Preparing Your Nervous System for Divorce: What No One Tells You Before You Walk Into That Room

Preparing Your Nervous System for Divorce: What No One Tells You Before You Walk Into That Room

From Divorce Happens by Fresh Starts Registry

July 17, 2026 · 17 min · Season 1 · Episode 254

About this episode

Leslie Mathews discusses the importance of preparing your nervous system for the challenges of divorce, emphasizing the impact of high-stakes conversations on emotional well-being.

Most people think divorce begins with paperwork. Leslie Mathews will tell you it actually begins in your nervous system. In this candid, deeply practical episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia sits down with Leslie Mathews, JD, MSW, a former attorney turned therapist, mindfulness coach, and founder of The LooM Life and LooM Life Therapy . Leslie brings a rare combination of expertise to the conversation: a law degree, a master's in social work, and her own lived experience of divorce, which she says taught her exactly what was missing from her process, and exactly what she now builds into every program she offers women navigating separation and starting over after divorce. At the heart of Leslie's work is a truth most divorcing people never hear until it's too late: high-stakes conversations about money, custody, and separation can trigger the nervous system into freeze, and freeze can mean walking out of a meeting with no memory of what you just agreed to. Leslie has watched clients make life-altering decisions in a room full of people and retain nothing about it, and she now teaches nervous system regulation and dissociation awareness as the foundation of divorce preparation…

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