Divorce Coaching: The Female Take
Read excerpts from SAS Cofounder and Divorce Coach Kimberly Mishkin’s interview on “Women’s Rights in the Workplace” (Progressive Radio Network, January 2015) as she discusses the ideas behind SAS for Women®, the specific needs women have facing divorce, and the unusual role of divorce coaching with PRN.com hosts Jack Tuckner and Deborah O’Rell.
To listen to the complete show, click here.
What’s different about divorce coaching at sas?
Jack Tuckner: Kim, are there any other professional practices in the country that do this type of work you are doing?
Kimberly Mishkin: Not exactly the way we’re doing it. There are a number of divorce coaches, but we consider ourselves {SAS} to be a hybrid model, unique — we’re not only coaching, but we also address all the practical and logistical matters that come along with divorce.
For example, somebody might come to us and she may need to sell her apartment, or she may need to go back to work — having been out of the workforce for a number of years — or she may need help locating an attorney she’s comfortable with, or help going through her finances. We spend time on all those practical things to help her move forward. At the same time, she’s broken emotionally, and that’s where our coaching component comes in.
We help women tap into their inner strength. Things have to be getting done of course, but at the same time they feel drained. And so we help fill them back up with strength to get them on the road to recovery.
Jack: Do you bring a certain kind of encouragement to help women see the light at the end of the tunnel? You help address all the issues?
Kimberly: Yes, absolutely. We look at the whole woman. We look at about ten specific areas of her life … and then we start making a plan and creating a situation where there’s accountability as well. So we’ll say, “Call me when you’ve done that. Let’s talk next week about how you’ve done on your list of five things that you wanted to tackle since we last met.”
We create a bond with them. We are their partner but we’re not emotionally invested in it as, say, your mom might be, or your sister, or somebody who has a stake in it. We can be more objective and create a path for them that will not only get things done and get them moving in a certain direction, but also we’re helping them look way ahead.
Most of the time they’ll come to us and they’re so overwhelmed with what the lawyer said, or what paperwork they have to fill out, or how their kids are going to handle this; all of those things are just swirling through their heads. So we help sort through it, but we’re also thinking ahead for them because we’ve come across that bridge and we know how great it feels to be back to that independent whole person.
We hold that beacon up and say, “We’re going to get you over here and don’t forget: we want to continue thinking about what your goals for five years from now are, not just getting you through this immediate crisis.”
Divorce coaching vs. therapy
Jack: What’s the distinction between that broken emotional person — what you do as a certified coach and what perhaps a licensed social worker, or psychologist would do? What’s that line?
Kimberly: We often work with people who are in therapy at the same time that they’re working with a coach. I’m not a therapist nor I do I pretend to be, and if there are deeper issues going on; clinical depression perhaps … that’s not something we’re equipped to do.
Therapy is about looking back at your patterns and your life that has come before and understanding it. Coaching is all about what you’re going to do now and next. So we concentrate, we don’t try to diagnose. We try to say, “What’s going on? And what’s the very next thing you can do to move toward your goals?”
Why doesn’t SAS work with men?
Jack: Okay. So the gender issue. Hey, I was divorced a bunch of years ago. I was a mess. I’m a cry baby. I was the one who had to go to the shrink. I was the one who could have probably used your services and if I called you, you’d say, “Sorry. Girls only.” So why is that?
Kimberly: …. I think the very genuine answer is that I’m a woman. I went through it as a woman and I know how that felt. And my partner Liza Caldwell … felt the same way, that we couldn’t speak to what the male experience was. So we started there. What we found since is that, I think we’re right, women deal with break ups and divorce very differently.
Jack: Why is there a male experience and a female experience in divorce coaching?
Kimberly: Well, I just think we’re built differently …. And I think that’s what we’re experiencing in our company. Women come to us looking for connection, looking for advice, looking for the village, and so we are providing that to women. And I joke all the time that when I get to the point where our company is big enough and we can open a new division, we’ll hire a really smart divorced man to run our men’s wing, but it shouldn’t be me.
For more on this interview, read “Divorce Advice: How To Get Over the Paralyzing Fear” or listen to the complete interview here.
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