. Do you ever do that, like family of origin work, in front of the kid too with the parent sometimes. Okay. Um, sometimes we'll start, it depends on how old the kid is. Yeah. And how traumatic maybe some of the stuff that the parent went through. Oh. Because sometimes it's not appropriate for the kid to hear all of that. For sure. Trauma. Mm-hmm. Um, but if it's a simple like, oh yeah, my dad always yelled at me. So every time you raise your voice, I react.'cause my dad always mm-hmm. That kind of stuff can be really good for kids to understand. And it helps the kids develop some compassion for their parents. We're not perfect as parents at all. We've got our own stuff. I'm a parent and a therapist and I'm still working on my own stuff. I don't always react well to my kids. And so helping your teenager understand that Oh yeah. You're working on stuff too. They don't feel like they're the problem. As much.'cause often they come in and they're like, my teen's misbehaving. So the teen is the problem. And when they realize the parent has some stuff that they're gonna work on, it can be good if, if we get into it and we're like, Ooh, this is getting in some really deep, heavy stuff, we'll do an individual session or refer out for individual treatment for the parent. Um, if it's stuff that's beyond what kids really need to know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, do you have parents who struggle with accountability? For example, dad, you're doing this. No, I'm not. Well I did this because you did blank, right? Yeah. I dunno if you, you could, I don't know, speak on that. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really hard for some parents to acknowledge that they have a part in the problem. Mm-hmm. Um, it, it's hard for a lot of us to yeah, acknowledge that we have a part in the problem. And so again, I keep him back to slow it down. We're gonna slow it down and go. Anytime I hear a Yeah. But you or, yeah, but this person, yeah. Um, we're gonna slow it down and go. Yeah. But right now we're talking about you. They're, they're doing their own bad parts of the problem too. And so we're gonna talk about you and you can only control yourself. When I start with families or couples, we do an individual session often, and one of my big things I tell them is, Hey, I can't guarantee that anyone else in the family or your partner is gonna change. What can I help you change? Mm-hmm. About what you already mm-hmm. So I'm trying to prime them from the very beginning to say, Hey, you can just control your behavior. The other person may still be misbehaving, but you can control how you respond to it. You can get curious with yourself about your reactions. And you don't get to keep misbehaving just because someone else does. Mm-hmm. And then we're just stuck in that blame cycle and no one's gonna change. So for sure. I like that you don't get to keep misbehaving'cause someone else does. Yeah. Yeah. That's not gonna help anybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure. Um, at PML, the are familiar with her? PML? I don't think so. Yeah. But anyway, she has a saying she passed that there's no traffic jam on the high road. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm getting like too in, into the weeds here, but sometimes I know you mentioned individuals, you see an individual client and sometimes people come in, there's like different versions of the same thing. Sometimes that can be frustrating. I know for me in my practice when people get stuck in like objective truth. Mm-hmm. Like this is the reality. And I can't believe you're saying that you're delusional. Mm-hmm. Um, I guess what my question is, like, how do you, I don't know if that comes up and if it does, like how do you work with that? Yeah. All the time. Mm-hmm. That comes up all the time. Um, yeah. I wasn't there. Yeah. I don't have a, a video of what happened and so I, I can't take anyone's side'cause I don't even know. Yeah. What we try to focus on is everyone has their own subjective, emotional reaction mm-hmm. To an event. So whether something was actually said or I thought I heard you say it, so I try to coach them, say, I thought I heard you say, or What I experienced in this conversation was this emotion. This reaction to you? Uh, we try to take it out of that, what exactly it was said or what wasn't said.'cause they could argue all day about that. Mm-hmm. And I have no way of helping them with that. Yeah. I wasn't there. Yeah. And it almost doesn't matter what was actually said, sometimes it's clarifying sometimes. Oh, you thought you heard what I, what I thought I said, and what I intended to say was, this can sometimes be helpful. But oftentimes you just argue in circles around it. Mm-hmm. And so what's more helpful is to go. When I was in that conversation with you, when we had this experience, this was my emotional experience of being around you. I felt unsafe, I felt unheard, I felt, uh, dismissed, whatever it is, and going, okay, that's not how I want you to feel around me. Let me try, let's try to redo that. And do it in a really productive, connecting way. This comes up a lot with reunification therapy in particular. Mm. There's usually some big event that broke apart a parent and child. Mm-hmm. And so, they both remember it very differently. Mm. Sometimes wildly differently. Sometimes there are claims or allegations of abuse that may or may not be true. I wasn't there. Mm-hmm. I didn't see what actually happened. Sometimes we do need a parent to take accountability for actions. And that can get messy too, of what actually happened. Yeah. What are they actually taking accountability for? Mm-hmm. What are they actually apologizing to the child for, if we need them to do that? Um, and for the child to be able to communicate, this is how I felt. Whether it was intended to be that way or not, can get really messy. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I bet. So reunification therapy. And so this is like if the parent or kid had been estranged for a while, estranged. So it's a form of usually court ordered family therapy. Okay, got it. So they might order family therapy or reunification therapy. So sometimes parents and kids are disconnected for lots of different reasons. Sometimes a parent has been in jail, sometimes there's been substance abuse issues that they've gone to treatment recovery. Um, sometimes a child is resisting or refusing contact with a parent because of. Of cited abuse or allegations of behaviors. Sometimes there's parental alienation and a kid is being turned against the parent. Um, that's more of the rarity, but it is out there and happens. Mm-hmm. So, uh, lots of different ways, but they're disconnected, severely disconnected, and usually a very court involved family. Mm-hmm. High conflict divorce. And so we come in and try to make sense. Of what's been going on for this family and what everybody's behaviors are and what we're working with. A lot of times there's a personality disorder or strong tendencies towards a personality disorder involved that are where the behaviors are really entrenched and they're really struggling to make changes. So in those situations we try to develop a team. We're the family therapist, but then there's often individual therapists involved, attorneys involved. And other professionals with the court who are trying to help this family navigate this. So, yeah. Okay. Well I'm just curious, like how did you get into this, you know, the court ordered families? Yeah. Uh, it is actually in my internship. Okay. Like a lot of people, we, we get assigned clients in our internship and we're told try not to say no to anyone. Okay.'cause you never know what you're gonna learn. And so I got assigned some high conflict. Divorced families. And they weren't necessarily court ordered family therapy'cause mm-hmm. I wouldn't have done that as an intern. Yeah. But, um, they had those dynamics. There were, it was divorced family, kids were resisting or refusing contact with a parent. And so in trying, I'm an intern, I'm going, okay, I gotta research what I, I'm doing with this. Mm-hmm. I gotta go get consultation and talk to my supervisor. And, got connected with a lot of people mm-hmm. And ended up taking a training on it. And it's a lot of work that a lot of therapists just don't want to do. Mm-hmm. So when I started out, I went into private practice and that was my niche. That was my instant. I can do this, uh, there's work available for it and. Not a lot of therapists want it, and so people would refer to me a lot and I was able to build up my practice that way. And just kept learning and growing. Every family came in, they're so complex and so difficult. I was constantly doing training after training and training to make sure I knew what I was handling and how, how to work with it. And so inadvertently became pretty well trained in it. That's good. I mean, being able to go there and then try to make sense of it and Yeah. Yeah. Provide therapy, obviously, very needed. Yeah. Very needed. And yeah, there's not a lot of therapists who mm-hmm. Want to engage with, more difficult clients. Is there anything else, that you want to share? Ooh, you're asking very big questions today. I know. Like, I love it. I love it. Yeah, as far as with this topic, it's really helping parents slow down and listen. Yeah. If that's the only thing people take away from this conversation mm-hmm. Is slow down and listen, ask more questions than you're trying to give advice with your kids. That's really key. If I can boil it all down to kind of identifying and managing your own reactions so that you can be curious with your kids. Assume that if you see a problematic behavior. They're trying to communicate something to you and not just being difficult. Or mean or problematic. What are they trying to say to you with this behavior? If you take those away and can just slow down and look your kids in the eye and go, okay, you're telling me a lot of things. Mm-hmm. They're hard for me to hear. What do you really want me to know? Yeah. Kids will tell you. Yeah, they'll start talking. Yeah. Slowing down, being curious. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, it's one of the, I think, the best things you can offer someone Yeah. Is like, I'm interested in what you're saying. I'm interested in you. Yeah. And then also you mentioned earlier too, the more you can stay, I would say on your side of the street. Mm-hmm. You know, like what I feel or what I make up is that, when you did XI felt this instead of you always. Yeah. Yeah. All those I statements. Going back to those I statements that we teach our clients. I felt like this, I experienced you. I experienced a situation like this instead of the you finger pointing Blame me language. Yeah. So if someone like couples are going through divorce or maybe that's on the table, there's high conflict. Be curious if you have kids. Be curious. Mm-hmm. Also, I assume you would say try to work on it if you want to stay together. I mean, being a therapist. Yeah. Being a therapist, I'm always in favor of let's try to work on it. And see what we can do. It's not going to necessarily work for every couple. But sometimes we can do some discernment counseling and find out. Do you really want to work on it or do you want to take that path? Mm-hmm. And then we can refer you to attorneys or mediators mm-hmm. Help you figure that out. But do we wanna do six months? Let's try six months of couples counseling or divorces off the table and we can try that. But yeah, it's up to the clients. They have the hard work. I feel like I have a really easy job a lot of time. Because I can. I can see things and I can help you with things, but you as the client have to do the work of changing yourself and noticing yourself, and that's really hard work. Yeah. That is, is there anything else you would like to share? Or even like how would someone work with you? Yeah. So you can find us, on our website, McCullough family therapy.com. We're on social media also. Any of those avenues, give us a call. If you're here in Colorado, we can work with anyone in Colorado. If you can't work get in with me. You can see someone else on my team. We have, several therapists who work with court involved clients, I don't know when this will air, but we currently have openings, for families to get in and always wanting to keep those openings. So hire more, grow, be able to reach more people and be able to meet the needs, in Denver area and all of Colorado. And you do in person online? Yeah, in person. And virtual, we really specialize in the therapy Got it. Side of things, that's our focus. Okay. Very cool. Well, Athena, thank you so much for taking the time and really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Always fun to chat with you and get to share all of these details with your listeners.