S1:E4 – DOUG NOLL "The Divorce De-Escalation Playbook (That Works)"

All right, Imagine walking into a maximum security prison and entering concrete room with no windows in front of you. There are 15 cages. Each cage has a man inside, shackled hands and feet. They are former gang members. Each of them have killed another human being. These are your students and your job is to teach them how to stop fights, arguments and violence in the prison. That is one of the many incredible assignments my guest has taken on his long career as a lawyer and peacemaker. My guest today is Doug Noll. He is a lawyer turned peacemaker who teaches high performing individuals, leaders and teams how to resolve conflicts and prevent fights and arguments in literally seconds. He has trained hundreds and thousands of people on how to de escalate violence, violence and conflict from maximum security prisons to Congressional Budget Office where he has trained analysts on how to de escalate situations involving members of Congress and their staff. Doug is the author of four books and with his fifth book on leadership empathy coming up next year from Simon and Schuster, today is going, he's going to share with us the counterintuitive skill that allows anyone to calm any angry person in less than 90 seconds. This skill will transform your life forever. So welcome, Doug, to the show. My goodness.

Thanks, Becky. Well, first of all, I just want to thank you so much for having me on. I know that this is, this, you're, you're, I'm one of your early guests on the show and I just want to acknowledge you for doing the hard work it takes to put a podcast on. We both have done other podcasts and stuff, but no matter how much experience you have, it's still a lot of effort. And I want to encourage everybody who's listening to go to whatever you're listening to. If it's Apple or Spotify or whatever, whatever platform you're on, give Becky five stars and do it right now. Because without those five star reviews, you know, it's, she's not going to get picked up and she has an important message that everybody has to hear. So while you're listening, get up, get up, get on your, your phone or your tablet or your computer and hit that. Five stars for Becky.

Sweet. Thank you so much, Doug.

You're welcome. So let's kind of dive into things now. I. Everybody knows that divorce triggers huge conflict and stress and anger and people that get into the divorce process, breathing techniques, stepping outside, meditating, trying to do mindfulness, doing yoga when they're thinking about it. But, but this, the stuff is that none of that works. Works. It never has and it never will. And what I do is teach people who are in high conflict. It could be divorce. It could be just a. Couples that have a relationship problem and they've lost their intimacy, or it could be high performing teams that are in chaos. I teach them how to resolve all that, to find instant peace and to never have a fight or argument again using what I call my 92nd reset protocol. And this has been transformative. I've been teaching this for 20 years. It's neuro neuroscience backed and we'll kind of get into it.

Can I first ask before you, before you get into that, because I, I think a lot of people going through divorce have this mindset that it has to be conflict. Right. It has to be you, you have to be that it, that it can't, there can't be peace building. You can't change the other person. Let me just say that.

Well, let me just stop right there because obviously we both know that's not true. There is a whole continuum of ways you can divorce. For example, you can, you can. If you and your partner just have decided to split and you need to get everything separated and you're both amicable, you can do it yourself. You can hire, you can hire a paralegal to do. They call them document preparers now because it's illegal to practice law. But, but you can still do it and you can do it really cheaply. Yep. You can, you can hire a mediator, somebody like me to come in and help you mediate the issues. And there are only five issues in a divorce that you have to worry about. So you've got to allocate, you've got to allocate the property, you gotta sort out the, the assets and liabilities, you gotta figure out how to divide them. You got to deal and then you got to deal with, with support. Could be spousal support, child support, and then you've got to work out a parenting plan if you've got children. But that's it, that's all you have to do. Sounds like it can be really complicated. But you can media, you can, you can engage in collaborative law practice.

And that's, and that's what people don't know, that they, they don't know when they're first starting in the divorce even. And I, as a strategist, I say that too, you know, there are options out there.

And so I have to get adversarial with this.

Exactly. Yep.

And, and to the degree that you can tamp down the anger and the hurt and the betrayal and the feeling of abandonment and the lost and engage in a more collaborative process, the better off you are. I'll just give you just in dollars and cents.

Yeah.

To mediate a divorce. Where I live in central California, you can mediate it for five or $10,000. If you use collaborative law, it probably cost you $20,000. If you go full, full on litigation, 200. 200 to $300,000.

Wow, that's so first of all, that's California rates. Right. So I was gonna say there's, there are. And that, that's scary alone for people that are thinking about divorce and especially from somebody that does not, let's say that they're the financially disadvantaged one. How, how would you recommend even navigating through that, like looking at those numbers going, well, what if we don't have that even 5 to $10,000 to mediate? Like

then you're gonna have to find you're. I mean it's hard, it's tough because if you're not on speaking terms with your, with your ex or your soon to be ex and you guys are fighting and arguing, you're in deep trouble.

Yeah.

And, and my recommendation is don't, don't fight. I mean, whatever it takes to, to get out from a relationship and protect the children and make sure the children are cared for. That's what it is. Don't get in fights over pictures or photos or dogs or cats or whatever. And you know, in my first divorce, I, I rolled over. I mean I, I was, you know, 22 years as a hardcore commercial and business trial lawyer. I tried, I've tried a lot of cases and I just decided I was going to take a high road and not allow any feelings of anger or frustration or whatever to get in the way and. Right. My wife said, I want the dogs. I love these dogs. Right? Yeah. Okay, you get the dogs. I'm not going to fight you on that. And that's the attitude you have to have. Well, you're better off walking away, walking away with nothing than wasting it on attorney's fees. Right. Chewing yourself up.

And people don't realize that there's a lot of choices that they need to make during a divorce. And there are some sacrifices. There are the things that are non negotiable sociable to be able to know. And, and I, So what you don't know is my husband now ended up coming out of his divorce, 27 and a half year marriage and he ended up with 21 cents in the bank. Now that, now that's not the whole story. However, he chose not to fight as well. My thing is, is that I, I, you have all the choices in the world going through divorce. Right. However, at least know what your rights are so that you can make the choices.

Right. You need to get good. Good.

Exactly.

From a family law. Before you do anything, you've got to really consult with the family law lawyer and find out what your rights are and what your options are. That's, that's essential. You can't go to ChatGPT and figure this stuff out. It's. Every state is different. They have different laws, and so you really need local council to give you, give you advice. But at the end of the day, the, the legal system is adversarial for a reason and it is ill suited for dealing with personal relationships. And yet it's the only system we, it's the system of last resort.

Right.

It's the only system we have. But you should think of it as the system of last resort. You do everything you possibly can to, to not litigate.

I, and I appreciate you saying that because a lot of people get really scared of the, of the system. That's, that's what it really is. It's a system.

Yeah. Here's what happens. You, you, you break up and now you got a whole bunch of hurt feelings and bitterness. And so often you see, you see the dollar auction problem, which is, I know I'm, I know I'm going down, but I'm taking you down with me and it's scorched earth and none of us are walking away from this thing without being severely injured. And I don't care if it cost me the whole freaking fortune. I'm making sure that you don't get a dime.

So what would you rec. With your experience? And this is, this is really, really key. If somebody is just starting the process of divorce from your experience, what would be your advice to them on how to mentally like with the conflict resolution. Right. How not to escalate that and to keep calm, even if the other person might be, you know, combative?

Well, if you're going into litigation, the first thing you got to do is find a lawyer that suits your personality. And there are all kinds of different divorce lawyers out there, and they are, you know, and you, you need to interview people and find, find the lawyer that, whose personality works with you. And you don't necessarily want a junkyard, junkyard dog lawyer, somebody who's just totally adversarial and it's no holds barred that those lawyers are good for some things and not so good for other things, in terms of your own personal space, I recommend number one, go out. You got to get therapy right now. Find a good therapist who can help you work through all the emotions and all the bitterness and all that stuff. Don't screw around with that if you can't afford it. If you are a person of faith, then go get some help from your, from your pastoral people. Pastors, they're trying to do this. So that's their job is to help you work through this. So it doesn't, it really, it's really important that you find outside help to deal with all of the strong emotions that come up. And then as you go through the process, you're obviously going to get triggered. They're going to be times when you're supremely angry and furious. You're going to feel betrayed and abandoned and rejected. You're going to feel lost and hopeless and despair and miserable. You're going to be anxious and worried and you're going to be disgusted. You can. Disgusted. And you're going to, at times, you're going to be disrespected and be insulted. All this is, it's going to happen. Yep, it is going to happen. So the way you deal with that is you learn how to name the emotions that you're feeling in the moment. This is part of what I teach brain scanning studies show that when you label your emotions, this is called self affect label. When you engage, engage in self affect labeling, you immediately calm the emotional centers of the brain related to negative emotions and you activate a part of the brain called the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, which is part of your executive function, your thinking brain. It's very simple. You simply say, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I feel really anxious, I'm worried, I'm terrified. I'm so pissed off I could put my foot through a wall. I feel completely abandoned, betrayed and rejected. And I'm alone and I'm miserable and depressed and upset and stressed and I'm embarrassed and humiliated. I have to tell my family that was a failure in a relationship. These are the kinds of things you need to tell yourself. And later on we can talk about how to use this on other people like your ex or your children. But for starters, learn how to ethic label your own emotions.

Do you recommend that people write them down or just say them verbally?

Yep, you can journal it. Journaling works fine. You can learn. You can, you, you can go online and there are all kinds of emotional motion lists, wheel, emotional wheels and all kinds of Stuff. And if you don't have. Most people don't have a really good working emotional vocabulary. So you can just take. If you just Google emotional wheel, all kinds of images will come up. Pick one you like, print it out big. And then whenever you're upset, just take a, take a pencil and just check. Yeah, I feel this. I feel this. And say it to yourself. Just don't read it. You got to say it out loud and check the emotion.

Well, I appreciate you bringing that up because I think sometimes during divorce that we and I talk about this sometimes is that we, the people that are supporting us and that are surrounding us and hear the stories over and over and hear all the drama that we're coming. They're like, you just need not feel what you're feeling. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm feeling this anger. I'm feeling this betrayal for a reason. And if I don't address it, do you find that if people don't address it, it comes out somewhere else in their life?

If you don't take care of this stuff, it's going to manifest in your physical and mental health. The other thing you have to expect, though, is because your, your family and friends are not. Have not been trained by me. They should be. They should all be trained by me. But because they haven't, they don't know how to listen to you. Yeah. And you're going to repeat your story over and over again because you want to be heard and validated. You're really looking to have your emotions validated. They can't do that for you.

Yep.

And what they're going to do is they're going to invalidate you or, or they're going to give you unsolicited advice and try to fix you, and that's just going to make you even more angry.

Yeah. And they're not, they're not trained. Right. And, and they do tap out. They tap out.

They're like, they aren't trained. Yeah. They get anxious around your anxiety, and now you get into this emotional contagion and everybody gets upset. So you have to recognize that you do not have. You have to accept that you do not have a good support system with you around you, probably, if you are good, but more likely than not, you do not have a good support system. And people are not going to be able to validate your emotions and support you as much as they may love you.

And they don't have all the details either. I mean, I think that's one of the things that I, I mean I think your suggestion of getting a therapist or somebody that is. Is formally trained or somebody that, that can listen and without. Because everybody gives you advice. I don't know if you had that experience when you went through the divorce, but everybody has an opinion about what to do, how to fail, what to,

you know, nobody, nobody, nobody gives me advice. They know better.

We need to train people how to treat us during a divorce. But we are in such trauma that people are just like oh my gosh, like I can't handle.

So in my divorce which was non contentious I. Because I was not going to fight. And, and I, we. We started with them, we did marriage counseling and when the marriage was over with I stayed with the same therapist and he, he worked with me for a year and really helped me put, put my head back together.

Yeah.

And you know, I mean it was really critical. So I, there. Some people feel there's a stigma about getting help.

I. And it's, it's anything even with legal help. Right. Like there's just. I, I'm a huge believer. Probably one of the first when they're, they're just beginning the process of divorce or even considering it is your self care is your number one priority and

then the number two priority is taking care of the kids. There's going to be a huge blowback on the kids. Divorce is considered. One of is considered an adverse childhood experience. There are nine adverse childhood experiences. If a child experiences three of these adverse childhood experiences while they're children then they're the. The likelihood of a. Of a good life outcome for them is very, very low. This is called the ACEs Study out of San Diego County, California. And if you don't believe me go just Google ACES study and read the study and you will be shocked. The researchers were shocked when they found out made these correlations. So you've got to really protect the children and there's only so much you can do and but one of the things you can do is learn how to de escalate your children's emotions because they're going to feel it all too. And you learn how to label. Oh Suzy, you're really sad. You're already mad, you're upset. You want to cry all the time and you're lonely and you're confused and you don't feel safe. Just words like that.

Yeah.

Instead of telling children not to feel anything. Oh, don't be such a drama queen. Grow up. Put your big girl panties on. Y. Don't do that. That's called emotional invalidation. That's another adverse childhood experience. You can.

And then they scream even louder.

Well, of course they do, because they can't. We can get into a whole thing about child rearing and how parents have to be emotional coaches for their children, but in divorce, it becomes particularly critical that you, you be an emotional coach for your children. And when you are that emotional coach for them and you tell them what they're feeling and you validate their emotional experiences, you'll. They'll come through this okay. If you don't, if you try to problem solve or if you try to invalidate them or ignore them, you're going to destroy them, guaranteed. I've seen it so many times.

So what do you recommend to, to parents that are going through that when they don't feel. So I guess it goes back to what we were just talking about is getting the support they need so that they can come strong and be strong for their kids, because it ends up creating more trauma in their family dynamics if they're not strong and then they're. They're invalidating their children.

That's right.

Right.

So the number one tool, the go to tool, is what I teach, learning how to validate emotions, the skills called affect labeling. And I actually have a program for parents called the Parents Game Changer. Yeah, it starts off from very inexpensive to, you know, you can pay more money and get some really powerful online lessons that I teach on online. But the, the, this skill will be the skill that gets you through all of this because you will now master your emotions and be able to manage the strong emotions of everybody around you, including your children and including your ex. So, for example, when your ex starts yelling at you, you don't yell back. You say, wow, you're really angry right now. You're pissed off and frustrated and you feel completely disrespected and unappreciated and unsupported.

So I have something to say about that because I, I wonder how many. One of the things that I read in Your bio on LinkedIn was is that not to listen to the words that they're saying. Listen, that's a mediator, right?

Like, ignore the words.

Ignore the words. And so many people get hung up on the words, especially in the court system and during the divorce. They're like, well, he said this and he blamed me for that.

Ignore the words so you don't get triggered. Yeah, it's just white noise. You've heard it all before. There's nothing that anybody can say to you in angry that, in anger that you haven't heard before. Ignore it.

Right.

Just don't pay attention to it because you want to focus on what their emotional experience is. And then you label those emotions. You are. Don't use active listing. Active listening has never worked. It never will work. Don't use it. That's what I think you're feeling is anger. That I statement stuff. That's all BS. It started with Thomas Gordon in 1956. He actually was teaching some pretty good stuff, but it got. It got perverted and misunderstood by the human potential movement and got into this passive voice. I statement stuff. And there are studies that show that when you use a my statement, you break down trust. It does exactly the opposite of what people think it does.

Okay, so go again. What do you say though, when they're

going after, after you say Becky, you are really pissed off. You're frustrated, you're angry, you feel completely disrespected. You don't feel appreciated or supported, just. And you're anxious and worried, a little terrified. You're completely disgusted by the whole thing.

And what if they say back to you? They're like, that's not how I'm feeling.

Oh, so you're. So you're. You're. But you are really frustrated. You're really frustrated. They won't say that. They never do. Yeah, because you. You can read their emotions. We have the capacity to read each other's emotions. It's hardwired into us from 2 million years of evolution. We just don't use this skill because we live in a culture that looks at emotions as being weak. And we never learn.

Right.

Emotional skills, but our brains can or can effortlessly and quickly assess the emotional experience of somebody else.

So. And what, what is that skill? What's that little skill though that to do? You just tell yourself, don't listen to what they're saying.

Make it white noise. Okay, just turn it off. Turn on. Just turn it off. Don't even. It's like. It's like somebody behind you is talking. You're not even listening to them and you just turn off. Turn it off. And you're only going to do this for 90 seconds because that's all it takes. And then, and then. So you ignore the words. You read the emotions. And basically all you do to read the emotions is quiet your mind, empty yourself of any thoughts. Breathe, breathe. Take a little bit of a breath. In a couple of seconds, the emotions will start coming into your. Into your head consciousness. And then you just reflect what you see.

Do you?

I help people in My training in coaching, I, I, we learn how to structure the emotions and we learn how to build scripts so that, so that you, you have stuff immediately available to you. Because here's the thing, everybody experiences the same basic emotions over and over and over again, and there are no surprises. And humans have a really limited repertoire of emotional behaviors. Really limited. I mean, less than 25. And once you have seen those patterns and you know what to look for, there's no more chaos, there's no more confusion. Somebody gets mad at you, say, yeah, you're just having an emotional moment.

Do you think, Doug, that if you're exercising, if you learn on a daily basis to exercise calling your own emotions, that makes it easier to call their emotions?

Okay, Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's, it's self reinforcing both ways. And the other thing that I do is, is when I teach, one of the things I tell people is you want to start practicing this stuff in emotionally safe places where if you make a mistake, you won't embarrass yourself. And my favorite laboratory is Starbucks. So you go into Starbucks and you give your order to the barista and you give them your debit card and you say, wow, you're having a really great day today. You're really happy now, you have no clue what they're feeling, but you can bet that Starbucks generally hires young people who are people oriented and at 6 in the morning are usually pretty happy to be doing what they're doing. So you got odds on chance that you're going to be right. And then what you do is you say that, wow, you're really happy this morning. And just shut up and watch. Put your proverbial lab coat on your white coat and, and observe how they behave. And you do this with strangers that you meet every day. You go into the supermarket, you go to the checkout counter. Checkout clerks are almost always kind of grumpy, right? So you say to the checkout clerk, wow, you're pretty excited because your shift's almost over. You get to go home. You have no clue, you have zero clue what's going.

But here you start some conversation, you're

gonna get one of three things. Yeah, I am. I'm really excited. Good job. Or two, no, I just started my shift and said, oh. Then you say, oh, so you really kind of got eight more hours and before you can go home and you just got to slog through it and you, and you know, you're just kind of dreading the day. Or the third, third answer is halfway through my shift. And I. I'm taking a dinner break, and then I come tomorrow and I'm off to home. Oh, wow. Really exciting. You know, halfway through, almost through the day. And so you just have to. Labeling what they're feeling.

Yeah.

The third place you can do it is when you go out to dinner. You go out to dinner and sit down at the table, and the waiter comes, hey, I'm Doug. I'm your servant. Hey, Doug. You look really excited to be here tonight. And if you don't know, it doesn't matter. Just listen to their response and then reflect back what they say. You get the best service you ever had in your life.

Well, you know, I was thinking about this the other day when I was walking through the store because, you know, so many people are on their cell phones now. Right. So it's. We. We are. We are objectifying the people around us. We're not connecting.

Right.

And so you doing that kind of thing is people are not feeling heard or seen in our society now unless they're like, oh, I got to go viral. I got to do all this stuff.

And I mean, but that's not anything either. I call this listening other people into existence.

Yes. Yes.

So that's how you practice these skills. Go out and listen to people into existence. You know, you see your neighbor. How you doing? Listen to the emotions. Oh, you are. And then just reflect back what they're feeling. Not what they're saying, but what they're feeling. And use a you statement.

Yeah.

You practice this with strangers and neighbors and socially safe places, you will see the same reaction every single time. Deep gratitude.

Well, and you feel like you get better. You get better and better as you.

And now you can get. Now you can start working with your children.

Yeah.

Working with friends. And ultimately, after a couple of months worth of practice, you need to deal with your ex.

Yes. And I think that you can't deal

with your ex right away. You got to build that muscle. It takes time. It takes practice, but not much time.

I will say that that takes practice because I remember my first husband and I, we were going through some therapy and things like that. And that is one of the things that we did every day. It was a daily check in, check in with our emot. Right. And. And we did have to fill out. We, you know, we printed out the. The. The emotional wheel because it is sometimes hard to go, you know, am I feeling sad? Am I feeling sad? Or am I feeling betrayed? You know, am I feeling whatever. Whatever emotion came with this? And so it was interesting Every single day. That is, was a practice that we got into. And so we were having a better chance of communicating that. So you can't see it unless you really recognize it. Right?

That's right. And remember, communication is not speaking, it's listening.

Yeah.

You know, everybody talks about the need for better communication. That's a horrible word. What we need is better listening. And we're not, we have never been taught how to listen. We're just not trained in how to listen, where people assume that because we speak language, that we have a language, English, for example, that we can communicate, that we can listen, but that's not true. And we sort of learn to listen sort of by osmosis and trial and error. But there is actually a structured way to listen that allows you to be present with people, to listen them into existence and to, and to create true connection. And that's what I teach. And that's a skill that many, many people don't have. I mean, that's how I was able to take in the introduction, how I was able to take these gang bangers who were all murderers in the, in the maximum security prison, Corcoran State Prison in California, the supermax, and train them how to be peacemakers and mediators to stop prison violence. The very first skill we can tell

us a little bit more about that, that what I, I have, you know, because I got my degree in peace building and mediation like we did, you know, there was case studies that we watched. And it's amazing to see what an influence one person can have on another person when they understand these skills and abilities. So tell us a little bit more about your experience.

So the, the, the, the project is called Prison of Peace. And I, I co founded it with my dear friend and colleague, Laurel Copper. We're both mediators and lawyers. She's in Southern California, I'm in Central California. And in 2009, she received a letter from a woman serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in the largest, most violent women's prison in the world, which happened to be about an hour and 15 minutes from where I live. And Laura was standing out on the street out of her mailbox, and she called me and read the letter to me and said, what do you think? And I thought about it for a second. I thought, well, this is real. I think we should do this. We had no idea what's going to happen next. Anyways, it took six or seven months from that letter in August of 2009 to start teaching our first group of 15 women at Valley State Prison for women in chocolate California, starting in April of 2010. And from there it just. We never knew what was going to happen. But the state decided to repurpose the prison to a men's Prison in 2013. So now we had our women in two other women's prisons in California. And then. And now. Now there was Valley State Prison, which was now a men's prison. And we kept getting asked by the warden if we'd come back and start prison the peace there. And we said no, no, no, no. Until we finally said yes. And then eventually expanded. The state began to see the results we were getting. We could train, for example, at Valley State Prison for women. We trained, we probably trained over 800 women over the three years we were there. And it. We got a letter from the warden saying, as a result of prison of peace, we can't. This is now a quiet prison. Yeah, we have our fights, we have our problems, but compared to what it used to be, this is, this is. Wow. It's all due to the leadership work of the women that you've trained here.

And that was basically going and calling the emotions was that we train them.

The first thing we do is train them. We call it reflective listening. How you engage in reflective listening, which is. Is paraphrasing core messaging and affect labeling ethic level. We've been talking about listening to and validating emotions. And then, and then we teach, we teach them a little bit about restorative justice. We teach them how to do peace circles, which are listening circles, to practice the skills. And we just built. What we did is this is not normal mediation training we used. When Laurel and I put this together, we were professors at Pepperdine University School of Law at the Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution, were both experienced teachers, but we knew that working with this population, they did not have any kind of interpersonal skills. That's why they're in prison. Yep. So we had to teach them a whole bunch of interpersonal skills. And in the beginning, we used Robert Bolton's book People Skills, which was published in 1973 and is still in print. And I strongly, even though it's old, it's still got a lot of really great stuff in it. And then from there we slowly build up the skills that they need to mediate. And then we take them through a three day mediation training once we have their skills built up. So the. So we started with the women, then we went to the men, and then we, we were about bankrupt because both of us gave up our professional practices to do this pro Bono. We did it for six years. Finally we got funded by the state, started making a little, Got paid a little bit of money. And Today we're in 15 prisons in California, the kinetic prison system. 15 prisons in Greece and three prisons in Northern Italy. And, and growing around when the pandemic hit. We filmed, we filmed our entire curriculum during the summer of 2020. And now everything is delivered via. Via Blu Ray disc. So we don't have to do any in prison work anymore.

Yeah. And so people now, now you're able to actually impact more people.

That's right, yeah. And here in California, one of the statistics I love to talk about is in California, we've had 800 of our students graduate from our program who were serving life sentences. They've been released on parole. Not one of them is reoffended. Wow.

See? And that. Okay, so that just tells you how powerful the stuff that you're teaching is because it. And, and that was a big thing that we talked a lot about in my peace building degree that I ended up getting was, is that we need to stop objectifying people.

Right.

And this is a skill that, that brings people together instead of built, you know, that's right.

And, and what, what I'm really big on is I don't tell you what to do. I tell you how to do it. And so for, for those who are interested, I mean, you can go, you can go to Amazon, buy my fourth book, De Escalate how to Calm an angry person in 90 seconds less, which will give you all this stuff. Well, since we're on it, we're kind of getting to the end of our time here. There's something else I can offer everybody. I was so impressed with your work, Becky, that I put together this little project. I call it the Peace Under Pressure Kit. And you can, you can find me on either LinkedIn or Facebook and just. Or messenger would be okay. And just DM strong 25. And I'll reach. I'll know who you are. I'll know that you heard this show. And I'll reach out and we'll connect and I will send you by email two things. Number one, I'm going to send you a really cool little chat GPT prompt called the Dougnold de Escalation Advisor. And you can literally type in the problem you have, and it will tell you what to say and how to say it, which is really cool. Okay, that's a simple one. And then the other cool thing I did is I've unlocked one of my courses called Dealing with Anger and aggression. And I'll give that to you for free and I'll just, I'll just give you the link to it and I've unlocked it and it's a four week, it's dripped over four weeks on how to deal with anger and aggression from anybody. And of course if you're underwater, you're dealing with anger and aggression. So this is a good thing for you to learn. So the, the secret to getting it is to DM me direct message me on messenger or LinkedIn and you can, you can find me. Just Google me and you'll find me. And I could see LinkedIn. I'm Doug Noll. Facebook. I'm Douglas Noel at Douglasnoll and DM Strong.

Put all your information at the bottom.

Too long. 25. I'll get your email address and I'll, I'll pop you there. This stuff and that way you can get started in this stuff. And you know, it's not about money for me today. To me it's about how many people can I teach these skills to because I have seen the transformations that occur.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just as we kind of, you know, wrap up, what are the transformations that you've seen when you see somebody that goes from not having any skills at all, learns these skills, what's the results they end up having?

Number one, you will never have a fighter argument again in your life with anybody over anything. Never. No more fights and arguments. Number two, every difficult conversation will become transformative. Number three, you will build instant intimacy, loyalty and trust with everybody around you. If you're a leader, you'll become a leader that everyone wants to follow. If you have children. The studies show that if you affect label your children starting at a fairly young age, 3 and 4 years old, by the time they're 12, they have the social maturity of a 21 year old. And they're almost always academically two grade levels ahead of their peers, which every

parent wants for their children especially.

Yeah. If you don't affect label them, if you invalidate them, then the opposite happens.

Yeah.

So. So. And it's not that difficult it you. I've had parents write to me. Our 3 year old had tantrums. Uncontrollable. We started affect labeling 4 months later into more tantrums.

Wow. That. And that just tells you how powerful it is because I think it's. And it is a skill that will help you throughout any aspect of your life. Not just.

That's why I call it the foundational skill of life.

Yep. Yeah. And why Isn't that not taught in schools?

Because schools. Schools are so conflicted and pulled in so many different ways that they don't have time for this. And in addition, teacher training, the professors that teach this stuff in education, schools and colleges and universities are not interested in emotions. In fact, they really want to keep emotions out of the classroom because they are not trained in emotions. They're anxious around emotions, and they want to keep everything logical and rational. And so they don't have the skill sets or the aptitude to teach their college students who are becoming teachers these. These basic skills. Yeah.

And I feel that the more we tap. I know for me, looking back when I was a young, young child, me not being able to express my feelings and my emotions and then having to stuff them and then go to addiction, a food addiction. Right. I was going to something that was fixing that, and then it took me years and years and years to realize, man, if we could just teach the kids how to identify what I'm feeling right now.

That's right.

They wouldn't need to go to those other substances because they feel ignored.

You know, all mental illness. Well, let me say 98 of all mental illness is caused by emotional abuse. Wow. Think about that. And emotional abuse can be as benign as neglect, or it can be invalidation or other, other forms of abuse. But yeah, it's almost all. It's almost all emotional. There's very, very few children are born with brain dysfunction that causes them to have problems. It's almost all emotional.

Yeah.

Adhd, Asperger's, autism. It's all emotional.

Well, and I think. I think if we learn as a society to start connecting rather than disconnecting. And this is a beautiful opportunity for us to learn the skills and ability to connect even when you're going through a divorce. So this is one of the things that I like to tell people is even if you're in high conflict with someone, and I was. Mine was. This last divorce was a very high conflict divorce. However, I chose me. Chose to stay in a peaceful place towards him, and I chose to not let that ruin me because of the skills and abilities I was learning as I was getting my education and mediation, because those, these are very, very valuable, valuable skills to be able to carry you throughout your whole entire life and your children's lives. So thank you so much, Doug. Honestly, like, this is. You're making. Actually, you know what? I'm going to put to practice some of the things that you're doing here in the next couple days as we'll be out and about with people and with my sweet husband that I have now.

Yeah, let me. Let me. Email me, let me know. Let me both. Tell me the stories, the training.

Absolutely. Because I. I think that's. See, you should do that. Do you have people, like, somewhere that they can write their stories, success stories of, after they use.

I don't have anything, but people can email me at doug-o u g@dougnol. D o u g n o l l dot com.

Awesome.

And I'm the sole practitioner. I don't have an entourage. I don't have an army of people around me. I answer all my own emails. So email me, tell me your stories, or if you have questions, feel free to email me.

I think that would be a great place, like a blog or something, for people to really see that this stuff works because it does take courage. It takes courage to call it out and to feel and to say, look, this is how I'm feeling.

Right.

And it's okay to feel what you're feeling. That's so important to validate and give yourself that kind of grace. So thank you again for being on the show, contributing to this beautiful community of people who are going through a really difficult thing. So. And thanks, you guys, for joining me today on Divorcing Strong. I'm Becky Sampson, your host with Doug Noll, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks again.

Bye.

Bye.