Madelaine Weiss: Your Goodness, Your Triggers, and Who You Want to Be

Madelaine Weiss makes an argument about high-conflict divorce that has nothing to do with money or custody schedules. What the process damages, in her view, is your sense of yourself as a good human being, and a co-parent who spends their time casting you as the bad one is aiming at exactly that spot.

Madelaine is a licensed psychotherapist with an MBA, board certified in executive, career, and life coaching. She has studied Eastern philosophy for roughly three decades, teaches mindfulness, and has been through two divorces of her own. Her practice draws heavily on evolutionary psychology, which is where she gets the explanation for why being cast as bad cuts so deep: when the modern brain was forming, a reputation for being good determined whether you were fed and whether your kin were looked after. The wiring did not update.

One of her professors, a granddaughter of Freud, told her there is an ounce of truth in every projection, because a projection needs a hook to hang itself on. Madelaine's point is not that the accusations are true. It is that if you are already questioning your own goodness, there is somewhere for them to land, and that is the part you can work on.

The tools are specific. A thirty-second belly-breathing reset, which she calls power breathing and gives away on her site, to bring the higher brain back before you answer anything. A warning that venting to everyone you know deepens the groove instead of draining it, because a brain that keeps firing the same circuit keeps strengthening it. The question who do I want to be here, followed by an action step sized so your brain registers it without deciding it is impossible. When a child comes home repeating what the other parent said, she borrows from Dan Siegel: go right brain to right brain, tell me about that, before any attempt to correct the record. And she closes on good company, which she means broadly, as the books, food, music, people, and thoughts you allow to stay. Lisa connects that to Bill Eddy's positive and negative advocates, and to why doom-scrolling family court horror stories changes how you run your own case.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a high-conflict divorce injures your sense of your own goodness, and why that hurts
• An ounce of truth in every projection: what your ex's accusations hang on
• A thirty-second breathing reset that brings your thinking brain back before you reply
• Why reacting fast strengthens the pattern you are trying to grow out of
• Why venting to ten friends deepens the groove instead of draining it
• Asking who do I want to be here, and sizing the action step so you actually take it
• Right brain to right brain: what to say when your child comes home loaded
• Good company: the books, food, music, people, and thoughts you let stay

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What good co-parenting means, and why knowing it is not the hard part
4:00 The injury nobody names: your sense of your own goodness
7:00 Why the brain is wired to need to be seen as good
9:00 An ounce of truth in every projection, and the hook it hangs on
10:00 Power breathing: a thirty-second reset before you answer
13:00 Why reacting fast makes it stronger, not weaker
16:00 Venting is overrated, and the groove it wears
19:00 Who do I want to be, and the right-sized action step
25:00 Right brain to right brain, and what to say when your kid comes home loaded
32:00 Good company, and positive vs negative advocates
38:00 "I'm going to live with dad," and how her own kids turned out

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Madelaine Weiss: https://madelaineweiss.com/
🔗 Madelaine's free power breathing guide: https://madelaineweiss.com/power_breathing/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.